Legacy: Arthurian Saga (222 page)

That night he slept in the woods. It
was chilly, but wrapped in his cloak he was warm enough, and for
supper there was something left of the bread and meat the girl had
given him. His horse, tethered on a long rein, grazed in the glade.
Next day, early, he rode on, this time to the south-west. Arthur
would be on his way to Caerleon, and he would meet him there. There
was no haste. Drustan would already have sent a courier with the
news of Lamorak's murder. Since Mordred had not appeared on the
scene the King would no doubt assume the truth, that the brothers
by some trick had managed to evade him. His assignment had not been
Lamorak's safety; that was Lamorak's own concern, and he had paid
for the risk he had taken; Mordred's task had been to find Gaheris
and take him south. Now, once the twins' hurts were healed, Drustan
would see to that. Mordred could still stay out of the affair, and
this he was sure the King would approve. Even if the brothers did
not survive the King's anger, the other troublemakers among the
Young Celts, assuming Mordred to be ambitious for whatever power he
could grasp for himself, might turn to him and invite him to join
their counsels. This, he suspected, the King would soon ask him to
do. And if you do, murmured that other, ice-cold voice in his
brain, and the campaign goes on that is to unseat Bedwyr and
destroy him, who better to take his place in the King's confidence,
and the Queen's love, than you, the King's own son?

It was a golden October, with chill
nights and bright, crisp days. The mornings glittered with a
dusting of bright frost, and in the evenings the sky was full of
the sound of rooks going home. He took his time, sparing his horse,
and, where he could, lodging in small, simple places and avoiding
the towns. The loneliness, the falling melancholy of autumn, suited
his mood. He went by smooth hills and grassy valleys, through
golden woods and by steep rocky passes where, on the heights, the
trees were already bare. His good bay horse was all the company he
needed. Though the nights were cold, and grew colder, he always
found shelter of a sort--a sheep-cote, a cave, even a wooded
bank--and there was no rain. He would tether the bay to graze, eat
the rations he carried, and roll himself in his cloak for the
night, to wake in the grey, frost-glittering morning, wash in an
icy stream, and ride on again.

Gradually the simplicity, the silence,
the very hardships of the ride soothed him; he was Medraut the
fisher-boy again, and life was simple and clean.

So he came at last to the Welsh hills,
and Viroconium where the four roads meet. And there, at the
crossways, like another welcome from home, was a standing stone
with its altar at its foot.

He slept that night in a thicket of
hazel and holly by the crossroads, in the lee of a fallen trunk.
The night was warmer, with stars out. He slept, and dreamed that he
was in the boat with Brude, netting mackerel for Sula to split and
dry for winter. The nets came in laden with leaping silver, and
across the hush of the waves he could hear Sula singing.

He woke to thick mist. The air was
warmer; the sudden change in temperature overnight had brought the
fog. He shook the crowded droplets from his cloak, ate his
breakfast, then on a sudden impulse took the remains of the food
and laid it on the altar at the foot of the standing
stone.

Then, moved by another impulse which
he would not begin to recognize, he took a silver piece from his
wallet and laid it beside the food. Only then did he realize that,
as in his dream, someone was singing.

It was a woman's voice, high and
sweet, and the song was one that Sula had sung. His flesh crept. He
thought of magic, and waking dreams. Then out of the mist, no more
than twelve paces away, came a man leading a mule with a girl
mounted sideways on its back. He took them at first for a peasant
with his wife going out to work, and then saw that the man was
dressed in a priest's robe, and the girl as simply, sackcloth and
wimple, and the pretty feet dangling against the mule's ribs were
bare. They were Christians, it appeared; a wooden cross hung from
the man's waist, and a smaller one lay on the girl's bosom. There
was a silver bell on the mule's collar, which rang as it
moved.

The priest checked in his stride when
he saw the armed man with the big horse, then, as Mordred gave him
a greeting, smiled and came forward.

"Maridunum?" he repeated, in response
to Mordred's query. He pointed to the road that led due west. "That
way is best. It is rough, but passable everywhere, and it is
shorter than the main road south by Caerleon. Have you come far,
sir?"

