by Mary Stewart
"I was indeed. And small blame to King Lot, that's what everyone was saying. The Princess Morgan is fair enough, and right enough a king's daughter, but the other one — well, you know how the talk goes. No man, let alone a man like Lot of Lothian, could come within arm's length of that lady and not lust to bed her."
"Your eyesight was good enough for that?" I asked him. I saw Ulfin smile.
"I didn't need eyesight." He laughed robustly. "I have ears, and I hear the talk that goes around, and once I got near enough to smell the scent she uses, and catch the colour of her hair in the sunlight, and hear her pretty voice. So I got my boy to tell me what she looked like, and I made this chain for her. Do you think her lord will buy it of me?"
I fingered the lovely thing; it was of gold, each link as delicate as floss, holding flowers of pearl and citrine set in filigree. "He would be a fool if he did not. And if the lady sees it first, he certainly will."
"I reckon on that," he said, smiling. "By the time I get to Dunpeldyr, she should be well again, and thinking of finery. You knew, did you? She was brought to bed two full weeks ago, before her time."
Ulfin's sudden stillness made a pause of silence as loud as a shout. Ninian looked up. I felt my own nerves tighten. The goldsmith sensed the sharpening of the attention he was getting, and looked pleased. "Had you not heard?"
"No. Since we passed Isurium we have not lodged in towns. Two weeks ago? This is certain?"
"Certain, sir. Too certain, maybe, for some folks' comfort." He laughed. "Never have I seen so many folk counting on their fingers that never counted before! And count as they may, with the best will in the world, they make it September for the child's conceiving. That," said the little gossip, "would be at Luguvallium, when King Uther died."
"I suppose so," I said indifferently. "And King Lot? The last I heard, he was gone to Linnuis, to join Arthur there."
"He did, that's true. He'll hardly have got the news yet. We got it ourselves when we lay for a night at Elfete, on the east road. That was the way her courier took. He had some tale of avoiding trouble by going that way, but it's my belief he'd been told to take his time. By the time King Lot gets news of the birthing, it'll be a more decent interval since the wedding day."
"And the child?" I asked idly. "A boy?"
"Aye, and from all accounts a sickly one, so with all his haste Lot still may not have got himself an heir."
"Ah, well," I said, "he has time." I turned the subject. "Are you not afraid to travel as you do, with so much valuable cargo?"
"I confess I have had fears about it," he admitted. "Yes, yes, indeed. You must understand that commonly, when I shut my workshop, and take to the roads for summer, I carry with me only such stuff as the folks like to buy in the markets, or, at best, gauds for merchants' wives. But luck was against me, and I could not get these jewels done in time to show them to Queen Morgause before she went north, so needs must I carry them after her. Now my luck is to fall in with an honest man like yourself; I don't need to be a Merlin to tell such things... I can see you're honest, and a gentleman like myself. Tell me, will my luck hold tomorrow? May we have your company, my good sir, as far as Cor Bridge?"
I had made up my mind already about that. "As far as Dunpeldyr if you will. I'm bound there. And if you stop by the way to sell your wares, that suits me, too. I recently had a piece of news that tells me there is no haste for me to be there."
He was delighted, and fortunately did not see Ulfin's look of surprise. I had already decided that the goldsmith might be useful to me. I judged that he would hardly have outstayed the spring weather in York, making up the rich jewels he had shown me, without some sort of assurance that Morgause would at least look at them. As he talked cheerfully on, needing very little encouragement to tell me more about the happenings in York, I found that I had been right. Somehow he had managed to engage the interest of Lind, Morgause's young handmaid, and had persuaded her, in return for a pretty trinket or two, to speak of his wares to the queen. Beltane himself had not been sent for, but Lind had taken one or two of his pieces to show her mistress, and had assured the goldsmith of Morgause's interest. He told me all about it at some length. For a while I let him talk on, then said casually: "You said something about Morgause and Merlin. Did I understand that she had soldiers out looking for him? Why?"
