A/N: For time and length, I had to cut out some of the parts that didn’t come directly from the poem. These parts are what are in brackets ([]). These quickly describe the action that would be here if I had had time to finish the whole draft.
The farmer next door swore he’d shoot the cat on sight.
He loaded up his shotgun with some nails and dynamite.
He waited, and he waited for the cat to come around,
97 pieces of the man were on the ground.
But the cat came back
The very next day
The cat came back
Well we though he was a goner
The cat came back
He just couldn’t stay away
“Where do you think you’re going?” Guinevere asked, standing at the door to the castle. Her long white dress was tangled up in the spring-time breeze, stirring around her ankles. Her blond hair flowed with it, only held in place by the [necklace worn around head name].
“Home,” the knight replied, hand on the sword at his waist. His hair, long and dark, flowed the same as the queens, as did the tails of the coat he wore. He was adorned in a shade befitting nobility, not a knight of his standing, accented with a pure white.
She stepped out of the doorway and down the stone steps toward him. Her feet were clad in dainty slippers. “And where is home, sir knight?” she asked, her eyes for a second sparked with colour and his heart jumped in his chest.
He had to get out. This was a trap. Whatever she had been sent to do, he wanted no part in it.
“With my heart,” he replied, taking a step back in a way he hoped was casual and contained.
The queen came up to stand in front of him, her step as graceful as the breeze, her body taut with strength. She placed her hand on his chest. “And where could that be except for here?” Her smile was a faux shy that made his stomach twist.
“Why would my heart be here in Camelot when you, the lady of the house, are the bride of the king?”
Her eyes fluttered and she leaned closer toward him, uncowed by the reminder and rebuke. “The King does not hold my heart,” she replied.
“Then who does?” he asked. She slid her hand down his armour and then pressed it onto the clasp of his belt. He took a stumbling step back.
“What does it matter who holds my heart when you could hold my body, Sir Jay?”
Yeah no. “I cannot, my queen.”
He stood a stumbling step back.
“And why can’t you?” She followed him, step for step. He could see magic stirring in her eyes. He could not be on the other end of Guienivere’s wrath.
“My heart is with another.”
“Liar.”
“I don’t lie.” He squeezed his left hand, willing the ring there to swallow him up. Maybe he would upset his husband by crashing his day, but he would rather that than having to deal with another second of this.
“Who is this lover? How can she be fairer than I?”
“I never said they were,” he replied, not even able to feign his lover was a woman. He had known that Authur’s court with its mix of Roman Christianity and Puppillandian noblemen’s standards would be a ghoulish place to be for someone like him, but Electra had asked, and he couldn’t say no.
“You’re in love with a boy,” she hissed, her tone cruel and disgusted. She stepped away from him as though he were contagious. “My husband will have you executed for this!”
“I–” Jay tried to answer, but his lungs choked and suddenly, everything was gone.
He’d changed form plenty of times, the collar around his neck made such a deed easy for him, but there was a big difference between voluntarily shifting form and being forced and twisted like this. Everything around him was in sharp and clear contrast, but was also bleeding out into nothing. He tried to scream but no sound came out.
And then, he could feel the soft ground under his feet and the sound of footsteps in the leaves. He ducked away from them, realising only as he moved and his feet padded softly below him what he’d been turned into. He pressed his ears against the sides of his head and shifted in the grass, his tail flicking back and forth as he turned to look over at where the queen still stood.
There was a man in front of her. He was wearing a long black robe that brushed against the ground. His hair was black with flecks of grey, tied tight in a bun at the base of his neck. His aura was strong, bleeding off of him and pushing against JJ’s mental and magical shields.
Merlin.
He’d been mostly out of town since JJ had arrived. Arthur hadn’t given him a clear answer as to where he was, though he was sure that had something to do with him not knowing. He had heard a little of the man from the others. Merlin was the advisor to the King until his magic had been revealed, back when magic was still illegal. Since then, the ban had been lifted, and the King and Queen themselves had been muddling in it.
But Merlin was, of course, still the strongest.
