by Jack Whyte
"You are an Erse enchantress, and well you know it. But why are you looking so pleased with yourself?"
"Oh, I am, am I?"
For a moment, I was unsure which of my remarks she was referring to, but her next words, and the sudden, wicked mischief in her eye, made everything clear.
"I know it well enough, but I'd begun to think you'd grown immune to my enchantments. I've sensed none of that wicked, friendly lust in you for years."
In the space of a heartbeat, my throat was thick with tension, my heart hammering in my breast. The friendly lust she spoke of had been mutually recognized by us long since, ungratified only because of our shared loyalty to Donuil. We had discussed and dismissed it years before, agreeing amicably, she and I, to be aware of it without pursuing it. Through her two pregnancies and my quest for a celibate existence, we had grown ever more comfortable with each other and become fast friends. The attraction, though still there, had mellowed into a warm, sustained awareness. But now, suddenly, the lust was raging in me again. I swallowed the lump in my throat.
"Oh, it's been there, all along," I said, fighting to keep my tone light. "You're just getting old. Your perception of such things has dulled."
"Hah! Enchantresses do not lose their keen perceptions. Ever."
She began to hum a lovely, haunting melody and rose to her feet, stepping away from her log and holding her hands out to me. I straightened from the tree I had been leaning against, and she led me to the seat she had occupied.
"Now," she said, grinning again, "sit you there and listen to my spells, and I'll summon woman's magic to tell you how loutish, lumbering men may live in safety and rear healthy children in this mountain land. Are you ready?" I nodded, having mastered myself again, and her grin softened to a smile. "Good. Pay attention, now."
She stood for a few moments, facing me, humming again the same lilting, unearthly tune she had used before. Then she reached up and untied the filet that held her hair in place and shook her long tresses free about her shoulders. As I stared, wide-eyed and almost disbelieving, she began to turn very slowly, humming all the time, continuing to face me though her body turned impossibly, it seemed, then whipping her head around just when it seemed her neck must break. Her arms were outstretched at her sides, and very gradually she increased the tempo of her movements until she was spinning rapidly, like a child's top. As she progressed from a slow, deliberate and graceful motion to increasing, whirling speed, I sat truly entranced, watching her face and the way her long, chestnut tresses flew out about her spinning head, barely aware, for the longest time, of the gradual emergence of the long, clean length of her bare legs beneath her flaring gown. Aware of it eventually, alas, my eyes saw nothing afterward but their nakedness and strong, clean-muscled shape.
She had been watching me, I am sure, as closely as I had been watching her, and when she saw my gaze gone from her face she slopped, suddenly, hear voice falling abruptly silent on a high, clear note, her skirts cascading downward like a waving, draped curtain.
As I sat there, blinking, staring at her still-undulating skirts, awareness of how sudden had been her stop flooded me, and I leaped belatedly to my feet to catch her as she fell over from giddiness. But she stood motionless, unruffled, smiling at me, her eyes clear and even her hair tamed.
"Sit," she said. "Enchantresses do not fall down. Now hear."
As I seated myself again, she came and knelt in front of me. My heart was pounding, and I felt a sense of strange anticipation. She was lovely, and in spite of her exertions, her high breasts showed no sign of heaving.
"Close your eyes, and keep them closed." I did, enjoying the brief vision I had had of her bare, whirling legs.
"Think upon this, Merlyn of Camulod ... " .she said softly, and then she began to speak in a rhythmic, almost singing, cadenced voice that quickly lulled me, compelling me to listen to her words.
"Imagine that a party of strong men, and women, too, came to a sea-girt place called Ravenglass, then disappeared from ken, their whereabouts unknown to living men. Imagine that their enemies sought high and low to find them, and sent spies away throughout the land to hunt them down wherever they might be ... Imagine that these spies all knew a name, a strong man's name, a leader's name, and knew that in finding him, they would find what they really sought and thought to find. Imagine then, that throughout all this land, through Alba and through Eire, too, it was believed that this strong man was nowhere known where men and women throng ... "
Her voice died away, but I sat with my eyes closed for moments longer, hearing and examining the visions she had conjured in my mind. When I looked at her again, she was kneeling still, staring at me, her beautiful hawklike eyes betraying no hint of humour now.
