Legacy: Arthurian Saga (177 page)

All the rest of that day, and the next
following, working directly under the light thrown down from above,
I toiled at my makeshift scaffold, bearing a wry thought for
Tremorinus, my father's chief engineer, who had first taught me my
craft. He would have laughed to see the great Merlin, the
engineer-artificer who had outpaced his master, and had lifted the
Hanging Stones of the Giants' Dance, cobbling together a structure
of which the sorriest apprentice would have been ashamed. All I
needed to do, he would have said, was to take my harp like Orpheus,
and play to the fragments of the broken furniture, and watch it
build itself like the walls of Troy. This had been his theory,
stoutly held in public, about the way I had managed the lifting of
the great trilithons of the Dance.

By nightfall of the second day I had
rigged a sort of rough scaffolding roofed with the stout plank of
the bench, which might serve as a base for a ladder. It was nine
feet high, and fixed firmly enough with a pile of stones holding it
in place. I had only, I reckoned, another twenty-five feet to
build.

I worked until dusk, then lighted the
lantern and made my wretched meal. Then, as a man turns to the
comfort of a lover, I lifted the harp into my arms and, without
thoughts of Orpheus or Troy, played until my eyelids drooped, and a
false chord warned me that it was time to sleep. Tomorrow would be
another day.

Who could have guessed what kind of
day? Tired from my labors, I slept deeply, and woke later than
usual to the light of a bright thread of sunshine, and the sound of
someone calling my name.

For a moment I lay still, thinking
myself still caught in the mists of a dream that had mocked me so
often before, but then I came fully awake to the discomfort of the
cavern floor (I had broken my bed up for use) and the voice again.
It came from the lantern, a man's voice, over-pitched with nerves,
but with something familiar about the queerly accented
Latin.

"My lord? My lord Merlin? Are you
there, my lord?"

"Here! Coming!"

In spite of aching joints, I was on my
feet as swiftly as any boy, and ran to the foot of the
shaft.

Sunshine was pouring down from above.
I picked my way, stumbling, to the foot of the rude structure that
almost filled the base of the shaft. I craned upward.

Framed in the gap of brilliant sky was
a man's head and shoulders. At first I could distinguish little
against the brightness. Me, he must be able to see clearly,
unkempt, bearded, no doubt pale as the ghost he must have feared to
see. I heard his shivering gasp of breath, and the head drew
back.

I cried out: "Stay for me, for God's
sake! I'm no ghost! Stay! Help me out of here! Stilicho,
stay!"

Almost without thinking, I had
identified his accent, and him with it. My old servant the
Sicilian, Stilicho, who had married Mai the miller's daughter, and
kept the mill on the Tywy at the valley's foot. I knew his kind,
credulous, superstitious, easily afraid of what they did not
understand. I leaned against the upright of the scaffolding,
gripped it with shaking hands, and fought for a composure that
would reassure him. His head came cautiously back. I saw the black
eyes staring, the sallow pallor of his face, the open
mouth.

With a self-control that shook me with
another wave of weakness I spoke in his own language, slowly and
with apparent calm: "Don't be afraid, Stilicho. I was not dead when
they left me here in error, and all these weeks I have been trapped
here in the hill. I am not a ghost, boy; it truly is Merlin, alive,
and very much in need of your help."

He leaned nearer. "Then the King --
all those others who were here --?" He stopped, swallowing
painfully.

"Do you think that a ghost could have
built this scaffolding?" I asked him. "I hadn't despaired of
escaping. I've lived here in hope, all through these weeks, but by
the God of all gods, Stilicho, if you leave me now without helping
me from here, I swear I shall be dead before the day is out." I
stopped, ashamed.

He cleared his throat. He sounded
shaken, as well he might, but scared no longer. "Then it really is
you, lord? They said you were dead and buried, and we have been
mourning you...but we should have known that your magic would keep
you from death."

