The Crystal Cave

by Mary Stewart

  "No. Not Moravik. But I know it's true."

  "How in the Thunderer's name do you know any such thing? Slaves' gossip?"

  I fed the last bite of my bread to the mare. "If you swear by heathen gods, Cerdic, it's you who'll be in trouble, with Moravik."

  "Oh, aye. That kind of trouble's easy enough to come by. Come on, who's been talking to you?"

  "Nobody. I know, that's all. I — I can't explain how. And when she refused Gorlan my uncle Camlach was as angry as my grandfather. He's afraid my father will come back and marry her, and drive him out. He doesn't admit this to my grandfather, of course."

  "Of course." He was staring, even forgetting to chew, so that saliva dribbled from the corner of his open mouth. He swallowed hastily. "The gods know — God knows where you got all this, but it could be true. Well, go on."

  The brown mare was pushing at me, snuffing sweet breath at my neck. I handed her away. "That's all. Gorlan is angry, but they'll give him something. And my mother will go in the end to St. Peter's. You'll see."

  There was a short silence. Cerdic swallowed his meat and threw the bone out of the door, where a couple of the stableyard curs pounced on it and raced off in a snarling wrangle.

  "Merlin —"

  "Yes?"

  "You'd be wise if you said no more of this to anyone. Not to anyone. Do you understand?"

  I said nothing.

  "These are matters that a child doesn't understand. High matters. Oh, some of it's common talk, I grant you, but this about Prince Camlach — " He dropped a hand to my knee, and gripped and shook it. "I tell you, he's dangerous, that one. Leave it be, and stay out of sight. I'll tell no one, trust me for that. But you, you must say no more. Bad enough if you were rightwise a prince born, or even in the King's favour like that red whelp Dinias, but for you..." He shook the knee again. "Do you heed me, Merlin? For your skin's sake, keep silent and stay out of their way. And tell me who told you all this."

  I thought of the dark cave in the hypocaust, and the sky remote at the top of the shaft. "No one told me. I swear it." When he made a sound of impatience and worry I looked straight at him and told him as much of the truth as I dared. "I have heard things, I admit it. And sometimes people talk over your head, not noticing you're there, or not thinking you understand. But at other times" — I paused — "it's as if something spoke to me, as if I saw things... And sometimes the stars tell me... and there is music, and voices in the dark. Like dreams."

  His hand went up in a gesture of protection. I thought he was crossing himself, then saw the sign against the evil eye. He looked shamefaced at that, and dropped the hand. "Dreams, that's what it is; you're right. You've been asleep in some corner, likely, and they've talked across you when they shouldn't, and you've heard things you shouldn't. I was forgetting you're nothing but a child. When you look with those eyes — " He broke off, and shrugged. "But you'll promise me you'll say no more of what you've heard?"

  "All right, Cerdic. I promise you. If you'll promise to tell me something in return."

  "What's that?"

  "Who my father was."

  He choked over his beer, then with deliberation wiped the foam away, set down the horn, and regarded me with exasperation. "Now how in middle-earth do you think I know that?"

  "I thought Moravik might have told you."

  "Does she know?" He sounded so surprised that I knew he was telling the truth.

  "When I asked her she just said there were some things it was better not to talk about."

  "She's right at that. But if you ask me, that's her way of saying she's no wiser than the next one. And if you do ask me, young Merlin, though you don't, that's another thing you'd best keep clear of. If your lady mother wanted you to know, she'd tell you. You'll find out soon enough, I doubt."

  I saw that he was making the sign again, though this time he hid the hand. I opened my mouth to ask if he believed the stories, but he picked up the drinking horn, and got to his feet.

  "I've had your promise. Remember?"

  "Yes."

  "I've watched you. You go your own way, and sometimes I think you're nearer to the wild things than to men. You know she called you for the falcon?"

  I nodded.

  "Well, here's something for you to think about. You'd best be forgetting falcons for the time being. There's plenty of them around, too many, if truth be told. Have you watched the ring-doves, Merlin?"

  "The ones that drink from the fountain with the white doves, then fly away free? Of course I have. I feed them in winter, along with the doves."

