The Last Enchantment (29 page)

He eyed me, I thought strangely, but answered readily enough. "Urbgen called me in. The enemy broke across country into Strathclyde, and Caw didn't manage to hold them. They would have forced their way down through the forest to the road. I came up with them, and broke them up and drove them back. The remnants fled south. I should have followed straight away, but then we found you, and I had to stay...How could I leave again, till I knew you were home, and cared for?"

"So I really did see the fighting? I wondered if it was part of the dream."

"You must have seen it all. We fought through the forest, along the river there. You know what it's like, good open ground with thin woodland, birch and alder, just the place for a surprise with fast cavalry. We had the hill at our backs, and took them as they reached the ford. The river was full; easy for horsemen, but for foot-soldiers a trap...Afterwards, when we came back from the first pursuit, people came running to tell me that you were there. You'd been found wandering among the dead and wounded and giving directions to the doctors...Nobody recognized you at first, but then the whispers started that Merlin's ghost was there." A wry little smile. "I gather that the ghost's advice was good, as often as not. But of course the whispers set up a scare, and some fools started throwing stones to drive you away. It was one of the orderlies, a man called Paulus, who recognized you, and put a stop to the ghost stories. He followed you back to where you were living, and then sent to me."

"Paulus. Yes, of course. A good man. I've worked with him often. And where was I living?"

"In a ruined turret, with an ancient orchard round it. You don't remember that?"

"No. But something is coming back. A turret, yes, ruinous, all ivy and owls. And apple trees?"

"Yes. It was little more than a pile of stones, with bracken for bedding, and piles of apples rotting, and a store of nuts, and rags hung to dry on the apple boughs." He paused to clear something from his throat.

"They thought at first you were one of those wild hermits, and indeed, when I first saw you myself..." His smile twisted. "You looked the part better than you ever looked it at the Green Chapel."

"I can imagine that." And so I could. My beard, before they had shaved me, had grown long and grey, and my hands, lying weakly on the bright blankets, looked thin and old, bones held together with a net of knotted veins.

"So we brought you here. I had to go south again soon after. We caught them up at Caer Guinnion, and fought a bloody engagement there. All went well, but then a messenger came down from Galava with more news of you. When we found you and brought you here, you were strong enough on your feet, but crazy; you didn't know anyone, and you talked about things that made no kind of sense; but once here, and in the women's care, you relapsed into sleep and silence. Well, the messenger came after the battle to tell me that you had never woken. You seemed to fall into a high fever, still talking in the same wild way, then finally lay so long unconscious that they took you for dead, and sent the courier to tell me. I came as soon as I could."

I narrowed my eyes at him. The light from the window was strong. He saw this, and signed to the slave, who pulled a curtain across. "Let me get this clear. After you had found me in the forest and brought me to Galava, you went south. And there was another battle? Arthur, how long have I been here?"

"It is three weeks since we found you. But it is fully seven months since you wandered off into the forest and lost yourself. You were gone all winter. Is it any wonder that we thought you were dead?"

"Seven months?" Often, as a doctor, I have had to give this kind of news to patients who have been long feverish, or lying in coma, and I always see the same sort of incredulous, groping shock. I felt it now myself. To know that half a year had dropped out of time, and such a half year...What, in those months, might not have happened to a country as torn and as embattled as mine? And to her King? Other things, forgotten till now in the mists of illness, began to come back to me.

Looking at him, I saw again, with fear, the hollowed cheekbones and the smudge of sleepless nights beneath his eyes: Arthur, who ate like a young wolf and slept like a child; who was the creature of gaiety and strength. There had been no defeat in the field; his glory there had not suffered even the smear of a shadow. Nor could his anxiety for me have brought him to this pass. There remained his home.

"Emrys, what has happened?"

Once more, in that place, the childhood name came naturally. I saw his face twist as if the memory were a pain. He bent his head and stared down at the blankets.

"My mother, the Queen. She died."

Memory stirred. The woman lying in the great bed hung with rich stuffs? I had known, then. "I am sorry,"

I said.

