Legacy: Arthurian Saga (174 page)

It is no part of this tale to follow
our travels league by league. Indeed, as I have explained, I cannot
do so. We went to Brittany, that I know, and were welcomed there by
King Hoel, and spent the autumn and winter in Kerrec, and I showed
Nimue the roads through the Perilous Forest, and the humble inn
where Ralf, my page, guarded the child Arthur through the dangerous
hidden years. But here already the memories are confused; as I
write I can see them all, crossing each other like ghosts that
crowd, century by century, into an old dwelling house. Each is as
clear as the others. Arthur as a baby, asleep in the manger straw.
My father watching me in the lamplight, asking, "What will come to
Britain?" The druids at their murderous work in Nemet. Myself, a
frightened boy, hiding in the cattle-shed. Ralf riding post-haste
through the trees with messages for Hoel to send to me. Nimue
beside me in the budding woods of April, lying on green turf in a
forest glade. The same glade, with the white doe fleeing like
magic, to draw danger away from Arthur. And across this,
confusedly, other memories or other dreams: a white stag with ruby
eyes; the deer fleeing through the dusk under the oaks at Nodens'
shrine; magic on magic. But through all, like a torch relit for
another quest, the stars, the smiling god, the sword.

We stayed away till summer, this much
I know for certain. I can even record the day of our arrival back
in Britain. Cador, Duke of Cornwall, died that year, and we
disembarked in a country deep in mourning for a great soldier and a
good duke. What I cannot recall is which of us -- Nimue or myself
-- knew that it was time to be gone, or which harbor to sail for.
We landed in a little bay a league or so from Tintagel, on
Dumnonia's northern coast, two days after Cador's death, to find
Arthur there already, with all his tram. Having seen our sail, he
came down to the wharf to meet us, and before ever we landed we saw
the covered shields, the lowered pennons, and the unadorned white
of mourning, and knew what had brought us home.

Scenes like these swim up, brightly
lit with hardly a shadow. But then comes the candlelit chapel where
Cador's body lay in state, with monks chanting; and the scene
dislimns, and once again I am standing at the foot of his father's
bier, waiting for the ghost of the man I had betrayed. Even Nimue,
when once I spoke to her of this, could be no help to me. For so
long now we had shared thought and dream alike that she herself
could not (she told me) separate the sight of Tintagel in the
summer, with the gentle wind lifting the sea against the rocks,
from my stormy tales of time past. Tintagel mourning for Duke Cador
recently dead seems less real to either of us than the storm-beaten
stronghold where Uther, lying with Gorlois' wife Ygraine, begot
Arthur for Britain.

And so it was with the rest of the
time. After Tintagel we went north. Memory, or dream here in the
long darkness, shows me the soft hills of Rheged, the hanging
clouds of forest, the lakes ringing with fish, and, reflected in
the glass of its own lake, Caer Bannog, where I hid the great sword
for Arthur to find. Then the Green Chapel, where later, on that
legendary night, Arthur lifted it at last into his hand.

So, as I had done in earnest years
ago, we lightly followed the sword, but something -- some instinct
I could no longer be sure was prophetic, or even wise -- bade me
keep silence about the other quest which, sometimes, I had glimpsed
in the shadows. It would not be for me; it would come after me; and
the time was not yet. So I said nothing of Segontium, or the place
where still, deep in the ground, lay buried the other treasures
that had come back with the sword to the West.

At last we came to Galava. It was a
happy end to a pleasant journey. We were welcomed by Count Ector,
an Ector grown stout with age and good living since the peace, who
presented Nimue to the lady Drusilla (with a wink at me) as "Prince
Merlin's wife, lass, at long last." And beside him was my faithful
Ralf, flushed with pleasure, proud as a peacock of his pretty wife
and four sturdy children, and avid for news of Arthur and the
south.

Nimue and I lay together in the tower
room where I had once been carried to recover from Morgause's
poison. It was some time after midnight, as we lay watching the
moon touch the hilltops beyond the window, that she stirred,
turning her cheek into the hollow of my shoulder, and said softly:
"And what, after this? Bryn Myrddin and the crystal
cave?"

