by Mary Stewart
I cried out: "Stay for me, for God's sake! I'm no ghost! Stay! Help me out of here! Stilicho, stay!"
Almost without thinking, I had identified his accent, and him with it. My old servant the Sicilian, Stilicho, who had married Mai the miller's daughter, and kept the mill on the Tywy at the valley's foot. I knew his kind, credulous, superstitious, easily afraid of what they did not understand. I leaned against the upright of the scaffolding, gripped it with shaking hands, and fought for a composure that would reassure him. His head came cautiously back. I saw the black eyes staring, the sallow pallor of his face, the open mouth.
With a self-control that shook me with another wave of weakness I spoke in his own language, slowly and with apparent calm: "Don't be afraid, Stilicho. I was not dead when they left me here in error, and all these weeks I have been trapped here in the hill. I am not a ghost, boy; it truly is Merlin, alive, and very much in need of your help."
He leaned nearer. "Then the King -- all those others who were here --?" He stopped, swallowing painfully.
"Do you think that a ghost could have built this scaffolding?" I asked him. "I hadn't despaired of escaping. I've lived here in hope, all through these weeks, but by the God of all gods, Stilicho, if you leave me now without helping me from here, I swear I shall be dead before the day is out." I stopped, ashamed.
He cleared his throat. He sounded shaken, as well he might, but scared no longer. "Then it really is you, lord? They said you were dead and buried, and we have been mourning you...but we should have known that your magic would keep you from death."
I shook my head. I forced myself to go on talking, knowing that with every word he was coming nearer to accepting my survival as true, and nerving himself to approach the tomb and its living ghost. "Not magic," I said, "it was the malady that deceived you all. I am no longer an enchanter, Stilicho, but I have God to thank that I am still a strong man. Otherwise these weeks below the earth would surely have killed me. Now, my dear, can you get me out? Later we can talk, and decide what's to be done, but now, for God's sake, help me out of here and into the air..."
It was a grim business, and it took a long time, not least because, when he would have left me to go for help, I begged him, in terms of which I am now ashamed, not to leave me. He did not argue, but set himself to knotting the long, stout rope which he had found still attached to an ash sapling in the rock above the lantern. He finished it with a loop for my foot, then lowered it carefully. It reached the platform, with some length to spare. Then he let himself down into the shaft, and in a short space of time was beside me at the foot of the scaffolding. I think he would have gone on his knees, as his habit had been, to kiss my hands, but I gripped him so tightly that instead he held me, supporting me with his young strength, and then helped me back into the main cavern.
He found the one remaining stool for me, then lit the lantern and brought me wine, and after a while I was able to say, with a smile: "So now you know that I am a solid body, and no ghost? It was brave of you to come at all, and braver still to stay. What on earth brought you to this place? You're the last person who I'd have thought would go visiting a tomb."
"I wouldn't have come at all," he said frankly, "but that something I heard made me wonder if you were not dead after all, but living here alone. I knew you were a great magician, and thought that perhaps your magic would not let you die like other men."
"Something you heard? What was that?"
"You know the man I have to help me at the mill, Bran, he's called? Well, he was in town yesterday, and brought home some tale of a fellow who'd drunk himself silly in one of the taverns, and the story was going about that he had been up to Bryn Myrddin, and that the enchanter had come out of the tomb and spoken to him. People were standing him drinks and asking for more, and of course the tale as he told it was plainly lies, but there was enough to make me wonder..." He hesitated. "What did happen, lord? I knew someone had been here, because of the rope on the tree."
"It happened twice," I told him. "The first time it was a horseman riding over the hill...you can see how long ago, I marked it on the tally yonder. He must have heard me playing; the sound would carry up through the hole in the cliff. The second time was four -- five? -- days since, when some ruffian came to rob the tomb, and opened the cliff as you saw it, and let himself down with the rope." I told him what had happened. "He must have been too scared to stop and untie his rope. It's a mercy you heard his story, and came up before he got his courage back, and came back for it -- and perhaps dared the tomb again."
