Legacy: Arthurian Saga (5 page)

"I told you I'd got something better
than windfalls. Here." He handed me one. "And if they beat you for
stealing, they'll have to beat me as well." He grinned, and bit
into the fruit he held.

I stood still, with the big bright
apricot cupped in the palm of my hand. The garden was very hot, and
very still, and quiet except for the humming of insects. The fruit
glowed like gold, and smelled of sunshine and sweet juice. Its skin
felt like the fur of a golden bee. I could feel my mouth
watering.

"What is it?" asked my uncle. He
sounded edgy and impatient. The juice of his apricot was running
down his chin. "Don't stand there staring at it, boy! Eat it!
There's nothing wrong with it, is there?"

I looked up. The blue eyes, fierce as
a fox, stared down into mine. I held it out to him. "I don't want
it. It's black inside. Look, you can see right through."

He took his breath in sharply, as if
to speak. Then voices came from the other side of the wall; the
gardeners, probably, bringing the empty fruit-baskets down ready
for morning. My uncle, stooping, snatched the fruit from my hand
and threw it from him, hard against the wall. It burst in a golden
splash of flesh against the brick, and the juice ran down. A wasp,
disturbed from the tree, droned past between us. Camlach flapped at
it with a queer, abrupt gesture, and said to me in a voice that was
suddenly all venom: "Keep away from me after this, you devil's
brat. Do you hear me? Just keep away."

He dashed the back of his hand across
his mouth, and went from me in long strides towards the
house.

I stood where I was, watching the
juice of the apricot trickle down the hot wall. A wasp alighted on
it, crawled stickily, then suddenly fell, buzzing on its back to
the ground. Its body jack-knifed, the buzz rose to a whine as it
struggled, then it lay still.

I hardly saw it, because something had
swelled in my throat till I thought I would choke, and the golden
evening swam, brilliant, into tears. This was the first time in my
life that I remember weeping.

The gardeners were coming down past
the roses, with baskets on their heads. I turned and ran out of the
garden.

3

My room was empty even of the
wolfhound. I climbed on my bed and leaned my elbows on the
windowsill, and stayed there a long while alone, while outside in
the pear tree's boughs the thrush sang, and from the courtyard
beyond the shut door came the monotonous clink of the smith's
hammer and the creak of the windlass as the mule plodded round the
well.

Memory fails me here. I cannot
remember how long it was before the clatter and the buzz of voices
told me that the evening meal was being prepared. Nor can I
remember how badly I was hurt, but when Cerdic, the groom, pushed
the door open and I turned my head, he stopped dead and said: "Lord
have mercy upon us. What have you been doing? Playing in the
bull-shed?"

"I fell down."

"Oh, aye, you fell down. I wonder why
the floor's always twice as hard for you as for anyone else? Who
was it? That little sucking-boar Dinias?"

When I did not answer he came across
to the bed. He was a small man, with bowed legs and a seamed brown
face and a thatch of light-colored hair. Standing on my bed as I
was, my eyes were almost on a level with his.

"Tell you what," he said. "When you're
a mite larger I'll teach you a thing or two. You don't have to be
big to win a fight. I've a trick or two worth knowing, I can tell
you. Got to have, when you're wren-size. I tell you, I can tumble a
fellow twice my weight -- and a woman too, come to that." He
laughed, turned his head to spit, remembered where he was, and
cleared his throat instead. "Not that you'll need my tricks once
you're grown, a tall lad like you, nor with the girls neither. But
you'd best look to that face of yours if you're not to scare them
silly. Looks as if it might make a scar." He jerked his head at
Moravik's empty pallet. "Where is she?"

"She went with my mother."

"Then you'd best come with me. I'll
fix it up."

So it was that the cut on my
cheek-bone was dressed with horse-liniment, and I shared Cerdic's
supper in the stables, sitting on straw, while a brown mare nosed
round me for fodder, and my own fat slug of a pony, at the full end
of his rope, watched every mouthful we ate. Cerdic must have had
methods of his own in the kitchens, too; the barn-cakes were fresh,
there was half a chicken-leg each as well as the salt bacon, and
the beer was full-flavored and cool.

When he came back with the food I knew
from his look that he had heard it all. The whole palace must be
buzzing. But he said nothing, just handing me the food and sitting
down beside me on the straw.

"They told you?" I asked.

He nodded, chewing, then added through
a mouthful of bread and meat: "He has a heavy hand."

"He was angry because she refused to
wed Gorlan. He wants her wed because of me, but till now she has
refused to wed any man. And now, since my uncle Dyved is dead, and
Camlach is the only one left, they asked Gorlan from Less Britain.
I think my uncle Camlach persuaded my grandfather to ask him,
because he is afraid that if she marries a prince in Wales
--"

He interrupted at that, looking both
startled and scared. "Whist ye now, child! How do you know all
this? I'll be bound your elders don't tattle of these high matters
in front of you? If it's Moravik who talks when she shouldn't
--"

"No. Not Moravik. But I know it's
true."

"How in the Thunderer's name do you
know any such thing? Slaves' gossip?"

I fed the last bite of my bread to the
mare. "If you swear by heathen gods, Cerdic, it's you who'll be in
trouble, with Moravik."

"Oh, aye. That kind of trouble's easy
enough to come by. Come on, who's been talking to you?"

"Nobody. I know, that's all. I -- I
can't explain how. And when she refused Gorlan my uncle Camlach was
as angry as my grandfather. He's afraid my father will come back
and marry her, and drive him out. He doesn't admit this to my
grandfather, of course."

"Of course." He was staring, even
forgetting to chew, so that saliva dribbled from the corner of his
open mouth. He swallowed hastily. "The gods know -- God knows where
you got all this, but it could be true. Well, go on."