"No, you misunderstood me. I was speaking in jest. When I was in York, listening as I do to the talk of the place, I heard someone say that Merlin and she had quarrelled at Luguvallium, and that she spoke of him now with hatred, where before she had spoken with envy of his art. And lately, of course, everyone was wondering where he had gone. Queen or no, little harm could she do a man like that!"
And you, I thought, are luckily short of sight, otherwise I should have to be wary of a perceptive and garrulous little man. As it was, I was glad I had fallen in with him. I was still thinking about it, but idly, as finally even he decided it was time to sleep, and we let the fire go low and rolled ourselves in our blankets under the trees. His presence would give credence to my disguise, and he could be, if not my eyes, my ears and information at the court of Morgause. And Ninian, who acted as his eyes? The cold breeze stirred my nape again, and my idle calculations dis-limned like a shadow when the sun goes in. What was this? Foreknowledge, the half-forgotten stirring of a kind of power? But even that speculation died as the night breeze hushed through the delicate birch boughs and the last faggot sank to ash. The dreamless night closed in. About the sickly child at Dunpeldyr I would not think at all, except to hope that it would not thrive, and so leave me no problem.
But I knew that the hope was vain.
10
IT IS BARELY THIRTY MILES from Vinovia to the town at the Cor Bridge, but it took us six days' journeying. We did not keep to the road, but travelled by circuitous and sometimes rough ways, visiting every village and farmstead, however humble, that lay between us and the bridge.
With no reason for haste, the journey passed pleasantly. Beltane obviously took great pleasure in our company, and Ninian's lot was made easier by the use of mules to carry his awkward packs. The goldsmith was as garrulous as ever, but he was a good-hearted man, and moreover a meticulous and honest craftsman, which is something to respect. Our wandering progress was made slower than ever by the time he took over his work — repair-work, mostly, in the poorer places; in the bigger villages, or at taverns, he was of course occupied all the time.
So was the boy, but on the journeys between settlements, and in the evenings by the camp fire, we struck up a strange kind of friendship. He was always quiet, but after he found that I knew the ways of birds and beasts, that a detailed knowledge of plants went with my physician's skill, and that I could, at night, even read the map of the stars, he kept near me whenever he could, and even brought himself to question me. Music he loved, and his ear was true, so I began to teach him how to tune my harp. He could neither read nor write, but showed, once his interest was engaged, a ready intelligence that, given time and the right teacher, could be made to blossom. By the time we reached Cor Bridge I was beginning to wonder if I could be that teacher, and if Ninian could be brought — his master permitting — to serve me. With this in mind, I kept my eyes open whenever we passed some quarry or farmstead, in case there might be some likely slave I could buy to serve Beltane, and persuade him to release the boy.
From time to time the small cloud oppressed me still, the hovering chill of some vague foreboding that made me restless and apprehensive; trouble was there at my whistle, looking for somewhere to strike. After a while I gave up trying to see where that stroke might fall. I was certain that it could not concern Arthur, and if it was to concern Morgause, then there would be time enough to let it worry me. Even in Dunpeldyr I thought I should be safe enough: Morgause would have other things on her mind, not least the return of her lord, who could count on his fingers as well as any man.
And the trouble might be no deep matter, but the trivial annoyance of a day, soon forgotten.
It is hard to tell, when the gods trail the shadows of foreknowledge across the light, whether the cloud is one that will blot out a king's realm, or make a child cry in its sleep.
At length we came to Cor Bridge, in the rolling country just south of the Great Wall. In Roman times the place was called Corstopitum. There was a strong fort there, well placed where Dere Street, from the south, crossed the great east-west road of Agricola. In time a civilian settlement sprang up in this favoured spot, and soon became a thriving township, accepting all the traffic, civil and military, from the four quarters of Britain. Nowadays the fort is a tumbledown affair, much of its stone having been pillaged for new buildings, but west of it, on a curve of rising ground edged by the Cor Burn, the new town still grows and prospers, with houses, inns, and shops, and a thriving market which is the liveliest relic of its prosperity in Roman times.
