Legacy: Arthurian Saga (156 page)

He was speaking of the brooch with the
name Maria engraved around the rim. This is the name of the
Christians' goddess. I said: "I doubt if it need trouble you. That
shrine is as old as the earth it stands on, and whichever Lady you
speak to there, the same one will hear you. There is only one, from
the beginning. Or so I think...But what will the bishops
say?"

"I am High King," said Arthur, and
left it at that. Bedwyr joined us then, and we rode out through the
gateway.

It was a gentle, grey day, with the
promise of summer rain somewhere in the clouds. We were soon clear
of the woodland, and into the marsh country. To either side of the
road the water stretched, grey and ruffled, as the lynx-paws of the
breeze crossed and recrossed it. Poplars whitened in the wayward
gusts, and the willows dipped, trailing, in the shallows. Islets
and willow-groves and tracts of marshland lay seemingly afloat on
the silver surface, their images blurred with the breeze. The paved
road, mantled with moss and fern as most roads soon are in that
low-lying land, led through this wilderness of reeds and water
toward the ridge of high ground that lay like an arm
half-encircling one end of the Island. Hoofs rang suddenly on
stone, and the road topped a gentle rise. Ahead now was the Lake
itself, lying like a sea moating the Island, its waters unbroken
save for the narrow causeway that led the road across, and here and
there the boats of fishermen, or the barges of the
marsh-dwellers.

From this shining sheet of water rose
the hill called the Tor, shaped like a giant cone, as symmetrical
as if hand-built by men. It was flanked by a gentler, rounded hill,
and beyond that by another, a long, low ridge, like a limb drawn up
in the water. Here lay the wharfs; one could see masts like reeds
beyond a dip in the green. Beyond the Island's triple hill,
stretching into the distance, was a great shining level of water,
sown with sedge and bulrush and the clusters of reed thatch among
the willows where the marsh people lived. It was all one long,
shifting, moving glimmer, as far as the sea. One could see why the
Island was called Ynys Witrin, the Isle of Glass. Sometimes, now,
men call it Avalon.

There were orchards everywhere on Ynys
Witrin. The trees crowded so thickly along the harbor ridge and up
the lower slopes of the Tor that only the plumes of wood-smoke,
rising among the boughs, showed where the village lay. (King's
capital though it was, it could earn no grander title.) A short way
up the hill, above the trees, could be seen the cluster of huts,
like hives, where the Christian hermits lived, and the holy women.
Melwas left them alone; they even had their own church, built near
the Goddess's shrine. The church was a humble affair made of wattle
and mud, and roofed with thatch. It looked as if the first bad
storm would blow it clean out of the ground.

Far different was the shrine of the
Goddess. It was said that with the centuries the land itself had
slowly grown up around it, and possessed it, so that now it lay
beneath the level of men's footing, like a crypt. I had never seen
it. Men were not normally received within its precincts, but today
the Lady herself, with the veiled and white-clad women and girls
behind her, all bearing flowers, waited to welcome the High King.
The old woman beside her, with the rich mantle, and the royal
circlet on her grey hair, must be Melwas' mother, the queen. Here
she took precedence of her son. Melwas himself stood off to one
side, among his captains and young men. He was a thickset, handsome
fellow, with a curled cap of brown hair, and a glossy beard. He had
never married: rumor had it that no woman had ever passed the test
of his mother's judgment.

The Lady greeted Arthur, and two of
the youngest maidens came forward and hung his neck with flowers.
There was singing, all women's voices, high and sweet. The grey sky
parted and let through a glint of sunlight. It was seen as an omen;
people smiled and looked at one another, and the singing grew more
joyous. The Lady turned, and with her women led the way down the
long flight of shallow steps into the shrine. The old queen
followed, and after her Arthur, with the rest of us. Lastly Melwas
came, with his followers. The common folk stayed outside. All
through the ceremony we could hear the muttering and shifting, as
they waited to catch another look at the legendary Arthur of the
nine battles.