The brown mare was pushing at me,
snuffing sweet breath at my neck. I handed her away. "That's all.
Gorlan is angry, but they'll give him something. And my mother will
go in the end to St. Peter's. You'll see."

There was a short silence. Cerdic
swallowed his meat and threw the bone out of the door, where a
couple of the stableyard curs pounced on it and raced off in a
snarling wrangle.

"Merlin --"

"Yes?"

"You'd be wise if you said no more of
this to anyone. Not to anyone. Do you understand?"

I said nothing.

"These are matters that a child
doesn't understand. High matters. Oh, some of it's common talk, I
grant you, but this about Prince Camlach -- " He dropped a hand to
my knee, and gripped and shook it. "I tell you, he's dangerous,
that one. Leave it be, and stay out of sight. I'll tell no one,
trust me for that. But you, you must say no more. Bad enough if you
were rightwise a prince born, or even in the King's favor like that
red whelp Dinias, but for you..." He shook the knee again. "Do you
heed me, Merlin? For your skin's sake, keep silent and stay out of
their way. And tell me who told you all this."

I thought of the dark cave in the
hypocaust, and the sky remote at the top of the shaft. "No one told
me. I swear it." When he made a sound of impatience and worry I
looked straight at him and told him as much of the truth as I
dared. "I have heard things, I admit it. And sometimes people talk
over your head, not noticing you're there, or not thinking you
understand. But at other times" -- I paused -- "it's as if
something spoke to me, as if I saw things...And sometimes the stars
tell me...and there is music, and voices in the dark. Like
dreams."

His hand went up in a gesture of
protection. I thought he was crossing himself, then saw the sign
against the evil eye. He looked shamefaced at that, and dropped the
hand. "Dreams, that's what it is; you're right. You've been asleep
in some corner, likely, and they've talked across you when they
shouldn't, and you've heard things you shouldn't. I was forgetting
you're nothing but a child. When you look with those eyes -- " He
broke off, and shrugged. "But you'll promise me you'll say no more
of what you've heard?"

"All right, Cerdic. I promise you. If
you'll promise to tell me something in return."

"What's that?"

"Who my father was."

He choked over his beer, then with
deliberation wiped the foam away, set down the horn, and regarded
me with exasperation.

"Now how in middle-earth do you think
I know that?"

"I thought Moravik might have told
you."

"Does she know?" He sounded so
surprised that I knew he was telling the truth.

"When I asked her she just said there
were some things it was better not to talk about."

"She's right at that. But if you ask
me, that's her way of saying she's no wiser than the next one. And
if you do ask me, young Merlin, though you don't, that's another
thing you'd best keep clear of. If your lady mother wanted you to
know, she'd tell you. You'll find out soon enough, I
doubt."

I saw that he was making the sign
again, though this time he hid the hand. I opened my mouth to ask
if he believed the stories, but he picked up the drinking horn, and
got to his feet.

"I've had your promise.
Remember?"

"Yes."

"I've watched you. You go your own
way, and sometimes I think you're nearer to the wild things than to
men. You know she called you for the falcon?"

I nodded.

"Well, here's something for you to
think about. You'd best be forgetting falcons for the time being.
There's plenty of them around, too many, if truth be told. Have you
watched the ring-doves, Merlin?"

"The ones that drink from the fountain
with the white doves, then fly away free? Of course I have. I feed
them in winter, along with the doves."

"They used to say in my country, the
ring-dove has many enemies, because her flesh is sweet and her eggs
are good to eat. But she lives and she prospers, because she runs
away. The Lady Niniane may have called you her little falcon, but
you're not a falcon yet, young Merlin. You're only a dove. Remember
that. Live by keeping quiet, and by running away. Mark my words."
He nodded at me, and put a hand down to pull me to my
feet.

"Does the cut still hurt?"

"It stings."

"Then it's on the mend. The bruise is
naught to worry you, it'll go soon enough." It did, indeed, heal
cleanly, and left no mark. But I remember how it stung that night,
and kept me awake, so that Cerdic and Moravik kept silent in the
other corner of the room, for fear, I suppose, that it had been
from some of their mutterings that I had pieced together my
information.

After they slept I crept out, stepped
past the grinning wolfhound, and ran along to the
hypocaust.

But tonight I heard nothing to
remember, except Olwen's voice, mellow as an ousel's, singing some
song I had not heard before, about a wild goose, and a hunter with
a golden net.

4

After this, life settled back into its
peaceful rut, and I think that my grandfather must eventually have
accepted my mother's refusal to marry. Things were strained between
them for a week or so, but with Camlach home, and settling down as
if he had never left the place -- and with a good hunting season
coming up -- the King forgot his rancor, and things went back to
normal.

Except possibly for me. After the
incident in the orchard, Camlach no longer went out of his way to
favor me, nor I to follow him. But he was not unkind to me, and
once or twice defended me in some petty rough-and-tumble with the
other boys, even taking my part against Dinias, who had supplanted
me in his favor.

But I no longer needed that kind of
protection. That September day had taught me other lessons besides
Cerdic's of the ring-dove. I dealt with Dinias myself. One night,
creeping beneath his bedchamber on the way to my "cave," I chanced
to hear him and his pack-follower Brys laughing over a foray of
that afternoon when the pair of them had followed Camlach's friend
Alun to his tryst with one of the servant-girls, and had stayed
hidden, watching and listening, to the sweet end. When Dinias
waylaid me next morning I stood my ground and -- quoting a sentence
or so -- asked if he had seen Alun yet that day. He stared, went
red and then white (for Alun had a hard hand and a temper to match
it) and then sidled away, making the sign behind his back. If he
liked to think it was magic rather than simple blackmail, I let
him. After that, if the High King himself had ridden in claiming
parentage for me, none of the children would have believed him.
They left me alone.