Legacy: Arthurian Saga (73 page)

8

The weather held, so we
went easily, taking care not to tread too closely on the heels of
Uther's force; if we were caught west of the Uxella marshes -- or
indeed south of the Severn at all -- it would be only too obvious
where we had been, Uther usually
moved
fast, and there was nothing to delay him here in settled country,
so we followed cautiously, waiting until his army should be clear
of the southern end of the Severn ferry. If we were lucky with the
ferry and, once we were across the Severn, made good speed
northwards, we should be able (having apparently just come
innocently for the purpose from Maridunum) to fall in with the
troops on their way up the Welsh border, and try to have speech
with the King.

On the way south we had avoided the
main road, but had used the pack tracks which run near the coast,
winding in and out of the valleys. Now, since we dared not fall too
far behind Uther, we kept as closely as we dared to the straight
route along the ridges, but avoiding the paved road where the
posting stations might be left guarded in the army's
wake.

We were even more careful
than we had been formerly. After we had left the shelter of Maeve's
roof we sought out no more inns. Indeed, the ways we went boasted
of no inns even had we looked for them; we lodged where we could --
in woodcutters' cabins, sheep shelters, even once or twice in the
lee of a stack of bracken cut for bedding -- and blessed the mild
weather. It was wild country through
which
we went. There are high ridged stretches of moorland, where heather
grows among the granite tors, and the land is good to feed nothing
except the sheep and the wild deer; but just below the rocky spine
of the land the forest begins. On the uplands the trees grow
sparsely, raked by the wind, already in early autumn half scoured
of leaves. But lower, in every dip and valley, the forest is dense,
of trees crowded and hugely grown, impassable with undergrowth as
toughly woven as a fisherman's net. Here and there, unnoticed until
you stumble across them, are crags and bouldered screes of rock
thickly clothed with thorn and creeper, invisible and deadly as a
wolf trap. Even more dangerous are the stretches of bog, some black
and slimy, some innocent and green as a meadow, where a man on
horseback can sink from sight as easily and almost as quickly as a
spoon sinking into a bowl of gruel. There are secret ways through
these places, known to the beasts and the forest dwellers, but
mostly men shun them. At night the soft ground flickers with
marshlights and strange dancing flames which, men say, are the
souls of the wandering dead.

Ralf had known the ways in his own
country, but once we struck the low-lying marshy forests through
which the Uxella and its tributaries flow towards the Severn we had
to go more cautiously, relying on information from the people of
the forest, charcoal-burners and woodmen, and once or twice a
solitary hermit or holy man who offered us a night's shelter in
some cave or woodland shrine. Ralf seemed to enjoy the rough travel
and rougher lodging, and even the danger that seemed to lie about
us in forest and track, and the threat of the army so few miles
ahead. Both of us grew daily more unkempt and more like the roles
we had assumed. It might be said that our disguise was more
necessary here even than in Tintagel; woe betide the King's
messenger or merchant who rides off the guarded road in these
parts, but the poor are received kindly, vagrants or holy men with
nothing to steal, and Ralf and I, as poor traveling healers, met
welcome everywhere. There was nowhere we could not buy food and
shelter with a copper penny and a pot of medicine. The marsh folk
always need medicine, living as they do at the edge of the fetid
bogland, with agues and swollen joints and the fear of fever. They
build their huts right at the borders of the scummed pools, just
clear of the deep black mud at the edge, or even set them on stilts
right over the stagnant water. The huts crack and rot and fall to
pieces every year, and have to be patched each spring, but in
spring and autumn the flocks of traveling birds fly down to drink,
in summer the waters are full of fish and the forest of game, and
in winter the folk break the ice and lie in wait for the deer to
come and drink. And always the place is loud with frogs; I have
eaten these many times in Brittany, and it is true that they make a
good meal So the folk of the marshes cling to their stinking
cabins, and eat well and drink the standing water, and die of the
fever and the flux; nor do they fear the walking fires which haunt
the marsh at night, for these are the souls of men they
knew.

