by J A Cummings
It took Ector a long time to recover, and during that time, Ulfius rode to glory at the side of the High King. He made friends with Brastias and Bedivere, and soon the three knights would come calling at Caer Gai together. Ector remembered their last Christmas celebration, when all of their families had come together at Caer Gai - Ector and Aelwen and newborn Kay, Bedivere and his wife Maire, and Brastias and Ulfius as bachelors. That was the last time the hall’s stones had rung with laughter and the chatter of happy voices.
So much had changed since then. So much had been lost. Both Ector and Bedivere had welcomed sons and lost wives, and then the silence had descended.
Silence. It occurred to him that the keep was silent. There was no snoring from the boys’ room to tell him Kay was safely sleeping, and he was briefly alarmed until he remembered both the hour of the day and the fact that Kay was now housed in apartments of his own outside the keep. He looked at the window and winced at the brightness of the sun and wondered what his sons and guests were doing.
There was only one way to find out. He staggered to his feet, wrapped himself in his robe, and made his way to the bathhouse.
Calling it a bathhouse was an exaggeration when it was compared with the baths at Viroconium, but it was still a place where water from the River Dee was heated and where the residents of Caer Gai could soak and clean their bodies. The bath was not empty when he arrived; Brastias was there already, soaking in the water and reclining back against the side with a wet cloth over his face.
Ector removed his robe and slid into the water, which Brastias or one of the servants had already heated to within spitting range of pain. He echoed his friend’s posture on the other side of the pool. Brastias pulled aside the cloth on his face, opened one eye and looked at him. He closed his eyes again.
“Good party,” he said, his voice gravelly.
“Hmm.” Ector slid under the surface of the water, then came back up. “It was.”
They sat in common suffering for a long while, trying to sweat the alcohol out of their systems. Finally, Brastias chuckled. “That boy of yours has the biggest set of balls I’ve ever seen.”
He knew without asking that he was talking about Arthur. “He’s going to get himself killed one day.”
“He just needs to learn a little discretion to go with his brass.”
Ector nodded. “He will. He’s young.”
“Ulfius will teach him if you’re not careful.”
“I will talk to Ulfius.”
Another long silence descended. A wren alit in the rafters and chirped out its song, then flew away. Brastias spoke again.
“Garwen is a pretty thing.”
“Yes. And young.”
“Bedivere brought her here for you, you know.”
Ector sighed. “That’s an ill choice.”
“Every man needs a wife to comfort him.”
“Says the bachelor,” he teased. “And what comfort could an old man like me give a girl like her? She’s too young for me. She would be a good match for Kay, though.”
“Perhaps. I think she has eyes for Arthur.”
“Well, that’s another ill choice.”
Brastias chuckled. “Indeed.” He groaned. “My head…”
“My gut.”
“Will you speak to Bedivere to arrange a marriage between Garwen and Kay?”
Ector shrugged. “Perhaps. Perhaps a betrothal. I think it’s too soon for marriage just now. They should get to know one another first.”
“They don’t need to like each other to be wed.”
“No, but it helps.” He sighed and hauled himself out of the pool. He took a cloth from a waiting stack and dried off, then pulled his robe back on. “Enjoy your bath.”
Arthur, Griflet, and Garwen returned to the keep after several hours in the wood, a brace of grouse hanging from Garwen’s saddle. Ulfius was standing near the stable, watching his horse graze, when they rode in through the gate. The Norse knight looked up and caught Arthur’s eye.
“Hold there, boy,” Ulfius said. “I would have a word with you.”
Griflet looked at Arthur nervously as he rode past. Arthur rode Avona to where Ulfius was standing, and he looked down at him with enforced calm.
“Yes, my lord?”
Ulfius squinted up at him. “Come down from that horse to I can talk to you.”
He obeyed. Ewain trotted out of the stable and took Avona’s reins, leading him away. Arthur turned to the knight. “Yes, my lord?”
The big man shifted his weight on his feet, looking sheepish and awkward. “I wanted to apologize for last night. I was too far in my cups, and I took liberties that I should not have done. Please forgive me.”
He considered telling him that he had spoken of those “liberties” when he was stone cold sober, but Arthur realized that this was the time to put his self-control into action. It was extraordinary that a knight should apologize to a squire for anything, he knew, and he couldn’t help but wonder who had put the Norseman up to this.
He nodded. “I accept your apology, Sir Ulfius. Please accept my apology as well for speaking out of turn and being disrespectful.”
“I’m sure I deserved it,” the knight said ruefully. “Apology accepted.”
Seemingly out of thin air, Merlin suddenly approached at a stroll. “Lovely day, isn’t it?” he said by way of greeting. “Arthur, walk with me.”
“Yes, sir.”
As he turned to leave Ulfius, he noted a look of unease in the tall man’s blue eyes. It seemed that the great warrior was afraid of the druid, which showed sense. He made note and walked on.
Merlin took him into the keep and directly to where Sir Ector was sitting in the great hall, looking at the tax rolls for his tenants. He closed the ledger when they approached.
“Did you have a good ride, son?”
“Yes, Father. Thank you.”
