The Last Enchantment (3 page)

"One can see why. The magic was real, and too strong for many of those who witnessed it, but it has burned down into the memories of all who saw it, and into the memory of the folk who made the songs and legends. Well, that is for the future. But we are here now, and with the work still to do. And one thing is certain; only you can do it. So you must go ahead and do it in your own way."

The young face relaxed. His hands flattened on the table as he leaned his weight on them. For the first time it could be seen that he was very tired, and that it was a kind of relief to let the weariness sweep over him, and with it the need for sleep.

"I should have known you would understand. So you see why I must go myself, without Cador. He didn't like it, I confess, but he saw the point in the end. And to be honest, I would have liked him with me...But this is something I must do alone. You might say it's as much for my own reassurance as for the people's. I can say that to you."

"Do you need reassurance?"

A hint of a smile. "Not really. In the morning I shall probably be able to believe everything that happened on the battlefield, and know it for real, but now it's still like being in the edges of a dream. Tell me, Merlin, can I ask Cador to go south to escort Queen Ygraine, my mother, fromCornwall ?"

"There's no reason why not. He is Duke of Cornwall, so since Uther's death her home at Tintagel must fall under his protection. If Cador was able to sink his hatred of Uther into the common weal, he must long ago have been able to forgive Ygraine for her betrayal of his father. And now you have declared his sons your heirs to theHighKingdom , so all scores are paid. Yes, send Cador."

He looked relieved. "Then all's well. I've already sent a courier to her, of course, with the news. Cador should meet her on the road. They will be in Amesbury by the time my father's body arrives there for burial."

"Do I take it, then, that you want me to escort the body to Amesbury?"

"If you will. I cannot possibly go myself, as I should, and it must be royally escorted. Better you, perhaps, who knew him, than I, who am so recently royal. Besides, if he is to lie beside Ambrosius in the Dance of the Hanging Stones, you should be there to see the king-stone shifted and the grave made.

You'll do that?"

"Certainly. It should take us, going in a seemly way, about nine days."

"By that time I should be there myself." A sudden flash. "With average luck, that is. I'm expecting word soon, about Colgrim. I'll be going after him in about four hours' time, as soon as it's full light. Bedwyr goes with me," he added, as if that should be a comfort and a reassurance.

"And what of King Lot, since I have gathered he does not go with you?"

At that I got a bland look, and a tone as smooth as any politician's. "He leaves, too, at first light. Not for his own land...not, that is, until I find which way Colgrim went. No, I urged King Lot to go straight toYork . I believe Queen Ygraine will go there after the burial, andLot can receive her. Then, once his marriage with my sister Morgan is celebrated, I suppose I can count him an ally, like it or not. And the rest of the fighting, whatever comes between now and Christmastime, I can do without him."

"So, I shall see you in Amesbury. And after that?"

"Caerleon," he said, without hesitation. "If the wars allow it, I shall go there. I've never seen it, and from what Cador tells me it must be my headquarters now."

"Until the Saxons break the treaty and move in from the south."

"As of course they will. Until then. God send there will be time to breath first."

"And to build another stronghold."

He looked up quickly. "Yes. I was thinking of that. You'll be there to do it?" Then, with sudden urgency:

"Merlin, you swear you will always be there?"

"As long as I am needed. Though it seems to me," I added lightly, "that the eaglet is fledging fast enough already." Then, because I knew what lay behind the sudden uncertainty: "I shall wait for you at Amesbury, and I shall be there to present you to your mother."

Amesbury is little more than a village, but since Ambrosius' day it has taken some kind of grandeur to itself, as befits his birthplace, and its nearness to the great monument of the Hanging Stones that stand on the windy Sarum plain. This is a linked circle of vast stone, a gigantic Dance, which was raised first in times beyond men's memory. I had (by what folk persisted in seeing as "magic art") rebuilt the Dance to beBritain 's monument of glory, and the burial-place of her kings. Here Uther was to lie beside his brother Ambrosius.

