Legacy: Arthurian Saga (29 page)

BOOK III THE WOLF
1

I was five years with Ambrosius in
Brittany. Looking back now, I see that much of what happened has
been changed in my memory, like a smashed mosaic which is mended in
later years by a man who has almost forgotten the first picture.
Certain things come back to me plain, in all their colors and
details; others -- perhaps more important -- come hazy, as if the
picture had been dusted over by what has happened since, death,
sorrow, changes of the heart. Places I always remember well, some
of them so clearly that I feel even now as if I could walk into
them, and that if I had the strength to concentrate, and the power
that once fitted me like my robe, I might even now rebuild them
here in the dark as I rebuilt the Giants' Dance for Ambrosius, all
those years ago.

Places are clear, and ideas, which
came to me so new and shining then, but not always the people:
sometimes now as I search my memory I wonder if here and there I
have confused them one with another, Belasius with Galapas, Cadal
with Cerdic, the Breton officer whose name I forget now with my
grandfather's captain in Maridunum who once tried to make me into
the kind of swordsman that he thought even a bastard prince should
want to be.

But as I write of Ambrosius, it is as
if he were here with me now, lit against this darkness as the man
with the cap was lit on that first frost-enchanted night in
Brittany. Even without my robe of power I can conjure up against
the darkness his eyes, steady under frowning brows, the heavy lines
of his body, the face (which seems so young to me now) engraved
into hardness by the devouring, goading will that had kept his eyes
turned westward to his closed kingdom for the twenty-odd years it
took him to grow from child to Comes and build, against all the
odds of poverty and weakness, the striking force that grew with
him, waiting for the time.

It is harder to write of Uther. Or
rather it is hard to write of Uther as if he were in the past, part
of a story that has been over these many years. Even more vividly
than Ambrosius he is here with me; not here in the darkness -- it
is the part of me that was Myrddin that is here in the darkness.
The part that was Uther is out there in the sunlight, keeping the
coasts of Britain whole, following the design I made for him, the
design that Galapas showed to me on a summer's day in
Wales.

But there, of course, it is no longer
Uther of whom I write. It is the man who was the sum of us, who was
all of us -- Ambrosius, who made me; Uther, who worked with me;
myself, who used him, as I used every man who came to my hand, to
make Arthur for Britain.

From time to time news came from
Britain, and occasionally with it -- through Gorlois of Cornwall --
news of my home.

It seemed that after my grandfather's
death, Camlach had not immediately deserted the old alliance with
his kinsman Vortigern. He had to feel himself more secure before he
would dare break away to support the "young men's party," as
Vortimer's faction was called. Indeed, Vortimer himself had stopped
short of open rebellion, but it seemed clear that this must come
eventually. King Vortigern was back between the landslide and the
flood; if he was to stay King of the British he must call on his
Saxon wife's countrymen for help, and the Saxon mercenaries year by
year increased their demands till the country was split and
bleeding under what men openly called the Saxon Terror, and -- in
the West especially, where men were still free -- rebellion only
waited for a leader of leaders. And so desperate was Vortigern's
situation becoming that he was forced against his better judgment
to entrust the armed forces in the West more and more to Vortimer
and his brothers, whose blood at least carried none of the Saxon
taint.

Of my mother there was no news, except
that she was safe in St. Peter's. Ambrosius sent her no message. If
it came to her ears that a certain Merlinus Ambrosius was with the
Count of Brittany, she would know what to think, but a letter or
message direct from the King's enemy would endanger her
unnecessarily. She would know, said Ambrosius, soon
enough.

