Legacy: Arthurian Saga (99 page)

For four days I tended him, while none
came near except the forest creatures and the wild deer and at
night the white owl haunting the place as if it waited to convoy
his spirit home.

I did not think he could recover; his
face was fallen in and grey, and I had seen the same blue tinge
round the mouths of dying men. From time to time he seemed to come
half to the surface, to know I was beside him. At such times he was
restless always, fretting, I understood, about the care of the
shrine. When I tried to talk to him and reassure him, he seemed not
to understand, so in the end I drew back the curtains that parted
the room from the shrine, so that he might see the lamp still
burning in its place on the altar.

It was a strange time for me, by day
tending the chapel and its keeper, and by night snatching sleep
while I watched the sick man and waited for his restless muttering
to make sense. There was a small store of meal and wine in the
place, and with the dried meat and raisins left in my pack, I had
sufficient food. The old man could scarcely swallow; I kept him
alive on warm wine mixed with water, and a cordial I made for him
from the medicines I carried. Each morning I was amazed that he had
lived through the night. So I stayed, tending the place by day, and
by night spending long hours beside him watching, or else in the
chapel where the smell of incense slowly faded and the sweet air of
the pines floated in and set the flame of the lamp aslant in its
well of oil.

Now when I look back on that time it
is like an island in moving waters. Or like a dreaming night which
gives rest and impetus between the hard days. I ought to have been
impatient to get on with my journey, to meet Arthur and to talk
with Ralf again and arrange with Count Ector how best, without
betraying either of us, I might enter the fabric of Arthur's life.
But I troubled myself with none of these things. The shrouding
forest, the still and glowing shrine, the sword lying where I had
hidden it under the thatch of the shed, these held me there, serene
and waiting. One never knows when the gods will call or come, but
there are times when their servants feel them near, and this was
such a time.

On the fifth night, as I carried in
wood to build the fire, the hermit spoke to me from the bed. He was
watching me from his pillows, and though he had not the strength to
lift his head, his eyes were level and clear.

"Who are you?"

I set down the wood and went over to
the bedside. "My name is Emrys, I was passing through the forest,
and came on the shrine. I found you by the well, and brought you
back to your bed."

"I...remember. I went to get water..."
I could see the effort that the memory cost him, but intelligence
was back in his eyes, and his speech, though blurred, was clear
enough.

"You were taken ill," I told him.
"Don't trouble yourself now. I'll get you something to drink, then
you must rest again. I have a brew here which will strengthen you.
I am a doctor; don't be afraid of it."

He drank, and after a while his color
seemed better, and his breathing easier. When I asked him if he was
in pain, his lips said, "No," without sound, and he lay quietly for
a while, watching the lamp beyond the doorway. I made the fire up
and propped him higher on his pillows to ease his breathing, then
sat down and waited with him. The night was still; from close
outside came the hooting of the white owl. I thought: You will not
have long to wait, my friend.

Towards midnight the old man turned
his head easily on the pillows and asked me suddenly: "Are you a
Christian?"

"I serve God."

"Will you keep the shrine for me when
I am gone?"

"The shrine shall be kept. Trust me
for it."

He nodded, as if satisfied, and lay
quiet for a time. But I thought something still troubled him; I
could see it working behind his eyes. I heated more wine and mixed
the cordial and held it to his lips. He thanked me with courtesy,
but as if he was thinking of something else, and his eyes went back
to the lighted doorway of the shrine.

I said: "If you wish, I will ride down
and bring you a Christian priest. But you will have to tell me the
way."

He shook his head, and closed his eyes
again. After a while he said, thinly: "Can you hear
them?"

"I can hear nothing but the
owl."

"Not that, no. The others."

"What others?"

"They crowd at the doors. Sometimes on
a night of midsummer you can hear them crying like young birds, or
like flocks on the far hills." He moved his head on the pillow.
"Did I do wrong, I wonder, to shut them out?"

I understood him then, I thought of
the bowl of sacrifice, the well outside, the unlit lamps in the
sacred nine of an older religion than any. And I think some part of
my mind was with the white shadow that floated through the forest
boughs outside. The place, if my blood told me aright, had been
holy time out of mind. I asked him gently: "Whose was the shrine,
father?"

"It was called the place of the trees.
After that the place of the stone. Then for a while it had another
name...but now down in the village they call it the chapel in the
green."

"What was the other name?"

He hesitated, then said: "The place of
the sword."

I felt the nape of my neck prickle, as
if the sword itself had touched me. "Why, father? Do you
know?"

He was silent for a moment, and his
eyes watched me, considering. Then he gave the ghost of a nod, as
if he had reached some conclusion that satisfied him. "Go into the
shrine and draw the cloth from the altar."

I obeyed him, lifting the lamp down to
the step in front of the altar, and taking off the cloth that had
draped it to the ground. It had been possible to see even through
the covering cloth that the altar was not a table such as the
Christians commonly use, but as high as a man's waist, and of the
Roman shape. Now I saw that this was indeed so. It was the twin of
the one in Segontium, a Mithras altar with a squared front and the
edge scrolled to frame the carving. And carving there had been,
though it was there no longer. I could make out the words MITHRAE
and INVICTO across the top, but on the panel below where other
words had been, a sword had been cut clear through them, its hilt,
like a cross, marking the center of the altar. The remains of the
other letters had been gouged away, and the sword blade carved in
high relief among them. It was rough carving, but clear, and as
familiar to my eyes as that hilt was already familiar to my hand. I
realized then, staring at it, that the sword in the stone was the
only cross the chapel held. And above it, only the dedication to
Mithras Unconquered remained. The rest of the altar was
bare.