We were still twelve miles short of
the ferry, and it was growing dusk, when the first hint of trouble
came. The oak forests had given way to a lighter woodland of birch
and alder, the trees crowding so closely to the sides of the track
that we had to lie low on the horses' necks to avoid the whipping
branches. Though there had been no rain the ground was very soft,
and now and again our horses' hoofs splashed deep in the black
mire. Soon, somewhere near us, I smelled the marsh, and before long
through the thinning trees we could see the dull glimmer of the bog
pools reflecting the last light from the sky. My horse stumbled,
floundering, and Ralf, who was riding ahead of me, checked and put
a quick hand to my rein. Then he pointed ahead.

Ahead of us, a different light pricked
the dusk: the steady, yellow of candle or rushlight. The hut of a
marsh dweller. We rode towards it.

The dwelling was not set over the
water, but the ground was very wet, and was no doubt flooded in bad
weather, for the hut was raised on piles, and approached by a
narrow causeway of logs sawn short and jammed together across a
ten-foot moat of mud.

A dog barked. I could see a man, a
shadow against the dully lit interior of the hut, peering out at
us. I hailed him. The marsh dwellers speak a tongue of their own,
but they understand the Celtic of the Dumnonii.

"My name is Emrys. I'm a traveling
doctor, and this is my servant. We're making for the ferry at
Uxella. We came by the forest because the King's army is on the
road. We're looking for shelter, and can pay for it."

If there was one thing the poor folk
of these parts understood, it was the need for a man to keep out of
the way of troops on the march. In a few moments a bargain was
struck, the dog was hauled back into the hut and tied up, and I was
picking my way gingerly across the slippery logs, leaving Ralf to
tend the horses and tether them on the driest piece of ground he
could find.

Our host's name was Nidd; he was a
short, agile-looking fellow with black hair and a black bristle of
beard. His shoulders and arms looked immensely strong, but he
limped badly from a leg which had been broken, then set by
guesswork and left to knit crooked. His wife, who was probably
little more than thirty, was white-haired and bent double on
herself with rheumatism; she looked and moved like an old woman,
and her face was drawn into tight lines round a toothless mouth.
The hut was cramped and foul-smelling, and I would rather have
slept in the open, but the evening had turned chilly, and neither
Ralf nor I wished to spend a night out in the sodden forest. So
when we had had our fill of black bread and broth we accepted the
space of floor offered us, and prepared to lie down wrapped in our
cloaks, and take what rest we could. I had mixed a potion for the
woman, and she was already asleep, huddled against the other wall
under a pile of skins, but Nidd made no move to join her. He went
instead to the doorway, peering again into the night, as if
expecting someone. Ralf's eyes met mine, and his brows lifted; his
hand moved towards his dagger. I shook my head. I had heard the
light, quick footsteps on the causeway. The dog made no sound, but
his tail beat the floor. The curtain of rough-tanned deerhide was
pushed aside from the doorway, and a boy came running in, his mouth
one huge grin in a filthy face. He stopped short when he saw Ralf
and me, but his father said something in patois and the boy, still
eyeing us curiously, dumped the bundle of faggots he carried on the
table and undid the thong that held it together. Then, with a swift
wary look at me, he pulled from the middle of the faggots a dead
fowl, a few strips of salted pork, a bundle which he shook out to
reveal a pair of good leather trews, and a well-sharpened knife of
the kind issued to the soldiers of the King's armies.

I approached the table, holding out my
hand. The man stood watchful, but made no move, and after a moment
the boy dropped the knife into my palm. I weighed it in my hand,
considering. Then I laughed and dropped it point down, to the
table. It stuck there beside the fowl, quivering.

"You've had good hunting tonight,
haven't you? That's easier than waiting for the wild duck to flight
in at dawn. So, the King's army lies nearby? How near?"

The boy merely stared, too shy to
answer, but with the help of his father I got the information bit
by bit.