In fact it was five years before the
break came, but the time went by like a tide-race. With the
possibility of an opening developing in Wales and Cornwall,
Ambrosius' preparations accelerated. If the men of the West wanted
a leader he had every intention that it should be, not Vortimer,
but himself. He would bide his time and let Vortimer be the wedge,
but he and Uther would be the hammer that drove after it into the
crack. Meanwhile hope in Less Britain ran high; offers of troops
and alliances poured in, the countryside shook to the tramp of
horses and marching feet, and the streets of the engineers and
armorers rang far into the night as men redoubled their efforts to
make two weapons in the time that before it had taken to make one.
Now at last the break was coming, and when it came Ambrosius must
be ready, and with no chance of failure. One does not wait half a
lifetime gathering the material to make a killing spear, and then
loose it at random in the dark. Not only men and materials, but
time and spirit and the very wind of heaven must be right for him,
and the gods themselves must open the gate. And for this, he said,
they had sent me to him. It was my coming just at such a time with
words of victory, and full of the vision of the unconquered god,
which persuaded him (and even more important, the soldiers with
him) that the time was at last approaching when he could strike
with the certainty of victory. So -- I found to my fear -- he rated
me.

Be sure I had never asked him again
how he intended to use me. He made it clear enough, and between
pride and fear and longing I fought to learn all that I could be
taught, and to open myself for the power which was all I could give
him. If he had wanted a prophet ready to hand he must have been
disappointed; I saw nothing of importance during this time.
Knowledge, I suppose, blocked the gates of vision. But this was the
time for knowledge; I studied with Belasius till I outran him,
learning, as he had never done, how to apply the calculations which
to him were as much an art as songs were to me; even songs, indeed,
I was to use. I spent long hours in the street of the engineers,
and had frequently to be dragged by a grumbling Cadal from some
oily piece of practical work which unfitted me, as he said, for any
company but a bath-slave's. I wrote down, too, all I could remember
of Galapas' medical teaching, and added practical experience by
helping the army doctors whenever I could. I had the freedom of the
camp and the town, and with Ambrosius' name to back me I took to
this freedom like a hungry young wolf to his first full meal. I
learned all the time, from every man or woman I met. I looked, as I
had promised, in the light and the dark, at the sunshine and at the
stale pool. I went with Ambrosius to the shrine of Mithras below
the farmstead, and with Belasius to the gatherings in the forest. I
was even allowed to sit silently at meetings between the Count and
his captains, though nobody pretended that I would ever be much use
in the field, "unless," said Uther once, half amused, half
malicious, "he is to stand above us like Joshua holding the sun
back, to give us more time to do the real work. Though joking
apart, he might do worse...the men seem to think of him as
something halfway between a Courier of Mithras and a splinter of
the

True Cross -- saving your presence,
brother -- and I'm damned certain he'd be more use stuck up on a
hill like a lucky charm where they can see him, than down in the
field where he wouldn't last five minutes." He had even more to say
when, at the age of sixteen, I gave up the daily sword practice
which gave a man the minimum training in self-defense; but my
father merely laughed and said nothing. I think he knew, though as
yet I did not, that I had my own kind of protection.

So I learned from everyone; the old
women who gathered plants and cobwebs and seaweeds for healing; the
traveling peddlers and quack healers; the horse doctors, the
soothsayers, the priests. I listened to the soldiers' talk outside
the taverns, and the officers' talk in my father's house, and the
boys' talk in the streets. But there was one thing about which I
learned nothing: by the time I left Brittany at seventeen, I was
still ignorant of women. When I thought about them -- which
happened often enough -- I told myself that I had no time, that
there was a lifetime still ahead of me for such things, and that
now I had work to do which mattered more. But I suppose the plain
truth is that I was afraid of them. So I lost my desires in work,
and indeed, I believe now that the fear came from the
god.

So I waited, and minded my own
business, which -- as I saw it then -- was to fit myself to serve
my father.

One day I was in Tremorinus' workshop.
Tremorinus, the master engineer, was a pleasant man who allowed me
to learn all I could from him, gave me space in the workshops, and
material to experiment with. This particular day I remember how
when he came into the workshop and saw me busy over a model at my
corner bench, he came over to have a look at it. When he saw what I
was doing he laughed.

"I'd have thought there were plenty of
those around without troubling to put up any more."

"I was interested in how they got them
there." I tilted the scale model of the standing stone back into
place.

