by Mike Ashley
Ambrosius shortened the journey with his wonder tales. And as he talked, he made coins walk across his knuckles and found two quail’s eggs behind Viviane’s left ear. Once he pulled a turtledove out of Merlin’s shirt, which surprised the dove more than the boy. The bird flew off onto a low branch of an ash tree and plucked its breast feathers furiously until the wagon had passed by.
They were two days traveling and one day resting by a lovely bright pond rimmed with willows.
“Carmarthen is over that small hill,” pointed out the mage. “But it will wait on us. The fair does not begin until tomorrow. Besides, we have fishing to do. And a man – whether mage or murderer – always can find time to fish!” He took Merlin down to the pond where he quickly proved himself a bad angler but a merry companion, telling fish stories late into the night. All he caught was a turtle. It was Merlin who pulled up the one small spotted trout they roasted over the fire that night and shared three ways.
Theirs was not the only wagon on the road before dawn, but it was the gaudiest by far. Peddlers’ children leaped off their own wagons to run alongside and beg the magician for a trick. He did one for each child and asked for no coins at all, even though Viviane chided him.
“Do not scold, Viviane. Each child will bring another to our wagon once we are in the town. They will be our best criers,” Ambrosius said, as he made a periwinkle appear from under the chin of a dirty-faced tinker lass. She giggled and ran off with the flower.
At first each trick made Merlin gasp with delight. But partway through the trip, he began to notice from where the flowers and coins and scarves and eggs really appeared – out of the vast sleeves of the mage’s robe. He started watching Ambrosius’ hands carefully through slitted eyes, and unconsciously his own hands began to imitate them.
Viviane reached over and, holding the reins with one hand, slapped his fingers so hard they burned. “Do not do that. It is bad enough he does the tricks for free on the road, but you would beggar us for sure if you give them away forever. Idiot!”
After the scolding, Merlin sat sullenly inside the darkened wagon practicing his sotto voce with curses he had heard but had never dared repeat aloud. Embarrassment rather than anger sent a kind of ague to his limbs. Eventually, though, he wore himself out and fell asleep. He dreamed a wicked little dream about Viviane, in which a whitethorn tree fell upon her. When he woke, he was ashamed of the dream and afraid of it as well, but he did not know how to change it. His only comfort was that his dreams did not come true literally. On the slant, he reminded himself, which lent him small comfort.
He was still puzzling this out when the mules slowed and he became aware of a growing noise. Moving to the window, he stared out past the painted face.
If Gwethern had been a bustling little market town, Carmarthen had to be the very center of the commercial world. Merlin saw gardens and orchards outside the towering city walls though he also noted that the gardens were laid out in a strange pattern and some of the trees along the northern edges were ruined and the ground around them was raw and wounded. There were many spotty pastures where sheep and kine grazed on the late fall stubble. The city walls were made up of large blocks of limestone. How anyone could have moved such giant stones was a mystery to him. Above the walls he could glimpse crenellated towers from which red and white banners waved gaudily in the shifting fall winds, first north, then west.
Merlin could contain himself no longer and scrambled through the wagon door, squeezing in between Ambrosius and Viviane.
“Look, oh look!” he cried.
Viviane smiled at the childish outburst, but the mage touched his hand.
“It is not enough just to look, Merlin. You must look – and remember.”
“Remember – what?” asked Merlin.
“The eyes and ears are different listeners,” said the mage. “But both feed into magecraft. Listen. What do you hear?”
Merlin strained, tried to sort out the many sounds, and said at last, “It is very noisy.”
Viviane laughed. “/hear carts growling along, and voices, many different tongues. A bit of Norman, some Saxon, Welsh, and Frankish. There is a hawk screaming in the sky behind us. And a loud, heavy clatter coming from behind the walls. Something being built, I would guess.”
Merlin listened again. He could hear the carts and voices easily. The hawk was either silent now or beyond his ken. But because she mentioned it, he could hear the heavy rhythmic pounding of building like a bass note, grounding the entire song of Carmarthen. “Yes,” he said, with a final exhalation.
