by Mary Stewart
His voice trailed away. Silence again, and the fire flickering. Time was, I thought, not without bitterness, when I would only have had to watch the flames to find the answer there. Would he be safe? Or would I carry the burden of yet another death? But all that the firelight showed me was a youth who needed to find manhood. Uther had denied it to him; I could not let my conscience do the same.
At length I said heavily: "I told you once that men must stand by their own deeds. I suppose that means I have no right to stop you taking your own risks. Very well, you may come... No, don't thank me. You'll dislike me thoroughly enough before we're done. It will be a damned uncomfortable journey, and before we set out, you'll have work to do that won't suit you."
"I'm used to that," he said, and straightened, laughing. He was shining, excited, the gaiety that I remembered back in his face. "But you don't mean you're going to teach me magic?"
"I do not. But I shall have to teach you a little medicine, whether you like it or not. I shall be a travelling eye doctor; it's a good passport anywhere, and one can pay one's way easily without spending the Queen's gold abroad where questions might be asked. So you will have to be my assistant, and that means learning to mix the salves properly."
"Well, if I must, but God help the patients! You know I can't tell one herb from the other."
"Never fear, I wouldn't let you touch them. You can leave me to select the plants. You'll just prepare them."
"And if any of Cador's men show signs of recognizing us, just try some of my salves on them," he said buoyantly. "Talk about magic, it'll be easy. The eye doctor's skilled assistant will simply strike them blind."
6
WE CAME TO THE INN AT Camelford two days before the middle of September.
The Camel valley is winding, with steep sides clothed with trees. For the last part of the way we followed the track along the waterside. The trees were closely crowded, and the path where we rode was so thickly padded with moss and small, dark-green ferns that our horses' hoofs made no sound. Beside us the river wrangled its way down through granite boulders that glittered in the sun. Around and above us the dense hangers of oak and beech were turning yellow, and acorns crunched among the dead leaves where the horses trod. Nuts ripened in the thickets; the willows trailed amber leaves in the tugging shallows; and wherever the bright sun splashed through the boughs it shimmered on the spiders' webs of autumn furred and glittering, sagging deep with dew.
Our journey had been uneventful. Once south of the Severn and beyond hourly danger of recognition, we had ridden at ease, and in pleasant stages. The weather, as so often in September, was warm and bright, but with a crisp feel to the air that made riding a pleasure. Ralf had been in high spirits all the way, in spite of poor clothes, an undistinguished horse (bought with some of the Queen's gold) and the work he had had to do for me making the washes and ointments with which I largely paid our way. We were only questioned once, by a troop of King's men who came on us just short of Hercules Point. Uther kept the old Roman camp there garrisoned as a strongpoint, and by the purest mischance we fell foul of a scouting party which was making its way home by the moorland track we followed. We were taken to the camp and questioned, though it seemed this was merely a matter of form as, after a cursory look at our baggage, my story was accepted. We were sent on our way with our flasks refilled with the ration wine, the richer for a copper coin given me by a man off duty who followed us out of camp and begged a pot of salve from me.
I found the men's vigilance interesting, and would have liked to know more of the state of affairs in the north, but that would have to wait. To have asked questions here would have attracted attention I did not want. No doubt I would find out what I wished to know from the Queen herself.
"Did you see anyone you knew?" I asked Ralf, as we headed over the moors at a brisk canter away from the gate of the camp.
"None. Did you?"
"I'd met the officer before, a few years ago. His name is Priscus. But he gave no sign of recognizing me."
"I wouldn't have known you myself," said Ralf. "And it isn't just the beard. It's the way you walk, your voice, everything. It's like that night at Tintagel, when you were disguised as the Duke's captain. I'd known him all my life, and I'd have sworn you were he. It's no wonder folks are talking about magic. I thought it was magic myself."
"This is easier," I said. "If you carry a trade or a skill with you men think about that, instead of looking at you too closely."