Mordred answered him civilly, giving
him what news he could. The man did not speak with a peasant's
accent. He might have been someone gently bred, a courtier, even.
The girl, Mordred saw now, was beautiful. Even the bare feet,
dangling by the mule's ribs, were clean and white, fine-boned and
veined with blue. She sat silently watching him, and listening, in
no way discomposed by his look. Mordred caught the priest's glance
at the altar stone where the silver coin gleamed beside the food.
"Do you know whose altar this is? Or whose stone at the
crossways?"

The man smiled. "Not mine, sir. That
is all I know. That is your offering?"

"Yes."

"Then God knows who will receive it,"
said the man, gently, "but if you have need of blessing, sir, then
my God can, through me, give it to you. Unless," he added, on a
troubled afterthought, "there is blood on your hands?"

"No," said Mordred. "But there is a
curse that says I shall have. How do I lift that?"

"A curse? Who laid it?"

"A witch," said Mordred, shortly, "but
she is dead."

"Then the curse may well have died
with her."

"But before her, a fate was spoken of,
and by Merlin."

"What fate?"

"That I cannot tell you."

"Then ask him."

"Ah," said Mordred. "Then it is true
he is still there?"

"They say so. He is there in his cave
on the hill, for those who have the need or the fortune to find
him. Well then, sir, I cannot help you, other than give you my
Christian blessing, and send you on your way."

He raised a hand, and Mordred bowed
his head, then thanked him, hesitated over a coin, decided against
it, and rode on. He took the west road to Maridunum. Soon the
mule's bell died out in the distance, and he was alone
again.

He came to the hill called Bryn
Myrddin at dusk, and slept again by a wood. When he woke there was
mist again, with the sun rising behind it. The haze was tinged with
rose, and a faint glimmer showed on the grey trunks of the beech
trees.

He waited patiently, eating the hard
biscuit and raisins that were his breakfast ration. The world was
silent, no movement but the slow eddying of the mist between the
trees, and the steady cropping of the horse. There was no haste. He
had ceased to feel any curiosity about the old man whom he sought,
the King's enchanter of a thousand legends who had been his enemy
(and since Morgause had said so, he took it without question as a
lie) since the day of his conception. Nor was there any
apprehension. If the curse could be lifted, then no doubt Merlin
would lift it. If not, then no doubt he would explain
it.

Quite suddenly, the mist was gone. A
slight breeze, warm for the time of year, rustled through the wood,
swept the eddies aside and dispersed them down the hillside like
smoke from a bonfire. The sun, climbing the hilltop across the
valley, blazed scarlet and gold into his eyes. The landscape
dazzled.

He mounted, turning towards the sun.
Now he saw where he was. The travelling priest's directions had
been accurate and vivid enough to guide anyone even through this
rolling and featureless landscape.

"By the time you reach the wood, you
will have gone past the upper slopes of Bryn Myrddin. Go down to
the stream, cross it, and you will find a track. Turn uphill again
and ride as far as a grove of thorn trees. There is a little cliff,
with a path curling up beside it. At the head of the cliff is the
holy well, and by it the enchanter's cave."

He came to the thicket of whitethorn.
There, beside the cliff, he dismounted and tied the horse. He trod
quickly up the path and came out on level ground and into mist
again, thick and still and stained red gold by the sun, standing as
still as lake water over the turf. He could see nothing. He felt
his way forward. The turf was level and fine. At his feet, peering,
he could just discern small late daisies, frost-nipped, and shut
against the damp. Somewhere to his left was the trickle of water.
The holy well? He groped forward, but could not find it. He trod on
a stone, which rolled away, almost bringing him to his knees. The
silence, broken only by the trickle of the spring, was eerie. In
spite of himself, he felt the chill prickles of sweat creep down
his spine.

He stopped. He stood squarely, and
shouted aloud.

"Ho, there! Is anyone
there?"

An echo, ringing from the wall of
mist, rebounded again and again from the invisible depths of the
valley, and died into silence.

"Is anyone there? This is Mordred,
Prince of Britain, to speak with Merlin his kinsman. I come in
peace. I seek peace."

