by J A Cummings
Arthur nodded. “Yes.”
“In which languages?”
“In Latin, and in Greek.”
“Ah. I see. And do you write as well as read?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Merlin.”
Arthur smiled. “Merlin.”
“And what books have you read?”
He thought back over his scanty education, which had come mostly at the hands of Father Marius, who served the parish in which Caer Gai stood. “The Bible, mostly.”
“Aristotle? Plato? Herodotus? Julius Caesar?”
“No.”
Merlin snorted. “An incomplete education is almost as good as none at all.” He released his hold on Arthur’s young shoulders and leaned upon the fence again. “And what languages do you speak? Obviously, you speak Brythonic, because you are speaking it now. And obviously you speak Latin and Greek, if you are reading the Old Book in those tongues. Any others?”
“None, my lord.”
“No Irish? No Gaelic? No Gaulish?’’
Arthur shook his head. “No.”
“Then it is clearly useless to ask if you speak the language of the fey, or the druidic secret tongue.” He sighed. “Well, there’s no help to it, you will simply have to be taught.”
He felt judged, but not unfairly. “I suppose so. Will it be important?”
“It will be very important, Arthur, very important indeed. You will have to be able to speak to many people from many places before your life on earth is over. You cannot depend upon a translator to tell you the truth of what people are saying, with all of the twists and turns of language and things hinted at but never said.”
“Am I destined to be a diplomat?” he asked. He could think of no other reason he would need so many languages at his disposal.
“Of a kind, and after a fashion,” Merlin nodded. “But I need to know one thing more. The Ladies, as I said, take very limited interest in humanity, and then it’s usually only when there’s a babe left unattended, or a child in distress. Tell me, Arthur - why were you injured when Niniane came to you?”
The boy gaped, and the pressure of the dark secrets of Catigern’s visit pressed upon him. There were so many things that had happened, and so many things he could not tell. He closed his mouth and pressed his lips into a line, outwardly showing the inward swallowing of unpleasant truths.
Merlin watched the emotion warring on his face, and he said quietly, “I know that you were injured, because there is no other reason she would have left her water. I know also that if he had known that you were injured, Sir Ector would have told me of it when I spoke to him in the forest a day ago. The injury had to have come to you while you were here, under Bedivere’s so-called protection.” He turned to face Arthur and made the boy meet his gaze. “What happened to you? Tell me the truth, for I can smell a lie.”
He tried to dissemble, but those knowing eyes caught him, and he could not turn away. He could not have concealed the truth if he’d tried. Finally, in a voice that was as small as this strange man was making him feel, he said, “I was beaten.”
A flash like fire went through Merlin’s eyes, sparking in the blue and almost leaping free. “By whom?”
Arthur wished that he could pull away or hide, but he was rooted to the spot, utterly immobile. “By Lord Catigern. Sir Bedivere and his man held me for him.”
Merlin growled low in his throat. “And why did Catigern beat you, Arthur?”
“I pushed him off A- off a boy.”
“What was he doing to that boy?”
Arthur took a ragged breath. “He was… he was raping him.”
“And did he rape you?”
“No.”
The answer came quickly and bright with truth, and Arthur could see Merlin relax just an iota when he heard it. The druid nodded. “You saved your friend from the old man, and you were beaten as a result.”
“Yes, sir…”
“Ah!”
“Merlin,” he corrected.
The druid leaned closer, and with his nose at the outer edges of Arthur’s left ear, he sniffed. “Well,” he said carefully, “someone has touched you.”
Arthur thought that he would die. His stomach dropped to his feet, and his mouth went dry. He could feel his pulse quicken. “I -”
“Whatever happened, was it with your blessing and agreement? That is my only concern. I care not otherwise, no matter who it was.”
He shifted his feet in the grass, wishing he could just run, tortured by his embarrassment. “Yes,” he breathed.
“Then there is nothing further that I need to know on that account.” Arthur suddenly felt something release him, as if he’d been tied tight by a rope that had suddenly been sliced free. He sagged. “And Amren, did he do what he did of his own accord?”
“Not with Catigern,” he answered resentfully. “Not really.”
“And with you?”
He squirmed, utterly caught. “Y- yes…”
Merlin chuckled. “I will not scold you, or him.”
Arthur looked toward the keep and saw Bedivere standing in the doorway, watching. “How did you know?”
“He is in your thoughts.” The druid looked back at the keep, as well, then turned to him once again. “Did Sir Bedivere force his son to service that old man?”
“Yes.” The outrage of it rose in him, and he blurted, “And Amren said it has happened at other times, too.”
“So Bedivere trots out his own son as a whore to the pederasts.”
“I-”
“You don’t have to answer that.”
He looked away. “Good.”
Merlin put his arm around the boy’s shoulders again and guided him further away from the keep. “These are lessons in the dirty side of politics that I would have spared you for a few more years, at least. You’ve learned too early about the depths to which some people will sink in search of a little advantage and influence. Power is more to blame for the destruction of souls than sex or drink or simple sin. Your God and His church speak out against it, but they are held in the sway of their own desire to grow more powerful in this Roman world.” His jaw set. “Well, Rome has gone, and these are our lands still, and we will not allow power to fall to just anyone who is ruthless enough to take it on the backs of the weak.”
