Legacy: Arthurian Saga (2 page)

I heard my grandfather's great laugh,
and another voice replying. Then he must have swept the newcomer
indoors with him, for the voices receded, leaving only the jingle
and stamp of the horses being led to the stables. I broke from
Moravik and ran to my mother.

"Who is it?"

"My brother Camlach, the King's son."
She did not look at me, but pointed to the fallen shuttle. I picked
it up and handed it to her. Slowly, and rather mechanically, she
set the loom moving again.

"Is the war over, then?"

"The war has been over a long time.
Your uncle has been with the High King in the south."

"And now he has to come home because
my uncle Dyved died?" Dyved had been the heir, the King's eldest
son. He had died suddenly, and in great pain, of cramps in the
stomach, and Elen his widow, who was childless, had gone back to
her father. Naturally there had been the usual talk of poison, but
nobody took it seriously; Dyved had been well liked, a tough
fighter and a careful man, but generous where it suited. "They say
he'll have to marry. Will he, Mother?" I was excited, important at
knowing so much, thinking of the wedding feast. "Will he marry
Keridwen, now that my uncle Dyved --"

"What?" The shuttle stopped, and she
swung round, startled. But what she saw in my face appeased her,
for the anger went out of her voice, though she still frowned, and
I heard Moravik clucking and fussing behind me. "Where in the world
did you get that? You hear too much, whether you understand it or
not. Forget such matters, and hold your tongue." The shuttle moved
again, slowly. "Listen to me, Merlin. When they come to see you,
you will do well to keep quiet. Do you understand me?"

"Yes, Mother." I understood very well.
I was well accustomed to keeping out of the King's way. "But will
they come to see me? Why me?"

She said, with a thin bitterness that
made her look all at once older, almost as old as Moravik: "Why do
you think?"

The loom clacked again, fiercely. She
was feeding in the green thread, and I could see that she was
making a mistake, but it looked pretty, so I said nothing, watching
her and staying close, till at length the curtain at the doorway
was pushed aside, and the two men came in. They seemed to fill the
room, the red head and the grey within a foot of the beams. My
grandfather wore blue, periwinkle color with a gold border. Camlach
was in black. Later I was to discover that he always wore black; he
had jewels on his hands and at his shoulder, and beside his father
he looked lightly built and young, but as sharp and whippy as a
fox.

My mother stood up. She was wearing a
house-robe of dark brown, the color of peat, and against it her
hair shone like corn-silk. But neither of the two men glanced at
her. You would have thought there was no one in the room but I,
small as I was, by the loom.

My grandfather jerked his head and
said one word: "Out," and the women hurried in a rustling, silent
group from the chamber. Moravik stood her ground, puffed up with
bravery like a partridge, but the fierce blue eyes flicked to her
for a second, and she went. A sniff as she passed them was all that
she dared. The eyes came back to me.

"Your sister's bastard," said the
King. "There he is. Six years old this month, grown like a weed,
and no more like any of us than a damned devil's whelp would be.
Look at him! Black hair, black eyes, and as scared of cold iron as
a changeling from the hollow hills. You tell me the devil himself
got that one, and I'll believe you!"

My uncle said only one word, straight
to her: "Whose?"

"You think we didn't ask, you fool?"
said my grandfather. "She was whipped till the women said she'd
miscarry, but never a word from her. Better if she had, perhaps --
some nonsense they were talking, old wives' tales of devils coming
in the dark to lie with young maids -- and from the look of him
they could be right."

Camlach, six foot and golden, looked
down at me. His eyes were blue, clear as my mother's, and his color
was high. The mud had dried yellow on his soft doeskin boots, and a
smell of sweat and horses came from him. He had come to look at me
before even taking the dirt of travel off. I remember how he stared
down at me, while my mother stood silent, and my grandfather
glowered under his brows, his breath coming harsh and rapid, as it
always did when he had put himself in a passion.

"Come here," said my uncle.