The knights spoke nothing of Merlin as a warrior, just as an old advisor and a man of deep magicks that was more Celtic than they could fully understand. His aura burned, the split in his connection funneling into two strong whips of light that curled around his body. JJ knew others could not see it like he could, but he wondered how Guinevere, a magician herself, couldn’t feel it.
The magic around them seemed to purr at Merlin’s arrival.
“What are you doing?” the man asked, waving his hand in the air.
JJ heard the crackles of dark magic swirling around him. He could hear voices hissing hide in his ears. The hair on the back of his neck stood up on end, but he ignored it. He took a seat, curling his tail around his body, and watched. He was sure that Merlin’s spell would hide him from any prying eyes.
“I was speaking to one of the knights,” Guinevere told him, chin tilted up defiantly as she looked in Merlin’s direction. “Is it against the law to be knowledgeable of my people now, Brutus?”
[Merlin calls out Guienevere for being an ass and reminds her that she has a place as the queen that she must stay in for the sake of their order and for the sake of England. She ends up marching back to the castle pissed off about this confrontation]
Merlin waved his hand in the air and his body twisted back into his normal form. “I’m sorry for her. She is still young.”
“That excuse won’t last forever,” JJ replied, realising only after the words had tripped over his lips that he had adopted the face of the sage rather than the brash young knight he’d been until now.
Merlin tilted his head in his direction, his lips pursed tight. “Come with me.”
[Merlin and JJ go to the R.A.C.E.S. headquarters. Merlin asks him about the markings on his cat form and JJ obfuscates the answer to that. Merlin is intrigued but only pushes so far. During this Merlin pulls out some different magic objects and begins preparing a glass syringe]
“Where were you going?” he asked, reaching his hand up to a bottle on the shelf. Bobbing in the fluid inside of it was a few needles. By the way they caught the light, they didn’t seem to be made of British or even earthen steel.
“To see my lover,” JJ replied, looking away from the man as he pulled out a needle and screwed it into the glass syringe clasped between his fingers. The work was careful, his movements focused. His hands didn’t even shake.
Merlin nodded. “Might I ask who they are?”
“If I speak too much of them they won’t be seen by me again,” he replied, cryptic in his answer. He didn’t need to be flaunting the truth of his lover, and an excuse to not give details would work, even if it wasn’t completely true.
Merlin held out his hand, the syringe clasped between two fingers of his other one. JJ studied him, closed off into himself.
“What are you doing?” he asked, frowning.
“I need some of your blood. If you are going to see your lover without being questioned then you need to move under cover.”
“And you need my blood because?”
“The form that I gave you to hide from the queen you could use to walk unseen to see your lover. I’m going to make a blood stone infused with the ability to shift. When you wear it, you will walk as human, but when you take it off you will be hidden.”
“Ah.” He touched the space just above his throat through the armour he wore. It was where one of the strange markings had appeared on his shifted form. “That makes sense.”
He handed one arm off, giving Merlin a good angle of the crook of his elbow. The needle probed at the vein until Merlin found the spot he wanted. As the needle pressed into JJ’s skin the older magician looked up to find the knight’s eyes glowing magenta.
“Are you afraid of needles?” he asked as he pulled the now-full syringe back out.
JJ rubbed his fingers over the spot. When he lifted them, all blood was gone, as well as any mark of what Merlin had done. “No, but you would have trouble getting a needle into me without my help.”
“How so?”
JJ reached into the bottle and pulled out one of the other needles, stabbing it into himself, the metal shattered against his skin. Shards of it flew across the space between them at the impact. Merlin took his arm in his hand and studied the spot where the needle should have stabbed into the other. There was nothing there, not even a mark of what he’d done.
“Oh.”
Merlin turned back to what he was making, dropping the blood from the syringe into a small charm. Holding his hand over it he murmured the spell under his breath that sent the blood to a boil before hardening it into stone. Instead of the normal acid green of blood crystals, it gleamed a bright magenta.
“That’s–”
JJ chuckled, slipping his fingers through the chain connected to the stone and holding it up. “You might say I’m special.”
“Indeed.” Merlin gestured to the necklace. “Put that on and I will perform my spell. When you go without the necklace you will be hidden in the form that I gave you, when you walk with it you will be human. Don’t lose it or else you will not be able to turn back.”
