Legacy: Arthurian Saga (117 page)

It was about the middle of the
afternoon when the fair-haired page brought the message. The King
was resting, he told me, and the prince had gone to his rooms. When
Ulfin had given the prince my message the latter had scowled,
impatient, and had said sharply (this part of the message came
demurely, verbatim) that he was damned if he'd skulk indoors for
the rest of the day. But when Ulfin had said the message came from
Prince Merlin the prince had stopped short, shrugged, and then gone
to his rooms without further word.

"Then I shall go, too," I said. "But
first, child, let me see that scratched cheek." When I had put
salve on it, and sent him scampering back to Ulfin, I made my way
through corridors more thronged than ever to my rooms.

Arthur was by the window. He turned
when he heard me. "Bedwyr is here, did you know? I saw him, but
could not get near. I sent a message that we'd ride out this
afternoon. Now you say I may not."

"I'm sorry. There will be other times
to talk to Bedwyr, better than this."

"Heaven and earth, they couldn't be
worse! This place stifles me. What do they want with me, that pack
in the corridors outside?"

"What most men want of their prince
and future King. You will have to get used to it."

"So it seems. There's even a guard
here, outside the window."

"I know. I put him there." Then,
answering his look: "You have enemies, Arthur. Have I not made it
clear?"

"Shall I always have to be hemmed in
like this, surrounded? One might as well be a prisoner."

"Once you are undoubted King you can
make your own dispositions. But until then, you must be guarded.
Remember that here we are only in an emergency camp: once in the
King's capital, or in one of his strong castles, you'll have your
own household, chosen by yourself. You'll be able to see all you
want of Bedwyr, or Cei, or anyone else you may appoint. It will be
freedom of a sort, as much as you can ever have now. Neither you
nor I can go back to the Wild Forest again, Emrys. That's
over."

"It was better there," he said, then
gave me a gentle look, and smiled. "Merlin."

"What is it?"

He started to say something, changed
his mind, shook his head instead and said abruptly: "At this feast
tonight. You'll be near me?"

"Be sure of it."

"The King has told me how he will
present me to the nobles. Do you know what will happen then? These
enemies you speak of --"

"Will try to prevent the assembly from
accepting you as Uther's heir."

He considered for a moment, briefly.
"May they carry arms in the hall?"

"No. They'll try some other
way."

"Do you know how?"

I said: "They can hardly deny your
birth to the King's face, and with me there and Count Ector they
can't quarrel with your identity. They can only try to discredit
you; shake the faith of the waverers, and try to swing the army's
vote. It's your enemies' misfortune that this has come on a
battlefield where the army outnumbers the council of nobles three
to one -- and after yesterday the army will take some convincing
that you are not fit to lead them. It's my guess that there will be
something staged, something that will take men by surprise and
shake their belief in you, even in Uther."

"And in you, Merlin?"

I smiled. "It's the same thing. I'm
sorry, I can't see further yet than that. I can see death and
darkness, but not for you."

"For the King?" he asked
sharply.

I did not answer. He was silent for a
moment, watching me, then, as if I had answered, he nodded, and
asked: "Who are these enemies?"

"They are led by the King of
Lothian."

"Ah," he said, and I could see he had
not let his senses be stifled through the brief hours of that
crowded day. He had seen and heard, watched and listened. "And
Urien who runs with him, and Tudwal of Dinpelydr, and -- whose is
the green badge with the wolverine?"

"Aguisel's. Did the King say anything
to you about these men?"

He shook his head. "We talked mostly
of the past. Of course he has heard all about me from you and Ector
over these past years, and" -- he laughed -- "I doubt if any son
ever knew more about his father and his father's father than I,
with all you have told me; but telling is not the same. There was a
lot of knowing to make up."

He talked on for a little about the
interview with the King, speaking of the missed years without
regret, and with the cool common sense that I had come to see was
part of his character. That much, I thought, was not from Uther; I
had seen it in Ambrosius, and in myself, in what men called
coldness. Arthur had been able to stand back from the events of his
youth; he had thought the thing through, and with the clear sight
that would make him a king he had set feeling aside and come to the
truth. Even when he went on to speak of his mother it was evident
that he saw the matter much as Ygraine had done, and with the same
hard expediency of outlook. "If I had known that my mother was
still alive, and had been so willingly parted from me, it might
have come hard to me, as a child. But you and Ector spared me that
by telling me she was dead, and now I see it as you say she saw it;
that to be a prince one must be ruled always by necessity. She did
not give me up for nothing." He smiled, but his voice was still
serious. "It was true as I told you. I was better in the Wild
Forest thinking myself motherless, and your bastard, than waiting
yearly in my father's castle for the Queen to bear another child to
supplant me."

In all those years I had never seen it
so. I had been blinded by my larger purposes, thinking all the time
of his safety, of the kingdom's future, of the gods' will. Until
the boy Emrys had burst into my life that morning in the Wild
Forest, he had hardly been a person to me, only a symbol, another
life (as it were) for my father, a tool for me. After I came to
know and love him I had seen only the deprivations we had subjected
him to, with his high temper and leaping ambition to be first and
best, and his quick generosity and affection. It was no use telling
myself that without me he might never have come near his heritage
at all; I had lived with guilt for all that he had been robbed
of.

No question but that he had felt the
deprivation, the bite of dispossession. But even here, even now in
the moment of finding himself, he could see clearly what that
princely childhood would have meant. I knew he was right. Even
apart from the daily dangers, he would have had a hard time of it
beside Uther, and the high qualities, wasting with time and hope
deferred, might have turned sour. But the admission, to absolve me,
had to come from him. Now it lifted my guilt from me as cool air
lifts a marsh mist. He was still speaking of his father. "I like
him," he said. "He has been a good king as far as it was in him.
Standing apart from him as I have done, I have been able to listen
to men talking, and to judge. But as a father -- as to how we would
have dealt together, that's another matter. There is time still to
know my mother. She will need comfort soon, I think."