I went back to the old man's bedside.
His eyes waited, with a question in them. I asked him: "What does
Macsen's sword do here, carved like a cross in the
altar?"

His eyes closed, then opened again,
lightly. He fetched a long, light breath. "So. It is you. You have
been sent. It was time. Sit down again, while I tell you." As I
obeyed him, he said, strongly enough, but in a voice stretched thin
as wire: "There is just time to tell you. Yes, it is Macsen's
sword, him the Romans called Maximus, who was Emperor here in
Britain before the Saxons ever came, and who married a British
princess. The sword was forged south of here, they say, from iron
found in Snow Hill within sight of the sea, and tempered with water
that runs from that hill into the sea. It is a sword for the High
King of Britain, and was made to defend Britain against her
enemies."

"So when he took it to Rome, it
availed him nothing?"

"It is a marvel it did not break in
his hand. But after he was murdered they brought the sword home to
Britain, and it is ready for the King's hand that can find it, and
finding, raise."

"And you know where they hid
it?"

"I never knew that, but when I was a
boy and came here to serve the gods, the priest of the shrine told
me that they had taken it back to the country where it was made, to
Segontium. He told me the story, as it happened in this very place,
years before his time. It was...it was after the Emperor Macsen had
died at Aquileia by the Inland Sea, and those of the British who
were left came home. They came through Brittany, and landed here on
the west, and took the road home through the hills, and they came
by here. Some of them were servants of Mithras, and when they saw
this place was holy, they waited here for the summer midnight, and
prayed. But most were Christians, and one was a priest, so when the
others had done they asked him to say a mass. But there was neither
cross nor cup, only the altar as you see it. So they talked
together, and went to where their horses were standing, and took
from the bundles tied there treasure beyond counting. And among the
treasure was the sword, and a great krater, a grail of the Greek
fashion, wide and deep. They stood the sword over against the altar
for a cross, and they drank from the grail, and it was said
afterwards that no man was there that day but found his spirit
satisfied. They left gold for the shrine, but the sword and the
grail they would not leave. One of them took a chisel and a hammer
and made the altar as you see it. Then they rode away with the
treasure, and did not come this way again."

"It's a strange story. I never heard
it before."

"No man has heard it. The keeper of
the shrine swore by the old gods and the new that he would say
nothing save to the priest who came after. And I, in my turn, was
told." He paused. "It is said that one day the sword itself will
come back to the shrine, to stand here for a cross. So in my time I
have struggled to keep the shrine clean of all but what you see. I
took the lights away, and the offering bowls, and threw the crooked
knife into the lake. The grass has grown now over the stone. I
drove out the owl that nested in the roof, and I took the silver
and copper coins from the well and gave them to the poor." Another
long pause, so long that I thought he had gone. But then his eyes
opened again. "Did I do right?"

"How can I tell? You did what you
thought was right. No one can do more than that."

"What will you do?" he
asked.

"The same."

"And you will tell no man what I have
told you, save him who should know?"

"I promise."

He lay quietly, with trouble still in
his face, and his eyes intent on something distant and long ago.
Then, imperceptibly but as definitely as a man stepping into a cold
stream to cross it, he made a decision. "Is the cloth still off the
altar?"

"Yes."

"Then light the nine lamps and fill
the bowl with wine and oil, and open the doors to the forest, and
carry me where I can see the sword again."

I knew that if I lifted him, he would
die in my hands. His breath labored harshly in the thin chest, and
the frail body shook with it. He turned his head on the pillows,
feebly now.

"Make haste." When I hesitated, I saw
fear touch his face. "I tell you I must see it. Do as I
say."

I thought of the shrine scoured and
swept of all its ancient sanctities; and then of the sword itself,
hidden with the King's gold in the roofbeams of the stable outside.
But it was too late even for that. "I cannot lift you, father," I
said, "but lie still. I will bring the altar here to
you."

"How can you -- ?" he began, then
stopped with wonder growing in his face, and whispered: "Then bring
it quickly, and let me go."

I knelt beside the bed, facing away
from him, looking at the red heart of the fire. The logs had fallen
from their blaze into a glowing cave, crystals glimmering in a
globe of fire. Beside me the difficult breathing came and went like
the painful beat of my own blood. The beat surged in my temples,
hurting me. Deep in my belly the pain grew and burned. The sweat
ran scalding down my face, and my bones shook in their sheath of
flesh as, grain by grain and inch by shining inch, I built that
altarstone for him against the dark, blank wall. It rose slowly,
solid, and blotted out the fire. The surface of the stone was
lucent against the dark, and ripples of light touched it and
wavered across it, as if it floated on sunlit water. Then, lamp by
lamp, I lit the nine flames so that they floated with the stone
like riding-lights. The wine brimmed in the bowl, and the censer
smoked. INVICTO, I wrote, and groped, sweating, for the name of the
god. But all that came was the single word INVICTO, and then the
sword stood forward out of the stone like a blade from a splitting
sheath, and the blade was white iron with runes running down it in
the wavering waterlight, below the flashing hilt and the word in
the stone, TO HIM UNCONQUERED...

It was morning, and the first birds
were stirring. Inside, the place was very quiet. He was dead, gone
as lightly as the vision I had made for him out of shadows. It was
I who, stiff and aching, moved like a ghost to cover the altar and
tend the lamp.

BOOK III THE SWORD
1

When I had promised the dying man to
see that the chapel was cared for, I had not thought of doing this
myself. There was a monastery in one of the little valleys not far
from Count Ector's castle, and it should not be hard to find
someone from there who would live here and care for the place. This
did not mean I must hand over the sword's secret to him; it was
mine now, and the end of its story was in my hands.