Children of the May (Children of the May Book 1)

Chapter One: King Arthur's Order

My favourite place in the whole of the Lake was its floor. Many were the days I would swim all the way down, pulling the water over my head, so I could feel the silt between my toes. My hunched back made no difference in the water; my short legs were no handicap. The swim to the bottom made me feel stronger than I ever did walking on land.

I felt isolated from the rest of the world down there. I felt safe. That place was my escape.

I would pass through shoals of silver fish that darted around the sunlit waters. Down through the beauty of the colourful creatures that lurked below the silver, waiting to pounce on their feed. To the bottom, where the big-eyed fish rested sleepily, waiting for food to wander into their path. They were my brothers, those fish at the bottom of the Lake. I aspired to be like them, calm and unfeeling.

Up above were my sisters and my mother, and they were not kind to me.

It was towards the end of my fourteenth summer. I had been down at the bottom for perhaps an hour when I heard my sister Neave call to me through the water.

‘You’re wanted.’

Her thought shocked me. My sisters avoided the water when I was swimming. They always said that making contact with my mind was an ugly experience. But sure enough, my eyes travelled the connection Neave had made with me, and I saw her. She was crouched at the lake’s edge, her fingertips just grazing the surface.

My heart beat faster. I wanted to pretend that I wasn’t there. I was fine if they just left me alone.

‘You can’t hide from me, brother. I can see and hear you both. Don’t make me come down there.’

She took her fingers from the water, and the connection between us was broken.

I closed my eyes and felt the calm of the big fish once more. I stayed like that for a moment, and then pushed myself towards the surface, climbing the water as slowly as I could. 

* * *

I hadn’t been into my mother’s castle since the first days of that summer. I had spent my nights in the open when it was fine, and in the stables belonging to the nunnery at the far end of the Lake when it was not. My mother and sisters had visitors in the summer months, emissaries from King Arthur and the smaller kingdoms of Britain. My family did not like me to be seen; they thought that the presence of a boy in the Lands of the Lake spoiled the image they fostered for themselves.

The castle, however, was where Neave took me that day.

When I’d thrown on my dirty clothes and ragged cloak she grabbed me by the wrist and dragged me to the castle gates. There were the normal signs of activity in the courtyard – Martha the blacksmith was at work in her forge, the sour-faced maids dashed hither and thither – but there was also a group of men lounging in the sunlight: dirty, bearded soldiers, who laughed and scratched and wolf-whistled at my tall, dark sister in her floating white robes.

‘I’ll hex you, you boors,’ Neave snapped, which shut them up. A hex was no little threat coming from a daughter of Lady Nemue, who had given King Arthur his magical sword.

Neave wrenched my arm as she dragged me into the great hall. I stumbled and fell on the blue tiles in front of the high table. I stayed where she left me. Neave took her seat between my other two sisters on the left wing of the table. A fat, red-faced man in a suit of scuffed armour sat on Mother’s right.

‘This is him, then?’ said the man

‘It is,’ said my mother, who was more ancient than the hills, but looked little older than my eldest sister. ‘This is him, Sir Dinadan. My greatest disappointment.’ She averted her eyes from my ugliness. I felt the dull ache of all the ways I’d failed her, just by being born. My family never let me forget how much I’d disappointed them.