“Oh, Guenevere,” he murmured, “I know it now, this music tells me so. Merlin is gone. I shall never see him again.”
The music broke off on a high discordant note. The bard came to an end with a plaintive lingering cry. He gave one last sweep of his harp, the air quivered, and the whole hall was still.
“My Gods are not with me. I may sing no more tonight,” he announced harshly, bowing before the throne with an unblinking glare. “But a brother bard has traveled with me to this place. He will sing for you in my stead.”
Arthur raised his head. “No, no,” he said wretchedly. “We will hear no more tonight.”
Something made Guenevere lay her hand on Arthur’s arm. She leaned forward. “Bring in your fellow singer,” she told the bard.
Beside her she felt Morgan stiffen, hunch her back, and catch her breath in a sharp hiss. But moments later she had her reward in Arthur’s gasp of delight, and the tears filling his eyes.
A familiar figure stepped in, hooting and cackling, waving his arms in the air. His eyes were very bright, and he walked with a new prancing gait.
“Merlin!” Arthur wept. “Oh, Merlin!”
“The Lord Merlin!” chanted the chamberlain.
Almost unnoticed, a slight figure walked by his side, with her maidens following behind.
“And the Lady Nemue!” the chamberlain called again. Guenevere sat bolt upright.
Nemue!
What was the priestess of the Lady doing here? They had not seen her since their wedding day, when she had come to the feast with all the Lady’s gifts. Surely she had gone straight back to Avalon to serve the Lady there?
And yet …
Who is that woman? Merlin had said, his eyes on fire as he raked her from head to foot.
And now here he is, and here she is too …
“So! So! So!”
Merlin was nodding and grinning like a madman, urging Nemue forward like a proud husband with a new young wife.
But Nemue was as cold as springwater over stones. “My greetings to Your Majesties, and the fond wishes of the Lady of the Lake,” she said evenly. “Lord Merlin has been gracious enough to stay with us in Avalon. And it seemed a good time to return the visit here.”
“You are welcome both!” Guenevere cried, her mind racing. Tomorrow, she promised herself, she would have the chance to speak to Nemue on her own. Tomorrow, she knew, she would have the full tale of this.
BUT NEMUE SAID nothing. Merlin betrayed himself. He was the gossip of the palace by the break of day.
“The maids found him lurking outside the priestess’s chamber before dawn,” Ina began impressively as soon as she entered to wake Guenevere for the day. “Some of them thought that he’d been there all night. He was grinning and full of himself, groomed and dressed up like a young knight. As soon as Nemue came out, he glued himself to her side. Her maidens say he is besotted with her, and he won’t leave her alone.”
“Besotted? Merlin?” Arthur said angrily when Guenevere took the news to him. “With Nemue? I don’t believe it! Merlin has no such weakness; he is above such things. He has not cared for women since his wife died, or thought of fleshly things since the cruel battle that took all his other kin. He told me so himself.”
“But that was long before he met Nemue. She is young and lovely, and gifted with the power. And surely anyone can fall in love?”
“Not Merlin!” Arthur cried in distress. “Not with a holy maiden, a priestess sworn to the Goddess!”
“People do not choose where they fall in love,” Guenevere tried to say. “The heart is a hunter; it strikes where it will.”
“Guenevere, listen to me!” Arthur was in agony now. “Not Merlin, no!”
HOW COULD SHE make him see it with her eyes? And what would Morgan feel, now that Merlin was here? Morgan must know from Igraine whose hand had brought Uther to her mother, whose magic had driven her father to his death. How would Morgan react to Merlin, whose enchantments had ruined her life?
But Arthur would have none of it. “You forget that Morgan was only a child then, Guenevere!” he said impatiently. “If she knew any of this at the time, it will all be forgotten now. I shall make the two of them the best of friends, you’ll see!”
So at dinner that night in the hall, he insisted that Morgan sit on his right hand, and Merlin on his left. While Guenevere watched from the far end of the table, she could see him struggling to make his claim come true. At first Morgan would say nothing, would not make a sound.
