On Arthur's Head

I saw my father. He shined me nice with a hammer in fists like bull hearts, left-right-left. Someone else cleaned me up. You’ve never seen your father, have you? Your Father – the capitalised one, the one you all go so mad for in those caves with the coloured windows. You say ‘jewel-coloured’, I say ‘I know about jewels, just look at me. They’re no jewels!’. I would say, if you listened. Here I sit whispering, straight into your ear every day, and you never listen, even though I’ve been closer to you than any one of your own.

I’m from the earth. Her ways are my ways.

Your father, though (uncapitalised), I remember better than you do. I knew his dragon’s head. Through him I watched you – the first time, in that dark house with the coloured glass, a babe in white linen too thin for the cold and then – to top it off – ice water over your head. You squalled. I would have done the same, being able.

The second time (and many after that) was in the tournaments. They created the junior category at your insistence. I watched you fight timid pages and other nobles’ sons, then shriek when they let you win as deference to your rank. You threw one down – I remember the crunch of the gravel – roaring. A grey day; they don’t agree with me either.

Later, you stayed up all night in prayer. It was part of the ceremony – the knight watch. You were sweet, a boy, so serious, drowned by the play-plates they strapped over your chainmail. When your father and I came back in the morning, your lips were blue. You didn’t mention the cold. You stood before him like a servant, wide-eyed: I didn’t see Him, Papa. Did I sin? What happens if I didn’t see Him? One pat on the shoulder was enough to jog your memory. Your father, too, had a heavy hand, useful for lifting the sword over your head: arise, Sir Arthur, Knight of Camelot.

In the end his hands were the problem. They shook when they touched me, once or twice even let me fall and sing against stone flags or tables strewn with daggers. It wasn’t your fault – you weren’t to know. He liked watching his men jostle for a place at the head of the table. One little slip of the wrist (three drops) was enough to turn his ale cup sour. The smell rose from his frothing lips and down he fell, with me, clattering into the feast.

It wasn’t just you who found it hard to adjust. Your boy’s head was bony, narrow in a way that got my teeth on edge – I know, it’s a figure of speech. The ceremony I could do again. Those things are what I was made for. Your comeliest page shined me up for the purpose – an enjoyable process – and then you and I, at last, met head-to-head. The bishop slipped you into me – how naughty of him! Then back down the aisle. You quivered, still in your mind the words of your blindness: I didn’t see Him, Papa. Did I sin? If I’d inherited my maker’s arms, I’d have slapped sense into you. You think it’s that Father of yours who makes a king? It’s me! Where was He in that damp grey house?

From the start, we were glorious. The nearby kingdoms all trooped in: Strathclyde, Wessex, the Danes from Manu. They trailed up the castle steps like the (un)Wise Men, teetering with treasure (none so noble as me): peacocks, iron, glittering tapestries of all the old stories. The women came too, heads pinched into conical hats, and bards who didn’t know their best songs had yet to be written.

One visitor stayed longest. You already know who I mean. At times an old man, others a green one, and then, memorably, a deer. Merlin claimed he’d organised your birth. This awkwardness was easy to ignore; he turned your highest creditor into a partridge!

The only others I remember were the Woman (capitalised) and the friend. Little is left to be said about them. No one wrote of his pinewood smell as he held you by your father’s grave. They missed out her soft fingers stroking your brow, and the magpies who left offerings under her cherry trees. Happy times were spent under their boughs. Later, you had them cut down. Lancelot and Guinevere are a romance for the ages, but I’ll never leave you.

A lot has happened since. The cup, the table, the devil’s men – the tales already spun by fireside soldiers and women plaiting straw. The sages buried you in armour (without your sword, you dealt with that yourself) and for a while debated what to do with me. I’m a kingmaker, after all, and you were not the last king. In the absence of takers, they gave me back to the earth alongside you, so St Peter would know your greatness when you arrived. Our greatness.

Beetles helped fade the skin from your flesh, and worms did the rest. Your hair stayed for longer, but now even that’s gone. If I thought your head was uncomfortable as a boy, I was a fool – skewwhiff on my side is worse. But there’s a peacefulness down here we never knew before. They’ll know you always, because of me, no matter your (lack of) face.

The earth is like the belly of a ship. She creaks, shudders, and turns. She has her own waves. She presses on us like a mother’s hand checking fever. Down here in the dark, they’ll never part us again.

Scrabbling. Scraping. Voices overhead which sound nothing like our language. The earth recoils, parts over us like sea. Are we in heaven? Were you right all along? I wait with you, face upwards. I’ll show them all. You needn’t speak.

Light.

POWYS COUNTY CRIER

SUPERMARKET BUILD UNEARTHS 5^TH CENTURY NOBLEMAN

Archaeologists employed to oversee the expansion of a small-town supermarket were shocked and delighted to uncover a fifth century burial site on the morning of the 22^nd of March. “We’re shocked and delighted,” said Dr. Aeneas Hipps, of Arch-angels contractors, soon after the discovery.

Excavators unearthed the remains of a male, thought to have died in his fifties from a wound to the skull. His body was discovered wearing fine-wrought armour, though archaeologists have so far been unable to locate any weaponry. More telling was the gold-plated coronet also found with the body. “Royalty was a complicated concept in the fifth century,” explained Dr Hipps. “Often to be called a king in this period was little more than shorthand for distinguishing the man with the biggest army.”

However, the body’s lack of weaponry complicates the story, suggesting this was not primarily a warrior figure. Dr Hipps gave his suggestion: “most likely this man was a nobleman of some importance who, despite dressing for the job, never quite made it to the top.”

The grave goods have been taken in for examination by Cardiff University and will be available for public viewing in Spring 2025.