The Last Enchantment (57 page)

Arthur swung round. He had gone quite white.

"By the Light! It's you!"

"Who else? I thought you knew."

"Merlin!" Now he really was trying for breath. He came back to stand over me. "I thought — I hardly had time to look — just those murdering rascals butchering an old man — unarmed, I thought, and poor, by the look of the horse and trappings..." He went on both knees beside me. "Ah, Merlin, Merlin..."

And the High King of allBritain laid his head down on my knee, and was silent.

After a while he stirred and lifted his head.

"I got your token, and the message from the courier. But I don't think I really quite believed him. When he first spoke and showed me the Dragon it seemed right...I suppose I'd never thought you could really die, like mortal men...but on the way here, riding alone, with nothing to do but think — well, it ceased to be real. I don't know what I pictured; myself ending up again, perhaps, in front of that blocked cave mouth, where we buried you alive." I felt a shiver go through him. "Merlin, what has happened? When we left you for dead, sealed in the cave, it was the malady, of course, giving the appearance of death; I realize that now. But afterwards? When you woke, alone and weighed down with your own grave-clothes? God knows, that would be enough to bring another death! What did you do? How survive, locked alone in the hill? How escape? And when? You must have known how sorely I was bereft. Where have you been all this while?"

"Not so great a while. When I escaped, you were abroad. They told me you had gone toBrittany . So I said nothing, and lodged with Stilicho, my old servant, who keeps the mill near Maridunum, and waited for your return. I'll tell you everything soon — if you will get me that drink of water."

"Fool that I am, I was forgetting!" He jumped up and ran to the river. He filled the horn and brought it, then went down on one knee to hold it for me.

I shook my head and took it from him. "Thank you, but I'm quite steady now. It's nothing. I was not hurt. I am ashamed to have been of so little help."

"You gave me all I needed."

"Which was not much," I said, half laughing. "I could almost feel sorry for those wretches, thinking they had an easy kill, and bringing Arthur himself down on them like a thunderbolt. I did warn them, but who could blame them for not believing me?"

"You mean to tell me they knew who you were? And still used you like that?"

"I told you, they didn't believe me. Why should they? Merlin was dead. And the only power I have now is in your name — and they didn't believe that, either. 'An old man, unarmed and poor.' " I quoted him, smiling. "Why, you didn't know me yourself. Am I so much changed?"

He considered me. "It's the beard, and, yes, you are quite grey now. But if I had once looked at your eyes..." He took the horn from me and got to his feet. "Oh, yes, it is you. In all that ever mattered, you are unchanged. Old? Yes, we must all grow old. Age is nothing but the sum of life. And you are alive, and back with me here. By the great God of heaven, I have you back with me. What should I fear now?"

He drained the horn, replaced it, and looked around him. "I suppose I had better tidy up this mess. Are you really all right now? Could you tend my horse for me? I think he could be watered now."

I led the stallion down to the water, and with it the cream cob, which was grazing quietly, and made no attempt to escape me. When they had drunk I tethered them, then got some salve from my pack and doctored the cut on the cob's shoulder. It rolled an eye back at me, and the skin of its shoulder flickered, but it showed no sign of pain. The cut bled still, but sluggishly, and the beast was not walking lame. I loosed the girths of both horses, and left them grazing while I retrieved the scattered contents of my saddlebag.

Arthur's way of clearing up the "mess" — three men violently dead — was to haul the bodies by their heels to a decent hiding-place at the forest's edge. The severed head he picked up by the beard and slung it after. He was whistling while he did it, a gay little tune I recognized as one of the soldiers'

marching songs, which was frank, not to say over-explicit, about the sexual prowess of their leader. Then he looked around him.

"The next rain will clear some of the blood away. And even if I had a spade or mattock, I'm damned if I'd spend the time and trouble in digging that carrion in. Let the ravens have them. Meanwhile, we might as well impound their horses; I see they've stopped to graze away up the road there. I'll have to wash the blood off first, or I'll never get near them. You'd better abandon that cloak of yours, it'll never be the same again. Here, you can wear mine. No, I insist. It's an order. Here."

