Legacy: Arthurian Saga (36 page)

I must have made some movement in
spite of myself. My mother looked up, and I saw her eyes under the
hood. She no longer looked like a princess; she looked like a woman
who is afraid. I smiled at her, and something came back into her
face, and I saw then that her fear was only for me.

I held myself still, and waited. Let
him make the moves. Time enough to counter them when he had shown
me the ground to fight from.

He twisted the big ring on his finger.
"This is what your son told my messengers. And I have heard it said
that no one else in the kingdom ever knew the name of his father.
From what men tell me, Lady Niniane, and from what I know of you,
your child would never be fathered by anyone base. Why not, then,
tell him? It is a thing a man should know."

I said angrily, forgetting my caution:
"What is it to you?"

My mother flashed me a look that
silenced me. Then to Vortigern, "Why do you ask me these
questions?"

"Lady," said the King, "I sent for you
today, and for your son, to ask you one thing only. The name of his
father."

"I repeat, why do you ask?"

He smiled. It was a mere baring of the
teeth. I took a step.

"Mother, he has no right to ask you
this. He will not dare --"

"Silence him," said
Vortigern.

The man beside me slapped a hand
across my mouth, and held me fast. There was the hiss of metal as
the other drew his sword and pressed it against my side. I stood
still.

My mother cried out: "Let him go! If
you hurt him, Vortigern, king or no king, I will never tell you,
even if you kill me. Do you think I held the truth from my own
father and my brother and even from my son for all these years,
just to tell you for the asking?"

"You will tell me for your son's
sake," said Vortigern. At his nod the fellow took his hand from my
mouth, and stood back. But his hand was still on my arm, and I
could feel the other's sword sharp through my tunic.

My mother had thrown back her hood
now, and was sitting upright in her chair, her hands gripping the
arms. Pale and shaken as she was, and dressed in the humble brown
robe, she made the Queen look like a servant. The silence in the
hall now was deathly. Behind the King's chair the priests stood
staring. I held tightly to my thoughts. If these men were priests
and magicians, then no thought of Ambrosius, not even his name,
must come into my mind. I felt the sweat start on my body, and my
thoughts tried to reach my mother and hold her, without forming an
image which these men could see. But the power had gone, and there
was no help here from the god; I did not even know if I was man
enough for what might happen after she told them. I dared not speak
again; I was afraid that if they used force against me she would
speak to save me. And once they knew, once they started to question
me...

Something must have reached her,
because she turned and looked at me again, moving her shoulders
under the rough robe as if she felt a hand touch her. As her eyes
met mine I knew that this was nothing to do with power. She was
trying, as women will, to tell me something with her eyes. It was a
message of love and reassurance, but on a human level, and I could
not understand it.

She turned back to Vortigern. "You
choose a strange place for your questions, King. Do you really
expect me to speak of these things here, in your open hall, and in
the hearing of all comers?"

He brooded for a moment, his brows
down over his eyes. There was sweat on his face, and I saw his
hands twitch on the arms of the chair. The man was humming like a
harp-string. The tension ran right through the hall, almost
visibly. I felt my skin prickle, and a cold wolfspaw of fear walked
up my spine. Behind the King one of the priests leaned forward and
whispered. Then the King nodded. "The people shall leave us. But
the priests and the magicians must remain."

Reluctantly, and with a buzz of
chatter, people began to leave the hall. The priests stayed, a
dozen or so men in long robes standing behind the chairs of the
King and Queen. One of them, the one who had spoken to the King, a
tall man who stood stroking his grey beard with a dirty ringed
hand, was smiling. From his dress he was the head of them. I
searched his face for signs of power, but, though the men were
dressed in priests' robes, I could see nothing there but death. It
was in all their eyes. More than that I could not see. The wolfspaw
of cold touched my bones again. I stood in the soldier's grip
without resistance.

"Loose him," said Vortigern. "I have
no wish to harm the Lady Niniane's son. But you, Merlin, if you
move or speak again before I give you leave, you will be taken from
the hall."

The sword withdrew from my side, but
the man still held it ready. The guards stood back half a pace from
me. I neither moved nor spoke. I had never since I was a child felt
so helpless, so naked of either knowledge or power, so stripped of
God. I knew, with bitter failure, that if I were in the crystal
cave with fires blazing and my master's eyes on me, I should see
nothing. I remembered, suddenly, that Galapas was dead. Perhaps, I
thought, the power had only come from him, and perhaps it had gone
with him.

The King had turned his sunken eyes
back to my mother. He leaned forward, his look suddenly fierce and
intent.

"And now, Madam, will you answer my
question?"

"Willingly," she said. "Why
not?"

8

She had spoken so calmly that I saw
the King's look of surprise. She put up a hand to push the hood
back from her face, and met his eyes levelly.

"Why not? I see no harm in it. I might
have told you sooner, my lord, if you had asked me differently, and
in a different place. There is no harm now in men knowing. I am no
longer in the world, and do not have to meet the eyes of the world,
or hear their tongues. And since I know now that my son, too, has
retired from the world, then I know how little he will care what
the world says about him. So I will tell you what you want to know.
And when I tell you, you will see why I have never spoken of this
before, not even to my own father or to my son himself."

There was no sign of fear now. She was
even smiling. She had not looked at me again. I tried to keep from
staring at her, to school my face into blankness. I had no idea
what she planned to say, but I knew that here would be no betrayal.
She was playing some game of her own, and was secure in her own
mind that this would avert whatever danger threatened me. I knew,
for certain, that she would say nothing of Ambrosius. But still,
everywhere in the hall, was death. Outside it had begun to rain,
and the afternoon was wearing on towards twilight. A servant came
in at the door bearing torches, but Vortigern waved him back. To do
him justice, I believe he was thinking of my mother's shame, but I
thought to myself: There can be no help even there, no light, no
fire...

