Legacy: Arthurian Saga (154 page)

When he had heard what I had to tell
him, he accepted this, and himself turned the subject. He was eager
to hear what had happened to me, and impatient of the fact that I
could remember little after the marriage feast at
Luguvallium.

"Can you not remember anything of how
you came to the turret where we found you?"

"A little. It comes clear bit by bit.
I must have wandered about in the forest and kept myself alive
somehow until winter. Then it seems to me as if some rude folk of
the hill forest must have taken me in and cared for me. Without
that, I doubt if I could have survived the snow. I thought they
might be some of Mab's people, the Old Ones of the mountain
country, but if so, they would surely have sent word to
you."

"They did. Word came, but only after
you had vanished again. As is usual, the Old Ones were snowed up in
their high caves all winter, and you with them. They went hunting
when the snow melted, and came back to their caves to find you
gone. It was from them that I first heard that you had run mad.
They had had to tie you, they said, but afterwards, at such times,
you would be calm and very weak, and so it was at the time when
they left you. When they got home, you had gone."

"I remember being bound. Yes. So after
that I must have made my way downhill, and ended up in the ruin
near the ford -- I suppose, in my crazed way, still making for
Galava. It was spring; I remember a little of that. Then the battle
must have overtaken me, and you found me there in the forest. I
recall nothing of that."

He told me again how I had been found,
thin and filthy and talking no kind of sense, hiding in the ruined
turret, with a kind of squirrel's hoard of acorns and beechnuts,
and dried windfall apples put by, and a pigling with a splinted leg
for company.

"So that part of it was real!" I said,
smiling. "I can remember finding the creature, and healing the leg,
but not much else. If I was as sharp set as you say, it was good of
me not to eat Master Piglet. What happened to it?"

"It's here in Ector's sties." The
first glimmer of humor touched his mouth. "And marked, I think, for
a long and dishonorable life. There's not one of the boys would
dare lay a hand on the enchanter's personal pig, which looks like
growing up into a good fighting boar, so it will end up as king of
the sty, which is only proper. Merlin, you've told me all you can
remember of what happened after making camp up there on the Wolf
Road ; what do you remember before that? What made you ill?
Urbgen's men said it came on suddenly. They thought it was poison,
and so did I. I wondered if the witch had had you followed, after
the wedding feast, and one of her creatures had dragged you from
your bed that night while the trooper's back was turned. But if
that had happened, surely they would have killed you? There was no
suspicion of foul play from those two men; they were Urbgen's own,
hand-picked."

"None at all. They were good fellows,
and I owe them my life."

"They told me that you drank wine that
night, from your own flask. They did not share it. They say, too,
that you were drunk at the marriage feast. You? I have never seen
you the worse for wine. And you sat beside Morgause. Have you any
reason to believe that she drugged your wine?"

I opened my mouth to answer him, and
to this day I swear that the word on my lips was "Yes." This, as
far as I knew it, was the truth. But some god must have forestalled
me. Instead of the Yes that my mind had framed, my lips said,
"No."

I must have spoken strangely, because
I saw him staring, arrested with narrowed eyes. It was a
discomforting look, and I found myself elaborating. "How can I
tell? But I don't think so. I have told you that I have no power
now, but the witch would not know that. She is still afraid of me.
She had tried before, not once but twice, to snare me with her
woman's spells. Both times she failed, and I think she would not
have dared try again."

He was silent for a while. Then he
said, shortly: "When my Queen died, there was talk of poison. I
wondered."

At this I could protest truthfully.
"There always is, but I beg you will not regard it! From what you
have told me, I am certain there was no such thing. Besides, how?"
I added, as convincingly as I could: "Believe me, Arthur. If she
were guilty, can you see any reason why I should want to protect
Morgause from you?"

He still looked doubtful, but did not
pursue it further. "Well," was all he said, "she'll find her wings
clipped now for a while. She is back in Orkney, and Lot is
dead."

