Legacy: Arthurian Saga (8 page)

"Yes. Myrddin. He lends me his spring,
and his hollow hill, and his heaven of woven light, and in return I
give him his due. It does not do to neglect the gods of a place,
whoever they may be. In the end, they are all one."

"If you're not a hermit, then, what
are you?"

"At the moment, a teacher."

"I have a tutor. He comes from
Massilia, but he's actually been to Rome. Who do you
teach?"

"Until now, nobody. I'm old and tired,
and I came to live here alone and study."

"Why do you have the dead bats in
there, on the box?"

"I was studying them."

I stared at him. "Studying bats? How
can you study bats?"

"I study the way they are made, and
the way they fly, and mate, and feed. The way they live. Not only
bats, but beasts and fish and plants and birds, as many as I
see."

"But that's not studying!" I regarded
him with wonder. "Demetrius -- that's my tutor -- tells me that
watching lizards and birds is dreaming, and a waste of time. Though
Cerdic -- that's a friend -- told me to study the
ring-doves."

"Why?"

"Because they're quick, and quiet, and
keep out of the way. Because they only lay two eggs, but still
though everybody hunts them, men and beasts and hawks, there are
still more ring-doves than anything else."

"And they don't put them in cages." He
drank some water, regarding me. "So you have a tutor. Then you can
read?"

"Of course."

"Can you read Greek?"

"A little."

"Then come with me." He got up and
went into the cave. I followed him. He lit the candle once more --
he had put it out to save tallow -- and by its light lifted the lid
of the box. In it I saw the rolled shapes of books, more books
together than I had ever imagined there were in the world. I
watched as he selected one, closed the lid carefully, and unrolled
the book.

"There." With delight, I saw what it
was. A drawing, spidery but definite, of the skeleton of a bat. And
alongside it, in neat, crabbed Greek letters, phrases which I
immediately, forgetting even Galapas' presence, began to spell out
to myself. In a minute or two his hand came over my shoulder.
"Bring it outside." He pulled out the nails holding one of the
dried leathery bodies to the box-lid, and lifted it carefully in
his palm. "Blow out the candle. We'll look at this
together."

And so, with no more question, and no
more ceremony, began my first lesson with Galapas.

It was only when the sun, low over one
wing of the valley, sent a long shadow creeping up the slope, that
I remembered the other life that waited for me, and how far I had
to go. I jumped to my feet. "I'll have to go! Demetrius won't say
anything, but if I'm late for supper they'll ask why."

"And you don't intend to tell
them?"

"No, or they'd stop me coming again."
He smiled, making no comment. I doubt if I noticed then the calm
assumptions on which the interview had been based; he had neither
asked how I had come, nor why. And because I was only a child I
took it for granted, too, though for politeness' sake I asked him:
"I may come again, mayn't I?"

"Of course."

"I -- it's hard to say when. I never
know when I'll get away -- I mean, when I'll be free."

"Don't worry. I shall know when you
are coming. And I shall be here."

"How can you know?" He was rolling up
the book with those long, neat fingers.

"The same way I knew
today."

"Oh! I was forgetting. You mean I go
into the cave and send the bats out?"

"If you like."

I laughed with pleasure. "I've never
met anyone like you! To make smoke signals with bats! If I told
them they'd never believe me, even Cerdic."

"You won't tell even Cerdic." I
nodded. "That's right. Nobody at all. Now I must go. Goodbye,
Galapas."

"Goodbye."

And so it was in the days, and in the
months, that followed. Whenever I could, once and sometimes twice
in the week, I rode up the valley to the cave. He certainly seemed
to know when I was coming, for as often as not he was there waiting
for me, with the books laid out; but when there was no sign of him
I did as we had arranged and sent out the bats as a smoke signal to
bring him in. As the weeks went by they got used to me, and it took
two or three well-aimed stones sent up into the roof to get them
out; but after a while this grew unnecessary; people at the palace
grew accustomed to my absences, and ceased to question them, and it
became possible to make arrangements with Galapas for meeting from
day to day.