"I saw it," she said. "It's what we've hoped to achieve. Shall I tell you where they vanished to?"
"Yes, if you know where my thoughts are leading now."
"They never left. Their ships left, in the dead of night, but they remained and lived in an abandoned fort. Their leader, Merlyn, changed his name to Cay, and while he led still, in truth, he gave the name of leader to another, not a warrior but a farmer, who would feed them all."
"Hector."
"Aye, Hector. Cay became a simple worker, so that when the spies returned at last, their search frustrated, there was no one called Merlyn known in Ravenglass."
I was staring at her in bemused wonder, amazed by the lucid simplicity of her suggestion and knowing she was absolutely right. Only a few people, to the best of my awareness, knew my real name here in Ravenglass, and for their benefit I could sail away ostentatiously with Connor and young Arthur, to be dropped ashore in some convenient spot a short way along the coast. From there I could make my way back to Mediobogdum, avoiding the town. I would be known simply as Cay. Merlyn would vanish.
"Shelagh! That could work!"
"Of course it will work! Enchantresses are never wrong, you blind man."
She was herself again, swaying lithely to her feet and reaching for her enormous satchel, from which she produced a small skin of wine, a whole cheese, a loaf of bread and a sharp knife. Seeing the knife, I became aware that this was the first time I had seen her without her throwing- knives for a long time, but the awareness was dulled by my amazement over the food.
"Good God! How did you—? Did you know we would be coming here today?"
She threw me a wry look. "Don't be foolish, how could I? But I did know I'd be keeping the boys away from the walls all day, first because of the fighting, and later, I sincerely hoped, because of the celebration. I didn't bring a cup. And I left the boys' food with Turga. Here, eat." She handed me half the cheese and half the loaf, and for the next while we ate in companionable silence-, sitting together on the ground with our backs against the fallen tree. When we were done, and the rich, red wine had left a satisfying feeling of repletion on my tongue, I turned to her.
"That was quite a dance you performed."
"Enchantment. It was an enchantment. It worked, didn't it?"
"It certainly did. Several ways." .
"Hmm. You were not supposed to be gawking beneath my skirts. Could you see my bare bottom?"
I shook my head, smiling, unaccountably comfortable again in this arena. "Unfortunately, no, I could not. But I would have made a greater effort had I known it was bare. Do you know, I was so fascinated by your, upper part, your face and head and hair, that I hardly noticed the other at all?"
"Liar. I saw your mouth fall open."
"How could you have? You were revolving far too quickly."
"Horse turds, my friend. A blink is all it takes to see that look. I stopped at once, for fear you'd have an apoplexy."
"That's unlikely. But my celibacy might have fared badly, had you continued."
She glanced down openly at my lap. "It still works, then? Despite all your single-minded self-denial?" There was no trace of prurience in her voice or her demeanour.
"Of course it does." I shifted position slightly, movin
g my buttocks in search of more comfort, strangely unfazed now, by this turn of talk. "Mostly in the dead of night, thank God."
"Erotic dreams?"
"Extremely."
"How often?"
"Frequently. Weekly."
"Weekly? After all this time?"
I sniffed. "Perhaps because of all this time. I don't know, and I try not to dwell on it. May we talk about something else?"
She was still gazing at my lap, her expression one of musing. Now she looked me in the eye, straightforwardly.
"Who do you dream about?"
I sighed, shaking my head. "I don't know, most of the time."
Her eyebrows rose in disbelief. "You must know! If a woman is attractive enough to draw your seed without even being there, you must know who she is."
Now I smiled at her incredulity. "It's not a woman, Shelagh, it's a dream, a spectral female form conjured by my body's needs and thy sleeping mind's instructions. I don't know how the conjuration works, simply that it does, and at some unsought, indeterminate time, by some unconscious means, I avail myself of this spectral presence, an incorporeal vessel into which I spill my seed without volition. Most of the time I am completely unaware of having done so. I only remember afterwards by the evidence in the morning."