I shook my head. I forced myself to go
on talking, knowing that with every word he was coming nearer to
accepting my survival as true, and nerving himself to approach the
tomb and its living ghost. "Not magic," I said, "it was the malady
that deceived you all. I am no longer an enchanter, Stilicho, but I
have God to thank that I am still a strong man. Otherwise these
weeks below the earth would surely have killed me. Now, my dear,
can you get me out? Later we can talk, and decide what's to be
done, but now, for God's sake, help me out of here and into the
air..."

It was a grim business, and it took a
long time, not least because, when he would have left me to go for
help, I begged him, in terms of which I am now ashamed, not to
leave me. He did not argue, but set himself to knotting the long,
stout rope which he had found still attached to an ash sapling in
the rock above the lantern. He finished it with a loop for my foot,
then lowered it carefully. It reached the platform, with some
length to spare. Then he let himself down into the shaft, and in a
short space of time was beside me at the foot of the scaffolding. I
think he would have gone on his knees, as his habit had been, to
kiss my hands, but I gripped him so tightly that instead he held
me, supporting me with his young strength, and then helped me back
into the main cavern.

He found the one remaining stool for
me, then lit the lantern and brought me wine, and after a while I
was able to say, with a smile: "So now you know that I am a solid
body, and no ghost? It was brave of you to come at all, and braver
still to stay. What on earth brought you to this place? You're the
last person who I'd have thought would go visiting a
tomb."

"I wouldn't have come at all," he said
frankly, "but that something I heard made me wonder if you were not
dead after all, but living here alone. I knew you were a great
magician, and thought that perhaps your magic would not let you die
like other men."

"Something you heard? What was
that?"

"You know the man I have to help me at
the mill, Bran, he's called? Well, he was in town yesterday, and
brought home some tale of a fellow who'd drunk himself silly in one
of the taverns, and the story was going about that he had been up
to Bryn Myrddin, and that the enchanter had come out of the tomb
and spoken to him. People were standing him drinks and asking for
more, and of course the tale as he told it was plainly lies, but
there was enough to make me wonder..." He hesitated. "What did
happen, lord? I knew someone had been here, because of the rope on
the tree."

"It happened twice," I told him. "The
first time it was a horseman riding over the hill...you can see how
long ago, I marked it on the tally yonder. He must have heard me
playing; the sound would carry up through the hole in the cliff.
The second time was four -- five? -- days since, when some ruffian
came to rob the tomb, and opened the cliff as you saw it, and let
himself down with the rope." I told him what had happened. "He must
have been too scared to stop and untie his rope. It's a mercy you
heard his story, and came up before he got his courage back, and
came back for it -- and perhaps dared the tomb again."

He gave me a sidelong, shamefaced
look. "I'll not pretend to you, lord. It's not right you praising
me for courage. I came up yesterday evening. I didn't want to come
alone, but I was ashamed to bring Bran, and Mai wouldn't go within
a mile of the place...Well, I saw the mouth of the cave was just as
it had been, and then I heard the harp. I -- I turned and ran home.
I'm sorry."

I said, gently: "But you came
back."

"Yes. I couldn't sleep all night. You
remember when you left me once to guard the cave, and you showed me
your harp, and how it played sometimes by itself, just with the air
moving? And how you gave me courage, and showed me the crystal cave
and told me I would be safe there? Well, I thought of all that, and
I thought of the times you were good to me, how you took me out of
slavery and gave me freedom and the life I have now. And I thought:
Even if it is my lord's ghost, or the harp playing by magic, alone
in the hollow hill, he would never harm me...So I came again, but
this time I came by daylight. I thought: If it is a ghost, then in
sunlight it will be sleeping."

"And so I was." The thought touched
me, like a cold dagger's point, that if I had drugged myself last
night, as I had so often done, I might have heard
nothing.

He was going on: "I walked over the
hill this time, and I saw the new broken stones showing white in
the corrie where the little air-shaft comes out. I went to look. I
saw the rope then, tied to the ash tree, and the big gap in the
cliff, and when I looked down the shaft, I saw the -- " he
hesitated, " -- the thing you built there."

