by Mary Stewart
The enchanter had disappeared, and all they could do was make their report, and wait for his return.
It was a long dream. I remember nothing about the beginning of it, but I suppose that, buoyed up by some kind of delirious strength, I crept from my bed-place and wandered off across the deep mosses of the forest, then lay, perhaps, where I fell, deep in some ditch or thicket where the trooper could not find me. I must have recovered in time to take shelter from the weather, and of course I must have found food, and possibly even made a fire, during the weeks of storm that followed, but of this I remember nothing.
All I can recall now is a series of pictures, a kind of bright and silent dream through which I moved like a spirit, weightless and bodiless, borne up by the air as a heavy body is borne up by water. The pictures, though vivid, are diminished into an emotionless distance, as if I were looking on at a world that hardly concerns me. So, I sometimes imagine, must the bodiless dead watch over the world they have left.
So I drifted, deep in the autumn forest, unheeded as a wraith of the forest mist. Straining back now in memory, I see it still. Deep aisles of beech, thick with mast, where the wild boar rooted, and the badger dug for food, and the stags clashed and wrestled, roaring, with never a glance at me. Wolves, too; the way through those high woods is known as the Wolf Road, but though I would have been easy meat they had had a good summer, and let me be. Then, with the first real chill of winter, came the hoar glitter of icy mornings, with the reeds standing stiff and black out of curded ice, and the forest deserted, badger in lair and deer down in the valley-bottom, and the wild geese gone and the skies empty.
Then the snow. A brief vision this, of the silent, whirling air, warm after the frost; of the forest receding into mist, into dimness, breaking into whirling flakes of white and grey, and then a blinding, silent cold...
A cave, with cave-smells, and turf burning, and the taste of cordial, and voices, gruffly uncouth in the harsh tongue of the Old Ones, speaking just out of hearing. The reek of badly cured wolfskins, the hot itch of verminous wrappings, and, once, a nightmare of bound limbs and a weight holding me down...
There is a long gap of darkness here, but afterwards sunlight, new green, the first bird-song, and a vision, sharp as a child's first sight of the spring, of a bank of celandines, glossy as licked gold. And life stirring again in the forest; the thin foxes padding out, the earth heaving in the badger-setts, stags trotting by, unarmed and gentle, and the wild boar again, out foraging. And an absurd, dim dream of finding a pigling still with the stripes and long silky hair of babyhood, that hobbled about on a broken leg, deserted by its land.
Then suddenly, one grey dawn, the sound of horses galloping, filling the forest, and the clash of swords and the whirl of bright axes, the yelling and the screams of wounded beasts and men, and, like a flashing, intermittent dream of violence, a day-long storm of fighting that ended with a groaning quiet and the smell of blood and crushed bracken.
Silence then, and the scent of apple trees, and the nightmare sense of grief that comes when a man wakes again to feel a loss he has forgotten in sleep.
7
"Merlin!" said Arthur in my ear. "Merlin!"
I opened my eyes. I was lying in bed in a room which seemed to be built high up. The bright sunlight of early morning poured in, falling on dressed stone walls, with a curve in them that told of a tower. At the level of the sill I caught a glimpse of treetops moving against cloud. The air eddied, and was cool, but within the room a brazier burned, and I was snug in blankets, and good linen fragrant with cedarwood. Some sort of herb had been thrown into the charcoal of the brazier; the thin smoke smelled clean and resinous. There were no hangings on the walls, but thick slate-grey sheepskins lay on the floor, and there was a plain cross of olive-wood hanging on the wall facing the bed. A Christian household, and, by the appointments, a wealthy one. Beside the bed, on a stand of gilded wood, stood a jug and goblet of Samian ware, and a bowl of beaten silver. There was a cross-legged stool nearby, where a servant must have been sitting to watch me; now he was standing, backed up against the wall, with his eyes not on me, but on the King.