“And what do you see?” asked Ambrosius.
Determined to match Viviane’s ears with his eyes, Merlin began a litany of wagons and wagoners, beasts straining to pull, and birds restrained in cages. He described jongleurs and farmers and weavers and all their wares. As they passed through the gates of the city and under the portcullis, he described it as well.
“Good,” said Ambrosius. “And what of those soldiers over there.” He nodded his head slightly to the left.
Merlin turned to stare at them.
“No, never look directly on soldiers, highwaymen, or kings. Look through the slant of your eyes,” whispered Viviane, reining in the mules.
Merlin did as she instructed, delighted to be once more in her good graces. “There are ten of them,” he said.
“And what do they wear?” prompted Ambrosius.
“Why, their uniforms. And helms.”
“What color helms?” Viviane asked.
“Silver, as helms are wont. But six have red plumes, four white.” Then as an afterthought, he added, “And they all carry swords.”
“The swords are not important,” said Ambrosius, “but note the helms. Ask yourself why some should be sporting red plumes, some white. Ask yourself if these are two different armies of two different lords. And if so, why are they both here?”
“I do not know,” answered Merlin. “Why?”
Ambrosius laughed. “I do not know either. Yet. But it is something odd to be tucked away. And remember – I collect oddities.”
Viviane clicked to the mules with her tongue and slapped their backs with the reins. They started forward again.
“Once around the square, Viviane, then we will choose our spot. Things are already well begun,” said the mage. “There are a juggler and a pair of acrobats and several strolling players, though none – I wager – with anything near your range. But I see no other masters of magic. We shall do well here.”
In a suit of green and gold – the gold a cotte of the mage’s that Viviane had tailored to fit him, the green his old hose sewn over with gold patches and bells – Merlin strode through the crowd with a tambourine. It was his job to collect the coins after each performance. On the first day folk were liable to be the most generous, afterward husbanding their coins for the final hours of the fair, at least that was what Viviane had told him. Still he was surprised by the waterfall of copper pennies that cascaded into his tambourine.
“Our boy Merlin will pass amongst you, a small hawk in the pigeons,” Ambrosius had announced before completing his final trick, the one in which Viviane was shut up in a box and subsequently disappeared into the wagon.
Merlin had glowed at the name pronounced so casually aloud, and at the claim of possession. Our boy, Ambrosius had said. Merlin repeated the phrase sotte voce to himself and smiled. The infectious smile brought even more coins, though he was unaware of it.
It was after their evening performance when Viviane had sung in three different voices, including a love song about a shepherd and the ewe lamb that turned into a lovely maiden who fled from him over a cliff, that a broad-faced soldier with a red plume in his helm parted the teary-eyed crowd. Coming up to the wagon stage, he announced, “The Lady Renwein would have you come tomorrow evening to the old palace and sends this as way of a promise. There will be more after a satisfactory performance. It is in honor of her upcoming wedding.” He dropped a purse into Ambrosius’ hand.
&n
bsp; The mage bowed low and then, with a wink, began drawing a series of colored scarves from behind the soldier’s ear. They were all shades of red: crimson, pink, vermilion, flame, scarlet, carmine, and rose.
“For your lady,” Ambrosius said, holding out the scarves.
The soldier laughed aloud and took them. “The lady’s colors. She will be pleased. Though not, I think, his lordship.”
“The white soldiers, then, are his?” asked Ambrosius.
Ignoring the question, the soldier said, “Be in the kitchen by nones. We ring the bells here. The duke is most particular.”
“Is dinner included?” asked Viviane.
“Yes, mistress,” the soldier replied. “You shall eat what the cook eats.” He turned and left.
“Then let us hope,” said Viviane to his retreating back, “that we like what the cook likes.”
Merlin dreamed that night and woke screaming but could not recall exactly what he had dreamed. The mage’s hand was on his brow and Viviane wrung out cool water onto a cloth for him.
