Legacy: Arthurian Saga (44 page)

When I had finished she was tired, and
grey stood under her eyes so sharply drawn that I got up to go. But
she looked contented, and said, as if it was the sum and finish of
the story, as I suppose it was, for her: "He has acknowledged
you."

"Yes. They call me Merlin
Ambrosius."

She was silent a little, smiling to
herself. I crossed to the window and leaned my elbows on the sill,
looking out. The sun was warm. Cadal nodded on his bench, half
asleep. From across the yard a movement caught my eye; in a
shadowed doorway the girl was standing, watching my mother's door
as if waiting for me to come out. She had put back her hood, and
even in the shadows I could see the gold of her hair and a young
face lovely as a flower. Then she saw me watching her. For perhaps
two seconds our eyes met and held. I knew then why the ancients
armed the cruelest god with arrows; I felt the shock of it right
through my body. Then she had gone, shrinking close-hooded back
into the shadow, and behind me my mother was saying: "And now? What
now?"

I turned my back on the sunlight. "I
go to join him. But not until you are better. When I go I want to
take news of you."

She looked anxious. "You must not stay
here. Maridunum is not safe for you."

"I think it is. Since the news came in
of the landing, the place has emptied itself of Vortigern's men. We
had to take to the hill-tracks on our way south; the road was alive
with men riding to join him."

"That's true, but --"

"And I shan't go about, I promise you.
I was lucky last night, I ran into Dinias as soon as I set foot in
town. He gave me a room at home."

"Dinias?"

I laughed at her astonishment. "Dinias
feels he owes me something, never mind what, but we agreed well
enough last night." I told her what mission I had sent him on, and
she nodded.

"He" -- and I knew she did not mean
Dinias -- "will need every man who can hold a sword." She knitted
her brows. "They say Hengist has three hundred thousand men. Will
he" -- and again she was not referring to Hengist -- "be able to
withstand Vortigern, and after him Hengist and the
Saxons?"

I suppose I was still thinking of last
night's vigil. I said, without pausing to consider how it would
sound: "I have said so, so it must be true."

A movement from the bed brought my
eyes down to her. She was crossing herself, her eyes at once
startled and severe, and through it all afraid. "Merlin -- " but on
the word a cough shook her, so that when she managed to speak again
it was only a harsh whisper: "Beware of arrogance. Even if God has
given you power --"

I laid a hand on her wrist, stopping
her. "You mistake me, madam. I put it badly. I only meant that the
god had said it through me, and because he had said it, it must be
true. Ambrosius must win, it is in the stars."

She nodded, and I saw the relief wash
through her and slacken her, body and mind, like an exhausted
child.

I said gently: "Don't be afraid for
me, Mother. Whatever god uses me, I am content to be his voice and
instrument. I go where he sends me. And when he has finished with
me, he will take me back."

"There is only one God," she
whispered.

I smiled at her. "That is what I am
beginning to think. Now, go to sleep. I will come back in the
morning."

I went to see my mother again next
morning. This time I went alone. I had sent Cadal to find
provisions in the market, Dinias' slut having vanished when he did,
leaving us to fend for ourselves in the deserted palace. I was
rewarded, for the girl was again on duty at the gate, and again led
me to my mother's room. But when I said something to her she merely
pulled the hood closer without speaking, so that again I saw no
more of her than the slender hands and feet. The cobbles were dry
today, and the puddles gone. She had washed her feet, and in the
grip of the coarse sandals they looked as fragile as blue-veined
flowers in a peasant's basket. Or so I told myself, my mind working
like a singer's, where it had no right to be working at all. The
arrow still thrummed where it had struck me, and my whole body
seemed to thrill and tighten at the sight of her.

She showed me the door again, as if I
could have forgotten it, and withdrew to wait.

My mother seemed a little better, and
had rested well, she told me. We talked for a while; she had
questions about the details of my story, and I filled them in for
her. When I got up to go I asked, as casually as I could: "The girl
who opened the gate; she is young, surely, to be here?

Who is she?"

"Her mother worked in the palace.
Keridwen. Do you remember her?"

I shook my head. "Should
I?"

"No." But when I asked her why she
smiled, she would say nothing, and in face of her amusement I dared
not ask any more.

On the third day it was the old deaf
portress; and I spent the whole interview with my mother wondering
if she had (as women will) seen straight through my carefully
casual air to what lay beneath, and passed the word that the girl
must be kept out of my way. But on the fourth day she was there,
and this time I knew before I got three steps inside the gate that
she had been hearing the stories about Dinas Brenin. She was so
eager to catch a glimpse of the magician that she let the hood fall
back a little, and in my turn I saw the wide eyes, grey-blue, full
of a sort of awed curiosity and wonder. When I smiled at her and
said something in greeting she ducked back inside the hood again,
but this time she answered. Her voice was light and small, a
child's voice, and she called me "my lord" as if she meant
it.

"What's your name?" I asked her.
"Keri, my lord." I hung back, to detain her. "How is my mother
today, Keri?" But she would not answer, just took me straight to
the inner court, and left me there. That night I lay awake again,
but no god spoke to me, not even to tell me she was not for me. The
gods do not visit you to remind you what you know
already.

By the last day of April my mother was
so much better that when I went again to see her she was in the
chair by the window, wearing a woolen robe over her shift, and
sitting full in the sun. A quince tree, pinioned to the wall
outside, was heavy with rosy cups where bees droned, and just
beside her on the sill a pair of white doves strutted and
crooned.

"You have news?" she asked, as soon as
she saw my face.

"A messenger came in today. Vortigern
is dead and the Queen with him. They say that

Hengist is coming south with a vast
force, including Vortimer's brother Pascentius and the remnant of
his army. Ambrosius is already on his way to meet them."

