The Excalibur Codex

Epilogue

The house backed onto the south-east slope of the triple peak, mottled pink stone and grey slate set squat and low to fend off the winds that had battered their way down the valley for countless millennia. Judging by the hotchpotch of building styles and the outbuildings that clung haphazardly to either side, it might be only the most recent manifestation of at least three earlier structures.

‘Home,’ Fiona Maxwell announced, pushing back the door with her uninjured hand, the other held across her chest in a makeshift sling. ‘This is my place. My mother and father usually look after Abbotsford, but fortunately they were away for the weekend. I was only standing in.’

She led the way through the house to a back room obviously used for storage. A painted door was set in the far left of the rear wall and she opened it to reveal a deep cupboard. Not for the first time, Jamie wondered if he was in a dream as Fiona reached up and pulled at the right hand wall until it slid aside with barely a squeak. ‘My uncle’s work,’ she explained. ‘He was a great one for the joinery.’ The gap led into a short corridor that led in turn to another door. She stood in front of it and turned to him, her green eyes shining cat-like in the gloom. As she spoke the pain of his wounds seemed to fade.

‘You have the right, twice over,’ she said formally. ‘The blood of kings runs through you. The St Clairs of Ravensneuk are descended through the matriarchal line from Lllachar, ruler of hosts, remembered in the Gododdin, and whose forefathers held this land for the High King of the Votadini. Yet you need not pass if you do not have the will.’

‘You said twice.’

‘And because you have been touched by the Lady. But you already know that.’

The Lady was Isis, paramount goddess of Ancient Egypt, and he had recovered her crown that had been lost for two millennia. Jamie felt a moment of utter certainty unlike any other in his life. ‘Then I will pass.’

She pushed the door back and they were in a tight space between the house and the hills, hidden from above by an overhang and from the sides by outcrops that buttressed the rear of the building. In front of them lay an ominous cleft that looked to Jamie like the entrance to the Underworld.

‘A great stone once covered this,’ she explained in a spectral voice that seemed to come from another age. ‘It was a shrine through the centuries and men came with offerings though they knew not what they worshipped. Then, in the time of William, known as the Lion, a young man was found wandering these hills, his hair turned white as a mountain fox in a single night. He carried one gold piece and told of a dark cave, a great treasure and a terrible king who had woken and ordered him to begone or be swallowed by the mountain for ever. The townsfolk took the madman to Michael Scott, the wizard, who had ceased his wanderings for a time, but he never recovered his senses. It is said Scott placed a spell of concealment on the cave and appointed himself its Guardian. Scotts have been the Guardians ever since.’

‘But you are a Maxwell.’ Jamie was surprised at the tremor in his voice.

‘My aunt was a Scott,’ Fiona said simply, ‘the last of that line, and someone must be chosen. Come.’

He shivered and would have hesitated before the dank, freezing tomb if Fiona Maxwell hadn’t led the way unflinchingly inside. She produced two tall candles from some hidden void and lit them with a long match. In the flickering yellow light Jamie saw that the sloping six-foot-high passage beyond the entrance had been cut from the rock by men and widened so that two people could pass side by side. Fiona set a steady pace over the uneven surface and Jamie followed at a slight crouch to shield his head from the tunnel’s rock ceiling. After a few minutes they reached a horizontal stretch and somewhere far ahead Jamie had an illusion that the walls were rippling as if they were a molten river. It was only when they came closer he realized the effect was caused by an uneven line of gleaming two-foot bronze discs ingeniously set into each side of the passage. When Fiona reached the first of the polished metal plates she placed her candle in a holder so that the disc reflected the entire light of the flame. The effect was astonishing. The curvature and angle of the mirror-surfaced disc focused the light diagonally on to a similar disc on the opposite side of the tunnel, which repeated the exercise on to a third, and a fourth until twenty discs illuminated the space a hundred paces ahead. When she took Jamie’s candle and inserted it in the disc on the opposite side of the passage the effect was almost as bright as day.

Oddly, the lights only increased Jamie’s sense of foreboding.

They continued down the passage and he noticed scorch marks on either side of the floor. A few paces later Fiona warned against a dark stream that cut across their path, appearing from one side of the tunnel and disappearing into the other, through a channel that had been cut by hand. Very gradually he began to work out where he was. The growing realization was reinforced by the dark oblong of a great pit ahead and his step faltered and his stomach seemed to drop as the full, quite literally awesome, reality threatened to overwhelm him. The emotion he experienced was as intense as when he first entered the Sistine Chapel or gazed upon the great paintings of the Louvre, but magnified a thousand times.

