Legacy: Arthurian Saga (77 page)

I had barely paused between the posts
of the archway when the porter was barring my way and asking my
business. I handed him my Dragon brooch, wrapped in a small pouch,
and bade him take it to his master. He came hurrying back to the
gate within minutes, and the chamberlain, puffing in his wake,
showed me straight in to Count Ector.

Ector was not much changed. He was a
man of medium height, growing now into middle age; if my father had
lived they would have been of an age now, I reckoned, which made
him something over forty. He had a brown beard going grey, and
brown skin with the blood springing healthily beneath it. His wife
was more than ten years younger; she was tall, a statuesque woman
still in her twenties, reserved and a little shy, but with
smoky-blue eyes that belied her cool manner and distant speech.
Ector had the air of a contented man.

He received me alone, in a small
chamber where spears and bows stood stacked against the walls, and
the hearth was four deep in deerhounds. The fire was heaped as high
as a funeral pyre with pine logs blazing, and small wonder, for the
narrow windows were unglazed and open to the brisk October air, and
the wind whined like another hound in the bowstrings that were
stacked there.

He gripped my arms with a bearlike
welcome, beaming. "Merlinus Ambrosius! Here's a pleasure indeed!
What is it, two years? Three? There's been water under the bridge,
aye, and stars fallen, since we last met, eh? Well, you're welcome,
welcome. I can't think of any man I'd rather see under my roof!
You've been making a name for yourself, haven't you? The tales I've
heard tell...Well, well, but you can tell me the truth of it
yourself. God's sweet death, boy, you get more like him by the day!
Thinner, though, thinner. You look as if you've seen no red meat
for a year. Come, sit down by the fire now, and let me send for
supper before we talk."

The supper was enormous and excellent,
and would have served me ten times over. Ector ate enough for
three, and pressed me to finish the rest. While we ate we exchanged
news. He had heard of the Queen's pregnancy, and spoke of it, but
for the moment I let it go, and asked him instead what had happened
at Viroconium. Ector had attended the King's council there, and was
but newly returned home.

"Success?" he asked, in reply to my
question. "It's hard to say. It was well attended. Coel of Rheged,
of course, and all from these lands" -- he named half a dozen
neighbors -- "except Riocatus of Verterae, who sent to say he was
sick."

"I gather you didn't believe
it?"

"When I believe anything that jackal
says," said Ector forcibly, "I'm a spitlicker too. But the wolves
were there, all of them, so the scavengers hardly
matter."

"Strathclyde?"

"Oh, aye, Caw was there. You know the
Picts in the western half of his land have been giving trouble --
when haven't they given trouble, come to that? But for all Caw's
Pictish himself, he'll co-operate with any plan that'll help him
keep control of that wild territory of his, so he was well disposed
to the idea of the council. He'll help, I'm sure of it. Whether he
can control that pack of sons he's sired is another matter. Did you
know that one of them, Heuil, a wild young blackguard scarcely old
enough (you'd have thought) to lift a spear, took one of Morien's
girls by force last spring when she was on her way to the monastery
her father had promised her to since birth? He lifted his spear to
her easily enough; by the time her father got the news she was over
the border with him, and in no condition for any monastery, however
broadminded." He chuckled. "Morien cried rape, of course, but
everyone was laughing, so he made the best of it. Strathclyde had
to pay, naturally, and he and Morien sat on opposite benches at
Viroconium, and Heuil wasn't there at all. Ah, well, but they
agreed to sink their differences. King Uther managed it well
enough, so what between Rheged and Strathclyde, there's half the
northern frontier solid for the King."

"And the other half?" I asked. "What
about Lot?"

