Legacy: Arthurian Saga (132 page)

So I lit the brazier in my sleeping
chamber, and kindled the logs at the doorway, then unpacked my
saddlebags and went out with the pitcher to draw water from the
spring. This trickled out of a ferny rock beside the cave mouth,
and lisped through the hanging lace of rime, to drip into a round
stone basin. Above it, among the mosses, and crowned with icy
glitter, stood the image of the god Myrddin, who keeps the roads of
the sky. I poured a libation to him, then went in to look to my
books and medicines.

Nothing had taken harm. Even the jars
of herbs, sealed and tied as I had taught Stilicho to do it, seemed
fresh and good. I uncovered the great harp that stood at the back
of the cave, and carried it near the fire to tune it. Then, having
made my bed ready, I mulled some wine and drank it, sitting by the
leaping fire of logs. Finally, I unwrapped the small knee-harp that
had been with me on all my travels, and carried it back to its
place in the crystal cave. This was a small inner cave, with its
opening set high in the rear wall of the main cavern, and so placed
behind a jut of rock that in the normal way the shadows hid it from
sight. When I was a boy it had been my gate of vision. Here, in the
inner silence of the hill, folded deep in darkness and in solitude,
no sense could play except the eye of the mind, and no sound
come.

Except, as now, the murmur of the harp
as I set it down. It was the one I had made as a boy, so finely
strung that the very air could set it whispering. The sounds were
weird and sometimes beautiful, but somehow outside the run of music
as we know it, as the song of the grey seal on the rocks is
beautiful, but is the sound of the wind and the waves rather than
of a beast. The harp sang to itself as I set it down, with a kind
of slumberous humming, like a cat purring to be back on its own
hearthstone.

"Rest you there," I told it, and at
the sound of my voice running round the crystal walls it hummed
again.

I went back to the bright fire, and
the stars gemming the black sky outside. I lifted the great harp to
me and -- hesitating at first, and then more easily -- made
music.

Rest you here, enchanter, while the
light fades, Vision narrows, and the far Sky-edge is gone with the
sun. Be content with the small spark of the coal, the smell of
food, and the breath of frost beyond the shut door. Home is here,
and familiar things; A cup, a wooden bowl, a blanket, prayer, a
gift for the god, and sleep.

(And music, says the harp, And
music.)

6

With the spring came, inevitably,
trouble. Colgrim, sniffing his way cautiously back along the
eastern coasts, landed within the old federated territories, and
set about raising a new force to replace the one defeated at
Luguvallium and the Glein.

I was back in Caerleon by that time,
busy with Arthur's plans for the establishment there of his new
mobile cavalry force.

The idea, though startling, was not
altogether new. With Saxon Federates already settled, and by
treaty, in the south-eastern districts of the island, and with the
whole eastern seaboard continually at risk, it was impossible to
set up and effectively maintain a fixed line of defense. There
were, of course, certain defensive ramparts already in existence,
of which Ambrosius' Wall was the greatest. (I omit Hadrian's Great
Wall here; it was never a purely defensive structure, and had been,
even in the Emperor Macsen's time, impossible to keep. Now it was
breached in a score of places; and besides, the enemy was no longer
the Celt from the wild country to the north; he came from the sea.
Or he was already, as I have explained, within the gates of
southeast Britain.) The others Arthur set himself to extend and
refurbish, notably the Black Dyke of Northumbria, which protects
Rheged and Strathclyde, and the other Wall that the Romans
originally built across the high chalk downlands south of the Sarum
plain. The King planned to extend this wall northward. The roads
through it were to be left open, but could be shut fast if any
attempt was made by the enemy to move toward the Summer Country to
the west. Other defensive works were planned, soon to be under way.
Meanwhile, all the King could hope to do was fortify and man
certain key positions, establish signal stations between these, and
keep open the communicating roads. The Kings and chiefs of the
British would keep each his own territory, while the High King's
work would be to maintain a fighting force that could be taken at
need to help any of them, or be thrown into whatever breach was
made in our defenses. It was the old plan with which Rome had
successfully defended her province for some time before the
withdrawal of the legions: the Count of the Saxon Shore had
commanded just such a mobile force, and indeed Ambrosius, more
recently, had done the same.

