by Mary Stewart
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."
"I remember being bound. Yes. So after that I must have made my way downhill, and ended up in the ruin near the ford — I suppose, in my crazed way, still making for Galava. It was spring; I remember a little of that. Then the battle must have overtaken me, and you found me there in the forest. I recall nothing of that."
He told me again how I had been found, thin and filthy and talking no kind of sense, hiding in the ruined turret, with a kind of squirrel's hoard of acorns and beechnuts, and dried windfall apples put by, and a pigling with a splinted leg for company.
"So that part of it was real!" I said, smiling. "I can remember finding the creature, and healing the leg, but not much else. If I was as sharp set as you say, it was good of me not to eat Master Piglet. What happened to it?"
"It's here in Ector's sties." The first glimmer of humour touched his mouth. "And marked, I think, for a long and dishonourable life. There's not one of the boys would dare lay a hand on the enchanter's personal pig, which looks like growing up into a good fighting boar, so it will end up as king of the sty, which is only proper. Merlin, you've told me all you can remember of what happened after making camp up there on the Wolf Road; what do you remember before that? What made you ill? Urbgen's men said it came on suddenly. They thought it was poison, and so did I. I wondered if the witch had had you followed, after the wedding feast, and one of her creatures had dragged you from your bed that night while the trooper's back was turned. But if that had happened, surely they would have killed you? There was no suspicion of foul play from those two men; they were Urbgen's own, hand-picked."
"None at all. They were good fellows, and I owe them my life."
"They told me that you drank wine that night, from your own flask. They did not share it. They say, too, that you were drunk at the marriage feast. You? I have never seen you the worse for wine. And you sat beside Morgause. Have you any reason to believe that she drugged your wine?"
I opened my mouth to answer him, and to this day I swear that the word on my lips was "Yes." This, as far as I knew it, was the truth. But some god must have forestalled me. Instead of the Yes that my mind had framed, my lips said, "No."
I must have spoken strangely, because I saw him staring, arrested with narrowed eyes. It was a discomforting look, and I found myself elaborating. "How can I tell? But I don't think so. I have told you that I have no power now, but the witch would not know that. She is still afraid of me. She had tried before, not once but twice, to snare me with her woman's spells. Both times she failed, and I think she would not have dared try again."
He was silent for a while. Then he said, shortly: "When my Queen died, there was talk of poison. I wondered."
At this I could protest truthfully. "There always is, but I beg you will not regard it! From what you have told me, I am certain there was no such thing. Besides, how?" I added, as convincingly as I could: "Believe me, Arthur. If she were guilty, can you see any reason why I should want to protect Morgause from you?"
He still looked doubtful, but did not pursue it further. "Well," was all he said, "she'll find her wings clipped now for a while. She is back in Orkney, and Lot is dead."
I took this in silently. It was another shock. In these few months, how much had changed. "How?" I asked him. "And when?"
"In the forest battle. I can't say that I mourn him, except that he had that rat Aguisel under his fist, and I believe that I shall have trouble there soon."
I said slowly: "I have remembered something else. During the fighting in
the forest I heard them calling to one another that the king was dead. It struck me with helpless grief. For me, there is only one King... But they must have been speaking of Lot. Well, yes, at least Lot was a known evil. Now, I suppose, Urien will have it all his own way in the northeast, and Aguisel with him... But there's time enough for that. Meanwhile, what of Morgause? She was carrying a child at Luguvallium, and should have been delivered by now. A boy?"
"Two. Twin sons, born at Dunpeldyr. She joined Lot there after Morgan's wedding. Witch or no witch," he said, with a trace of bitterness, "she is a good breeder of sons. By the time Lot joined us here in Rheged, he was bragging that he had left yet another in her before he quitted Dunpeldyr." He looked down at his hands. "You must have had speech with her at the wedding. Did you find anything out about the other boy?"
There was no need to ask which boy he meant. It seemed that he could not bring himself to say "my son."
"Only that he is alive."
His eyes came up quickly to mine. There was a flash in them, suppressed instantly. But I was sure that it was one of joy. So short a time ago, and he had looked for the child only to kill it.
I said, schooling my voice to hide the pity I felt: "She tells me that she does not know where he is to be found. She may be lying, I'm not sure of that. It must be true that she kept him hidden away from Lot. But she may bring him into the open now. What has she to fear, now that Lot has gone? Except, perhaps, from you?"
He was looking at his hands again. "She need not fear me now on that score," he said woodenly.
That is all I can remember of that interview. I heard someone saying, but the words seemed to go round the curved tower walls like a whispered echo, or like words in my head alone: "She is the falsest lady at this time alive, but she must live to rear her four sons by the King of Orkney, for they will be your faithful servants, and the bravest of your Companions."
I must have shut my eyes then, against the wave of exhaustion that broke over me, for when I opened them again it was dark, and Arthur had gone, and the servant knelt beside the bed, offering me a bowl of soup.
8
I AM A STRONG MAN, AND heal fast. I was on my feet again soon after this, and, some two or three weeks later, thought myself fit enough to ride south in Arthur's wake. He had gone the next morning, riding down to Caerleon. Since then a courier had brought news that longships had been sighted in the Severn estuary, so it looked as if the King would soon have another battle on his hands.
I would have liked to stay a while longer at Galava, perhaps to pass the summer in that familiar country, and to revisit my old haunts in the forest. But after the courier's visit, though Ector and Drusilla tried to keep me, I thought it high time to be gone. The battle now imminent would be fought from Caerleon: indeed, it was possible (the dispatch had said) that the invaders were attempting in force to destroy the war-leader's main stronghold and supply center. I had no doubt that Arthur would hold Caerleon, but it was time I got back to Caer Camel to see how Derwen had been doing in my absence.
