by Mary Stewart
It was like dropping a stone into a pool, the room was so still, so centered on me. I said strongly: "My mother has told you what you asked her. No doubt you will tell me now in what way I can serve you, but first I must ask you to keep your royal promise and let her go."
"The Lady Niniane is our honored guest." The King's reply seemed automatic. He glanced at the open arcade that faced the river, where the white lances of the rain hissed down across a dark grey sky. "You are both free to go whenever you choose, but this is no time to begin the long journey back to Maridunum. You will surely wish to lie the night here, Madam, and hope for a dry day tomorrow?" He rose, and the Queen with him. "Rooms have been prepared, and now the Queen will take you there to rest and make ready to sup with us. Our court here, and our rooms, are a poor makeshift, but such as they are, they are at your service. Tomorrow you will be escorted home."
My mother had stood when they did. "And my son? You still have not told us why you brought us here for this?"
"Your son can serve me. He has powers which I can use. Now, Madam, if you will go with the Queen, I will talk to your son and tell him what I want of him. Believe me, he is as free as you are. I constrained him only until you told me the truth I wished to hear. I must thank you now for confirming what I had guessed." He put out a hand. "I swear to you, Lady Niniane, by any god you like, that I do not hold his birth against him, now or ever."
She regarded him for a moment, then bowed her head and, ignoring his gesture, came down to me, holding out both her hands. I crossed to her and took them in my own. They felt small and cold. I was taller than she was. She looked up at me with the eyes that I remembered; there was anxiety in them, and the dregs of anger, and some message urgently spoken in silence.
"Merlin, I would not have had you know it this way. I would have spared you this." But this was not what her eyes were saying.
I smiled down at her, and said carefully: "Mother, you told me nothing today that shocked me. Indeed, there's nothing you could tell me about my birth that I do not already know. Set yourself at rest."
She caught her breath and her eyes widened, searching my face. I went on, slowly: "Whoever my father was, it will not be held against me. You heard what the King promised. That is all we need to know."
Whether she got this part of the message I could not guess. She was still taking in what I had said first. "You knew? You knew?"
"I knew. You surely don't imagine that in all the years I've been away from you, and with the kind of studies I've undertaken, I never found out what parentage I had? It's some years now since my father made himself known to me. I assure you, I've spoken with him, not once but many times. I find nothing in my birth of which I need to be ashamed."
For a moment longer she looked at me, then she nodded, and the lids drooped over her eyes. A faint color had come up into her face. She had understood me.
She turned away, pulling her hood up again to hide her face, and put her hand on the King's arm. She went from the room, walking between him and the Queen, and her two women followed them. The priests remained, clucking and whispering and staring. I took no notice of them, but watched my mother go.
The King paused in the doorway, and I heard his voice bidding my mother goodbye. There was a crowd waiting in the outer porch. They made way for Rowena and my mother, and the half-dozen women who were there followed them. I heard the swish of their dresses and the light voices of the women fade into the sound of the rain. Vortigern stood still in the doorway, watching them go. Outside the rain fell with a noise like a running river. It was darkening fast.
The King swung round on his heel and came back into the hall, with his fighting men behind him.
9
They crowded round me, muttering noisily, but holding back in a circle, like hounds before they close in for the kill. Death was back in the hall; I could feel it, but could not believe or understand it. I made a movement as if to follow my mother, and the swords of my guards lifted and quivered. I stood still.
I said sharply, to the King: "What's this? You gave your word. Are you so quickly forsworn?"
"Not forsworn. I gave my word that you should serve me, that I would never hold your birth against you. This is true. It is because of what I know about you, because you are the child of no man, that I have had you brought to me today. You will serve me, Merlin, because of your birth."
"Well?"
He mounted the steps to the throne and sat down again. His movements were slow and deliberate. All the men of the court had crowded in with him, and with them the torch-bearers. The hall filled with smoky light and the rustle and creak of leather and the clank of mail. Outside the rain hissed down.