“Greetings, Merlin.”
The druid smiled thinly, perhaps annoyed that he had not been greeted first. “Greetings, Sir Ector. I wonder if I might have a word with you about your ward.”
Arthur felt a momentary surge of panic, wondering what he’d done wrong now. He looked from Merlin to Ector and back again. His foster father sat back. “Of course.”
“I want you to put him in my care until Samhain.” Arthur gaped at him, and the druid’s eyes twinkled with a puckish gleam. “I want you to let me take him from this place, teach and train him, and then return him to you. He will be unharmed, I assure you.”
Ector frowned, looking into the druid’s face, trying to read his intentions. “Where will you take him, and what will you teach him?”
“I will take him to Ynys Môn, and I will teach him what he needs to know.”
“He is a Christian.”
“That is for him to decide.”
The knight stared at Merlin for a long time, and Arthur fought against the urge to fidget. He was afraid of what the druid had in mind, but excited at the same time. He hoped against hope that his father would say yes.
Finally, Ector sighed. “I agree. When will you take him?”
“As soon as he’s packed.”
“This…” He rose. “This is sudden.”
“This is necessary.” He stared hard into Sir Ector’s eyes. “It is nearly time.”
Arthur could bear it no longer. “Nearly time for what?”
“Time for your destiny to find you.” He turned to face Arthur, and he smiled again. “I told you once that you have a great inheritance ahead of you. Now is the time to prepare for it.”
He felt his excitement and disquiet increase in equal measure. His mouth ran dry, and all he could do was nod. He turned to Sir Ector. “Father…”
“When will you return him?”
“He will be here in time for the Samhain celebration.”
“We do not celebrate Samhain in this keep.”
Merlin clucked his tongue. “In time for All Saints’ Day, then.”
Ector nodded to Arthur.
“Go and pack, son. Take my saddlebag, and take Avona. Take Amren’s armor, too.”
“Yes, Father.”
Arthur raced up the stairs to his room, his heart pounding in his chest. Of all the turns his life could have taken, this was one that he expected least. Was Merlin going to teach him magic? Was he going to learn to be a druid? He grabbed Sir Ector’s saddlebag out of his bedroom, then scrabbled together his own meager possessions and shoved them inside. He looked around the room to be certain he hadn’t forgotten anything, then raced back down the stairs.
Sir Ulfius and Sir Brastias were in the hall when he returned, standing behind Merlin as if they were going to try to box him in. Sir Ector was also on his feet, his face grim, and Arthur stopped short when he saw the men.
“Father?” he said.
They all turned to face him, Merlin smiling, the others looking serious and displeased. The druid said, “Ah! Quick on your feet. I like that. Come here, boy.”
Arthur went to his side, the saddlebag slung over his shoulder. “Yes, sir.”
Merlin twitched a finger, and Arthur was clad in the armor that had once belonged to Amren, the greaves and bracers, breastplate and chain shirt all buckled into place. A shield was on his back, hanging from a strap that stretched across his body, and a sword was at his hip, ready to be drawn. His mouth dropped open, and expressions of surprise colored every other face in the hall to varying degrees. Only Ector seemed unmoved by the casual display of magic.
The druid turned to Arthur’s foster father. “Thank you, Sir Ector. You have made a very wise decision.”
He put a hand on Arthur’s shoulder, and then a strange sensation overtook him, as if his entire body suddenly went watery. He tried to speak but could not. He could not see, and he was unable to move. He had just begun to feel alarmed when the sensation faded and he found himself standing in a clearing before the most massive yew tree he had ever seen. The tree was awash in color, decorated with banners and strips of parti-colored cloth. A semi-circle of bark and wood huts stood around the tree, and all but one had a cook pot in front of them. Avona stood beside him, huffing and stamping one massive hoof. Arthur’s jaw dropped.
Merlin smiled at him. “Welcome to Ynys Môn.”
Arthur looked around him in stunned silence. He had seen Merlin travel through magic before, but he had never expected to experience it himself. His mind still scrambled after understanding what had just happened, how he could have been in his foster father’s keep one moment and standing on the green sward of a druid grove the next. He put his hands to his head and stared.
Beside him, Merlin chuckled. “You’ve been through a shock. Take a moment and you will see that you are quite unhurt and all is well.”
An old man in a white robe, his white-streaked gray beard hanging to his waist, came forward with a wooden cup. Merlin accepted it and pressed it into Arthur’s chest. The boy brought his hands down and took it.
“Drink,” the elder ordered. “It will help.”
Arthur drank. The taste was bittersweet and strong, and he grimaced. Merlin laughed at his expression. “Dandelion wine,” he said. “It will help to ground you.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that you will be calmed.”
“I’m not angry,” he protested mildly.
“Just drink.”
He obeyed, still looking around him as he did. There were several people around the grove, young and old, male and female, all dressed in white or green robes. The women had their hair loose and held back with bands woven from ivy, and the men all had long beards with free-flowing hair of their own. Merlin was the only man without a beard and with short-shorn hair. There were children playing, chasing one another around the central tree, laughing in delight. The smell of cooking food and wood fires and the sound of someone playing a flute completed the image of comfort and peace.