"I heard just before we fought the battle at Caer Guinnion. Lucan brought the news, with the token you had left with him. You remember it, a brooch with the Christian symbol? Her death came as no surprise.

We had expected it. But I believe that grief helped to hasten her death."

"Grief? Why, has there been — ?" I stopped dead. It had come back clearly now, the night in the forest, and the flask of wine I had opened to share with the troopers. And why. The vision stirred again, the moonlit chamber and the blowing curtains and the dead woman. Something closed my throat. I said, hardly: "Guenever?"

He nodded, not looking up.

I asked, knowing the answer: "And the child?"

He looked up quickly. "You knew? Yes, of course you would...It never came to term. They said she was with child, but shortly before Christmas she began to bleed, and then, at the New Year, died in great pain. If you had been there — " He stopped, swallowed, and was silent.

"I am sorry," I said again.

He went on, in a voice so hard that it sounded angry: "We thought you were dead, too. Then, after the battle, there you were, filthy and old and crazy, but the field surgeons said you might recover. That, at least, I had saved from the shambles of the winter...Then I had to leave you to go to Caer Guinnion. I won it, yes, but lost some good men. Then on the heels of the action Ector's courier came to tell me you were dead. When I got here at dawn yesterday I expected to find your body already burned or buried."

He stopped, put his forehead hard down on a clenched fist, and stayed so. The servant, rigid by the window, caught my eye, and went, softly. In a moment or two Arthur raised his head and spoke in his normal voice.

"Forgive me. All the time I was riding north, I kept remembering what you said about dying a shameful death. It was hard to bear."

"But here I am, clean and whole, with my wits clear, and ready to become clearer when you tell me all that has happened in the last seven months. Now, of your kindness, pour me some of that wine, and go back, if you will, to your journey into Elmet."

He obeyed me, and in a while talk became easier. He spoke of his journey through the Gap to Olicana, and what he had found there, and of his meeting with the King of Elmet. Then of his return to Caerleon, and of the Queen's miscarriage and death. This time, when I questioned him, he was able to answer me, and in the end I could give him the chilly comfort of knowing that my presence at court beside the young Queen could have been no help. Her doctors were skilled with drugs, and had saved her the worst of the pain; I could have done no more. The child was ill-conceived; nothing could have saved it, or its mother.

When he had heard what I had to tell him, he accepted this, and himself turned the subject. He was eager to hear what had happened to me, and impatient of the fact that I could remember little after the marriage feast at Luguvallium.

"Can you not remember anything of how you came to the turret where we found you?"

"A little. It comes clear bit by bit. I must have wandered about in the forest and kept myself alive somehow until winter. Then it seems to me as if some rude folk of the hill forest must have taken me in and cared for me. Without that, I doubt if I could have survived the snow. I thought they might be some of Mab's people, the Old Ones of the mountain country, but if so, they would surely have sent word to you."

"They did. Word came, but only after you had vanished again. As is usual, the Old Ones were snowed up in their high caves all winter, and you with them. They went hunting when the snow melted, and came back to their caves to find you gone. It was from them that I first heard that you had run mad. They had had to tie you, they said, but afterwards, at such times, you would be calm and very weak, and so it was at the time when they left you. When they got home, you had gone."

"I remember being bound. Yes. So after that I must have made my way downhill, and ended up in the ruin near the ford — I suppose, in my crazed way, still making for Galava. It was spring; I remember a little of that. Then the battle must have overtaken me, and you found me there in the forest. I recall nothing of that."

He told me again how I had been found, thin and filthy and talking no kind of sense, hiding in the ruined turret, with a kind of squirrel's hoard of acorns and beechnuts, and dried windfall apples put by, and a pigling with a splinted leg for company.

"So that part of it was real!" I said, smiling. "I can remember finding the creature, and healing the leg, but not much else. If I was as sharp set as you say, it was good of me not to eat Master Piglet. What happened to it?"

