The Hollow Hills

by Mary Stewart

  He waited again for my agreement. I nodded, then said, carefully neutral: "Have you chosen this guardian?"

  "Yes. Budec."

  So the Queen had been right, and the decision was made. But still he had sent for me. I held myself still and said, so flatly that it sounded indifferent: "It was the obvious choice."

  He shifted in his chair and cleared his throat. I saw with some surprise that he was uneasy, nervous even. He even looked half pleased at my commendation of his choice. The knowledge steadied me. I realized that I had been so single-minded — so wrapped in what I had believed was my and the child's driving fate — that I had seen Uther falsely as the enemy. He was not so concerned: the plain fact was that Uther was a war-leader harassed perpetually by the strife in and around his borders, working desperately against time to patch a dam here, a sea-wall there, against the piling flood-water; and to him this affair of the child, though it might prove one day vitally important, was now little but a rub in the way of major issues, something he wanted out of the way and delegated. He had spoken without emotion, and indeed had set the thing out fairly enough. It was possible that he had sent for me, genuinely, to ask my advice, as his brother had been used to do. In which case... I wetted dry lips, and schooled myself to listen quietly, an adviser with a man beset by trouble.

  He was speaking again, something about a letter. The message which had come yesterday. He pointed to the stool beside him where the parchment lay, crumpled as if he had thrown it down in anger. "Did you know about this?"

  I picked the letter up and smoothed it out. It was brief, a message from Brittany, that had been sent to the King at Tintagel and brought here after him. King Budec had fallen sick of a fever, it said, during the summer. He had seemed on the way to recovery, then, towards the end of August, he had quite suddenly died. The letter finished with protestations of formal friendship from the new king, Hoel, Uther's "devoted cousin and ally..."

  I looked up. Uther had sat back in his chair, shifting a fold of the scarlet mantle over his arm. Everything seemed quite still. Outside, the wind had dropped. The sounds of the camp came from far away, faintly. Uther's chin was sunk on his chest, and he was watching me with a mixture of worry and impatience.

  I was noncommittal. "This is heavy news. Budec was a good man and a good friend."

  "Heavy enough, even if it had not destroyed my plans. I was preparing to send messages even when this letter came. Now I can't see my way clear. Have they told you that I go to a council of kings at Viroconium?"

  "Audagus told me." Audagus was the officer who had escorted us from the ferry.

  He threw out a hand. "Then you see how much I want to turn aside to deal with this. But it must be dealt with now. This is why I sent for you."

  I flicked the seal with a forefinger. "You won't send the child to Hoel, then? He swears himself your devoted cousin and ally."

  "He may be my devoted cousin and ally, but he's also a — " Uther used a phrase that became a soldier rather than a king in council. "I never liked him, nor he me. Oh, Mithras knows he would never mean harm to a son of mine, but he's not the man his father was, and he might not be able to protect the boy from his ill-wishers. No, I'll not send him to Hoel. But what other court can I send him to? Reckon it for yourself." He told over a few names, all powerful men, all of them kings whose lands lay in the southern part of the country, behind the Wall of Ambrosius. "Well? Do you see my problem? If he goes to one of the nobles or petty kings here in safe country he could still be in danger from an ambitious man; or worse, become a tool of treachery and rebellion."

  "So?"

  "So I come to you. You are the only man who can steer me between these clashing rocks. On the one hand, the child must be sworn and acknowledged my own, in case there is no other heir. On the other, he must be taken away out of danger for himself and the kingdom, and brought up in ignorance of his birth until the time comes when I send for him." He turned over a hand on his knee and asked me as simply as he had asked me once before; "Can you help me?"

  I answered him as simply. .The bewilderment, the confused whirl of thought, settled suddenly into a pattern, like coloured leaves blown down into a tapestry on the grass when the spinning wind drops still. "Of course. You need wreck no part of your kingdom on either of these rocks. Listen, and I will tell you how. You told me you had 'taken counsel.' Other men, then, know of your plans to send the boy to Budec?"

