Patrick Samphire

Camelot

When she finds me, I’m half-sitting, half-slouched, butt propped against the bonnet of my chunky old Volvo estate, shoulders hunched, flicking away madly at my fifty pence lighter, roll-up hanging from my mouth, boots still unlaced. Dignified, right? But sometimes the need takes you, and it doesn’t matter where you are or what you’re doing, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

I need a fag, and that’s that.

And, let’s face it, it’s not like it’s going to kill me.

The bonnet is still hot under my arse, and that’s something to be grateful for, because today’s bitch cold. The Volvo’s heater broke weeks ago, and I haven’t a clue how to fix it. My bones hurt.

I finally coax a flame out of the lighter. I take a drag and feel the smoke burn its way down into my lungs. Now that’s what I call central heating. I’d say it’s better than sex, but to be honest, it’s been so long since the latter that I can’t remember.

When I open my eyes, a whole coach load of fucking Japanese tourists have drawn up and are piling out, right into my view. Fantastic.

It’s while I’m watching them that she sidles up to me. Must have come from the other end of the car, because the first I know of it, she’s taking the fag out of my fingers and lighting one of her own with the end. She returns mine with a half shrug--very Gallic--then settles beside me.

“It never is,” she says.

Which is a funny fucking opening gambit, if you ask me. If it’s supposed to be a come-on, it’s not exactly ‘do you come here often’. But, to be honest, she doesn’t exactly need the lines. She’s gorgeous. Hair as black as burnt wood and cascading to the small of her back, which in turn sends the eyes you know where, and once I’m there, well, I’m not looking away in a hurry.

“Isn’t what?” I say, eyes still firmly where they shouldn’t be.

“Camelot,” she says. “It’s never Camelot.” She waves the cigarette at the ruins that rise on the hill above us, leaving an elegant trace of smoke in the air.

She turns to look at me for the first time and I get the full effect of her eyes. They’re almost as dark as her hair, and they near-as-fuck knock me out of my unlaced boots. I’ve never seen eyes like them before. My heart’s hammering away like a teenager with a skin mag.

“That’s what you’re looking for, isn’t it?” she says. “Camelot?”

“No,” I say. “I’m looking for my brother.”

She nods, like it explains everything.

“What happened to him?”

“He disappeared.” Which is true as far as it goes. There are just a couple of details I leave out. Like, my brother was shot down over France in 1943. Like, I was twenty-two years old.

Like, I’ve been looking for him ever since.

Like, it’s 2010 now, and I haven’t aged a single day.

“Camelot,” she says. “It’s never Camelot.”

There are things you long for. Things you need with the strength of a black hole some bastard’s opened in your chest. Things you can’t leave be because you’d die if you did.

I finish my roll-up with one deep suck and grind out what’s left under my foot.

“I’m going to take a look.”

“Fine,” she says. “I’m coming.”

I don’t say no.

I’ve seen it in my dreams. The place Jack came down. I’ve seen weed-strewn ruins, high arches of stone, glittering glass hanging in shattered windows. I’ve seen fountains and a river that wells up from deep beneath the ruins to run over carved reliefs. I’ve seen statues and fluttering flags standing forlorn over crumbled walls. I’ve seen Jack lying there, his parachute crumpled behind him, his face twisted with pain, his leg bent back at an impossible angle. I’ve seen the cold sunlight overhead and heard the wind snatching at the stones. I’ll know it the moment I see it.

This isn’t it.

I didn’t think it would be. After all these years, I don’t expect to find that place, but I can’t stop looking. It’s got to be out there somewhere.

Jack fell from the sky. I can’t leave him.

The Japanese tourists are all over these ruins, taking shots, laughing, talking. Steam rises from their lips, wreathing their heads like they’re dragons at the fucking monsters’ ball.

This is not it. I can’t help but feel disappointed. You’d have thought after all this time, I’d have grown immune.

“I’ve got a room,” she says. “Back in the village. Nothing special, but...”

I shrug. Anything’s better than another night in the back of the Volvo, with ice on the inside of the windows and a crick in my neck that’ll take all day to loosen.

“Sounds good.”

That night, after the wine, after we’ve fucked, after I’ve stared into her eyes like into twin wells filled with ink, she shifts herself out from under me.

She gazes up at me from the darkness. “How old do you think I am?”

Trust me, there’s no right answer to that. “About thirty,” I say, trying to be honest.

She smiles. “Sweet boy.”