The shrine was not large; our company
filled it to capacity. It was dimly lit, with no more than half a
dozen scented lamps, grouped to either side of the archway that led
to the inner sanctuary. In the smoky light the white robes of the
women shone ghostly. Veils hid their faces and covered their hair
and floated, cloudy, to the ground. Of them all, only the Lady
herself could be seen clearly: she stood full in the lamplight,
stoled with silver, and wearing a diadem that caught what light
there was. She was a queenly figure; one could well believe that
she came of royal stock.

Veiled, too, was the inner sanctuary;
no one save the initiated -- not even the old queen herself --
would ever see beyond that curtain. The ceremony that we saw
(though it would not be seemly to write of it here) would not be
the customary one sacred to the Goddess. It was certainly lengthy;
we endured two hours of it, standing crowded together; but I
suspect that the Lady wanted to make the most of the occasion, and
who was to blame her if thoughts of future patronage were in her
mind? But it came to an end at last. The Lady accepted Arthur's
gift, presented it with the appropriate prayer, and we emerged in
due order into the daylight, to receive the shouts of the
people.

It was a small incident, which might
have left no mark in my memory, but for what came later. As it is,
I can still recall the soft, lively feel of the day, the first
drops of rain that blew in our faces as we left the shrine, and the
thrush's song from the thorn tree standing deep in summer grass
spiked with pale orchis and thick with the gold of the small flower
they call the Lady's Slipper. The way to Melwas' palace lay through
precincts of summer lawn, where among the apple trees grew flowers
that could not have come there in nature, all with their uses, as
well I knew, in medicine or magic. The ancillae practiced healing,
and had planted the virtuous herbs. (I saw no other kind. The
Goddess is not the same whose bloody knife was thrown, once, from
the Green Chapel.) At least, I thought, if I have to live
hereabouts, the country is a better garden for my plants than the
open hillside at home.

With that, we came to the palace, and
were welcomed by Melwas into his hall of feasting.

The feast was much like any other,
except (as was natural in that place) for the excellence and
variety of the fish dishes. The old queen occupied the central
position at the high table, with Arthur to one side of her and
Melwas to the other. None of the women from the shrine, not even
the Lady herself, was present. What women there were, I noticed
with some amusement, were far from being beauties, and were none of
them young. Rumor had perhaps been right about the queen. I
recalled a glance and a smile passing between Melwas and a girl in
the crowd: well, the old woman could not watch him all the time.
His other appetites were well enough; the food was plentiful and
well cooked, though nothing fanciful, and there was a singer with a
pleasant voice. The wine, which was good, came (we were told) from
a vineyard forty miles off, on the chalk. It had recently been
destroyed by one of the sharp incursions of the Saxons, who had
begun to come closer this summer.

Once this was said, it was inevitable
which way the talk would go. Between dissection of the past and
discussion of the future, time passed quickly, with Arthur and
Melwas in accord, which augured well.

We left before midnight. A moon coming
toward the full gave a clear light. She hung low and close behind
the beacon at the summit of the Tor, marking with sharp shadows the
walls of Melwas' stronghold, a fort rebuilt on the site of some
ancient hilltop fastness. It was a place for retreat in times of
trouble: his palace, where we had been entertained, stood below, on
the level near the water.

We were none too soon. A mist was
rising from the Lake. Pale wreaths of it eddied across the grass,
below the trees, smoking to our horses' knees. Soon the causeway
would be hidden. Melwas, escorting us with his torch-bearers,
guided us across the pale fog that was the Lake, and up into clear
air, onto the ringing stone of the ridge. Then he made his
farewells, and set off for home.

I drew rein, looking back. From here,
of the three hills that made the island, only the Tor was visible,
rising from a lake of cloud. From the shrouding mist near its foot
could be seen the red torchlit glow of the palace, not yet quenched
for the night. The moon had sailed clear of the Tor into a dark
sky. Near the beacon tower, on the rising spiral of the road to the
high fortress, a light flickered and moved.

