Legacy: Arthurian Saga (15 page)

"Hmm." He thought for a minute. "The
old King leaves another son. If the nobles don't want this alliance
--"

"A baby? Aren't you being a bit
simple? Camlach's had a good example in front of him; Vortimer
wouldn't be where he is if his father hadn't done just what Camlach
will do."

"And that is?"

"You know as well as I do. Look, why
should I say any more till I know who you are? Isn't it time you
told me?" He ignored that. He sounded thoughtful. "You seem to know
a lot about it. How old are you?"

"Twelve. I'll be thirteen in
September. But I don't need to be clever to know about Camlach and
Vortimer. I heard him say so himself."

"Did you, by the Bull? And what else
did you hear?"

"Quite a lot. I was always underfoot.
Nobody took any notice of me. But my mother's going into retirement
now at St. Peter's, and I wouldn't give you a fig for my chances,
so I cleared out."

"To Vortigern?" I said, honestly:
"I've no idea. I -- I have no plans. It might have to be Vortigern
in the end. What choice is there but him, and the Saxon wolves
hanging at our throats for all time till they've torn Britain
piecemeal and swallowed her? Who else is there?"

"Well," said Marric, "Ambrosius." I
laughed. "Oh, yes, Ambrosius. I thought you were serious. I know
you're from Less Britain, I can tell by your voices, but
--"

"You asked who we were. We are
Ambrosius' men."

There was a silence. I realized that
the river-banks had disappeared. Far off in the darkness to the
north a light showed; the lighthouse. Some time back the rain had
slackened and stopped. Now it was cold, with the wind off shore,
and the water was choppy. The boat pitched and swung, and I felt
the first qualm of sickness. I clutched my hands hard against my
belly, against the cold as much as the sickness, and said sharply:
"Ambrosius' men? Then you're spies? His spies?"

"Call us loyal men."

"Then it's true? It's true he's
waiting in Less Britain?"

"Aye, it's true." I said, aghast:
"Then that's where you're going? You can't imagine you can get
there in this horrible boat?"

Marric laughed, and Hanno said sourly,
"We might have to, at that, if the ship's not there."

"What ship would be there in winter?"
I demanded. "It's not sailing weather."

"It's sailing weather if you pay
enough," said Marric dryly.

"Ambrosius pays. The ship will be
there." His big hand dropped on my shoulder, not ungently. "Never
mind that, there's still things I want to know."

I curled up, hugging my belly, trying
to take big breaths of the cold clear air. "Oh, yes, there's a lot
I could tell you. But if you're going to drop me overboard anyway,
I've nothing to lose, have I? I might as well keep the rest of my
information to myself -- or see if Ambrosius will pay for it. And
there's your ship. Look; if you can't see it yet, you must be
blind. Now don't talk to me any more, I feel sick."

I heard him laugh again under his
breath. "You're a cool one, and no mistake. Aye, there's the ship,
I can see her clearly enough now. Well, seeing who you are, we'll
take you aboard. And I'll tell you the other reason; I liked what
you said about your friend. That sounded true enough. So you can be
loyal, eh? And you've no call to be loyal to Camlach, by all
accounts, or to Vortigern. Could you be loyal to
Ambrosius?"

"I'll know when I see him."

His fist sent me sprawling to the
bottom of the boat. "Princeling or not, keep a civil tongue in your
head when you speak of him. There's many a hundred men think of him
as their King, rightwise born."

I picked myself up, retching. A low
hail came from near at hand, and in a moment we were rocking in the
deeper shadow of the ship.

"If he's a man, that'll be enough," I
said.

The ship was small, compact and low in
the water. She lay there, unlighted, a shadow on the dark sea. I
could just see the rake of her mast swaying -- sickeningly, it
seemed to me -- against the scudding cloud that was only a little
lighter than the black sky above. She was rigged like the
merchantmen who traded in and out of Maridunum in the sailing
weather, but I thought she looked cleaner built, and
faster.

