Legacy: Arthurian Saga (4 page)

My clothes were kept in a wooden chest
which stood against the wall. This was very old, with panels
painted with scenes of gods and goddesses, and I think originally
it had come from Rome itself. Now the paint was dirty and rubbed
and flaking, but still on the lid you could see, like shadows, a
scene taking place in what looked like a cave; there was a bull,
and a man with a knife, and someone holding a sheaf of corn, and
over in the corner some figure, rubbed almost away, with rays round
his head like the sun, and a stick in his hand. The chest was lined
with cedar wood, and Moravik washed my clothes herself, and laid
them away with sweet herbs from the garden.

She threw the lid up now, so roughly
that it banged against the wall, and pulled out the better of my
two good tunics, the green one with the scarlet border. She shouted
for water, and one of the maids brought it, running, and was
scolded for spilling it on the floor.

The fat servant came panting again to
tell us that we should hurry, and got snapped at for his pains, but
in a very short time I was hustled once more along the colonnade
and through the big arched doorway into the main part of the
house.

The hall where the King received
visitors was a long, high room with a floor of black and white
stone framing a mosaic of a god with a leopard. This had been badly
scarred and broken by the dragging of heavy furniture and the
constant passing of booted feet. One side of the room was open to
the colonnade, and here in winter a fire was kindled on the bare
floor, within a loose frame of stones. The floor and pillars near
it were blackened with the smoke. At the far end of the room stood
the dais with my grandfather's big chair, and beside it the smaller
one for his Queen.

He was sitting there now, with Camlach
standing on his right, and his wife, Olwen, seated at his left. She
was his third wife, and younger than my mother, a dark, silent,
rather stupid girl with a skin like new milk and braids down to her
knees, who could sing like a bird, and do fine needlework, but very
little else. My mother, I think, both liked and despised her. At
any rate, against all expectation, they got along tolerably well
together, and I had heard Moravik say that life for my mother had
been a great deal easier since the King's second wife, Gwynneth,
had died a year ago, and within the month Olwen had taken her place
in the King's bed. Even if Olwen had cuffed me and sneered at me as
Gwynneth did I should have liked her for her music, but she was
always kind to me in her vague, placid way, and when the King was
out of the way had taught me my notes, and even let me use her harp
till I could play after a fashion. I had a feeling for it, she
said, but we both knew what the King would say to such folly, so
her kindness was secret, even from my mother.

She did not notice me now. Nobody did,
except my cousin Dinias, who stood by Olwen's chair on the dais.
Dinias was a bastard of my grandfather's by a slave-woman. He was a
big boy of seven, with his father's red hair and high temper; he
was strong for his age and quite fearless, and had enjoyed the
King's favor since the day he had, at the age of five, stolen a
ride on one of his father's horses, a wild brown colt that had
bolted with him through the town and only got rid of him when he
rode it straight at a breast-high bank. His father had thrashed him
with his own hands, and afterwards given him a dagger with a gilded
hilt. Dinias claimed the title of Prince -- at any rate among the
rest of the children -- from then on, and treated his
fellow-bastard, myself, with the utmost contempt. He stared at me
now as expressionless as a stone, but his left hand -- the one away
from his father -- made a rude sign, and then chopped silently,
expressively, downwards.

I had paused in the doorway, and
behind me my nurse's hand twitched my tunic into place and then
gave me a push between the shoulder-blades. "Go on now. Straighten
your back. He won't eat you." As if to give the lie to this, I
heard the click of charms and the start of a muttered
prayer.

The room was full of people. Many of
them I knew, but there were strangers there who must be the party I
had seen ride in. Their leader sat near the King's right,
surrounded by his own men. He was the big dark man I had seen on
the bridge, full-bearded, with a fierce beak of a nose and thick
limbs shrouded in a scarlet cloak. On the King's other side, but
standing below the dais, was my mother, with two of her women. I
loved to see her as she was now, dressed like a princess, her long
robe of creamy wool hanging straight to the floor as if carved of
new wood. Her hair was unbraided, and fell down her back like rain.
She had a blue mantle with a copper clasp. Her face was colorless,
and very still.