My flesh crept, like a dog's at the
sight of a specter. A wisp of mist lay there, high, and across it a
shadow strode, like a giant's. The Tor was a known gate to the
Otherworld; for a flash I wondered if, with the Sight come back to
me, I was watching one of the guardians of the place, one of the
fiery spirits who keep the gate. Then my sight cleared, and I saw
that it was a man with a torch, running up the steep of the Tor to
light the beacon fire.

As I set spurs to my horse I heard
Arthur's voice, lifted in quick command. A rider detached himself
from the cavalcade and leaped forward at a stretched gallop. The
others, silent all at once, followed him, fast but collected, while
behind us the flames went up into the night, calling Arthur of the
nine battles to yet another fight.

10

The investing of Caer Camel saw the
start of the new campaign. Four more years it took: siege and
skirmish, flying attack and ambush -- except during the midwinter
months he was never at rest. And twice more, towards the end of
that time, he triumphed over the enemy in a major
engagement.

The first of these battles was joined
in response to a call from Elmet. Eosa himself had landed from
Germany, at the head of fresh Saxon war-bands, to be joined by the
East Saxons already established north of the Thames. Cerdic added a
third point to the spear with a force brought by longboat from
Rutupiae. It was the worst threat since Luguvallium. The invaders
came swarming in force up the Vale, and were threatening what
Arthur had long foreseen, to break through the barrier of the
mountains by the Gap.

Surprised and (no doubt) disconcerted
by the readiness of the fort at Olicana, they were checked and held
there, while the message was sent flashing south for Arthur. The
East Saxon force, which was considerable, was concentrated on
Olicana; the King of Elmet held them there, but the others streamed
westward through the Gap. Arthur, heading fast up the west road,
reached the Tribuit fort before them and, re-forming there in
strength, caught them at Nappa Ford. He vanquished them there, in a
bloody struggle, then threw his fast cavalry up through the Gap to
Olicana, and, side by side with the King of Elmet, drove the enemy
back into the Vale. From there a movement beyond countering, right
back, east and south, until the old frontiers contained them, and
the Saxon "king," looking round on his bleeding and depleted
forces, admitted defeat.

A defeat, as it turned out, all but
final. Such was Arthur's name now that its very mention had come to
mean victory, and "the coming of Arthur" a synonym for salvation.
The next time he was called for -- it was the clearing-up operation
of the long campaign -- no sooner had the dreaded cavalry with the
white horse at its head and the Dragon glinting over the helmets
showed in the mountain pass of Agned than the enemy fell into the
disarray of near panic, so that the action was a pursuit rather
than a battle, a clearing of territory after the main action.
Through all this fighting, Gereint (who knew every foot of the
territory) was with the calvary, with a command worthy of him. So
Arthur rewarded service.

Eosa himself had received a wound in
the fighting at Nappa. He never took the field again. It was the
young Cerdic, the Aetheling, who led the Saxons at Agned, and did
his best to hold them against the terror of Arthur's onslaught. It
was said that afterwards, as he withdrew -- in creditable order --
to the waiting longboats, he made a vow that when he next set foot
on British territory, he would stay, and not even Arthur should
prevent him.

For that, as I could have told him, he
would have to wait till Arthur was no longer there.

It was never my intention here to give
details of the years of battle. This is a chronicle of a different
kind. Besides, everyone knows now about his campaign to free
Britain and cleanse her shores of the Terror. It was all written
down in that house up in Vindolanda, by Blaise, and the solemn,
quiet clerk who came from time to time to help him. Here I will
only repeat that never once during the years it took him to fight
the Saxons to a standstill was I able to bring prophecy or magic to
his aid. The story of those years is one of human bravery, of
endurance and of dedication. It took twelve major engagements, and
some seven years' hard work, before the young King could count the
country safe at last for husbandry and the arts of
peace.