Legacy: Arthurian Saga (78 page)

"Your wife, you mean? She's so
devout?"

"Poor lass," he said, "she has nothing
else since our second died. There'll be no more, they say. In fact
it will be God's mercy if we take this boy into our house; my son
Cei's a headstrong little ruffian for all he's only three, and the
women spoil him. It will be good to have the second child. What did
you say his name was to be? Arthur? You'll leave this with me to
talk over with Drusilla? Though there's no question, she'll be as
glad as I am to have him. And I can tell you that she's
close-mouthed enough, for all she's a woman. He'll be safe with
us."

"I was sure of it. It doesn't need the
stars to tell me that." But when I began to thank him, he cut me
short.

"Well, then, that's settled. We can
talk over the details later. I'll speak with Drusilla tonight.
You'll stay a while, of course?"

"Thank you, but I can't -- no longer
than it takes to rest myself and my horse. I have to be at Tintagel
again in December, and before that I must be home when Ralf gets
back from Brittany. There's a lot to be arranged."

"A pity. But you'll be back. I'll look
forward to it." He grinned, stirring the hounds again. "I'll enjoy
seeing you installed as tutor to the household, or whatever you
think will give you some claim on the boy. And I own I should like
to see Cei licked into shape. Maybe he'll mind his manners with
you, if he thinks he can be turned into a toad for disobeying
you."

"Bats are my speciality," I said,
smiling. "You are very good, and I'll never be out of your debt.
But I'll find a place of my own."

"Look, boy, Ambrosius' son doesn't
wander the countryside looking for a home while I have four walls
and a fireplace to offer him. Why not here?"

"Because I might be recognized, and
where Merlin is for the next few years, men will look for Arthur
near him. No, I must stay unknown. A household as big as this is
too risky, and, with all my thanks to you, four walls are not
always the best shelter for such as me."

"Ah, yes. A cave, isn't it? Well,
there are a few hereabouts, they tell me, if you turn the wolves
out first. Well, you know your own business. But tell me, what of
the Queen? You didn't say where she stood in this? What woman would
let her first child be taken from the bed where she bore him, and
never try to see him again or make herself known to
him?"

"The Queen herself sent for me
secretly, and asked me to take him. She has suffered, I know, but
it's the King's will, and she knows that it's more than a whim born
of anger; she sees the dangers as well as he. And she is a queen
before she is a woman." I added, carefully: "I think that the Queen
is not a woman for a family, any more than Uther is a family man.
They are man and woman for each other, and outside their bed they
are King and Queen. It may be that in the future Ygraine will
wonder, and ask questions; but that is with the future. For the
moment she is content to let him go."

After this we talked on, late into the
night, arranging as far as we could the details of the time ahead.
Arthur would be left in Brittany until he was three or four years
old, then at a safe time of year Ralf would bring him across from
Brittany to Ector's home.

"And you?" asked Ector. "Where will
you be?"

"Not in Brittany, for the same reason
that I can't live here. I shall vanish, Ector. It's a talent that
magicians have. And when I do appear again, it will be somewhere
that draws men's eyes away from Brittany and Galava." When he
questioned me further, I laughed, and refused to enlighten
him.

"Truth to tell, my plans are not yet
fixed. Now, I've kept you out of your bed for long enough. Your
wife will be wondering what sort of mystery man you have been
closeted with all these hours. I'll make my apologies when you
present me in the morning."

"And I'll make my own now," he said,
getting to his feet. "But that's one apology I enjoy making. You
miss a lot, you know, Merlin -- but then you can't
know."

"I know," I said.

"You do? Then you must think it's
worth it, life without women?"

"For me, yes."

"Well, then, come this way to your
cold bed," he said, and held the door for me.

11

The boy was born on the eve of
Christmas, an hour before midnight.

Just before the birth I and the two
nobles appointed as witnesses were called into the Queen's chamber,
where Gandar attended with Marcia and other women of the Queen's
household. One of these was a girl called Branwen who had lately
been brought to bed of a dead child; she was to be the child's
wetnurse. When all was done, the baby washed and swaddled, and the
Queen sleeping, I took my leave and rode out of the castle and
along the track towards Dimilioc. As soon as the lights of the
gatehouse were out of view I turned my horse aside down the steep
path into the valley which runs from the high fields above the
headland down to the shore.

The castle at Tintagel is built on a
promontory of rock, or near-island, a crag jutting up out of the
fearsome seas, which is joined to the cliffs of the mainland only
by a narrow causeway. To either side of this causeway the cliffs
drop away sheer to small bays of rock and shingle tucked in under
the cliff. From one of these a path, narrow and precarious, and
passable only on a receding tide, leads up the face of the cliff to
a small gate let into the roots of the castle wall. This is the
postern, the secret entrance to the castle. Inside is a narrow
stairway of stone leading up to the private door of the royal
apartments.

Halfway up the steep stairway was a
broad landing, and a guardroom. Here I was to wait, until the child
was judged fit to be taken abroad into the winter's cold. There
were no guards: months past, the King had had the postern sealed,
and the guardroom's other door, giving on the main part of the
castle, had been built up. For tonight the postern gate had been
opened, but no porter manned it; only Ulfin the King's man, and
Valerius, his friend and trusted officer, waited there to let me
in. Valerius took me up to the guardroom, while Ulfin went out down
the path into the bay to take my horse. Ralf was not with me. He
had gone to ensure that the Breton ship was waiting as it had
promised, and he was also to bring horses and to keep watch each
night in the bay below the secret path.

I waited for two days and nights.
There was a pallet in the guardroom, and Ulfin himself had kindled
a fire to banish the disused chill of the place, and from time to
time brought food and fuel, and the news from above stairs. He
would have waited on me if I had let him; he was grateful still for
some kindness I had shown to him in the past, and I think the
King's disfavor had distressed him. But I sent him back to his post
at the Queen's door, and spent the waiting time alone.