“Too much excitement for one day,” she said, making a clucking sound with her tongue.
“And too many meat pies,” added the mage, nodding.
The morning of the second day of the holy day fair came much too soon. And noisily. When Merlin went to don his green-and-gold suit, Ambrosius stayed him.
“Save that for the lady’s performance. I need you in your old cotte to go around the fair. And remember – use your ears and eyes.”
Nodding, Merlin scrambled into his old clothes. They had been tidied up by Viviane, but he was aware, for the first time, of how really shabby and threadbare they were. Ambrosius slipped him a coin.
“You earned this. Spend it as you will. But not on food, boy. We will feast enough at the duke’s expense.”
Clutching the coin, Merlin escaped into the early morning crowds. In his old clothes, he was unremarked, just another poor lad eyeing the wonders at the holy day fair.
At first he was seduced by the stalls. The variety of foods and cloth and toys and entertainments were beyond anything he had ever imagined. But halfway around the second time, he remembered his charge. Eyes and ears. He did not know exactly what Ambrosius would find useful but he was determined to uncover something.
“It was between the Meadowlands Jugglers and a stall of spinach pies,” he told Ambrosius later, wrinkling his nose at the thought of spinach baked in a flakey crust. “A white plumed soldier and a red were quarreling. It began with name calling. Red called white, ‘Dirty men of a dirty duke,’ and white countered with ‘Spittle of the Lady Cock.’ And they would have fallen to, but a ball from the jugglers landed at their feet and the crowd surged over to collect it.”
“So there is no love lost between the two armies,” mused Ambrosius. “I wonder if they were the cause of the twisted earth around the city walls.”
“And after that I watched carefully for pairs of soldiers. They were everywhere matched, one red and one white. And the names between them bounced back and forth like an apple between boys.”
The mage pulled on his beard thoughtfully. “What other names did you hear?”
“She was called Dragonlady, Lady Death, and the Open Way.”
Ambrosius laughed. “Colorful. And one must wonder how accurate.”
“And the duke was called Pieless, the Ewe’s Own Lover, and Draco,” said Merlin, warming to his task.
“Scurrilous and the Lord knows how well-founded. But two dragons quarreling in a single nest? It will make an unsettling performance at best. One can only wonder why two such creatures decided to wed.” Ambrosius worked a coin across his knuckles, back and forth, back and forth. It was a sign he was thinking.
“Surely, for love?” whispered Merlin.
Viviane, who had been sitting quietly, darning a colorful petticoat, laughed. “Princes never marry for love, little hawk. For money, for lands, for power – yes. Love they find elsewhere or not at all. That is why I would never be a prince.”
Ambrosius seemed not to hear her, but Merlin took in every word and savored the promise he thought he heard.
They arrived at the old castle as the bells chimed nones. And the castle was indeed old; its keep from the days of the Romans was mottled and pocked but was still the most solid part of the building. Even Merlin, unused as he was to the ways of builders, could see that the rest was of shoddy material and worse workmanship.
“The sounds of building we heard from far off must be a brand-new manor being constructed,” said Ambrosius. “For the new-wedded pair.”
And indeed the cook, whose taste in supper clearly matched Viviane’s, agreed. “The duke’s father fair beggared our province fighting off imagined invaders, and his son seems bent on finishing the job. He even invited the bloody-minded Saxons in to help.” He held up his right hand and made the sign of horns and spat through it. “Once, though you’d hardly credit it, this was a countryside of lucid fountains and transparent rivers. Now it’s often dry as dust, though it was one of the prettiest places in all Britain. And if the countryside is in tatters, the duke’s coffers are worse. That is why he has made up his mind to marry the Lady Renwein. She has as much money as she has had lovers, so they say, and that is not the British way. But the duke is besotted with both her counte and her coinage. And even I must admit she has made a difference. Why, they are building a great new house upon the site of the old Roman barracks. The duke is having it constructed on the promise of her goods.”
