The Last Enchantment

by Mary Stewart

  "Later," I said quickly. "No questions now. She is coming with us. Meantime, Master Beltane, thank you. You are a good friend. Yes, we should go without delay. Casso, shift the baggage, will you, please? The girl will ride on the pack-mule. Ulfin, you say you have a friend in the guardhouse. Ride ahead, and talk us through. Find which way the troopers went. Bribe the guards if you have to."

  As it happened, there was no need. The gates were just being closed when we got there, but the guards made no difficulty about letting us through. Indeed, from the muttered talk that could be overheard, they were as shocked as the townspeople at what had happened, and found it quite understandable that peaceful traders should pack up hurriedly and leave the town in the middle of the night.

  A short way down the road, out of earshot of the guardhouse, I drew rein.

  "Master Beltane, I have business to see to. No, not back in the town, so have no fear for me. I'll join you later. Do you ride on to the tavern we stayed at on our way north, the one with the bush of broom outside. Remember? Wait for us there. Lind, you will be safe with these men. Don't be afraid, but you will do well to keep silent till I return. Do you understand?" She nodded dumbly. "At The Bush of Broom, then, Master Beltane?"

  "Of course, of course. I cannot say I understand, but perhaps in the morning —"

  "In the morning, I hope, all will be made clear. For now, good night."

  They clattered off. I brought my mule's head up hard. "Ulfin?"

  "They took the east road, my lord."

  So by the east road we went.

  * * *

  Indifferently mounted as we were, we would not normally have expected to catch up with hard-riding troops. But our mounts were rested, while Lot's men must needs, I thought, still be using the poor beasts that had borne them from the battlefields in the south.

  So when, after half an hour's riding, we caught no glimpse, nor heard any sound of them, I drew rein, and turned in the saddle.

  "Ulfin. A word with you."

  He nudged his mule alongside. In that windy darkness I could not see his face, but something came from him that I could sense. He was afraid.

  He had not been afraid before, even at Macha's cottage. And here there could only be one source of fear: myself.

  I said to him: "Why did you lie to me?"

  "My lord —"

  "The troopers did not come this way, did they?"

  I heard him swallow. "No, my lord."

  "Then which way?"

  "To the sea. I think — it was thought they were going to put the children into a boat, and set it adrift. The king had said he would put them into God's hands, so that the innocent ones —"

  "Pah!" I said. "Lot speak of God's hands? He feared what the people might do if they saw the babies' throats cut, that is all. No doubt he'll have it put about that Arthur ordered the slaughter, but that he himself mitigated the sentence, and gave the babies their chance. The shore. Where?"

  "I don't know."

  "Is that true?"

  "Indeed, indeed it is. There are several ways. No one knew for sure. This is the truth, my lord."

  "Yes. If anyone had known, some of the menfolk might have tried to follow. So we go back and take the first road to the shore. We can ride along the beach to look for them. Come."

  But as I swung my mule's head round, his hand came down on the rein. It was something he would hardly have dared to do, except in desperation. "My lord — forgive me. What are you going to do? After all this... are you still trying to find the child?"

  "What do you think? Arthur's son?"

  "But Arthur himself wants him dead!"

  So that was it. I should have guessed long since. My mule jibbed as the reins jerked in my hands. "So you were listening at Caerleon. You heard what he said to me that night."

  "Yes." This time I could hardly hear him. "To refuse to murder a child, lord, that is one thing. But when the murder is done for you —"

  "There is no need to struggle to prevent it? Perhaps not. But since you were eavesdropping that night, you may also have heard me tell the King that I take orders from an authority beyond his own. And so far my gods have told or shown me nothing. Do you imagine they want us to emulate Lot, and his bitch of a queen? And you have heard the calumny they have thrown upon Arthur. For his honour's sake, even just for his peace of mind, he has to know the truth. I am here for him, to watch and to report. Whatever is to be done, I shall do it. Now take your hand off my rein."

  He obeyed. I kicked the mule to a gallop. We pounded back along the road.

  This was the way we had originally come to Dunpeldyr by daylight. I tried to remember what we had seen then of the coastline. It is a coast of high cliffs, with wide sandy bays between them. One great headland jutted out about a mile from the town, and even at low tide it seemed unlikely that a man could ride round it. But just beyond the headland was a track leading toward the sea. From there — and the tide, I reckoned, was well out now — we could ride the whole way back along the shore to the mouth of the Tyne.

  Faintly, but perceptibly, the night was slackening toward dawn. It was possible to see our way.

  Now a cairn of stones loomed on our right. On a flat slab at its base a bundle of feathers stirred in the wind, and the mules showed the whites of their eyes; I supposed they could smell the blood. And here was the track, leading off across rough grassland toward the sea. We swung into it. Presently the track sloped downhill, and there before us was the shore, and the grey murmur of the sea.

  The vast headland loomed on our right; to the left the sand stretched level and grey. We turned that way, and struck once more to a gallop.

  The tide was out, the rippled sand packed hard. To our right the sea threw a kind of grey light up to the cloudy sky. Some way to the north, set back in the midst of that luminous grey, was the mass of the great rock where the lighthouse stands. The light was red and steady. Soon, I thought, as our mules pounded along, we should be able to distinguish the looming shape of Dunpeldyr's crag to landward, and the level reaches of the bay where the river meets the sea.

