Legacy: Arthurian Saga (90 page)

I shook myself awake. My vision
cleared. The steam had thinned, and the last of it was wisping away
through the window. The girl's hands were still again, folded as
before; she had shaken her hair back, and was watching me
curiously. Stilicho had lifted the bowl from the burner, and peered
at me across it, anxious and scared.

"Master, it's one you mix yourself.
You said there was no harm in it..."

"No harm at all. But another time,
watch what you're doing." I looked down at the girl. "I'm sorry,
did I frighten you? It's nothing, a headache, I get them sometimes.
Sudden, and soon gone. Now I must go. I leave London at the end of
the week. If you need my help before then, send to me and I shall
be glad to come." I smiled, and reached out a hand to touch her
hair. "No, don't look so downcast, child. It's a hard gift to have,
and not for young maids."

She curtsied to me again as I went
out, the small lovely face hidden once more behind the curtaining
hair.

6

I think this was the only time in my
life that I saw Bryn Myrddin not as the home I was eager to reach,
but as a mere halting place on a journey. And once I had arrived in
Maridunum, instead of welcoming the familiar quiet of the valley,
the company of my books, the time to think and to work with my
music and my medicines, I found myself fretting to be away, all my
being straining northwards to where the boy lived who was to be my
life from this time on.

All I knew of him, apart from the
cryptic reassurances which had come to me through Hoel and Ector,
was that he was healthy and strong, though smaller for his age than
Cei, Ector's own son, had been. Cei was eleven years old now, to
Arthur's eight, and as familiar to my visions as the young prince.
I had watched Arthur scuffling with the older boy, riding a horse
that to my coward's eye looked far too big for him, playing at
swordsmanship with staves, and then with swords: I suppose these
must have been blunted, but all I saw was the dangerous flash of
the metal, and here, though Cei had the strength and the longer
reach, I could see that Arthur was quick as a sword himself. I
watched the pair of them fishing, climbing, racing through the edge
of the Wild Forest in a vain bid to escape Ralf who (with the help
of Ector's two most trusted men) rode guard on Arthur at all times,
day or night. All this I watched in the fire, in the smoke or the
stars, and once where there were none of these and the message was
straining to be through, in the side of a precious crystal goblet
which Ahdjan was displaying to me in his palace by the Golden Horn.
He must have wondered at my sudden inattention, but probably put it
down to indigestion after one of his lavish meals, which to an
Eastern host is rather a compliment than otherwise.

I could not even be sure that I should
recognize Arthur when I saw him, nor could I tell what kind of boy
he had grown to be. Daring I could see, and gaiety, and stubborn
strength, but of his real nature I could be no judge; visions may
fill the mind's eye, but it takes blood to engage the heart. I had
not even heard him speak. Nor had I as yet any clear idea how to
enter his life when I did reach the north country, but every night
of my journey from London to Bryn Myrddin I walked outside under
the stars, searching for what they had to tell me, and always the
Bear hung there straight ahead of me, glittering, speaking of the
dark north and cool skies and the smell of pines and mountain
water.

Stilicho's reaction when he saw the
cave where I lived was not what I expected. When I had left home to
go on my travels, since I was to be away for so long, I had hired
help to look after the place for me. I had left money with the
miller on the Tywy, asking him to send one of his servants up from
time to time; it was apparent that this had been done, for the
place was clean, dry and well provisioned. There was even fresh
bedding for the horses, and we had barely dismounted before the
girl from the mill came panting after us up the track with goats'
milk and fresh bread and five or six newly caught trout. I thanked
her, and then, because I would not let Stilicho clean the fish at
the holy well, asked her to show him where the runaway water
trickled down below the cliff. While I checked over my sealed jars
and bottles, making sure that the lock on my chest was untouched
and that the books and instruments within were undamaged, I could
hear the two young voices outside still clacking busily as the mill
wheel, with a good deal of laughter as each tried to make the other
understand the foreign tongue.

When at length the girl went and the
boy came in with the fish neatly gutted and split ready for
roasting, he seemed happily prepared to find the place as
convenient and comfortable as any of the houses we had stayed in on
my travels. At first I put this down in some amusement to the
compensation he had just discovered, but I found later that he had
in fact been born and reared in just such a cave in his own
country, where people of the lower sort are so poor that the owners
of a well-placed and dry cavern count themselves lucky, and often
have to fight like foxes to keep their den to themselves.
Stilicho's father, who had sold him with rather less thought than
one would give to an unwanted puppy, had been well able to spare
him out of a family of thirteen; his room in the cave had been more
valuable than his presence. As a slave, his quarters had been in
the stables, or more usually out in the yard, and even since he had
been in my service I was aware that I had lodged in places where
the grooms were worse housed than the horses. The chamber he had
occupied in London was the first he had ever had to himself. To him
my cave on Bryn Myrddin was spacious and even luxurious, and now it
promised further pleasures which did not often come the way of a
young slave in the sharp competition of the servants'
quarters.

So he settled in cheerfully, and word
soon got round that the enchanter was back in his hill, and the
folk came for drugs, and paid as they had always done with food and
comforts. The miller's girl, whose name was Mai, seized every
opportunity to come up the valley with food from the mill, and
sometimes with the people's offerings which she brought for them.
Stilicho, in his turn, made a practice of calling at the mill every
time he went down to the town for me. And before very long it
appeared that Mai had made him welcome in every way known to her.
One night when I could not sleep I went out onto the lawn beside
the holy well to look at the stars, and heard, in the night's
quiet, the horses moving and stamping restlessly in their shed
below the cliff. It was a night bright with stars and a white
scythe of a moon, so I did not need a torch, but called softly to
Stilicho to follow me and trod quickly down to the thorn grove to
find out what was disturbing the beasts. It was only when I saw,
through the half-opened door, the two young bodies coupling in the
straw, that I realized Stilicho was there before me. I withdrew
without being seen, and went back to my own bed to
think.