I took half a dozen steps forward. I
did not dare go nearer. I stopped. From three paces away he seemed
taller than ever. He towered over me to the ceiling
beams.

"What's your name?"

"Myrddin Emrys."

"Emrys? Child of light, belonging to
the gods...? That hardly seems the name for a demon's
whelp."

The mildness of his tone encouraged
me. "They call me Merlinus," I ventured. "It's a Roman name for a
falcon, the corwalch."

My grandfather barked, "Falcon!" and
made a sound of contempt, shooting his arm-rings till they
jingled.

"A small one," I said defensively,
then fell silent under my uncle's thoughtful look.

He stroked his chin, then looked at my
mother with his brows up. "Strange choices, all of them, for a
Christian household. A Roman demon, perhaps, Niniane?"

She put up her chin. "Perhaps. How do
I know? It was dark."

I thought a flash of amusement came
and went in his face, but the King swept a hand down in a violent
gesture. "You see? That's all you'll get -- lies, tales of sorcery,
insolence! Get back to your work, girl, and keep your bastard out
of my sight! Now that your brother's home, we'll find a man who'll
take the pair of you from under my feet and his! Camlach, I hope
you see the sense of getting yourself a wife now, and a son or two,
since this is all I'm left with!"

"Oh, I'm for it," said Camlach easily.
Their attention had lifted from me. They were going, and neither
had touched me. I unclenched my hands and moved back softly, half a
pace; another. "But you've got yourself a new queen meantime, sir,
and they tell me she's pregnant?"

"No matter of that, you should be wed,
and soon. I'm an old man, and these are troubled times. As for this
boy" -- I froze again -- "forget him. Whoever sired him, if he
hasn't come forward in six years, he'll not do so now. And if it
had been Vortigern himself, the High King, he'd have made nothing
of him. A sullen brat who skulks alone in corners. Doesn't even
play with the other boys -- afraid to, likely. Afraid of his own
shadow."

He turned away. Camlach's eyes met my
mother's, over my head. Some message passed. Then he looked down at
me again, and smiled.

I still remember how the room seemed
to light up, though the sun had gone now, and its warmth with it.
Soon they would be bringing the rushlights.

"Well," said Camlach, "it's but a
fledgling falcon after all. Don't be too hard on him, sir; you've
frightened better men than he is, in your time."

"Yourself, you mean? Hah!"

"I assure you."

The King, in the doorway, glared
briefly at me under his jutting brows, and then with a puff of
impatient breath settled his mantle over his arm. "Well, well, let
be. God's sweet death, but I'm hungry. It's well past supper-time
-- but I suppose you'll want to go and soak yourself first, in your
damned Roman fashion? I warn you, we've never had the furnaces on
since you left..."

He turned with a swirl of the blue
cloak and went out, still talking. Behind me I heard my mother's
breath go out, and the rustle of her gown as she sat. My uncle put
out a hand to me.

"Come, Merlinus, and talk to me while
I bathe in your cold Welsh water. We princes must get to know one
another."

I stood rooted. I was conscious of my
mother's silence, and how still she sat. "Come," said my uncle,
gently, and smiled at me again. I ran to him.

I went through the hypocaust that
night. This was my own private way, my secret hiding-place where I
could escape from the bigger boys and play my own solitary games.
My grandfather had been right when he said I "skulked alone in
corners," but this was not from fear, though the sons of his nobles
followed his lead -- as children do -- and made me their butt in
their rough wargames whenever they could catch me.

At the beginning, it is true, the
tunnels of the disused heating-system were a refuge, a secret place
where I could hide and be alone; but I soon found a curiously
strong pleasure in exploring the great system of dark,
earth-smelling chambers under the palace floors.