It was not reassuring. The army had
made camp barely five miles away. The boy had lurked in a tree at
the forest's edge, watching his chance to steal food, and had
overheard scraps of talk among the men who had gone in among the
trees to relieve themselves. It seemed, if the boy had rightly
understood what he had heard, that though the main body of the army
would no doubt head on its way in the morning, a troop was to be
detached and sent directly to Caerleon, with a message for the
commander there. They would obviously go by the quickest way, the
river crossing. They would certainly commandeer whatever boats were
available.

I looked at Ralf. He was already
fastening his cloak. I nodded, and turned to Nidd.

"We must go, I'm afraid. We must get
to the ferry before the King's troops, and no doubt they'll ride at
first light. We'll have to leave now. Can the boy guide
us?"

The boy would do anything, it seemed,
for the copper penny I gave him, and he knew all the ways through
the marsh. We thanked our host, left the fee and medicines we had
promised, and were soon on our way, with the boy -- whose name was
Ger -- at my horse's head.

There were stars, and a quarter moon,
but hazed over with fitful cloud. I could barely see the path, but
the boy never hesitated. He seemed able to see even in the dark
under the trees. The beasts trod softly enough on the forest floor,
but the boy made no sound at all.

It was difficult to tell, what with
the dark, the bad going and the winding track, what kind of
distance we were covering. It seemed a long time before the trees
dwindled and thinned, and the way stretched clearer ahead of us. As
the moon grew stronger, the clouds diffusing her pale light, I
could see more clearly. We were still in the marsh; water gleamed
on either hand, islanded with blackness. Underfoot mud pulled and
sucked at the horses' hoofs. Rushes swished and rustled shoulder
high. There was a noise of frogs everywhere, and now and again a
splash as something took to the water. Once, with a clap and a call
and a flash of white, a feeding bird shot off not a yard in front
of my horse's hoofs, and, had it not been for the boy's hand on the
reins, I must have been unseated and thrown into the water. After
that my horse picked his way nervously, starting even at the faint
sucking sounds from the pools where the marshlights flickered and
bubbles popped under the wisps of vapour which hung and floated
over the water. Here and there, sticking up black out of the bog,
was the stripped skeleton of a tree.

It was a strange, dead-looking
landscape, and smelling of death. From Ralf's silence, I knew that
he was afraid. But our guide, at my horse's head, plodded on
through the wandering mists and the wisps of fire that were the
souls of his fathers. The only sign he gave was when, at a fork in
the track, we passed a hollow tree, a thick trunk twice the height
of a man, with a gaping hole in the bark, and inside this a
greenish glow that, with the help of the moonlight, faintly lit a
crouching shape of eyes, mouth, and crudely carved breasts. The old
goddess of the crossways, the Nameless One, who sits staring from
her hollowed log like the owl who is her creature; and in front of
her, decaying with the greenish glow that folk call enchanter's
light, an offering of fish, laid in an oyster shell. I heard Ralf's
breath go in, and his hand flickered in a defensive gesture. The
boy Ger, without even looking aside, muttered the word under his
breath, and held straight on.

Half an hour later, from the head of a
rise of solid ground, we saw the wide, moonlit stretch of the
estuary, and smelled salt on the clean and moving air.

Down by the shore where the ferry
plied there was a red glimmer of light, the flame of the cresset on
the wharf. The road to it, clear in the moonlight, crossed the
ridge not far from us and ran straight downhill to the shore. We
drew rein, but when I turned to thank the boy I found that he had
already vanished, melting back into the darkness as silently as one
of the wandering marshlights fading. We headed our weary horses
down towards the distant glimmer.

When we reached the ferry we found
that our luck had deserted us as swiftly and as decisively as our
guide. The cresset burned on its post at the strip of shingle where
the ferry beached, but the ferry was not there. Straining my ears,
I thought I heard, above the ripple of water, the splashing of oars
some way out on the estuary. I gave a hail, but got no
reply.