Legacy: Arthurian Saga (184 page)

"Not so great a while. When I escaped,
you were abroad. They told me you had gone to Brittany. So I said
nothing, and lodged with Stilicho, my old servant, who keeps the
mill near Maridunum, and waited for your return. I'll tell you
everything soon -- if you will get me that drink of
water."

"Fool that I am, I was forgetting!" He
jumped up and ran to the river. He filled the horn and brought it,
then went down on one knee to hold it for me.

I shook my head and took it from him.
"Thank you, but I'm quite steady now. It's nothing. I was not hurt.
I am ashamed to have been of so little help."

"You gave me all I needed."

"Which was not much," I said, half
laughing. "I could almost feel sorry for those wretches, thinking
they had an easy kill, and bringing Arthur himself down on them
like a thunderbolt. I did warn them, but who could blame them for
not believing me?"

"You mean to tell me they knew who you
were? And still used you like that?"

"I told you, they didn't believe me.
Why should they? Merlin was dead. And the only power I have now is
in your name -- and they didn't believe that, either. 'An old man,
unarmed and poor.' " I quoted him, smiling. "Why, you didn't know
me yourself. Am I so much changed?"

He considered me. "It's the beard,
and, yes, you are quite grey now. But if I had once looked at your
eyes..." He took the horn from me and got to his feet. "Oh, yes, it
is you. In all that ever mattered, you are unchanged. Old? Yes, we
must all grow old. Age is nothing but the sum of life. And you are
alive, and back with me here. By the great God of heaven, I have
you back with me. What should I fear now?"

He drained the horn, replaced it, and
looked around him. "I suppose I had better tidy up this mess. Are
you really all right now? Could you tend my horse for me? I think
he could be watered now."

I led the stallion down to the water,
and with it the cream cob, which was grazing quietly, and made no
attempt to escape me. When they had drunk I tethered them, then got
some salve from my pack and doctored the cut on the cob's shoulder.
It rolled an eye back at me, and the skin of its shoulder
flickered, but it showed no sign of pain. The cut bled still, but
sluggishly, and the beast was not walking lame. I loosened the
girths of both horses, and left them grazing while I retrieved the
scattered contents of my saddlebag.

Arthur's way of clearing up the "mess"
-- three men violently dead -- was to haul the bodies by their
heels to a decent hiding-place at the forest's edge. The severed
head he picked up by the beard and slung it after. He was whistling
while he did it, a gay little tune I recognized as one of the
soldiers' marching songs, which was frank, not to say
over-explicit, about the sexual prowess of their leader. Then he
looked around him.

"The next rain will clear some of the
blood away. And even if I had a spade or mattock, I'm damned if I'd
spend the time and trouble in digging that carrion in. Let the
ravens have them. Meanwhile, we might as well impound their horses;
I see they've stopped to graze away up the road there. I'll have to
wash the blood off first, or I'll never get near them. You'd better
abandon that cloak of yours, it'll never be the same again. Here,
you can wear mine. No, I insist. It's an order. Here."

He dropped it over the pine log, then
went down to the river and washed. While he remounted and went
cantering up the road after the other horses, I stripped off my
cloak, which was already stiffening with blood, and washed myself,
then shook out Arthur's cloak of royal purple, and put it on. My
own I rolled up and pitched after the dead men into the
undergrowth.

Arthur came back at a trot, leading
the thieves' horses.

"Now, where is this inn with the bush
of holly?"

8

The innkeeper's boy was out in the
road, watching for me. I suppose he had been posted there to give
the goodwife warning of when the "meal fit for the King's court"
would be wanted. When he saw us coming, two men and five horses, he
stood staring awhile, then went with a skip and a jump back into
the inn. When we were still seventy paces short of the place, the
innkeeper himself came out to see.

He recognized Arthur almost straight
away. What drew his eye first was the quality of the King's horse.
Then came a long, summing look at the rider, and the man was on his
knee out on the road.

"Get up, man," said the King
cheerfully. "I've been hearing good things of the house you keep
here, and I'm looking forward to trying your hospitality. There's
been a little skirmish down by the ford -- nothing deadly, just
enough to get up a bit of an appetite. But that will have to wait a
little. Look after my friend here first, will you, and if your
goodwife can clean his clothes, and someone can tend to the horses,
we'll cheerfully wait for the meal." Then, as the man began to
stammer something about the poverty of his house, and the lack of
accommodation: "As to that, man, I'm a soldier, and there've been
times when any shelter from the weather could be counted a luxury.
From what I've heard of your tavern, it's a haven indeed. And now,
may we come in? Wine we cannot wait for, nor fire --"

We had both in a very short time. The
innkeeper, once he had recovered himself, came to terms quickly
with the royal invasion, and very sensibly set all aside except the
immediate service that was needed. The boy came running to take the
horses, and the innkeeper himself piled logs on the fire and
brought wine, then helped me out of my soiled and blood-splashed
robes, and brought hot water, and fresh clothes from my baggage
roll. Then, at Arthur's bidding, he locked the inn door against
casual passers-by, and got himself off to the kitchen, there, one
imagined, to instill a panic frenzy into his excellent
wife.

When I had changed, and Arthur had
washed, and spread his cloak to the blaze, he poured wine for me,
and took his place at the other side of the hearth. Though he had
traveled fast and far, and with a fight at the end of it, he looked
as fresh as if he had newly risen from his bed. His eyes were
bright as a boy's, and color sprang red in his cheeks. Between the
joy of seeing me again and the stimulus of the danger past, he
seemed a youth again. When at length the goodwife and her husband
came in with the food, making some ado about setting the board and
carving the capons, he received them with gay affability, so easily
that, by the time we had done, and they had withdrawn, the woman
had so far forgotten his rank as to scream with laughter at one of
his jests, and cap it herself. Then her husband pulled at her gown,
and she ran out, but laughing still.