The fine Roman bridge, which gives the place its modern name, still stands, spanning the Tyne at the point where the Cor Burn runs into it from the north. There is a mill there, and the bridge's timbers groan all day under the loads of grain. Below the mill is a wharf where shallow-draught barges can tie up. The Cor is little more than a stream, relying on its steep tumble of water to drive the mill wheel, but the great River Tyne is wide and fast, flowing here over bright shingle between its gracious banks of trees. Its valley is broad and fertile, full of fruit trees standing deep in growing corn. From this flowery and winding tract of green the land rises toward the north to rolling moorland, where, under the windy stretches of sky, sudden blue lakes wink in the sun. In winter it is a bleak country, where wolves and wild men roam the heights, and come sometimes over-close to the houses; but in summer it is a lovely land, with forests full of deer, and fleets of swans sailing the waters. The air over the moors sparkles with bird-song, and the valleys are alive with skimming swallows and the bright flash of kingfishers. And along the edge of the whinstone runs the Great Wall of the Emperor Hadrian, rising and dipping as the rock rises and dips. It commands the country from its long cliff-top, so that from any point of it fold upon fold of blue distance fades away east or westward, till the eye loses the land in the misty edge of the sky.
It was not country I had known before. I had come this way, as I had told Arthur, because I had a call to make. One of my father's secretaries, whom I had known first in Brittany and thereafter in Winchester and Caerleon, had come north after Ambrosius' death, to retirement of a sort here in Northumbria. The pension he received from my father had let him buy a holding near Vindolanda, in a sheltered spot beside the Agricolan Road, with a couple of strong slaves to work it. There he had settled, growing rare plants in his favoured garden, and writing, so I had been told, a history of the times he had lived through. His name was Blaise.
We lodged in the old part of the town, at a tavern within the purlieus of the original fortress. Beltane, with sudden, immovable obstinacy, had refused to pay the toll extracted at the bridge, so we crossed at the ford some half-mile downstream, then turned along the river past the forge, coming into the town by its old east gate.
Night was falling when we got there, so we put up at the first tavern we found. This was a respectable place not far from the main market square. Late though the hour was, there was still plenty of coming and going. Servants were gossiping at the cistern while they filled their water jars; through the laughter and talk came the cool splash of a fountain; in some house nearby a woman was singing a weaving-song. Beltane was in high glee at the prospects for trading on the morrow, and in fact started business that same night, when the tavern filled up after supper-time. I did not stay to see how he did. Ulfin reported a bath house still in commission near the old west wall, so I spent the evening there and then retired, refreshed, to bed.
Next morning Ulfin and I breakfasted together in the shade of the huge plane tree which grew beside the inn. It promised to be a hot day.
Early as we were, Beltane and the boy were before us. The goldsmith had already set up his stall in a strategic place near the cistern; which meant merely that he, or rather Ninian, had spread some rush matting on the ground, and on that had laid out such gauds as might appeal to the eyes and purses of ordinary folk. The fine work was carefully hidden away in the lining of the bags.
Beltane was in his element, talking incessantly to any passerby who paused even for a moment to look at the goods: a complete lesson in jewelcraft was given away, so to speak, with every piece. The boy, as usual, was silent. He patiently rearranged the items that had been handled and carelessly dropped back on the matting, and he took the money, or sometimes exchange-goods such as food or cloth. Betweentimes he sat cross-legged, stitching at the frayed straps of his sandals, which had given a lot of trouble on the road.
