Legacy: Arthurian Saga (187 page)

I stopped. Her hand, holding mine, had
clenched suddenly. The laughter in her eyes died; she looked at me
fixedly, with a strange mixture of appeal and dread. It did not
need the Sight to guess the part of the story that she had not told
me, or why Arthur and the rest had avoided speaking of her to me.
She had not usurped my power, or had a hand in trying to destroy
me: all she had done, once the old enchanter had gone, was to take
a young man to her bed.

I seemed to have been expecting this
moment for a very long time. I smiled, and asked her, gently: "Who
is he, this king of yours?"

The red rushed into her cheeks. I saw
the tears sting her eyes again. "I should have told you straight
away. They said they hadn't told you. Merlin, I didn't
dare."

"Don't look like that, my dear. What
we had, we had, and one cannot drink the same draught of elixir
twice. If I had still been half a magician, I should have known
long ago. Who is he?"

"Pelleas."

I knew him, a young prince, handsome
and kind, with a sort of gaiety about him that would help to offset
the haunted somberness that sometimes hung around her. I spoke of
him, commending him, and in a while she grew calmer, and began,
with growing ease, to tell me about her marriage. I listened, and
watched, and had time, now, to mark the changes in her; changes, I
thought, due to the power that she had had so drastically to
assume. My gentle Ninian had gone, with me into the mists. There
was an edge to this Nimue that had not been there before; something
quietly formidable, a kind of honed brightness, like a weapon's
edge. And in her voice, at times, sounded a subtle echo of the
deeper tones that the god uses when, with authority and power, he
descends to mortal speech. These attributes had once been mine. But
I, accepting them, had taken no lover. I found myself hoping, for
Pelleas' sake, that he was a strong-minded young man.

"Yes," said Nimue, "he is."

I started out of my thoughts. She was
watching me, her head on one side, her eyes alight once more with
laughter.

I laughed with her, then put out my
arms. She came into them, and lifted her mouth. I kissed her, once
with passion, and once with love, and then I let her go.

10

Christmas at Caerleon. Pictures came
crowding back to me, sun and snow and torchlight, full of youth and
laughter, of bravery and fulfillment and time won back from
oblivion. I have only to shut my eyes; no, not even that; I need
only glance into the fire and they are here with me, all of
them.

Nimue, bringing Pelleas, who treated
me with deference, and her with love, but who was a king and a man.
"She belongs to the King," he said, "and then to me. And I -- well,
it's the same, isn't it? I am his before ever I can be hers. Which
of us, in the sight of God and King, is ever his own
man?"

Bedwyr, coming on me one evening down
beside the river, which slipped along, swollen and slate-grey,
between its winter banks. A fleet of swans were proving the mud at
the water's edge among the reeds. Snow had begun to fall, small and
light, floating like swansdown through the still air. "They told me
you had come this way," said Bedwyr. "I came to take you back. The
King stays for you. Will you come now? It's cold, and will get
colder." Then, as we walked back together: "There's news of
Morgause," he said. "She has been sent north into Lothian, to the
nunnery at Caer Eidyn. Tydwal will see to it that she's kept fast
there. And there's talk of Queen Morgan's being sent to join her.
They say that King Urbgen finds it hard to forgive her attempt to
embroil him in treachery, and he's afraid that if he keeps her by
him the taint will cling, to him and to his sons. Besides, Accolon
was her lover. So the talk goes that Urbgen will put her away. He
has sent to Arthur for permission. He'll get it, too. I think
Arthur will feel more comfortable with both his loving sisters
safely shut up, and a good long way away. It was Nimue's
suggestion." He laughed, looking at me sideways. "Forgive me,
Merlin, but now that the King's enemies are women, perhaps it is
better that he has a woman to deal with them. And if you ask me,
you'll be well out of it..."