He nodded, looping the length around his neck, the stone resting on his chest.
[JJ goes to visit his husband. He explains the necklace to him and what Merlin said. Noah puts magic on it that allows him to track it and which will tell him when the necklace is touched by anyone other than him and JJ, as an added precaution to keep him safe. They then talk about the reason that JJ is in Arthur’s court and the events that have been happening around him as well as Guinevere’s behavior toward him. They end the scene with a long kiss, and JJ heads back to the palace, shifting form and grabbing the necklace in his mouth as a cat to carry it back with him.]
[Guinevere confronts Merlin over him taking Jay’s side rather than hers. She reminds him that she is his apprentice and that since she married Arthur she is the queen. Merlin tells her that she is being a fool and that her self-entitlement is blinding her to what is really going on. She storms out of his office and into the palace courtyard].
She paused at the sound of hurrying steps. Looking up at the allur above her she could see the figure of a knight dressed in just his underarmour, a long white cloak billowing around him. As he jumped over the rampart and down to the base of the stairs, magenta magic swirling to catch him before he shattered his legs, she recognised who it was.
“Jeshua” she hissed under her breath, glaring at the knight. Despite the slight he’d offered her, he’d faced no punishment. In fact, if anyone in the court was Arthur’s favourite knight it was him. Jeshua was skilled with a sword, had amazing aim with a bow, and a skill with magic that rivalled even Morgana’s.
She hated him. She couldn’t understand how even Merlin could take his side over hers. She’d been his apprentice since she was eleven. Merlin knew her better than most anyone else, even Arthur, yet he thought that Jeshua was worth his attention more than her.
The knight didn’t see her in the shadows, moving too fast to notice. His sword wasn’t at his waist, so he hadn’t been alerted to a fight. She wondered where he was going. Probably to see his boy, the one that the rest of the court wouldn’t believe her that he had, and those who did just brushed it off. She knew some of the knights here, even the magicians, didn’t fully understand, they didn’t understand the importance of bloodlines and nobility, but she had hoped they would by now. She had more ease with discussing this with the earthen knights than the Puppillandian ones sometimes.
She followed him out of the castle, her hand hovering over the knife at her waist. He ran down to the stables and collected his horse. The Palomino jumped and skipped as it moved back, before twisting and thundering off toward the woods. She frowned, but followed after him, pulling herself onto her own steed and saddle, and galloping after.
He was still faster.
The woods she found his horse tied outside of it were dark. She climbed off of the saddle and walked toward the edge of it, her hand outstretched as pastel pink light swirled around it. She stepped toward the trees, trepidation rising. She wished she were in her armour instead of her courtly gowns.
Her foot pressed down on something hard. She looked down toward it. The sparkle of something caught her eye, and she bent down to pick it up. A small magenta crystal hung on a silver chain. She moved to place the pendent on her hand, but before it touched her finger it burned hot, like blood crystal. She pulled it back, only holding the chain.
Oh. That’s how JJ went about his secret business undetected. She would guess he was either now enchanted to be invisible, or in the form of a beast. She would also guess that he would stay that way until he put the necklace back on.
She grinned. Well, that was one way to get rid of a bother. The necklace slipped down the fabric of her pocket, pooling warm at the base of it. Goodbye Jeshua.
“Have you seen Jeshua?” Arthur asked, stopping beside the large desk and looking down at his mentor. Merlin looked up at him, waving his hand and stilling the magic that had been swirling around him until that moment.
“Not since yesterday,” he answered. “Why is something wrong?”
“He didn’t show up for training today, Lancelot was worried.”
Merlin stood, walking around Authur and heading down the hall. The king followed behind him, his red and green robes swirling as he walked. They arrived at the knight’s door, and with a wave of his hand, Merlin opened it.
It was empty. The bed had been made, blankets tucked under the cot and pillows straightened out. His armour was on the stand in the corner, and his sword laid out on the dresser.
