by Mike Ashley
So Ogier followed the page through a postern gate by which he had often entered the palace in Charlemaine’s time. The coat-of-arms above the doorway, which he well remembered looking fresh and gay in those days, was now so faded and weather-stained that the young page paused to point it out to the stranger as a quaint and interesting relic of the past! No wonder Ogier felt as though he were in a dream, and would presently awaken to find himself among the familiar faces of his early days, or perchance alone on the fatal Loadstone Rock!
After a light meal in the hall, he wandered out of doors to the gardens, past merry groups of squires and gay ladies, until, finding a quiet spot beyond the sound of play and laughter, he lay down to rest, and soon lost himself in dreams.
Still slumbering, he was found by the Queen, who, having dispatched her affairs of state in the public square, came through the gardens, accompanied by an elderly dame of honour. Her eyes wandered admiringly over his outstretched form, and with a smile she remarked that the name given to him was ill-suited to such a handsome young knight.
“Ah, my lady,” said the dame, shaking her head distrustfully, “I fear there is some dark mystery about him. The squire who took him to the palace says he kept questioning him of men who have been dead these fifty years or more. And look how old a fashion he shows in his armour! God grant he is not a spirit of evil come to lead us into greater trouble! That ring, engraven with strange figures, is doubtful sign of his good faith.” And even as the Queen was striving to reassure her, the old dame stooped down, and deftly slipped the ring off his finger.
Instantly his golden hair changed to white, his face grew wrinkled, and, amidst other marks of old age, his breathing became hard and gasping. His eyes half opened, but his lips were too feeble to frame words; he could only move one hand slightly, as if groping for the lost ring.
The Queen grew pale with terror when she saw this change pass over the young and handsome knight. The tears coursed down her cheeks, for she could not endure to see him growing grey and cold, as if the hand of death were already on his heart. Her old attendant, on the contrary, showed neither dismay nor pity. She handed the ring to her mistress, saying that it was indeed a treasure, since the wearer of it would ever remain young. But the Queen would not keep it, tempting prize though it was. To the indignation of the cruel old dame, she knelt over the knight, and whispering, “Ah, wilt not thou think kindly of me if I restore thee this magic ring?” she hastily thrust it upon his finger, in the hope that it might yet be in time to save his life.
As quickly as strength had ebbed, so fast did it flow back to Ogier. In a moment he sprang to his feet, fresh, youthful, and handsome as before, looking around him with dazed eyes, that showed he had newly awakened from dreams and did not understand the reason of the Queen’s pallor and her troubled looks. She, hiding her anxiety, smiled, and chided him playfully for sleeping whilst other men were fighting for the cause of France.
“Nay, Queen,” said he; “I would far sooner meet thy foemen than be confronted with such dreams of old age and misery as have come to me in my sleep this afternoon.”
With a sudden blush that made her look the lovelier in Ogier’s eyes, she cried: “Ah, if dreams beset such a mighty man as thou, then it is pardonable that they also visit a frail woman like me! ’Twas but last night I dreamed that enthroned before our people sat a king of France whose face was strange to me; to-day I know it to have been thine.”
From the way in which the Queen spoke, Ogier saw that she thought him worthy of every honour, and he, in return, felt deeply grateful for her trust, and longed to prove that it was well placed in him.
Together they walked to the council-room, leaving behind them the dame of honour, who was muttering her disgust at the turn events had taken, and vowing that if ever she had the chance of regaining the ring, she would not again part with it so easily.
Ogier had not long to wait an opportunity of serving in the field. In the council-room, he gave such wise advice, and showed so extraordinary a knowledge of warfare, that he was forthwith appointed to the command of one wing of the newly raised army, which was about to march from Paris to the aid of the King at Rouen.
A proud man was Ogier as he rode forth at the head of his troops next morning, his heart fired with the joy of coming battle and love of the fair Queen, who from her window, watched the passing army, and dropped a wreath of sweet-scented flowers at her champion’s feet.
When the army reached Rouen it was met by the news that the King lay slain by an arrow, and that the town and surrounding country were in the hands of the heathen foe. It was not long before Ogier changed the fortunes of the war. He speedily fell upon the enemy, and completely routing them in a great battle, he avenged the King’s death and recaptured the city. Then, on his victorious return to Paris, he was welcomed as the saviour of France, and the people, who had now to elect a new monarch, declared, one and all, that the Ancient Knight must succeed to the throne, for he had proved himself be a leader amongst men. For a year he continued to wage war upon the heathen invaders, driving them before him until not one remained within the kingdom of France. So great was his delight in once more being on the field of battle, and so deep his devotion to the Queen, who, after a short widowhood, had now promised to bestow her hand upon him, that amid the pleasures of his new life, Avallon, with its peaceful, uneventful days, faded utterly from his memory.
In due course, when May was again gladdening the land, preparations were made for the coronation of King Charles (the name by which Ogier was known in his new kingdom), and for his marriage, on the same day, with the widowed Queen. Full of joyful thoughts he awoke in the early dawn of that great day. So early it was that the sparrows had scarce begun to twitter in the eaves, and at first the only sound that was heard in his bedchamber was the distant hammering of the woodwrights, who had been busy overnight completing the stagings for the morning’s pageant.
