Legacy: Arthurian Saga (58 page)

I rode up close to the King and set my
mouth to his ear. "The castle's barely a mile from here. We ride
down to the shore now. Ralf will be there to show us in. I'll lead
on?"

He nodded. Even in the ragged, flying
dark I thought I saw the gleam of his eyes. I added: "And don't
look like that, or they'll never think you're Gorlois, with years
of married life behind you."

I heard him laugh, and then I wheeled
my horse and led the way carefully down the rabbit-ridden slope of
scrub and scree into the head of the narrow valley which leads down
towards the shore.

This valley is little more than a
gully carrying a small stream to the sea. At its widest the stream
is not more than three paces broad, and so shallow that a horse can
ford it anywhere. At the foot of the valley the water drops over a
low cliff straight to a beach of slaty shingle. We rode in single
file down the track, with the stream running deep down on the left,
and to our right a high bank covered with bushes. Since the wind
was from the south-west and the valley was deep and running almost
north, we were sheltered from the gale, but at the top of the bank
the bushes were screaming in the wind, and twigs and even small
boughs hurtled through the air and across our path. Even without
this and the steepness of the stony path and the darkness, it was
not easy riding; the horses, what with the storm and some tension
which must have been generated by the three of us -- Cadal was as
solid as a rock, but then he was not going into the castle -- were
wild and white-eyed with nerves. When, a quarter of a mile from the
sea, we turned down to the stream and set the beasts to cross it,
mine, in the lead, flattened its ears and balked, and when I had
lashed it across and into a plunging canter up the narrow track,
and a man's figure detached itself from the shadows ahead beside
the path, the horse stopped dead and climbed straight up into the
air till I felt sure it would go crashing over backwards, and me
with it.

The shadow darted forward and seized
the bridle, dragging the horse down. The beast stood, sweating and
shaking.

"Brithael," I said. "Is all
well?"

I heard him exclaim, and he took a
pace, pressing closer to the horse's shoulder, peering upwards in
the dark. Behind me Uther's grey hoisted itself up the track and
thudded to a halt. The man at my horse's shoulder said,
uncertainly: "My lord Gorlois...? We did not look for you tonight.
Is there news, then?"

It was Ralf's voice. I said in my own:
"So we'll pass, at least in the dark?" I heard his breath go in.
"Yes, my lord...For the moment I thought it was indeed
Brithael.

And then the grey horse...Is that the
King?"

"For tonight," I said, "it is the Duke
of Cornwall. Is all well?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then lead the way. There is not much
time."

He gripped my horse's bridle above the
bit and led him on, for which I was grateful, as the path was
dangerous, narrow and slippery and twisting along the steep bank
between the rustling bushes; not a path I would have wished to ride
even in daylight on a strange and frightened horse. The others
followed, Cadal's mount and Ulfin's plodding stolidly along, and
close behind me the grey stallion snorting at every bush and trying
to break his rider's grip, but Uther could have ridden Pegasus
himself and foundered him before his own wrists even
ached.

Here my horse shied at something I
could not see, stumbled, and would have pitched me down the bank
but for Ralf at its head. I swore at it, then asked Ralf: "How far
now?"

"About two hundred paces to the shore,
sir, and we leave the horses there. We climb the promontory on
foot."

"By all the gods of storm, I'll be
glad to get under cover. Did you have any trouble?"

"None, sir." He had to raise his voice
to make me hear, but in that turmoil there was no fear of being
heard more than three paces off. "My lady told Felix herself --
that's the porter -- that she had asked the Duke to ride back as
soon as his troops were disposed at Dimilioc. Of course the word's
gone round that she's pregnant, so it's natural enough she'd want
him back, even with the King's armies so close. She told Felix the
Duke would come by the secret gate in case the King had spies
posted already. He wasn't to tell the garrison, she said, because
they might be alarmed at his leaving Dimilioc and the troops there,
but the King couldn't possibly be in Cornwall for another day at
soonest...Felix doesn't suspect a thing. Why should he?"

