Legacy: Arthurian Saga (173 page)

"Well..." said Arthur. He looked
across at me, lifted his brows, then shrugged in his turn, and went
out.

Silence, so long that the robin hopped
right into the room and onto the table where the breakfast lay,
barely touched.

"Nimue," I said.

She looked at me then, and I saw that
although she had stood in no awe of the King, she was afraid to
meet my eyes. I smiled at her, and saw to my amazement the grey
eyes fill with tears.

I put out both my hands. Hers met
them. In the end there was no need of words. We did not hear the
King's horse go down the hill, or, much later, Mora come back from
the market to find the breakfast still uneaten.

BOOK IV Bryn Myrddin
1

So, toward the end of my life, I found
a new beginning. A beginning it was in love, for both of us. I had
no skill, and she, vowed from childhood to be one of the Lake
maidens, had hardly thought of love. But what we had was enough and
more than enough. She, for all she was many years younger than I,
seemed happy and satisfied; and I, calling myself in private
dotard, old fool, wisdom dragged at mockery's chariot wheels, knew
that I was none of these: between myself and Nimue was a bond
stronger than any between the best-matched pair in the flower of
their age and strength. We were the same person. We were part of
each other as are night and daylight, dark and dawn, sun and
shadow. When we lay together we lay at the edge of life where
opposites fuse and make new entities, not of the flesh, but of the
spirit, the issue as much of the ceaseless traffic of mind with
mind, as of the body's pleasure.

We did not marry. Looking back now, I
doubt if either of us even thought of cementing the relationship in
this way; it was not clear what rites we could have used, what
faster bond we could have hoped for. With the passing of the days
and nights of that sweet summer, we found ourselves closer and yet
more close, as if cast in a common mold: we would wake in the
morning and know we had shared the same dream; meet at evening and
each know what the other had learned and done that day. And all the
time, as I believed, each of us harbored our own private and
growing joy: I to watch her trying the wings of power like a strong
young bird feeling for the first time the mastery of air; she to
receive this waxing strength, and to know, with love but without
pity, that at the same time the power was leaving me.

So the month of June flew by, and then
high summer was with us. The cuckoo vanished from the brakes, the
meadow-sweet was out with its heavy honey smell, the bees droned
all day in the blue borage and the lavender. Nimue called to Varro
to set a saddle on the chestnut -- Arthur had made her a present of
him -- then she kissed me and rode off towards the Lake. It was, of
course, known now that the former servant of the Goddess was with
Merlin at Applegarth.

There must have been speculation and
gossip, some of it no doubt malicious -- and (I was sure) all of it
amazed at the impulse that had taken a young and lovely girl into
the ageing enchanter's bed. But the High King had stated publicly,
and had moreover made it clear by gifts and visits, that our
relationship had his approval; so even the Lady of the shrine had
not attempted to close her doors against Nimue; she had, rather,
made her welcome, in the hope (Nimue suggested with amusement) that
the shrine might fall heir to some of Merlin's secrets. Nimue
herself did not often leave Applegarth, either for the Island or
the court at Camelot. But she was hardly to be blamed if she was a
trifle flown with the power and excitement of these first months,
and as a young bride enjoys showing off her new status among her
maiden colleagues, so, I guessed, Nimue was eager to revisit her
friends among the Goddess's ancillae. She had not yet been to the
court of Camelot without me; I guessed what she did not say, that
even with the King's support she was doubtful of her reception
there. But on three occasions she had been back to the Island, and
this time, she told me, she would see about the promise of some
plants from the garden near the holy well. She would be back at
dusk. I saw her off, then checked over my bag of medicines, put on
a straw hat against the sun, and set out across the hill to visit
the house of a woman who was recovering from a bout of fever. I
went blithely. The day was fine but fresh, and lark-song poured
down from a clear sky like rillets of bright water. I reached the
hilltop and followed the track between gorse bushes ablaze with
flowers. A flock of goldfinches fluttered and dipped through a
patch of tall, seeding thistles, making the sweet, plaintive call
that the Saxons call "chirm," or "charm." The breeze smelled of
thyme.