He gave me a sidelong, shamefaced look. "I'll not pretend to you, lord. It's not right you praising me for courage. I came up yesterday evening. I didn't want to come alone, but I was ashamed to bring Bran, and Mai wouldn't go within a mile of the place...Well, I saw the mouth of the cave was just as it had been, and then I heard the harp. I -- I turned and ran home. I'm sorry."
I said, gently: "But you came back."
"Yes. I couldn't sleep all night. You remember when you left me once to guard the cave, and you showed me your harp, and how it played sometimes by itself, just with the air moving? And how you gave me courage, and showed me the crystal cave and told me I would be safe there? Well, I thought of all that, and I thought of the times you were good to me, how you took me out of slavery and gave me freedom and the life I have now. And I thought: Even if it is my lord's ghost, or the harp playing by magic, alone in the hollow hill, he would never harm me...So I came again, but this time I came by daylight. I thought: If it is a ghost, then in sunlight it will be sleeping."
"And so I was." The thought touched me, like a cold dagger's point, that if I had drugged myself last night, as I had so often done, I might have heard nothing.
He was going on: "I walked over the hill this time, and I saw the new broken stones showing white in the corrie where the little air-shaft comes out. I went to look. I saw the rope then, tied to the ash tree, and the big gap in the cliff, and when I looked down the shaft, I saw the -- " he hesitated, " -- the thing you built there."
I had not thought to feel amusement ever again. "That is a builder's scaffold, Stilicho."
"Yes, of course. Well, I thought, no ghost made that. So I shouted. That's all."
"Stilicho," I said, "if ever I did anything for you, be sure you have paid me a thousand times over. In fact, you have saved me twice over. Not only today; if you hadn't left the place the way I found it, I should have died weeks back, from starvation and cold. I shall not forget it."
"We've got to get you out of here now. But how?" He looked around him at the stripped cave and the broken furnishings. "Now we've spoken, and you're feeling stronger, lord, shall I not go and bring men and tools, and open the doorway for you? It would be the best way, truly it would."
"I know that, but I think not. I've had time now to consider. Until I know how things stand in the kingdoms, I can't suddenly come to life.' That is how the common people will see it, if Prince Merlin comes back from the tomb. No part of the story must be told until the King knows. So, until we can get a private message to him --"
"He's gone to Brittany, they say."
"So?" I thought for a moment. "Who is Regent?"
"The Queen, with Bedwyr."
A pause, while I looked down at my hands. Stilicho was sitting cross-legged on the floor. In the lantern's light he looked still much like the boy I had known. The dark Byzantine eyes watched me.
I wetted my lips. "The Lady Nimue? Do you know who I mean? She --"
"Oh, yes, all the world knows her. She has magic, as you used to -- as you have, lord. She is always near the King. She lives near Camelot."
"Yes," I said. "Well, I am sorry, my dear, but I cannot have it known before the King comes back from Brittany. Somehow, between us, we shall have to get me out of the shaft. I have no doubt that if you will bring the tools up out of the stable, we'll manage something."
And so we did. He was back in something under half an hour with nails and tools and the small stock o
f timber that had been left in the stable. It was a bad half hour for me: I had no doubts that he would return, but the reaction was so intense that, left alone again, I sat there on the stool, sweating and shaking like a fool. But by the time the stuff was pitched down the shaft, with himself following it, I had myself in hand, and we set to work and, with me sitting idly on the stool watching and directing, he put together a ladder of a sort and fixed it to the platform I had made. This reached the sloping section of the chimney. Here, as an adjunct to the knotted rope, he cut pieces of wood which with the help of cracks and protuberances of rock he wedged at intervals against the side of the chimney to act, if not as steps, then as resting-places where one could set a knee.