Marric answered the hail, then a rope
snaked down overside, and Hanno caught it and made it
fast.

"Come on, you, get moving. You can
climb, can't you?"

Somehow, I got to my feet in the
swinging coracle. The rope was wet, and jerked in my hands. From
above an urgent voice came: "Hurry, will you? We'll be lucky if we
get back at all, with the weather that's coming up."

"Get aloft, blast you," said Marric,
roughly, giving me a shove. It was all it needed. My hands slipped,
nerveless, from the rope, and I fell back into the coracle, landing
half across the side, where I hung, gasping and retching, and
beyond caring what fate overtook me or even a dozen kingdoms. If I
had been stabbed or thrown into the sea at that point I doubt if I
would even have noticed, except to welcome death as a relief. I
simply hung there over the boat's side like a lump of sodden rags,
vomiting.

I have very little recollection of
what happened then. There was a good deal of cursing, and I think I
remember Hanno urgently recommending Marric to cut his losses and
throw me overboard; but I was picked up bodily and, somehow, slung
up and into the waiting hands above. Then someone half-carried,
half-dragged me below, and dropped me on a pile of bedding with a
bucket to hand and the air from an open port blowing on my sweating
face.

I believe the journey took four days.
Rough weather there certainly was, but at least it was behind us,
and we made spanking speed. I stayed below the whole time, huddled
thankfully in the blankets under the port-hole, hardly venturing to
lift my head. The worst of the sickness abated after a time, but I
doubt if I could have moved, and mercifully no one tried to make
me.

Marric came down once. I remember it
vaguely, as if it were a dream. He picked his way in over a pile of
old anchor chain to where I lay, and stood, his big form stooping,
peering down at me. Then he shook his head. "And to think I thought
we'd done ourselves a good turn, picking you up. We should have
thrown you over the side in the first place, and saved a lot of
trouble. I reckon you haven't very much more to tell us,
anyway?"

I made no reply.

He gave a queer little grunt that
sounded like a laugh, and went out. I went to sleep,
exhausted.

When I woke, I found that my wet
cloak, sandals and tunic had been removed, and that, dry and naked,
I was cocooned deep in blankets. Near my head was a water jar, its
mouth stoppered with a twist of rag, and a hunk of barley
bread.

I couldn't have touched either, but I
got the message. I slept.

Then one day shortly before dusk, we
came in sight of the Wild Coast, and dropped anchor in the calm
waters of Morbihan that men call the Small Sea.

BOOK II THE FALCON
1

The first I knew of our coming to
shore was being roused, still heavy with that exhausted sleep, by
voices talking over me.

"Well, all right, if you believe him,
but do you really think even a bastard prince would be abroad in
those clothes? Everything soaking, not even a gilt clasp to his
belt, and look at his sandals. I grant you it's a good cloak, but
it's torn. More likely the first story was true, and he's a slave
running away with his master's things."

It was, of course, Hanno's voice, and
he was talking in Breton. Luckily I had my back to them, curled up
in the welter of blankets. It was easy to pretend to be asleep. I
lay still, and tried to keep my breathing even.

"No, it's the bastard all right; I've
seen him in the town. I'd have known him sooner if we'd been able
to show a light." The deeper voice was Marric's. "In any case it
would hardly matter who he was; slave or royal bastard, he's been
privy to a lot in that palace that Ambrosius will want to listen
to. And he's a bright lad; oh, yes, he's what he says he is. You
don't learn those cool ways and that kind of talking in the
kitchens."

"Well, but..." The change in Hanno's
voice made my skin shift on my bones. I kept very still.

"Well but what?"

The Weasel dropped his voice still
further. "Maybe if we made him talk to us first...I mean, look at
it this way. All that stuff he told us, hearing what King Camlach
meant to do and all that...If we'd got that information for
ourselves and got away to report it, there'd be a fat purse for us,
wouldn't there?"

Marric grunted. "And then when he gets
ashore and tells someone where he comes from? Ambrosius would hear.
He hears everything."

