Legacy: Arthurian Saga (70 page)

I found the men's vigilance
interesting, and would have liked to know more of the state of
affairs in the north, but that would have to wait. To have asked
questions here would have attracted attention I did not want. No
doubt I would find out what I wished to know from the Queen
herself.

"Did you see anyone you knew?" I asked
Ralf, as we headed over the moors at a brisk canter away from the
gate of the camp.

"None. Did you?"

"I'd met the officer before, a few
years ago. His name is Priscus. But he gave no sign of recognizing
me."

"I wouldn't have known you myself,"
said Ralf. "And it isn't just the beard. It's the way you walk,
your voice, everything. It's like that night at Tintagel, when you
were disguised as the Duke's captain. I'd known him all my life,
and I'd have sworn you were he. It's no wonder folks are talking
about magic. I thought it was magic myself."

"This is easier," I said. "If you
carry a trade or a skill with you men think about that, instead of
looking at you too closely."

Indeed, I had troubled very little
with disguise. I had bought a new riding cloak, brown, with a hood
which could be pulled about my face, and I spoke Celtic with the
accent of Brittany. This is a tongue close to the Cornish one, and
would be understood where we were going. This, with the beard, and
my humble tradesman's bearing, should keep any but my intimates
from knowing me. Nothing would part me from the brooch my father
had given me, with its royal cipher of the Red Dragon on gold, but
I wore it clipped inside the breast of my tunic, and had threatened
Ralf with every face in the Nine Books of Magic if he called me "my
lord" even in private.

We reached Camelford towards evening.
The inn was a small squat building of daubed stone built where the
coast road ran down into the ford. It was at the top of the bank,
just clear of flood level. Ralf and I, approaching by the country
track along the river, came on it from the rear. It seemed a
pleasant place, and clean. Someone had given the stones a wash of
red ochre, the color of the rich earth thereabouts, and fat poultry
picked about among the ricks at the edge of a swept yard. A chained
dog dozed in the shade of a mulberry tree heavy with fruit. There
was a tidy stack of firewood against the byre, and the midden was
fully twenty feet from the back door.

As luck would have it, the innkeeper's
wife was out at the back with a maidservant, taking in bedding
which had been spread over the bushes in the sun. As we approached
the dog flew out, barking, at the length of his chain. The woman
straightened, shading her eyes against the light, and
staring.

She was a young woman, broadly built
and lively looking, with a fresh, high color and prominent
light-blue eyes. Her bad teeth and plump figure gave away a rash
passion for sweetmeats, and the lively blue eyes spoke even more
clearly of other pleasures. They ran now over Ralf, who rode ahead
of me, appraised him as likely, but young for it; then, more
hopefully, over me, to dismiss me finally as less likely, and
probably too poor to pay my shot anyway. Then, as her gaze returned
to Ralf, I saw her recognize him. She stiffened, looking quickly
back at me. Her mouth fell open, and I thought for an anxious
moment that she was going to curtsy, but then she had command of
herself. A word sent the maid packing indoors with an armful of
bedding, a shrill bidding to the dog drove him back, ears down and
growling, into the mulberry shade, then she was greeting us,
smiling widely, eyes curious and excited.

"You'll be the eye doctor,
likely?"

We drew our horses to a halt in the
dust of the yard. "Indeed, mistress. My name is Emrys, and this is
my servant Ban."

"We've been expecting you. Your beds
is bespoke." Then under her breath as she came close to my horse's
shoulder: "You be very welcome, my lord, and Ralf, too. I declare
he do look a handspan taller than when I seen him last. Will you be
pleased to come in?"

I dismounted and handed the reins to
Ralf. "Thank you. It's good to be here; we're both weary. Ralf will
look after the horses himself. Now before we go in, Maeve, give me
the news from Tintagel. Is all well with the Queen?"

"Yes, indeed, sir, praise be to all
the saints and fairies. You need have no worries there,
surely."

"And the King? He's still at
Tintagel?"

