Legacy: Arthurian Saga (114 page)

5

He came back to his room just before
daylight. The first bird had whistled, and a few moments later the
sudden jargoning of the early chorus almost drowned the clink of
arms at the outer door, and his soft word to the guard. He came in,
his eyes full of sleep, and stopped short just inside the door when
he saw me sitting in the high-backed chair beside the
window.

"Merlin! Up at this hour? Couldn't you
sleep?"

"I haven't yet been to
bed."

He came suddenly wide awake, sharpened
and alert. "What is it? What's wrong? Is it the King?"

At least, I thought, he doesn't jump
to the conclusion that I stayed awake to question his night's
doings. And one thing he must never know; that I followed him
through that door.

I said: "No, not the King. But you and
I must talk before the day comes."

"Oh, the gods, not now, if you love
me," he said, half laughing, and yawned. "Merlin, I've got to
sleep. Did you guess where I'd gone, or did the guard tell
you?"

As he came forward into the room I
could smell her scent on him. I felt sickened, and I suppose I was
shaken. I said curtly: "Yes, now. Wash yourself, and wake up. I
have to talk to you."

I had put out all the lamps but one,
and this was burning low, only half competing with the leaden light
of dawn. I saw his face go rigid. "By what right -- ?" He checked
himself, and I saw the quick control come down over his anger.
"Very well. I suppose you do have the right to question me, but I
don't like the time you choose."

It was something altogether different
from the injured boyish anger he had shown before, how short a time
ago, beside the lake. So far they had already taken him between
them, the sword and the woman. I said: "I have no right to question
you, and I've no intention of doing so. Calm yourself, and listen.
It's true I want to talk to you -- among other things -- about what
happened tonight, but not for the reasons you seem to impute to me.
Who do you think I am, Abbot Martin? I don't dispute your right to
take your pleasure as and where you wish." He was still hostile,
between anger and pride. To relax him and pass the moment over, I
added mildly: "Perhaps it wasn't wise to venture through this house
at night where there are men who hate you for what you did
yesterday. But how can I blame you for going? You showed yourself a
man in battle, why not then in your bed?" I smiled. "Though I've
never lain with a woman myself, I've known what it is to want one.
For the pleasure you had, I'm glad."

I stopped. His face had been pale with
anger; now even in that lack of light I could see the anger drain
away, and with it the last vestiges of color. It was as if blood
and breath had stopped together. His eyes looked black. He narrowed
them at me as if he could not see me properly, or as if he were
seeing me for the first time, and could not get me in focus. It was
a discomforting look, and I am not easily discomforted.

"You have never lain with a
woman?"

Somehow, to the matters boiling in my
mind, the question came as sheer irrelevancy. I said, surprised: "I
said so. I believe it's a matter of common knowledge. I also
believe it's a fact that some men hold in contempt. But those
--"

"Are you a eunuch, then?"

The question was cruel; his manner,
harsh and abrupt, made it seem meant so. I had to wait a moment
before I answered. "No. I was going to add, that those who hold
chastity in contempt are not men whose contempt would disturb me.
Have I yours, then?"

"What?" He had obviously not heard a
word of what I had been saying. He jerked himself free of whatever
strong emotion was riding him, and made for his room like a man who
is choking, and in need of air. As he went he said, muffled: "I'll
go and wash."

The door shut behind him. I stood up
quickly and set my hands on the window sill, leaning out into the
chill September dawn. A cock was crowing; from farther off others
answered it. I found that I was shaking; I, Merlin, who had watched
while kings and priests and princes plotted my death openly in
front of my eyes; who had talked with the dead; who could make
storm and fire and call the wind. Well, I had called this wind; I
must face it. But I had counted on his love for me to get us both
through what I had to tell him. I had not reckoned on losing his
respect -- and for such a reason -- at this moment. I told myself
that he was young; that he was Uther's son, fresh from his first
woman, and in the flush of his new sexual pride. I told myself that
I had been a fool to see love given back where I gave it, when what
the boy was rendering to me was no more than I had given my own
tutor Galapas, affection tinged with awe. I told myself these and
other things, and by the time he came back I was seated again, calm
and waiting, with two goblets of wine poured ready on a table at my
hand. He took one without a word, then sat across the room from me,
on the edge of my bed. He had washed even his hair; it was still
damp, and clung to his brow. He had changed his bedgown for day
dress, and in the short tunic, without mantle or weapon, looked
like a boy again, the Arthur of the summer and the Wild
Forest.