"It's here in Ector's sties." The first glimmer of humour touched his mouth. "And marked, I think, for a long and dishonourable life. There's not one of the boys would dare lay a hand on the enchanter's personal pig, which looks like growing up into a good fighting boar, so it will end up as king of the sty, which is only proper. Merlin, you've told me all you can remember of what happened after making camp up there on theWolf Road ; what do you remember before that? What made you ill? Urbgen's men said it came on suddenly. They thought it was poison, and so did I. I wondered if the witch had had you followed, after the wedding feast, and one of her creatures had dragged you from your bed that night while the trooper's back was turned. But if that had happened, surely they would have killed you? There was no suspicion of foul play from those two men; they were Urbgen's own, hand-picked."

"None at all. They were good fellows, and I owe them my life."

"They told me that you drank wine that night, from your own flask. They did not share it. They say, too, that you were drunk at the marriage feast. You? I have never seen you the worse for wine. And you sat beside Morgause. Have you any reason to believe that she drugged your wine?"

I opened my mouth to answer him, and to this day I swear that the word on my lips was "Yes." This, as far as I knew it, was the truth. But some god must have forestalled me. Instead of the Yes that my mind had framed, my lips said, "No."

I must have spoken strangely, because I saw him staring, arrested with narrowed eyes. It was a discomforting look, and I found myself elaborating. "How can I tell? But I don't think so. I have told you that I have no power now, but the witch would not know that. She is still afraid of me. She had tried before, not once but twice, to snare me with her woman's spells. Both times she failed, and I think she would not have dared try again."

He was silent for a while. Then he said, shortly: "When my Queen died, there was talk of poison. I wondered."

At this I could protest truthfully. "There always is, but I beg you will not regard it! From what you have told me, I am certain there was no such thing. Besides, how?" I added, as convincingly as I could:

"Believe me, Arthur. If she were guilty, can you see any reason why I should want to protect Morgause from you?"

He still looked doubtful, but did not pursue it further. "Well," was all he said, "she'll find her wings clipped now for a while. She is back in Orkney, andLot is dead."

I took this in silently. It was another shock. In these few months, how much had changed. "How?" I asked him. "And when?"

"In the forest battle. I can't say that I mourn him, except that he had that rat Aguisel under his fist, and I believe that I shall have trouble there soon."

I said slowly: "I have remembered something else. During the fighting in the forest I heard them calling to one another that the king was dead. It struck me with helpless grief. For me, there is only one King...But they must have been speaking ofLot . Well, yes, at leastLot was a known evil. Now, I suppose, Urien will have it all his own way in the northeast, and Aguisel with him...But there's time enough for that.

Meanwhile, what of Morgause? She was carrying a child at Luguvallium, and should have been delivered by now. A boy?"

"Two. Twin sons, born at Dunpeldyr. She joinedLot there after Morgan's wedding. Witch or no witch,"

he said, with a trace of bitterness, "she is a good breeder of sons. By the timeLot joined us here in Rheged, he was bragging that he had left yet another in her before he quitted Dunpeldyr." He looked down at his hands. "You must have had speech with her at the wedding. Did you find anything out about the other boy?"

There was no need to ask which boy he meant. It seemed that he could not bring himself to say "my son."

"Only that he is alive."

His eyes came up quickly to mine. There was a flash in them, suppressed instantly. But I was sure that it was one of joy. So short a time ago, and he had looked for the child only to kill it.

I said, schooling my voice to hide the pity I felt: "She tells me that she does not know where he is to be found. She may be lying, I'm not sure of that. It must be true that she kept him hidden away fromLot .

But she may bring him into the open now. What has she to fear, now thatLot has gone? Except, perhaps, from you?"

He was looking at his hands again. "She need not fear me now on that score," he said woodenly.

That is all I can remember of that interview. I heard someone saying, but the words seemed to go round the curved tower walls like a whispered echo, or like words in my head alone: "She is the falsest lady at this time alive, but she must live to rear her four sons by the King of Orkney, for they will be your faithful servants, and the bravest of your Companions."