I was so busy with my own fears -- the
gesture from Dinias, the averted face and downcast eyes of my
mother, the silence of the people, and the empty middle of the
floor over which I must walk -- that I had not even looked at my
grandfather. I had taken a step forward, still unnoticed, when
suddenly, with a crash like a horse kicking, he slammed both hands
down on the wooden arms of his chair, and thrust himself to his
feet so violently that the heavy chair went back a pace, its feet
scoring the oak planks of the platform.

"By the light!" His face was mottled
scarlet, and the reddish brows jutted in knots of flesh above his
furious little blue eyes. He glared down at my mother, and drew a
breath to speak that could be heard clear to the door where I had
paused, afraid. Then the bearded man, who had risen with him, said
something in some accent I didn't catch, and at the same moment
Camlach touched his arm, whispering. The King paused, then said
thickly, "As you will. Later. Get them out of here." Then clearly,
to my mother: "This is not the end of it, Niniane, I promise you.
Six years. It is enough, by God! Come, my lord."

He swept his cloak up over one arm,
jerked his head to his son, and, stepping down from the dais, took
the bearded man by the arm, and strode with him towards the door.
After him, meek as milk, trailed his wife Olwen with her women, and
after her Dinias, smiling. My mother never moved. The King went by
her without a word or a look, and the crowd parted between him and
the door like a stubble-field under the share.

It left me standing alone, rooted and
staring, three paces in from the door. As the King bore down on me
I came to myself and turned to escape into the anteroom, but not
quickly enough.

He stopped abruptly, releasing
Gorlan's arm, and swung round on me. The blue cloak swirled, and a
corner of the cloth caught my eye and brought the tears to it. I
blinked up at him. Gorlan had paused beside him. He was younger
than my uncle Dyved had been. He was angry, too, but hiding it, and
the anger was not for me. He looked surprised when the King
stopped, and said: "Who's this?"

"Her son, that your grace would have
given a name to," said my grandfather, and the gold flashed on his
armlet as he swung his big hand up and knocked me flat to the floor
as easily as a boy would flatten a fly. Then the blue cloak swept
by me, and the King's booted feet, and Gorlan's after him with
barely a pause. Olwen said something in her pretty voice and
stooped over me, but the King called to her, angrily, and her hand
withdrew and she hurried after him with the rest.

I picked myself up from the floor and
looked round for Moravik, but she was not there. She had gone
straight to my mother, and had not even seen. I began to push my
way towards them through the hubbub of the hall, but before I could
reach my mother the women, in a tight and silent group round her,
left the hall by the other door. None of them looked
back.

Someone spoke to me, but I did not
answer. I ran out through the colonnade, across the main court, and
out again into the quiet sunlight of the orchard.

My uncle found me on Moravik's
terrace.

I was lying on my belly on the hot
flagstones, watching a lizard. Of all that day, this is my most
vivid recollection; the lizard, flat on the hot stone within a foot
of my face, its body still as green bronze but for the pulsing
throat. It had small dark eyes, no brighter than slate, and the
inside of its mouth was the color of melons. It had a long, sharp
tongue, which flicked out quick as a whip, and its feet made a tiny
rustling noise on the stones as it ran across my finger and
vanished down a crack in the flags.

I turned my head. My uncle Camlach was
coming down through the orchard.

He mounted the three shallow steps to
the terrace, soft-footed in his elegant laced sandals, and stood
looking down. I looked away. The moss between the stones had tiny
white flowers no bigger than the lizard's eyes, each one perfect as
a carved cup. To this day I remember the design on them as well as
if I had carved it myself.

"Let me see," he said.