That is all I remember. Next -- it
seemed all in a moment -- the world was dark, and the stars were
out, with that clear sparkle that one can feel pricking down into
the eyes and brain. I was lying on my back, flat on the turf,
staring up at them. The gorse bushes were all round me, humped and
dark, and gradually, as if sense were coming back from a limitless
distance, I felt the stab of their prickles biting into hands and
arms. Starlight sparked from the dew. Everywhere there was a great
silence, like a held breath. Then above me, high in the black sky,
another point of light began to grow. The darkness lit. Into this
single, waxing point of light the smaller stars, like metal dust to
a lodestone, like a swarm into the hive, fled, till in all the sky
there was no other light. My eyes dazzled. I could not move, but
lay there, it seemed alone on the curve of the world, watching the
star. Then, intolerably bright, it started from its place, and
swiftly, like a brand flung across the sky, it arched from the
zenith to the earth's edge, trailing behind it a great train of
light shaped like a dragon.

I heard someone call out: "The Dragon!
The Dragon! See where the Dragon falls!" and knew the voice was my
own.

Then lights, and hands, and Nimue's
face, white in the lantern light, with Varro behind her, and a
youth I vaguely recognized as the shepherd who watched his flock on
the down. Then voices. "Is he dead?"

"No. Come, quickly, cover him. He's
cold."

"He's dead, mistress."

"No! Never! I'll never believe it! Do
as I say!" Then, with anguish: "Merlin, Merlin!" And a man's voice,
fearfully: "Who will tell the King?"

After that a gap of time, and my own
bed, and the taste of hot wine with herbs infused in it, and
another long gap, this time of sleep.

Now we come to the part of my
chronicle that is the most difficult to tell. Whether or not (as
the popular belief went) the falling comet with the dragon's tail
betokened the true end of Merlin's greater powers, I know that,
looking back at the days and nights -- more, the weeks and months
-- that followed, I cannot tell for certain whether what I remember
was reality, or a dream. It was the year of my journeying with
Nimue. Looking back now, I see it, scene after scene, like
reflections sliding past a boat, blurred and repeated, and broken,
as the oars stir the water's glass. Or like the moments just before
sleep, when scene after scene swims up into the mind's eye, the
true memories like dreams, and the dreams as real as
memory.

I still only have to close my eyes to
see Applegarth, serene in the sun, with the silver lichen thick on
the old trees, where, the green fruit, slowly swelling, shone like
lamps, and in the sheltered garth lavender and sage and sweet briar
breathed their scent into the air as thickly as smoke. And on the
hill behind the tower the thorn trees, those strange thorns that
flower in winter and have small flowers with stamens like nails.
And the doorway where the girl Nimue first stood shyly, with the
light behind her, like the gentle ghost of the drowned boy who
might have been a greater enchanter than she. And the ghost itself;
the "boy Ninian" who still haunts my memories of the garth,
alongside the slender girl who sat at my feet in the
sun.

For perhaps a week after my falling
fit on the hilltop, I spent most of my time sitting on the carved
seat in the garth. Not from weakness, but because Nimue insisted,
and I needed time to think.

Then one evening, in the warm dusk, I
called her to me. She nestled down in her old place, on a cushion
at my feet. Her head was against my knee, and my hand stroked the
thick hair. This was growing now, and had reached her
shoulder-blades. I wondered daily at my old blindness that had not
seen the curves of her body, and the sweet lines of throat and brow
and wrist.

"You've been busy this
week."

"Yes," she said.

"Housewife's jobs. Cutting the herbs
and bunching them to dry."

"Are they done?"

"Just about. Why?"

"I've been idle all this time while
you have been working, but I have been thinking."

"About?"