"Lot?" Ector snorted. "That braggart!
He'd swear allegiance to the Devil and Hecate combined if it would
get him a few more acres for himself. He cares no more for Britain
than that hound by the hearthstone. Less, He and his wild brood of
brothers sitting on that cold rock of theirs. They'll fight when it
pays them, and that's all." He fell silent, scowling at the fire,
poking with a foot at the hound nearest him; it yawned with
pleasure, and flattened its ears. "But he talks well, and maybe I'm
blackguarding him. Times are changing, and even barbarians like Lot
ought to be able to see that unless we band together with a strong
oath, and keep it, it'll be the Flood Year all over
again."

He was not referring to an actual
flood, but to the year of the great invasion a century ago, when
the Picts and Saxons, joined with the Scots from Ireland, poured
across Hadrian's Wall with axe and fire. Maximus commanded then, in
Segontium. He drove them back and broke them, and won for Britain a
time of peace, and for himself an empire and a legend.

I said: "Lothian is a key to the
defense that Uther's planning, even more than Rheged or
Strathclyde. I'd heard tell -- I don't know if it's true? -- that
there are Angles settled on the Alaunus, and that the strength of
the Anglian Federates south of York along the Abus has doubled
since my father's death?"

"It's true." He spoke heavily. "And
south of Lothian there's only Urien on the coast, and he's another
carrion crow, picking at Lot's leavings. Nay, that may be another
one I'm doing an injustice to. He's married to Lot's sister, when
all's done, so he'd be bound to cry the same way. Talking of which
--"

"Talking of what?" I asked, as he
paused.

"Marriage." He scowled, then began to
grin. "If it wasn't so plaguy dangerous, it would be funny. You
knew Uther had a bastard girl, I forget her name, she must be seven
or eight years old?"

"Morgause. Yes, I remember her. She
was born in Brittany."

Morgause was a sideslip of Uther's by
a girl in Brittany who had followed him to Britain hoping, I
suppose, for marriage, since she was of good family, and the only
woman, so far as anyone knew then for certain, who had borne him a
child. (It had always been a matter of amazement, and a good deal
of private and public conjecture among Uther's troops, how he
managed to avoid leaving a train of bastards in his wake like
seedlings following the sower down a furrow. But this girl was, to
public knowledge, the only one. And I believe to Uther's knowledge,
too. He was a fair man and a generous one, and no girl had suffered
any loss worse than maidenhead through him.) He had acknowledged
the child, kept both child and mother at one of his houses, and
after the mother's marriage to a lord of his household, had taken
the girl into his own. I had seen her once or twice in Brittany, a
thin pale-haired girl with big eyes and a mouth folded
small.

"What about Morgause?" I
asked.

"Uther was casting out feelers for
marrying her to Lot, come the time she'll be ready for
bedding."

I cocked an eyebrow at him. "And what
did Lot think about that?"

"Eh, you'd have laughed to watch him.
Black as a wolverine at the suggestion that Uther's byblow was good
enough, but careful to keep his talk sweet in case there's no other
daughter born in the right bed now the King's wedded. Bastards --
and their mates -- have inherited kingdoms before now. Saving your
presence, of course."

"Of course. Lot casts his eyes as high
as that, then?"

He gave a short nod. "High as the High
Kingdom itself, you can take my word for it."

I digested that, frowning. I had never
met Lot; he was at this time scarcely older than myself --
somewhere in his early twenties -- and though he had fought under
my father, his path and mine had not crossed. "So Uther wants to
tie Lothian to him, and Lot wants to be tied? Whether it's for his
own ambition or not, it means surely that Lot will fight for the
High King when the time comes? And Lothian is our main bulwark
against the Angles and the other invaders from the
north."

"Oh, aye, he'll fight," said Ector.
"Unless the Angles offer him a better bribe than Uther
does."

"Do you mean that?" I was alarmed.
Ector, for all his bluff ways, was a shrewd observer, and few men
knew more about the changing shifts of power along our
shores.

"Maybe I was putting it a trifle high.
But for my money Lot's unscrupled and ambitious, and that's a
combination that spells danger to any overlord who can't placate
him."

"How is he with Rheged?" I was
thinking of the child to be lodged here perhaps at Galava, with Lot
east by north across the Pennines.