I had not thought to feel amusement
ever again. "That is a builder's scaffold, Stilicho."

"Yes, of course. Well, I thought, no
ghost made that. So I shouted. That's all."

"Stilicho," I said, "if ever I did
anything for you, be sure you have paid me a thousand times over.
In fact, you have saved me twice over. Not only today; if you
hadn't left the place the way I found it, I should have died weeks
back, from starvation and cold. I shall not forget it."

"We've got to get you out of here now.
But how?" He looked around him at the stripped cave and the broken
furnishings. "Now we've spoken, and you're feeling stronger, lord,
shall I not go and bring men and tools, and open the doorway for
you? It would be the best way, truly it would."

"I know that, but I think not. I've
had time now to consider. Until I know how things stand in the
kingdoms, I can't suddenly come to life.' That is how the common
people will see it, if Prince Merlin comes back from the tomb. No
part of the story must be told until the King knows. So, until we
can get a private message to him --"

"He's gone to Brittany, they
say."

"So?" I thought for a moment. "Who is
Regent?"

"The Queen, with Bedwyr."

A pause, while I looked down at my
hands. Stilicho was sitting cross-legged on the floor. In the
lantern's light he looked still much like the boy I had known. The
dark Byzantine eyes watched me.

I wetted my lips. "The Lady Nimue? Do
you know who I mean? She --"

"Oh, yes, all the world knows her. She
has magic, as you used to -- as you have, lord. She is always near
the King. She lives near Camelot."

"Yes," I said. "Well, I am sorry, my
dear, but I cannot have it known before the King comes back from
Brittany. Somehow, between us, we shall have to get me out of the
shaft. I have no doubt that if you will bring the tools up out of
the stable, we'll manage something."

And so we did. He was back in
something under half an hour with nails and tools and the small
stock of timber that had been left in the stable. It was a bad half
hour for me: I had no doubts that he would return, but the reaction
was so intense that, left alone again, I sat there on the stool,
sweating and shaking like a fool. But by the time the stuff was
pitched down the shaft, with himself following it, I had myself in
hand, and we set to work and, with me sitting idly on the stool
watching and directing, he put together a ladder of a sort and
fixed it to the platform I had made. This reached the sloping
section of the chimney. Here, as an adjunct to the knotted rope, he
cut pieces of wood which with the help of cracks and protuberances
of rock he wedged at intervals against the side of the chimney to
act, if not as steps, then as resting-places where one could set a
knee.

When all was done he tested it, and
while he did so I wrapped the harp in the remaining blanket, and
with it my manuscripts and a few of the drags that I might need to
restore my strength fully. He climbed out with them. Finally I took
a knife and cut the best of the jewels off the pall, and dropped
them, together with the gold coins, into a leather bag which had
held herbs. I slipped the thong of the bag over my wrist, and was
waiting at the scaffold's foot when at last Stilicho reappeared at
the top, laid hold of the rope, and called for me to begin my
climb.

4

I stayed a month with Stilicho at the
mill. Mai, who had held me formerly in trembling awe, once she saw
that this was no terrifying wizard, but a man sick and in need of
care, looked after me devotedly. I saw no one besides these two. I
kept to the upper chamber they gave me -- it was their own, the
best, they would hear of nothing else. The hired man slept out in
the granary sheds, and knew only that some ageing relative of the
miller's was staying there. The children were told the same, and
accepted me without question, as children will.

At first I kept to my bed. The
reaction from the recent weeks was a severe one; I found daylight
trying, and the noises of every day hard to bear -- the men's
voices in the yard as the grain barges came in to the wharf, hoofs
on the roadway, the shouts of the children playing. At first the
very act of talking to Mai or Stilicho came hard, but they showed
all the gentleness and understanding of simple folk, so things
gradually became easier, and I began to feel myself again. Soon I
left my bed, and began to spend time with my writing, and, calling
the elder of the children to me, began to teach them their letters.
In time I even came to welcome Stilicho's ebullience, and
questioned him eagerly about what had happened since I had been
shut away.