I took this in silently. It was
another shock. In these few months, how much had changed. "How?" I
asked him. "And when?"

"In the forest battle. I can't say
that I mourn him, except that he had that rat Aguisel under his
fist, and I believe that I shall have trouble there
soon."

I said slowly: "I have remembered
something else. During the fighting in the forest I heard them
calling to one another that the king was dead. It struck me with
helpless grief. For me, there is only one King...But they must have
been speaking of Lot. Well, yes, at least Lot was a known evil.
Now, I suppose, Urien will have it all his own way in the
northeast, and Aguisel with him...But there's time enough for that.
Meanwhile, what of Morgause? She was carrying a child at
Luguvallium, and should have been delivered by now. A
boy?"

"Two. Twin sons, born at Dunpeldyr.
She joined Lot there after Morgan's wedding. Witch or no witch," he
said, with a trace of bitterness, "she is a good breeder of sons.
By the time Lot joined us here in Rheged, he was bragging that he
had left yet another in her before he quitted Dunpeldyr." He looked
down at his hands. "You must have had speech with her at the
wedding. Did you find anything out about the other boy?"

There was no need to ask which boy he
meant. It seemed that he could not bring himself to say "my
son."

"Only that he is alive."

His eyes came up quickly to mine.
There was a flash in them, suppressed instantly. But I was sure
that it was one of joy. So short a time ago, and he had looked for
the child only to kill it.

I said, schooling my voice to hide the
pity I felt: "She tells me that she does not know where he is to be
found. She may be lying, I'm not sure of that. It must be true that
she kept him hidden away from Lot. But she may bring him into the
open now. What has she to fear, now that Lot has gone? Except,
perhaps, from you?"

He was looking at his hands again.
"She need not fear me now on that score," he said
woodenly.

That is all I can remember of that
interview. I heard someone saying, but the words seemed to go round
the curved tower walls like a whispered echo, or like words in my
head alone: "She is the falsest lady at this time alive, but she
must live to rear her four sons by the King of Orkney, for they
will be your faithful servants, and the bravest of your
Companions."

I must have shut my eyes then, against
the wave of exhaustion that broke over me, for when I opened them
again it was dark, and Arthur had gone, and the servant knelt
beside the bed, offering me a bowl of soup.

8

I am a strong man, and heal fast. I
was on my feet again soon after this, and, some two or three weeks
later, thought myself fit enough to ride south in Arthur's wake. He
had gone the next morning, riding down to Caerleon. Since then a
courier had brought news that longships had been sighted in the
Severn estuary, so it looked as if the King would soon have another
battle on his hands.

I would have liked to stay a while
longer at Galava, perhaps to pass the summer in that familiar
country, and to revisit my old haunts in the forest. But after the
courier's visit, though Ector and Drusilla tried to keep me, I
thought it high time to be gone. The battle now imminent would be
fought from Caerleon: indeed, it was possible (the dispatch had
said) that the invaders were attempting in force to destroy the
war-leader's main stronghold and supply center. I had no doubt that
Arthur would hold Caerleon, but it was time I got back to Caer
Camel to see how Derwen had been doing in my absence.

It was high summer when I saw the
place again, and Derwen's team had done wonders. There it stood on
its steep, flat-topped hill, the vision made real. The outer works
were complete, the great double wall, of dressed stone topped with
timber, running along the rim of the slope to crown the whole crest
of the hill. Piercing it at their two opposing corners, the vast
gateways were finished, and impressive. Great double doors of oak,
studded with iron, stood open, pulled back to wall the tunnels that
led in through the thick rampart. Above them went the sentry-way
behind its battlements.

Moreover, there were sentries there.
Since winter, Derwen told me, the King had had the place invested,
so that the work of finishing could proceed inside defended walls.
And finished it soon would be. Arthur had sent word that, come July
or August, he wanted to be there with the knights-companions and
all his cavalry.

