Merlin's Booke (14 page)

They walked companionably to the river which ran noisily between stones. Willows on the bank wept their leaves into the swift current. Merlinnus used the willow trunks for support as he sat down carefully on the bank. He eased his feet, sandals and all, into the cold water. It was too far and too slippery for him to stand.

“Bring me enough to bathe with,” he said, pointing to the water. It could be a test of the boy's quick-wittedness.

Gawen stripped off his cap, knelt down, and held the cap in the river. Then he pulled it out and wrung the water over the old man's hands.

Merlinnus liked that. The job had been done, and quickly, with little wasted motion. Another boy might have plunged into the river, splashing like an untrained animal. Or asked what to do.

The boy muttered,
“De matri a patre.”

Startled, Merlinnus looked up into the clear, untroubled blue eyes. “You know Latin?”

“Did I … did I say it wrong?”

“From the mother to the father.”

“That is what I meant.” Gawen's young face was immediately transformed by the wide smile. “The … the brothers taught me.”

Merlinnus knew only two monasteries along the coast and they were very far away. The sisters of Quintern Abbey were much closer, but they never taught boys. This child, thought the mage, has come a very long way indeed. Aloud, he said, “They taught you well.”

Gawen bent down again, dipped the cap once more, and this time used the water to wash his own face and hands. Then he wrung the cap out thoroughly, but did not put it back on his head. Cap in hand, he faced the mage. “You
will
bring me to the High King, then?”

A sudden song welled up in Merlinnus' breast, a high hallelujah so unlike any of the dark chantings he was used to under the oaks. “I will,” he said.

As they neared the castle, the sun was setting. It was unusually brilliant, rain and fog being the ordinary settings for evenings in early fall. The high tor, rumored to be hollow, was haloed with gold and loomed up behind the topmost towers.

Gawen gasped at the high timbered walls.

Merlinnus smiled to himself but said nothing. For a child from the coast, such walls must seem near miraculous. But for the competent architect who planned for eternity, mathematics was miracle enough. He had long studied the writing of the Roman builders, whose prose styles were as tedious as their knowledge was great. He had learned from them how to instruct men in the slotting of breastwork timbers. All he had needed was the ability to read—and time. Yet time, he thought bitterly, for construction as with everything else had all but run out for him. Still, there was this boy—and this
now.

“Come,” said the mage. “Stand tall and enter.”

The boy squared his shoulders, and they hammered upon the carved wooden doors together.

Having first checked them out through the spyhole, the guards opened the doors with a desultory air that marked them at the end of their watch.

“Ave,
Merlinnus,” said one guard with an execrable accent. It was obvious he knew that much Latin and no more. The other guard was silent.

Gawen was silent as well, but his small silence was filled with wonder. Merlinnus glanced slantwise and saw the boy taking in the great stoneworks, the Roman mosaic panel on the entry wall, all the fine details he had insisted upon. He remembered the argument with Morgana when they had built that wall.

“An awed emissary,” he had told her, “is already half won over.”

At least she had had the wit to agree, though later those same wits had been addled by drugs and wine and the gods only knew what other excesses. Merlinnus shook his head. It was best to look forward not back when you have so little time. Looking backward was an old man's drug.

He put his hand on the boy's shoulder, feeling the fine bones beneath the jerkin. “Turn here,” he said softly.

They turned into the long, dark walkway where the walls were niched for the slide of three separate portcullises. No invaders could break in this way. Merlinnus was proud of the castle's defenses.

As they walked, Gawen's head was constantly aswivel: left, right, up, down. Wherever he had come from had left him unprepared for this. At last the hall opened into an inner courtyard where pigs, poultry, and wagons vied for space.

Gawen breathed out again. “It's like home,” he whispered.

“Eh?” Merlinnus let out a whistle of air like a skin bag deflating.

“Only finer, of course.” The quick answer almost satisfying, but not quite. Not quite. And Merlinnus was not one to enjoy unsolved puzzles.