He looked surprised. I knew why. He
had lived in Less Britain all his life, and the landscape there is
so seamed with the stones that men do not see them any more. One
walks daily through a forest of stone, and to most men it seems
dead stone...But not to me. To me they still said something, and I
had to find out what; but I did not tell Tremorinus this. I added,
merely: "I was trying to work it out to scale."

"I can tell you something straight
away: that's been tried, and it doesn't work." He was looking at
the pulley I had rigged to lift the model. "That might do for the
uprights, but only the lighter ones, and it doesn't work at all for
the cap-stones."

"No. I'd found that out. But I'd had
an idea...I was going to tackle it another way."

"You're wasting your time. Let's see
you getting down to something practical, something we need and can
use. Now, that idea of yours for a light mobile crane might be
worth developing..."

A few minutes later he was called
away. I dismantled the model, and sat down to my new calculations.
I had not told Tremorinus about them; he had more important things
to think about, and in any case he would have laughed if I had told
him I had learned from a poet how to lift the standing
stones.

It had happened this way. One day
about a week before this, as I walked by the water that guarded the
town walls, I heard a man singing. The voice was old and wavering,
and hoarse with over-use -- the voice of a professional singer who
has strained it above the noise of the crowd, and through singing
with the winter cold in his throat. What caught my attention was
neither the voice nor the tune, which could hardly be picked out,
but the sound of my own name.

Merlin, Merlin, where art thou
going

He was sitting by the bridge, with a
bowl for begging. I saw that he was blind, but the remnant of his
voice was true, and he made no gesture with his bowl as he heard me
stop near him, but sat as one sits at a harp, head bent, listening
to what the strings say, with fingers stirring as if they felt the
notes. He had sung, I would judge, in kings' halls.

Merlin, Merlin, where art thou
going

So early in the day with thy black
dog? I have been searching for the egg, The red egg of the
sea-serpent, Which lies by the shore in the hollow stone. And I go
to gather cresses in the meadow, The green cress and the golden
grasses, The golden moss that gives sleep, And the mistletoe high
on the oak, the druids' bough That grows deep in the woods by the
running water. Merlin, Merlin, came back from the wood and the
fountain! Leave the oak and the golden grasses Leave the cress in
the water-meadow, And the red egg of the sea-serpent In the foam by
the hollow stone! Merlin, Merlin, leave thy seeking! There is no
diviner but God.

Nowadays this song is as well known as
the one of Mary the Maiden, or the King and the Grey Seal, but it
was the first time I had heard it. When he knew who it was who had
stopped to listen, he seemed pleased that I should sit beside him
on the bank, and ask questions. I remember that on that first
morning we talked mostly of the song, then of himself; I found he
had been as a young man on Mona, the druids' isle, and knew
Caer'n-ar-Von and had walked on Snowdon. It was in the druids' isle
that he had lost his sight; he never told me how, but when I told
him that the sea-weeds and cresses that I hunted along the shore
were only plants for healing, not for magic, he smiled and sang a
verse I had heard my mother sing, which, he said, would be a
shield. Against what, he did not say, nor did I ask him. I put
money into his bowl, which he accepted with dignity, but when I
promised to find a harp for him he went silent, staring with those
empty eye-sockets, and I could see he did not believe me. I brought
the harp next day; my father was generous, and I had no need even
to tell him what the money was for. When I put the harp into the
old singer's hands he wept, then took my hands and kissed
them.

After that, right up to the time I
left Brittany, I often sought him out. He had traveled widely, in
lands as far apart as Ireland and Africa. He taught me songs from
every country, Italy and Gaul and the white North, and older songs
from the East -- strange wandering tunes which had come westward,
he said, from the islands of the East with the men of old who had
raised the standing stones, and they spoke of lores long forgotten
except in song. I do not think he himself thought of them as
anything but songs of old magic, poets tales; but the more I
thought about them, the more clearly they spoke to me of men who
had really lived, and work they had really done, when they raised
the great stones to mark the sun and moon and build for their gods
and the giant kings of old.