Legacy: Arthurian Saga (138 page)

I looked up to see Beltane watching me
eagerly. I gave him what he wanted. "This is splendid work.
Beautiful. It is as fine as any I have seen."

He glowed with simple pleasure. Now
that I had placed him, I could let myself be easy. He was an
artist, and artists live on praise as bees on nectar. Nor do they
much concern themselves in anything beyond their own art; Beltane
had been barely interested in my own calling. His questions were
harmless enough, a traveling salesman probing for news; and with
the events at Luguvallium still a story forevery fireside, what
finer morsel of news could there be than some hint of Merlin's
whereabouts? It was certain that he had no idea who he was talking
to. I asked a few questions about the work, these out of genuine
interest; I have always learned where I could about any man's
skills. His answers soon showed me that he had certainly made the
jewels himself; so the service for which the wine had been a reward
was also explained.

"Your eyesight," I said. "You spoiled
it with this work?"

"No, no. My eyesight is poor, but it
is good for close work. In fact, it has been my blessing as an
artist. Even now, when I am no longer young, I can see details very
finely, but your face, my good sir, is by no means clear; and as
for these trees around us, for such I take them to be..." He smiled
and shrugged. "Hence my keeping this idle dreamer of a boy. He is
my eyes. Without him I could hardly travel as I do, and indeed, I
am lucky to have got here safely, even with his eyes, the little
fool. This is no country to leave the roads and venture across
bogland."

His sharpness was a matter of routine.
The boy Ninian ignored it; he had taken the chance of showing me
the jewelry to stay near the fire.

"And now?" I asked the goldsmith. "You
have shown me work fit for kings' courts. Too good, surely, for the
marketplace? Where are you taking it?"

"Need you ask? To Dunpeldyr, in
Lothian. With the king newly wed, and the queen as lovely as
mayflowers and sorrelbuds, there will surely be trade for such as
I."

I stretched my hand to the warmth of
the blaze. "Ah, yes," I said. "He married Morgause in the end.
Pledged to one princess and married to another. I heard something
of that. You were there?"

"I was indeed. And small blame to King
Lot, that's what everyone was saying. The Princess Morgan is fair
enough, and right enough a king's daughter, but the other one --
well, you know how the talk goes. No man, let alone a man like Lot
of Lothian, could come within arm's length of that lady and not
lust to bed her."

"Your eyesight was good enough for
that?" I asked him. I saw Ulfin smile.

"I didn't need eyesight." He laughed
robustly. "I have ears, and I hear the talk that goes around, and
once I got near enough to smell the scent she uses, and catch the
color of her hair in the sunlight, and hear her pretty voice. So I
got my boy to tell me what she looked like, and I made this chain
for her. Do you think her lord will buy it of me?"

I fingered the lovely thing; it was of
gold, each link as delicate as floss, holding flowers of pearl and
citrine set in filigree. "He would be a fool if he did not. And if
the lady sees it first, he certainly will."

"I reckon on that," he said, smiling.
"By the time I get to Dunpeldyr, she should be well again, and
thinking of finery. You knew, did you? She was brought to bed two
full weeks ago, before her time."

Ulfin's sudden stillness made a pause
of silence as loud as a shout. Ninian looked up. I felt my own
nerves tighten. The goldsmith sensed the sharpening of the
attention he was getting, and looked pleased. "Had you not
heard?"

"No. Since we passed Isurium we have
not lodged in towns. Two weeks ago? This is certain?"

"Certain, sir. Too certain, maybe, for
some folks' comfort." He laughed. "Never have I seen so many folk
counting on their fingers that never counted before! And count as
they may, with the best will in the world, they make it September
for the child's conceiving. That," said the little gossip, "would
be at Luguvallium, when King Uther died."

"I suppose so," I said indifferently.
"And King Lot? The last I heard, he was gone to Linnuis, to join
Arthur there."

"He did, that's true. He'll hardly
have got the news yet. We got it ourselves when we lay for a night
at Elfete, on the east road. That was the way her courier took. He
had some tale of avoiding trouble by going that way, but it's my
belief he'd been told to take his time. By the time King Lot gets
news of the birthing, it'll be a more decent interval since the
wedding day."