Derwen was all for pressing on with
the headquarters buildings, and with the King's own rooms, but I
knew Arthur's mind better than that. I had given instructions that
the men's barracks, and the horse-lines, the kitchens and service
quarters must be completed first, and this had been done. A good
start had been made, too, on the central buildings: the King,
certainly, must lodge under skins and temporary timber, as if he
were still in the field, but his great hall was built and roofed,
and carpenters were at work on the long tables and benches
within.

There had been no lack of local help.
The folk who lived nearby, thankful to see a strong place going up
near their settlements, had come whenever they could to fetch and
carry, or to lend their skills to our own workmen. With them came
many who were willing, but too old or too young to labor. Derwen
would have sent them away, but I set them to clearing the
nettle-grown trenches of a site not far from headquarters where
formerly there must have been a shrine. I did not know, and nor did
they, to what god it had been consecrated; but I know soldiers, and
all fighting men need some center-point, with a light and an
offering, to tempt their god down among them for a moment of
communion, when strength can be received in return for hope and
faith.

Similarly, the spring on the northern
embankment, which was enclosed within the outer works of the
fortification, I set the women to clearing. This they did eagerly,
for it was known that, time out of mind, the spring had been
dedicated to the Goddess herself. For many years now it had been
neglected, and sunk in a tangle of thorny growth that prevented
them from making their offerings and sending up the sort of prayers
that women send. Now the woodmen had hacked the thickets down, so I
let the women make their own shrine. They sang as they worked; they
had been afraid, I think, that their sacred place would be shut
away in an enclave of men. I told them not so: when once the Saxon
power was broken, it was the High King's plan that men and women
should come and go in peace, and Caer Camel would be a fair city
set on a hill, rather than a camp of fighting men.

Finally, on the lowest part of the
field, near the northeast gate, we cleared a place for the people
and their cattle, where they could take refuge, and live, if need
be, till danger was past.

Then Arthur came. In the night the Tor
flamed suddenly, and beyond the flame could be seen the point of
light that was the beacon hill behind. In the early morning
sunlight he came riding along the Lake's edge, at the head of his
knights. White was still his color; he rode his white war-horse;
his banner was white, and his shield also, too proud for a device
such as the others wore. He shone out of the misty landscape like a
swan on the pearled reaches of the Lake. Then the cavalcade was
lost to sight beyond the trees that crowded the base of the hill,
and presently the beat of hoofs came steadily on, and up the new
curling road to the King's Gate.

The double gates stood open to receive
him. Inside them, lining the newly paved road, waited all those who
had built the place for him. So for the first time Arthur, duke of
battles, High King among the other kings of Britain, entered the
stronghold which was to be his own fair city of Camelot.

Of course he was pleased with it, and
that night a feast was held, to which everyone -- man, woman or
child -- who had lent a hand to the work was bidden. He and his
knights, with Derwen and myself and a few others, sat in the hall,
at the long table so newly sanded that the dust still hung in the
air and made haloes round the torches. It was a joyous occasion,
without form or solemnity, like a feast on a victory field. He made
some kind of speech of welcome -- of which I now remember no single
word -- pitching his voice so that the people pressing outside the
doors could hear him; then, once we in the hall had started eating,
he left his place at the table's head, and, with a mutton bone in
one hand and a goblet in the other, went the rounds of the place,
sitting with this group or that, dipping into a pot with the masons
or letting the carpenters ply him from the mead-barrel, all the
time looking, questioning, praising, with all his old, shining way.
In a short while, their awe of him melting, they pelted their
questions like snowballs. What had happened at Caerleon? In
Linnuis? In Rheged? When would he settle here? Was it likely that
the Saxons could press this far and get across the downs? What was
Eosa's strength? Were the stories -- of this, that, and the other
thing -- true? All of which he answered patiently: what men knew
they must face, they would face; it was the fear of surprise and
the arrow in the dark that unmanned the hardiest.