Indeed, I had troubled very little with disguise. I had bought a new riding cloak, brown, with a hood which could be pulled about my face, and I spoke Celtic with the accent of Brittany. This is a tongue close to the Cornish one, and would be understood where we were going. This, with the beard, and my humble tradesman's bearing, should keep any but my intimates from knowing me. Nothing would part me from the brooch my father had given me, with its royal cipher of the Red Dragon on gold, but I wore it clipped inside the breast of my tunic, and had threatened Ralf with every face in the Nine Books of Magic if he called me "my lord" even in private.
We reached Camelford towards evening. The inn was a small squat building of daubed stone built where the coast road ran down into the ford. It was at the top of the bank, just clear of flood level. Ralf and I, approaching by the country track along the river, came on it from the rear. It seemed a pleasant place, and clean. Someone had given the stones a wash of red ochre, the colour of the rich earth thereabouts, and fat poultry picked about among the ricks at the edge of a swept yard. A chained dog dozed in the shade of a mulberry tree heavy with fruit. There was a tidy stack of firewood against the byre, and the midden was fully twenty feet from the back door.
As luck would have it, the innkeeper's wife was out at the back with a maidservant, taking in bedding which had been spread over the bushes in the sun. As we approached the dog flew out, barking, at the length of his chain. The woman straightened, shading her eyes against the light, and staring.
She was a young woman, broadly built and lively looking, with a fresh, high colour and prominent light-blue eyes. Her bad teeth and plump figure gave away a rash passion for sweetmeats, and the lively blue eyes spoke even more clearly of other pleasures. They ran now over Ralf, who rode ahead of me, appraised him as likely, but young for it; then, more hopefully, over me, to dismiss me finally as less likely, and probably too poor to pay my shot anyway. Then, as her gaze returned to Ralf, I saw her recognize him. She stiffened, looking quickly back at me. Her mouth fell open, and I thought for an anxious moment that she was going to curtsy, but then she had command of herself. A word sent the maid packing indoors with an armful of bedding, a shrill bidding to the dog drove him back, ears down and growling, into the mulberry shade, then she was greeting us, smiling widely, eyes curious and excited.
"You'll be the eye doctor, likely?"
We drew our horses to a halt in the dust of the yard. "Indeed, mistress. My name is Emrys, and this is my servant Ban."
"We've been expecting you. Your beds is bespoke." Then under her breath as she came close to my horse's shoulder: "You be very welcome, my lord, and Ralf, too. I declare he do look a handspan taller than when I seen him last. Will you be pleased to come in?"
I dismounted and handed the reins to Ralf. "Thank you. It's good to be here; we're both weary. Ralf will look after the horses himself. Now before we go in, Maeve, give me the news from Tintagel. Is all well with the Queen?"
"Yes, indeed, sir, praise be to all the saints and fairies. You need have no worries there, surely."
"And the King? He's still at Tintagel?"
"Aye, my lord, but the word goes that he'll ride out any day now. You'll not have long to bide. You're as safe here as anywhere in Cornwall. We'll have good enough warning of troops moving, and you can hear them on this road a mile off. And never worry about Caw — that's my husband; he's a Duke's man, sure enough, but he'll do nothing to harm my lady, and besides, he always does as I tell him. Leastways, not always. There's some things he
don't do near often enough for my liking." This with a burst of cheery laughter. I saw Ralf grinning as he led the horses away, then Maeve, talking loudly about beds and supper-time, and the sore eyes of her youngest which could do with looking at, led me through the back door of the inn.
When I saw her husband later that evening I knew that I need have no fears for his discretion. He was a dry stick of a man, and silent as an oyster. He came in as we were sitting down to supper, stared at Ralf, nodded at me, then went about his business of serving wine without a word spoken. His wife treated him — and all comers — with the same rough, frank kindliness, and saw to it without fuss that we were well served and comfortably housed. It was as good a house of its kind as I have ever been in, and the food was excellent.