She was frowning. "Donuil never has such dreams."
"By the Christus, I should hope not! Nor would I, could I reach out to you at night—" I caught myself, choking the words off, but she was barely listening, her brow furrowed in thought.
"You Said 'most of the time.' You don't know most of the time. That means you sometimes do. Who?"
"You, Shelagh. You, my dear. You gave me leave to dream of you, once, to lust after you in my mind. Don't you recall? And so I do, sometimes."
I had surprised her.
"How? I've given you no reason ... "
"No, nor encouragement, for several years, so be at peace. Nor have I lusted after you—not consciously, at least—in recent times. It is not a voluntary thing, on either of our parts."
"I know that. But how? I mean, oh, Dia! I sound stupid."
"Not at all." I picked up the wine skin and took a deep swallow. "You are a woman. Your body does not feel men's lusts, which seem to be more urgent, and more transitory, than women's are. Seem, I say, seem to be. I have no way of knowing if that's true, nor do you."
"It's true enough, I think. Women are slower to arousal than men are, I know that much. Men are sudden and frequent, unpredictable, except for the predictability of their frequency and unpredictability. They recognize no time as being better, more conducive, than another." She paused. "Look, I know you want to talk of other things, but you've told me something here I know nothing about, and I'm dying of curiosity. May I ask you something else?"
I shook my head again, smiling ruefully at her tenacity. "Of course. What is it?"
She sat silent for several moments, hesitating at the boldness of her words, then blurted out her question.
"When you ... when you dream of me like that ... what do you recall?"
We were staring at each other, our faces close, each of us tight with the fluttery tension of discovery, yet lacking, somehow, any sense of sexual urgency or imperative. When I answered her, my voice was husky and my words slow and deliberate.
"Everything about you, from the feel of your breasts to the clinging depth of you."
"But you've never touched me."
I moved slightly away from her. "I am aware of that, my dear, believe it or not, and looking at your legs and thighs today, I saw more of you than I have ever seen."
"No. I was practically naked that day when Julia died. You saw me then, wearing only that ridiculous flimsy mantle."
"Damnation! So I did. D'you know, I've never even thought of that since then? I had completely forgotten!"
She started to smile, but then her face grew somber. "That would have been an awful thing, Merlyn, to have found physical attraction in that place and at that time."
"Aye, it would. I suppose that's why I was unaware of it."*
"Hmm." Her face cleared slowly, the troubled frown giving way to a look of concentration. "So, when you ... lie with me, in dreams, the dreams seem real? I find that really difficult to comprehend."
"No more than I do, Shelagh, but I thank God, from time to time, that they seem as real as they do, because they bring no guilt, and no disloyalty to Donuil, or to you."
'To me? How could they bring disloyalty to me?"
"Because of how you truly are, a faithful wife. But they could not—they are merely dreams. Purely involuntary. Even Luke says so."
. Her eyebrows shot up on her forehead. "You've told Lucanus?"
I laughed aloud. "No, not about you! What do you think of me? We've talked of celibacy, that's all, and nocturnal emissions, as he calls them."
"'Nocturnal emissions ... ' That sounds very grand."
"They can be grand, sometimes, but they don't approximate the real thing."
"Why not? They sound like it, to me."
"Yes, my dear, except for the absence of one important, crucial element: the actual woman, with her delicious, lubricated friction."
We had been speaking in Latin, which she had picked up with wondrous speed, but now she raised one hand to her lips like a little girl, her eyes dancing, and suddenly her Erse speech was more pronounced. "Crucial? You mean spread out like a cross? 'Loo-oobricated friction ... ' Latin's a wondrous language. You couldn't say things like that in Erse. 'Delicious, lubricated friction ... Oh, listen to me! The gods would scream, could they hear us! I never even talk like this with Donuil. Can you imagine the face of him, sitting over there, listening to us?" She fell silent, thinking, then laughed in a girlish way. "So you're sound asleep when this happens? Dead to the world, with no idea at all of what's going on?"