“You want to know how old I am?” I say, suddenly irritated. “I’m eighty fucking nine.”

Her smile widens. “You’re far older than that, Sam.”

As I slip into sleep, she whispers, “You’re not supposed to remember. None of us are.”

In the morning, she’s gone, leaving only the scent of olives behind her.

I never told her my name.

A bit of that old poem flits through my brain. You know the one. “I did but see her passing by, and yet I love her till I die.”

I did but fuck her passing by...

Doesn’t quite have the same ring to it. It’s true, though. I feel like she’s set my blood on fire. It’s pumping through my veins with a searing pain that grows with every beat of my heart.

I’m sweating. My sheets are soaked. The hairs on my skin are standing painfully on end, and every time I brush against the cotton, it hurts like a razor cut. I’m shivering. I feel hot and cold at the same time.

Fuck. She’s done something to me.

I stumble out of bed and fall, my knees crashing on the floor. The room is spinning around me. I squeeze my eyes shut and scrabble around for my clothes. I can only find one sock and my T-shirt has completely disappeared. Gritting my teeth, I dress.

I stagger to the door, crashing it open with my shoulder and almost tripping down the stairs. I hug my coat around me.

The innkeeper gabbles something at me in French. I ignore him and lurch out into the freezing morning. The light is blinding, even with my eyes almost squeezed shut.

The innkeeper follows me out, still spouting gibberish.

My car is in the lot. I reach it, wrench open the door, and slump down in the driver’s seat. My head falls forward, smacking into the steering wheel. Distantly, I hear a blaring sound, but my head is swirling worse than ever.

The fever dream comes then, eddying up from behind my eyelids. I see fire and smoke, burning buildings and shattered walls. All around me, heavily armoured men clash and fall. Sweat and blood and mud make everything slippery. A shape looms before me, and I swing. The shape goes down before I can see a face. I step over, shield raised.

The men around me break into a run, racing towards the enormous, burning buildings ahead of us. The last of the defenders fall and flee. The inferno rages with a fierce joy, ripping and tearing and laughing in its hunger. The heat beats on metal. Armour and swords reflect orange and red. We’re shouting in triumph, beating swords against shields.

That’s when they come, walking through the fire. The old man and the young.

Our cheers die in our mouths.

The man beside me turns, screaming back to someone I can’t see. “You said they were gone! You said they wouldn’t be here!”

Then men are breaking, running, fleeing. I stand for a moment as the figures approach through the fire. Then I’m running too, my shield forgotten behind me.

I don’t know how long I’ve sat there in the car. Long enough that my sweat has chilled nearly to ice. The fire that burned in me has faded, and the shivering is just because I’m freezing. The fever is gone.

I fumble out my keys and turn on the engine. There’s frost on the windscreen. I should get out and scrape it off, but I don’t have the strength. Instead, I start the car rolling forwards, squinting through the tiny patch of clear glass.

Futilely, I worry the little heating lever back and forward on the dashboard. Something clicks, and miraculously, a thin trickle of warm air washes over me. I want to cry.

I pull out my little notebook, still peering through the frosted windscreen, and flick through the pages. I glance down and read the next name on the list. Château de Najac. It’s a fair drive. Not that I expect to find anything there. I’ve seen photos. But there are only so many options left, and I can’t afford to ignore any of them. Jack wouldn’t have.

Jack might have been my little brother, but he was the one who always looked out for me. He only joined the RAF so he could keep an eye on me. So I wouldn’t get myself killed doing something stupid. Then they shot him down, and he fell, and he was only twenty-one.

He was the same when we were kids. I lost track of how many times he dragged me out of ponds or caught me before I could tumble down some embankment.

Now he’s lost, and the irony is, I can’t die. I can’t even grow old.

When he needed to be caught, I wasn’t there. I was in a bar. With a couple of girls. Drunk.

They had to wait to the next day to tell me, when I was sober, but by then I’d already had the first dream of Jack lying in the ruins, and I knew he wasn’t dead. He was waiting for me to save him.

Château de Najac stands on a craggy outcropping of rock over a painfully cute village. The kind of place that too-rich English bastards infest like a case of the crabs. Darling, it’s so authentic.

I climb out of the Volvo.

This isn’t the right place. I know it. It’s not even close. Jack wouldn’t even have been flying this far south.

A cold wind whips shreds of snow up from the valley. They scratch and melt on my bare face.

I don’t remember when I last ate.

“It never is,” she says, just behind me.