  "Yes."

  "Have you spoken to anyone of this letter, and your doubts of Hoel?"

  "No."

  "Good. You will give it out that your plan stays as formerly, and that the boy will go to Hoel's court at Kerrec. You will write to Hoel requesting this. Have someone make all arrangements to send the boy with his nurse and attendants as soon as the weather allows. See that it is given out that I will accompany him there myself."

  He was frowning, intent, and I could see protest in his face, but he made none. He said merely: "And?"

  "Next," I said, "I must be at Tintagel for the birth. Who is her physician?"

  "Gandar." He seemed about to say something more, then changed his mind and waited.

  "Good. I'm not suggesting I should attend her." I smiled. "In view of what I shall suggest, that might lead to some rather dangerous rumours. Now, will you be there yourself for the lying-in?"

  "I shall try, but it's doubtful."

  "Then I shall be there to attest the child's birth, as well as Gandar and the Queen's women, and whoever you can appoint. If it is a boy, the news will be sent to you by beacon, and you will declare him your son by the Queen, and, in default of a son begotten in wedlock, your heir until another prince shall be born."

  He took some time over that, frowning, and obviously reluctant to commit himself. But it was only the conclusion of what he had himself said to me. Finally he nodded and spoke a little heavily: "Very well. It is true. Bastard or not, he is my heir until I get another. Go on."

  "Meantime the Queen will keep her chamber, and once he has been seen and sworn to, the child will be taken back to the Queen's apartments and kept there, seen only by Gandar and the women. Gandar can arrange this. I myself will leave openly, by the main gate and the bridge. Then after dark I shall go down secretly to the postern gate on the cliff, to receive the child."

  "And take him where?"

  "To Brittany. No, wait. Not to Hoel, nor by the ship which everyone will be watching. Leave that part of it to me. I shall take him to someone I know in Brittany, on the edge of Hoel's kingdom. He will be safe, and well cared for. You have my word for it, Uther."

  He brushed that aside as if there had been no need for me to say it. He was already looking lighter, glad to be relieved of a care that must, among the weighty cares of the kingdom, seem trivial, and — with the child still only a weight in a woman's womb — unreal. "I'll have to know where you take him."

  "To my own nurse, who reared me and the other royal children, bastard and true alike, in the nurseries at Maridunum. Her name is Moravik, and she's a Breton. After the sack by Vortigern she went home to her people. She has married since. While the child is sucking, I can think of no better place. He won't be looked for in such a humble home. He will be guarded, but better than that, he will be hidden and unknown."

  "And Hoel?"

  "He will know. He must. Leave Hoel to me."

  Outside a trumpet sounded. The sun was growing stronger, and the tent was warm. He stirred, and flexed his shoulders, as a man does when he lays off his armour. "And when men find that the child is not on the royal ship, but has vanished? What do we tell them?"

  "That for fear of the Saxons in the Narrow Sea the prince was sent, not by the royal ship, but privily, with Merlin, to Brittany."

  "And when it is found he is not at Hoel's court?"

  "Gandar and Marcia will swear to it that I took the child safely. What will be said I can't tell you, but there's no one who will doubt me, or that the child is safe as long as he's under my protection. And what my protection mean
s you know. I imagine that men will talk of enchantments and vanishings, and wait for the child to reappear when my spells are lifted."

  He said prosaically: "They're more like to say the ship foundered and the child is dead."

  "I shall be there to deny it."

  "You mean you won't stay with the boy?"

  "I must not, not yet. I'm known."

  "Then who will be with him? You said he would be guarded."

  For the first time I hesitated fractionally. Then I met his eyes. "Ralf."

  He looked startled, then angry, then I saw him thinking back past his anger. He said slowly: "Yes. I was wrong there, too. He will be true."

  "There is no one truer."