Guinevere, sitting at her loom one
bright morning, with sun on the snow outside, and a caged bird
singing on the sill beside her. Her hands lay idle among the
colored threads, and the lovely head turned to watch, down beside
the moat, the boys at play. "They might be my own sons," she said.
But I saw that her eyes did not follow the bright heads of Lot's
children, but only the dark boy Mordred, who stood a little way
apart from the others, watching them, not as an outcast might watch
his more favored brothers, but as a prince might watch his
subjects.

Mordred himself. I never spoke with
him. Mostly the boys were on the children's side of the palace, or
in the care of the master-at-arms or those set to train them. But
one afternoon, on a dark day drawing to dusk, I came on him,
standing beside the arch of a garden gateway, as if waiting for
someone. I paused, wondering how to greet him, and how he might
receive his mother's enemy, when I saw his head turn, and he
started forward. Arthur and Guinevere came together through the
dead roses of the garden, and out through the archway. It was too
far away for me to hear what was said, but I saw the Queen smile
and reach out a hand, and the King spoke, with a kind look. Mordred
answered him; then, in obedience to a gesture from Arthur, went
with them as they moved off, walking between them.

And, finally, Arthur, one evening in
the King's private chamber, when Nimue brought the box to show him
the treasure from Segontium.

The box lay on top of the big marble
table that had been my father's. It was of metal, and heavy, its
lid scored and dented with the weight of the stuff that had fallen
on it when the shrine crumbled to ruin. The King laid hands to it.
For a few moments it resisted him, then suddenly, light as a leaf,
it lifted.

Inside were the things just as I
remembered them. Rotten canvas wrappings, and, gleaming through
them, the head of a lance. He drew it out, trying the edge with a
thumb, a gesture as natural as breathing.

"For ornament, I think," he said,
rubbing the jewels of the binding with his hand, and laying it
aside. Then came a flattish dish, gold, with the rim crusted with
gems. And finally, out of a tumble of greyed linen fallen to dust,
the bowl.

It was the type of bowl they call
sometimes a cauldron, or a grail of the Greek fashion, wide and
deep. It was of gold, and from the way he handled it, very heavy.
There was chasing of some sort round the outside of the bowl, and
on the foot. The two handles were shaped like birds' wings. On a
band round it, out of the way of the drinker's lips, were emeralds
and sapphires. He turned and held it out to me with both
hands.

"Take it and see. It is the most
precious thing I have ever seen."

I shook my head, "It is not for me to
touch."

"Nor for me," said Nimue.

He looked at it for a moment longer,
then he put it back in the box with the lance-head and the dish,
gently wrapping the things away in the linen, which was worn thin,
like a veil. "And you won't even tell me where to keep such
splendor, or what I am to do with it?"

Nimue looked across at me, and was
silent. When I spoke, it was only a gentle echo of what I had said
before, long ago. "It is not for you, either, Arthur. You do not
need it. You yourself will be the grail for your people, and they
will drink from you and be satisfied. You will never fail them, nor
ever leave them quite. You do not need the grail. Leave it for
those who come after."

"Then since it is neither mine nor
yours," said Arthur, "Nimue must take it, and with her enchantments
hide it so that no one can find it except that he is
fitted."

"No one shall," she said, and shut the
lid on the treasure.

After that, another year dawned cold,
and drew slowly into spring. I went home at April's end, with the
wind turning warm, and the young lambs crying on the hill, and
catkins shivering yellow in the copses.

The cave was swept and warm again, a
place for living, and there was food there, with fresh bread and a
crock of milk and a jar of honey. Outside, by the spring, were
offerings left by the folk I knew; and all my belongings, with my
books and medicines, my instruments and the great standing harp,
had been brought from Applegarth.

My return to life had been easier than
I had anticipated. It seems that to the simple folk, as indeed to
the people in distant parts of Britain, the tale of my return from
death was accepted, not as plain truth, but as a legend. The Merlin
they had known and feared was dead; a Merlin lived on in the "holy
cave," working his minor magic, but only a ghost, as it were, of
the enchanter they had known. It may be they thought that I, like
so many pretenders of the past, was some small magician merely
claiming Merlin's reputation and his place. In the court, and in
the cities and the great places of the earth, people looked now to
Nimue for power and help. To me the local folk came to have their
sores or their aches healed; to me Ban the shepherd brought the
sickly lamb, and the children from the village their pet
puppies.