Presently, however, a voice ran in his ears: “Ogier! Ogier!” Now, our hero had lost all memory, not only of Avallon, but also of his former days on earth when he was known as Ogier the Dane. The name was strange to him, therefore, and, rising on his elbow, he cried: “Who is here? Why seek ye an Ogier in this room?”
There came a sigh in answer to his questions. “Ogier was once a mighty knight,” said the gentle voice, “and many were his gallant deeds when Charlemaine ruled in this land.” Then the astonished listener heard the story of his own wonderful prowess and the conquests he had once made. “The Ogier of whom I tell, is none other than thou who to-day callest thyself Charles of France; last year the Ancient Knight was thy title. Ah, Ogier, mine own love, hast thou forgotten that thou camest here only on a short sojourn from the happy land of Avallon? Return, I pray thee; the heathen are swept from France, and thy task is finished. If thou didst linger here, no more fame couldst thou win, and the unending youth that my ring provides for thee, would rouse ill talk amongst mortals. Come, love, take from me the crown which dispels all thought of earthly life, and which will once more bring thee perfect bliss. Dost thou still look on me strangely? Nay, Ogier, this is no empty dream.”
By his side stood Morgan le Fay, dazzlingly beautiful, holding in her outstretched hand the crown that had been placed on his head when first he entered the palace of Avallon. At her bidding he now rose as in a dream, put on the kingly robes that had once been Charlemaine’s, and seated himself in the royal chair, wearing the golden crown, and holding in his right hand the sceptre of that great conqueror. Then the fairy Morgan drew near, raised the earthly crown from his head, and set in its place her circlet, which brought its wearer the blessed boon of forgetfulness. In a moment the memory of the past months was blotted out; the hero recalled the fair land of Avallon, and knew that it was no creation of his fancy that stood before him, but his own true love, who had come to lead him to those distant shores.
“Oh, love,” he faltered, “how came we here? Have I been separated from thee for a while? I dreamed, methinks, of having
spent long months toiling and battling upon earth.”
Without waiting to answer, she took his hand in hers and drew him gently from the palace. On the threshold they paused, and turned their eyes upon the sleeping city, whose Queen would yet have to seek a new consort to share her throne. Beneath the rising sun the Seine shone like a great stream of molten gold, and very fair lay the misty town along its banks. A moment the pair stood drinking in their last memory of this world – then vanished, and mortals knew Ogier no more. But in far-distant Avallon, he and his fairy bride dwell together in bliss, untouched by age or by the shadow of death.
MERLIN DREAMS IN THE MONDREAM WOOD
CHARLES DE LINT
Charles de Lint (b. 1951) has established a strong reputation in his fantasies drawing upon the roots of British folklore. A Canadian by birth, de Lint is a musician as well as a writer, specializing in folk music, and also operates his own small press called Triskell Press, which published his earliest writings, including the various tales of Cerin Songweaver, a medieval minstrel. Charles’s stories are seldom far from the basis of myth and legend, such as Mulengro (1985) and Greenmantle (1988) and his retelling of the fairy tale Jack, the Giant-Killer (1987). More recently his work has become darker and sinister taking on the pressures and horrors of American city life, but a thread of the elder world remains. The following story was originally published in the American series Pulphouse in 1990. It brings the Merlin legend down to the present day.
In the heart of the house lay a garden.
In the heart of the garden stood a tree.
In the heart of the tree lived an old man who wore the shape of a red-haired boy with crackernut eyes that seemed as bright as salmon tails glinting up the water.
His was a riddling wisdom, older by far than the ancient oak that housed his body. The green sap was his blood and leaves grew in his hair. In the winter, he slept. In the spring, the moon harped a windsong against his antler tines as the oak’s boughs stretched its green buds awake. In the summer, the air was thick with the droning of bees and the scent of the wildflowers that grew in stormy profusion where the fat brown bole became root.
And in the autumn, when the tree loosed its bounty to the ground below, there were hazelnuts lying in among the acorns.
The secrets of a Green Man.
“When I was a kid, I thought it was a forest,” Sara said.
She was sitting on the end of her bed, looking out the window over the garden, her guitar on her lap, the quilt bunched up under her knees. Up by the headboard, Julie Simms leaned forward from its carved wood to look over Sara’s shoulder at what could be seen of the garden from their vantage point.
“It sure looks big enough,” she said.
Sara nodded. Her eyes had taken on a dreamy look.
It was 1969 and they had decided to form a folk band – Sara on guitar, Julie playing recorder, both of them singing. They wanted to change the world with music because that was what was happening. In San Francisco. In London. In Vancouver. So why not in Ottawa?
With their faded bell-bottom jeans and tie-dyed shirts, they looked just like any of the other seventeen-year-olds who hung around the War Memorial downtown, or could be found crowded into coffee houses like Le Hibou and Le Monde on the weekends. Their hair was long – Sara’s a cascade of brown ringlets, Julie’s a waterfall spill the color of a raven’s wing; they wore beads and feather earrings and both eschewed makeup.