“To the right,” the old man growled, shoving his finger hard into the boy's back. “To the right.”

They were ushered into the throne room without a moment's hesitation. This much, at least, a long memory and a reputation for magic making and king making brought him.

The king looked up from the paper he was laboriously reading, his finger marking his place. He always, Merlinnus noted with regret, read well behind that finger for he had come to reading as a grown man, and reluctantly, his fingers faster in all activities than his mind. But he
was
well-meaning, the mage reminded himself. Just a bit sluggish on the uptake. A king should be faster than his advisors, though he seem to lean upon them; quicker than his knights, though he seem to send them on ahead.

“Ah, Merlinnus, I am glad you are back. There's a dinner tonight with an emissary from the Orkneys and you know I have trouble understanding their rough mangling of English. You will be there?”

Merlinnus nodded.

“And there is a contest I need your advice on. Here.” He snapped his fingers and a list was put into his hand.

“The men want to choose a May queen to serve next year. I think they are hoping to thrust her on me as my queen. They have drawn up a list of those qualities they think she should possess. Kai wrote the list down.”

Kai, Merlinnus thought disagreeably, was the only one of that crew who
could
write and his spelling was only marginally better than his script. He took the list and scanned it:

Thre things smalle—headde, nose, breestes;

“Sounds more like an animal in a bestiary than a girl, my lord,” Merlinnus ventured at last.

Gawen giggled.

“They are trying—” the king began.

“They certainly are,” muttered the mage.

“They are trying … to be helpful, Merlinnus.” The king glowered at the boy by the mage's side. “And who is this fey bit of work?”

The boy bowed deeply. “I am called Gawen, sire, and I have come to learn to be a knight.”

The king ground his teeth. “And some of them, no doubt, will like you be-nights.”

A flush spread across the boy's cheeks. “I am sworn to the Holy Mother to be pure,” he said.

“Are you a grailer or a Goddess worshipper?” Before the boy could answer, the king turned to Merlinnus. “Is he well bred?”

“Of course,” said Merlinnus, guessing. The Latin and the elegant speech said as much, even without the slip about how much a castle looked like home.

“Very well,” the king said, arching his back and putting one hand behind him. “Damned throne's too hard. I think I actually prefer a soldier's pallet. Or a horse.” He stood and stretched. “That's enough for one day. I will look at the rest tomorrow.” He put out a hand and steadied himself, using the mage's shoulder, then descended the two steps to the ground. Whispering in Merlinnus' right ear because he knew the left ear was a bit deafened by age, the king said, “When you gave me the kingdom, you forgot to mention that kings need to sit all day long. You neglected to tell me about wooden thrones. If you had told me that when you offered me the crown, I might have thought about it a bit longer.”

“And would you have made a different choice, my lord?” asked Merlinnus quietly.

The king laughed and said aloud, “No, but I would have requested a different throne.”

Merlinnus looked shocked. “But that is the High King's throne. Without it, you would not be recognized.”

The king nodded.

Gawen, silent until this moment, spoke up. “Would not a cushion atop the throne do? Like the crown atop the High King's head?”

The king's hand went immediately to the heavy circlet of metal on his head. Then he swept it off, shook out his long blonde locks, and laughed. “Of course. A cushion. Out of the mouth of babes … it would do, would it not, Merlinnus?”

The mage's mouth twisted about the word. “Cushion.” But he could think of no objection. It was the quiet homeyness of the solution that offended him. But certainly it would work.

Merlinnus put aside his niggling doubts about the boy Gawen and turned instead to the problem at hand: making the king accept the magic of the sword in the stone.

“I beg you, sire,” the old mage said the next morning, “to listen.” He accompanied his request with a bow on bended knee. The pains of increasing age were only slightly mitigated by some tisanes brewed by a local herb wife. Merlinnus sighed heavily as he went down. It was that sigh, sounding so much like his old grandfather's, that decided the king.