So the year wore on, but so lightly
that is seemed only like the evening of a quiet day. The days were
golden, tranquil and sweet. There was no call of power, no great
high clean wind, no pain in the heart or picking of the flesh. The
great doings of the kingdom seemed no longer to trouble me. I did
not hunger or ask after news, for when it came, it was brought by
the King himself. Just as the boy Arthur, racing up to see me in
the shrine of the Wild Forest, had poured out all the doings of
every day at my feet, so did the High King of Britain bring me all
his acts, his problems and his troubles, and spread them out there
on the cave floor in the firelight, and talk to me. What I did for
him I do not know; but always, after he had gone, I found myself
sitting, drained and silent, in the stillness of complete
content.

The god, who was God, had indeed
dismissed his servant, and was letting him go in peace.

One day I drew the small harp to me,
and set myself to make a new verse for a song sung many years
ago.

Rest here, enchanter, while the fire
dies. In a breath, in an eyelid's fall, You will see them, the
dreams; The sword and the young king, The white horse and the
running water, The lit lamp and the boy smiling.

Dreams, dreams, enchanter! Gone With
the harp's echo when the strings Fall mute; with the flame's shadow
when the fire Dies. Be still, and listen. Far on the black air
Blows the great wind, rises The running tide, flows the clear
river. Listen, enchanter, hear Through the black air and the
singing air The music...

I had to leave the song there because
a string broke. He had promised to bring me new ones, next time he
came.

He came again yesterday. Something had
called him down to Caerleon, he said, so he had ridden up, just for
an hour. When I asked him what the business was in Caerleon, he put
the question aside, till I wondered -- then dismissed it as absurd
-- if the journey had been made merely to see me. He brought gifts
with him -- he never came empty-handed -- wine, a basket of cooked
meats from his own kitchen, the promised harp-strings and a blanket
of soft new wool, woven, he told me, by the Queen's own women. He
carried them in himself, like a servant, and put them away for me.
He seemed in spirits. He told me of some young man who had recently
come to court, a noble fighter, and a cousin of March of Cornwall.
Then he spoke of a meeting he was planning with the Saxon "king,"
Eosa's successor, Cerdic. We talked till the dark drew in, and his
escort came jingling up the valley track for him.

Then he rose, lightly, and, as always
now when he left me, stooped to kiss me. Usually he made me stay
there, by the fire, while he went out into the night, but this time
I got up and followed him to the cave entrance, and waited there to
watch him go. The light was behind me, and my shadow stretched,
thin and long, like the tall shadow of old, across the little lawn
and almost to the grove of thorn trees where the escort waited
below the cliff.

It was almost night, but over beyond
Maridunum in the west, a lingering bar of light hinted at the dying
sun. It threw a glint on the river skirting the palace wall where I
was born, and touched a jewel spark on the distant sea. Near at
hand the trees were bare with winter, and the ground crisp with the
first frost. Arthur trod away from me across the grass, leaving
ghost-prints in the frost. He reached the place where the track led
down to the grove, and half turned. I saw him raise a
hand.

"Wait for me." It was the same
farewell always. "Wait for me. I shall come back."

And, as ever, I made the same reply:
"What else have I to do but wait for you? I shall be here, when you
come again."

The sound of horses dwindled, faded,
was gone. The winter's silence came back to the valley. The dark
drew down.

A breath of the night slid, like a
sigh, through the frost-hung trees. In its wake, faintly, like no
sound but the ghost of a sound, came a faint sweet ringing from the
air. I lifted my head, remembering, once more, the child who had
listened nightly for the music of the spheres, but had never heard
it. Now here it was, all around me, a sweet, disembodied music, as
if the hill itself was a harp to the high air.