"Aye, my lord, but the word goes that
he'll ride out any day now. You'll not have long to bide. You're as
safe here as anywhere in Cornwall. We'll have good enough warning
of troops moving, and you can hear them on this road a mile off.
And never worry about Caw -- that's my husband; he's a Duke's man,
sure enough, but he'll do nothing to harm my lady, and besides, he
always does as I tell him. Leastways, not always. There's some
things he don't do near often enough for my liking." This with a
burst of cheery laughter. I saw Ralf grinning as he led the horses
away, then Maeve, talking loudly about beds and supper-time, and
the sore eyes of her youngest which could do with looking at, led
me through the back door of the inn.

When I saw her husband later that
evening I knew that I need have no fears for his discretion. He was
a dry stick of a man, and silent as an oyster. He came in as we
were sitting down to supper, stared at Ralf, nodded at me, then
went about his business of serving wine without a word spoken. His
wife treated him and all comers -- with the same rough, frank
kindliness, and saw to it without fuss that we were well served and
comfortably housed. It was as good a house of its kind as I have
ever been in, and the food was excellent.

Understandably, the inn was always
busy, but there was little danger of our being recognized. My
character as a traveling healer was not only my pass to people's
incurious acceptance; it gave Ralf and me the excuse to be abroad
in the countryside. Each day early we would take food and wine with
us, and make our way up by one of the deep, densely wooded glens
that fed the Camel valley, to the windy upland that lay between
Camelford and the sea. Ralf knew all the ways. We would separate,
more often than not, and each choose some hidden point of vantage
from which he could watch the two roads which Uther and his men
might take out of Tintagel. He might turn north-east along the
coast for Dimilioc and the camp near Hercules Point, or -- if he
was making straight for Winchester or the trouble centers along the
Saxon Shore -- he would follow the valley tracks through Camelford
and from there climb south-east to the military road which ran
along the spine of Dumnonia. Here on the wind-swept heights the
forest thins, and there are great tracts of broken moorland
treacherous with bog and watched over by strange stony hills. The
old Roman road, crumbling fast in that wild country, but still
service-runs straight through Isca, into the kinder lands behind
Ambrosius' Wall. It was my guess that this latter was the way that
Uther would take, and I wanted to see who rode with him. Ralf and I
gave it out that I was searching for plants for my medicines, and
indeed I came back each evening to my meeting-place with him with a
pouch full of roots and berries which did not grow at home, and
which I was glad to have. Luckily the weather continued fine, and
no one wondered to see us ride abroad. They were too glad to have a
doctor staying there who, each evening, would treat any who came to
him, and ask no more than they could afford to pay.

So the days went by, serene and still,
while we waited for the King to move, and the Queen to send
word.

It was a week before he rode out. He
went the way I had expected, and I was there watching.

There is a place where the track from
Tintagel to Camelford runs straight for some quarter of a mile
along the foot of a steeply wooded bank. For the most part the wood
is too steep and thickly grown to penetrate, but there were places
at the wood's edge open to the sun, stony banks deep in ferns and
drifting thistledown, where brambles and bracken grew in thickets
over the rocks. The blackthorn bushes were high, and glinting with
fruit. Some of the little sloe-plums were still greenish, but most
were ready; black bloomed over pale blue with ripeness. There is an
extract one can make of the fruit which is sovereign for a flux of
the bowels: one of Maeve's children had been suffering in this way,
and I had promised a draught that night. It would need no more than
a handful, but the fruit was ripe to perfection, and so tempting
that I went on gathering. If the berries are crushed and added in a
certain way to juniper-wine they make a good drink, rich,
astringent and powerful. I had told Maeve of it, and she wanted to
try it.

My bag was almost full when I heard,
like a soft thunder in the distance, horses coming steadily along
the track below me. I withdrew quickly into the edge of the wood,
and watched from hiding. Soon the head of the column came in sight;
then the long train of dust, filled with the beat of trotting
hoofs, the clash of mail, the colored glint of pennants, rolled
past along the foot of the slope. A thousand, perhaps more I stood
stone-still in the shadow of the trees, and watched them go
by.

