Free Here Lies Arthur by Philip Reeve

been dazzled when the door burst open. His wine-cup rolled across the floor, and the curtain behind the altar flapped in the breeze. I lifted a corner and looked behind it. And there, of course, among the cobwebs, I found all the things he had persuaded Peri’s mother to part with in the interests of her immortal soul. Fine gold dishes, and bags that had a money-full look about them, and gold neck-rings and other jewellery in a well-made casket, and a whole crowd of those tall Gaulish wine jars in a corner, leaning together like drunks.
    I laughed at my own cleverness, and went back outside. Peri had managed to get the gull-wings off, but she was looking at her shift in dismay, and wouldn’t even listen to my story about Porroc’s treasure. There’d been some blood left in the wings, and somehow in working herself free of them she’d smeared some across the breast of her white shift.
    “The servants will see,” she cried. “They’ll tell my mother! Oh, what am I to do?”
    “Take it off,” I ordered.
    She seemed fearful. “Look away.”
    I turned my back on her, and busied myself tugging her bundled-up dress out of the bag I carried. Behind me I heard her hiss at the cold as she pulled the stained shift over her head. “My mother said I must never let anyone see me unclothed,” she said.
    What was it made me look round? Just mischief, maybe. Just a desire to go against whatever Peri’s godlymother said. Anyway, I glanced over my shoulder, and caught sight of her in her nakedness. Only a flash, like something glimpsed by lightning. But enough. It drove all thoughts of Saint Porroc and his plunder from my head and blew them away on the wind.
    I’d known all along there was something strange about her. I’d not known what it was that kept pulling my eyes back to her face, to the line of her jaw and the set of her features. But I saw it now, and once I had, I couldn’t imagine how I’d been so stupid not to see it sooner.
    Peri wasn’t a girl at all.
    I looked away quick, before Peri caught me peeking, and held the dress out behind me with one hand. When I turned, she’d pulled it on. It looked all wrong on her, now I knew her secret.
His
secret.
    “Why do you dress like that?” I asked.
    “Like what?”
    Could it be he didn’t know? I saw nothing but honest confusion in those long-lashed eyes. No, this wasn’t some quick disguise. His mother hadn’t seen her guests coming and said, “Quickly, son, put on a gown, or they’ll have you for their war-band.” It takes time to grow your hair long enough to sit upon. It takes a better actor than Peri could ever be to mimic the movements of a well-born maiden; those downcast eyes and shy tilts of the head. This boy must have been treated as a girl his whole life long, and it had never occurred to him that he might be anything else.
    I waved the bloodied shift at him, lost for what to say. “I’ll wash this with my master’s stuff. Bring it to you later.”
    “What about Saint Porroc?”
    “My master Myrddin will know what to do with him.”
    We walked back towards the hall, side by side, a little apart. I said, “That name of yours…”
    “It’s Peredur,” said Peri. “My real name’s Peredur. “I know it’s a man’s name, but it was my father’s, and as there are no men left to take it, my mother said it must be mine.”
    “It’s a good name,” I said, and mumbled something about looking for my master, and left him there. Hurried to the shore with my head full of questions. Why would Peredur’s mother do such a thing? And how long did she mean for her son to live as a girl?

XIV
     
    Down on the shore where the grey waves broke, Saint Porroc was tumbling like driftwood in the cold white surf. His monks stood on the sand, calling out prayers and praising God for this new sign of their master’s holiness. I crunched past them along the top of a shingle bank towards a place beneath the cliffs where another black shape leant into the