  "They used to say in my country, the ring-dove has many enemies, because her flesh is sweet and her eggs are good to eat. But she lives and she prospers, because she runs away. The Lady Niniane may have called you her little falcon, but you're not a falcon yet, young Merlin. You're only a dove. Remember that. Live by keeping quiet, and by running away. Mark my words." He nodded at me, and put a hand down to pull me to my feet. "Does the cut still hurt?"

  "It stings."

  "Then it's on the mend. The bruise is nought to worry you, it'll go soon enough."

  It did, indeed, heal cleanly, and left no mark. But I remember how it stung that night, and kept me awake, so that Cerdic and Moravik kept silent in the other corner of the room, for fear, I suppose, that it had been from some of their mutterings that I had pieced together my information.

  After they slept I crept out, stepped past the grinning wolfhound, and ran along to the hypocaust.

  But tonight I heard nothing to remember, except Olwen's voice, mellow as an ousel's, singing some song I had not heard before, about a wild goose, and a hunter with a golden net.

  4

  AFTER THIS, LIFE SETTLED BACK into its peaceful rut, and I think that my grandfather must eventually have accepted my mother's refusal to marry. Things were strained between them for a week or so, but with Camlach home, and settling down as if he had never left the place — and with a good hunting season coming up — the King forgot his rancour, and things went back to normal.

  Except possibly for me. After the incident in the orchard, Camlach no longer went out of his way to favour me, nor I to follow him. But he was not unkind to me, and once or twice defended me in some petty rough-and-tumble with the other boys, even taking my part against Dinias, who had supplanted me in his favour.

  But I no longer needed that kind of protection. That September day had taught me other lessons besides Cerdic's of the ring-dove. I dealt with Dinias myself. One night, creeping beneath his bedchamber on the way to my "cave," I chanced to hear him and his pack-follower Brys laughing over a foray of that afternoon when the pair of them had followed Camlach's friend Alun to his tryst with one of the servant-girls, and had stayed hidden, watching and listening, to the sweet end. When Dinias waylaid me next morning I stood my ground and — quoting a sentence or so — asked if he had seen Alun yet that day. He stared, went red and then white (for Alun had a hard hand and a temper to match it) and then sidled away, making the sign behind his back. If he liked to think it was magic rather than simple blackmail, I let him. After that, if the High King himself had ridden in claiming parentage for me, none of the children would have believed him. They left me alone.

  Which was just as well, for during that winter part of the floor of the bath-house fell in, my grandfather judged the whole thing dangerous, and had it filled in and poison laid for the rats. So like a cub smoked from its earth, I had to fend for myself above ground.

  About six months after Gorlan's visit, as we were coming through a cold February into the first budding days of March, Camlach began to insist, first to my mother and then to my grandfather, that I should be taught to read and write. My mother, I think, was grateful for this evidence of his interest in me; I myself was pleased and took good care to show it, though after the incident in the orchard I could have no illusions about his motives. But it did no harm to let Camlach think that my feelings about the priesthood had undergone a change. My mother's declaration that she
would never marry, coupled with her increased withdrawal among her women and her frequent visits to St. Peter's to talk with the Abbess and such priests as visited the community, removed his worst fears — either that she would marry a Welsh prince who could hope to take over the kingdom in her right, or that my unknown father would come to claim her and legitimate me, and prove to be a man of rank and power who might supplant him forcibly. It did not matter to Camlach that in either event I was not much of a danger to him, and less than ever now, for he had taken a wife before Christmas, and already at the beginning of March it seemed that she was pregnant. Even Olwen's increasingly obvious pregnancy was no threat to him, for Camlach stood high in his father's favour, and it was not likely that a brother so much younger would ever present a serious danger. There could be no question; Camlach had a good fighting record, knew how to make men like him, and had ruthlessness and common sense. The ruthlessness showed in what he had tried to do to me in the orchard; the common sense showed in his indifferent kindness once my mother's decision removed the threat to him. But I have noticed this about ambitious men, or men in power — they fear even the slightest and least likely threat to it. He would never rest until he saw me priested and safely out of the palace.