"Speak, then," said Vortigern. "Who
fathered your son?"

"I never saw him." She spoke quite
simply. "It was no man that I ever knew." She paused, then said,
without looking at me, her eyes still level on the King: "My son
will forgive me for what he is soon to hear, but you have forced
me, and this he will understand."

Vortigern flashed me a look. I met it
stonily. I was certain of her now.

She went on: "When I was only young,
about sixteen, and thinking, as girls do, of love, it happened one
Martinmas Eve, after I and my women had gone to bed. The girl who
slept in my room was asleep, and the others were in the outer
chamber, but I could not sleep. After a while I rose from my bed
and went to the window. It was a clear night, with a moon. When I
turned back to my bed-place I saw what I took to be a young man
standing there, full in the middle of my bedchamber. He was
handsome, and young, dressed in a tunic and long mantle, with a
short sword at his side. He wore rich jewels. My first thought was
that he had broken in through the outer chamber while my women
slept; my second was that I was in my shift, and barefoot, with my
hair loose. I thought he meant mischief, and was opening my mouth
to call out and wake the women, when the youth smiled at me, with a
gesture as if to tell me to be quiet, he meant me no harm. Then he
stepped aside into the shadow, and when I stole after, to look,
there was no one there."

She paused. No one spoke. I remembered
how she would tell me stories when I was a child. The hall was
quite still, but I felt the man beside me quiver, as if he would
have liked to move away. The Queen's red mouth hung open, half in
wonder, half (I thought) in envy.

My mother looked at the wall above the
King's head. "I thought it had been a dream, or a girl's fancy bred
of moonlight. I went to bed and told no one. But he came again. Not
always at night; not always when I was alone. So I realized it was
no dream, but a familiar spirit who desired something from me. I
prayed, but still he came. While I was sitting with my girls,
spinning, or when I walked on dry days in my father's orchard, I
would feel his touch on my arm, and his voice in my ear. But at
these times I did not see him, and nobody heard him but
I."

She groped for the cross on her breast
and held it. The gesture looked so unforced and natural that I was
surprised, until I saw that it was indeed natural, that she did not
hold the cross for protection, but for forgiveness. I thought to
myself, it is not the Christian God she should fear when she lies;
she should be afraid of lying like this about the things of power.
The King's eyes, bent on her, were fierce and, I thought, exultant.
The priests were watching her as if they would eat her spirit
alive.

"So all through that winter he came to
me. And he came at night. I was never alone in my chamber, but he
came through doors and windows and walls, and lay with me. I never
saw him again, but heard his voice and felt his body. Then, in the
summer, when I was heavy with child, he left me." She
paused.

"They will tell you how my father beat
me and shut me up, and how when the child was born he would not
give him a name fit for a Christian prince, but, because he was
born in September, named him for the sky-god, the wanderer, who has
no house but the woven air. But I called him Merlin always, because
on the day of his birth a wild falcon flew in through the window
and perched above the bed, and looked at me with my lover's
eyes."

Her glance crossed mine then, a brief
flash. This, then, was true. And the Emrys, too, she had given me
that in spite of them; she had kept that much of him for me after
all.

She had looked away. "I think, my lord
King, that what I have told you will not altogether surprise you.
You must have heard the rumors that my son was not as ordinary boys
-- it is not possible always to be silent, and I know there have
been whispers, but now I have told you the truth, openly; and so I
pray you, my lord Vortigern, to let my son and me go back in peace
to our respective houses of religion."

When she had finished there was
silence. She bowed her head and pulled up her hood again to hide
her face. I watched the King and the men behind him. I thought to
see him angry, frowning with impatience, but to my surprise his
brows smoothed out, and he smiled. He opened his mouth to answer my
mother, but the Queen forestalled him. She leaned forward, licking
her red lips, and spoke for the first time, to the
priests.

"Maugan, is this possible?"

It was the tall man, the bearded high
priest, who answered her. He spoke without hesitation, bland and
surprisingly emphatic.

"Madam, it is possible. Who has not
heard of these creatures of air and darkness, who batten on mortal
men and women? In my studies, and in many of the books I have read,
I have found stories of children being born into the world in this
fashion." He eyed me, fondling his beard, then turned to the King.
"Indeed, my lord, we have the authority of the ancients themselves.
They knew well that certain spirits, haunting the air at night
between the moon and the earth, cohabit at their will with mortal
women, in the shape of men. It is certainly possible that this
royal lady -- this virtuous royal lady -- was the victim of such a
creature. We know -- and she has said herself -- that this was
rumored for many years. I myself spoke with one of her
waiting-women who said that the child could surely be begotten of
none but the devil, and that no man had been near her. And of the
son himself, when he was a child, I heard many strange things.
Indeed, King Vortigern, this lady's story is true."

No one looked any longer at Niniane.
Every eye in the place was on me. I could see in the King's face
nothing that was not at once ferocious and innocent, a kind of
eager satisfaction like a child's, or a wild beast's when it sees
its prey loitering nearer. Puzzled, I held my tongue and waited. If
the priests believed my mother, and Vortigern believed the priests,
then I could not see where danger could come from. No faintest hint
had turned men's thoughts towards Ambrosius. Maugan and the King
seemed to hurry with eager satisfaction down the path that my
mother had opened for them.

The King glanced at my guards. They
had moved back from me, no doubt afraid to stand so near a demon's
child. At his sign they closed in again. The man on my right still
held his sword drawn, but down by his side and out of my mother's
view. It was not quite steady. The man on my left surreptitiously
loosened his own blade in its sheath. Both men were breathing
heavily, and I could smell fear on them.