Legacy: Arthurian Saga (128 page)

This was the once-famous shrine of
Nodens, who is Nuatha of the Silver Hand, known in my country as
Llud, or Bilis, King of the Otherworld, whose gates are the hollow
hills. He it was who had guarded the sword after I had raised it
from its long grave below the floor of Mithras' temple at
Segontium. I had left it in his keeping in the lake cave that was
known to be sacred to him, before carrying it finally up to the
Green Chapel. To Llud, also, I had a debt to pay.

His shrine by the Severn was far older
than Mithras' temple, or the chapel in the forest. Its origins had
long been lost, even in song or story. It had been a hill fortress
first, with maybe a stone or a spring dedicated to the god who
cared for the spirits of dead men. Then iron was found, and all
through Roman times the place was mined, and mined richly. It may
have been the Romans who first called the place the Hill of the
Dwarfs, after the small dark men of the west who worked there. The
mine had long since been closed, but the name persisted, and so did
the stories, of the Old Ones who were seen lurking in the oak
woods, or who came thronging out of the earth's depths on nights of
storm and starlight to join the train of the dark king, as he rode
from his hollow hill with his wild rout of ghosts and enchanted
spirits.

I reached the top of the hill behind
the camp, and walked down between the scattered oaks toward the
stream at the valley's foot. There was a ripe autumn moon that
showed me my way. The chestnut leaves, already loosened and
drifting, fell here and there quietly to the grass, but the oaks
still held their leaves, so that the air was full of rustling as
the dry boughs stirred and whispered. The land after the rain
smelled rich and soft, ploughing weather, nutting weather, the
squirrel-time for winter's coming.

Below me on the shadowed slope
something moved. There was a stirring of grasses, a pattering,
then, like the sound of a hail-storm sweeping past, a herd of deer
went by, as swiftly as swallows flying. They were very near. The
moonlight struck the dappled coats and the ivory tips of the tines.
So close they were that I even saw the liquid shine of their eyes.
There were pied deer and white, ghosts of dapple and silver,
scudding as lightly as their own shadows, and as swiftly as a
sudden squall of wind. They fled by me, down to the valley foot,
between the breasts of the rounded hills and up round a curve of
oak trees, and were gone.

They say that a white deer is a
magical creature. I believe that this is true. I had seen two such
in my life, each one the herald of a marvel. These, too, seen in
the moonlight, scudding like clouds into the trees' darkness,
seemed things of magic. Perhaps, with the Old Ones, they haunted a
hill that still held an open gate to the Otherworld.

I crossed the stream, climbed the next
hill, and made my way up toward the ruinous walls that crowned it.
I picked my way through the debris of what looked like ancient
outworks, then climbed the last steep rise of the path. There was a
gate set in a high, creeper-covered wall. It was open. I went
in.

I found myself in the precinct, a wide
courtyard stretching the full width of the flat hilltop. The
moonlight, growing stronger every moment, showed a stretch of
broken pavement furred with weeds. Two sides of the precinct were
enclosed by high walls with broken tops; on the other two there had
once been large buildings, of which some portions were still
roofed. The place, in that light, was still impressive, roofs and
pillars showing whole in the moonlight. Only an owl, flying
silently from an upper window, showed that the place had long been
deserted, and was crumbling back into the hill.

There was another building set almost
in the middle of the court. The gable of its high roof stood up
sharply against the moon, but moonlight fell through empty windows.
This, I knew, must be the shrine. The buildings that edged the
courtyard were what remained of the guest-houses and dormitories
where pilgrims and suppliants had lodged; there were cells, walled
in, windowless and private, such as I had known at Pergamum, where
people slept, hoping for healing dreams, or visions of
divination.