It was high summer when I saw the place again, and Derwen's team had done wonders. There it stood on its steep, flat-topped hill, the vision made real. The outer works were complete, the great double wall, of dressed stone topped with timber, running along the rim of the slope to crown the whole crest of the hill. Piercing it at their two opposing corners, the vast gateways were finished, and impressive. Great double doors of oak, studded with iron, stood open, pulled back to wall the tunnels that led in through the thick rampart. Above them went the sentry-way behind its battlements.
Moreover, there were sentries there. Since winter, Derwen told me, the King had had the place invested, so that the work of finishing could proceed inside defended walls. And finished it soon would be. Arthur had sent word that, come July or August, he wanted to be there with the knights-companions and all his cavalry.
Derwen was all for pressing on with the headquarters buildings, and with the King's own rooms, but I knew Arthur's mind better than that. I had given instructions that the men's barracks, and the horse-lines, the kitchens and service quarters must be completed first, and this had been done. A good start had been made, too, on the central buildings: the King, certainly, must lodge under skins and temporary timber, as if he were still in the field, but his great hall was built and roofed, and carpenters were at work on the long tables and benches within.
There had been no lack of local help. The folk who lived nearby, thankful to see a strong place going up near their settlements, had come whenever they could to fetch and carry, or to lend their skills to our own workmen. With them came many who were willing, but too old or too young to labour. Derwen would have sent them away, but I set them to clearing the nettle-grown trenches of a site not far from headquarters where formerly there must have been a shrine. I did not know, and nor did they, to what god it had been consecrated; but I know soldiers, and all fighting men need some center-point, with a light and an offering, to tempt their god down among them for a moment of communion, when strength can be received in return for hope and faith.
Similarly, the spring on the northern embankment, which was enclosed within the outer works of the fortification, I set the women to clearing. This they did eagerly, for it was known that, time out of mind, the spring had been dedicated to the Goddess herself. For many years now it had been neglected, and sunk in a tangle of thorny growth that prevented them from making their offerings and sending up the sort of prayers that women send. Now the woodmen had hacked the thickets down, so I let the women make their own shrine. They sang as they worked; they had been afraid, I think, that their sacred place would be shut away in an enclave of men. I told them not so: when once the Saxon power was broken, it was the High King's plan that men and women should come and go in peace, and Caer Camel would be a fair city set on a hill, rather than a camp of fighting men.
Finally, on the lowest part of the field, near the northeast gate, we cleared a place for the people and their cattle, where they could take refuge, and live, if need be, till danger was past.
Then Arthur came. In the night the Tor flamed suddenly, and beyond the flame could be seen the point of light that was the beacon hill behind. In the early morning sunlight he came riding along the Lake's edge, at the head of his knights. White was still his colour; he rode his white war-horse; his banner was white, and his shield also, too proud for a device such as the others wore. He shone out of the misty landscape like a swan on the pearled reaches of the Lake. Then the cavalcade was lost to sight beyond the trees that crowded the base of the hill, and presently the beat of hoofs came steadily on, and up the new curling road to the King's Gate.
The double gates stood open to receive him. Inside them, lining the newly paved road, waited all those who had built the place for him. So for the first time Arthur, duke of battles, High King among the other kings of Britain, entered the stronghold which was to be his own fair city of Camelot.
* * *
Of course he was pleased with it, and that night a feast was held, to which everyone — man, woman or child — who had lent a hand to the work was bidden. He and his knights, with Derwen and myself and a few others, sat in the hall, at the long table so newly sanded that the dust still hung in the air and made haloes round the torches. It was a joyous occasion, without form or solemnity, like a feast on a victory field. He made some kind of speech of welcome — of which I now remember no single word — pitching his voice so that the people pressing outside the doors could hear him; then, once we in the hall had started eating, he left his place at the table's head, and, with a mutton bone in one hand and a goblet in the other, went the rounds of the place, sitting with this group or that, dipping into a pot with the masons or letting the carpenters ply him from the mead-barrel, all the time looking, questioning, praising, with all his old, shining way. In a short while, their awe of him melting, they pelted their questions like snowballs. What had happened at Caerleon? In Linnuis? In Rheged? When would he settle here? Was it
likely that the Saxons could press this far and get across the downs? What was Eosa's strength? Were the stories — of this, that, and the other thing — true? All of which he answered patiently: what men knew they must face, they would face; it was the fear of surprise and the arrow in the dark that unmanned the hardiest.
It was all in the style of the old Arthur, the young King I knew. His looks matched it, too. The fatigue and despair had gone; grief had been laid aside; this was once again the King who held all men's eyes, and whose strength they felt they could draw on for ever, and never weaken him. By morning there would be no one there who would not willingly die in his service. That he knew this, and was fully aware of the effect he made, did not detract one whit from his greatness.
As usually happened, we had a word together before sleep. He was housed simply, but better than in a field tent. A roof of leather had been stretched across the beams of his half-finished sleeping chamber, and rugs laid. His own camp bed had been put against a wall, with the table and reading lamp he worked with, and a pair of chairs and the clothes chest and the stand with the silver bowl and water-jug.
We had not spoken privately since Galava. He asked after my health, and spoke of the work I had done at Caer Camel, and then of what still remained to do. What had happened in the Caerleon fighting I had heard already, in the talk at table. I said something about the change in him. He looked at me for a moment or two, then, apparently, came to a decision.
"There's something I wanted to say to you, Merlin. I don't know if I have any right, but I shall say it all the same. When you last saw me, at Galava, sick as you were, you must have seen something of what I was feeling. In fact, how could you help it? As usual, I laid all my troubles on you, regardless of whether you were fit to bear them or not."