by Mary Stewart
(He was gone before I woke next morning. He kept his word, and joined Ambrosius later, at York, with a few hundred men. He was honourably received and acquitted himself well, but soon afterwards, in some minor engagement, received wounds of which he later died. As for me, I never saw him again.)
Cadal shut the door behind him. "At least there's a good lock and a stout bar."
"Are you afraid of Dinias?" I asked.
"I'm afraid of everybody in this cursed town. I'll not be happy till we're quit of it and back with Ambrosius."
"I doubt if you need worry now. Vortigern's men have gone. You heard what Dinias said."
"Aye, and I heard what you said, too." He had stooped to pick up the blankets from beside the fire, and paused with his arms full of bedding, looking at me. "What did you mean, you're getting your own place here ready? You're never thinking of setting up house here?"
"Not a house, no."
"That cave?"
I smiled at his expression. "When Ambrosius has done with me, and the country is quiet, that is where I shall go. I told you, didn't I, that if you stayed with me you'd live far from home?"
"We were talking about dying, as far as I remember. You mean, live there?"
"I don't know," I said. "Perhaps not. But I think I shall need a place where I can be alone, away, aside from things happening. Thinking and planning is one side of life; doing is another. A man cannot be doing all the time."
"Tell that to Uther."
"I am not Uther."
"Well, it takes both sorts, as they say." He dumped the blankets on the bed. "What are you smiling at?"
"Was I? Never mind. Let's get to bed, we'll have to be early at the nunnery. Did you have to bribe the old woman again?"
"Old woman nothing." He straightened. "It was a girl this time. A looker, too, what I could see of her with that sack of a gown and a hood over her head. Whoever puts a girl like that in a nunnery deserves — " He began to explain what they deserved, but I cut him short.
"Did you find out how my mother was?"
"They said she was better. The fever's gone, but she'll not rest quiet till she's seen you. You'll tell her everything now?"
"Yes."
"And then?"
"We join Ambrosius."
"Ah," he said, and when he had dragged his mattress to lie across the door, he blew out the lamp and lay down without another word to sleep.
My bed was comfortable enough, and the room, derelict or no, was luxury itself after the journey. But I slept badly. In imagination I was out on the road with Ambrosius, heading for Doward. From what I had heard of Doward, reducing it would not be an easy job. I began to wonder if after all I had done my father a disservice in driving the High King out of his Snowdon fastness. I should have left him there, I thought, with his rotten tower, and Ambrosius would have driven him back to the sea.
It was with an effort almost of surprise that I recalled my own prophecy. What I had done at Dinas Brenin, I had not done of myself. It was not I who had decided to send Vortigern fleeing out of Wales. Out of the dark, out of the wild and whirling stars, I had been told. The Red Dragon would triumph, the White would fall. The voice that had said so, that said so now in the musty dark of Camlach's room, was not my own; it was the god's. One did not lie awake looking for reasons; one obeyed, and then slept.
3
IT WAS THE GIRL CADAL HAD SPOKEN of who opened the nunnery gate to us. She must have been waiting to receive us, for almost as soon as Cadal's hand was lifted to the bell-pull the gate opened and she motioned us to come in. I got a swift impression of wide eyes under the brown hood, and a supple young body shrouded in the rough gown, as she latched the heavy gate and, drawing her hood closer over her face and hair, led us quickly across the courtyard. Her feet, bare in canvas sandals, looked cold, and were splashed with mud from the puddled yard, but they were slim and well-shaped, and her hands were pretty. She did not speak, but led us across the yard and through a narrow passage between two buildings, into a larger square beyond. Here against the walls stood fruit trees, and a few flowers grew, but these were mostly weeds and wild-flowers, and the doors of the cells that opened off the courtyard were unpainted and, where they stood open, gave on bare little rooms where simplicity had become ugliness and, too often, squalor.
Not so in my mother's cell. She was housed with adequate — if not royal — comfort. They had let her bring her own furniture, the room was limewashed and spotlessly clean, and with the change in the April weather the sun had come out and was shining straight in through the narrow window and across her bed. I remembered the furniture; it was her own bed from home, and the curtain at the window was one she had woven herself, the red cloth with the green pattern that she had been making the day my uncle Camlach came home. I remembered, too, the wolfskin on the floor; my grandfather had killed the beast with his bare hands and the haft of his broken dagger; its beady eyes and snarl had terrified me when I was small. The cross that hung on the bare wall at the foot of her bed was of dull silver, with a lovely pattern of locked but flowing lines, and studs of amethyst that caught the light.
The girl showed me the door in silence, and withdrew. Cadal sat down on a bench outside to wait.
My mother lay propped on pillows, in the shaft of sunshine. She looked pale and tired, and spoke not much above a whisper, but was, she told me, on the mend. When I questioned her about the illness, and laid a hand on her temples, she put me aside, smiling and saying she was well enough looked after. I did not insist: half of healing is in the patient's trust, and no woman ever thinks her own son is much more than a child. Besides, I could see that the fever had gone, and now that she was no longer anxious over me, she would sleep.