He dropped it over the pine log, then went down to the river and washed. While he remounted and went cantering up the road after the other horses, I stripped off my cloak, which was already stiffening with blood, and washed myself, then shook out Arthur's cloak of royal purple, and put it on. My own I rolled up and pitched after the dead men into the undergrowth.

Arthur came back at a trot, leading the thieves' horses.

"Now, where is this inn with the bush of holly?"

The innkeeper's boy was out in the road, watching for me. I suppose he had been posted there to give the goodwife warning of when the "meal fit for the King's court" would be wanted. When he saw us coming, two men and five horses, he stood staring awhile, then went with a skip and a jump back into the inn. When we were still seventy paces short of the place, the innkeeper himself came out to see.

He recognized Arthur almost straight away. What drew his eye first was the quality of the King's horse.

Then came a long, summing look at the rider, and the man was on his knee out on the road.

"Get up, man," said the King cheerfully. "I've been hearing good things of the house you keep here, and I'm looking forward to trying your hospitality. There's been a little skirmish down by the ford — nothing deadly, just enough to get up a bit of an appetite. But that will have to wait a little. Look after my friend here first, will you, and if your goodwife can clean his clothes, and someone can tend to the horses, we'll cheerfully wait for the meal." Then, as the man began to stammer something about the poverty of his house, and the lack of accommodation: "As to that, man, I'm a soldier, and there've been times when any shelter from the weather could be counted a luxury. From what I've heard of your tavern, it's a haven indeed. And now, may we come in? Wine we cannot wait for, nor fire —"

We had both in a very short time. The innkeeper, once he had recovered himself, came to terms quickly with the royal invasion, and very sensibly set all aside except the immediate service that was needed. The boy came running to take the horses, and the innkeeper himself piled logs on the fire and brought wine, then helped me out of my soiled and blood-splashed robes, and brought hot water, and fresh clothes from my baggage roll. Then, at Arthur's bidding, he locked the inn door against casual passers-by, and got himself off to the kitchen, there, one imagined, to instill a panic frenzy into his excellent wife.

When I had changed, and Arthur had washed, and spread his cloak to the blaze, he poured wine for me, and took his place at the other side of the hearth. Though he had travelled fast and far, and with a fight at the end of it, he looked as fresh as if he had newly risen from his bed. His eyes were bright as a boy's, and colour sprang red in his cheeks. Between the joy of seeing me again and the stimulus of the danger past, he seemed a youth again. When at length the goodwife and her husband came in with the food, making some ado about setting the board and carving the capons, he received them with gay affability, so easily that, by the time we had done, and they had withdrawn, the woman had so far forgotten his rank as to scream with laughter at one of his jests, and cap it herself. Then her husband pulled at her gown, and she ran out, but laughing still.

At last we were alone. The short afternoon drew in. Soon it would be lamp-lighting. We went back to our places one on either side of the blaze. I think we both felt tired, and sleepy, but neither of us could have rested until we had exchanged such news as could not be spoken of in front of our hosts. The King had, he told me, ridden the whole way with only a few hours' respite for sleep, and to rest his horse.

"For," he said, "if the courier's message, and the token he brought, told a true tale, then you were safe, and would wait for me. Bedwyr and the others came up with me, but they, too, stopped to rest. I told them to stay back and give me a few hours' grace."

"That could have cost you dear."

"With that carrion?" He spoke contemptuously. "If they hadn't caught you unarmed and unawares, you could have dealt with them yourself."

And time was, I thought, when without even a dagger in my hand I could have dealt with them. If Arthur was thinking the same, he gave no sign of it. I said: "It's true that they were hardly worth your sword.

And talking of that, what have I been hearing about the theft of Caliburn? Some tale about your sister Morgan?"

He shook his head. "That's over, so let it wait. What's more to the point now is that I should know what has been happening to you. Tell me. Tell me everything. Don't leave anything out."