“I used to think it spoke to me,” Sara said.
“What? The garden?”
“Um-hmm.”
“What did it say?”
The dreaminess in Sara’s eyes became wistful and she gave Julie a rueful smile.
“I can’t remember,” she said.
It was three years after her parents had died – when she was nine years old – that Sara Kendell came to live with her Uncle Jamie in his strange rambling house. To an adult perspective, Tamson House was huge: an enormous, sprawling affair of corridors and rooms and towers that took up the whole of a city block; to a child of nine, it simply went on forever.
She could wander down corridor after corridor, poking about in the clutter of rooms that lay spread like a maze from the northwest tower near Bank Street – where her bedroom was located – all the way over to her uncle’s study overlooking O’Conner Street on the far side of the house, but mostly she spent her time in the library and in the garden. She liked the library because it was like a museum. There were walls of books, rising two floors high up to a domed ceiling, but there were also dozens of glass display cases scattered about the main floor area, each of which held any number of fascinating objects.
There were insects pinned to velvet and stone artifacts; animal skulls and clay flutes in the shapes of birds; old manuscripts and hand-drawn maps, the parchment yellowing, the ink a faded sepia; Kabuki masks and a miniature Shinto shrine made of ivory and ebony; corn-husk dolls, Japanese netsuke and porcelain miniatures; antique jewelry and African beadwork; Kachina dolls and a brass fiddle, half the size of a normal instrument . . .
The cases were so cluttered with interesting things that she could spend a whole day just going through one case and still have something to look at when she went back to it the next day. What interested her most, however, was that her uncle had a story to go with each and every item in the cases. No matter what she brought up to his study – a tiny ivory netsuke carved in the shape of a badger crawling out of a teapot, a flat stone with curious scratches on it that looked like Ogham script – he could spin out a tale of its origin that might take them right through the afternoon to suppertime.
That he dreamed up half the stories only made it more entertaining, for then she could try to trip him up in his rambling explanations, or even just try to top his tall tales.
But if she was intellectually precocious, emotionally she still carried scars from her parents’ death and the time she’d spent living with her other uncle – her father’s brother. For three years Sara had been left in the care of a nanny during the day – amusing herself while the woman smoked cigarettes and watched the soaps – while at night she was put to bed promptly after dinner. It wasn’t a normal family life; she could only find that vicariously in the books she devoured with a voracious appetite.
Coming to live with her Uncle Jamie, then, was like constantly being on holiday. He doted on her and on those few occasions when he was too busy, she could always find one of the many house guests to spend some time with her.
All that marred her new life in Tamson House were her night fears.
She wasn’t frightened of the house itself Nor of bogies or monsters living in her closet. She knew that shadows were shadows, creaks and groans were only the house settling when the temperature changed. What haunted her nights was waking up from a deep sleep, shuddering uncontrollably, her pajamas stuck to her like a second skin, her heartbeat thundering at twice its normal tempo.
There was no logical explanation for the terror that gripped her – once, sometimes twice a week. It just came, an awful, indescribably panic that left her shivering and unable to sleep for the rest of the night.
It was on the days following such nights that she went into the garden. The greenery and flowerbeds and statuary all combined to soothe her. Invariably, she found herself in the very center of the garden where an ancient oak tree stood on a knoll and overhung a fountain. Lying on the grass sheltered by its boughs, with the soft lullaby of the fountain’s water murmuring close at hand, she would find what the night fears had stolen from her the night before.
She would sleep.
And she would dream the most curious dreams.
“The garden has a name, too,” she told her uncle when she came in from sleeping under the oak one day.
The house was so big that many of the rooms had been given names just so that they could all be kept straight in their minds.
“It’s called the Mondream Wood,” she told him.
She took his look of surprise to mean that he
didn’t understand the word.
“It means that the trees in it dream that they’re people,” she explained.
He uncle nodded. “‘The dream of life among men.’ It’s a good name. Did you think it up yourself?”
“No. Merlin told me.”
“The Merlin?” her uncle asked with a smile.
Now it was her turn to look surprised.
“What do you mean, the Merlin?” she asked.
Her uncle started to explain, astonished that in all her reading she hadn’t come across a reference to Britain’s most famous wizard, but then just gave her a copy of Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur and, after a moment’s consideration, T. H. White’s The Sword in the Stone as well.
“Did you ever have an imaginary friend when you were a kid?” Sara asked as she finally turned away from the window.
Julie shrugged. “My mom says I did, but I can’t remember. Apparently he was a hedgehog the size of a toddler named Whatzit.”
“I never did. But I can remember that for a long time I used to wake up in the middle of the night just terrified and then I wouldn’t be able to sleep again for the rest of the night. I used to go into the middle of the garden the next day and sleep under that big oak that grows by the fountain.”
“How pastoral,” Julie said.
Sara grinned. “But the thing is, I used to dream that there was a boy living in that tree and his name was Merlin.”