But slowly Arthur drew from her a word or two, then her shy sideways glance, and finally a smile. As for Merlin, his eyes flashed and his cackling laugh rang to the roof. Energy pulsed from him, and he threw back glass after glass of wine. Guenevere did not know what to make of it. Never had she seen the old man in such high spirits, and never at such ease in female company, relishing the feast.
Seated at her right hand, Nemue watched Merlin and Morgan too, with the ghost of a smile. “I can hardly wish on the Lady Morgan the burden I have borne,” she said softly in her strange rusty voice. “But the love of Lord Merlin is a weight I dearly long to pass on. I shall stay only a short while to recover from the journey here. Then I shall hurry back gladly to the Sacred Isle.”
“He fell in love with you at our wedding?” Guenevere knew it was true before she spoke. “And he followed you to Avalon?”
Nemue nodded. “He will give me no rest,” she said simply. “He is with me all the time. That is why I had to bring him back here to you. On the Sacred Isle, he dogs my every move. My life has been intolerable since he came.”
“What does he hope to gain by hounding you?”
“He wants to possess me, body and soul. He is after me every day to yield to him.”
Guenevere was astounded. “But he knows you are sworn to the Goddess! Would he violate your sacred oath?”
She shook her head. “He does not care. I am his fate, he says, and he is mine.” She gave a weary smile. “And he tells me I was born to mate with him. When I do, he says, he will give me knowledge of all the secrets of the world. His power will flow into me, and I will know all he knows. He will make magic if I lie with him.”
Merlin’s magic? How could that impress a maiden of the Lady, a priestess of the Great One herself? It was so absurd that Guenevere wanted to laugh. Then she thought of his old man’s wizened hands, his crusted eyes and yellow teeth, his bent and ancient body, his sour musty smell, and shuddered from head to foot. Oh, these men! These lecherous old men!
She tried to keep the disgust out of her voice. “He loves you, then?”
“So he says.” Nemue sighed. “Yet at other times he curses me for a witch, and calls me all the devils in the world. He moans and weeps and says I have numbered his days. I am the demon of his downfall, he says, and I will bring him to his grave.”
“His grave?” A wave of the old sickness gripped Guenevere again. “He thinks that you will be the death of him?”
“Worse.” She was pale, but very calm. “I will bury him alive, he prophesies. He will be put in the earth, and a stone rolled over him to seal him in his tomb.”
A cold wind blew by them like a breath from the Underworld. Guenevere forced herself to laugh. “What nonsense; he must be mad! Tombs and moving stones? Surely he borrowed this from the Christians, who claim that happened to their God? As if you would ever do such a thing!”
Nemue closed her eyes. “I hear the truth in what he says. But my sight does not show me how.”
Guenevere stared at her. Nemue? Bury a man alive? Never—never in the world. Nemue was all goodness, like the Lady herself.
A glance down the far end of the table was enough to set such thoughts to rest. Merlin was grinning now in his happiest fashion, and Morgan looked easy too. And Arthur was basking in the joy among them all. He looked up at her and raised his glass in the familiar toast. Guenevere returned his pledge with a silent vow. To you, my love! And the blessings of the Great One on all those you love!
&nb
sp; AFTERWARD SHE THOUGHT she was never happier than when they left the hall that night. Walking with Arthur to their apartments, she was brimming with contentment, rosy with joy. How wise Nemue was to bring Merlin here! Now she could ease her burden, and even Morgan seemed charmed by the old man tonight. And Arthur would be happy, the one thing that mattered above all.
“Admit it, Guenevere!” Arthur teased as they dismissed the servants and tumbled into bed. “I know you love Morgan and want to protect her, but you have to confess that you were wrong about her hating Merlin and bearing him a grudge. You saw the way they talked. They took to each other like ducks on a pond!”
“I admit nothing!” Guenevere retorted, poking him in the ribs. “Morgan wants to please you, and her good nature made her behave as well as she could. And I don’t think that Nemue has seen the last of Merlin yet.”
“Well, well, little pessimist,” Arthur yawned, drawing her to him and tucking her head under his chin, “you’ll see I’m right. Wait till tomorrow and I’ll show you how well things are going for us all.”
“I can’t wait!”
And drowsily wrangling, they fell asleep.