My grandfather's palace had been, in
times past, a vast country-house belonging to some Roman notable
who had owned and farmed the land for several miles each way along
the river valley. The main part of the house still stood, though
badly scarred by time and war, and by at least one disastrous fire,
which had destroyed one end of the main block and part of a wing.
The old slaves' quarters were still intact round the courtyard
where the cooks and houseservants worked, and the bath-house
remained, though patched and plastered and with the roof
rough-thatched over the worst bits. I never remember the furnace
working; water was heated over the courtyard fires.

The entrance to my secret labyrinth
was the stoke-hole in the boiler-house; this was a trap in the wall
under the cracked and rusting boiler, barely the height of a grown
man's knee, and hidden by docks and nettles and a huge curved metal
shard fallen from the boiler itself. Once inside, you could get
under the rooms of the bath-house, but this had been out of use for
so long that the space under the floors was too cluttered and foul
even for me. I went the other way, under the main block of the
palace. Here the old hot-air system had been so well built and
maintained that even now the knee-high space under the floors was
dry and airy, and plaster still clung to the brick pillars that
held up the floors. In places, of course, a pillar had collapsed,
or debris had fallen, but the traps which led from one room to
another were solidly arched and safe, and I was free to crawl,
unseen and unheard, even as far as the King's own
chamber.

If they had ever discovered me I think
I might have received a worse punishment than whipping: I must have
listened, innocently enough, to dozens of secret councils, and
certainly to some very private goings-on, but that side of it never
occurred to me. And it was natural enough that nobody should give a
thought to the dangers of eavesdropping; in the old days the flues
had been cleaned by boy-slaves, and nobody much beyond the age of
ten could ever have got through some of the workings; there were
one or two places where even I was hard put to it to wriggle
through. I was only once in danger of discovery: one afternoon when
Moravik supposed I was playing with the boys and they in turn
thought I was safe under her skirts, the red-haired Dinias, my
chief tormentor, gave a younger boy such a shove from the roof-tree
where they were playing that the latter fell and broke a leg, and
set up such a howling that Moravik, running to the scene,
discovered me absent and set the palace by the ears. I heard the
noise, and emerged breathless and dirty from under the boiler, just
as she started a hunt through the bath-house wing. I lied my way
out of it, and got off with boxed ears and a scolding, but it was a
warning; I never went into the hypocaust again by daylight, only at
night before Moravik came to bed, or once or twice when I was
wakeful and she was already abed and snoring. Most of the palace
would be abed, too, but when there was a feast, or when my
grandfather had guests, I would listen to the noise of voices and
the singing; and sometimes I would creep as far as my mother's
chamber, to hear the sound of her voice as she talked with her
women. But one night I heard her praying, aloud, as one does
sometimes when alone, and in the prayer was my name, "Emrys," and
then her tears. After that I went another way, past the Queen's
rooms, where almost every evening Olwen, the young Queen, sang to
her harp among her ladies, until the King's tread came heavily down
the corridor, and the music stopped.

But it was for none of these things
that I went. What mattered to me -- I see it clearly now -- was to
be alone in the secret dark, where a man is his own master, except
for death.

Mostly I went to what I called my
"cave." This had been part of some main chimney-shaft, and the top
of it had crumbled, so that one could see the sky. It had held
magic for me since the day I had looked up at midday and had seen,
faint but unmistakable, a star. Now when I went in at night I would
curl up on my bed of stolen stable-straw and watch the stars
wheeling slowly across, and make my own bet with heaven, which was,
if the moon should show over the shaft while I was there, the next
day would bring me my heart's desire.

The moon was there that night. Full
and shining, she stood clear in the center of the shaft, her light
pouring down on my upturned face so white and pure that it seemed I
drank it in like water. I did not move till she had gone, and the
little star that dogs her.

On the way back I passed under a room
that had been empty before, but which now held voices.

Camlach's room, of course. He and
another man whose name I did not know, but who, from his accent,
was one of those who had ridden in that day; I had found that they
came from Cornwall. He had one of those thick, rumbling voices of
which I caught only a word here and there as I crawled quickly
through, worming my way between the pillars, concerned only not to
be heard.