Legacy: Arthurian Saga (86 page)

"You see?" He threw out a hand. "I try
to goad you into speaking, and you are not even angry. Where
another man would protest, would even fear to go back, you say
nothing, and -- I'm afraid -- decide to take ship straight for
home."

"I know the future, Abidjan, that's
the difference."

"Well, I don't know the future, and
it's obvious you won't tell me, but I can make my own guess at the
truth. What men are saying is just that truth twisted: you keep the
boy close because you know he must one day be King. You can tell me
this, though. What will you do when you get back? Bring him out of
hiding?"

"By the time I get back the Queen's
child should be born," I said. "What I do must depend on that. I
shall see Uther, of course, and talk to him. But the main thing, as
I see it, is to let the people of Britain know -- friend and enemy
alike -- that Prince Arthur is alive and thriving, and will be
ready to show himself beside his father when the time
comes."

"And that's not yet?"

"I think not. When I reach home I hope
I shall see more clearly. With your leave, Ahdjan, I'll take the
first ship."

"As you will, of course. I shall be
sorry to lose your company."

"I regret it, too. It's been a happy
chance that brought me after all to Constantinopolis. I might have
missed seeing you, but I was delayed by bad weather and lost the
ship I should have got at Chalcedon."

He said something civil, then looked
startled as he saw the implications. "Delayed? You mean you were on
your way home already? Before you saw the letter? You
knew?"

"No details. Only that it was time I
was home."

"By the Three!" For a moment I had
seen the Celt looking out of his eyes, though it was the Christian
god that he swore by; they only have one other oath in
Constantinopolis, and that is "By the One," and they fight to the
death over them. Then he laughed. "By the Three! I wish I'd had you
beside me last week in the Hippodrome! I lost a cool thousand on
the Greens -- a sure thing, you'd have sworn, and they ran like
three-legged cows. Well, it seems that whatever prince has you to
guide him, he's lucky. If he had had you, I might have had an
empire today, instead of a respectable government post -- and lucky
to get that without being a eunuch besides."

He nodded as he spoke at the great
mosaic on the main wall of the room behind us. I had noticed it
already, and wondered vaguely at the Byzantine strain of melancholy
which decorates a room with such scenes instead of the livelier
designs one sees in Greece and Italy. I had already observed, in
the entrance hall, a crucifix done lifesize with mourning figures
and Christian devices all round it. This, too, was an execution,
but a noble one, on the battlefield. The sky was dark, done with
chips of slate and lapis hammered into clouds like iron, with among
them the staring heads of gods. The horizon showed a line of towers
and temples with a crimson sun setting behind. It seemed meant to
be Rome. The wide plain in front of the walls was the scene of the
battle's end: to the left the defeated host, men and horses dead or
dying on a field scattered with broken weapons; to the right the
victors, clustered behind the crowned leader, and bathed in a shaft
of light descending from a Christ poised in blessing above the
other gods. At the victor's feet the other leader knelt, his neck
bared to the executioner's blade. He was lifting both arms towards
his conqueror, not for mercy, but in formal surrender of the sword
which lay across his hands. Below him, in the corner of the
picture, was written Max. On the right, below the victor, were
stamped the words Theod. Imp.

"By the One!" I said, and saw Ahdjan
smile; but he could not have known what had brought me so quickly
to my feet. He rose gracefully and followed me to the wall,
obviously pleased at my interest.

"Yes, Maximus' defeat by the Emperor.
Good, isn't it?" He smoothed a hand over the silken tesserae. "The
man who did it can't have known much of the ironies of war. In
spite of all this, you might say it came out even enough in the
end. That hangdog fellow on the left behind Maximus is Hoel's
ancestor, the one who took the remnants of the British contingent
home. This holy-looking gentleman shedding blood all over the
Emperor's feet is my great-great-grandfather, to whose conscience
and good business sense I owe both my fortune and the saving of my
soul."

I hardly listened. I was staring at
the sword in Maximus' hand. I had seen it before. Glowing on the
wall behind Ygraine. Flashing home to its scabbard in Brittany. Now
here, the third time, imaged in Maximus' hand outside the walls of
Rome. Ahdjan was watching me curiously. "What is it?"

"The sword. So it was his
sword."

"What was? Have you seen it,
then?"

"No. Only in a dream. Twice, I've seen
it in dreams. Now here for the third time, in a picture..." I spoke
half to myself, musing. Sunlight, striking up off the pool on the
terrace, sent light rippling across the wall, so that the sword
shimmered in Macsen's hands, and the jewels in its hilt showed
green and yellow and vivid blue. I said, softly: "So that is why I
missed the ship at Chalcedon."

"What do you mean?"

"Forgive me, I hardly know. I was
thinking of a dream. Tell me, Ahdjan, this picture...Are those the
walls of Rome? Maximus wasn't murdered at Rome, surely?"

"Murdered?" Ahdjan, speaking primly,
looked amused. "The word on our side of the family is 'executed.'
No, it wasn't at Rome. I think the artist was being symbolic. It
happened at Aquileia. You may not know it; it's a small place near
the mouth of the Turrus River, at the northern end of the
Adriatic."

"Do ships call there?"

His eyes widened. "You mean to
go?"

"I would like to see the place where
Macsen died. I would like to know what became of his
sword."

"You won't find that at Aquileia," he
said. "Kynan took it."

"Who?"

He nodded at the picture. "The man on
the left. Hoel's ancestor, who took the British back home to
Brittany. Hoel could have told you." He laughed at my expression.
"Did you come all this way for that piece of
information?"

"It seems so," I said. "Though until
this moment I didn't know it. Are you telling me that Hoel has that
sword? It's in Brittany?"