"Are you trying to be simple?" The
question was waspish.

It was all I could do to keep still.
There was a space between my shoulder-blades where the skin
tightened cold over the flesh as if it already felt the
knife.

"Oh, I'm not as simple as that. I get
you. But I don't see that it --"

"Nobody in Maridunum knows where he
went." Hanno's whisper was hurried and eager. "As for the men who
saw him come on board, they'll think we've taken him off with us
now. In fact, that's what we'll do, take him with us now, and there
are plenty of places between here and the town..." I heard him
swallow. "I told you before we put out, it's senseless to have
spent the money on his passage --"

"If we were going to get rid of him,"
said Marric bluntly, "we'd have done better not to have paid his
passage at all. Have a bit of sense, we'll get the money back now
in any case, and maybe a good bit over."

"How do you make that out?"

"Well, if the boy has got information,
Ambrosius'll pay the passage, you can be sure of that. Then if it
turns out he is the bastard -- and I'm certain he is -- there might
be extra in it for us. Kings' sons -- or grandsons -- come in
useful, as who should know better than Ambrosius?"

"Ambrosius must know the boy's useless
as a hostage." Hanno sounded sullen.

"Who's to tell? And if he's no use
either way to Ambrosius, then we keep the boy and sell him and
split the proceeds. So leave it be, I tell you. Alive, he might be
worth something; dead, he's worth nothing at all, and we might find
ourselves out of pocket over his passage."

I felt Hanno's toe prodding me, not
gently. "Doesn't look worth much either way at the moment. Ever
know anyone so sick? He must have a stomach like a girl. Do you
even suppose he can walk?"

"We can find out," said Marric, and
shook me. "Here, boy, get up." I groaned, rolled over slowly, and
showed them what I hoped was a wretchedly pale face.

"What is it? Are we there?" I asked it
in Welsh.

"Yes, we're there. Come on now, get to
your feet, we're going ashore."

I groaned again, more dismally than
before, and clutched my belly. "Oh, God, no, leave me
alone."

"A bucket of sea water," suggested
Hanno.

Marric straightened. "There's hardly
time." He spoke in Breton again. "He looks as if we'd have to carry
him. No, we'll have to leave him; we've got to get straight to the
Count. It's the night of the meeting, remember? He'll already know
the ship's docked, and he'll be expecting to see us before he has
to leave. We'd better get the report straight to him, or there'll
be trouble. We'll leave the boy here for the time being. We can
lock him up and tell the watch to keep an eye on him. We can be
back well before midnight."

"You can, you mean," said Hanno
sourly. "I've got something that won't wait."

"Ambrosius won't wait, either, so if
you want the money for that, you'd better come. They've half
finished unloading already. Who's on watch?"

Hanno said something, but the creak of
the heavy door as they pulled it shut behind them, and then the
thudding of the bars dropping into their sockets drowned the reply.
I heard the wedges go in, then lost the sound of their voices and
footsteps in the noises of the off-loading operation that was
shaking the ship -- the creak of winches, the shouts of men above
me and a few yards away on shore, the hiss and squeak of running
hawsers, and the thud of loads being lifted and swung overside on
to the wharf. I threw the blankets off and sat up. With the ceasing
of the dreadful motion of the ship I felt steady again -- even
well, with a sort of light and purged emptiness that gave me a
strange feeling of well-being, a floating, slightly unreal
sensation, like the power one has in dreams. I knelt up on the
bedding and looked about me. They had lanterns on the wharf to work
by, and light from these fell through the small square port-hole.
It showed me the wide-mouthed jar, still in place, and a new hunk
of barley bread. I unstoppered the jar and tasted the water
cautiously. It was musty, tasting of the rag, but good enough, and
it cleared the metallic sickness from my mouth. The bread was
iron-hard, but I soused it in water until I could break off a piece
to chew. Then I got up, and levered myself up to look out of the
port-hole.