So I merely pulled up the room's single chair, sat down and began to tell her all she wanted to know, without waiting for her questions: about my escape from Maridunum and the flight like the arrow from the god's bow straight from Britain to Ambrosius' feet, and all that had happened since. She lay back against her pillows and watched me with astonishment and some slowly growing emotion which I identified as the emotion a cage-bird might feel if you set it to hatch a merlin's egg.
When I had finished she was tired, and grey stood under her eyes so sharply drawn that I got up to go. But she looked contented, and said, as if it was the sum and finish of the story, as I suppose it was, for her:
"He has acknowledged you."
"Yes. They call me Merlin Ambrosius."
She was silent a little, smiling to herself. I crossed to the window and leaned my elbows on the sill, looking out. The sun was warm. Cadal nodded on his bench, half asleep. From across the yard a movement caught my eye; in a shadowed doorway the girl was standing, watching my mother's door as if waiting for me to come out. She had put back her hood, and even in the shadows I could see the gold of her hair and a young face lovely as a flower. Then she saw me watching her. For perhaps two seconds our eyes met and held. I knew then why the ancients armed the cruellest god with arrows; I felt the shock of it right through my body. Then she had gone, shrinking close-hooded back into the shadow, and behind me my mother was saying:
"And now? What now?"
I turned my back on the sunlight. "I go to join him. But not until you are better. When I go I want to take news of you."
She looked anxious. "You must not stay here. Maridunum is not safe for you."
"I think it is. Since the news came in of the landing, the place has emptied itself of Vortigern's men. We had to take to the hill-tracks on our way south; the road was alive with men riding to join him."
"That's true, but —"
"And I shan't go about, I promise you. I was lucky last night, I ran into Dinias as soon as I set foot in town. He gave me a room at home."
"Dinias?"
I laughed at her astonishment. "Dinias feels he owes me something, never mind what, but we agreed well enough last night." I told her what mission I had sent him on, and she nodded.
"He" — and I knew she
did not mean Dinias — "will need every man who can hold a sword." She knitted her brows. "They say Hengist has three hundred thousand men. Will he" — and again she was not referring to Hengist — "be able to withstand Vortigern, and after him Hengist and the Saxons?"
I suppose I was still thinking of last night's vigil. I said, without pausing to consider how it would sound: "I have said so, so it must be true."
A movement from the bed brought my eyes down to her. She was crossing herself, her eyes at once startled and severe, and through it all afraid. "Merlin — " but on the word a cough shook her, so that when she managed to speak again it was only a harsh whisper: "Beware of arrogance. Even if God has given you power —"
I laid a hand on her wrist, stopping her. "You mistake me, madam. I put it badly. I only meant that the god had said it through me, and because he had said it, it must be true. Ambrosius must win, it is in the stars."
She nodded, and I saw the relief wash through her and slacken her, body and mind, like an exhausted child.
I said gently: "Don't be afraid for me, Mother. Whatever god uses me, I am content to be his voice and instrument. I go where he sends me. And when he has finished with me, he will take me back."
"There is only one God," she whispered.
I smiled at her. "That is what I am beginning to think. Now, go to sleep. I will come back in the morning."
* * *
I went to see my mother again next morning. This time I went alone. I had sent Cadal to find provisions in the market, Dinias' slut having vanished when he did, leaving us to fend for ourselves in the deserted palace. I was rewarded, for the girl was again on duty at the gate, and again led me to my mother's room. But when I said something to her she merely pulled the hood closer without speaking, so that again I saw no more of her than the slender hands and feet. The cobbles were dry today, and the puddles gone. She had washed her feet, and in the grip of the coarse sandals they looked as fragile as blue-veined flowers in a peasant's basket. Or so I told myself, my mind working like a singer's, where it had no right to be working at all. The arrow still thrummed where it had struck me, and my whole body seemed to thrill and tighten at the sight of her.
She showed me the door again, as if I could have forgotten it, and withdrew to wait.
My mother seemed a little better, and had rested well, she told me. We talked for a while; she had questions about the details of my story, and I filled them in for her. When I got up to go I asked, as casually as I could:
"The girl who opened the gate; she is young, surely, to be here? Who is she?"
"Her mother worked in the palace. Keridwen. Do you remember her?"
I shook my head. "Should I?"
"No." But when I asked her why she smiled, she would say nothing, and in face of her amusement I dared not ask any more.
On the third day it was the old deaf portress; and I spent the whole interview with my mother wondering if she had (as women will) seen straight through my carefully casual air to what lay beneath, and passed the word that the girl must be kept out of my way. But on the fourth day she was there, and this time I knew before I got three steps inside the gate that she had been hearing the stories about Dinas Brenin. She was so eager to catch a glimpse of the magician that she let the hood fall back a little, and in my turn I saw the wide eyes, grey-blue, full of a sort of awed curiosity and wonder. When I smiled at her and said something in greeting she ducked back inside the hood again, but this time she answered. Her voice was light and small, a child's voice, and she called me "my lord" as if she meant it.
"What's your name?" I asked her.
"Keri, my lord."
I hung back, to detain her. "How is my mother today, Keri?"
But she would not answer, just took me straight to the inner court, and left me there.