  "Very well, I am content. Make what arrangements you please. It's in your hands. You of all men in Britain will know how to protect him." His hands came down hard on the arms of his chair. "So, that is settled. Before we march today I shall send a message to the Queen telling her what I have decided."

  I thought it wise to ask: "Will she accept it? It's no easy thing for a woman to bear, even a queen."

  "She knows my decision, and she will do as I say. There's one thing, though, where she'll have her way; she wants the child baptized a Christian."

  I glanced at the Mithras altar against the tent wall. "And you?"

  He lifted his shoulders. "What does it matter? He will never be King. And if he were, then he would pay service where he had to, in the sight of the people." A hard, straight look. "As my brother did."

  If it was a challenge I declined it, saying merely: "And the name?"

  "Arthur."

  The name was strange to me, but it came like an echo of something I had heard long before. Perhaps there had been Roman blood in Ygraine's family... The Artorii; that would be it. But that was not where I had heard the name...

  "I'll see to it," I said. "And now, with your permission, I'll send the Queen a letter, too. She'll lie the easier for being assured of my loyalty."

  He nodded, then stood up and reached for his helmet. He was smiling, a cold ghost of the old malicious smile with which he had baited me when I was a child. "It's strange, isn't it, Merlin the bastard, that I should talk so easily of trusting the body of my own ill-begotten son to the one man in the kingdom whose claim to the throne is better than his? Are you not flattered?"

  "Not in the least. You'd be a fool if you didn't know by now that I have no ambitions towards your crown."

  "Then don't teach my bastard any, will you?" He turned his head, shouting for a servant, then back to me. "And none of your damned magic, either."

  "If he's your son," I said dryly, "he won't take very kindly to magic. I shall teach him nothing except what he has the need and the right to know. You have my word on it."

  On that we parted. Uther would never like me, nor I him, but there was a kind of cold mutual respect between us, born of our shared blood and the different love and service we had given to Ambrosius. I should have known that he and I were linked in this as closely as the two sides of the same counter, and that we would move together whether we willed it or not. The gods sit over the board, but it is men who move under their hands for the mating and the kill.

  I should have known; but I had been so used to God's voice in the fire and stars that I had forgotten to listen for it in the counsels of men.

  * * *

  Ralf was waiting, alone in the guarded tent. When I told him the result of my talk with the King, he was silent a long time. Then he said: "So it will all happen, just as you said it would. Did you expect it to come like this? When they brought us here last night, I thought you were afraid."

  "I was, but not in the way you mean."

  I expected him to ask how, but oddly, he seemed to understand. His cheek flushed and he busied himself over some detail of packing. "My lord, I have to tell you..." His voice was stifled. "I have been very wrong about you. At first I — because you are not a man of war, I thought —"

  "You thought I was a coward? I know."

  He looked up sharply. "You knew? You didn't mind?" This, obviously, was almost as bad as cowardice.

  I smiled. "When I was a child among budding warriors, I grew used to it. Besides, I have never been sure myself how much courage I have."

  He stared at that, then burst out: "But you are afraid of nothing! All the things that have happened — this journey — you'd have thought we were riding out on a summer morning, instead of going by paths filled with wild beasts and outlaws. And when the King's men took us — even if he is your uncle, that's not to say you'd never be in danger from him. Everyone knows the King's unchancy to cross. But you just looked cold as ice, as if you expected him to do what you wanted, just as everyone does! You, afraid? You're not afraid of anything that's real."

  "That's what I mean," I said. "I'm not sure how much courage is needed to face human enemies — what you'd call 'real' — knowing they won't kill you. But foreknowledge has its own terrors, Ralf. Death may not lie just at the next corner, but when one knows exactly when it will come, and how... It's not a comfortable thought."

  "You mean you do know?"

  "Yes. At least, I think it's my death that I see. At any rate it is darkness, and a shut tomb."

  He shivered. "Yes, I see. I'd rather fight in daylight, even thinking I might die perhaps tomorrow. At least it's always 'perhaps tomorrow,' never 'now.' Will you wear the doeskin boots for riding, my lord, or change them now?"