At last we were alone. The short
afternoon drew in. Soon it would be lamp-lighting. We went back to
our places one on either side of the blaze. I think we both felt
tired, and sleepy, but neither of us could have rested until we had
exchanged such news as could not be spoken of in front of our
hosts. The King had, he told me, ridden the whole way with only a
few hours' respite for sleep, and to rest his horse.

"For," he said, "if the courier's
message, and the token he brought, told a true tale, then you were
safe, and would wait for me. Bedwyr and the others came up with me,
but they, too, stopped to rest. I told them to stay back and give
me a few hours' grace."

"That could have cost you
dear."

"With that carrion?" He spoke
contemptuously. "If they hadn't caught you unarmed and unawares,
you could have dealt with them yourself."

And time was, I thought, when without
even a dagger in my hand I could have dealt with them. If Arthur
was thinking the same, he gave no sign of it. I said: "It's true
that they were hardly worth your sword. And talking of that, what
have I been hearing about the theft of Caliburn? Some tale about
your sister Morgan?"

He shook his head. "That's over, so
let it wait. What's more to the point now is that I should know
what has been happening to you. Tell me. Tell me everything. Don't
leave anything out."

So I told my story. The day drew in,
and beyond the small, deep-set windows the sky darkened to indigo,
then to slate. The room was quiet, but for the crack and flutter of
the flames. A cat crept from some corner and curled on the hearth,
purring. It was a strange setting for the tale I had to tell, of
death and costly burial, of fear and loneliness and desperate
survival, of murder foiled and rescue finally accomplished. He
listened as so many times before, intent, lost in the tale,
frowning over some parts of it, but relaxed into the warmth and
contentment of the evening. This was another of the times that
comes vividly back to me in memory whenever I think of him; the
quiet room, the King listening, the firelight moving red on his
cheek and lighting the thick fall of dark hair, and the dark
watching eyes, intent on the story I was telling him. But with a
difference now: this was a man listening with a purpose; summing up
what he was told, and judging, ready to act.

At the end he stirred. "That fellow,
the grave-robber -- we must find him. It shouldn't be hard, if he's
cadging drinks from that story all over Maridunum...I wonder who it
was who heard you the first time? And the miller, Stilicho; I've no
doubt you'll want me to leave that to you?"

"Yes. But if you could ride over that
way some time, perhaps when you're next in Caerleon? Mai will die
of terror and ecstasy, but Stilicho will take it as no more than
his due, who served the great enchanter...and then boast about it
for the rest of his days."

"Of course," he said. "I was thinking,
while I was on the road; we'll go straight on from here to Caerleon
now. I imagine you're not yet ready to go back to court
--"

"Not now, or ever. Or to Applegarth. I
have left that for good." I did not add "to Nimue"; her name had
not been mentioned by either of us. So carefully had we avoided it
that it seemed to ring through every sentence that was spoken. I
went on: "I've no doubt you'll fight me to the death over this, but
I want to go back to Bryn Myrddin. I'll be more than glad to stay
with you in Caerleon until it can be made ready again."

Of course he objected, and we argued
for a while, but in the end he let me have my way, on the (very
reasonable) condition that I did not live there alone, but was
cared for by servants. "And if you must have your precious
solitude, then you shall have it. I shall build a place for the
servants, out of your sight and below the cliff; but they must be
there."

"And that is an order?" I quoted,
smiling.

"Certainly...There'll be time enough
to see about it; I'll spend Christmas at Caerleon, and you with me.
I take it you won't insist on going back there till the winter is
past?"

"No."

"Good. Now, there's something in your
story that doesn't agree with the facts...that business you
described in Segontium." He glanced up, smiling. "So that was where
you found Caliburn? In the soldiers' shrine of the Light? Well, it
tallies. I remember that you told me, years ago, just before we
left the forest, that there were other treasures there still. You
spoke of a grail. I still remember what you said. But the gift
Morgause brought to me was no treasure of Macsen's. It was silver
goods -- cups and brooches and torques, the sort of thing they
fashion in the far north. Very handsome, but not as you described
the treasure to me."

"No. I did catch a glimpse of it,
there in the vision. It was not Macsen's treasure. But the shepherd
boy was certain that it was taken, and I believe him."

"You don't know?"

"No. How could I, without
power?"

"But you had this vision. You watched
Morgause and the boys accost me at Camelot. You saw the silver
treasure she gave me. You knew the courier had come, and that I was
on my way to you."

I shook my head. "That was not power,
not as you and I have known it. That is Sight only, and that, I
think, I shall have until I die. Every village sibyl has it, in
some degree or another. Power is more than that: it is doing and
speaking with knowledge; it is bidding without thought, and knowing
that one will be obeyed. That has gone. I don't repine now." I
hesitated. "Nor, hope, do you? I have heard tales of Nimue, how she
is the new Lady of the Lake, the mistress of the Island's shrine. I
am told that men call her the King's enchantress, and that she has
done you service?"

"Indeed, yes." He looked away from me,
leaning forward to adjust a log on the burning pile. "It was she
who dealt with the theft of Caliburn."

I waited, but he left it there. I said
at length: "I understood she was still in the north. She is
well?"

"Very well." The log was burning to
his satisfaction. He set his chin on a fist, and stared at the
fire. "So. If Morgause had the treasure with her when she embarked,
it will be somewhere on the Island. My people saw to it that she
did not go ashore between Segontium and her landing there. She
lodged with Melwas, so it should not be beyond me to have it
traced. Morgause is being held under guard until I get back. If she
refuses to speak, the children will hardly be proof against
questioning. The younger ones are too innocent to see any harm in
telling the truth. Children see everything; they will know where
she left the treasure."