  Whatever his motives, I was pleased when my tutor came; he was a Greek who had been a scribe in Massilia until he drank himself into debt and ensuing slavery; now he was assigned to me, and because he was grateful for the change in status and the relief from manual work, taught me well and without the religious bias which had constricted the teaching I had picked up from my mother's priests. Demetrius was a pleasant, ineffectually clever man who had a genius for languages, and whose only recreations were dice and (when he won) drink. Occasionally, when he had won enough, I would find him happily and incapably asleep over his books. I never told anyone of these occasions, and indeed was glad of the chance to go about my own affairs; he was grateful for my silence, and in his turn, when I once or twice played truant, held his tongue and made no attempt to find out where I had been. I was quick to catch up with my studies and showed more than enough progress to satisfy my mother and Camlach, so Demetrius and I respected one another's secrets and got along tolerably well.

  One day in August, almost a year after the coming of Gorlan to my grandfather's court, I left Demetrius placidly sleeping it off, and rode up alone into the hills behind the town.

  I had been this way several times before. It was quicker to go up past the barrack walls and then out by the military road which led eastwards through the hills to Caerleon, but this meant riding through the town, and possibly being seen, and questions being asked. The way I took was along the river-bank. There was a gateway, not much used, leading straight out from our stableyard to the broad flat path where the horses went that towed the barges, and the path followed the river for quite a long way, past St. Peter's and then along the placid curves of the Tywy to the mill, which was as far as the barges went. I had never been beyond this point, but there was a pathway leading up past the millhouse and over the road, and then by the valley of the tributary stream that helped to serve the mill.

  It was a hot, drowsy day, full of the smell of bracken. Blue dragonflies darted and glimmered over the river, and the meadowsweet was thick as curds under the humming clouds of flies.

  My pony's neat hoofs tapped along the baked clay of the towpath. We met a big dapple grey bringing an empty barge down from the mill with the tide, taking it easy. The boy perched on its withers called a greeting, and the bargeman lifted a hand.

  When I reached the mill there was no one in sight. Grainsacks, newly unloaded, were piled on the narrow wharf. By them the miller's dog lay sprawled in the hot sun, hardly troubling to open an eye as I drew rein in the shade of the buildings. Above me, the long straight stretch of the military road was empty. The stream tumbled through a culvert beneath it, and I saw a trout leap and flash in the foam.

  It would be hours before I could be missed. I put the pony at the bank up to the road, won the brief battle when he tried to turn for home, then kicked him to a canter along the path which led upstream into the hills.

  The path twisted and turned at first, climbing the steep stream-side, then led out of the thorns and thin oaks that filled the gully, and went north in a smooth level curve along the open slope.

  Here the townsfolk graze their sheep and cattle, so the grass is smooth and shorn. I passed one shepherd boy, drowsy under a hawthorn bush, with his sheep at hand; he was simple, and only stared vacantly at me as I trotted past, fingering the pile of stones with which he herded his sheep. As we passed him he picked up one of them, a smooth green pebble, and I wondered if he was going to throw it at me, but he lobbed it instead to turn some fat grazing lambs which were straying too far, then went back to his slumbers. There were black cattle further afield, down nearer the river where the grass was longer, but I could not see the herdsman. Away at the foot of the hill, tiny beside a tiny hut, I saw a girl with a flock of geese.

  Presently the path began to climb again, and my pony slowed to a walk, picking his way through scattered trees. Hazel-nuts were thick in the coppices, mountain ash and brier grew from tumbles of mossed rock, and the bracken was breast-high. Rabbits ran everywhere, scuttering through the fern, and a pair of jays scolded a fox from the safety of a swinging hornbeam. The ground was too hard, I supposed, to bear tracks well, but I could see no sign, either of crushed bracken or broken twigs, that any other horseman had recently been this way.

  The sun was high. A little breeze swept through the hawthorns, rattling the green, hard fruit. I urged the pony on. Now among the oaks and hollies were pine trees, their stems reddish in the sunlight. The ground grew rougher as the path climbed, with bare grey stone outcropping through the thin turf, and a honeycombing of rabbit burrows. I did not know where the path led, I knew nothing but that I was alone, and free. There was nothing to tell me what sort of day this was, or what way-star was leading me up into the hill. This was in the days before the future became clear to me.