“Screw you,” I say, somehow not surprised that she’s here.

“You already did.”

I glance back at her. She’s showing a slight smile. She takes my breath away, just like she did yesterday. This woman is so beautiful.

“You can’t find it like this,” she says. “You can’t just walk into Camelot.”

My hands bunch into fists, cold fingers feeling like dead chunks of wood against my palms. “I’m not interested in fucking Camelot. I just want my brother.”

“Jack,” she says.

“How do you know his name?”

“It’s not his real name, you know,” she says. “Just like Sam’s not your real name.”

I shake my head, turning away.

In bed that night, she says again, “You’re not supposed to remember.”

“Remember what?” I demand.

“Who you are,” she says. “What you did. They took that from us, from those cast out. We fell from grace.”

I shake my head, but already sleep is claiming me, and in the morning she’s gone.

The fever hits me again on the way to the car, but this time I’m half expecting it. I’ve got my keys in my hand, and I make it to the car without falling.

The fever dream is more real this time. More visceral. I can feel the sweat on my back and taste metal-tinged blood in my mouth. Heat from the flames beats against my armour and my exposed skin. My eyes are dry and they sting. The armour has rubbed me raw beneath my arms and at my neck. Metal clashes around me. I block a swinging sword, and the impact judders down my arm, numbing my wrist.

When the defenders break, I scream, “No! Don’t follow!” But this is a fever dream, and I am not in control. No sounds pass my lips, and I run forward with the other attackers, screaming triumph.

I feel the biting fear as the two men come striding through of the flames.

“You said they were gone! You said they wouldn’t be here!” the man behind me shouts, just before we flee.

I turn and run, racing back across flagstones I fought bitterly to take only minutes before. She is there, standing with back pressed against the stone wall, hands folded in front of her as though she’s sitting in her solar, talking to her ladies. But I see the fear in her eyes too.

I don’t have time to think. The young one, the one carrying the sword is on us already. Men fall, cut down.

There is no way out of this courtyard. A burning beam has fallen across the gate. When it happened, I was delighted. No reinforcements.

I swing back in time to see him cut down another man without breaking step. There are scarcely a dozen of us left standing, fanned out before the blocked gate.

I look into that face that I once loved more than I loved my own life. But the killing rage is upon him, and there is no mercy in his eyes.

I raise my sword. At least it will be quick.

Then Jack comes stumbling from around the burning stables. He isn’t wearing armour. He never joined us. I never told him what we were planning to do, because I knew that if I did, he would follow me, and this was never Jack’s fight.

Jack was the only one who could ever talk to him during one of his killing rages. Now Jack pleads, cajoles, reasons, begs, while the rest of us stand there, waiting for the end.

But slowly the killing rage fades in his eyes. Hardness remains, but it is the hardness of reason and justice, not of rage. I know Jack has saved me once more

Then the old one speaks. His words chill the air. Darkness gathers like thunder, oppressive, heavy, painful. A fear grips me that is so great that it stops the blood in my veins. I do not understand most of the words. They are too powerful, too ... potent. In my terror the only words I catch are, Cast out, for all time.

Then comes the fall.

I wake sweating. My hands are gripping the steering wheel so tight that they’ve left dents in the hard plastic. I’m shaking. Despite my thick clothes, I’m chilled through. I fumble out a roll-up. Thank God I made it last night, because right now I can hardly hold it.

When it’s lit, I turn on the engine. The petrol indicator is close to empty, and so is my wallet. I reckon I’ve got enough for another two tanks, then I’m broke. I’ll have to get a job, save some more up, before I can start looking again. Could take months. I hammer my cold fists on the steering wheel. It’s been over sixty years. Jack is out there, lost, hurt. I can’t bear to give up again.

I consult my notebook and my map. Then I turn the car north.

The drive takes most of the day. The frost-rimed landscape of southern France slips by, an unending sequence of towns and villages, fields, forests and mountains. Eventually, though, I catch sight of my destination, high, ruined walls against a fading sky.

It’s not the place I’m looking for.

“It never is,” she says.

That night, instead of making love, she sings to me. It’s the saddest song I have ever heard.

“Find him,” she whispers, when she’s done.

In the morning, she’s gone again, but there is no fever dream.

Next stop is Calais, then the ferry home. If I’m careful, I can make enough in three or four months to set out again. There are plenty more ruins in France. If they fail me, I’ll try Belgium. Jack could have been blown off course. He might not have been shot down over France. I won’t stop. Jack wouldn’t have.