"And the child?" I asked idly. "A
boy?"

"Aye, and from all accounts a sickly
one, so with all his haste Lot still may not have got himself an
heir."

"Ah, well," I said, "he has time." I
turned the subject. "Are you not afraid to travel as you do, with
so much valuable cargo?"

"I confess I have had fears about it,"
he admitted. "Yes, yes, indeed. You must understand that commonly,
when I shut my workshop, and take to the roads for summer, I carry
with me only such stuff as the folks like to buy in the markets,
or, at best, gauds for merchants' wives. But luck was against me,
and I could not get these jewels done in time to show them to Queen
Morgause before she went north, so needs must I carry them after
her. Now my luck is to fall in with an honest man like yourself; I
don't need to be a Merlin to tell such things...I can see you're
honest, and a gentleman like myself. Tell me, will my luck hold
tomorrow? May we have your company, my good sir, as far as Cor
Bridge?"

I had made up my mind already about
that. "As far as Dunpeldyr if you will. I'm bound there. And if you
stop by the way to sell your wares, that suits me, too. I recently
had a piece of news that tells me there is no haste for me to be
there."

He was delighted, and fortunately did
not see Ulfin's look of surprise. I had already decided that the
goldsmith might be useful to me. I judged that he would hardly have
outstayed the spring weather in York, making up the rich jewels he
had shown me, without some sort of assurance that Morgause would at
least look at them. As he talked cheerfully on, needing very little
encouragement to tell me more about the happenings in York, I found
that I had been right. Somehow he had managed to engage the
interest of Lind, Morgause's young handmaid, and had persuaded her,
in return for a pretty trinket or two, to speak of his wares to the
queen. Beltane himself had not been sent for, but Lind had taken
one or two of his pieces to show her mistress, and had assured the
goldsmith of Morgause's interest. He told me all about it at some
length. For a while I let him talk on, then said casually: "You
said something about Morgause and Merlin. Did I understand that she
had soldiers out looking for him? Why?"

"No, you misunderstood me. I was
speaking in jest. When I was in York, listening as I do to the talk
of the place, I heard someone say that Merlin and she had
quarrelled at Luguvallium, and that she spoke of him now with
hatred, where before she had spoken with envy of his art. And
lately, of course, everyone was wondering where he had gone. Queen
or no, little harm could she do a man like that!"

And you, I thought, are luckily short
of sight, otherwise I should have to be wary of a perceptive and
garrulous little man. As it was, I was glad I had fallen in with
him. I was still thinking about it, but idly, as finally even he
decided it was time to sleep, and we let the fire go low and rolled
ourselves in our blankets under the trees. His presence would give
credence to my disguise, and he could be, if not my eyes, my ears
and information at the court of Morgause. And Ninian, who acted as
his eyes? The cold breeze stirred my nape again, and my idle
calculations dis-limned like a shadow when the sun goes in. What
was this? Foreknowledge, the half-forgotten stirring of a kind of
power? But even that speculation died as the night breeze hushed
through the delicate birch boughs and the last faggot sank to ash.
The dreamless night closed in. About the sickly child at Dunpeldyr
I would not think at all, except to hope that it would not thrive,
and so leave me no problem. But I knew that the hope was
vain.

10

It is barely thirty miles from Vinovia
to the town at the Cor Bridge, but it took us six days' journeying.
We did not keep to the road, but traveled by circuitous and
sometimes rough ways, visiting every village and farmstead, however
humble, that lay between us and the bridge.

With no reason for haste, the journey
passed pleasantly. Beltane obviously took great pleasure in our
company, and Ninian's lot was made easier by the use of mules to
carry his awkward packs. The goldsmith was as garrulous as ever,
but he was a good-hearted man, and moreover a meticulous and honest
craftsman, which is something to respect. Our wandering progress
was made slower than ever by the time he took over his work --
repair-work, mostly, in the poorer places; in the bigger villages,
or at taverns, he was of course occupied all the time.