But Arthur planned to go further.
"Caesar-speed," as he saw it, could be made ten times as speedy if
the whole force were mounted. Nowadays, when one sees cavalry
troops daily on the roads and in the parade grounds, this seems a
normal enough thing; but then, when he first thought of it and put
it to me, it came with all the force of the surprise attack he
hoped to achieve with it. It would take time, of course; the
beginnings, perforce, would be modest. Until enough of the troops
were trained to fight from horseback, it would have to be a
smallish, picked force drawn from among the officers and his own
friends. This granted, the plan was feasible. But no such plan
could be put into being without the right horses, and of these we
could command relatively few. The cobby little native beasts,
though hardy, were neither speedy enough nor big enough to carry an
armed man into battle.

We talked it over for days and nights,
going into every detail, before Arthur would put the idea before
his commanders. There are those -- the best, too, often among them
-- who are opposed to any kind of change; and unless every argument
can be met, the waverers are drawn to cast with the noes. Between
them Arthur and Cador, along with Gwilim of Dyfed and Ynyr from
Caer Guent, hammered the thing out over the map tables. I could
contribute little to the war-talk, but I did solve the problem of
the horses.

There is a race of horses that are
said to be the best in the world. Certainly they are the most
beautiful. I had seen them in the East, where the men of the desert
prize them more than their gold or their women; but they could be
found, I knew, nearer than that. The Romans had brought some of
these creatures back from North Africa into Iberia, where they had
interbred with the thicker-bodied horses from Europe. The result
was a splendid animal, fast and fiery, but strong with it, and
supple, and biddable as a war-horse should be. If Arthur would send
across to see what might be bought, then as soon as the weather
would allow safe transportation, the makings of a mounted force
could be his by the following summer.

So when I got back to Caerleon in the
spring, it was to put in motion the building of big new
stable-blocks, while Bedwyr was dispatched overseas to do the
horse-trading.

Caerleon was already transformed. Work
on the fortress itself had gone quickly and well, and now other
buildings were springing up nearby, of sufficient comfort and
grandeur to grace a temporary capital. Though Arthur would use the
commandant's house inside the walls as battle headquarters, another
house (which the folk called "the palace") was being built outside,
in the lovely curve of the Isca River, by the Roman bridge. When
finished this would be a large house, with several courtyards for
guests and their servants. It was well built, of stone and
brickwork, with painted plaster and carved pillars at the doors.
Its roof was gilded, like that of the new Christian church, which
was on the site of the old Mithras temple. Between these two
buildings and the parade ground to the west of them, houses and
shops were springing up, making a bustling township where before
there had only been a small village settlement. The folk, proud of
Arthur's choice of Caerleon, and willing to ignore the reasons for
it, worked with a will to make the place worthy of a new reign, and
a king who would bring peace.

He brought peace of a sort by
Pentecost. Colgrim, with his new army, had broken bounds in the
eastern regions. Arthur fought him twice, once not far south of the
Humber, the second time nearer the Saxon boundary, in the reedy
fields of Linnuis. In the second of these battles Colgrim was
killed. Then, with the Saxon Shore uneasily recoiling into quiet
once more, Arthur came back to us, in time to meet Bedwyr
disembarking with the first contingent of the promised
horses.

Valerius, who had been to help
disembark them, was enthusiastic.

"High as your breast, and strong with
it, and as gentle as maidens. Some maidens, that is. And fast, they
say, as greyhounds, though they're still stiff from the voyage, and
it'll take time before they get their land-legs again. And
beautiful! There's many a maiden, gentle or otherwise, who'd
sacrifice to Hecate for eyes as big and dark, or skins as
silken..."

"How many did he bring? Mares as well?
When I was in the East they parted only with the
stallions."

"Mares as well. A hundred stallions in
this first lot, and thirty mares. Better off than the army on
campaign, but still fierce competition, eh?"

"You've been at war too long," I told
him.

He grinned and went, and I called my
assistants and went up through the new cavalry lines to make sure
that all would be ready to receive the horses, and to check yet
again the new, light field-harness that the saddlers' workshops had
made for them.

As I went, the bells began to ring
from the gilded towers. The High King was home, and preparations
for the crowning could begin.