Merlin closed his eyes and waved his hand over the space. Green light appeared in the shape of JJ, a mirage of bright sparks in front of it. There was no sound to the magical apparition, but JJ seemed to be talking to someone, pacing back and forth and gesturing all around as he did. When he finished, he went to his dresser and started pulling on his clothes, running toward them after his boots were tugged up to his knees and disappearing in a flash of light.
“It doesn’t seem anything is amiss,” Merlin mused.
“Who was he talking to?” Arthur asked, stepping toward the spot where JJ had been facing and speaking.
“Probably a projection communication,” he explained. We can’t see it because it wasn’t physically here, but he used his magic to manifest the connection.”
“So where did he go?”
“We’ll find out.”
[Merlin and Arthur find out JJ went to the stables and then follow his tracks on their own horses. Merlin’s magic seeing-the-past thing only works in a confined space so they can’t see what happened or where he went. They know they were on the right track when they find his horse standing by the edge of the forest, but there’s no sign of him. Arthur is distressed and says they need to send out a search party but Merlin tells him that it is a waste of time and that if he doesn’t want to be found, he won’t be. Merlin thinks he went off to his husband].
The doors to the palace slammed open with a clatter and scrape that turned the heads of everyone nearby. Standing in the doorway was a figure that didn’t look like anyone expected. The great oak doors, reinforced with steel, had moved with such speed that a giant was the only thought on anyone’s mind, yet the young man standing between them was not that.
He was tall, sure. Probably just over six feet. His hair was a pale blond that fell in some curls in front of his face. He was wearing a tunic that was white and buttoned up to his neck, the edges of it a bright amethyst. His pants were the same white, and his cloak was amethyst, billowing behind him and out.
Arthur drew his sword. The purrus of Excalibur’s blade caught the light as it extended.
“Who do you think you are to enter Ca–” The king started.
The man looked up at him, and with a flick of his wrist the monarch was falling back into the cobblestones, clattering with the screech of metal on stone. The other knights began to draw their blades, their hands shaking around the grips. The young man advanced, his cloak dancing out in the non-existent wind, his eyes glowing first amethyst, and then white.
“w̶͠ͅh̷̻̍̅ͅa̸̹̲̽̅t̵͎̠̊ ̷̨̫̾d̵̫̖͊͘i̶̼͖̋d̶͒̌͜ ̸̲̑y̷͕͚͑o̸͎̅͗u̸̗̾́ ̵̼̔̽d̷̯̐ö̷͕́͒ͅ ̶̰͕̾t̴̲̜̀o̵̳͛͑ ̷̖͕̀́ḧ̴̹́͐i̵͈͎͠m̸̗̉?̷̝̻̓͆” The power that burned in his voice was enough to make even Merlin step back for a second before he shifted and stepped forward.
“I do not know who you think you are, but this is the court of King Arthur, and we do not take kindly to people who–”
Before he could finish his speech he went flying back through the air. He slammed down into the ground, his hands splaying out to catch him but missing. His back hit the wall and he landed on his hands and knees, disoriented.
“I don’t want to hear of the greatness of Arthur’s court,” the man hissed, walking deeper into the courtyard. He lifted his hands up and the space around them began to darken, casting light only on him, light that swirled around him and followed him, like he was its master.
Lancelot drew his sword and charged. The blade swung through the air, singing as it fell. The man lifted his hand up, holding the sword in place millimeters from his palm. With a flick of his wrist, the blade shattered from tip to hilt.
“You are no match for me, Hydor. This is a fight you are outclassed it.”
He threw the knight into the ground. He landed at the queen’s feet with a clatter of metal grinding on stone.
“What–”
Merlin lunged forward, hand held out, green light curling around it and snapping toward the other. Amethyst rushed up to meet it, curling in the air between them. The two magicians’ spells tangled and looped around each other, like dragons in a dance. It burned and cracked in the space between them. Carefully, the purple dragon began to strangle the green one. The light was snuffed out as it pulled tight.
Red filled the air, cracks of black splitting it. Morgana stood, holding her staff in two hands, the stone in the centre spinning with the power of the spell. With a twist, the magician between them shot cracks into the cloud, amethyst drowning out the black, strangling it until it bled white into the red. He pulled his arm toward his chest, and Morgana was dragged across the courtyard toward him, falling to her knees.