  "Change them. Thank you." I sat down on a stool and stretched out a foot for him. He knelt to pull off my boots. "Ralf, there is something else I must tell you. I told the King you were with me, and that you would go to Brittany to guard the child."

  He looked up at that, struck still. "You told him that? What did he say?"

  "That you were a true man. He agreed, and approved you."

  He sat back on his heels, my boots in his hands, gaping at me.

  "He has had time to think, Ralf, as a king should think. He has also had time — as kings do — to still his conscience. He sees Gorlois now as a rebel, and the past as done with. If you wish to go back into his service he will receive you kindly, and give you a place among his fighting men."

  He did not answer, but stooped forward again and busied himself fastening my boots. Then he got to his feet and pulled back the flap of the tent, calling to a man to bring up the horses. "And hurry. My lord and I ride now for the ferry."

  "You see?" I said. "Your own decision this time, freely given. And yet who can say it is not as much a part of the pattern as the 'chance' of Budec's death?" I got to my feet, stretching, and laughed. "By all the living gods, I'm glad that things are moving now. And gladder for the moment of one thing more than any other."

  "That you're to get the child so easily?"

  "Oh, that, of course. No, I really meant that now at last I can shave off this damnable beard."

  10

  BY THE TIME RALF AND I REACHED Maridunum my plans, so far as could be at this stage, were made. I sent him by the next ship to Brittany, with letters of condolence to Hoel, and with messages to supplement the King's. One letter, which Ralf carried openly, merely repeated the King's request that Hoel should give shelter to the baby during his infancy; the other, which Ralf was to deliver secretly, assured Hoel that he would not be burdened with the charge of the child, nor would we come by the royal ship or at the time ostensibly fixed. I begged his assistance for Ralf in all the arrangements for the secret journey at Christmas that I planned. Hoel, easy-going and lazy by nature, and less than fond of his cousin Uther, would be so relieved, I knew, that he would help Ralf and myself in every way known to him.

  With Ralf gone, I myself set out for the north. It was obvious that I would not be able to leave the baby too long in Brittany; the refuge with Moravik would serve for a while, till men's interest died down, but after that it might be dangerous. Brittany was the place (as I had said to the Queen) where Uther's enemies would look for the child; the fact that the child was not — had
never been — at his publicly declared refuge at Hoel's court might make them believe that the talk of Brittany had been nothing but a false trail I would make certain that no real trail would lead them to Moravik's obscure village. But this was only safe as long as the boy was an infant. As soon as he grew and began to go about, some query or rumour might start. I knew how easily this could happen, and for the child of a poor house to be so cared for and guarded as must happen here, it would be very easy for some question to start a rumour, and a rumour to grow too quickly into a guess at the truth.

  More than this, once the child was weaned from women and the nursery, he would have to be trained, if not as a young prince, then as a young noble and a warrior. It was obvious that Bryn Myrddin, on no count, could be his home: he must have the comfort and safety of a noble house around him. In the end I had thought of a man who had been a friend of my father's, and whom I had known well. His name was Ector, styled Count of Galava, one of the nobles who fought under King Coel of Rheged, Uther's most considerable ally in the north.

  Rheged is a big kingdom, stretching from the mountainous spine of Britain right to the western coast, and from the Wall of Hadrian in the north clear down to the plain of Deva. Galava, which Ector held under Coel, lies about thirty miles in from the sea, in the north-west corner of the kingdom. Here there is a wild and mountainous tract of country, all hills and water and wild forest; in fact, one of the names it goes by is the Wild Forest. Ector's castle lies on the flat land at the end of one of the long lakes that fill these valleys. There was in past time a Roman fortress there, one of a chain on the military road running from Glannaventa on the coast to join the main way from Luguvallium to York. Between Galava and the port of Glannaventa lie steep hills and wild passes, easily defended, and inland is the well-guarded country of Rheged itself.