"The porter is alone at the
gate?"

"Yes, but there are two guards in the
guard-room."

He had told us already what lay inside
the postern. This was a small gate set low in the outer castle
wall, and just inside it a long flight of steps ran up to the
right, hugging the wall. Halfway up was a wide landing, with a
guardroom to the side. Beyond that the stairs went up again, and at
the top was the private door leading through into the
apartments.

"Do the guards know?" I
asked.

He shook his head. "My lord, we didn't
dare. All the men left with the Lady Ygraine were hand-picked by
the Duke."

"Are the stairs well
lighted?"

"A torch. I saw to it that it will be
mostly smoke."

I looked over my shoulder to where the
grey horse came ghostly behind me through the dark. Ralf had had to
raise his voice to make me hear above the wind which screamed
across the top of the valley, and I would have thought that the
King would be waiting to know what passed between us. But he was
silent, as he had been since the beginning of the ride. It seemed
he was indeed content to trust the time. Or to trust me.

I turned back to Ralf, leaning down
over my horse's shoulder. "Is there a password?"

"Yes, my lord. It is pilgrim. And the
lady has sent a ring for the King to wear. It is one the Duke wears
sometimes. Here's the end of the path, can you see? It's quite a
drop to the beach." He checked, steadying my horse, then the beast
plunged down and its hoofs grated on shingle. "We leave the horses
here, my lord."

I dismounted thankfully. As far as I
could see, we were in a small cove sheltered from the wind by a
mighty headland close to our left, but the seas, tearing past the
end of this headland and curving round to break among the offshore
rocks, were huge, and came lashing down on the shingle in torrents
of white with a noise like armies clashing together in anger. Away
to the right I saw another high headland, and between the two this
roaring stretch of white water broken by the teeth of black rocks.
The stream behind us fell seawards over its low cliff in two long
cascades which blew in the wind like ropes of hair. Beyond these
swinging waterfalls, and in below the overhanging wall of the main
cliff, there was shelter for the horses.

Ralf was pointing to the great
headland on our left. "The path is up there. Tell the King to come
behind me and to follow closely. One foot wrong tonight, and before
you could cry help you'd be out with the tide as far as the western
stars."

The grey thudded down beside us and
the King swung himself out of the saddle. I heard him laugh, that
same sharp, exultant sound. Even had there been no prize at the end
of the night's trail, he would have been the same. Danger was drink
and dreams alike to Uther.

The other two came up with us and
dismounted, and Cadal took the reins. Uther came to my shoulder,
looking at the cruel race of water. "Do we swim for it
now?"

"It may come to that, God knows. It
looks to me as if the waves are up to the castle wall."

He stood quite still, oblivious of the
buffeting of wind and rain, with his head lifted, staring up at the
headland. High against the stormy dark, a light burned.

I touched his arm. "Listen. The
situation is what we expected. There is a porter, Felix, and two
men-at-arms in the guard-room. There should be very little light.
You know the way in. It will be enough, as we go in, if you grunt
your thanks to Felix and go quickly up the stair. Marcia, the old
woman, will meet you at the door of Ygraine's apartments and lead
you in. You can leave the rest to us. If there is any trouble, then
there are three of us to three of them, and on a night like this
there'll be no sound heard. I shall come an hour before dawn and
send Marcia in for you. Now we shall not be able to speak again.
Follow Ralf closely, the path is very dangerous. He has a ring for
you and the password. Go now."

He turned without a word and trod
across the streaming shingle to where the boy waited. I found Cadal
beside me, with the reins of the four horses gathered in his fist.
His face, like my own, was streaming with wet, his cloak billowing
round him like a storm cloud.

I said: "You heard me. An hour before
dawn."