Vortigern leaned forward, chin on fist. "Merlin, we have learned today what in part we already suspected, that you are the child of no man, but of a devil. As such, you require mercy from no man. But because your mother is a king's daughter, and therefore something is due to you, I shall tell you why I brought you here. You know perhaps that I am building a stronghold here on the rock they call the Fortress?"
"Everyone knows it," I said, "and everyone knows that it will not stand, but falls down whenever it reaches man height."
He nodded. "And my magicians and wise men here, my advisers, have told me why. The foundations have not been properly laid."
"Well," I said, "that sounds remarkably like sense to me."
There was a tall old man to the King's right, beside the priests. His eyes were a bright angry blue under jutting white brows. He was watching me fixedly, and I thought I saw pity in his look. As I spoke, he put a hand up to his beard as if to hide a smile.
The King seemed not to have heard me. "They tell me," he said, "that a king's stronghold should be built on blood."
"They are talking, of course, in metaphors?" I said politely.
Maugan suddenly struck his staff on the floor of the dais. "They are talking literally!" he shouted. "The mortar should be slaked with blood! Blood should be sprinkled on the foundations. In ancient times no king built a fortress without observing this rite. The blood of a strong man, a warrior, kept the walls standing."
There was a sharp pause. My heart had begun to beat in slow, hard strokes that made the blood tingle in my limbs. I said, coldly: "And what has this to do with me? I am no warrior."
"You are no man, neither," said the King harshly. "This is the magic, Merlin, that they have revealed to me, that I should seek out a lad who never had a father, and slake the foundations with his blood."
I stared at him, then looked round the ring of faces. There was shifting and muttering, and few eyes met mine, but I could see it in all their faces, the death I had smelled ever since I entered the hall. I turned back to the King.
"What rubbish is this? When I left Wales, it was a country for civilized men and for poets, for artists and for scholars, for warriors and kings who killed for their country, cleanly and in daylight. Now you talk of blood and human sacrifice. Do you think to throw modern Wales back to the rites of ancient Babylon and Crete?"
"I do not speak of 'human' sacrifice," said Vortigern. "You are the son of no man. Remember this."
In the stillness the rain lashed into the bubbling puddles on the ground outside. Someone cleared his throat. I caught the fierce blue glance of the old warrior. I had been right; there was pity there. But even those who pitied me were not going to raise a hand against this stupidity.
It had all come clear at last, like lightning breaking. This had been nothing to do with Ambrosius, or with my mother. She was safe enough, having merely confirmed what they wanted confirmed. She would even be honored, since she had provided what they desired. And Ambrosius had never even entered their thoughts. I was not here as his son, his spy, his messenger; all they wanted was the "devil's child" to kill for their crude and dirty magic.
And, ironically enough, what they had got was no devil's child, not even the boy who once had thought to have power in his hands. All they had got was a human youth with no
power beyond his human wits. But by the god, I thought, those might yet be enough...I had learned enough, power or no power, to fight them with their own weapons.
I managed to smile, looking beyond Maugan at the other priests. They were still making the sign against me, and even Maugan hugged his staff against his breast as if it had the power to protect him. "And what makes you so sure that my father the devil will not come to my aid?"
"Those are only words, King. There's no time to listen." Maugan spoke quickly and loudly, and the other priests pressed forward with him round the King's chair. They all spoke at once.
"Yes, kill him now. There's no time to waste. Take him up to the crag and kill him now. You shall see that the gods will be appeased and the walls stand steady. His mother will not know, and even if she does, what can she do?"
There was a general movement, like hounds closing in. I tried to think, but I was empty even of coherent thought. The air stank and darkened. I could smell blood already, and the sword blades, held openly now against me, flashed in the torchlight. I fixed my eyes on the fireshot metal, and tried to empty my mind, but all I could see was the picked skeleton of Galapas, high on the hill in the sunlight, with the wings of the birds over him...