THAT NIGHT SHE slept sweetly, without care or the thought of care. She lay on the downy pillows in the shelter of Arthur’s arms, sleeping like a child. And like a child she would have given anything not to wake the way she did.
“My lady! Oh, my lady! Wake the King!”
Guenevere came to with a sick lurching start. Gaunt and stark-eyed in the light of one quavering candle, Ina stood at the side of the bed, clutching a shawl around her nightgown, crying and trembling with fear. “In the royal guest apartments,” she wept, “no one knows what’s happened—but the Princess Morgan—oh, madam, I can’t tell you what they say—”
At the end of the corridor a handful of frightened servants and a few of the guard clustered around the open door. The room within gaped black as a burial mound, with the same brooding sense of earth and death. The only light came from the fire on the hearth as it struggled to stay alive, the dull coals throwing sudden spurts of blue and yellow flame high in the air, only to fall back with a sick hiss. An unclean smell seeped out to meet them as they ventured in.
They found Morgan crouched white and speechless at the head of the bed, her knees drawn up to her chin, one thin bare shoulder shivering through her torn nightgown in the cold of the night. Her mouth gaped, and scenes of fresh terror were vivid in her eyes. At the end of the bed stood a figure scarcely visible in the firelight, crying out and shouting in the dark. It was Merlin, half-naked and raving, one arm clutching a blanket round his sunken loins, the other thrashing the air.
As they came in, the fire sank down, hissing on the hearth. “She has bewitched me!” Merlin ranted madly, tossing his long gray hair. “She follows the Old Ones and knows the blackness of the Gods. Her dark magic has done for me; she will bury me alive!”
Dimly he focused on Arthur at Guenevere’s side. “She will betray you too!” he screeched. “All women betray. They are the work of the Devil, and this one is worst of all! Keep well your sword and scabbard, for they will be stolen from you by the woman you most trust!” His eyes rolled toward Arthur and flared with alarm. “She is the child of Satan, and she will bear Satan’s seed. In incest will she spawn, and her offspring will be Death!”
He screamed, and his eyes widened in pure terror. “She will put me in the earth alive, she will roll the stone on me!” He pointed a quivering finger at Morgan. “She will shit on my head, she will dance on my grave!”
CHAPTER 31
“Look to your sword! Look to your scabbard too! You will be betrayed by the woman you most trust!”
Merlin’s high wailing cry rang round the room. Then he began to sing to himself and smile at his fingernails, flicking them up and down.
A strange sick smell hung heavy in the air. Arthur’s eyes were wild with question and reproach. “The woman I most trust? What is he saying, Guenevere?” he whispered. “What does he mean?”
Morgan still huddled, rigid with terror, against the wall at the head of the bed, hugging her knees, her chin on her chest. Merlin’s eyes rolled over her, then turned upward till only the whites could be seen. The blanket he was clutching slipped to the floor. Slowly he raised his arms above his head, waving them like snakes.
Naked as a radish in the firelight he began a stately dance, crooning to himself. Lost in his footwork, he trod carefully to and fro, pacing around the bed. Morgan hurled her thin body away from him, cowering against the hangings at the bed’s head. Shuddering violently, she opened her mouth in a silent scream.
“Help her! We must help her!” Guenevere caught at Arthur’s arm. But he was staring at Merlin like a man possessed.
Clustering around the doorway now and blocking the corridor beyond were a clutch of terrified servants and men of the guard. Guenevere beckoned the nearest. “Who is the captain here?”
A large plain-faced man stepped forward. “I am, Your Majesty.”
“Get all these people out of here at once. Put two men on the door, none to be admitted except by my word. Send a picked guard of your six best men here this instant, do you hear me?”
“Yes, Madam.”
She hesitated. “And have the captain of the guard tower—or wherever prisoners are held here in Caerleon—come to me at once.”
He bowed his head. “It shall be done, Your Majesty.”
Trembling, she summoned Ina to her side. “Call the King’s doctors, send them all here now. And ask the Lady Nemue to come.” Ina nodded and vanished, stifling her tears.
“She is the Bride of Death,” sang Merlin in the thin high voice of a bat or an owl. “The Black Mother comes to take her children home.”