Arthur looked up at Merlin. “What has happened to Amren can never happen again. And Catigern’s slaves - they are humiliated. What gives him the right?”
“Nothing at all,” Merlin said, “except that he says he has the right, and the sycophants at his feet agree with him because they yearn for the crumbs that fall from his corrupted table. Listen to me, Arthur. No lord, no master - no king - ever ruled except with the agreement of those who allow themselves to be ruled by him. What kind of king would you be? One who terrifies the common people into cowering obedience, or one who wins them to his side with love?”
“The greatest of these is love,” Arthur quoted, the Biblical phrase falling easily from his mouth.
Merlin shook his head, but he chuckled. “That Book again. There is a great deal of damage that it spreads, but occasionally it speaks things true. Yes, my boy. Love is best. Love is always best. And it is because of his love of his people that a good king rules.”
They walked a few more yards, and the boy asked, “Why do you speak to me of kings?”
“Because Catigern and his ilk always want to be kings. I want you to be the one who stands up to their lies and tells them that you will not be ruled by men such as they.”
He didn’t know what made him say it, but he volunteered, “In the bath house of Viroconium, they said that the High King has died and that he has no heir.”
“That is partially true.”
“Then he is not dead?”
Merlin stopped walking. “He is dead enough. I put him in the earth myself. But he does have an heir, one who is in hiding from the Catigerns and Bediveres of this world.”
“I hope he comes soon,” Arthur said. “I am afr
aid of what will happen if men like Catigern take power.”
“He will come when he is ready,” the druid said, amusement in his voice. “And he is nearly there. Until then, we will all need to stay safe and hidden from the politics of power.”
“It will be easier for me to hide than for you,” he pointed out. “If you are the chief druid of Britain, then everyone will know who you are.”
“Yes, indeed.” He smiled at him, and he looked in that instant as if he were barely older than Arthur himself. “But just because they know of me, that’s no reason for them to be able to find me if I don’t wish it. I tell you, my young man, I am found only when I want to be.”
A shout rose at the outer gate, and then Sir Ector arrived, riding at a good clip, sending clouds of dust into the air behind him. Kay ran to him from the keep, and Arthur wanted to, as well. He looked at Merlin, who smiled at him with a nod and sent him on his way.
The boys ran to their father, who greeted them with embracing. Bedivere joined Merlin on the grassy yard to watch.
“Did you learn what you came to know, my lord?” the knight asked.
The druid nodded. “All that and more.” He turned cold eyes onto Bedivere’s face. “You should be grateful that you still have a part to play in the years ahead, or I would slit your throat and watch you bleed your life out on this rocky ground.”
Bedivere’s eyebrows shot toward his hairline, and he took an involuntary step backward, his hand reaching for the dagger at his side. “What?”
“You will never be entrusted with that boy’s care again, this I promise you.” Merlin put his hand upon Bedivere’s wrist. “When you think of him or of selling your own son again, I charge you to look upon this and remember.”
The druid vanished in a gray cloud liberally studded with tiny thorns that lodged in Bedivere’s skin and clothes. The thorns penetrated painfully into the flesh of his wrist, and they burned where they touched. A tattoo of ashes appeared beneath his burned skin in the shape of the Ogham symbol for ivy. Merlin’s voice whispered in his mind.
Tread carefully.
Merlin took himself to a keep on the western edge of Cambria, where the waves crashed against the rocks and sea birds cried in the salty air. He appeared upon the parapet, his cloak lashed by the wind that roiled up from the water below. Ahead of him, in a tower room open to the elements but encircled by curtained columns, a beautiful woman with scarlet hair sat at her gazing mirror, watching. She looked like the flame in the center of a lantern, and her power shone like light.
He took a step toward her, the roaring of the wind loud in his ears.
“Vivienne.” Merlin took another step. “Mother.”
“I saw him,” she said, not looking up.
“Then you know that the time is nearly here.” He stepped again, and this time he passed into the curtained enclosure. As soon as he crossed the threshold, the wind stopped, stilled by the magic she had cast at the circle’s edge. Each step he took brought him further and further inside her power. He told her confidently, “He will be what he is meant to be.”
She looked up at him with a smile, her unnaturally green eyes sparkling. “I know, for you will be at his side.”
Merlin nodded. “Soon.”
Sir Ector pulled Sir Bedivere aside while the boys toiled at their chores. The old friends repaired to the battlements, looking out over the forest.
“I spoke to Merlin while I was away,” the master of Caer Gai said without preamble. “He charged me with taking Amren with me when we return home.”
A guilty look stole over Bedivere’s face, and he could not hold Ector’s gaze. “That would be for the best, I think, if you can support another ward.”
“I can, and I will.” He studied his old friend’s face. “What secrets are you keeping?”
“Only those that come with politics. These are dangerous times, my friend, and if you mean to stay alive, then you must make choices that will be hard to reconcile with your heart.”
Ector shook his head. “If my heart does not agree with my choices, then they are the wrong ones. I would have thought you’d learned that lesson, too.”