Moravik had let me go more and more my
own way since Olwen's baby had been born at the end of May, and
when Camlach's son arrived in September she established herself
firmly in the royal nursery as its official ruler, abandoning me as
suddenly as a bird deserting the nest. I saw less and less of my
mother, who seemed content to spend her time with her women, so I
was left pretty much to Demetrius and Cerdic between them.
Demetrius had his own reasons for welcoming a day off now and
again, and Cerdic was my friend. He would unsaddle the muddy and
sweating pony without question, or with a wink and a lewd remark
about where I had been that was meant as a joke, and was taken as
such.

I had my room to myself now, except
for the wolfhound; he spent the nights with me for old times' sake,
but whether he was any safeguard I have no idea. I suspect not; I
was safe enough. The country was at peace, except for the perennial
rumors of invasion from Less Britain; Camlach and his father were
in accord; I was to all appearances heading willingly and at high
speed for the prison of the priesthood, and so, when my lessons
with Demetrius were officially done, was free to go where I
wished.

I never saw anyone else in the valley.
The shepherd only lived there in summer, in a poor hut below the
wood. There were no other dwellings there, and beyond Galapas' cave
the track was used only by sheep and deer. It led
nowhere.

He was a good teacher, and I was
quick, but in fact I hardly thought of my time with him as lessons.
We left languages and geometry to Demetrius, and religion to my
mother's priests; with Galapas to begin with it was only like
listening to a story-teller. He had traveled when young to the
other side of the earth, Aethiopia and Greece and Germany and all
around the Middle Sea, and seen and learned strange things. He
taught me practical things, too; how to gather herbs and dry them
to keep, how to use them for medicines, and how to distil certain
subtle drugs, even poisons. He made me study the beasts and birds,
and -- with the dead birds and sheep we found on the hills, and
once with a dead deer -- I learnt about the organs and bones of the
body. He taught me how to stop bleeding, how to set a broken bone,
how to cut bad flesh away and cleanse the place so that it heals
cleanly; even -- though this came later -- how to draw flesh and
sinews into place with thread while the beast is stunned with
fumes. I remember that the first spell he taught me was the
charming of warts; this is so easy that a woman can do
it.

One day he took a book out of the box
and unrolled it. "Do you know what this is?"

I was used to diagrams and drawings,
but this was a drawing of nothing I could recognize. The writing
was in Latin, and I saw the words Aethiopia and Fortunate Islands,
and then right out in a corner, Britannia. The lines seemed to be
scrawled everywhere, and all over the picture were trails of mounds
drawn in, like a field where moles have been at work.

"Those, are they
mountains?"

"Yes."

"Then it's a picture of the
world?"

"A map." I had never seen a map
before. At first I could not see how it worked, but in a while, as
he talked, I saw how the world lay there as a bird sees it, with
roads and rivers like the radials of a spider's web, or the
guidelines that lead the bee into the flower. As a man finds a
stream he knows, and follows it through the wild moors, so, with a
map, it is possible to ride from Rome to Massilia, or London to
Caerleon, without once asking the way or looking for the
milestones. This art was discovered by the Greek Anaximander,
though some say the Egyptians knew it first. The map that Galapas
showed me was a copy from a book by Ptolemy of Alexandria. After he
had explained, and we had studied the map together, he bade me get
out my tablet and make a map for myself, of my own
country.

When I had done he looked at it. "This
in the center, what is it?"

"Maridunum," I said in surprise. "See,
there is the bridge, and the river, and this is the road through
the market place, and the barrack gates are here."

"I see that. I did not say your town,
Merlin, I said your country."

"The whole of Wales ? How do I know
what lies north of the hills? I've never been further than
this."

"I will show you."