We brought his body without incident to Amesbury and left it in the monastery there, wrapped in spices and coffined in hollowed oak, under its purple pall before the chapel altar. The King's guard (who had ridden south with his body) stood vigil, and the monks and nuns of Amesbury prayed beside the bier.

Queen Ygraine being a Christian, the dead king was to be buried with all the rites and ceremonies of the Christian church, though in life he had barely troubled even to pay lip-service to the Christians' God.

Even now he lay with gold coins glinting on his eyelids, to pay the fee of a ferryman who had exacted such toll for centuries longer than Saint Peter of the Gate. The chapel itself had apparently been erected on the site of a Roman shrine; it was little more than an oblong erection of daub and wattle, with wooden shafts holding up a roof of thatch, but it had a floor of fine mosaic work, scrubbed clean and hardly damaged. This, showing scrolls of vine and acanthus, could offend no Christian souls, and a woven rug lay centrally, probably to cover whatever pagan god or goddess floated naked among the grapes.

The monastery reflected something of Amesbury's new prosperity. It was a miscellaneous collection of buildings huddled anyhow around a cobbled yard, but these were in good repair and the Abbot's house, which had been vacated for the Queen and her train, was well built of stone, with wooden flooring, and a big fireplace at one end with a chimney.

The headman of the village, too, had a good house, which he made haste to offer me for lodging, but explaining that the King would follow me soon, I left him in an uproar of extra preparation, and betook myself with my servants to the tavern. This was small, with little pretension to comfort, but it was clean, and fires were kept burning high against the autumn chills. The innkeeper remembered me from the time I had lodged there during the rebuilding of the Dance; he still showed the awe that the exploit had raised in him, and made haste to give me the best room, and to promise me fresh poultry and a mutton pie for supper. He showed relief when I told him that I had brought two servants with me, who would serve me in my own chamber, and banished his own staring pot-boys to their posts at the kitchen burners.

The servants I had brought were two of Arthur's. In recent years, living alone in theWildForest , I had cared for myself, and now had none of my own. One was a small, lively man from the hills of Gwynedd; the other was Ulfin, who had been Uther's own servant. The late King had taken him from a rough servitude, and had shown him kindness, which Ulfin repaid with devotion. This would now belong to Arthur, but it would have been cruel to deny Ulfin the chance of following his master's body on its last journey, so I had asked for him by name. By my orders he had gone to the chapel with the bier, and I doubted if I would see him before the funeral was over. Meantime, the Welshman, Lleu, unpacked my boxes and bespoke hot water, and sent the more intelligent of the landlord's boys across to the monastery with a message from me to be delivered to the Queen on her arrival. In it I bade her welcome, and offered to wait on her as soon as she should be rested enough to send for me. News of the happenings in Luguvallium she had had already; now I added merely that Arthur was not yet in Amesbury, but was expected in time for the burial.

I was not in Amesbury when her party arrived. I rode out to the Giants' Dance to see that all was ready for the ceremony, to be told on my return that the Queen and her escort had arrived shortly after noon, and that Ygraine with her ladies was settled into the Abbot's house. Her summons to me came just as afternoon dimmed into evening.

The sun had gone down in a clouded sky, and when, refusing the offer of an escort, I walked the short distance to the monastery, it was already almost dark. The night was heavy as a pall, a mourning sky, where no stars shone. I remembered the great king-star that had blazed for Ambrosius' death, and my thoughts went again to the King who lay nearby in the chapel, with monks for mourners, and the guards like statues beside the bier. And Ulfin, who, alone of all those who saw him die, had wept for him.

A chamberlain met me at the monastery gate. Not the monks' porter; this was one of the Queen's own servants, a royal chamberlain I recognized fromCornwall . He knew who I was, of course, and bowed very low, but I could see that he did not recall our last meeting. It was the same man, grown greyer and more bent, who had admitted me to the Queen's presence some three months before Arthur's birth, when she had promised to confide the child to my care. I had been disguised then, for fear of Uther's enmity, and it was plain that the chamberlain did not recognize, in the tall prince at the gate, the humble bearded

"doctor" who had called to consult with the Queen.

He led me across the weedy courtyard toward the big thatched building where the Queen was lodged.