"I think so."

"If your own hills are as beautiful as
these, perhaps I shan't mind, after all, deserting Applegarth..." I
heard a smile in her voice... "at least in summer."

"I promised you that it wouldn't come
to that. Tell me this: for the last stage of your wedding journey,
would you rather travel down the western roads, or take ship from
Glannaventa, and go by sea to Maridunum? I'm told the seas are
calm."

There was a short pause. Then she
said: "But why ask me to choose? I thought --"

"You thought?"

Another pause. "I thought you had
something still to show me."

It seemed that her instinct was as
true as my own. I said: "What, then, my dear?"

"You have told me all the story of the
sword, and you have shown me now all that happened to it, this
wonderful Caliburn that is the symbol of the King's power, and by
which he holds his kingdom. You have showed me the places of vision
which led you to find it; where you hid it until Arthur should be
ready to raise it, and where at last he did raise it. But you have
never told me where you yourself found it. I had thought that this
would be the last thing you would show me, before you took me
home."

I did not reply. She raised herself in
the bed, and lay on an elbow, looking down at me. The moonlight
slid over her, making her a thing of silver and shadow, lighting
the lovely lines of temple and cheekbone, throat and
breast.

I smiled, tracing the line of her
shoulder with a gentle finger. "How can I think and answer you when
you look like that?"

"Easily." She answered the smile, not
moving. "Why have you never told me? It's because there's something
else there, isn't it, that belongs to the future?"

So: instinct or vision, she knew. I
said slowly: "You spoke of a 'last thing.' Yes, there is still one
mystery, the only one; and yes, it is for the future. I haven't
seen it clearly myself, but once, before he was King, I made a
prophecy for Arthur. It was between the finding and the raising of
the sword, when the future was still hedged around with fire and
vision. I remember what I said..."

"Yes?"

I quoted it: "‘I see a settled and
shining land, with corn growing rich in the valleys, and farmers
working their fields in peace as they did in the time of the
Romans. I see a sword growing idle and discontented, and the days
of peace stretching into bickering and division, and the need of a
quest for the idle swords and the unfed spirits. Perhaps it was for
this that the god took the grail and the spear back from me and hid
them in the ground, so that one day you might set out to find the
rest of Macsen's treasure. No, not you, but Bedwyr...it is his
spirit, not yours, which will hunger and thirst, and slake itself
in the wrong fountains.'"

A long silence. I could not see her
eyes; they were full of moonlight. Then she whispered: "The grail
and the spear? Macsen's treasure, hidden again in the ground, to be
the objects of a quest as great as that of the sword? Where? Tell
me where?"

She looked eager; not awed, but eager,
like a runner in sight of the goal. When she does see the chalice
and the spear, I thought, she will bend her head before their
magic. But she is only a child, and still sees the things of power
as weapons in her own hand. I did not say to her: "It is the same
quest, because what use to anyone is the sword of power without the
fulfillment of the spirit? All the kings are now one King. It is
time the gods became one God, and there in the grail is the oneness
for which men will seek, and die, and dying, live."

I did not say it, but lay for a while
in silence, while she watched me, unmoving. I could feel the power
coming from her, my own power, stronger now in her than in my own
hands. For myself, I felt nothing but weariness, and a kind of
grief.

"Tell me, my darling," she said,
whispering, intent.

So I told her. I smiled at her, and
said, gently: "I will do better than tell you. I shall take you
there, and what there is to see, I shall show you. What is left of
Macsen's treasure lies below the ground in the ruined temple of
Mithras at Segontium, that is called Caer Von, below Wyddfa. And
now that is all that I can give you, my dear, except my
love."

I remember that she said: "And that
would have been enough, even without the rest," as she stooped to
put her mouth on mine.