  Ahead of us a low headland jutted out, its seaward end black and broken, with the water whitening at its edge. We rounded it, the mules splashing fetlock-deep through the creaming surf. Now we could see Dunpeldyr, a mile or two away inland, still alive with lights. Ahead of us lay the last stretch of sand. Shadowy trees marked the river's course, and the ashen glimmer where its waters spread out to meet the sea. And along the river's edge, where the sea-road ran, bobbed the torches of horsemen heading back at a steady canter for the town. The work was done.

  My mule came willingly to a halt. Ulfin's stopped, blowing, half a length to the rear. Under their hoofs the ebbtide dragged at the grating sand.

  After a while I spoke. "You have your wish, it seems."

  "My lord, forgive me. All I could think of —"

  "What do I forgive? Am I to bear you a grudge for serving your master rather than me?"

  "I should have trusted you to know what you were doing."

  "When I have not known myself? For all I know, you have been wiser than I. At least, since the thing is done, and it seems Arthur will bear some part of the blame for it, we can be forgiven for hoping that Morgause's child is dead with the rest."

  "How could any of them escape? Look, my lord."

  I swung round to look where he pointed.

  Away out to sea, beyond a low reef of rocks at the edge of the bay, a sail showed, a pale crescent, glimmering faintly grey in the sea-light. Then it cleared the reef, and the boat moved out to sea. The wind, steadily offshore, filled the sail, taking the boat out with the speed of a gliding gull. Herod's mercy for the innocents lay there, in the movement of wind and sea, as the drifting boat dipped and skimmed, carrying its hapless cargo fast away from the shore.

  The sail melted into the grey and vanished. The sea sighed and murmured under the wind. The little waves lapped on the rock and dragged the sand and broken shells seaward past the mules' feet.
On the ridge beside us the bent-grass whistled in the wind. Then, above these sounds, I heard it, very faintly, carried to us over the water in a lull of the wind; a thin, keening wail, as unhuman as the song of the grey seals at their meeting-haunts. It dwindled as we listened; then suddenly came again, piercingly loud, straight over us, as if some soul, leaving the doomed boat, had flown homing for the shore. Ulfin shied as if from a ghost, and made the sign against evil; but it was only a gull sweeping over us, high in the wind.

  Ulfin did not speak again, and I sat my mule in silence. Something was there in the dark; something that weighed me down with grief. Not the children's fate only; certainly not the presumed death of Arthur's child. But the dim sight of that sail moving away over the grey water, and the sorrowful sounds that came out of the dark, found an echo somewhere in the very core of my soul.

  I sat there without moving, while the wind dwindled to silence, and the water lapped on the rock, and on the sea the wailing died away.

  BOOK II — Camelot

  1

  MUCH AS I WOULD HAVE LIKED to do so, I did not leave Dunpeldyr straight away. Arthur was still in Linnuis, and would want my report, not only on the massacre itself but on what happened afterwards. Ulfin, I think, expected to be dismissed, but, reckoning that to lodge in Dunpeldyr itself would hardly be safe, I stayed on at The Bush of Broom, and so kept Ulfin with me to act as messenger and connecting-file. Beltane, who had been understandably shaken by the night's events, went south straight away with Casso. I kept my promise to the latter: it had been a promise made on impulse, but I have found that such impulses commonly have a source which should not be denied. So I talked with the goldsmith, and easily persuaded him of the advantages of a servant who could read and write; I made it clear, besides, that I was letting Casso go to him for less than his cost to me on condition that my wish was met. I found I had not needed to insist; Beltane, that kindly man, promised with pleasure to teach Casso himself, and then they both took leave of me and went south, aiming once more for York. With them went Lind, who, it seemed, had met a man in York who might protect her; he was a small merchant, a respectable fellow who had spoken of marriage, but whom, for fear of the queen, she had rejected. I took leave of them, and settled down to see what the next few days would bring.

  Some two or three days after the terrible night of Lot's return, the wreckage of the boat began to come ashore, and with it the bodies. It was apparent that the boat had driven on rock somewhere and had been broken up by the tide. The poor women who went down to the beach fell to a kind of dreadful squabbling as to which baby was which. The shore was haunted by these wretched women. They wept a great deal and said very little; it was apparent that they were accustomed, like beasts, to take what their lords handed out to them, whether alms or blows. It was also apparent to me, sitting in the alehouse shadows and listening, that in spite of the tale about Arthur's responsibility for the massacre, most folk laid the blame squarely where it belonged, with Morgause, and with Lot, befooled and angry about it. And because men are men everywhere, they were inclined not to blame their king overmuch for his hasty reaction to that anger. Any man, they were soon saying, would have done the same. Come home to find your wife delivered of another man's boy, and small blame to you if you lost your temper. And as for the wholesale slaughter, well, a king was a king, and had a throne to consider as well as his bed. And speaking of kings, had he not made kingly reparation? For this, wisely, Lot had done; and however much the women might still weep and mourn, the men on the whole accepted Lot's deed, along with the golden recompense that followed it, as the natural action of a wronged and angry king.