He put aside the tablet, and taking a
sharp stick, began to draw in the dust, explaining as he did so.
What he drew for me was a map shaped like a big triangle, not Wales
only, but the whole of Britain, even the wild land beyond the Wall
where the savages live. He showed me the mountains and rivers and
roads and towns, London and Calleva and the places that cluster
thick in the south, to the towns and fortresses at the ends of the
web of roads, Segontium and Caerleon and Eboracum and the towns
along the Wall itself. He spoke as if it were all one country,
though I could have told him the names of the kings of a dozen
places that he mentioned. I only remember this because of what came
after.

Soon after this, when winter came and
the stars were out early, he taught me their names and their
powers, and how a man could map them as one would map the roads and
townships. They made music, he said, as they moved. He himself did
not know music, but when he found that Olwen had taught me, he
helped me to make myself a harp. This was a rude enough affair, I
suppose, and small, made of hornbeam, with the curve and
fore-pillar of red sallow from the Tywy, and strung with hair from
my pony's tail, where the harp of a prince (said Galapas) should
have been strung with gold and silver wire. But I made the
string-shoes out of pierced copper coins, the key and tuning-pins
of polished bone, then carved a merlin on the sounding-board, and
thought it a finer instrument than Olwen's. Indeed it was as true
as hers, having a kind of sweet whispering note which seemed to
pluck songs from the air itself. I kept it in the cave: though
Dinias left me alone these days, being a warrior while I was only a
sucking clerk, I would not have kept anything I treasured in the
palace, unless I could lock it in my clothes-chest, and the harp
was too big for that. At home for music I had the birds in the pear
tree, and Olwen still sang sometimes. And when the birds were
silent, and the night sky was frosted with light, I listened for
the music of the stars. But I never heard it.

Then one day, when I was twelve years
old, Galapas spoke of the crystal cave.

7

It is common knowledge that, with
children, those things which are most important often go
unmentioned. It is as if the child recognizes, by instinct, things
which are too big for him, and keeps them in his mind, feeding them
with his imagination till they assume proportions distended or
grotesque which can become equally the stuff of magic or of
nightmare.

So it was with the crystal
cave.

I had never mentioned to Galapas my
first experience there. Even to myself I had hardly admitted what
came sometimes with light and fire; dreams, I had told myself,
memories from below memory, figments of the brain only, like the
voice which had told me of Gorlan, or the sight of the poison in
the apricot. And when I found that Galapas never mentioned the
inner cave, and that the mirror was kept covered whenever I was
there, I said nothing.

I rode up to see him one day in winter
when frost made the ground glitter and ring, and my pony puffed out
steam like a dragon. He went fast, tossing his head and dragging at
the bit, and breaking into a canter as soon as I turned him away
from the wood and along the high valley. I had at length grown out
of the gentle, cream-colored pony of my childhood, but was proud of
my little Welsh grey, which I called Aster. There is a breed of
Welsh mountain pony, hardy, swift, and very beautiful, with a fine
narrow head and small ears, and a strong arch to the neck. They run
wild in the hills, and in past times interbred with horses the
Romans brought from the East. Aster had been caught and broken for
my cousin Dinias, who had overridden him for a couple of years and
then discarded him for a real warhorse. I found him hard to manage,
with rough manners and a ruined mouth, but his paces were silken
after the jogging I was used to, and once he got over his fear of
me he was affectionate.

I had long since contrived a shelter
for my pony when I came here in winter. The hawthorn brake grew
right up against the cliff below the cave, and deep in the thickest
part of it Galapas and I had carried stones to make a pen of which
the back wall was the cliff itself. When we had laid dead boughs
against the walls and across the top, and had carried a few armfuls
of bracken, the pen was not only a warm, solid shelter, but
invisible to the casual eye. This need for secrecy was another of
the things that had never been openly discussed; I understood
without being told that Galapas in some way was helping me to run
counter to Camlach's plans for me, so -- even though as time went
on I was left more completely to my own devices -- I took every
precaution to avoid discovery, finding half a dozen different ways
to approach the valley, and a score of stories to account for the
time I spent there.