It’s late afternoon and the sky is fading to a wintery lilac when I catch a glimpse of something through the cold-stripped trees. It’s just a flash of stone, but old instincts take over, and I slam on the brakes. In summer, I wouldn’t have seen a thing.

I consult my map, but there’s nothing marked.

It’s probably just a tumbledown farmhouse. I’m going to be driving all night as it is. I’m tempted to keep driving.

Instead, I climb out, pull on my walking boots, and crunch my way up the slope, through the trees.

I have dreamt this place so many times. The weed-strewn ruins, the high arches of stone, the glass still hanging in shattered windows. There is the fountain, empty of water now, but familiar still. Here is the small river that wells up from deep beneath the ruins to run over reliefs. I peer through the icy water and see knights carved from stone. Broken statues line the track to the courtyard. There are no flags on the walls, but my dream is of sixty-seven years ago. Things change.

I tramp towards the courtyard. Two statues stand on either side of the gate. I recognise them from my fever dream and look quickly away.

This time, I hear her footsteps before she reaches me. Her face is flushed from the climb in the freezing air, but she is still the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. Just looking at her makes it hard to breathe. There’s another car parked behind mine on the road, a low black Ferrari.

“You’ve been following me,” I say.

“You’re a slow driver.”

I shrug. “Is this it?” I say. “Is this Camelot?”

“No,” she says. “But it’s close. It’s very close.”

I make my way into the courtyard. In my dreams, Jack comes down on the far side, in the shade of the great wall. His parachute stretches across the flagstones behind him.

Here, now, the accumulated leaves of a dozen years have blown in undisturbed drifts.

When I close my eyes, I can see exactly where he should be lying.

I kneel in the rotting, frost-crisped leaves and dig through them.

The first thing I find is a buckle, still glinting despite the grime. As I move more leaves, I uncover a rotting RAF uniform, then bones. The left femur has snapped and the rest of the leg juts backwards.

My hands won’t uncover any more. They tremble uselessly at my side. There’s an emptiness pressing against my throat, so deep that I can’t even cry or scream or shout.

I cannot die. I thought the same would be true for Jack. I thought he’d be waiting for me. I never imagined he would die here in this cold, empty courtyard, alone and undiscovered.

Jack never failed me in all our years. I’ve failed him now.

The woman pushes me aside with a strength I would not have guessed. Her face is full of delight. I stare at her. She runs her hands over Jack’s bones, then looks up at me, her eyes alight with joy.

I can’t speak.

“We were cast out,” she says. “You, me and all the others. We fell. All of us except Jack. Jack followed you, like he always did. He was not banished. Don’t you understand? His bones can carry us home.”

I look at her with revulsion. “That’s all you wanted? All of this was so that I could lead you to Jack and you could go home?”

“To Camelot,” she says. “We both could. Your brother would want you to.”

The truth is, she is right. Jack would do anything for me. He wanted to make me happy and keep me safe. He would want me to go home.

“Who were we?” I say. “Back in Camelot, what were our real names?”

She smiles. “Follow me and find out.”

I shake my head. Without Jack, there’s nothing for me there. There’s nothing for me anywhere.

“You’ll forget,” she says. “These memories will fade, like they did before. You won’t have another chance.”

I don’t care. I want them to fade.

This isn’t Jack. It can’t be. Not dead in this bleak, lost place. Not Jack. Not my brother.

I leave her there, this woman, kneeling over the bones of the British airman.

That night, I dream of Jack lying, leg broken, in the ruins. I dream of fountains and a river running over carved stone and bright glass in shattered windows. I dream of flags fluttering over high walls.

In the morning, I get into my Volvo and continue to drive north.

There are other ruins. Perhaps I was wrong about these ones.

After all, there were no flags fluttering over the walls.

The Volvo’s engine is making an unhealthy noise, and the heater is broken again. I keep driving.

- End -

Publication Details

Published in Interzone, issue 230, September / October 2010.

Reviews

My favourite story this issue.
- Cate Gardiner, Skull Salad Reviews
Read full review.

Patrick Samphire offers an updated Arthurian fantasy, an elegantly crafted modern-day take on the Matter of Britain.
- Gardner Dozois, Locus, Issue 598

... the short relationship between the two [protagonists] is a vivid physical one.
- Mark Watson, Best SF
Read full review.

Credits

Story illustration by Ben Baldwin.