Understandably, the inn was always busy, but there was little danger of our being recognized. My character as a travelling healer was not only my pass to people's incurious acceptance; it gave Ralf and me the excuse to be abroad in the countryside. Each day early we would take food and wine with us, and make our way up by one of the deep, densely wooded glens that fed the Camel valley, to the windy upland that lay between Camelford and the sea. Ralf knew all the ways. We would separate, more often than not, and each choose some hidden point of vantage from which he could watch the two roads which Uther and his men might take out of Tintagel. He might turn north-east along the coast for Dimilioc and the camp near Hercules Point, or — if he was making straight for Winchester or the trouble centers along the Saxon Shore — he would follow the valley tracks through Camelford and from there climb south-east to the military road which ran along the spine of Dumnonia. Here on the wind-swept heights the forest thins, and there ate great tracts of broken moorland treacherous with bog and watched over by strange stony hills. The old Roman road, crumbling fast in that wild country, but still service-runs straight through Isca, into the kinder lands behind Ambrosius' Wall. It was my guess that this latter was the way that Uther would take, and I wanted to see who rode with him. Ralf and I gave it out that I was searching for plants for my medicines, and indeed I came back each evening to my meeting-place with him with a pouch full of roots and berries which did not grow at home, and which I was glad to have. Luckily the weather continued fine, and no one wondered to see us ride abroad. They were too glad to have a doctor staying there who, each evening, would treat any who came to him, and ask no more than they could afford to pay.
So the days went by, serene and still, while we waited for the King to move, and the Queen to send word.
It was a week before he rode out. He went the way I had expected, and I was there watching.
There is a place where the track from Tintagel to Camel-ford runs straight for some quarter of a mile along the foot of a steeply wooded bank. For the most part the wood is too steep and thickly grown to penetrate, but there were places at the wood's edge open to the sun, stony banks deep in ferns and drifting thistledown, where brambles and bracken grew in thickets over the rocks. The blackthorn bushes were high, and glinting with fruit. Some of the little sloe-plums were still greenish, but most were ready; black bloomed over pale blue with ripeness. There is an extract one can make of the fruit which is sovereign for a flux of the bowels: one of Maeve's children had been suffering in this way, and I had promised a draught that night. It would need no more than a handful, but the fruit was ripe to perfection, and so tempting that I went on gathering. If the berries are crushed and added in a certain way to juniper-wine they make a good drink, rich, astringent and powerful. I had told Maeve of it, and she wanted to try it.
My bag was almost full when I heard, like a soft thunder in the distance, horses coming steadily along the track below me. I withdrew quickly into the edge of the wood, and watched from hiding. Soon the head of the column came in sight; then the long train of dust, filled with the beat of trotting hoofs, the clash of mail, the coloured glint of pennants, rolled past along the foot of the slope. A thousand, perhaps more I stood stone-still in the shadow of the trees, and watched them go by.
A horse's length to the front the King rode, and behind him, on his left hand, his standard-bearer carried the Red Dragon. Other colours showed through the dust, but there was no wind to move the banners, and though I strained my eyes the length of the column, I could not swear to most that I saw. Nor did I glimpse the one I was watching for, though it might well have been there. I waited till the last horseman disappeared at a smart trot round a bend in the road, then I made my way to the place where I had arranged to meet Ralf.
He met me halfway, panting. "Did you see them?"
"Yes. Where were you? I sent you to watch the other road."
"I was watching. There was nothing stirring there, nothing at all. I was on my way back here when I heard them, so I ran. I almost missed them — only saw the tail end. It was the King, wasn't it?"
"It was. Ralf, could you pick out the devices? Did you see any that you knew?"
"I saw Brychan, and Cynfelin, but no others from Dyfnaint that I recognized. The men from Garlot were there, and Cernyw, too, I think, and others I thought I knew, but there was too much dust to make sure. They were round that bend before I could get a good sight of them."
"Was Cador there?"
"My lord, I'm sorry, I didn't see."
