by Jane Yolen
“So, boy, have you come to pay what you owe?” asked a soft voice, followed by the trill of a mistle thrush.
At first Merrillin could not see who was speaking, but then something moved at one of the windows, a pale moon of a face. It was right where the face of the painted princess should have been. Until it moved, Merrillin had thought it part of the painting. With a bang, the window was slammed shut and then he saw the painted face on the glass. It resembled the other face only slightly.
A woman stepped through the door and stared at him. He thought her the most beautiful person he had ever seen. Her long dark hair was unbound and fell to her waist. She wore a dress of scarlet wool and jewels in her ears. A yellow purse hung from a braided belt and jangled as she moved, as if it were covered with tiny bells. As he watched, she bound up her hair with a single swift motion into a net of scarlet linen.
She smiled. “Ding-dang-dong, cat’s got your tongue, then?”
When he didn’t answer, she laughed and sat down on the top step of the wagon. Then she reached back behind her and pulled out a harp exactly like the one painted on the wagon’s side. Strumming, she began to sing:
“A boy with eyes a somber blue
Will never ever come to rue,
A boy with …”
“Are you singing about me?” asked Merrillin.
“Do you think I am singing about you?” the woman asked and then hummed another line.
“If not now, you will some day,” Merrillin said.
“I believe you,” said the woman, but she was busy tuning her harp at the same time. It was as if Merrillin did not really exist for her except as an audience.
“Most people do not,” Merrillin said, walking over. He put his hand on the top step, next to her bare foot. “Believe me, I mean. But I never tell lies.”
She looked up at that and stared at him as if really seeing him for the first time. “People who never tell lies are a wonder. All people lie sometime.” She strummed a discordant chord.
Merrillin looked at the ground. “I am not all people.”
She began picking a quick, bright tune, singing:
“If you never ever lie
You are a better soul than I …”
Then she stood and held up the harp behind her. It disappeared into the wagon. “But you did not answer my question, boy.”
“What question?”
“Have you come to pay what you owe?”
Puzzled Merrillin said: “I did not answer because I did not know you were talking to me. I owe nothing to you.”
“Ah, but you owe it me,” came a lower voice from inside the wagon where it was dark. A man emerged and even though he was not wearing the cloak, Merrillin knew him at once. The voice was the same, gentle and ironic. He was the mage on the wagon’s side; the slate gray hair was the same—and the amber eyes.
“I do not owe you either, sir.”
“What of the apple, boy?”
Merrillin started to cringe, thought better of it, and looked straightaway into the man’s eyes. “The apple was meant to come to me, sir.”
“Then why came you to the wagon?” asked the woman, smoothing her hands across the red dress. “If not to pay.”
“As the apple was meant to come into my hands, so I was meant to come into yours.”
The woman laughed. “Only you hoped the mage would not eat you up and put your little green worm on a rock for some passing scavenger.”
Merrillin’s mouth dropped open. “How did you know?”
“Bards know everything,” she said.
“And tell everything as well,” said the mage. He clapped her on the shoulder and she went, laughing, through the door.
Merrillin nodded to himself. “It was the window,” he whispered.
“Of course it was the window,” said the mage. “And if you wish to talk to yourself, make it sotto voce, under the breath. A whisper is no guarantee of secrets.”
“Sotto voce,” Merrillin said.
“The soldiers brought the phrase, but it rides the market roads now,” said the mage.
“Sotto voce,” Merrillin said again, punctuating his memory.
“I like you, boy,” said the mage. “I collect oddities.”
“Did you collect the bard, sir?”
Looking quickly over his shoulder, the mage said, “Her?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I did.”
“How is she an oddity?” asked Merrillin. “I think she is—” he took a gulp, “—wonderful.”
“That she is; quite, quite wonderful, my Viviane, and she well knows it,” the mage replied. “She has a range of four octaves and can mimic any bird or beast I name.” He paused. “And a few I cannot.”
“Viviane,” whispered Merrillin. Then he said the name without making a sound.
The mage laughed heartily. “You are an oddity, too, boy. I thought so at the first when you walked into the market fair with nothing to sell and no purse with which to buy. I asked, and no one knew you. Yet you stood in front of the barrow as if you owned the apples. When the stick fell, you did not protest; when the coin dropped from your lips, you said not a word. But I could feel your anger and surprise and—something more. You are an oddity. I sniffed it out with my nose from the first and my nose—” he tapped it with his forefinger, managing to look both wise and ominous at once “—my nose, like you, never lies. Do you think yourself odd?”
Merrillin closed his eyes for a moment, a gesture the mage would come to know well. When he opened them again, his eyes were no longer the somber blue that Viviane had sung about but were the blue of a bleached out winter sky. “I have dreams,” he said.
The mage held his breath, his wisdom being as often in silence as in words.
“I dreamed of a wizard and a woman who lived in a castle green as early spring grass. Hawks flew about the turrets and a bear squatted on the throne. I do not know what it all means, but now that I have seen the green wagon, I am sure you are the wizard and the woman, Viviane.”