When all was done he tested it, and while he did so I wrapped the harp in the remaining blanket, and with it my manuscripts and a few of the drags that I might need to restore my strength fully. He climbed out with them. Finally I took a knife and cut the best of the jewels off the pall, and dropped them, together with the gold coins, into a leather bag which had held herbs. I slipped the thong of the bag over my wrist, and was waiting at the scaffold's foot when at last Stilicho reappeared at the top, laid hold of the rope, and called for me to begin my climb.
4
I stayed a month with Stilicho at the mill. Mai, who had held me formerly in trembling awe, once she saw that this was no terrifying wizard, but a man sick and in need of care, looked after me devotedly. I saw no one besides these two. I kept to the upper chamber they gave me -- it was their own, the best, they would hear of nothing else. The hired man slept out in the granary sheds, and knew only that some ageing relative of the miller's was staying there. The children were told the same, and accepted me without question, as children will.
At first I kept to my bed. The reaction from the recent weeks was a severe one; I found daylight trying, and the noises of every day hard to bear -- the men's voices in the yard as the grain barges came in to the wharf, hoofs on the roadway, the shouts of the children playing. At first the very act of talking to Mai or Stilicho came hard, but they showed all the gentleness and understanding of simple folk, so things gradually became easier, and I began to feel myself again. Soon I left my bed, and began to spend time with my writing, and, calling the elder of the children to me, began to teach them their letters. In time I even came to welcome Stilicho's ebullience, and questioned him eagerly about what had happened since I had been shut away.
Of Nimue he knew little beyond what he had already told me. I gathered that her reputation for magic, in the weeks since my going, had grown so quickly that the mantle of the King's enchanter had fallen naturally upon her shoulders. She spent some of her time at Applegarth, but since the Lady's death had gone back to the Island shrine, to be accepted without question as the new Lady of the place. One rumor seemed to indicate that the status of the Lady would change with her. She did not remain on the Island, a maiden among maidens: she paid frequent visits to the court at Camelot, and there was talk of a probable marriage. Stilicho could not tell me who the man was said to be, "But of course," he said, "he will be a king."
With this I had to be content. There was little other news. Most of the men who came up-river to the mill were simple workmen, or barge masters, whose knowledge was only local, and who cared for little beyond getting a good price for the goods they carried. All I could gather was that the times were still prosperous; the kingdom was at peace; the Saxons kept to their treaties. And the High King, in consequence, had felt free to go abroad.
Why, Stilicho did not know. And this did not, for the moment, matter to me, except that it must mean my own continued secrecy. I thought the matter over again, after my return to health, and the conclusions I came to were the same. No purpose could be served by my public return to affairs. Even the "miracle" of a return from the grave would do no more for the kingdom and its High King than my "death" and the transfer of power had done. I had no power or vision to bring him; it would be wrong to indulge in a return which would tend to discredit Nimue as my successor, without bringing anything fresh or even valid to Arthur's service. I had made my farewells, and my legend, such as it was, had already begun to gather way. So much I could understand from the tales that, according to Stilicho, had already added themselves to the grave-robber's tale of the enchanter's ghost.
As for Nimue, the same arguments applied. With what wisdom I could command in the matter, I saw that the love we had had together was already a thing of the past. I could not go back, expecting to claim again the place I had had with her, and to tie jesses to the feet of a falcon already in flight. Something else held me back, something I would not recognize in daylight, but which mocked me in dreams with old prophecies buzzing around like stinging flies. What did I know of women, even now? When I remembered the steady draining of my power, the last, desperate weakness, the trancelike state in which I had lain before the final desertion in darkness, I asked myself what that love had been but the bond that held me to her, and bade me give her all I owned. And even when I recalled her sweetness, her generous worship, her words of love, I knew (and it took no vision to do so) that she would not lay her power down now, even to have me back again.
It was hard to make Stilicho understand my reluctance to reappear, but he did accept my desire to wait for Arthur's return before making plans. From his references to Nimue he was obviously not yet aware that she had been more to me than a pupil who had taken up the master's charge.