So I told my story. The day drew in, and beyond the small, deep-set windows the sky darkened to indigo, then to slate. The room was quiet, but for the crack and flutter of the flames. A cat crept from some corner and curled on the hearth, purring. It was a strange setting for the tale I had to tell, of death and costly burial, of fear and loneliness and desperate survival, of murder foiled and rescue finally accomplished. He listened as so many times before, intent, lost in the tale, frowning over some parts of it, but relaxed into the warmth and contentment of the evening. This was another of the times that comes vividly back to me in memory whenever I think of him; the quiet room, the King listening, the firelight moving red on his cheek and lighting the thick fall of dark hair, and the dark watching eyes, intent on the story I was telling him. But with a difference now: this was a man listening with a purpose; summing up what he was told, and judging, ready to act.

At the end he stirred. "That fellow, the grave-robber — we must find him. It shouldn't be hard, if he's cadging drinks from that story all over Maridunum...I wonder who it was who heard you the first time?

And the miller, Stilicho; I've no doubt you'll want me to leave that to you?"

"Yes. But if you could ride over that way some time, perhaps when you're next in Caerleon? Mai will die of terror and ecstasy, but Stilicho will take it as no more than his due, who served the great enchanter...and then boast about it for the rest of his days."

"Of course," he said. "I was thinking, while I was on the road; we'll go straight on from here to Caerleon now. I imagine you're not yet ready to go back to court —"

"Not now, or ever. Or to Applegarth. I have left that for good." I did not add "to Nimuë"; her name had not been mentioned by either of us. So carefully had we avoided it that it seemed to ring through every sentence that was spoken. I went on: "I've no doubt you'll fight me to the death over this, but I want to go back to Bryn Myrddin. I'll be more than glad to stay with you in Caerleon until it can be made ready again."

Of course he objected, and we argued for a while, but in the end he let me have my way, on the (very reasonable) condition that I did not live there alone, but was cared for by servants. "And if you must have your precious solitude, then you shall have it. I shall build a place for the servants, out of your sight and below the cliff; but they must be there."

" 'And that is an order?' " I quoted, smiling.

"Certainly...There'll be time enough to see about it; I'll spend Christmas at Caerleon, and you with me. I take it you won't insist on going back there till the winter is past?"

"No."

"Good. Now, there's something in your story that doesn't agree with the facts...that business you described in Segontium." He glanced up, smiling. "So that was where you found Caliburn? In the soldiers'

shrine of the Light? Well, it tallies. I remember that you told me, years ago, just before we left the forest, that there were other treasures there still. You spoke of a grail. I still remember what you said. But the gift Morgause brought to me was no treasure of Macsen's. It was silver goods — cups and brooches and torques, the sort of thing they fashion in the far north. Very handsome, but not as you described the treasure to me."

"No. I did catch a glimpse of it, there in the vision. It was not Macsen's treasure. But the shepherd boy was certain that it was taken, and I believe him."

"You don't know?"

"No. How could I, without power?"

"But you had this vision. You watched Morgause and the boys accost me at Camelot. You saw the silver treasure she gave me. You knew the courier had come, and that I was on my way to you."

I shook my head. "That was not power, not as you and I have known it. That is Sight only, and that, I think, I shall have until I die. Every village sibyl has it, in some degree or another. Power is more than that: it is doing and speaking with knowledge; it is bidding without thought, and knowing that one will be obeyed. That has gone. I don't repine now." I hesitated. "Nor, hope, do you? I have heard tales of Nimuë, how she is the new Lady of the Lake, the mistress of theIsland 's shrine. I am told that men call her the King's enchantress, and that she has done you service?"

"Indeed, yes." He looked away from me, leaning forward to adjust a log on the burning pile. "It was she who dealt with the theft of Caliburn."

I waited, but he left it there. I said at length: "I understood she was still in the north. She is well?"

"Very well." The log was burning to his satisfaction. He set his chin on a fist, and stared at the fire. "So. If Morgause had the treasure with her when she embarked, it will be somewhere on theIsland . My people saw to it that she did not go ashore between Segontium and her landing there. She lodged with Melwas, so it should not be beyond me to have it traced. Morgause is being held under guard until I get back. If she refuses to speak, the children will hardly be proof against questioning. The younger ones are too innocent to see any harm in telling the truth. Children see everything; they will know where she left the treasure."