So was the boy, but on the journeys
between settlements, and in the evenings by the camp fire, we
struck up a strange kind of friendship. He was always quiet, but
after he found that I knew the ways of birds and beasts, that a
detailed knowledge of plants went with my physician's skill, and
that I could, at night, even read the map of the stars, he kept
near me whenever he could, and even brought himself to question me.
Music he loved, and his ear was true, so I began to teach him how
to tune my harp.

He could neither read nor write, but
showed, once his interest was engaged, a ready intelligence that,
given time and the right teacher, could be made to blossom. By the
time we reached Cor Bridge I was beginning to wonder if I could be
that teacher, and if Ninian could be brought -- his master
permitting -- to serve me. With this in mind, I kept my eyes open
whenever we passed some quarry or farmstead, in case there might be
some likely slave I could buy to serve Beltane, and persuade him to
release the boy.

From time to time the small cloud
oppressed me still, the hovering chill of some vague foreboding
that made me restless and apprehensive; trouble was there at my
whistle, looking for somewhere to strike. After a while I gave up
trying to see where that stroke might fall. I was certain that it
could not concern Arthur, and if it was to concern Morgause, then
there would be time enough to let it worry me. Even in Dunpeldyr I
thought I should be safe enough: Morgause would have other things
on her mind, not least the return of her lord, who could count on
his fingers as well as any man.

And the trouble might be no deep
matter, but the trivial annoyance of a day, soon forgotten. It is
hard to tell, when the gods trail the shadows of foreknowledge
across the light, whether the cloud is one that will blot out a
king's realm, or make a child cry in its sleep.

At length we came to Cor Bridge, in
the rolling country just south of the Great Wall. In Roman times
the place was called Corstopitum. There was a strong fort there,
well placed where Dere Street, from the south, crossed the great
east-west road of Agricola. In time a civilian settlement sprang up
in this favored spot, and soon became a thriving township,
accepting all the traffic, civil and military, from the four
quarters of Britain.

Nowadays the fort is a tumbledown
affair, much of its stone having been pillaged for new buildings,
but west of it, on a curve of rising ground edged by the Cor Burn,
the new town still grows and prospers, with houses, inns, and
shops, and a thriving market which is the liveliest relic of its
prosperity in Roman times.

The fine Roman bridge, which gives the
place its modern name, still stands, spanning the Tyne at the point
where the Cor Burn runs into it from the north. There is a mill
there, and the bridge's timbers groan all day under the loads of
grain. Below the mill is a wharf where shallow-draught barges can
tie up. The Cor is little more than a stream, relying on its steep
tumble of water to drive the mill wheel, but the great River Tyne
is wide and fast, flowing here over bright shingle between its
gracious banks of trees. Its valley is broad and fertile, full of
fruit trees standing deep in growing corn. From this flowery and
winding tract of green the land rises toward the north to rolling
moorland, where, under the windy stretches of sky, sudden blue
lakes wink in the sun. In winter it is a bleak country, where
wolves and wild men roam the heights, and come sometimes over-close
to the houses; but in summer it is a lovely land, with forests full
of deer, and fleets of swans sailing the waters. The air over the
moors sparkles with bird-song, and the valleys are alive with
skimming swallows and the bright flash of kingfishers. And along
the edge of the whinstone runs the Great Wall of the Emperor
Hadrian, rising and dipping as the rock rises and dips. It commands
the country from its long cliff-top, so that from any point of it
fold upon fold of blue distance fades away east or westward, till
the eye loses the land in the misty edge of the sky.

It was not country I had known before.
I had come this way, as I had told Arthur, because I had a call to
make. One of my father's secretaries, whom I had known first in
Brittany and thereafter in Winchester and Caerleon, had come north
after Ambrosius' death, to retirement of a sort here in
Northumbria. The pension he received from my father had let him buy
a holding near Vindolanda, in a sheltered spot beside the Agricolan
Road, with a couple of strong slaves to work it. There he had
settled, growing rare plants in his favored garden, and writing, so
I had been told, a history of the times he had lived through. His
name was Blaise.