"No. It was lost long since. Some of
the men who went home to Greater Britain took his things with them;
I suppose they would have taken his sword to give his
son."

"And?"

"That's all I know. It's a long time
ago and all it is now is a family tale, and the half of it's
probably not true. Does it matter so much?"

"Matter?" I said. "I hardly know. But
I've learned to look close at most things that come my
way."

He was watching me with a puzzled
look, and I thought he would question me further, but after a short
hesitation he said merely: "I suppose so. Will you walk out now
into the garden? It's cooler. You looked as if your head hurt
you."

"That? It was nothing. Someone playing
a lyre on the terrace down there. It isn't in tune."

"My daughter. Shall we go down and
stop her?"

On the way down he told me of a ship
due to leave the Horn in two days' time. He knew the master, and
could bespeak me a passage. It was a fast ship, and would dock at
Ostia, whence I would certainly find a vessel plying
westwards.

"What about your servants?"

"Gaius is a good man. You could do
worse than employ him yourself. I freed Stilicho. He's yours if
he'll stay, and he's a wizard with horses. It would be cruelty for
me to take him to Britain; his blood's as thin as an Arabian
gazelle's."

But when the morning came Stilicho was
there at the quayside, stubborn as the mules he had handled with
such skill, his belongings in a stitched sack, and a cloak of
sheepskin sweltering round him in the Byzantine sun. I argued with
him, traducing even the British climate, and my simple way of
living which he might find tolerable in a country where the sun
shines, but would be hardship itself in that land of icy winds and
wet. But, seeing finally that he would have his way even if he paid
his own passage with the money I had given him as a parting gift, I
gave way.

To tell the truth I was touched, and
glad to have his company on the long voyage home. Though he had had
none of Gaius' training as a body-servant, he was quick and
intelligent, and had already shown skill in helping me with plants
and medicines. He would be useful, and besides, after all these
years away life at Bryn Myrddin looked a little lonelier than it
had used to, and I knew well that Ralf would never come back to
me.

3

It was late summer when I reached
Britain. Fresh news met me on the quay, in the person of one of the
King's chamberlains, who greeted me with passionate relief, and
such a total absence of surprise that I told him: "You should be in
my business."

He laughed. He was Lucan, whom I had
known well when my father was King, and he and I were on terms.
"Soothsaying? Hardly. This is the fifth ship I've met. I own I
expected you, but I never thought to see you so soon. We heard you
went east a long while back, and we sent messengers, hoping to
reach you. Did they find you?"

"No. But I was already on my
way."

He nodded, as if I had confirmed his
thoughts. He had been too close to my father, Ambrosius, to
question the power that guided me. "You knew the King was sick,
then?"

"Not that, no. Only that the times
were dangerous, and I should get home. Uther ill? That's grave
news. What's the sickness?"

"A wound gone bad. You knew he's been
seeing to the rebuilding of the Saxon Shore defenses, and training
the troops there himself? Well, an alarm was raised about longships
up the Thames -- they'd been seen level with Vagniacae -- too near
London for comfort. A small foray, nothing serious, but he was
first into it as usual, and got a cut, and the wound didn't heal.
This was two months since, and he's still in pain, and losing
flesh."

"Two months? Hasn't his own physician
been attending him?"

"Indeed yes. Gandar's been there from
the beginning."

"And he could do nothing?"

"Well," said Lucan, "according to him
the King was mending, and he says -- along with the other doctors
who've been consulted -- that there's nothing to fear. But I've
watched them conferring in corners, and Gandar looks worried." He
glanced at me sideways. "There's a kind of uneasiness -- you might
even call it apprehension -- infecting the whole court, and it's
going to be hard to keep it contained there. I don't have to tell
you, it's a bad time for the country to doubt if their leader's
going to be fit to lead them. In fact, rumors have started already.
You know the King can't have the bellyache without a scare of
poison; and now they whisper about spells and hauntings. And not
without reason; the King looks, sometimes, like a man who walks
with ghosts. It was time you came home."

We were already moving along the road
from the port. The horses had been there ready saddled at the
quayside, and an escort waiting; this more for ceremony than for
safety; the road to London is well-traveled and guarded. It
occurred to me that perhaps the armed men who rode with us were
there, not to see that I came to the King unharmed, but that I came
there at all.

I said as much dryly, to Lucan. "It
seems the King wants to make sure of me."

He looked amused, but only said with
his courtier's smoothness: "Perhaps he was afraid that you might
not care to attend him. Shall we say that a physician who fails to
cure a king does not always add to his reputation."

"Does not always survive, you mean. I
trust poor Gandar's still alive?"

"So far." He paused, then said
neutrally: "Not that I'm much of a judge, but I'd have said it's
not the King's body that lacks a cure, but his mind."

"So it's my magic that's wanted?" He
was silent. I added: "Or his son?"

His eyelids drooped. "There are rumors
about him, too."

"I'm sure there are." My voice was as
bland as his. "One piece of news I did hear on my travels, that the
Queen was pregnant again. I reckon she should have been brought to
bed a month ago. What is the child?"

"It was a son, stillborn. They say
that it was this sent the King out of his mind, and fevered his
wound again. And now there are rumors that the eldest son is dead,
too. In fact some say he died in infancy, that there is no son." He
paused. His gaze fixed on his horse's ears, but there was the
faintest of queries in his voice.

"Not true, Lucan," I said. "He's
alive, a fine boy, and growing fast. Don't be afraid, he'll be
there when he's needed."

"Ah." It was a long exhalation of
relief. "Then it's true he's with you! This is the news that will
heal the kingdom, if not the King. You'll bring the boy to London
now?"

"First I must see the King. After
that, who knows?"