She sat very straight, looking past me
at the wall. There was a woman with her today, sitting on a stool
on the other side of the bed; it was one of the nuns who had
attended her at Dinas Brenin. I saw her make the sign of the cross
on her breast, but Niniane sat still and straight looking past me
at something, thinking.

"Tell me, then."

I told her all I had heard about the
affair at Doward. The woman crossed herself again, but my mother
never moved. When I had finished, her eyes came back to
me.

"And you will go now?"

"Yes. Will you give me a message for
him?"

"When I see him again," she said, "it
will be time enough."

When I took leave of her she was still
sitting staring past the winking amethysts on the wall to something
distant in place and time.

Keri was not waiting, and I lingered
for a while before I crossed the outer yard, slowly, towards the
gate. Then I saw her waiting in the deep shadow of the gateway's
arch, and quickened my step. I was turning over a host of things to
say, all equally useless to prolong what could not be prolonged,
but there was no need. She put out one of those pretty hands and
touched my sleeve, beseechingly. "My lord --"

Her hood was half back, and I saw
tears in her eyes. I said sharply: "What's the matter?" I believe
that for a wild moment I thought she wept because I was going.
"Keri, what is it?"

"I have the toothache."

I gaped at her. I must have looked as
silly as if I had just been slapped across the face.

"Here," she said, and put a hand to
her cheek. The hood fell right back. "It's been aching for days.
Please, my lord --"

I said hoarsely: "I'm not a
toothdrawer."

"But if you would just touch it
--"

"Or a magician," I started to say, but
she came close to me, and my voice strangled in my throat. She
smelled of honeysuckle. Her hair was barley-gold and her eyes grey
like bluebells before they open. Before I knew it she had taken my
hand between both her own and raised it to her cheek.

I stiffened fractionally, as if to
snatch it back, then controlled myself, and opened the palm gently
along her cheek. The wide greybell eyes were as innocent as the
sky. As she leaned towards me the neck of her gown hung forward
slackly and I could see her breasts. Her skin was smooth as water,
and her breath sweet against my cheek.

I withdrew the hand gently enough, and
stood back. "I can do nothing about it." I suppose my voice was
rough. She lowered her eyelids and stood humbly with folded hands.
Her lashes were short and thick and golden as her hair. There was a
tiny mole at the corner of her mouth.

I said: "If it's no better by morning,
have it drawn."

"It's better already, my lord. It
stopped aching as soon as you touched it." Her voice was full of
wonder, and her hand crept up to the cheek where mine had lain. The
movement was like a caress, and I felt my blood jerk with a beat
like pain. With a sudden movement she reached for my hand again and
quickly, shyly, stooped forward and pressed her mouth to it. Then
the door swung open beside me and I was out in the empty
street.

4

It seemed, from what the messenger had
told me, that Ambrosius had been right in his decision to make an
end of Vortigern before turning on the Saxons. His reduction of
Doward, and the savagery with which he did it, had their effect.
Those of the invading Saxons who had ventured furthest inland began
to withdraw northwards towards the wild debatable lands which had
always provided a beachhead for invasion. They halted north of the
Humber to fortify themselves where they could, and wait for him. At
first Hengist believed that Ambrosius had at his command little
more than the Breton invading army -- and he was ignorant of the
nature of that deadly weapon of war. He thought (it was reported)
that very few of the island British had joined Ambrosius; in any
case the Saxons had defeated the British, in their small tribal
forces, so often that they despised them as easy meat. But now as
reports reached the Saxon leader of the thousands who had flocked
to the Red Dragon, and of the success at Doward, he decided to
remain no longer fortified north of the Humber, but to march
swiftly south again to meet the British at a place of his own
choosing, where he might surprise Ambrosius and destroy his
army.

Once again, Ambrosius moved with
Caesar-speed. This was necessary, because where the Saxons had
withdrawn, they had laid the country waste.

The end came in the second week of
May, a week hot with sunshine that seemed to come from June, and
interrupted by showers left over from April -- a borrowed week,
and, for the Saxons, a debt called in by fate. Hengist, with his
preparations half complete, was caught by Ambrosius at Maesbeli,
near Conan's Fort, or Kaerconan, that men sometimes call
Conisburgh. This is a hilly place, with the fort on a crag, and a
deep ravine running by. Here the Saxons had tried to prepare an
ambush for Ambrosius' force, but Ambrosius' scouts got news of it
from a Briton they came across lurking in a hilltop cave, where he
had fled to keep his woman and two small children from the axes of
the Northmen. So Ambrosius, forewarned, increased the speed of his
march and caught up with Hengist before the ambush could be fully
laid, thus forcing him into open battle.

Hengist's attempt to lay an ambush had
turned the luck against him; Ambrosius, where he halted and
deployed his army, had the advantage of the land. His main force,
Bretons, Gauls, and the island British from the south and
southwest, waited on a gentle hill, with a level field ahead over
which they could attack unimpeded. Among these troops, medley-wise,
were other native British who had joined him, with their leaders.
Behind this main army the ground rose gently, broken only by brakes
of thorn and yellow gorse, to a long ridge which curved to the west
in a series of low rocky hills, and on the east was thickly
forested with oak. The men from Wales -- mountain men -- were
stationed mainly on the wings, the North Welsh in the oak forest
and, separated from them by the full body of Ambrosius' army, the
South Welsh on the hills to the west. These forces, lightly armed,
highly mobile and with scores to settle, were to hold themselves in
readiness as reinforcements, the swift hammer-blows which could be
directed during battle at the weakest points of the enemy's
defense. They could also be relied upon to catch and cut down any
of Hengist's Saxons who broke and fled the field.