Viviane made no comment but kept eating. Ambrosius, who always ate sparingly before a performance, listened intently, urging the cook on with well-placed questions. Following Viviane’s actions, Merlin stuffed himself and almost made himself sick again. He curled up in a corner near the heath to sleep. The last thing he heard was the cook’s continuing complaint.
“I know not when we shall move into the new house. I long for the larger hearth promised, for now with the red guards to feed as well as the duke’s white – and the Saxon retainers – I need more. But the building goes poorly.”
“Is that so?” interjected Ambrosius.
“Aye. The foundation does not hold. What is built up by day falls down by night. There is talk of witchcraft.”
“Is there?” Ambrosius asked smoothly.
“Aye, the Saxons claim it against us. British witches, they cry. And they want blood to cleanse it.”
“Do they?”
* * *
A hand on his shoulder roused Merlin, but he was still partially within the vivid dream.
“The dragons . . .” he murmured and opened his eyes.
“Hush,” came Ambrosius’ voice. “Hush – and remember. You called out many times in your sleep: dragons and castles, water and blood, but what it all means you kept to yourself. So remember the dream, all of it. And I will tell you when to spin out the tale to catch the conscience of Carmarthen in its web. If I am right . . .” He touched his nose.
Merlin closed his eyes again and nodded. He did not open them again until Viviane began fussing with his hair, running a comb through the worst tangles and pulling at his cotte. She tied a lover’s knot of red and white ribands around his sleeve, then moved back.
“Open your eyes, boy. You are a sight.” She laughed and pinched one cheek.
The touch of her hand made his cheeks burn. He opened his eyes and saw the kitchen abustle with servants. The cook, now too busy to chat with them further, was working at the hearth, basting and stirring and calling out a string of instructions to his overworked crew. “Here, Stephen, more juice. Wine up to the tables and hurry, Mag – they are pounding their feet upon the floor. The soup is hot enough, the tureens must be run up, and mind the handles. Use a cloth, Nan, stupid girl. And where are the sharp knives? These be dull as Saxon wit. Come, Stephen, step lively; the pies must come out the oast or they burn. Now!”
Merlin wondered that he could keep it all straight.
The while Ambrosius in one corner limbered up his fingers, having
already checked out his apparatus and Viviane, sitting down at the table, began to tune her harp. Holding it on her lap, her head cocked to one side, she sang a note then tuned each string to it. It was a wonder she could hear in all that noise – the cook shouting, Stephen clumping around and bumping into things, Nan whining, and Mag cursing back at the cook – but she did not seem to mind, her face drawn up with passionate intensity.
Into the busyness strode a soldier. When he came up to the hearth, Merlin could see it was the same one who had first tendered them the invitation to perform. His broad, homey face was split by a smile, wine and plenty of hot food having worked their own magic.
“Come, mage. And you, singer. We are ready when you are.”
Ambrosius gestured to three large boxes. “Will you lend a hand?”
The soldier grunted.
“And my boy comes, too,” said Ambrosius.
Putting his head to one side as if considering, the soldier asked, “Is he strong enough to carry these? He looks small and puling.”
“He can carry if he has to, but he is more than that to us.”
The soldier laughed. “You will have no need of a tambourine boy to pass among the gentlefolk and soldiers. Her ladyship will see that you are well enough paid.”
Ambrosius stood very tall and dropped his voice to a deep, harsh whisper. “I have performed in higher courts than this. I know what is fit for fairs and what is fit for a great hall. You know not to whom you speak.”
The soldier drew back.
Viviane smiled but carefully, so that the soldier could not see it, and played three low notes on the harp.
Merlin did not move. It was as if for a moment the entire kitchen had turned to stone.
Then the soldier gave a short, barking laugh, but his face was wary. “Do not mock me, mage. I saw him do nothing but pick up coins.”
“That is because he only proffers his gifts for people of station. I am but a mage, a man of small magics and tricks that fool the eye. But the boy is something more.” He walked toward Merlin slowly, his hand outstretched.
