Free King of the Middle March by Kevin Crossley-Holland

a squire and given your utmost, and you’ll continue to serve me well as a young knight.”
    â€œYes, sir.”
    â€œTomorrow’s a great day for you.”
    â€œThe most important day of my life.”
    â€œTomorrow, yes,” Lord Stephen said, “but it’s the next day and the day after that really matter.”
    â€œSir?”
    â€œCertain events in our lives mark our passage through this world. Baptism, confirmation, betrothal, and marriage…But what matters is how we make use of these crossing-places. How we apply them to the rest of our lives. Isn’t that right?”
    Lord Stephen told me that Milon’s priest will come and shave a tonsure on the top of my head early tomorrow morning, and explain the ceremony, and tell me the order of the words. After that I am to wear white, and Milon will give me a white surcoat, and a new sword.
    I am writing all this quite calmly as if it were happening to someone else, but it is happening to me, Arthur.
    I know I’m still young to be knighted. Tom’s seventeen, and he hasn’t been knighted yet, and Serle wasn’t until last year, while Lord Stephen and I were away.
    Although I’ve never actually seen the ceremony, I saw in my stone how Sir Kay was knighted, so I know what it’s like. The great church of Saint Paul picked up and echoed all of Kay’s words. Even though my ceremony will not be in a church, I think it will be the same for me. My vows will echo and travel with me all the days of my life.

22
MERLIN, QUESTIONING
    I HAVE SEEN MERLIN AGAIN.
    I was asleep, curled up in a dune. At first the sea was all glitter, but then I saw a misty shape hanging over the water, and the shape grew towards me.
    â€œMerlin!” I shouted.
    He was riding Sorry, his poor old rounsey, and wearing his dark hood, and when he looked at me, his grey eyes were like shale the tide has just washed.
    â€œWhat did I ask you?”
    â€œAsk me?”
    â€œWhat did I ask you?” he demanded in his deep voice. He smiled and unsmiled, and at once he began to blur again.
    â€œMerlin!” I cried.
    But he faded. In front of me, he dissolved into air.
    Ask me? The truth is, Merlin asked me questions the whole time. Well, Arthur? Is that what you think? Is that what you mean, Arthur? What will your quest be?
    Merlin said knowledge is dry as dead leaves unless you’re ready for it, and the only true way to understand is to keep asking the right questions.
    So in a way, Merlin is here even though he’s not. He’s still helping me to help myself. Because of what he’s taught me.
    Isn’t that what my dream means? Isn’t Merlin asking me to go on asking?

23
SIR ARTHUR
    T HIS TWENTY-SEVENTH DAY OF JULY IN THE YEAR OF Our Lord 1202: It may have been the feast day of the Seven Sleepers, but I wasn’t one of them. I didn’t want to miss anything; and all my life, I will remember everything. Even the little things: how Rhys trimmed Bonamy’s feathering and wound strips of white linen above his fetlocks; the way Serle’s right stirrup broke, and his foul curses; Milon saying Turold’s face is like a map, the kind the Saracens make; the golden buttons on Cardinal Capuano’s tunic blazing in the sunlight; yes, and Bertie punching the air with both fists after Milon dubbed me.
    For a while I lay on my bed. I listened to the sea breathing for me. I watched our tent suck in its cheeks and blow them out again. I heard a distant trumpeter, like a hidden longing, summoning me. Then I leaped up.
    Before Lord Stephen and I had broken our fast, Milon’s priest, Pagan, rode into camp; and as soon as he’d tossed back a tumbler of ale, he shaved a round spot on the top of my head.
    â€œWhen you took the Cross at Soissons,” he said, “you enlisted in God’s army. And now, with this tonsure, you prepare yourself to become one of God’s knights.”
    â€œWhy are you called