I didn't move. He crossed to the stone
bench and sat down facing me, knees apart, clasped hands between
them.

"Look at me, Merlin."

I obeyed him. He studied me in silence
for a while.

"I'm always being told that you will
not play rough games, that you run away from Dinias, that you will
never make a soldier or even a man. Yet when the King strikes you
down with a blow which would have sent one of his deerhounds
yelping to kennel, you make no sound and shed no tear."

I said nothing.

"I think perhaps you are not quite
what they deem you, Merlin." Still nothing. "Do you know why Gorlan
came today?" I thought it better to lie. "No."

"He came to ask for your mother's
hand. If she had consented you would have gone with him to
Brittany." I touched one of the moss-cups with a forefinger. It
crumbled like a puff-ball and vanished.

Experimentally, I touched another.
Camlach said, more sharply than he usually spoke to me: "Are you
listening?"

"Yes. But if she's refused him it will
hardly matter." I looked up.

"Will it?"

"You mean you don't want to go? I
would have thought..." He knitted the fair brows so like my
grandfather's. "You would be treated honorably, and be a
prince..."

"I am a prince now. As much a prince
as I can ever be."

"What do you mean by that?"

"If she has refused him," I said, "he
cannot be my father. I thought he was. I thought that was why he
had come."

"What made you think so?"

"I don't know. It seemed -- " I
stopped. I could not explain to Camlach about the flash of light in
which Gorlan's name had come to me. "I just thought he must
be."

"Only because you have been waiting
for him all this time." His voice was calm. "Such waiting is
foolish, Merlin. It's time you faced the truth. Your father is
dead." I put my hand down on the tuft of moss, crushing it. I
watched the flesh of the fingers whiten with the pressure. "She
told you that?"

"No." He lifted his shoulders. "But
had he been still alive he would have been here long since. You
must know that." I was silent. "And if he is not dead," pursued my
uncle, watching me, "and still has never come, it can surely not be
a matter for great grief on anyone's part?"

"No, except that however base he may
be, it might have saved my mother something. And me." As I moved my
hand, the moss slowly unfurled again, as if growing. But the tiny
flowers had gone. My uncle nodded. "She would have been wiser,
perhaps, to have accepted Gorlan, or some other prince."

"What will happen to us?" I asked.
"Your mother wants to go into St. Peter's. And you -- you are quick
and clever, and I am told you can read a little. You could be a
priest."

"No!"

His brows came down again over the
thin-bridged nose. "It's a good enough life. You're not warrior
stock, that's certain. Why not take a life that will suit you, and
where you'd be safe?"

"I don't need to be a warrior to want
to stay free! To be shut up in a place like St. Peter's -- that's
not the way -- " I broke off. I had spoken hotly, but found the
words failing me. I could not explain something I did not know
myself. I looked up eagerly: "I'll stay with you. If you cannot use
me I -- I'll run away to serve some other prince. But I would
rather stay with you."

"Well, it's early yet to speak of
things like that. You're very young." He got to his feet. "Does
your face hurt you?"

"No."

"You should have it seen to. Come with
me now."

He put out a hand, and I went with
him. He led me up through the orchard, then in through the arch
that led to my grandfather's private garden. I hung back against
his hand. "I'm not allowed in there."

"Surely, with me? Your grandfather's
with his guests, he'll not see you. Come along. I've got something
better for you than your windfall apples. They've been gathering
the apricots, and I saved the best aside out of the baskets as I
came down."

He trod forward, with that graceful
cat's stride of his, through the bergamot and lavender, to where
the apricot and peach trees stood crucified against the high wall
in the sun. The place smelled drowsy with herbs and fruit, and the
doves were crooning from the dove-house. At my feet a ripe apricot
lay, velvet in the sun. I pushed it with my toe until it rolled
over, and there in the back of it was the great rotten hole, with
wasps crawling. A shadow fell over it. My uncle stood above me,
with an apricot in each hand.