"Among other things, Bryn Myrddin. You
have never been there. So before the summer ends, I think we must
leave Applegarth, you and I --"

"Leave Applegarth?" She started away
from me, looking up in dismay. "Do you mean live at Bryn Myrddin
again...both of us live there?" I laughed. "No. Somehow I don't see
that happening. Do you?" She subsided against my knee, her head
bent. She was silent for a while, then she said, muffled: "I don't
know. I've never glimpsed even a dream of it. But you have told me
that you will die there. Is that what you mean?" I put out a hand
again and touched her hair. "I know I have said that that will
happen, but I've had no warning of it yet. I feel very well, better
than for many months. But look at it like this: when my life does
end, yours must begin. And for that to happen you must do one day
as I did, and enter the crystal cave of vision. You know this.
We've spoken of it before."

"Yes, I know." She did not sound
reassured. "Well," I told her cheerfully, "we shall go to Bryn
Myrddin, but at the end of our journey. Before we get there we
shall have traveled widely, and seen many places and many things. I
want you to visit the places where I have passed my life, and see
the things I have seen. I have told you as much as I can; now you
must see as much as I am able to show you. Do you
understand?"

"I think so. You are giving me the sum
of your life, on which to build my own."

"Exactly that. For you, the stones on
which to build the life you want; for me, the crown and
harvest."

"And when I have it all?" she asked,
subdued. "Then we shall see." Amused, I caressed her hair again.
"Don't look like that, child, take it lightly. It's a wedding
journey, not a funeral procession. Our travels may have a purpose,
but we'll take them for pleasure, be sure of that. I've had this in
mind sometime; it wasn't just suggested by this last sick turn of
mine. We've been happy here in Applegarth, and no doubt we shall be
happy here again, but you are too young to fold your wings here
year after year. So we'll go traveling. I have a suspicion that my
real object is just to show you the places I've known and loved,
for no more serious reason than that I have known and loved
them."

She sat up, looking easier. Her eyes
began to sparkle. She was young. "A kind of pilgrimage?"

"You could call it that."

"Tintagel, you mean, and Rheged, and
the place where you found the sword, and the lake where you laid it
to wait for the King?"

"More than that. God help us both, we
must sail to Brittany. My story and the High King's has been bound
up -- as yours will be, too -- in that great sword of his. I have
to show you where the god himself first came to me, with the first
sign of the sword. Which is why we should go soon. The seas are
calm, but in another month or so the gales will start."

She shuddered. "Then by all means let
us go now." Then, suddenly, all uncomplicated pleasure, a young
woman setting out on an exciting journey, with no other thought in
her head: "And you'll have to take me to Camelot. I really haven't
got anything fit to wear..."

So next day I spoke with Arthur's
courier, and not very long after that Arthur himself came to tell
me that escort and ship were ready, and that we could
go.

We set sail from the Island at the end
of July, and Arthur and the Queen rode down to the harbor to see us
on our way. Bedwyr was with us, his face a mixture of relief and
misery: he had been sent to escort us across the sea, and he was
like a man released from the torment of a drug which he knows will
kill him, but for which, night and day, he craves. He was charged
with dispatches from Arthur to his cousin King Hoel of Brittany,
and would escort us as far as Hoel's court at Kerrec.

When we came to the quay the ship was
still loading, but soon all was ready, and Arthur bade us farewell,
with an admonition to Nimue to "take care of him" which brought
forcibly back to me memories of the voyage I had made with Arthur
himself a squalling baby in his wet-nurse's arms, and King Hoel's
escort scowling at the noise, and trying to give me due greeting
through it all. Then he kissed Bedwyr, with nothing apparent in his
look save warm affection, and Bedwyr muttered something, holding
him, before turning to take his leave of the Queen. Smiling by the
King's side, she had command of herself; her light touch of
Bedwyr's hand, and the serene "Godspeed" she wished him showed
barely more warmth than that given to Nimue, and rather less than
to me. (Since the Melwas affair, she had shown a pretty gratitude
and liking, such as a girl might have for her elderly father.) I
said my goodbyes, cast a wary eye at the smooth summer sea, and
went on board. Nimue, already pale, came with me. It needed no
prophetic vision to foretell that we would see nothing of one
another until the ship docked in the Small Sea.