He referred only once, briefly, to
Morgause.

"They say she has left the
town?"

"She went this morning while you were
with the King."

"You spoke with her? How did she take
it?"

"Without distress," I said, with
perfect truth. "You needn't fear for her."

"Did you send her away?"

"I advised her to go. As I advise you
to put it out of your mind. For the moment, at any rate, there is
nothing to be done. Except -- I suggest -- sleep...Today has been
hard, and will be harder for both of us before it's done. So if you
can forget the crowds outside and the guard beyond the window, I
suggest we both sleep till sundown."

He yawned suddenly, widely, like a
young cat, then laughed. "Have you put a spell on me to make sure
of it? Suddenly I feel I could sleep for a week...All right, I'll
do as you say, but may I send a message to Bedwyr?"

He did not speak of Morgause again,
and I think that soon, in the final preparations for the evening's
feast, he forgot her. Certainly the haunted look of the morning had
left him, and it seemed to me that no shadow touched him now; doubt
and apprehension would have wisped off his charged and shining
youth like waterdrops from whitehot metal. Even if he had guessed,
as I did, what the future held -- that it was greater than he could
have imagined, and in the end more terrible -- I doubt if it would
have dimmed his brightness. When one is fourteen, death at forty
seems still to be several lifetimes away. An hour after sundown,
they came for us to lead us to the hall of feasting.

8

The hall was packed to the doors. If
the place had seemed crowded before, by the time the trumpets
sounded for the feast there was barely breathing-room in the
corridors; it seemed as if even those sturdy Roman-built walls must
bulge and crumble under the press of excited humanity. For rumor
had run like a forest fire through the countryside that this was no
ordinary victory feast, and even from parts of the province twenty
or thirty miles off people were pouring into Luguvallium to be
there for the great occasion.

It would have been impossible to sift
and select the followers of those privileged nobles who were
allowed into the main hall where the King would sit. At a feast of
this kind men expected to leave their weapons outside, and this was
enforced, till the antechamber, stacked as it was with thickets of
spears and swords, looked like a grove of the Wild Forest. More
than this the guards could not do, save run an eye over each man's
person as he entered the hall, to see that he carried only the
knife or dagger he needed for his food. By the time the company was
assembled the sky outside was paling to dusk, and torches were lit.
Soon, with the smoky torchlight and the mild evening, the food and
wine and talk and laughter, the place was uncomfortably warm, and I
watched the King anxiously. He seemed in good enough spirits, but
his color was too high and his skin had a glazed, transparent look
that I have seen before in men who are pushed to the limits of
their strength. But he was perfectly in command of himself, talking
cheerfully and courteously to Arthur on his right, and to the
others about him, though at times he would fall into silence and
seem to be drifting, forgetfully, into some place far away from
which he would recall himself with a jerk. At one point he asked me
-- I was seated on his left -- if I knew why Morgause had not come
to see him that day. He asked without concern, without even much
interest; it was obvious that he had not taken in the fact that she
had left the court. I told him that she had wanted to go to her
sister at York, and that since the King had been unable to see her
I myself had given her permission, and sent her with an escort. I
added quickly that the King need have no fears for his health,
since I was here and would attend him personally. He nodded and
thanked me, but as if my offer of help was something no longer
needed: "I have had the best doctors I could have had this day;
victory, and this boy beside me." He laid a hand on Arthur's arm,
and laughed. "You heard what the Saxon dogs were calling me? The
half-dead King. I heard them shouting it when I was carried forward
in my chair...And so in truth I think I was, but now I have both
victory and life."

He had spoken clearly, and men leaned
forward to listen, and afterwards murmured approval, while the King
went back to picking at his food. Ulfin and I had both warned him
that he must eat and drink sparingly, but there had been no need
for such advice; he had little appetite, and Ulfin saw to it that
his wine was well watered. And Arthur's, too. He sat beside his
father, his back straight as a spear, and the tension and
excitement of the occasion had taken some of the color from his
cheeks. For once he hardly seemed to notice what he was eating. He
spoke little, and then only when he was addressed, answering
briefly and obviously only for courtesy. Most of the time he sat
silent, his eyes on the throng in the hall below the royal dais. I,
who knew him, could see what he was doing; he was telling over face
by face, blazon by blazon, the toll of the men who were there, and
noting where they sat. Noting also how they looked. This face was
hostile, that friendly, this undecided and ready to be swayed by
promises of power or gain, that foolish or merely curious. I could
read them myself, as clearly as if they were red and white pieces
ready on the board to play, but for a youth not yet turned fifteen,
and on such a highly charged occasion, it was a marvel that he
could collect himself to watch them so. Years afterwards he was
still able to tally exactly the forces which assembled for and
against him that first night of his power. Only twice did that cool
look linger and soften; on Ector, not far from where we sat, solid,
dependable Ector, beaming a little moist-eyed across his wine as he
watched his fosterson jeweled and resplendent in white and silver
at the High King's side. (I thought that Cei's glance beside him
was less than enthusiastic, but Cei had, at best, low brows and a
narrow face that gave even his enthusiasms a grudging look.) Down
the hall, beside his father the King of Benoic, was Bedwyr, his
plain face flushed and his soul, as they say, in his eyes. The two
boys' eyes met and met again during the feasting. Here, already,
the next strong thread was being woven of the new kingdom's
pattern.