Arthur let out a long breath, and some of the colour came back into his face. He looked as I had never seen him look before. His eyes were shadowed with fatigue, and the flesh had fallen in below his cheekbones. The last of his youth had vanished; here was a hard-living man, sustained by a will that daily pushed himself and his followers to their very limits and beyond.
He was kneeling beside the bed. As I moved my eyes to look at him, his hand fell across my wrist in a quick grip. I could feel the calluses on his palm.
"Merlin? Do you know me? Can you speak?"
I tried to form a word, but could not. My lips were cracked and dry. My mind felt clear enough, but my body would not obey me. The King's arm came round me, lifting me, and at a sign from him the servant came forward and filled the goblet. Arthur took it from him and held it to my mouth. The stuff was a cordial, sweet and strong. He took a napkin from the man, wiped my lips with it, and lowered me back against the pillows.
I smiled at him. It must have shown as little more than a faint movement of muscles. I tried his name, "Emrys." I could hear no sound. I fancy that it came as a breath, no more.
His hand came down again over mine. "Don't try to speak. I was wrong to make you. You are alive, that's all that matters. Rest now."
My eye, wandering, fell on something beyond him: my harp, set on a chair beside the wall. I said, still without a thread of sound: "You found my harp," and relief and joy went through me, as if, in some way, all must now be well.
He followed my glance. "Yes, we found it. It's unharmed. Rest now, my dear. All is well. All is well, indeed..."
I tried his name again, and failing, slid back into darkness. Faintly, like movements from the Otherworld of dream, I remember swift commands, softly spoken, the servants hurrying, slippered footsteps and the rustle of women's garments, cool hands, soft voices. Then the comfort of oblivion.
When I awoke again, it was to full consciousness, as if from a long, refreshing sleep. My brain was clear, my body very weak, but my own. I was conscious, gratefully, of hunger. I moved my head experimentally, then my hands. They felt stiff and heavy, but they belonged to me. Wherever I had been wandering, I had come back to my body. I had quitted the world of dream.
I could see, from the change in the light, that it was evening. A servant — a different one — waited near the door. But one thing was the same: Arthur was still there. He had pulled the stool forward, and was sitting by the bed. He turned his head and saw me watching him, and his face changed. He made a quick movement forward, and his hand came down on mine again, a gentle touch like a doctor's, feeling for the pulse in the wrist.
"By God," he said, "you frightened us! What happened? No, no, forget that. Later you'll tell us all you can remember...Now it's enough to know that you are safe, and living. You look better. How do you feel?"
"I have been dreaming." My voice was not my own; it seemed to come from somewhere else, away in the air, almost outside my control. It was as feeble as the pigling's pipe when I mended its broken leg. "I have been ill, I think."
"Ill?" He gave a crack of laughter that held nothing of mirth. "You have been stark crazy, my dear king's prophet. I thought you were gone clean out of your wits, and that we should never have you back with us again."
"It must have been a fever of a kind. I hardly remember..." I knitted my brows, thinking back. "Yes. I was traveling to Galava with two of Urbgen's men. We made camp up near theWolf Road, and...Where am I now?"
"Galava itself. This is Ector's castle. You're home."
It had been Arthur's home, rather than mine; for reasons of secrecy I had never lived in the castle myself, but had spent the hidden years in the forest, up at the Green Chapel. But as I turned my head and caught the familiar scents of pine forest and lake water, and the smell of the rich tilled soil of Drusilla's garden below the tower, reassurance c
ame, like the sight of a known light through the fog.
"The battle I saw," I said. "Was that real, or did I imagine it?"
"Oh, that was real enough. But don't try to talk about it yet. Take it from me, all is well. Now, you should rest again. How do you feel?"
"Hungry."
This, of course, started up a new bustling. Servants brought broth, and bread, and more cordials, and the Countess Drusilla herself helped me to eat, and then once more disposed me for welcome and dreamless sleep.