A horse's length to the front the King
rode, and behind him, on his left hand, his standard-bearer carried
the Red Dragon. Other colors showed through the dust, but there was
no wind to move the banners, and though I strained my eyes the
length of the column, I could not swear to most that I saw. Nor did
I glimpse the one I was watching for, though it might well have
been there. I waited till the last horseman disappeared at a smart
trot round a bend in the road, then I made my way to the place
where I had arranged to meet Ralf.

He met me halfway, panting. "Did you
see them?"

"Yes. Where were you? I sent you to
watch the other road."

"I was watching. There was nothing
stirring there, nothing at all. I was on my way back here when I
heard them, so I ran. I almost missed them -- only saw the tail
end. It was the King, wasn't it?"

"It was. Ralf, could you pick out the
devices? Did you see any that you knew?"

"I saw Brychan, and Cynfelin, but no
others from Dyfnaint that I recognized. The men from Garlot were
there, and Cernyw, too, I think, and others I thought I knew, but
there was too much dust to make sure. They were round that bend
before I could get a good sight of them."

"Was Cador there?"

"My lord, I'm sorry, I didn't
see."

"No matter. If the others were there
from Cornwall, you may be sure he would be. No doubt they'll know
at the inn. And had you forgotten that you were not to call me 'my
lord,' even when we were alone?"

"I'm sorry...Emrys." It was a measure
of our new, easier relationship that he should add, with a
suspicious meekness: "And had you forgotten that my name is
Ban?"

Then, laughing as he dodged my cuff at
his head: "Do you have to call me after the halfwit?"

"It's the first name that came into my
head. It's a king's name too, the King of Benoic, so you can take
your choice which was your sponsor."

"Benoic? Where's that?"

"In the north. Come now, we'll get
back to the inn. I doubt if the Queen will send before tomorrow,
but I've a draught to make tonight, and it's a decoction that takes
time. Here, carry these."

I was right; the messenger came next
morning. Ralf had gone out down the road' to watch for him, and the
two of them came back together, with the news that I was to ride to
Tintagel immediately for my audience with the Queen.

I had not confessed it to Ralf, nor
even hardly admitted it to myself, but I was apprehensive about the
coming interview with Ygraine. On that night at Tintagel when the
child was conceived I had been certain, in every way a seer can be
certain, that the boy who was to be born would be given to me to
foster, and that I should be the guardian of a great King. Uther
himself, in his bitterness and anger over Gorlois' death, had sworn
to reject the "bastard" he had begotten, and from Marcia's letter I
knew he was still of the same mind. But in the six long months
since that March night I had had no direct message from Ygraine,
and no means of knowing whether she would obey her husband, or
whether as the time drew near she would find it impossible to face
separation from her child. I had gone over in my mind a hundred
times all the arguments I might bring to bear, remembering half
incredulously the sureness with which I had spoken to her before,
and to the King. Indeed my god had been with me then. And in truth,
and how bitterly, was he gone from me now. There were even times
when, lying wakeful in the night, I saw my sure visions in the past
as chances, illusions, dreams fed by desire. I remembered the
King's bitter words to me. "I see now what your magic is, this
'power' you talk of. It is nothing but human trickery, an attempt
at statecraft which my brother taught you to like and to play for,
and to believe was your mystery. You use even God to gain your
ends. 'It is God who tells me to do these things, it is God who
exacts the price, it is God who sees that others should pay...' For
what, Merlin? For your ambition? And who is it pays this debt to
God for carrying out your plans? Not you. The men who play your
game for you, and pay the price. But you pay nothing." When I
listened to such words as these, heard clearly in the nights when
nothing else spoke to me, I wondered if I had read my vision of the
future aright, or if everything I had done and dreamed of had been
a mockery. Then, thinking of those who had paid with death for my
dream, I would wonder if that death had not been kinder than this
desert of self-doubt where I lay fixed, waiting in vain for even
the smallest of my gods to speak to me. Oh, yes, I paid. Every
night of those nine long months I paid.