Again the echo. Again the silence. He
moved cautiously towards the sound of water, and his groping
fingers touched the stone rim of the well. He stooped towards the
water. Breaths of mist furred and fumed from the smooth glass of
the surface. He bent nearer. Below that glass the clear depths,
darkly shining, led the eye down, away from the mist. At the bottom
of the well was the gleam of silver, the offerings to the
god.

From nowhere came a memory: the pool
below the ancient tomb where Morgause had bidden him watch the
depths for vision. There he had seen nothing but what should
rightly be there. Here, on the holy hilltop, the same.

He straightened. Mordred, the realist,
did not know that a burden had dropped from him. He would have said
only that Merlin's magic was no doubt as harmless as Morgause's.
What he had seen as a cursed fate, foreseen with grief by Merlin
and twisted into evil by Morgause, dwindled in this world of clear
water and lighted mist into its proper form. It was not even a
curse. It was a fact, something due to happen in the future, that
had been seen by an eye doomed to foresee, whatever the pain of
that seeing. It would come, yes, but only as, soon or late, all
deaths came. He, Mordred, was not the instrument of a blind and
brutal fate, but of whatever, whoever, made the pattern to which
the world moved. Live what life brings; die what death comes. He
did not see the comfort even as cold.

Nor did he, in fact, even know that he
had been comforted. He reached for the cup that stood above the
water, filled it and drank, and felt refreshed. He poured for the
god, and as he returned the cup to its place said, in the tongue of
his childhood, "Thank you," and turned to go.

The mist was thicker than ever, the
silence as intense. The sun was right up now, but the light,
instead of sweeping the air clear, blazed like a fire in the middle
of a great cloud. The hillside was a swirl of flame and smoke, cool
to the skin, clean to the nostrils, but blinding to the eye and
filling the mind with confusion and wonder. The very air was
crystal, was rainbow, was flowing diamond. "He is where he always
was," Nimue had said, "with all his fires and travelling glories
round him." And "If he wishes it, you may find him."

He had found, and been answered. He
began to feel his way back towards the head of the cliff. Behind
him, invisible, the falling drops of the spring sounded for all the
world like the sweet, faint notes of a harp. Above him was the
swirl of light where the sun stood. Guided by these he felt his way
forward until his foot found the drop to the path.

When he reached the base of the hill
he turned east and rode straight and fast for Caerleon and his
father.

By the time Mordred reached Caerleon
matters had begun to settle themselves. The King had been very
angry over Lamorak's murder, and it was certainly to Agravain's
advantage that his wound would keep him, and Gaheris with him, in
the north until it was healed. Drustan duly sent an account of the
incident to Arthur, but its bearer was not a royal courier, it was
Gareth; and Gareth, though far from trying to excuse his brothers,
pleaded successfully with the King for their pardon. For Gaheris he
pleaded madness; Gaheris, who had loved Morgause and had killed
her. Gareth, out of his own grief, could make a guess at what had
passed in his brother's bruised mind as he knelt there in his
mother's blood. And Agravain, as ever, had acted as the shield and
dagger alongside his twin's sword. Now that Lamorak was dead, urged
Gareth, it was surely possible that Gaheris could put the bloody
past behind him, and take his place again as a loyal man. And
Drustan, though sorely provoked, had held his hand, so it might
well be that now the swinging pendulum of revenge could be
stilled.

Unexpectedly enough, the main
opposition to Gareth's pleading came from Bedwyr. Bedwyr, deploring
the blood tie that linked Arthur to the Orkney brothers, disliked
and distrusted them, and lost no chance to set the King on guard
against them. He was known throughout the court to be using all his
considerable influence to prevent the twins from being recalled.
And where, Bedwyr insisted, with growing suspicion, was Mordred?
Had he, too, perhaps, assisted in the murder, and fled before
Drustan and Gareth came on the scene? Mordred himself arrived in
Caerleon in time to save confusion about his part in the affair,
and eventually, in spite of Bedwyr, Gareth was sent north again, to
bring his brothers back to court when they were both, in mind and
body, whole once more.