He finished the drink in his cup and handed it back to the old man, who accepted the empty vessel with a smile and walked back to the line of huts, leading Avona away. The dwellings were shaped like beehives, made with wooden frames and covered over with sheets of bark and woven thatch. Each one had a pot above a cook fire in front of the open door. Only one fire was not burning.
He saw motion in one of the huts, and a flash of green as someone stepped into the shadows. Arthur could feel people looking at him, no doubt curious about this armored boy who had stepped out of thin air at the side of their chieftain. Merlin put a hand on his shoulder and led him toward the hut without a fire.
“This is where you will sleep, but you won’t spend much time here during the day. I have much to teach you, and there’s not much time. Put your things inside and meet me at the yew.”
Arthur ducked into the little hut and found it already furnished with a bed of furs and a box with leather straps. He put his saddlebag into the box, and he was about to put his shield and sword down, as well, but he thought better of it and left them where they were. He came back out into the sunlight that dappled the grove.
Again there was that flash of green in the hut directly across from him, and this time he saw a pale feminine hand as well. He bowed his head toward the mysterious watcher, then turned to Merlin.
“I am ready, Merlin,” he said.
The druid smiled. “When we are here, and while you are my student, you will not address me by my name until I give you leave. Until then, you will call me Master. Do you understand?”
He nodded. “Yes, Master.”
“Good.”
He led Arthur on a slow procession around the mighty yew tree in the center of the grove, ducking around the branches that had rooted to the ground. The bole of the tree was as big around as one of the huts, and it had an air of antiquity. The tree must have been very old.
Merlin began to speak. “This yew was a sapling when the gods were young. It has stood for centuries, and will stand for centuries more. Our strength is its strength, and its strength is our strength. This grove is the most sacred of all spaces on Ynys Môn, and the gods and the fey and the spirits of our ancestors crowd around us here, drawn by the power of the yew and the magic that we do. This is no place for your Christian God, and he is not welcome here. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
A giggling girl child collided with Arthur’s legs, then sprinted away, followed by her tiny fellows. He smiled after them, as did Merlin.
“Our next generation,” the druid said fondly. He turned his unearthly blue eyes to Arthur. “I will teach you many things, and you will have many questions. I promise you that the answers will come if you search within yourself. Contemplation and introspection are good activities for the evening.”
“And in the day?” Arthur asked. “When will my lessons begin?”
“They already have.”
He felt something thrumming beneath his feet, as if he was standing on some giant heart that was beating slow and steady. He looked around. “What is that?”
Merlin smiled wider. “Touch the yew.”
He did as he was told. He pressed his palm flat against the moss-speckled bark. It was strangely warm against his skin, and he realized with a jolt that the thrumming he was feeling was coming from the ancient tree. He pressed his other hand against it, too, and gaped as he felt something like an invisible river rush in through one palm, across his body and out through the other.
“The yew is tied to the cycle of life and death,” the druid told him. “It is connected to the souls of the dead and to those not yet born. The energy of the land courses through it and you are feeling it moving in you now as you touch the tree. The tree gives birth to itself when its branches root to the ground, and a new yew springs up. But the tree is also death, because its berries and its wood are poisonous to men and animals.”
Arthur’s head was spinning. He felt himself rocking with the pulsing energy, swaying on his feet as if he were standing in a boat on choppy water. He leaned his forehead against the tree and closed his eyes.
“The cup from which you drank was made of yew wood, and what you drank was more than wine. You have been poisoned.”
He jolted, startled, and stared at Merlin in disbelief. “What?”
The druid stepped back. Arthur’s knees felt overtaken by the watery feeling that was coursing through him, and he staggered, falling to kneel among the roots. He could not take his hands away from the tree, his palms still pressed to the mossy bark as if they’d been pinned there. He was getting light headed and short of breath, and his field of vision was constricting into a small blurry dot of light and color. He could barely hear Merlin when he spoke again.
“You will not die, but you will never be the same.”
With a groan, he toppled onto the tree and slipped away.
He opened his eyes and found himself upon a battlefield. A heavy mist crawled across the ground, slithering over the writhing forms of wounded men who called out for assistance in suffering voices. The mist was cold around his ankles, and his feet felt like they were made of ice. Then he heard the horns.
He looked across the bloody field, and he could see a great host of men. Their red and orange banners streamed in the wind like flames from wild torches, the colors reflecting off the metal on the weapons and armor of a host of knights. A full phalanx of foot soldiers followed the mounted men, carrying tall and heavy shields, and behind them came a long line of archers and light infantry. Their bows and halberds protruded up into the darkness like the spines on the back of an unwieldy war beast that wound through the land. At the head of the column, riding a powerful horse and draped with a scarlet cape over his red-painted coat of mail, was a man with a stern and unloving face. His steel-blue eyes were hard and glinting, chilling the watching boy even from a distance. On his two sides rode pages bearing his pennant high, proclaiming his identity in the double-headed eagle of his standard. Arthur wracked his brain to remember this invader’s name. He could not recall it, and that, more than the appearance of his army, struck him full of fear.