Morning again, and the bright, clean light to which I had first woken. I felt weak still, but in command of myself. It seemed that the King had given orders that he was to be fetched as soon as I woke, but this I would not allow until I had been bathed and shaved and had eaten.
When he came at length he looked quite different. The strained look about his eyes had lessened, and there was colour in his face under the brown of weather. Something of his own especial quality had come back, too; the young strength that men could drink from, as at a spring, and be strengthened themselves.
I had to reassure him about my own recovery, before he would let me talk, but he eventually settled down to give me news. "The last I heard," I told him, "was that you had gone into Elmet...But that's past history now, it seems. I gather that the truce was broken? What was the battle I saw? It must have been up these parts, in the Caledonian Forest? Who was involved?"
He eyed me, I thought strangely, but answered readily enough. "Urbgen called me in. The enemy broke across country into Strathclyde, and Caw didn't manage to hold them. They would have forced their way down through the forest to the road. I came up with them, and broke them up and drove them back. The remnants fled south. I should have followed straight away, but then we found you, and I had to stay...How could I leave again, till I knew you were home, and cared for?"
"So I really did see the fighting? I wondered if it was part of the dream."
"You must have seen it all. We fought through the forest, along the river there. You know what it's like, good open ground with thin woodland, birch and alder, just the place for a surprise with fast cavalry. We had the hill at our backs, and took them as they reached the ford. The river was full; easy for horsemen, but for foot-soldiers a trap...Afterwards, when we came back from the first pursuit, people came running to tell me that you were there. You'd been found wandering among the dead and wounded and giving directions to the doctors...Nobody recognized you at first, but then the whispers started that Merlin's ghost was there." A wry little smile. "I gather that the ghost's advice was good, as often as not. But of course the whispers set up a scare, and some fools started throwing stones to drive you away. It was one of the orderlies, a man called Paulus, who recognized you, and put a stop to the ghost stories. He followed you back to where you were living, and then sent to me."
"Paulus. Yes, of course. A good man. I've worked with him often. And where was I living?"
"In a ruined turret, with an ancient orchard round it. You don't remember that?"
"No. But something is coming back. A turret, yes, ruinous, all ivy and owls. And apple trees?"
"Yes. It was little more than a pile of stones, with bracken for bedding, and piles of apples rotting, and a store of nuts, and rags hung to dry on the apple boughs." He paused to clear something from his throat. "They thought at first you were one of those wild hermits, and indeed, when I first saw you myself..." His smile twisted. "You looked the part better than you ever looked it at the Green Chapel."
"I can imagine that." And so I could. My beard, before they had shaved me, had grown long and grey, and my hands, lying weakly on the bright blankets, looked thin and old, bones held together with a net of knotted veins.
"So we brought you here. I had to go south again soon after. We caught them up at Caer Guinnion, and fought a bloody engagement there. All went well, but then a messenger came down from Galava with more news of you. When we found you and brought you here, you were strong enough on your feet, but crazy; you didn't know anyone, and you talked about things that made no kind of sense; but once here, and in the women's care, you relapsed into sleep and silence. Well, the messenger came after the battle to tell me that you had never woken. You seemed to fall into a high fever, still talking in the same wild way, then finally lay so long unconscious that they took you for dead, and sent the courier to tell me. I came as soon as I could."
I narrowed my eyes at him. The light from the window was strong. He saw this, and signed to the slave, who pulled a curtain across. "Let me get this clear. After you had found me in the forest and brought me to Galava, you went south. And there was another battle? Arthur, how long have I been here?"
"It is three weeks since we found you. But it is fully seven months since you wandered off into the forest and lost yourself. You were gone all winter. Is it any wonder that we thought you were dead?"
"Seven months?" Often, as a doctor, I have had to give this kind of news to patients who have been long feverish, or lying in coma, and I always see the same sort of incredulous, groping shock. I felt it now myself. To know that half a year had dropped out of time, and such a half year...What, in those months, might not have happened to a country as torn and as embattled as mine? And to her King? Other things, forgotten till now in the mists of illness, began to come back to me.