I had been casting round carefully for
what to say, but now could find nothing. It was Arthur who broke
the silence, not looking at me, turning the goblet round and round
in his hands, watching the swirl of wine as if his life depended on
it.

He said, flatly, and as if it
explained everything, as I suppose it did: "I thought you were my
father."

It was like facing an opponent's
sword, only to find that the sword and the enemy are in fact
illusions, but in the same moment to feel that the very ground on
which one has made one's stand is a shaking bog. I fought to
rearrange my thoughts. Respect and love, yes, I had had these from
him, but they could have been given to me for the man I was; in
fact, only in such a way does a boy give them to his father. But
other things became suddenly plain; above all the deference which
he would have given to no other man but Ector, his obedience, his
assumption of my ready welcome, and more than all -- I saw it like
the sudden rift of daffodil sky which opened in the grey beyond the
window -- the shining anticipation with which he had come with me
to Luguvallium. I remembered my own ceaseless childhood search for
my father, and how I had looked for and seen him everywhere, in
every man who looked my mother's way. Arthur had had only his
fosterparents' story of noble bastardy, and a vague promise of
recognition "when you are grown enough to bear arms." As children
do -- as I had done -- he had said little, but waited and wondered,
ceaselessly. Then into this perpetual search and expectation I had
come, with some mystery about me, and I suppose the air that Ralf
had spoken of, of a man used to deference and moved by some strong
purpose. The boy may have seen his own likeness to me; more likely
others, Bedwyr even, had commented on it. So he had waked, reaching
his own conclusions, prepared to give love, accept authority and
trust me for the future. Then came the sword, a gift, it seemed,
from me; father to son. And the discovery that had followed hard on
it, that I was Ambrosius' son, and the Merlin of the thousand
legends told at every fireside. Bastard or no, suddenly he had
found himself, and he was royal.

So he had followed me to the King at
Luguvallium, seeing himself as Ambrosius' grandson and great-nephew
to Uther Pendragon. From this knowledge had come that flashing
confidence in battle. He must have thought this was why Uther had
flung him the sword, because in default of the absent prince, he,
bastard or not, was the next in blood. So he had led the charge,
and afterwards accepted the duties and the favors due to a
prince.

It also explained why he had never
seemed to suspect that he might be the "lost" prince. The stares
and whispers and the deference he received he had put down to
recognition as my son. He accepted, as most men did, the fact that
the High King's heir was abroad at a foreign court, and thought
nothing more about it. And once he imagined he had found his place,
why should he think again? He was mine, and he was royal, and
through me he had a place at the center of the kingdom. Now all at
once, cruelly enough, as he must see it, he found himself not only
deprived of ambition and the place he had dreamed of, but even of a
place as a man's acknowledged son. I, who had lived my youth as a
bastard and a no-man's-child, knew how that canker can eat: Ector
had tried to spare Arthur this by telling him that he would one day
be acknowledged nobly; it had never struck me that he would count
in love and confidence on the acknowledgment coming from
me.

"Even my name, you see." The dull
apology of his tone was worse than the cruelty that shock had
brought from him before.

At least, if I could heal nothing
else, I could heal his pride. The cost would be counted presently,
but he had to know now. I had many times thought how, if it were
left to me, I would tell him. Now I spoke straight, the simple
truth. "We bear the same name because we are in fact kin to one
another. You are not my son, but we are cousins. You, like me, are
a grandson of Constantius and a descendant of Maximus the Emperor.
Your true name is Arthur, and you are the legitimate son of the
High King and Ygraine his Queen."