Since I had watched Uther crowned I
had traveled abroad, and seen splendors -- in Rome, Antioch,
Byzantium -- beside which anything that Britain could do was like
the mumming of gaudy tumblers; but there was about that ceremony at
Caerleon a young and springtime glory that none of the riches of
the East could have procured. The bishops and priests were splendid
in scarlet and purple and white, set off the more brilliantly by
the browns and sables of the holy men and women who attended them.
The kings, each with his following of nobles and fighting men,
glittered with jewels and gilded arms.

The walls of the fortress, crested
with the shifting and craning heads of the people, stirred with
bright hangings, and rang with cheering. The ladies of the court
were gay as kingfishers; even Queen Ygraine, in a glow of pride and
happiness, had put aside her mourning robes, and shone like the
rest. Morgan, beside her, had certainly none of the air of a
rejected bride; she was only a little less richly dressed than her
mother, and showed the same smiling, royal composure. It was
difficult to remember how young she was. The two royal ladies kept
their places among the women, not coming to Arthur's side. I heard,
here and there, murmurs among the ladies, and perhaps even more
among the matrons, who had their eyes on the empty side of the
throne; but to me it was fitting that there should be no one yet to
share his glory. He stood alone in the center of the church, with
the light from the long windows kindling the rubies to a blaze, and
laying panels of gold and sapphire along the white of his robe, and
on the fur that trimmed the scarlet mantle.

I had wondered if Lot would come.
Gossip had gathered, like a boil, to bursting-point before we knew;
but come, in the end, he did. Perhaps he felt that he would lose
more by staying away than by braving the King and Queen and his
slighted princess, for, a few days before the ceremony, his spears
were seen, along with those of Urien of Gore, and Aguisel of
Bremenium, and Tydwal who kept Dunpeldyr for him, flouting the sky
to the northeast.

This train of northern lords stayed
encamped together a little beyond the township, but they came
crowding in to join the celebrations as if nothing untoward had
ever happened at Luguvallium or York. Lot himself showed a
confidence too easy to be called bravado; he was relying, perhaps,
on the fact that he was now hand-kin to Arthur. Arthur said as
much, privately, to me; in public he received Lot's ceremonious
courtesies blandly. I wondered, with fear, if Lot yet suspected
that he had the King's unborn child at his mercy.

At least Morgause had not come.
Knowing the lady as I did, I thought she might have come and faced
even me, for the pleasure of flaunting her crown in front of
Ygraine, and her swollen belly in front of Arthur and myself. But
whether for fear of me, or whether Lot's nerve had failed him and
he had forbidden it, she stayed away, with her pregnancy as the
plea. I was beside Arthur when Lot gave his queen's excuses; there
was no hint of any extra knowledge in his face or voice, and if he
saw Arthur's sudden glance at me, or the slight paling of his
cheeks, he gave no sign. Then the King had himself in hand again,
and the moment passed.

So the day wore through its brilliant,
exhausting hours. The bishops spared no touch of holy ceremonial,
and, for the pagans present, the omens were good. I had seen signs
other than that of the Cross being made in the street as the
procession passed, and at the street corners fortunes were told
with bones and dice and gazing, while peddlers did a brisk trade
with every kind of charm and luck-piece. Black cockerels had been
killed at dawning, and offerings made at ford and crossroads, where
the old Herm used to wait for travelers' gifts. Outside the city,
in mountain and valley and forest, the small dark folk of the upper
hills would be watching their own omens and petitioning their own
gods. But in the city center, on church and palace and fortress
alike, the Cross caught the sun. As for Arthur, he went through the
long day with calm and pale-faced dignity, stiff with jewels and
embroidery, and rigid with ceremony, a puppet for the priests to
sanctify. If this was needed to declare his authority finally in
the eyes of the people, then this was what he would do. But I, who
knew him, and who stood at his side all through that endless day,
could sense neither dedication nor prayer in that still composure.
He was probably, I thought, planning the next fighting foray to the
east. For him, as for all who had seen it, the kingdom had been
taken into his hand when he lifted the great sword of Maximus from
its long oblivion, and made his vow to the listening forests. The
crown of Caerleon was only the public seal of what he had held in
his hand then, and would hold until he died.