"None at all, consciously. Of course, there's much going on inside your head."
"Aye, and other parts of you."
"Hmm."
She made another tiny sound of mirthful excitement, hitching herself more upright and lapsing back into her native tongue. "Wouldn't I love to see that, though? Wouldn't that be something to behold, the bright seed just springing from it like a ribbon, with no warning at all?"
"Aye," I said, more of a grunt than a word, and began to rise to my feet. "And if we don't leave now, it's going to happen here, in the brightness of the afternoon. Come on, let's go."
I held out my hand to help her rise, but she remained where she was, her eyes fixed on the erection that thrust beneath my clothing at the level of her eyes, which had turned suddenly solemn.
"Merlyn, forgive me. I didn't think. That was stupid of me and unforgivable to taunt you like that."
"Come on, get up. Here, take my hand. It wasn't unforgivable at all. I enjoyed it thoroughly. It simply means I'll do it twice this week." I pulled her to her feet then stepped away, literally turning my back on the temptation to gather her into my arms and kiss her. She would have come to me, I knew. I stood there, staring at the closest tree until her voice came from behind me, small and tentative.
"Merlyn? Is that the truth? You're not angry?"
I turned back to her, smiling. "No, Shelagh, I'm not angry. I swear it."
She was silent for a spell, and then, "Twice this week?" She was smiling again. "Does that mean—"
"Aye, four nights ago, aboard the galley, and it wasn't you."
"The faceless, wanton spectre ... Will it be me tonight?"
"Aye, it will, and for several nights to come, I think. But don't expect me to thank you for stirring me up this way."
"I won't, but ... "
"But what?"
She smiled. "I want you to know, though I shouldn't say it. But I'm just as stirred up now as you are ... It was you saying 'twice this week' that did it."
I stared at her for the space of several heartbeats, aware that we were both in grave danger, then began to turn away. "Good fortune for Donuil."
She caught me by the
wrist, stopping me. "Don't think of it like that, Merlyn. It's not Donuil who has me swimming, here, and he won't benefit from it. I may not lie with you, but tonight, for you, I won't lie with my husband." She stared at me, eye to eye, but I could only shake my head.
"This is insane. We'd better go."
On the way back down we talked of other things, and by the time we came to the town she had taught me the first lines of the melody she had sung in her enchantment.
SIX
The walls of the main gateway tower reared up above my head to the height of four tall men, and the heavy double doors were made from massive, layered slabs of dense- grained oak, shrunken and dried and cracked with age but serviceable still. These were framed, around and between, by heavy, solid, mason-dressed blocks of red sandstone brought down, Derek had told me, from the quarries to the north, along the coast. I craned my neck to decipher the faded, weather-beaten words on the plaque that had been mounted there on the plinth above the double doors.
"What does it say, Merlyn?"
Young Arthur stood beside me, holding his pony's reins and gazing up at the densely packed lettering of the inscription. "You're the scholar, young man. You tell me."
His brow wrinkled in concentration. "I've been trying to read it, but there are too many words I don't know. They're all at the beginning, there. What do they mean?"
I smiled. "They're names, lad. Names you've never heard before, but in their day, when their owners were alive, the whole world knew and feared them. It says: 'For the Emperor Caesar Trajan Hadrian Augustus, son of the divine Trajan, conqueror of Parthia, grandson of the divine Nerva, Pontifex Maximus and three times Consul, the Fourth Cohort of Dalmatians set this here in the presence of the Emperor's propraetorian governor.'"
He turned to me, his eyes growing round. "Caesar Augustus?"
"Aye, but not the one you're thinking of. This one was a Caesar, but the 'Augustus' in this instance is simply a way of calling him the Great Caesar. His real name was Hadrian, just as mine is Merlyn. My full name is Caius Merlyn Britannicus, but Caius Britannicus was my grandfather."