A few days later when I talked to the
boy, and told him that I planned to go north soon, but wanted no
one to know of it, so would leave him behind to cover my retreat,
he was enthusiastic, and fervent in protestations of faithfulness
and secrecy. I was sure I could trust him; another gift he had
besides his facility with drugs, he was a marvelous liar. I am told
that this, too, is a gift of his people. My only fear was that he
might lie too well, like his horse-trading father, and cheat
himself and me into trouble. But it was a risk I had to take, and I
judged him too loyal to me, and too happy in his life at Bryn
Myrddin, to put it at risk. When he asked (trying not to sound too
eager) when I would be gone, I could only tell him that I was
waiting for a time, and a sign. As always, he accepted what I said,
simply and without question. He would as soon have questioned a
priestess mouthing in her shrine -- they hold the Old Religion in
Sicily -- or Hephaistos himself when he breathed flame from the
mountains. I had found that he believed every tale the people told
of me, and would have shown no surprise if I had vanished in a puff
of smoke or conjured gold from thin air. I suspected that, like
Gaius, he made the most of his status as my servant; certainly Mai
was terrified of me, and could not be persuaded to set foot beyond
the thorn grove. Which was just as well for the plans I had in
mind.

It was no magic sign that I was
waiting for. If I had been certain it was safe, I would have set
off for the north soon after I had reached home from London. But I
knew that I would be watched. Uther would almost certainly continue
to have me spied upon. There was no danger in this -- not, that is,
from the King; but if one man can buy a spy's loyalty, so can
another, and there must be many others who, even only for
curiosity, would be watching me. So I curbed my impatience, stayed
where I was, and went about my business, waiting for the watchers
to show themselves.

One day I sent Stilicho down with the
horses to the forge at the edge of the town. Both animals had been
shod for the journey from London, and though normally the shoes
would have been removed before winter, I wanted my own mare left
shod in preparation for my journey. Her girth buckles, too, were in
need of repair, so Stilicho had ridden down, and was to do some
errands in the town while the smith looked after the
animals.

It was a day of frost, dry and still,
but with the kind of thick sky that cuts the rays from the sun and
lets it hang red and cold and low. I went over the hilltop to the
hut of Abba the shepherd. His son Ban, the simpleton, had cut his
hand a few days ago on a stake, and the wound had festered. I had
cut the swelling and bound it with salve, but I knew that Ban could
be trusted no more than a bandaged dog, and would worry the thing
off if it hurt him.

I need not have troubled; the bandage
was still in place, and the wound healing fast and neatly. Ban -- I
have noticed this with simple folk -- mended like a child or a wild
animal. Which was just as well, since he was one of those men who
can hardly pass a week without injuring themselves in some way.
After I had tended the hand I stayed. The hut was in a sheltered
part of the valley, and Abba's sheep were all in fold. As sometimes
happens, there were early lambs due, though it was only December. I
stayed to help Abba with a hard lambing where the simpleton's hand
would not have served him. By the time the twin lambs were curled,
dry and sleeping, on Ban's knee near the fire, with the ewe
watching nearby, the short winter's day had drawn to a red dusk. I
took my leave, and walked home over the hilltop. The way took me
across my own valley higher up, and it was dark when I reached the
pine wood above the cave. The sky had cleared, the night was still
and brightly starred, with a blurred moon throwing blue shadows on
the frost. And shadows I saw, moving. I stopped dead, and stood to
watch.

Four men, on the flat lawn outside my
cave. From the thorn thicket below the cliff came the movement and
clink of their tethered horses. I could hear the mutter of the
men's voices as they huddled together, conferring. Two of them had
swords in their hands.

Every moment the moonlight
strengthened and fresh stars showered out into the frosty sky. Far
away at the foot of the valley I heard the bark of a dog. Then,
faintly, the clip of hoofs coming at a gentle pace. The intruders
below me heard it, too. One of them gave a low command, and the
group turned and made at speed for the path which would take them
down to the grove.

They had barely reached the head of
the path when I spoke from directly above them.
"Gentlemen?"

You would have thought I had fallen
straight from heaven in a chariot of flame. I suppose it was
alarming enough, to be addressed out of the dark by a man they
thought they had just heard riding up the valley some halfmile
away. Besides, any man who sets out to spy on a magician starts
more than half terrified, and ready to believe any marvel. One of
them cried out in fear, and I heard a stifled oath from the leader.
In the starlight their faces, upturned, looked grey as the
frost.

I said: "I am Merlin. What do you want
with me?"

There was a silence, in which the
hoofbeats came nearer, quickening as the horses scented home and
supper. I caught a movement below me as if they were half minded to
turn and run. Then the leader cleared his throat. "We come from the
King."

"Then put up your foolish swords. I
will come down."

When I reached them I saw they had
obeyed me, but their hands hovered not far from their weapons, and
they huddled close together.

"Which of you is the
leader?"

The biggest of them stepped forward.
He was civil, but with truculence behind it. He had not relished
that moment of fear. "We were waiting for you, Prince. We bring
messages from the King."

"With swords drawn? Well, you are only
four to one, after all."

"Against enchantment," said the man,
nettled.

I smiled. "You should have known that
my enchantment would never work against King's men. You could have
been sure of your welcome." I paused. Their feet shuffled in the
frost. One of them muttered something, half curse, half invocation,
in his own dialect. I said: "Well, this is hardly the place to
talk. My home is open to all comers, as you see. Why did you not
kindle the fire and light the lamps and wait for me in
comfort?"