"No matter. If the others were there from Cornwall, you may be sure he would be. No doubt they'll know at the inn. And had you forgotten that you were not to call me 'my lord,' even when we were alone?"
"I'm sorry... Emrys." It was a measure of our new, easier relationship that he should add, with a suspicious meekness: "And had you forgotten that my name is Ban?" Then, laughing as he dodged my cuff at his head: "Do you have to call me after the half-wit?"
"It's the first name that came into my head. It's a king's name too, the King of Benoic, so you can take your choice which was your sponsor."
"Benoic? Where's that?"
"In the north. Come now, we'll get back to the inn. I doubt if the Queen will send before tomorrow, but I've a draught to make tonight, and it's a decoction that takes time. Here, carry these."
I was right; the messenger came next morning. Ralf had gone out down the road' to watch for him, and the two of them came back together, with the news that I was to ride to Tintagel immediately for my audience with the Queen.
I had not confessed it to Ralf, nor even hardly admitted it to myself, but I was apprehensive about the coming interview with Ygraine. On that night at Tintagel when the child was conceived I had been certain, in every way a seer can be certain, that the boy who was to be born would be given to me to foster, and that I should be the guardian of a great King. Uther himself, in his bitterness and anger over Gorlois' death, had sworn to reject the "bastard" he had begotten, and from Marcia's letter I knew he was still of the same mind. But in the six long months since that March night I had had no direct message from Ygraine, and no means of knowing whether she would obey her husband, or whether as the time drew near she would find it impossible to face separation from her child. I had gone over in my mind a hundred times all the arguments I might bring to bear, remembering half incredulously the sureness with which I had spoken to her before, and to the King. Indeed my god had been with me then. And in truth, and how bitterly, was he gone from me now. There were even times when, lying wakeful in the night, I saw my sure visions in the past as chances, illusions, dreams fed by desire. I remembered the King's bitter words to me. "I see now what your magic is, this 'power' you talk of. It is nothing but human trickery, an attempt at statecraft which my brother taught you to like and to play for, and to believe was your mystery. You use even God to gain your ends. 'It is God who tells me to do these things, it is God who exacts the price, it is God who sees that others should pay...' For what, Merlin? For your ambition? And who is it pays this debt to God for carrying out your plans? Not you. The men who play your game for you, and pay the price. But you pay nothing." When I listened to such words as these, heard clearly in the nights when nothing else spoke to
me, I wondered if I had read my vision of the future aright, or if everything I had done and dreamed of had been a mockery. Then, thinking of those who had paid with death for my dream, I would wonder if that death had not been kinder than this desert of self-doubt where I lay fixed, waiting in vain for even the smallest of my gods to speak to me. Oh, yes, I paid. Every night of those nine long months I paid.
But now it was day, and I would soon find out what the Queen wanted with me. I remember how restlessly I fidgeted around while Ralf saddled my horse and made ready. Maeve was with the maids in the kitchen, washing the sloes for the wine-making. A pan of them was on the stove, coming to the simmer. It seemed a strange memory to take with me on my visit to the Queen, the smell of sloe wine. Suddenly I found the pungent sweetness intolerable, and made, choking, for the air outside. But then one of the girls came running to ask something about the mixing, and in answering her I forgot my sickness, and then all at once Ralf was at my elbow to summon me, and the three of us — Ralf, the messenger and I — were heading for Tintagel at a hand-gallop through the soft, blowing September noon.
7
IT WAS ONLY A FEW MONTHS since I had last seen Ygraine, but she seemed very much changed. At first I thought this was only the pregnancy; her once-slim body was greatly swollen and, though her face was full of the bloom of health, she had that pinched and shadowy look that women get around the eyes and mouth. But the change was deeper than this; it was in the expression of her eyes, in her gestures, the way she sat. Where before she had seemed young and burning, a wild bird beating her wings against the wires of the cage, now she seemed to brood, wings clipped, gravid, a creature of the ground.