After she slept I lay watching the
moon, full and bright, becalmed, it seemed for hours, full in the
center of the window-frame. And I remembered how, long ago, as a
child, I had believed that such a sight would bring me my heart's
desire. What that had been in those days -- power, prophecy,
service, love -- I could barely remember. Now all that was past,
and my heart's desire lay here, sleeping in my arms. And the night,
so full of light, was empty of the future, empty of vision; but
still, like breathing ghosts from the past, came the
voices.

Morgause's voice, the witch's voice
spitting her curse at me: "Are you so sure you are proof against
women's magic, Prince Merlin? It will snare you in the
end."

And across it, Arthur's voice,
vigorous, angry, full of love: "I cannot bear to see you hurt." And
then: "Witch or no witch, lover or no lover, I shall deal with her
as she deserves."

I held her young body close against my
own, and kissed her sleeping eyelids, very gently. I said to the
ghosts, to the voices, to the empty moonlight: "It was time. Let me
go in peace." Then, commending myself and my spirit to God who all
these years had held me in his hand, I composed myself for
sleep.

This was the last thing that I know to
be truth, and not a dream in darkness.

2

When I was a small child at Maridunum
I had slept with my nurse in a room in the servants' wing of my
grandfather's palace. It was a ground-floor chamber, and outside
the window grew a pear tree, where at evening a thrush would sing,
and then afterwards the stars would come pricking out into the sky
behind the branches, looking for all the world as if they were
lights entangled in the tree. I used to lie watching them in the
quiet of the night, and straining my ears to hear the music which,
I had been told, the stars make as they move along the
sky.

Now at last, it seemed, I heard it. I
was lying, warmly shrouded, on -- I thought -- a litter, which
must, from the swaying motion, be being borne along under a night
sky. A great darkness wrapped me in, and far above me arched a
night sky teeming and wheeling with stars, which rang like small
bells as they moved. I was part of the ground that moved and echoed
to my pulses, and a part of the enormous darkness that I could see
above me. I was not even sure if my eyes were open. My last vision,
I thought, feebly, and my heart's desire. My heart's desire was
always this, to hear, before I died, the music of the
stars...

Then I knew where I was. There must be
people near me; I could hear voices talking softly, but seemingly
at a great distance, like voices when one is sick with fever.
Servants were carrying the litter; their arms brushed me with
warmth; the beat in the ground was the soft tread of their sandals.
This was no vision lighted by the singing spheres; I was only a
sick old man, earth-bound, being carried home by stages, in the
helpless silence of my malady. The music of the stars was no more
than the bells on the harness of the mules.

How long it took I cannot tell. At
length the litter leveled at the head of a long climb, and an
archway of warm firelight met me, and more people, and voices
everywhere, and someone weeping, and I knew that somehow, out of
another falling-fit of the malady, I had been brought home to Bryn
Myrddin.

More confusion after that. Sometimes I
thought that Nimue and I were still on our travels; I was showing
her the streets of Byzantium, or walking with her on the heights
above Berytus. She brought me the drugs she had made, and held them
to my mouth. It was her own mouth that was on mine, tasting of
strawberries, and her lips murmured sweet incantations above me,
and the cave filled with smoke from handfuls of the precious
frankincense. There were candles everywhere: in their mellow
wavering light my merlin perched on the ledge by the cave's
entrance, waiting for the god's breath on his feathers. Galapas sat
by the brazier, drawing my first maps for me in the dust, and
beside them, now, knelt the boy Ninian, poring over them with his
grave and gentle eyes. Then he looked up, and I saw that it was
Arthur, vivid and impatient, and ten years old...and then Ralf,
young and sullen...and then at last the boy Merlin, going at his
master's bidding up into the crystal cave. And so came the visions;
I saw them again, the dreams that had first stormed into my child's
brain here in this very cave. And this time Nimue held my hand, and
saw them with me, star for star, and held the cordial afterwards to
my lips, while Galapas and the child Merlin, and Ralf and Arthur
and the boy Ninian, faded and vanished like the ghosts they were.
Only the memories remained, and they, now, were locked in her brain
as they had been in mine, and would be hers forever.