At length, feeling myself again, and not wanting to impose any longer on Stilicho's little household, I prepared to set off for Northumbria, and set Stilicho to make arrangements for me. I decided to go north by sea. A sea voyage is something I never willingly undertake, but by road it would be a long, hard journey, with no guarantee of continued fine weather, and besides, I could hardly have gone alone; Stilicho would have insisted upon accompanying me, even though at this time of year he could be spared from the mill. Indeed, he tried to insist on going with me by ship, but in the end let himself be overruled; this not only by expedience, but because I think he believed me still to be the "great enchanter" whom he had served in the past with such awe and pride. In the end I had my way, and one morning early I went quietly downstream on one of the barges, and embarked at Maridunum on a north-bound coastal ship.
I had sent no message to Blaise in Northumbria, because there was no courier I could trust with the news of "Merlin's return from the dead." I would think of some way to prepare him when I came near the place. It was even possible that he had not yet heard news of my death; he lived so retired from the world -- held to the times only by my dispatches -- it was conceivable that he had only just unrolled my last letter from Applegarth.
This, as it turned out, was the fact; but I did not find out yet for a while. I did not get to Northumbria, but traveled no farther north than Segontium.
The ship put in there on a fine, still morning. The little town sunned itself at the edge of the shining strait, its clustered houses dwarfed by the great walls of the Roman-built fortress that had been the headquarters of the Emperor Maximus. Across the strait the fields of Mona's Isle showed golden in the sun. Behind the town, a little way beyond the fortress walls, stood the remains of the tower that was known as Macsen's Tower. Nearby was the site of the ruined temple of Mithras, where years ago I had found the King's sword of Britain, and where, deep under the rubble of the floor and the ruined altar of the god, I had left the rest of Macsen's treasure, the lance and the grail. This was the place I had promised to show Nimue on our way home from Galava. Beyond the tower the great Snow Hill, Wyddfa, reared against the sky. The first white of winter was on its crest, and its cloud-haunted sides, even on that golden day, showed purple-black with scree and dead heather.
We nosed in to the wharf. There were goods to unload, and this would take time, so I went thankfully ashore, and, after a word at the harbor-master's office, made for the wharfside inn. There I could have a meal, and watch the unloading and loading of my ship.
I was hungry, and likely to get hungrier. My idea of any voyage, however calm, is to get below and stay below, without food or drink, until it is over. The harbor master had told me that the ship would not sail before the evening tide, so there was ample time to rest and make ready for the next dreaded stage of the journey. It did cross my mind to wish I might have time to make my way up once again to the temple of Mithras, but I put the thought aside. Even if I were to revisit the place, I would not disturb the treasure. It was not for me. Besides, the privations of the journey had tired me, and I needed food. I made for the inn.
This was built round three sides of a court, the fourth being open to the wharf, for the convenience, I suppose, of carrying goods straight from the ships into the inn's storerooms, which served as warehouses for the town. There were benches and stout wooden tables under the overhanging eaves of the open courtyard, but fine though the weather was, it was not warm enough to persuade me to eat out of doors. I found my way into the main room, where a log fire burned, and ordered food and wine. (I had paid my passage with -- appropriately -- one of the gold coins which had been the "ferryman's fee"; this had left me change besides, and caused the ship's master to accord me a respect which my apparent style hardly called for.) Now the servant hastened to serve me with a good meal, of mutton and fresh bread, with a flask of rough red wine such as seamen like, then left me in peace to enjoy the warmth of the fire and watch through the open door the scene at the quay-side.
The day wore through. I was more tired than I had realized. I dozed, then woke, and dozed again. Over at the wharf the work went on, with creak of windlass and rattle of chain and straining of ropes as the cranes swung the bales and sacks inboard. Overhead the gulls wheeled and cried. Now and again an ox-cart creaked by on clumsy wheels.