Arthur ran forward, his sword cut through the air, coming down toward his head. Just as the blade was meant to cut through his neck, his body turned to myst, and then he was gone. Only to appear behind the queen, his hand latched around her throat, clouds of amethyst and white pouring off of him and down the steps, like dry ice in the heat.
“If you move a muscle, I’ll kill her,” he said. As though to prove his point, he held out his hand. A spike of light formed in it, before solidifying into a blade made of the same silvery metal as Excalibur. He pressed it against the queen’s throat.
Everyone stilled. Arthur went pale. Merlin looked between the blade, glowing with power still, and the man.
“You’re–” he began, but Arthur cut him off.
“What do you want?” He demanded. “What do you think is so important as to storm into my palace and threaten my wife?”
He sneered, his eyes flashing between white and purple as he did. His hair still hovered around his head. “You ask as though what I’m after is less important to me than she is to you. Where is he?”
“WHO!” Lancelot yelled, holding up the crossguard of his blade, gesturing toward the man with it. “Who could you possibly–”
“MY HUSBAND!” when he screamed, the world under them shook.
“Jeshua,” Merlin realised, stepping toward the man on the dais. “You’re talking about Jeshua.”
Arthur looked over at his advisor. “Why would–”
Merlin ignored him, stepping closer. The man pressed the blade into Guienevere’s neck hard enough that she cried out, tears spilling out of her eyes as she scrambled against the man’s wrist.
“Let her go, we can talk.”
“I know you have him,” he growled. “And if a single hair on his head has been harmed, I will raze this castle, the timeline be damned. I will send you all to Antares without a second thought if he is not returned to me.”
“As though you could raze Camalot,” Lancelot sneered. “You think–”
The castle shook. “Don’t test me.”
“I knew of Jeshua’s powers, but I didn’t realise the full extent of what…who he was.” Merlin lifted his hands in supplication. “I promise, there is no trick to this. I thought that he was with you, anointed one.”
He dug the blade deeper into Guienevere’s throat and she cried out once more. “Don’t you lie, if he is not with you then he would be home, ONE OF YOU has hurt him and I will–”
The queen shifted. For a second it seemed she was trying to get free, but then a necklace was tumbling across the rocks and landing on the cobblestone of the courtyard. It glimmered magenta from the crystal set inside of it.
“You witch,” the man behind her hissed, but he let go. Brushing past her, he picked the necklace up off of the ground.
He held it against his chest and closed his eyes. Magenta mist bubbled up in the space in front of him, thick and strong. Soon, a figure took shape. Jeshua stepped out of it, and fell into the other’s arms. He caught him, holding him close as he knelt down.
“How long has it been?”
“Weeks.”
He pressed his face against his, tears dripping out of his eyes. His hands shook where they clenched onto the near-unconscious man’s form. “I’m sorry it took so long.”
He cupped his hand around his cheek and tugged him down toward him. Leaning up, he pressed his lips against his, soft and chaste but full of tender love and care. “It’s okay, you’re here now.”
He stood up, Jeshua’s form clutched against his chest, the man’s head on his shoulder. His cape now hung behind him, no longer stirred by magic. Everything was still.
He looked into Guienevere’s eyes. “When the day comes, know that it happened because of what you’ve done. You have angered the gods, and so you will fall.”
With that declaration, lightning cracked through the sky and he was consumed in its blast.
fin
Reflection and Explanation
After having read the poems by Marie De France for this class, I was reminded of one of my current in-progress assignments. I’ve been working for a while on an Arthurian retelling that involves my own characters and world. I’ve been borrowing various different versions of Arthurian legend and various different stories to create one version for my universe. It has been a big project, but very fun. From the moment that Nic explained the plot of “Lanval” it reminded me of JJ and Noah and when I read the poem it made me think that once again.
For this story, I ran with that thought and decided to write about them using the frames of Lanval and Biscalvert. For this story, the main/point of view character is JJ or “Jeshua”. He goes by different names in different time periods. The intention here is that his name is the French-ified version of the Hebrew version of his name. Arthurian legend ties back to a lot of French authors of the middle ages and because of that I have lots of French references in my drafts for it, including a possibility that the original manuscript in this universe of this version of the tale was French. It felt fitting then to use this as his nickname.