  And Arthur? I put the question one evening, casually, into one such conversation. If the rumours that were being put about were true, of the High King's involvement in the killing, was not Arthur himself similarly justified? If the child Mordred was indeed his bastard by his half-sister, and a hostage to fortune with King Lot (who had not always been his keenest friend), surely it could be said that policy could justify the deed? What more likely way could Arthur find of keeping the great King of Lothian his friend than to ensure the death of the cuckoo in the nest, and take the responsibility for its killing?

  At this there were murmurs and head-shakings, which resolved at length into a sort of qualified assent. So I threw in another thought. Everyone knew that in matters like this of policy — and high and secret policy, with a great country like Lothian concerned — everyone knew it was not the young Arthur who made the civil decisions; it was his chief adviser, Merlin. Depend upon it, this was the decision of a ruthless and tortuous mind, not of a brave young soldier who spent his every waking moment in the field against Britain's enemies, and who had little time for bedroom politics — except, naturally, those that every man could find time for...

  So, like a seed of grass, the idea was sown, and as quickly as the grass it spread and grew; so that by the time the news came of Arthur's next victorious engagement the facts of the massacre had been accepted, and the guilt for it, whether of Merlin, Arthur, or Lot, almost condoned. It was plain that the High King — may God preserve him against the enemy — had had little to do with it except see its necessity. Besides, the babies, most of them, would have died in infancy of one thing or another, and that without any gifts of gold such as Lot had handed to the bereaved fathers. Moreover, most of the women were soon bearing again, and had perforce to forget their tears.

  The queen, also. King Lot was now seen to have behaved in a truly kingly fashion. He had swept home in anger, removed the bastard (whether by Arthur's orders or his own), then got a true heir in the dead boy's place, and ridden off again, his loyalty to the High King undiminished. Some of the bereaved fathers, being offered places in the troop, rode with him, confirmed in their own loyalty. Morgause herself, far from appearing cowed by her lord's violence, or apprehensive of the people's anger, looked (on the one or two occasions when I saw her riding out) sleek and pleased with herself. Whatever the people may have believed about her part in the massacre, she was safe from their ill-will now that she was said to be carrying the kingdom's true heir.

  If she grieved for her lost son, she gave no sign of it. It showed, the people said, that she had in truth been seduced by Arthur, and could never have wanted the bastard she had been made to bear. But to me, watching and waiting in drab anonymity, it began to mean something quite different. I did not believe that the child Mordred had been in that boatload of slaughtered innocents at all. I remembered the three armed men, sober and purposeful, who had gone back into the castle by the postern entrance before Lot's return — and after the coming of Morgause's messenger from the south. The woman Macha, too, lying dead in her cottage beside the empty cradle with her throat cut. And Lind, running out into the dark without Morgause's knowledge or sanction, to warn Macha and take the child Mordred to safety.

  Piecing it together, I thought I knew what had happened. Macha had been chosen to foster Mordred because she had borne Lot a bastard boy; it might even have pleased Morgause to watch the baby killed; she had laughed, Lind had told us. So, with Mordred safe, and the changeling ready for the slaughter, Morgause had waited for Lot's return. As soon as she had news of it, her men-at-arms had been sent with orders to dispatch Mordred to yet another safe foster-home, and to kill Macha, who, if her own baby were to suffer, might be tempted to betray the queen. And now Lot was pacified, the town was quiet, and somewhere, I was sure, the child who was Morgause's weapon of power grew in safety.

  After Lot had ridden to rejoin Arthur, I sent Ulfin south again, but myself stayed on in Lothian, watching and waiting. With Lot out of the way, I moved back into Dunpeldyr, and tried, in every way I could, to find some clue to where Mordred could now be hidden. What I would have done if I had found him, I do not know, but the god did not lay that burden on me. So I waited for fully four months in that squalid little town, and though I walked on the shore by starlight and sunlight and spoke to my god in every tongue and with every way I knew,
I saw nothing, either by daylight or in dream, to guide me to Arthur's son.

  In time I came to believe that I might have been wrong; that even Morgause could not be so evil, and that Mordred had perished with the other innocents in that midnight sea.

  So at length, as autumn slid into the first chills of winter, and news came that the fighting in Linnuis was done, and Lot would soon be on his way home once more, I thankfully left Dunpeldyr. Arthur would be at Caerleon for Christmas, and would look for me there. I paused only once on my journey, to spend a few nights with Blaise in Northumbria and give him the news, then I travelled south, to be there when the King came home.

  * * *

  He came back in the second week of December, with frost on the ground, and the children out gathering the holly and ivy for decking the Christmas feast. He barely waited to bathe and change from the ride before he sent for me. He received me in the room where we had talked before we parted. This time the door to the bedroom was shut, and he was alone.

  He had changed a good deal in the months since Pentecost. Taller, yes, by half a head — it is an age when youths shoot up like barley-stalks — and with breadth to go with it, and the hard lean brownness got from the soldier's life he was leading. But this was not the real change. That was in authority. His manner showed now that he knew what he was doing and where he was going.