by Whyte, Jack
A sound over by the mast brought Merlyn's head up quickly, and he listened intently for several moments until he was sure that it would not come again.
Ygraine. The last surviving woman on the beach had been Deirdre's sister. Ygraine, and that recognition, too, had shaken Merlyn to the core of his being, showing him a ghostly image of the face of his beloved, long-lost wife one more agonizing time.
Merlyn had noticed only by accident that Ygraine was still alive, and he had gone to her assistance immediately, only to find that she was close to death. She had been trampled and kicked in the head by Derek's enormous warhorse as it had surged and stamped, fighting for balance and scrambling to accommodate the immense, ungainly weight of Derek's armoured bulk as he mounted.
Merlyn had cradled her in his arms, unable to do anything other than support her shattered head with his hand while she died, begging him frantically to look to her child, Uther's son, Arthur.
Mystified, Merlyn had assumed that she was raving, her mind unhinged with the pain of what had happened to her, for there was neither sight nor sign of any infant on the deserted beach. And then water from the incoming tide had swirled around his knees, and from the once-beached boat, now miraculously afloat and drifting out to sea, had come the wail of a child.
He clearly remembered splashing through the shallows and leaping out to clutch the side of the vessel, the ground already lost beneath his feet, knowing that if he lost his hold the dead weight of his armour would plunge him straight to the bottom. After hanging there for an age, feeling himself grow ever heavier, he had managed finally to twist his lower body upwards in one last, mighty effort and hook his right leg over the side of the boat, lodging his spur beneath the wood of the rail. He hung there quietly for a long time after that, collecting himself until he could rally his strength one more time and haul himself up and to safety.
Recalling what he had found after that, he focused his gaze on the black bearskin by the mast, and then stood up and moved towards it.
The child was awake, it’s strange, gold-flecked eyes gazing solemnly up at the shape that stooped over it. Cautiously, filled with awe, Merlyn knelt, then sat on the deck, supporting his weight with one hand while he reached out with the other to stroke the infant's smooth, warm cheek with one bent, tentative knuckle. The golden eyes, strangely ageless, shifted to gaze into his own. The child would be . . . what, how old? Merlyn had no idea, but he knew that it could be no more than a month or two. He felt his throat close up unexpectedly, and his vision dissolved into a film of tears as his breast filled with grief. He hooked his little finger, and the infant seized it in its tiny hand, and he could tell that its sturdy little legs were kicking beneath the bearskin covering. Tears ran down his face and dripped from his chin, and he sat motionless, allowing all the pain and the hurl inside him to well up into the light of day.
By the time he realized that he had stopped weeping for long enough that the crusted salt of his tears felt stiff on his cheeks, much of the burning pain he had felt was gone, but the infant still lay staring up at him, its impossibly small hands now bunched at its mouth.
"Well," he whispered hoarsely, swallowing to moisten his aching throat. "We are well met, young Arthur Pendragon. But how am I to get you off this cursed boat?" The child gazed back at him as though listening. He nodded. "I'm your Cousin Merlyn . . . Merlyn Britannicus . . . But I'm your Uncle Merlyn. too, because your mother was my wife's sister. I knew your father all his life. He's not here now, but he and I were . . . We were friends, the best friends men can be . . . for a long time."
His throat swelled up again and he looked away, blinking fresh tears from his eyes, and when he eventually spoke again, his eyes remained fixed on some distant spot.
"We had our differences, he and I. And I was stupid . . . stupid and . . ." He stopped, and then looked back at the child. "Arrogant. That's what I was. Arrogant and unyielding. But that was then, and this is now, and we have to get off this boat and back to Camulod. I don't know how we're going to do it, but we will, because you have a grandmother there, young man, who is going to love the sight of you. You'll grow up there in Camulod, because I am going to see to it." He paused, cocking his head to one side and gazed down at the child with a tremulous but warm smile. The great, gold Necked eyes gazed back at him.
"You know, I was angry not too long ago when I found out that people were calling your father Uther of Camulod, because he really wasn't from Camulod at all. He lived in Cambria, and he was a King. But you, you will live in Camulod, and it will be your home, and by the time you grow to be a man, people might not remember that there ever was an Uther of Camulod—or even a Merlyn of Camulod." His smile grew wider, and he reached to touch the child's face again, caressing the smooth skin.
"But you, young eagle, with those golden eyes . . . I'll wager here and now that everyone will know and remember Arthur of Camulod."