He, too, was looking up at the crag
where high above us the castle towered. In a moment of flying light
through the torn cloud I saw the castle walls, growing out of the
rock. Below them fell the cliff, almost vertical, to the roaring
waves. Between the promontory and the mainland, joining the castle
to the mainland cliff, ran a natural ridge of rock, its sheer side
polished flat as a sword-blade by the sea. From the beach where we
stood, there seemed to be no way out but the valley; not mainland
fortress, nor causeway, nor castle rock, could be climbed. It was
no wonder they left no sentries here. And the path to the secret
gate could be held by one man against an army.

Cadal was saying: "I'll get the horses
in there, under the overhang, in what shelter there is. And for my
sake, if not for yon lovesick gentleman's, be on time. If they as
much as suspicion up yonder that there's something amiss, it's rats
in a trap for the lot of us. They can shut that bloody little
valley as sharp as they can block the causeway, you know that? And
I wouldn't just fancy swimming out the other way,
myself."

"Nor I. Content yourself, Cadal, I
know what I'm about."

"I believe you. There's something
about you tonight...The way you spoke just now to the King, not
thinking, shorter than you'd speak to a servant. And he said never
a word, but did as he was bid. Yes, I'd say you know what you're
about. Which is just as well, master Merlin, because otherwise, you
realize, you're risking the life of the King of Britain for a
night's lust?"

I did something which I had never done
before; which I do not commonly do. I put a hand out and laid it
over Cadal's where it held the reins. The horses were quiet now,
wet and unhappy, huddling with their rumps to the wind and their
heads drooping.

I said: "If Uther gets into the place
tonight and lies with her, then before God, Cadal, it will not
matter as much as the worth of a drop of that sea-foam there if he
is murdered in the bed. I tell you, a King will come out of this
night's work whose name will be a shield and buckler to men until
this fair land, from sea to sea, is smashed down into the sea that
holds it, and men leave earth to live among the stars. Do you think
Uther is a King, Cadal? He's but a regent for him who went before
and for him who comes after, the past and future King. And tonight
he is even less than that: he is a tool, and she a vessel, and
I...I am a spirit, a word, a thing of air and darkness, and I can
no more help what I am doing than a reed can help the wind of God
blowing through it. You and I, Cadal, are as helpless as dead
leaves in the waters of that bay." I dropped my hand from his. "An
hour before dawn."

"Till then, my lord."

I left him then, and, with Ulfin
following, went after Ralf and the King across the shingle to the
foot of the black cliff.

7

I do not think that now, even in
daylight, I could find the path again without a guide, let alone
climb it. Ralf went first, with the King's hand on his shoulder,
and in my turn I held a fold of Uther's mantle, and Ulfin of mine.
Mercifully, close in as we were to the face of the castle rock, we
were protected from the wind: exposed, the climb would have been
impossible; we would have been plucked off the cliff like feathers.
But we were not protected from the sea. The waves must have been
rushing up forty feet, and the master waves, the great sevenths,
came roaring up like towers and drenched us with salt fully sixty
feet above the beach.

One good thing the savage boiling of
the sea did for us, its whiteness cast upwards again what light
came from the sky. At last we saw, above our heads, the roots of
the castle walls where they sprang from the rock. Even in dry
weather the walls would have been unscalable, and tonight they were
streaming with wet. I could see no door, nothing breaking the
smooth streaming walls of slate. Ralf did not pause, but led us on
under them towards a seaward corner of the cliff. There he halted
for a moment, and I saw him move his arm in a gesture that meant
"Beware." He went carefully round the corner and out of sight. I
felt Uther stagger as he reached the corner himself and met the
force of the wind. He checked for a moment and then went on,
clamped tight to the cliff's face. Ulfin and I followed. For a few
more hideous yards we fought our way along, faces in to the
soaking, slimy cliff, then a jutting buttress gave us shelter, and
we were stumbling suddenly on a treacherous slope cushiony with
sea-pink, and there ahead of us, recessed deep in the rock below
the castle wall, and hidden from the ramparts above by the sharp
overhang, was Tintagel's emergency door.