“Do you dream often?” asked the mage, slowly coming down the steps of the wagon and sitting on the lowest stair.
Merrillin nodded.
“And do your dreams often come true?” he asked. Then he added, quickly, “No, you do not have to answer that.”
Merrillin nodded again.
“Always?”
Merrillin closed his eyes, then opened them.
“Tell me,” said the mage.
“I dare not. When I tell, I am called a liar or hit. Or both. I do not think I want to be hit anymore.”
The mage laughed again, this time with his head back. When he finished, he narrowed his eyes and looked at the boy. “I have never hit anyone in my life. And telling lies is an essential part of magic. You lie with your hands like this.” And so saying, he reached behind Merrillin’s ear and pulled out a bouquet of meadowsweet, wintergreen, and a single blue aster. “You see, my hands told the lie that flowers grow in the dirt behind your ear. And your eyes took it in.”
Merrillin laughed, a funny crackling sound, as if he were not much used to laughter.
“But do not let Viviane know you tell lies,” said the mage, leaning forward and whispering. “She is as practiced in her anger as she is on the harp. I may never swot a liar, but she is the very devil when her temper’s aroused.”
“I will not,” said Merrillin solemnly. They shook hands on it, only when Merrillin drew away his grasp, he had a small copper coin in his palm.
“Buy yourself a meat pie, boy,” said the mage. “And then come along with us. I think you will be a very fine addition to our collection.”
“Thank you, sir,” gasped Merrillin.
“Not sir. My name is Ambrosius, because of my amber eyes. Did you notice them? Ambrosius the Wandering Mage. And what is your name? I cannot keep calling you ‘boy.’”
“My name is Merrillin but …” he hesitated and looked down.
“I will not hit you and you may keep the coin wha
tever you say,” Ambrosius said.
“But I would like to be called Hawk.”
“Hawk, is it?” The mage laughed again. “Perhaps you will grow into that name, but it seems to me that you are mighty small and a bit thin for a hawk.”
A strange sharp cackling sound came from the interior of the wagon, a high ki-ki-ki-ki.
The mage looked in and back. “Viviane says you are a hawk, but a small one—the merlin. And that is, quite happily, close to your Christian name as well. Will it suit?”
“Merlin,” whispered Merrillin, his hand clutched tightly around the coin. Then he looked up, his eyes gone the blue of the aster. “That was the hawk in my dream, Ambrosius. That was the sound he made. A merlin. It has to be my true name.”
“Good. Then it is settled,” said the mage standing. “Fly off to your pie, Hawk Merlin, and then fly quickly back to me. We go tomorrow to Carmarthen. There’s to be a great holy day fair. Viviane will sing. I will do my magic. And you—well, we shall have to figure out what you can do. But it will be something quite worthy, I am sure. I tell you, young Merlin, there are fortunes to be made on the road if you can sing in four voices and pluck flowers out of the air.”
The road was a gentle winding path through valleys and alongside streams. The trees were still gold in most places, but on the far ridges the forests were already bare.
As the wagon bounced along, Viviane sang songs about Robin of the Wood in a high, sweet voice and the Battle of the Trees in a voice deep as thunder. And in a middle voice she sang a lusty ballad about a bold warrior that made Merlin’s cheeks turn pink and hot.
Ambrosius shortened the journey with his wonder tales. And as he talked, he made coins walk across his knuckles and found two quail’s eggs behind Viviane’s left ear. Once he pulled a turtledove out of Merlin’s shirt, which surprised the dove more than the boy. The bird flew off onto a low branch of an ash tree and plucked its breast feathers furiously until the wagon had passed by.
They were two days traveling and one day resting by a lovely bright pond rimmed with willows.
“Carmarthen is over that small hill,” pointed out the mage. “But it will wait on us. The fair does not begin until tomorrow. Besides, we have fishing to do. And a man—whether mage or murderer—always can find time to fish!” He took Merlin down to the pond where he quickly proved himself a bad angler but a merry companion, telling fish stories late into the night. All he caught was a turtle. It was Merlin who pulled up the one small spotted trout they roasted over the fire that night and shared three ways.
Theirs was not the only wagon on the road before dawn, but it was the gaudiest by far. Peddlers’ children leaped off their own wagons to run alongside and beg the magician for a trick. He did one for each child and asked for no coins at all, even though Viviane chided him.
“Do not scold, Viviane. Each child will bring another to our wagon once we are in the town. They will be our best criers,” Ambrosius said, as he made a periwinkle appear from under the chin of a dirty-faced tinker lass. She giggled and ran off with the flower.
At first each trick made Merlin gasp with delight. But partway through the trip, he began to notice from where the flowers and coins and scarves and eggs really appeared—out of the vast sleeves of the mage’s robe. He started watching Ambrosius’ hands carefully through slotted eyes, and unconsciously his own hands began to imitate them.
Viviane reached over and, holding the reins with one hand, slapped his fingers so hard they burned. “Do not do that. It is bad enough he does the tricks for free on the road, but you would beggar us for sure if you give them away forever. Idiot!”