That night I lay awake again, but no god spoke to me, not even to tell me she was not for me. The gods do not visit you to remind you what you know already.
* * *
By the last day of April my mother was so much better that when I went again to see her she was in the chair by the window, wearing a woollen robe over her shift, and sitting full in the sun. A quince tree, pinioned to the wall outside, was heavy with rosy cups where bees droned, and just beside her on the sill a pair of white doves strutted and crooned.
"You have news?" she asked, as soon as she saw my face.
"A messenger came in today. Vortigern is dead and the Queen with him. They say that Hengist is coming south with a vast force, including Vortimer's brother Pascentius and the remnant of his army. Ambrosius is already on his way to meet them."
She sat very straight, looking past me at the wall. There was a woman with her today, sitting on a stool on the other side of the bed; it was one of the nuns who had attended her at Dinas Brenin. I saw her make the sign of the cross on her breast, but Niniane sat still and straight looking past me at something, thinking.
"Tell me, then."
I told her all I had heard about the affair at Doward. The woman crossed herself again, but my mother never moved. When I had finished, her eyes came back to me.
"And you will go now?"
"Yes. Will you give me a message for him?"
"When I see him again," she said, "it will be time enough."
When I took leave of her she was still sitting staring past the winking amethysts on the wall to something distant in place and time.
Keri was not waiting, and I lingered for a while before I crossed the outer yard, slowly, towards the gate. Then I saw her waiting in the deep shadow of the gateway's arch, and quickened my step. I was turning over a host of things to say, all equally useless to prolong what could not be prolonged, but there was no need. She put out one of those pretty hands and touched my sleeve, beseechingly. "My lord —"
Her hood was half back, and I saw tears in her eyes. I said sharply: "What's the matter?" I believe that for a wild moment I thought she wept because I was going. "Keri, what is it?"
"I have the toothache."
I gaped at her. I must have looked as silly as if I had just been slapped across the face.
"Here," she said, and put a hand to her cheek. The hood fell right back. "It's been aching for days. Please, my lord —"
I said hoarsely: "I'm not a toothdrawer."
"But if you would just touch it —"
"Or a magician," I started to say, but she came close to me, and my voice strangled in my throat. She smelled of honeysuckle. Her hair was barley-gold and her eyes grey like bluebells before they open. Before I knew it she had taken my hand between both her own and raised it to her cheek.
I stiffened fractionally, as if to snatch it back, then controlled myself, and opened the palm gently along her cheek. The wide greybell eyes were as innocent as the sky. As she leaned towards me the neck of her gown hung forward slackly and I could see her breasts. Her skin was smooth as water, and her breath sweet against my cheek.
I withdrew the hand gently enough, and stood back. "I can do nothing about it." I suppose my voice was rough. She lowered her eyelids and stood humbly with folded hands. Her lashes were short and thick and golden as her hair. There was a tiny mole at the corner of her mouth.
I said: "If it's no better by morning, have it drawn."
"It's better already, my lord. It stopped aching as soon as you touched it." Her voice was full of wonder, and her hand crept up to the cheek where mine had lain. The movement was like a caress, and I felt my blood jerk with a beat like pain. With a sudden movement she reached for my hand again and quickly, shyly, stooped forward and pressed her mouth to it.
Then the door swung open beside me and I was out in the empty street.
4
IT SEEMED, FROM WHAT THE MESSENGER had told me, that Ambrosius had been right in his decision to make an end of Vortigern before turning on the Saxons. His reduction of Doward, and the savagery with which he did it, had their effect. Those of the invading Saxons who had ventured furthest inland began to withdraw northwards
towards the wild debatable lands which had always provided a beachhead for invasion. They halted north of the Humber to fortify themselves where they could, and wait for him. At first Hengist believed that Ambrosius had at his command little more than the Breton invading army — and he was ignorant of the nature of that deadly weapon of war. He thought (it was reported) that very few of the island British had joined Ambrosius; in any case the Saxons had defeated the British, in their small tribal forces, so often that they despised them as easy meat. But now as reports reached the Saxon leader of the thousands who had flocked to the Red Dragon, and of the success at Doward, he decided to remain no longer fortified north of the Humber, but to march swiftly south again to meet the British at a place of his own choosing, where he might surprise Ambrosius and destroy his army.
Once again, Ambrosius moved with Caesar-speed. This was necessary, because where the Saxons had withdrawn, they had laid the country waste.
The end came in the second week of May, a week hot with sunshine that seemed to come from June, and interrupted by showers left over from April — a borrowed week, and, for the Saxons, a debt called in by fate. Hengist, with his preparations half complete, was caught by Ambrosius at Maesbeli, near Conan's Fort, or Kaerconan, that men sometimes call Conisburgh. This is a hilly place, with the fort on a crag, and a deep ravine running by. Here the Saxons had tried to prepare an ambush for Ambrosius' force, but Ambrosius' scouts got news of it from a Briton they came across lurking in a hilltop cave, where he had fled to keep his woman and two small children from the axes of the Northmen. So Ambrosius, forewarned, increased the speed of his march and caught up with Hengist before the ambush could be fully laid, thus forcing him into open battle.