At the Crossing Places Read Free Page A

And below the courtyard, there’s a grassy bank so steep that it would be impossible to attack the castle from this side.
    Beyond that, I can see the South Yard and the cottages and crofts of the people who live on Lord Stephen’s manor; I can see the archery butts and, far below me, the drawn bow of the dark river, which half-surrounds this castle.
    â€œDoes everything here look very strange?” Lord Stephen asked me at dinner. “Well, it’s when things look strange that we see them most clearly.”
    I’ve noticed one of the floorboards in my room stops short of the outer wall. When I raised it, I saw that the joist had a hollow in it, and that’s where I’ve decided to hide my seeing stone. I don’t think anyone will find it there.
    I couldn’t see anything in my stone at all when Merlin gave it to me—not to begin with. Nothing but my own reflection: my sticking-out ears and blob nose. But after I’d looked into it a dozen times, and polished it, and warmed it in the palm of my right hand, I began to see deep into it. I watched the white dragon of England fight the red dragon of Wales, and saw King Uther fall in love with Ygerna, wife of the duke of Cornwall. I saw the mysterious hooded man help Uther by giving him drugs to change his appearance so that he looked like Ygerna’s own husband. I saw Ygerna giving birth to their baby son, and how he was put out to foster parents when he was only two days old.
    In the stone, I’m myself but not myself: I’m a boy who looks like me, and talks like me, but is not me because he knows magic, and has fought his murderous uncle and killed him, and has ridden with his father and brother to a tournament in London.
    I watched my namesake gallop to the churchyard of Saint Paul’s and pull the sword from the stone. Arthur has proved he is the king of all Britain. To begin with, most of the earls and lords and knights of the country refused to accept him because he was a boy. He was thirteen, like me. But then the hooded man addressed the crowd in his voice of thunder: “I tell you all, you men of Britain: Arthur is Uther’s blood-son, the trueborn king of all Britain. Arthur’s time has come!”
    In the stone I heard the townspeople of London cheering and shouting, I saw them waving their cudgels. I saw all the great men of Britain reluctantly get to their knees and swear allegiance.
    â€œI will be just to rich and poor alike.” That’s what Arthur-in-the-stone told them. “I will root out evil wherever I see it. I will lead you by serving you and serve you by leading you as long as I live.”
    Merlin gave me my stone, my other world, and because he knows magic, he was waiting for me inside the stone until I recognized him. He is the hooded man, I know he is, but when I challenged him he turned my words on themselves.
    â€œBut who are you?” he asked me. “And who are you to be? That’s what matters…Anyone without a quest is lost to himself.”
    I have been wondering whether serving as a squire is a quest.
    Finding my true mother…that will be a quest.
    Taking the Cross. Perhaps that will be the greatest quest of all.
    Yes, this castle is like a fist. Upright and tight and knuckled. It’s at the ready. And so am I.

3 ARTHUR’S MOTHER, YGERNA’S SON
    A RTHUR IS RISING OUT OF MY STONE TO MEET ME; HE is breaking the dark water.
    And now I see where I am: the same great hall where King Uther feasted and fell in love with Ygerna, consulted with his dukes and earls, and handed down laws. Here he lay prostrate with pain after he had been poisoned by the Saxons, and tried to sit up as he was dying, crying out that he had a son, giving him God’s blessing, calling on his son to claim the crown.
    A door opens at the far end of the hall and a woman walks in. I recognize the gentle slope of her shoulders and her slender arms, pale as stripped willow. I can see