"Or this one, madam?" Beltane was saying, to a round-faced woman with a basket of cakes on her arm. "This we call cell-work, or inclosed work, very beautiful, isn't it? I learned the art in Byzantium, and believe me, even in Byzantium itself you'd never see finer... And this very same design, I've seen it done in gold, worn by the finest ladies in the land. This one? Why, it's copper, madam — and priced accordingly, but it's every bit as good — the same work in it, as you can well see... Look at those colours. Hold it up to the light, Ninian. How bright and clear they are, and see how the bands of copper shine, holding the colours apart... Yes, copper wire, very delicate; you have to lay it in pattern, and then you run the colours in, and the wire acts as a wall, you might say, to contain the pattern. Oh, no, madam, not jewels, not at that price! It's glass, but I'll warrant you've never seen jewels with colours finer. I make the glass myself, and very skilled work it is, too, in my little 'etna' there — that's what I call my smelting stove — but you've not time this morning, I can see that, madam. Show her the little hen, Ninian, or maybe you prefer the horse... that's it, Ninian... Now, madam, are the colours not beautiful? I doubt if anywhere in the length and breadth of the land you would find work to equal this, and all for a copper penny. Why, there's as much copper, nearly, in the brooch as there is in the penny you'll give me for it..."
Ulfin appeared then, leading the mules. It had been arranged that he and I would make the short journey to Vindolanda, and return on the morrow, while Beltane and the boy pursued their trade in the town. I paid for the breakfast, then, rising, went across to take leave of them.
"You're going now?" Beltane spoke without taking his eyes off the woman, who was turning a brooch over in her hand. "Then a good journey to you, Master Emrys, and we hope to see you back tomorrow night... No, no, madam, we have no need of your cakes, delicious though they look. A copper penny is the price today. Ah, I thank you. You will not regret it. Ninian, pin the brooch on for the lady... Like a queen, madam, I do assure you. Indeed, Queen Ygraine herself, that's the highest in the land, might envy you. Ninian" — this as the woman moved away, his voice changing to the habitual nagging tone he used to the boy — "don't stand there with your mouth watering! Take the penny now and get yourself a pair of new shoes. When we go north I cannot have you hobbling and lagging with flapping soles as you did all the way —"
"No!" I did not even realize that I had spoken, till I saw them staring. Even then I did not know what impelled me to add: "Let the boy have his cakes, Beltane. The sandals will suffice, and see, he is hungry, and the sun is shining."
The goldsmith's short-sighed eyes were puckered as he stared up at me against the light. At length, a little to my surprise, he nodded, with a gruff "All right, get along," to the boy. Ninian gave me a shining look, then ran off into the crowd after the market-woman. I thought Beltane was going to question me, but he did not. He began to set the goods straight again, saying merely: "You're right, I have no doubt. Boys are always starving, and he's a good lad and faithful. He can go barefoot if he has to, but at least let him have his belly full. It isn't often we get sweet stuff, and the cakes smelled like a feast, so they did."
As we rode west along the riverside Ulfin asked, with sharp concern in his voice:
&
nbsp; "What is it, my lord? Is something ailing you?"
I shook my head, and he said no more, but he must have known I was lying, because I myself could feel the tears cold on my cheeks in the summer wind.
* * *
Master Blaise received us in a snug little house of sand-coloured stone, built round a small courtyard with apple trees trained up the walls, and roses hiding the squared modern pillars.
The house had once, long ago, belonged to a miller; a stream ran past, its steep fall controlled by shallow water-steps, its walled banks set with little ferns and flowers. Some hundred paces below the house, the stream vanished under a hanging canopy of beech and hazel. Above this woodland, on the steep slope behind the house, full in the sun, was the walled garden that held the old man's treasured plants.
He knew me straight away, though it was many years since we had met. He lived alone, but for his two gardeners and a woman who, with her daughter, cared for the house and cooked for him. She was bidden to get beds ready, and bustled off to do some scolding over the kitchen braziers. Ulfin went to see our mules stabled, and Blaise and I were free to talk.
Light lingers late in the north, so after supper we went out to the terrace over the stream. The warmth of the day breathed still from the stones, and the evening air smelled of cypress and rosemary. Here and there in the tree-hung shadows the pale shape of a statue glimmered. A thrush sang somewhere, a richer echo of the nightingale. At my elbow the old man (magister artii, as he now liked to style himself) was talking of the past, in a pure Roman Latin with no trace of accent. It was an evening borrowed from Italy: I might have been a young man again, on my youthful travels.
I said as much, and he beamed with pleasure.