"Oh, friends, friends. As good friends
as two big hounds each with his own full platter of meat; No, it's
not yet a matter for concern, and may never be. So forget it, and
drink up." He drank deeply himself, set down his cup and wiped his
mouth. Then he fixed me with a sharp and curious eye. "Well? You'd
better get to it, boy. You didn't come all this way for a good
supper and a battle with an old farmer. Tell me how I can serve
Ambrosius' son?"

"It is Ambrosius' nephew you will be
serving," I said, and told him the rest. He heard me out in
silence. For all his warmth and heartiness, there was nothing
impulsive or overquick about Ector. He had been a cold-brained and
calculating officer; a valuable man in any circumstance, from a
pitched fight to a long and careful siege. After a sharp glance of
surprise and a lift of the brows when I spoke of the King's
decision and my guardianship of the child, he listened without
moving and without taking his eyes off me.

When I had finished, he stirred.
"Well...I'll say one thing to start with, Merlin; I'm glad and
proud you should have come to me. You know how I felt about your
father. And to tell you the truth, boy" -- he cleared his throat,
hesitated, then looked away into the fire as he spoke -- "it always
sorrowed my heart that you yourself were a bastard. And that's
between these four walls, I don't have to tell you. Not that
Uther's made a bad shot at being High King --"

"A far better shot than I'd ever have
made," I said, smiling. "My father used to say that Uther and I,
between us, shared out some of the qualities of a good king. It was
a dear dream of his that someday, between us, we might fashion one.
And this is the one." Then, as his head went up, "Oh, I know, a
baby not yet born. But all the first part has happened as I knew it
must happen: a child begotten by Uther and given to me to raise. I
know this is the one. I believe he will be such a king as this poor
country has never had before, and may never see again."

"Your stars tell you this?"

"It has been written there, certainly,
and who writes among the stars but God?"

"Well, God grant it is so. There's
coming a time, Merlin, maybe not next year, or for five years, or
even for ten, but it is coming -- when the Flood Year will come
again, and pray God that this time there's a king here to raise the
sword of Maximus against it." He turned his head sharply. "What's
that? That sound?"

"Only the wind in the
bowstrings."

"I thought it was a harp sounding.
Strange. What is it, boy? Why do you look so?"

"Nothing."

He looked at me doubtfully for a
moment longer, then grunted and fell silent, and behind us the long
humming stretched out, a cold music, something from the air itself.
I remembered how, as a child, I had lain watching the stars and
listening for the music which (I had been told) they made as they
moved. This must, I thought, be how it sounded.

A servant came in then with logs to
replenish the fire, and the sound died. When he had gone, and the
door had shut behind him, Ector spoke again in quite a different
tone. "Well, I'll do it, of course, and proud to. You're right; in
the next few years I can't see that Uther will have much time for
him, and for that matter he'd be hard put to it to keep the child
safe. Tintagel might have done, but as you say, there's Cador
there...Does the King know that you've come to me?"

"No. Nor will I tell him,
yet."

"Indeed?" He thought it over for a
moment, frowning a little. "Do you think he'll be content with
that?"

"Possibly. I don't know. He didn't
press me too hard about Brittany. I think that just now he wants as
little to do with it as need be. The other thing is" -- I smiled a
little wryly -- "the King and I have a truce declared, but I
wouldn't bank on its staying that way; and out of sight, out of
mind. If I'm to have anything to do with the child's teaching, then
it had better be at a fair distance from the High King."

"Aye, I've heard that, too. It's never
a wise thing to help kings to their heart's desire. Will the boy be
a Christian?"

"The Queen wants it, so he'll be
baptized in Brittany if I can arrange it. He's to be called
Arthur."

"You'll stand for him?"

I laughed. "I believe the fact that I
was never baptized myself puts me out of the running."

His teeth showed. "I forgot you were a
pagan. Well, I'm glad to hear about the boy. There'd have been a
peck of trouble else."