Bedivere looked out over the trees. “I am learning it now.” He swallowed. “Take my son, and keep him safe. When the time is right, I will come for him. In the meantime, I trust you with his protection. Whatever else people may believe, I do love him. He is my only surviving child.”
They could see the three boys taking arm loads of chain shirts, freshly oiled, out to the guard barracks. Ector nodded. “He will be secure beneath my roof, I swear to you.”
“I know. More secure than he has ever been beneath mine.”
Before Ector could ask him what he meant, the other knight turned and left him standing on the parapet.
It stormed that night in Viroconium, the gale coming in from the sea and lashing inland with a vengeance. The inclement weather kept Sir Ector from taking his charges back to his own home, and they were obliged to stay one more night beneath Sir Bedivere’s roof. All across Britannia, lightning flashed and wind roared as if from the mouths of demons, lashing trees and blowing the thatch from roofs. It was no common wind, but one that carried magic and death on its back. It eddied in corners and rushed down chimneys, coaxing whirling devils up out of the ashes in the hearth. The flames themselves rose to twist and dance in the maelstrom, their orange and red tongues limned with an unholy, sickly green. The people hid inside and prayed for the storm to pass.
In the kingdom of Rheged, north of Viroconium on the shores of the Irish Sea, death came to the royal household. The young queen, Morgana, the fourteen-year-old daughter of Queen Igraine and the late Duke Gorlois, struggled to give birth to her fifth child by her much-older husband, King Uriens. The baby was dead already, and she labored to release the corpse, but the evil magic in the night made the stillbirth seem to struggle against the light. Morgana was in agony, and her serving women and midwives had given up trying to help her. One of them mopped her sweat-soaked brow and looked at her companions with a gloomy shake of her head.
Only the first of Morgana and Uriens’ progeny had survived, and now he sat in the hall at his father’s feet, playing gently with the kitchen cat. King Uriens chewed upon a stick of hickory and stared into the fire, watching its tortured dance. The child heard his mother’s cries echo through the castle, and the young prince Owain mab Uriens winced to hear it. One cry was filled with such agony and rage that he stole a look at his father, who sat and listened without response. If Uriens heard, he gave no sign, just as he gave no indication that he was conscious of his only surviving heir on the floor at his feet. Owain swallowed a lump in his throat.
The door opened, admitting a druid in black robes. Owain knew Merlin, for he had seen him many times. The druid magician came whenever his mother was in her childbed, and only he seemed capable of keeping her alive. He entered and fixed the king with a hard stare.
“The queen will survive,” the druid announced to the king.
Uriens grunted and spat bark into the fire. “And the child?”
“Dead.”
“Boy or girl?”
“Boy.”
He sighed, then released whatever miniscule amount of emotion he felt. “No matter. I have sons enough.”
“But only one born in wedlock.”
The king sat back in his chair, his bearded face looking almost monstrous in the light from the fireplace. He scratched his hairy chin and said, still staring into the flames, “Well, a son is a son. When I’m High King, I will make it so that any son of mine who earns the right will inherit what I leave to him.”
“If you become High King,” Merlin said. “That is not assured.”
“I have taken the old king’s daughter to wife. That gives me the right.”
“She is his step-daughter, and not even the eldest. King Lot has the eldest sister.”
“I have the old king’s favorite.”
The druid sneered. “If you say so. He couldn’t wa
it to be rid of both Morgana and Morgause, so ‘favorite stepdaughter’ was a great deal like ‘favorite flea’ to Uther.”
“They were given to us as thanks for our great service,” the king objected. “The High King held us in great esteem and showed it in giving us the queen’s daughters to wife.”
“If you say so.”
Uriens scowled. “Well, the marriages will mean something to the barons, even if it means nothing to you. And if it comes to it, I can defeat Lot.”
“Perhaps you can, perhaps you can’t. Morgause has given him four fine sons, and shows no sign of stopping.”
The king spat into the fire again. “And my useless hag can only give me dead children.”
“That is because she was a child herself with the first one. It broke her body. And Morgause was nearly a woman when Lot took her away.” Merlin mused, “Three years in a girl’s life can make a great deal of difference.”
“Bah!”
Owain looked up at Merlin, and the druid looked back. The child’s dark eyes were filled with knowing that should not have belonged to so young a boy. Merlin smiled at him and tried to look harmless. Uriens saw his son’s focus and looked at the druid, then turned back to the fire.
“What is your counsel, druid?” the king demanded. “There must be more to your visit. I can’t believe you came here just to see to my woman’s birthing ills.”
“Believe or disbelieve, it’s all the same to me.” He stepped forward, approaching the warmth of the fire and letting it chase the chill away, at least from his front. This would be a lengthy storm. “As for my counsel, it is this: stop lying with Morgana. She was too young for you when you wed, and you do nothing but harm her with these pregnancies.”
Uriens waved his hand. “She is a woman. It’s what she’s made for.”
“She’s not a woman yet.”
“She’s woman enough, obviously.” He gestured toward their son, then squinted up at the druid. “You’re older than me, but your face shows you too young for whiskers. Have you ever known a woman?”