After the scolding, Merlin sat sullenly inside the darkened wagon practicing his sotto voce with curses he had heard but had never dared repeat aloud. Embarrassment rather than anger sent a kind of ague to his limbs. Eventually, though, he wore himself out and fell asleep. He dreamed a wicked little dream about Viviane, in which a whitethorn tree fell upon her. When he woke, he was ashamed of the dream and afraid of it as well, but he did not know how to change it. His only comfort was that his dreams did not come true literally. On the slant, he reminded himself, which lent him small comfort.
He was still puzzling this out when the mules slowed and he became aware of a growing noise. Moving to the window, he stared out past the painted face.
If Gwethern had been a bustling little market town, Carmarthen had to be the very center of the commercial world. Merlin saw gardens and orchards outside the towering city walls though he also noted that the gardens were laid out in a strange pattern and some of the trees along the northern edges were ruined and the ground around them was raw and wounded. There were many spotty pastures where sheep and kine grazed on the late fall stubble. The city walls were made up of large blocks of limestone. How anyone could have moved such giant stones was a mystery to him. Above the walls he could glimpse crenellated towers from which red and white banners waved gaudily in the shifting fall winds, first north, then west.
Merlin could contain himself no longer and scrambled through the wagon door, squeezing in between Ambrosius and Viviane.
“Look, oh look!” he cried.
Viviane smiled at the childish outburst, but the mage touched his hand.
“It is not enough just to look, Merlin. You must look—and remember.”
“Remember—what?” asked Merlin.
“The eyes and ears are different listeners,” said the mage. “But both feed into magecraft. Listen. What do you hear?”
Merlin strained, tried to sort out the many sounds, and said at last, “It is very noisy.”
Viviane laughed. “I hear carts growling along, and voices, many different tongues. A bit of Norman, some Saxon, Welsh, and Frankish. There is a hawk screaming in the sky behind us. And a loud, heavy clatter coming from behind the walls. Something being built, I would guess.”
Merlin listened again. He could hear the carts and voices easily. The hawk was either silent now or beyond his ken. But because she mentioned it, he could hear the heavy rhythmic pounding of building like a bass note, grounding the entire song of Carmarthen. “Yes,” he said, with a final exhalation.
“And what do you see?” asked Ambrosius.
Determined to match Viviane’s ears with his eyes, Merlin began a litany of wagons and wagoners, beasts straining to pull, and birds restrained in cages. He described jongleurs and farmers and weavers and all their wares. As they passed through the gates of the city and under the portcullis, he described it as well.
“Good,” said Ambrosius. “And what of those soldiers over there.” He nodded his head slightly to the left.
Merlin turned to stare at them.
“No, never look directly on soldiers, highwaymen, or kings. Look through the slant of your yes,” whispered Viviane, reining in the mules.
Merlin did as she instructed, delighted to be once more in her good graces. “There are ten of them,” he said.
“And what do they wear?” prompted Ambrosius.
“Why, their uniforms. And helms.”
“What color helms?” Viviane asked.
“Silver, as helms are wont. But six have red plumes, four white.” Then as an afterthought, he added, “And they all carry swords.”
“The swords are not important,” said Ambrosius, “but note the helms. Ask yourself why some should be sporting red plumes, some white. Ask yourself if these are two different armies of two different lords. And if so, why are they both here?”
“I do not know,” answered Merlin. “Why?”
Ambrosius laughed. “I do not know either. Yet. But it is something odd to be tucked away. And remember—I collect oddities.”
Viviane clicked to the mules with her tongue and slapped their backs with the reins. They started forward again.
“Once around the square, Viviane, then we will choose our spot. Things are already well begun,” said the mage. “There are a juggler and a pair of acrobats and several strolling players, though none—I wager—w
ith anything near your range. But I see no other masters of magic. We shall do well here.”
In a suit of green and gold—the gold a cotte of the mage’s that Viviane had tailored to fit him, the green his old hose sewn over with gold patches and bells—Merlin strode through the crowd with a tambourine. It was his job to collect the coins after each performance. On the first day folk were liable to be the most generous, afterward husbanding their coins for the final hours of the fair, at least that was what Viviane had told him. Still he was surprised by the waterfall of copper pennies that cascaded into his tambourine.
“Our boy Merlin will pass amongst you, a small hawk in the pigeons,” Ambrosius had announced before completing his final trick, the one in which Viviane was shut up in a box and subsequently disappeared into the wagon.
Merlin had glowed at the name pronounced so casually aloud, and at the claim of possession. Our boy, Ambrosius had said. Merlin repeated the phrase sotto voce to himself and smiled. The infectious smile brought even more coins, though he was unaware of it.
It was after their evening performance when Viviane had sung in three different voices, including a love song about a shepherd and the ewe lamb that turned into a lovely maiden who fled from him over a cliff, that a broad-faced soldier with a red plume in his helm parted the teary-eyed crowd. Coming up to the wagon stage, he announced, “The Lady Renwein would have you come tomorrow evening to the old palace and sends this as way of a promise. There will be more after a satisfactory performance. It is in honor of her upcoming wedding.” He dropped a purse into Ambrosius’ hand.