I said, to the swords: "Tell me one thing. Who killed Galapas?"
"What did he say? What did the devil's son say?" The question buzzed through the hall. A harsh voice said, loudly: "Let him speak." It was the old grey-bearded warrior.
"Who killed Galapas, the magician who lived on Bryn Myrddin above Maridunum?"
I had almost shouted it. My voice sounded strange, even to me. They fell silent, eyeing one another sideways, not understanding. Vortigern said: "The old man? They said he was a spy."
"He was a magician, and my master," I said. "And he taught me, Vortigern."
"What did he teach you?"
I smiled. "Enough. Enough to know that these men are fools and charlatans. Very well, Vortigern. Take me up to the crag and bring your knives with you, you and your soothsayers. Show me this fortress, these cracking walls, and see if I cannot tell you, better than they, why your fort will not stand. 'No man's child'!" I said it with contempt. "These are the things they conjure up, these foolish old men, when they can think of nothing else. Does it not occur to you, King, that the son of a spirit of darkness might have a magic that outstrips the spells of these old fools? If what they say is true, and if my blood will make these stones stand, then why did they watch them fall not once, not twice, but four times, before they could tell you what to do? Let me but see the place once, and I will tell you. By the God of gods, Vortigern, if my dead blood could make your fortress stand, how much better could my living body serve you?"
"Sorcery! Sorcery! Don't listen to him! What does a lad like him know of such matters?" Maugan began to shout, and the priests to cluck and chatter. But the old warrior said gruffly and sharply:
"Let him try. There's no harm in that. Help you must have, Vortigern, be it from god or devil. Let him try, I say." And round the hall I heard the echoes from the fighting men, who would have no cause to love the priests: "Let him try."
Vortigern frowned in indecision, glancing from Maugan to the warriors, then at the grey arches where the rain fell. "Now?"
"Better now," they said. "There is not much time."
"No," I said clearly, "there is not much time." Silence again, all eyes on me. "The rain is heavy, Vortigern. What kind of king is it whose fortress is knocked down by a shower of rain? You will find your walls fallen yet again. This comes of building in the dark, with blind men for counselors. Now take me to the top of your crag, and I will tell you why your walls have fallen. And if you listen to me instead of to these priests of darkness, I will tell you how to rebuild your stronghold in the light."
As I spoke, like the turning off of a tap, the downpour stopped. In the sudden quiet, men's mouths gaped. Even Maugan was dumb. Then like the pulling aside of a dark curtain, the sun came out.
I laughed. "You see? Come, King, take me to the top of the crag, and I will show you in sunlight why your walls fell down. But tell them to bring the torches. We shall need them."
10
Before we had fairly reached the foot of the crag I was proved right. The workmen could be seen crowded to the edge of the rock above, waiting for the King, and some of them had come down to meet him. Their foreman came panting up, a big man with rough sacking held gripped round his shoulders like a cloak, still sluicing with wet. He seemed hardly to have realized that the rain had stopped. He was pale, his eyes red-rimmed as if he had lacked sleep for nights. He stopped three paces away, eyeing the King nervously, and dashing the wet back of a hand across his face.
"Again?" said Vortigern briefly.
"Aye, my lord, and there's no one can say that it's a fault of ours, that I'll swear, any more than last time, or the times before. You saw yesterday how we were laying it this time. You saw how we cleared the whole site, to start again, and got right down to solid rock. And it is solid rock, my lord, I'll swear it. But still the wall cracks." He licked his lips, and his glance met mine and slid away from it, so that I knew he was aware of what the King and his soothsayers planned. "You're going up now, my lord?"
"Yes. Clear the men off the site."