Jeshua is a time traveller who is also a knight in Arthur’s court. This story takes place after the point in the timeline when magic becomes legal (in the part of the draft linked below it hasn’t become legal yet). For this version of King Arthur I am combining earthen culture of the time with my fictional world– Puppalland’s– culture of the time. In Puppalland being gay is not illegal, but since earth at this time was very Christian-influenced it makes sense that like magic being illegal, gayness would be illegal for the same reason. So, unlike Lanval who has to keep his lover secret because of a promise to his fairy queen, Jeshua has to keep his lover secret because of the laws. Noah, Jeshua’s husband, is not a fey queen like Lanval’s lover probably is, but he is a god, which meant that it made sense for him to be the stand-in here.
Guinevere in this universe is not a good person. It’s not exactly her fault. Her father and Merlin control most of her childhood and teen years. She is a magician from another universe who came to earth to train as an assassin and apprenticed with Merlin. She is now very skilled, but Merlin still has a watchful eye over her, and he arranged her marriage to Arthur back when magic was not legalised. She was already in love with Lancelot before she married Arthur, but since to marry Arthur she must betray her love, and to be with her love she must betray Arthur, she has given up on the idea of being loyal, and instead chases after her own pleasure, believing that she should be given this after everything she has been through. I think it fits her in these poems pretty well, which was another reason I wanted to write this story based on them.
For the Biscalvert part of this story I chose to have Merlin make JJ a disguise to be able to escape Guienevere’s attention. Since Merlin was her mentor he sees himself as responsible for her bad behavior. JJ changes into a cat because of the tie-in to the song here which is used as a prophecy in my universe. The song is about how everyone tries to kill a cat, but all the time it never succeeds. The characters in the universe think that it has to do with trying to destroy the villain god. The quote here is the part of the prophecy about Arthur.
For the final climax I decided to combine the reveal of Lanval– with the lover coming in to prove him innocent and have him freed– and the end of Biscalvert– with the werewolf being returned back to their human form after the talisman taken from them is returned back to them. I think it worked really well. I had fun writing the fight scene.
Citations
There are not any clear citations for this work other than the original two poems that it is based on, but I’m going to reference some of the things that have inspired this work and this AU here.
- BBC Merlin— if you haven’t seen this show I recommend. It is a really great version of King Arthur. In this one they made Merlin and Arthur the same age and Magic is illegal in Camelot on pain of death. Also, Uther raises Arthur and he is a piece of shit. Morgana in this show is one of the BEST written ones I’ve seen, she absolutely is a tragic villain and her arc HURTS! (Merlin, created by Johnny Capps and Julian Murphy, BBC Wales/Shine TV, 2008–2012)
- The Winter Knight— I couldn’t help but be a little inspired by this text while writing this because I’m in the middle of reading the book. I think mostly this came through in this version of JJ I’ve written. I realized that I haven’t ever written from his POV, and that was a bit of a struggle, so I ended up thinking about the way Gawain is characterized in this book a lot while writing it. (Battis, Jes. The Winter Knight. ECW Press.)
- France, Marie De. “Lanval”. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Ed. M.H.Abrams. New York: W.W.Norton & Company, Inc., 2000.
- France, Marie De. “Biscalvert”. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Ed. M.H.Abrams. New York: W.W.Norton & Company, Inc., 2000.
- The other citation that makes the most sense here is the Canterbury tales, since Guinevere is a rape apologist there and is has only alighted my dislike for her even more as well as my belief that it is in character for her to try to force herself on someone. Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Canterbury Tales. Translated by Nevill Coghill, Penguin Classics, 2003.
More Reading
So Wills Its King, Who Hath Forbid linked here is the second draft of another short story with the characters in this one, this gives a little more context as to who they are.
The Turn and the Table is my own Arthurian rewrite project that the completed version of this story is from. Here is the first draft I have of this which has context for the story in the setting I’ve developed for King Arthur.
Sprockets and Springes 