Ides of the May (Children of the May 2 - updates weekly)

Chapter Twenty-Eight: In the Camp

I trotted past the guards into the heart of the camp, not really knowing where I was heading. Thankfully, my mare smelled her brother and sister horses on the rank air and led me to the stables. I dismounted, and handed my reins over to the stablehand.

‘Sir Breuse is it, sir?’ said the warty man. ‘His tent’s back aways.’

‘Thanks,’ I said.

The man looked shocked at the word, so unused was he to receiving thanks. Rather than engage him further in conversation, and perhaps reveal how little I knew of camp etiquette, I walked away in the direction he had pointed me.

Although the army could only have been assembled sometime in the previous couple of weeks, the place smelled as if it they had been camped outside of Tintagel for months. It was, well, I’ll say it was ripe; the smell of many thousands of men crammed into a small patch of land probably always is. The smell of smoke mixed with that of cooking food, which in turn mixed with the raw stinks of ale and wine and the effects of those drinks on their drinkers. The men lounged about under the flaps of their tents, playing dice and other games of chance, just like Palomina’s crew when the fleet had been becalmed. They were so absorbed in their games that they did not so much as look at me.

The attitudes of the men changed when I approached a section of grander tents towards the centre of the camp, where Merlin’s spell terminated. Here the soldiers were clean-shaven, and stood to attention as I passed. I had hoped to go without being noticed, but it had been a foolish hope. I could feel I was getting closer to Palomides. I could sense the string of magical metal slinking to the ground nearby, but I had entered an avenue of tents that led directly to the grandest of all, where the commander of the army – or at least that section of it – was stationed.

‘A messenger!’ called one man, and that call was repeated all the way down the line to that largest of the tents, where the guards swept aside the black curtains for me to enter. Hoping that my concern did not show on the face of my glamour, I strode into the tent as if my orders lay in that direction.

I passed through the anteroom, where a clerk sat at his desk, and the sentries lifted another curtain for me to enter the main chamber. It was a richly decorated room, with animal skins laid out on the floor. A large bearded man sat at a desk, writing something on a piece of parchment. Behind him, on his right shoulder, was a statue of this same man in white marble, dressed in the mode of an ancient Roman senator. Over his left shoulder was a very rich suit of armour, its metal treated to make it appear as black marble. I did not need these clues to identify the man, I recognised him from Bellina’s memories: this was Sir Breuse Saunce Pité, her father. Agravaine had been right to doubt the Marble knight’s allegiance, it seemed; here he was in command of Arthur’s siege of Tintagel.

Minutes passed while Sir Breuse finished writing on his paper. I knew this was his method of imposing his authority on his underlings, including his daughter. Bellina had learned to wait for hours after being summoning into her father’s presence. ‘It’s his way of feeling as powerful at home as he does ahorse,’ the wisest of Bellina’s short-lived stepmothers had once told her.

Finally the Marble knight looked up from his papers. ‘Yes?’

I had been desperately thinking of what message I could deliver throughout my long wait, but my mind was racing so fast that I was struggling to hang onto one idea.

‘Quickly, boy. Do not test my patience.’ He sat back in his chair, defying me not to give my message.

‘From the king, Sir Breuse,’ I said too quickly. I tried to slow my voice. ‘He orders that Sir Palomides be returned to Camelot.’