“All right, all right, Merlinnus. Let us see this sword and this stone.”

“It is in my workroom,” Merlinnus said. “If you will accompany me there.” He tried to stand and could not.

“I will not only accompany you,” said the king patiently, “it looks as if I will have to carry you.” He came down from his throne and lifted the old man up to his feet.

“I can walk,” Merlinnus said, somewhat testily.

Arm in arm, they wound through the castle halls, up three flights of stone stairs to Merlinnus' tower workroom.

The door opened with a spoken spell and three keys. The king seemed little impressed.

“There!”
said the mage, pointing to a block of white marble with veins of red and green running through. Sticking out of the stone top was the hilt of a sword. The hilt was carved with wonderful runes. On the white marble face was the legend:

WHOSO PULLETH OUTE THIS SWERD OF THIS STONE IS RIGHTWYS KYNGE BORNE OF ALL BRYTAYGNE

Slowly the king read aloud, his finger tracing the letters in the stone. When he had finished, he looked up. “But
I
am king of all Britain.”

“Then pull the sword, sire.”

The king smiled and it was not a pleasant smile. He was a strong man, in his prime, and except for his best friend Sir Lancelot, was reputed to be the strongest in the kingdom. It was one of the reasons Merlinnus had chosen him. He put his hand to the hilt, tightened his fingers around it until the knuckles were white, and pulled.

The sword remained in the stone.

“Merlinnus, this is witchery. I will not have it.” His voice was cold.

“And with
witchery
you will pull it out in full view of the admiring throngs. You—and no one else.” The mage smiled benignly.

The king let go of the sword. “But why this? I am
already
king.”

“Because I hear grumblings in the kingdom. Oh, do not look slantwise at me, boy. It is not magic but reliable spies that tell me so. There are those who refuse to follow you, to be bound to you and so bind this kingdom because they doubt the legitimacy of your claim.”

The king snorted. “And they are right, Merlinnus. I am king because the arch-mage wills it.
Per crucem et quercum.”

Startled, Merlinnus asked, “How did you know that?”

“Oh, my old friend, do you think you are the only one with reliable spies?”

Merlinnus stared into the king's eyes. “Yes, you are right. You are king because I willed it. And because you earned it. But this bit of legerdemain …”

“Witchery!” interrupted the king.

Merlinnus persisted. “This
legerdemain
will have them all believing in you.” He added quickly, “As I do.
All
of them. To bind the kingdom you need
all
the tribes to follow you.”

The king looked down and then, as if free of the magic for a moment, turned and stared out of the tower window to the north where winter was already creeping down the mountainsides. “Do those few tribes matter? The ones who paint themselves blue and squat naked around small fires. The ones who wrap themselves in woolen blankets and blow noisily into animal bladders calling it song? The ones who dig out shelled fish with their toes and eat the fish raw? Do we really want to bring them to our kingdom?”

“They are all part of Britain. The Britain of which you are the king now and for the future.”

The king shifted his gaze from the mountains to the guards walking his donjon walls. “Are you positive I shall be able to draw the sword? I will
not
be made a mockery to satisfy some hidden purpose of yours.”

“Put your hand on the sword, sire.”

The king turned slowly as if the words had a power to command him. He walked back to the marble. It seemed to glow. He reached out and then, before his hand touched the hilt, by an incredible act of will, he stopped. “I am a good soldier, Merlinnus. And I love this land.”

“I know.”

With a resonant slap the king's hand grasped the sword. Merlinnus muttered something in a voice as soft as a cradle song. The sword slid noiselessly from the stone.

Holding the sword above his head, the king turned and looked steadily at the mage. “If I were a wicked man, I would bring this down on your head. Now.”

“I know.”

Slowly the sword descended and, when it was level with his eyes, the king put his left hand to the hilt as well. He hefted the sword several times and made soft comfortable noises deep in his chest. Then, carefully, like a woman threading a needle, he slid the sword back into its slot in the stone.