Looking at him, I saw again, with fear, the hollowed cheekbones and the smudge of sleepless nights beneath his eyes: Arthur, who ate like a young wolf and slept like a child; who was the creature of gaiety and strength. There had been no defeat in the field; his glory there had not suffered even the smear of a shadow. Nor could his anxiety for me have brought him to this pass. There remained his home.
"Emrys, what has happened?"
Once more, in that place, the childhood name came naturally. I saw his face twist as if the memory were a pain. He bent his head and stared down at the blankets.
"My mother, the Queen. She died."
Memory stirred. The woman lying in the great bed hung with rich stuffs? I had known, then. "I am sorry," I said.
"I heard just before we fought the battle at Caer Guinnion. Lucan brought the news, with the token you had left with him. You remember it, a brooch with the Christian symbol? Her death came as no surprise. We had expected it. But I believe that grief helped to hasten her death."
"Grief? Why, has there been —?" I stopped dead. It had come back clearly now, the night in the forest, and the flask of wine I had opened to share with the troopers. And why. The vision stirred again, the moonlit chamber and the blowing curtains and the dead woman. Something closed my throat. I said, hardly: "Guenever?"
He nodded, not looking up.
I asked, knowing the answer: "And the child?"
He looked up quickly. "You knew? Yes, of course you would...It never came to term. They said she was with child, but shortly before Christmas she began to bleed, and then, at the New Year, died in great pain. If you had been there — " He stopped, swallowed, and was silent.
"I am sorry," I said again.
He went on, in a voice so hard that it sounded angry: "We thought you were dead, too. Then, after the battle, there you were, filthy and old and crazy, but the field surgeons said you might recover. That, at least, I had saved from the shambles of the winter...Then I had to leave you to go to Caer Guinnion. I won it, yes, but lost some good men. Then on the heels of the action Ector's courier came to tell me you were dead. When I got here at dawn yesterday I expected to find your body already burned or buried."
He stopped, put his forehead hard down on a clenched fist, and stayed so. The servant, rigid by the window, caught my eye, and went, softly. In a moment or two Arthur raised his head and spoke in his normal voice.
"Forgive me. All the time I was riding north, I kept remembering what you said about dying a shameful death. It was hard to bear."
"But here I am, clean and whole, with my wits clear, and ready to become clearer when you tell me all that has happened in the last seven months. Now, of
your kindness, pour me some of that wine, and go back, if you will, to your journey into Elmet."
He obeyed me, and in a while talk became easier. He spoke of his journey through the Gap to Olicana, and what he had found there, and of his meeting with the King of Elmet. Then of his return to Caerleon, and of the Queen's miscarriage and death. This time, when I questioned him, he was able to answer me, and in the end I could give him the chilly comfort of knowing that my presence at court beside the young Queen could have been no help. Her doctors were skilled with drugs, and had saved her the worst of the pain; I could have done no more. The child was ill-conceived; nothing could have saved it, or its mother.
When he had heard what I had to tell him, he accepted this, and himself turned the subject. He was eager to hear what had happened to me, and impatient of the fact that I could remember little after the marriage feast at Luguvallium.
"Can you not remember anything of how you came to the turret where we found you?"
"A little. It comes clear bit by bit. I must have wandered about in the forest and kept myself alive somehow until winter. Then it seems to me as if some rude folk of the hill forest must have taken me in and cared for me. Without that, I doubt if I could have survived the snow. I thought they might be some of Mab's people, the Old Ones of the mountain country, but if so, they would surely have sent word to you."
"They did. Word came, but only after you had vanished again. As is usual, the Old Ones were snowed up in their high caves all winter, and you with them. They went hunting when the snow melted, and came back to their caves to find you gone. It was from them that I first heard that you had run mad. They had had to tie you, they said, but afterwards, at such times, you would be calm and very weak, and so it was at the time when they left you. When they got home, you had gone."