‘We’re in a Mithraeum?’

‘Yes.’

Mithras, god of the East, the soldier’s god, bull slayer and keeper of the mysteries. Jamie could imagine it now. The naked initiate escorted down the tunnel, his senses battered by sights and sounds and smells. The heat from the twin fires singeing his flesh, and then the bewildering drop into the freezing cold waters. Every step a test of courage. A single flinch or a foot backwards and the ceremony would be abandoned. Beyond the stream they would have lined the floor deep with cattle entrails and whispered in the man’s ear that they were the remains of his family. Something soft and fleshy forms a barrier. A sword placed in his hand. ‘Your eldest son. Thrust deep and sure, or Mithras rejects you.’

And finally the grave pit with your sword in your hand. The sound of the bull being brought and the terrified lowing as it scents the gore. And then you’re drowning in blood, gallons of it pouring over you, hot and thick and oily from the beast’s slashed throat, choking and blinding you and filling your nostrils with the stink of death.

And then you rise. Reborn.

Sweat poured from Jamie’s body as if he’d personally suffered the ordeal. He was so focused on the pit that he almost didn’t notice the skulls cut into niches in the walls, each of them topped by an exotic helmet of ancient origin: a distinctive Thracian cap with its griffin crest; the conical dome of a Scythian archer; the plumed headgear and fish-scale neck protector of a Parthian cataphract; a Celtic-era pot helmet from Gaul or Hispania decorated in gold. Even a jewelled headdress that looked as if it might have originated from somewhere on the Russian steppe.

‘These were the Sword Brethren,’ Fiona said reverently. ‘Enemies, but men who also worshipped the bull slayer. Warriors who fought well and died well and have been given their place in his halls for all eternity.’

Jamie stopped as he reached the gaping hole in the ground.

‘No, do not hesitate.’ Her voice was urgent. ‘You are welcome here. You have not suffered the trials, but you have bathed in the blood of your enemies.’ He remembered the awful crunch as the jagged fragment of sword had cut into Adam Steele’s throat and the warm blood that had spurted slick and viscous onto his face and clothing. ‘It is your right.’ As she repeated the words she’d uttered at the cave entrance she pointed towards the end of the chamber. ‘It has many names, but in our time it has always been Excalibur.’

He followed her gaze. There, on the far side of the pit, glowing in the combined spotlight of the final pair of discs as if at the bottom of a sea pool, was a sword. Excalibur, the sword of Arthur, lay encased in a bubble of almost clear aquamarine calcite. Only the hilt and pommel, a wonderful twin dragon head of pure gold, remained clear of the beautiful flowstone formed from the stalagmite hanging above. A spatha, Jamie realized in wonder. Of course it would be a spatha. The heavy sword carried by Roman auxiliary cavalry during their centuries in Britain. The sword of a great lord, but a warrior’s sword, for all the fancy decoration. Awe filled him, as the eerie light from the centre of the bubble filled the chamber and made it feel like being at the centre of a sunburst or the gates of some strange blue Heaven.

Fiona waved him forward and he felt a liquid tremor as he realized the implications of what she’d said. It was his right to lay his hands on the sword of kings. It was his right to draw it from the embrace of the marvellous blue stone if he were able. But Jamie Saintclair knew it was not right. Nature had kept Excalibur safe for close on a hundred generations. Nature would keep her safe for another hundred. He shook his head wearily and slumped onto the stone bench carved into the tunnel wall by the pit, listening as Fiona Maxwell’s footsteps faded down the passageway.

He closed his eyes and for the first time since he’d heard the news of Abbie’s death he felt at peace. Here, he was surrounded by the spirits of departed warriors. Men who asked nothing of their friends but friendship in return. Men who had fought. Men who had gone to their deaths willingly and without complaint, their only concern that they should take their last breath with a sword in their hand. He stood up and said a silent prayer to their shades. Their God was long gone, he was sure, but the syndexioi, the faithful who had created this temple remained, loyal beyond death to the greatest hero of them all. For beyond the unnatural black veil that silhouetted the aquamarine rock that gripped Excalibur in its stony embrace lay a second chamber, and, he was certain, a secret more significant still. But that secret would stay with him till the end of his days.

As he made his way back through the honour guard of Sword Brethren he thought he heard a sound — not a whisper, more a shimmer in the still air …

Arthur.