At the other side of the landing, in
the outer wall of the castle and opposite the guardroom door, was
another door leading out onto a narrow, level platform skirted
waisthigh by a battlement. It was not overlooked by any of the
castle windows, and below it, between the castle wall and the sea,
was an apron of grass sloping down to the edge of the sheer cliffs.
In summer the place was alive with nesting sea birds, but now, in
midwinter, it was barren and crisp with frost. From below,
incessantly, came the suck and hush and thud of the winter
sea.

Each day, at dawn and sunset, I walked
out to this platform to see if the weather had changed. But for
three days there was no change. The air was cold, and below me the
grass, grey with rime, was barely distinguishable in the thick mist
that held the whole place shrouded, from the invisible sea below
the invisible cliffs to the pale blur where the winter sun fought
to clear the sky. Below the blanket of mist the sea was quiet, as
quiet as it ever is on that raging coast. And every midnight,
before I slept, I went out into the icy dark and looked upwards for
the stars. But there was only the blank pall of the
mist.

Then on the third night, the wind
came. A small wind from the west, that crept across the battlements
and in under the doors and set the flames fluttering blue round the
birch logs. I stood up, listening. I had a hand to the latch of the
door when I heard a sound, in the quiet, from the head of the
stairway. The door to the Queen's apartments had opened and shut
again, gently. I opened the door and looked upwards.

Someone was coming softly down the
stairs; a woman, shrouded in a mantle, carrying something. I
stepped out onto the landing, and the light from the guard-room
door came after me, firelight and shadow.

It was Marcia. I saw the tears glisten
on her cheeks as she bent her head over what lay in her arms. A
child, wrapped warm against the winter night. She saw me and held
her burden out to me. "Take care of him," she said. "Take care of
him, as God loves him and you."

I took the child from her. Inside the
woolen wrappings I caught the glint of cloth of gold, "And the
token?" I asked. She handed me a ring. It was one I had often seen
on Uther's hand, made of gold, enclosing a stone of red jasper with
a dragon crest carved small. I slipped it on my own finger, and saw
her instinctive movement of protest, stilled as she remembered who
I was.

I smiled. "For safekeeping only. I
shall put it away for him."

"My lord prince..." She bent her head.
Then she threw a quick glance over her shoulder to where the girl
Branwen, hooded and cloaked, was coming down the stairway, with
Ulfin behind her carrying a pack with her effects. Marcia turned
back to me swiftly and laid a hand on my arm. "You will tell me
where you are taking him?" It was a plea, whispered.

I shook my head. "I'm sorry. It's
better that no one should know."

She was silent, her lips working. Then
she straightened herself. "Very well. But you promise me that he
will be safe? I'm not asking you as a man, or even as a prince. I'm
asking you from your power. He will be safe?"

So Ygraine had said nothing, even to
Marcia. Marcia's guess at the future was still only a guess. But in
the days to come both these women would feel the bitter need for
each other's confidence. It would be cruel to leave the Queen
isolated with her knowledge and her hopes. It is not true that
women cannot keep secrets. Where they love, they can be trusted to
death and beyond, against all sense and reason. It is their
weakness, and their great strength.

I met Marcia's eyes full for a moment.
"He will be King," I said. "The Queen knows it. But for the child's
sake, you will tell no one else."

She bent her head again, without
replying. Ulfin and Branwen were beside us. Marcia leaned forward
gently and drew back a fold of the shawl from the child's face. The
baby was sleeping. The eyelids, curiously full, lay over the shut
eyes like pale shells. There was a thick down of dark hair on his
head. Marcia stooped and kissed him lightly on the head. He slept
on, undisturbed. She pulled the fold of wool back to shelter him,
then with gentle expert hands settled the bundle closer into my
arms. "So. Hold his head so. You will be careful going down the
path?"

"I will be careful."

She opened her mouth to speak again,
then shook her head quickly, and I saw a tear slide from her cheek
to fall on the child's shawl. Then she turned abruptly away, and
started back up the stairs.

I carried the baby down the secret
path. Valerius went ahead, with his sword drawn and ready, and
behind me, with Ulfin's arm to help her, came Branwen. As we
reached the bottom and stepped on the grating pebbles, Ralf's
shadow detached itself from the immense darkness of the cliffs, and
we heard his quick, relieved greeting, and the tread of hoofs on
the shingle.

He had brought a mule for the girl,
tough and sure-footed. He settled her in the saddle, then I handed
the baby up to her, and she folded him close in the warmth of her
cloak. Ralf vaulted to the back of his own horse and took the
mule's rein in hand. I was to lead the packmule. This time I
planned to travel as an itinerant singer -- a harper is free of
kings' courts where a drugpeddler is not -- and my harp was
strapped to the mule's saddle. Ulfin gave me the lead-rein, then
held my gelding for me; it was fresh, and anxious to be moving and
warm itself. I said my thanks and farewells, then he and Valerius
started back up the cliff path. They would seal the postern again
behind them.

I turned my horse's head into the
wind. Ralf and the girl had already put their mounts to the bank. I
saw the dim shapes pause above me, waiting, and the pale oval of
Ralf's face as he turned back to watch me. Then his arm went out,
pointing: "Look!" I turned.

The mist was lifting, drawing back
from a sparkling sky. Faintly, high over the castle promontory,
grew a hazy moon of light. Then the last cloud blew clear,
billowing before the west wind like a sail blowing towards
Brittany, and in its wake, blazing through the sparkle of the
lesser stars, grew the great star that had lit the night of
Ambrosius' death, and now burned steady in the east for the birth
of the Christmas King.

We set spurs to our horses and rode
for the ship.