Cressets burned outside the door and here and there along the wall, so that the poverty of the place showed starkly. After the wet summer weeds had sprouted freely among the cobbles, and the corners of the yard were waist-high in nettles. Among these the wooden ploughs and mattocks of the working brothers stood, wrapped in sacking. Near one doorway was an anvil, and on a nail driven into the jamb hung a line of horse-shoes. A litter of thin black piglings tumbled, squealing, out of our way, and were called by a sow's anxious grunting through the broken planks of a half-door. The holy men and women of Amesbury were simple folk. I wondered how the Queen was faring.

I need not have feared for her. Ygraine had always been a lady who knew her own mind, and since her marriage to Uther she had kept a most queenly state, urged to this, possibly, by the very irregularity of that marriage. I remembered the Abbot's house as a humble dwelling, clean and dry, but boasting no comfort. Now in a few short hours the Queen's people had seen to it that it was luxurious. The walls, of undressed stone, had been hidden by hangings of scarlet and green and peacock blue, and one beautiful Eastern carpet that I had brought for her fromByzantium . The wooden floor was scrubbed white, and the benches that stood along the walls were piled with furs and cushions. A great fire of logs burned on the hearth. To one side of this was set a tall chair of gilded wood, cushioned in embroidered wool, with a footstool fringed with gold. Across from this stood another chair with a high back, and arms carved with dragons' heads. The lamp was a five-headed dragon in bronze. The door to the Abbot's austere sleeping chamber stood open, and beyond it I caught a glimpse of a bed hung with blue, and the sheen of a silver fringe. Three or four women — two of them no more than girls — were busying themselves in the bedchamber and over the table, which, at the end of the room away from the fire, stood ready for supper. Pages dressed in blue ran with dishes and flagons. Three white greyhounds lay as near to the fire as they dared go.

As I entered, there was a pause in the bustle and chatter. All eyes turned to the doorway. A page bearing a wine-jar, caught within a yard of the door, checked, swerved, and stared, showing the whites of his eyes. Someone at the table dropped a wooden trencher, and the greyhounds pounced on the fallen cakes. The scrabbling of their claws and their munching were the only sounds in the room to be heard through the rustling of the fire.

"Good evening," I said pleasantly. I answered the women's reverences, watched gravely while a boy picked up the fallen trencher and kicked the dogs out of the way, then allowed myself to be ushered by the chamberlain toward the hearthplace.

"The Queen — " he was beginning, when the eyes turned from me to the inner door, and the greyhounds, arched and wagging, danced to meet the woman who came through it.

But for the hounds and the curtsying women, a stranger might have thought that here was the Abbess of the place come to greet me. The woman who entered was as much a contrast to the rich room as that room had been to the squalid courtyard. She was dressed from head to foot in black, with a white veil covering her hair, its ends thrown back over her shoulders, and its soft folds pinned to frame her face like a wimple. The sleeves of her gown were lined with some grey silken stuff, and there was a cross of sapphires on her breast, but to the somber black and white of her mourning there was no other relief.

It was a long time since I had seen Ygraine, and I expected to find her changed, but even so I was shocked at what I saw. Beauty was still there, in the lines of bone and the great dark-blue eyes and the queenly poise of her body; but grace had given way to dignity, and there was a thinness about the wrists and hands that I did not like, and shadows near her eyes almost as blue as the eyes themselves. This, not the ravages of time, was what shocked me. There were signs everywhere that a doctor could read all too clearly.

But I was here as prince and emissary, not as physician. I returned her smile of greeting, bowed over her hand, and led her to the cushioned chair. At a sign from her the boys ran to collar the greyhounds and take them aside, and she settled herself, smoothing her skirt. One of the girls moved a footstool for her, and then, with lowered eyelids and folded hands, stayed beside her mistress's chair.

The Queen bade me be seated, and I obeyed her. Someone brought wine, and across the cups we exchanged the commonplaces of the meeting. I asked her how she did, but with purely formal courtesy, and I knew she could read nothing of my knowledge in my face.

"And the King?" she asked at length. The word came from her as if forced, with a kind of pain behind it.