I thought the silence this time would
never break. At my first word his eyes had come up from watching
the swirling wine, and fastened on me. His brows were knitted like
those of a deaf man straining to hear. The red washed through his
face like blood staining a white cloth, and his lips parted. Then
he set the goblet down very carefully, and standing up, came to the
window near me, and, just as I had done earlier, set his hands on
the sill and leaned out into the air.

A bird flew into the bough beside him
and began to sing. The sky faded to heron's egg green, then slowly
cooled to hyacinth where thin flakes of cloud floated. Still he
stood there, and I waited, without movement or speech.

At length, without turning, he spoke
to the bough with its singing bird. "Why this way? Fourteen years.
Why not where I belonged?"

So at last I told him the whole story.
I began with the vision Ambrosius had shared with me, of the
kingdoms united under one king, Dumnonia to Lothian, Dyfed to
Rutupiae; Romano-Briton and Celt and loyal foederatus fighting as
one to keep Britain clear of the black flood that was drowning the
rest of the Empire; a version, humbler and more workable, of
Maximus' imperial dream, adapted and handed down by my grandfather
to my father, and lodged in me by my master's teaching and by the
god who had marked me for his service. I told him about Ambrosius'
death without other issue, and the raveled clue the god had thrust
into my hand, bidding me follow it. About the sudden passion of the
new King Uther for Ygraine, wife of Cornwall's Duke, and about my
own connivance at their union, shown by the god that this was the
union which would bring its next king to Britain. About Gorlois'
death and Uther's remorse, mingled as it was with relief at a death
he had more than half wished, but wanted publicly to disclaim and
disown; then the consequent banishment of myself and Ralf, and
Uther's own threats to disown the child so begotten. Then finally,
how pride and common sense between them prevailed, and the child
had been handed to me to look after through the dangerous first
years of Uther's reign; and how since then the King's illness and
the growing power of his enemies had forced him to leave his son in
hiding. About some things I said nothing: I did not tell Arthur
what I had seen waiting for him, of greatness or pain or glory; and
I said no word about Uther's impotence. Nor did I speak of the
King's desperate wish for another son to supplant the "bastard" of
Tintagel; these were Uther's secrets, and he would not have long
now to keep them.

Arthur listened in silence, without
interruption. Indeed, at first without movement, so that one might
have thought his whole attention was on the slowly brightening sky
outside the window, and the song of the blackbird on the bough. But
after a while he turned and -- though I was not looking at him -- I
felt his eyes on me at last. When I came to the Coronation feast,
and the King's demand for me to bring him to Ygraine's bed, he
moved again, going softly across to his former place on the bed. My
tale of that wild night when he was begotten was told plainly,
exactly as it had happened. But he listened as if it had been the
same half-enchanted tale I had told him in the Wild Forest with
Bedwyr beside him, himself curled half-sitting, half-lying on my
bed, chin on fist, his dark eyes, calm now and shining, on my
face.

As I came towards an end it was to be
seen that the tale fitted in with all that I had taught him in the
past, so that now I was just handing him the last links in the
golden lineage and saying, in effect: "All that I have ever taught
or told you is summed up in you, yourself."

I stopped at length, and took a
draught of wine. He uncurled swiftly from the bed and, bringing the
jug, poured more into my goblet. When I thanked him, he stooped and
kissed me.

"You," he said quietly, "you, from the
very beginning. I wasn't so far wrong after all, was I? I'm as much
yours as the King's -- more; and Ector's too...Then Ralf, I'm glad
to know about Ralf. I see...Oh, yes, now I begin to see a lot of
things." He paced about the room, talking in snatches, half to
himself, as restless as Uther. "So much -- it's too much to take
in, I'll have to have time...I'm glad it was you who told me. Did
the King mean to tell me himself?"