The man swallowed, turned and ran up the twisting track. I heard him shouting. A mule was brought and the King mounted. My wrist was tied roughly to the harness. Magician or no, the sacrifice was to be given no chance of escape until he had proved himself. My guards kept close to my side. The King's officers and courtiers crowded round us, talking in low voices among themselves, but the priests held back, aloof and wary. I could see that they were not much afraid of the outcome; they knew as well as I did how much their magic was the power of their gods and how much illusion working on faith. They were confident that I could do no more than they; that even if I were one of their own kind they could find a way to defeat me. All I had to put against their smooth-worn rites was, they thought, the kind of bluff they were familiar with, and the luck that had stopped the rain and brought the sun out when I spoke.
The sun gleamed on the soaked grasses of the crag's crest. Here we were high above the valley where the river wound like a bright snake between its green verges. Steam rose from the roofs of the King's camp. Round the wooden hall and buildings the small skin tents clustered like toadstools, and men were no bigger than wood-lice crawling between them. It was a magnificent place, a true eagle's eerie. The King halted his mule in a grove of wind-bitten oaks and pointed forward under the bare boughs.
"Yesterday you could have seen the western wall from here."
Beyond the grove was a narrow ridge, a natural hogsback or causeway, along which the workmen and their beasts had beaten a wide track. King's Fort was a craggy tower of rock, approached on one side by the causeway, and with its other three sides falling steeply away in dizzy slopes and cliffs. Its top was a plateau perhaps a hundred by a hundred paces, and would once have been rough grass with outcropping rock and a few stunted trees and bushes. Now it was a morass of churned mud round the wreck of the ill-wished tower. On three sides the walls of this had risen almost to shoulder height; on the fourth side the wall, newly split, sagged out in a chaos of piled stones, some fallen and half buried in mud, others still precariously mortared to outcrops of the living rock. Heavy poles of pine wood had been driven in here and there and canvas laid across to shelter the work from the rain. Some of the poles had fallen flat, some were obviously newly splintered by the recent crack. On those which were whole the canvas hung flapping, or had stretched and split with the wet. Everything was sodden, and pools stood everywhere.
The workmen had left the site and were crowded to one side of the plateau, near the causeway. They were silent, with fear in their faces. I could see that the fear was not of the King's anger at what had happened to the work, but of the force which they believed in and did not understand. There were guards at the entrance to the causeway. I knew that without them
not one workman would have been left on the site.
The guards had crossed their spears, but when they recognized the King they drew them back. I looked up. "Vortigern, I cannot escape from you here unless I leap off the crag, and that would sprinkle my blood just where Maugan wants it. But neither can I see what is wrong with your foundations unless you loose me."
He jerked his head, and one of my guards freed me. I walked forward. The mule followed, stepping delicately through the thick mud. The others came after. Maugan had pressed forward and was speaking urgently to the King. I caught words here and there: "Trickery...escape...now or never...blood..."
The King halted, and the crowd with him. Someone said, Here, boy," and I looked round to see the greybeard holding out a staff. I shook my head, then turned my back on them and walked forward alone."
Water stood everywhere, glinting in soggy pools between the tussocks, or on the curled fingers of young bracken thrusting through the pallid grass of winter. The grey rock glittered with it. As I walked slowly forward I had to narrow my eyes against the wet dazzle to see at all.
It was the western wall that had fallen. This had been built very near the edge of the crag, and though most of the collapse had been inwards, there was a pile of fallen stuff lying right out to the cliff's edge, where a new land-slip showed raw and slimy with clay. There was a space in the north wall where an entrance was to be built; I picked my way through this between the piles of rubble and workmen's gear, and into the center of the tower.
Here the floor was a thick mess of churned mud, with standing puddles struck to blinding copper by the sun. This was setting now, in the last blaze of light before dusk, and glared full in my eyes as I examined the collapsed wall, the cracks, the angle of fall, the tell-tale lie of the outcrops.
All the time I was conscious of the stir and mutter of the crowd. From time to time the sun flashed on bared weapons. Maugan's voice, high and harsh, battered at the King's silence. Soon, if I did nothing and said nothing, the crowd would listen to him.