I went softly forward over the broken
pavement. I knew what I would find; a shrine full of dust and cold
air, like the abdicated temple of Mithras at Segontium. But it was
possible, I told myself, as I trod up the steps and between the
still-massive doorposts of the central cella, that the old gods who
had sprung, like the oak trees and the grass and the rivers
themselves -- it was possible that these beings made of the air and
earth and water of our sweet land, were harder to dislodge than the
visiting gods of Rome. Such a one, I had long believed, was mine.
He might still be here, where the night air blew through the empty
shrine, filling it with the sound of the trees.

The moonlight, falling through the
upper windows and the patches of broken roof, lit the place with a
pure, fierce light. Some sapling, rooted high up in the masonry,
swayed in the breeze, so that shadow and cold light moved and
shifted over the dimness within. It was like being at the bottom of
a well-shaft; the air, shadow and light, moved like water against
the skin, as pure and as cold. The mosaic underfoot, rippled and
uneven where the ground had shifted beneath it, glimmered like the
floor of the sea, its strange sea-creatures swimming in the swaying
light. From beyond the broken walls came the hiss, like foam
breaking, of the rustling trees.

I stood there, quiet still and silent,
for a long time. Long enough for the owl to sail back on hushed
wings, drifting to her perch above the dormitory. Long enough for
the small wind to drop again, and the water-shadows to fall still.
Long enough for the moon to move behind the gable, and the dolphins
under my feet to vanish in darkness.

Nothing moved or spoke. No presence
there. I told myself, with humility, that this meant nothing. I,
once so powerful an enchanter and prophet, had been swept on a
mighty tide to God's very gates, and now was dropping back on the
ebb to a barren shore. If there were voices here I would not hear
them. I was as mortal as the spectral deer.

I turned to leave the place. And
smelled smoke.

Not the smoke of sacrifice; ordinary
wood-smoke, and with it the faint smell of cooking. It came from
somewhere beyond the ruined guest-house of the precinct's north
side. I crossed the courtyard, went in through the remains of a
massive archway, and guided by the smell and then by faint
firelight, found my way to a small chamber, where a dog, waking,
began to bark, and the two who had been sleeping by the fire got
abruptly to their feet.

It was a man and a boy, father and son
by the look of them; poor people, to judge by their worn and shabby
clothing, but with some look about them of men who are their own
masters. In this I was wrong, as it happened.

They moved with the speed of fear. The
dog -- it was old and stiff, with a grey muzzle and a white eye --
did not attack, but stood its ground, growling. The man was on his
feet more quickly than the dog, with a long knife in his hand; it
was honed and bright and looked like a sacrificial weapon. The boy,
squaring up to the stranger with all the bravado of twelve or so,
held a heavy billet of firewood.

"Peace to you," I said, then repeated
it in their own tongue. "I came to say a prayer, but no one
answered, so when I smelled the fire I came across to see if the
god still kept servants here."

The knife-point sank, but he gripped
it still, and the old dog growled. "Who are you?" demanded the
man.

"Only a stranger who is passing this
place. I had often heard of Nodens' famous shrine, and seized the
time to visit it. Are you its guardian, sir?"

"I am. Are you looking for a night's
lodging?"

"That was not my intention. Why? Do
you still offer it?"

"Sometimes." He was wary. The boy,
more trusting, or perhaps seeing that I was unarmed, turned away
and placed the billet carefully on the fire. The dog, silent now,
edged forward to touch my hand with its greyed muzzle. Its tail
moved.

"He's a good dog, and very fierce,"
said the man, "but old, and deaf." His manner was no longer
hostile. At the dog's action the knife had vanished.

"And wise," I said, I smoothed the
upraised head. "He's one who can see the wind."

The boy turned, wide-eyed. "See the
wind?" asked the man, staring.

"Have you not heard that of a dog with
a white eye? And, old and slow as he is, he can see that I come
with no intent to hurt you. My name is Myrddin Emrys, and I live
west of here, near Maridunum, in Dyfed. I have been traveling, and
am on my way home." I gave him my Welsh name; like everyone else,
he would have heard of Merlin the enchanter, and awe is a bad
hearth-friend. "May I come in and share your fire for a while, and
will you tell me about the shrine you guard?"