  The pony hesitated, and I came to myself. There was a fork in the track, with nothing to indicate which would be the best way to go. To left, to right, it led away round the two sides of a thicket.

  The pony turned decisively to the left, this being downhill. I would have let him go, but that at that moment a bird flew low across the path in front of me, left to right, and vanished beyond the trees. Sharp wings, a flash of rust and slate-blue, the fierce dark eye and curved beak of a merlin. For no reason, except that this was better than no reason, I turned the pony's head after it, and dug my heels in.

  The path climbed in a shallow curve, leaving the wood on the left. This was a stand mainly of pines, thickly clustered and dark, and so heavily grown that you could only have hacked your way in through the dead stuff with an axe. I heard the clap of wings as a ring-dove fled from shelter, dropping invisibly out of the far side of the trees. It had gone to the left. This time I followed the falcon.

  We were now well out of sight of the river valley and the town. The pony picked his way along one side of a shallow valley, at the foot of which ran a narrow, tumbling stream. On the far side of the stream the long slopes of turf went bare up to the scree, and above this were the rocks, blue and grey in the sunlight. The slope where I rode was scattered with hawthorn brakes throwing pools of slanted shadow, and above them again, scree, and a cliff hung with ivy where choughs wheeled and called in the bright air. Apart from their busy sound, the valley held the most complete and echoless stillness.

  The pony's hoofs sounded loud on the baked earth. It was hot, and I was thirsty. Now the track ran along under a low cliff, perhaps twenty feet high, and at its foot a grove of hawthorns cast a pool of shade across the path. Somewhere, close above me, I could hear the trickle of water.

  I stopped the pony and slid off. I led him into the shade of the grove and made him fast, then looked about me for the source of the water.

  The rock by the path was dry, and below th
e path was no sign of any water running down to swell the stream at the foot of the valley. But the sound of running water was steady and unmistakable. I left the path and scrambled up the grass at the side of the rock, to find myself on a small flat patch of turf, a little dry lawn scattered with rabbits' droppings, and at the back of it another face of cliff.

  In the face of the rock was a cave. The rounded opening was smallish and very regular, almost like a made arch. To one side of this, the right as I stood looking, was a slope of grass-grown stones long ago fallen from above, and overgrown with oak and rowan, whose branches overhung the cave with shadow. To the other side, and only a few feet from the archway, was the spring.

  I approached it. It was very small, a little shining movement of water oozing out of a crack in the face of the rock, and falling with a steady trickle into a round basin of stone. There was no outflow. Presumably the water sprang from the rock, gathered in the basin, and drained away through another crack, eventually to join the stream below. Through the clear water I could see every pebble, every grain of sand at the bottom of the basin. Hart's-tongue fern grew above it, and there was moss at the lip, and below it green, moist grass.

  I knelt on the grass, and had put my mouth to the water, when I saw there was a cup. This stood in a tiny niche among the ferns. It was a handspan high, and made of brown horn. As I lifted it down I saw above it, half-hidden by the ferns, the small, carved figure of a wooden god. I recognized him. I had seen him under the oak at Tyr Myrddin. Here he was in his own hill-top place, under the open sky.

  I filled the cup and drank, pouring a few drops on the ground for the god.

  Then I went into the cave.

  5

  THIS WAS BIGGER THAN HAD appeared from outside. Only a couple of paces inside the archway — and my paces were very short — the cave opened out into a seemingly vast chamber whose top was lost in shadow. It was dark, but — though at first I neither noticed this nor looked for its cause — with some source of extra light that gave a vague illumination, showing the floor smooth and clear of obstacles. I made my way slowly forward, straining my eyes, with deep inside me the beginning of that surge of excitement that caves have always started in me. Some men experience this with water; some, I know, on high places; some create fire for the same pleasure: with me it has always been the depths of the forest, or the depths of the earth. Now, I know why; but then, I only knew that I was a boy who had found somewhere new, something he could perhaps make his own in a world where he owned nothing.