Delicately he continued his small crazy dance, naked and unashamed, revolving before their eyes. The firelight fell on his emaciated chest, his pouched and hollow belly, his withered flanks and ancient shriveled sex. Guenevere’s skin crawled. Gods above! He’s as mad as a storm at sea, as wild as the wind in the trees. Will Arthur do nothing to spare his old friend’s shame?
At last Arthur seemed to hear her angry thoughts. He moved forward and picked up the wrap from the floor.
“Come, Merlin,” he said in a voice of muffled pain. Towering over the old man, he bundled him into the blanket and lifted him off his feet, carrying him like a child. He threw a look of agony at Guenevere. “He did not force her! I can’t believe that of him!”
“Well,” she muttered grimly, “we shall see!”
“Ask Morgan! She will tell the truth!”
“Leave her to me; get Merlin away from her now!” Guenevere said urgently. “Take him to his quarters, and stay with him there. Don’t leave him alone. As soon as they come, I will send over the doctors, and—”
Ye Gods, how can I say this?
“—and the captain who takes charge of the prisoners.”
“HE MUST HAVE mistaken Morgan for you,” she said somberly to Nemue. “His lust burst its bounds, and he tried to possess her, thinking it was you. When we came in, he did not know who she was.”
Nemue lifted her head. “Perhaps,” she said oddly. Her eyes were as green as glass. “How is he now? And Morgan? How is she?”
Guenevere looked around. They were in the anteroom of Morgan’s apartments, cut off by a stout oak door from where she lay asleep with the doctors at her bedside. But who knows what the troubled can hear, even in their dreams? Guenevere lowered her voice. “Arthur stayed with Merlin till the doctors had given him something to make him sleep. Then he was taken to the guard tower and placed under lock and key.”
She winced, remembering Arthur’s grief and distress. “The cell where he lodges is rough housing for any guest, let alone an old man, and one of Arthur’s royal kin. But we dare not risk this happening again.”
Nemue shook her head. “There will be no repeat of last night’s scene.” She gave an angry laugh. “I blame myself. The Lady will be very much displeased. She will say I wa
s wrong to bring Merlin here. In truth, I saw an end to my burden in this place, but I did not see far enough. Now I know Merlin was right. He is my fate, as I proved to be his.”
“What do you mean?”
Nemue raked Guenevere’s face with her long searching look. “No matter,” she said coolly. “Give me an enclosed litter and six good strong men, and I will take charge of Merlin.” She paused. Once again a veil passed over her eyes. “Just as he knew I would.”
“You shall have whatever you need.”
“I will carry him back to Avalon, to our healing chamber inside the hollow hill. Merlin can rest there until he has recovered his wits.” Nemue paused. “Or live forever in seclusion, if he is fated never to be whole again.”
And suddenly Guenevere saw it: Merlin’s last retreat, a cool, quiet space cut into the hillside, hollowed out of the living rock. A flight of stone steps led down into it, and the white hawthorn of the Goddess blew on the hill above. Inside, all the walls, the floor, and the round dome of the roof glittered with brilliant white fragments of natural quartz. It was a crystal chamber, a cave of broken reflections for a broken mind. And the only way back to the world above was past a great disk of white stone that rolled into place for a door.
All this Guenevere saw, shuddering at the sight. Dimly she tried to make sense of it all. “But Merlin—”
Nemue read her thought. “Merlin foretold his fate. He had the power to shape another for himself, if he so chose.” She lifted her head, scenting the air like a doe at the running of the herd. “I must go. The Lady calls.”
Don’t go, don’t leave me, Guenevere wanted to cry. I am calling too! But she could not. “What about Morgan?”
“Never fear, Guenevere.” Nemue’s eyes glinted. “Morgan will always tell you what she wants.”
BUT MORGAN DID NOT, for she could not speak. Guenevere sat by her bed as the doctors vainly clucked and fussed. In the guard tower, she knew, Arthur was nursing Merlin, weeping over the frail madman in his arms. As Ina softly moved around the room, tending the fire and making all neat and sweet, Guenevere held Morgan’s hand and tried to talk to her.
Guenevere, Queen of the Summer Country Page 26