They made way for me, and the boy
pulled a stool out of a corner somewhere. Under my questions, at
length, the man relaxed and began to talk. His name was Mog: it is
not really a name, meaning, as it does, merely "a servant," but
there was a king once who did not disdain to call himself Mog
Nuatha, and the man's son was called, even more grandly, after an
emperor. "Constant will be the servant after me," said Mog, and
went on to talk with pride and longing of the great period of the
shrine, when the pagan emperor rebuilt and re-equipped it only half
a century before the last of the legions left Britain. From long
before this time, he told me, a "Mog Nuatha" had served the shrine
with all his family. But now there were only himself and his son;
his wife was from home, having gone down that morning to market,
and to spend the night with her ailing sister in the
village.

"If there's room left, with all that's
there now," the man grumbled. "You can see the river from the wall
yonder, and when we saw the boats crossing I sent the boy to have a
look. The army, he says it is, along with the young King -- " He
broke off, peering through the firelight at my plain robe and
cloak. "You're no soldier, are you? Are you with them?"

"Yes to the last, and no to the first.
As you can see, I am no soldier, but I am with the
King."

"What are you, then? A
secretary?"

"Of a sort."

He nodded. The boy, listening and
absorbed, sat cross-legged beside the dog at my feet. His father
asked: "What's he like, this youngster that they say King Uther
handed the sword to?"

"He is young, but a man turned, and a
good soldier. He can lead men, and he has enough sense to listen to
his elders."

He nodded again. Not for these folk
the tales and hopes of power and glory. They lived all their lives
on this secluded hilltop, with this one direction to their days;
what happened beyond the oak trees did not concern them. Since the
start of time no one had stormed the holy place. He asked the only
question that, to these two, mattered: "Is he a Christian, this
young Arthur? Will he knock down the temple, in the name of this
new-fangled god, or will he respect what's gone before?"

I answered him tranquilly, and as
truly as I knew how: "He will be crowned by the Christian bishops,
and bend his knees to his parents' God. But he is a man of this
land, and he knows the gods of this land, and the people who still
serve those gods on the hills and by the springs and
fording-places." My eye had caught, on a broad shelf opposite the
fire, a crowd of objects, carefully arranged. I had seen similar
things in Pergamum and other places of divine healing; they were
offerings to the gods; models of parts of the human body, or carved
statues of animals or fish, that carried some message of
supplication or gratitude. "You will find," I told Mog, "that his
armies will pass by without harm, and that if he ever comes here
himself he will say a prayer to the god and make an offering. As I
did, and as I will."

"That's good talking," said the boy
suddenly, and showed a white-toothed grin.

I smiled at him, and dropped two coins
into the outstretched palm. "For the shrine, and for its
servants."

Mog grunted something, and the boy
Constant slid to his feet and went to a cupboard in the corner. He
came back with a leather bottle and a chipped cup for me. Mog
lifted his own cup up off the floor and the boy tipped the liquor
in. "Your health," said Mog. I answered, and we drank. The stuff
was mead, sweet and strong.

Mog drank again, and drew his sleeve
across his mouth. "You've been asking about times long past, and
we've told you as best we may. Now do you, sir, tell us what's been
happening up there in the north. All we heard down here were
stories of battles, and kings dying and being made. Is it true the
Saxons have gone? Is it true that King Uther Pendragon kept this
prince hidden all this time, and brought him out, sudden as a
thunderclap, there in the battlefield, and he killed four hundred
of the Saxon beasts with a magic sword that sang and drank
blood?"

So once more I told the story, while
the boy quietly fed the fire, and the flames spat and leaped and
shone on the carefully polished offerings ranged on the shelf. The
dog slept again, its head on my foot, the fire hot on its rough
coat. As I talked the bottle passed and the mead went down in it,
and at last the fire dwindled and the logs fell to ash, and I
finished my tale with Uther's burial and Arthur's plans to hold
Caerleon in readiness for the spring campaigning.