by Mary Stewart
After this we talked on, late into the night, arranging as far as we could the details of the time ahead. Arthur would be left in Brittany until he was three or four years old, then at a safe time of year Ralf would bring him across from Brittany to Ector's home.
"And you?" asked Ector. "Where will you be?"
"Not in Brittany, for the same reason that I can't live here. I shall vanish, Ector. It's a talent that magicians have. And when I do appear again, it will be somewhere that draws men's eyes away from Brittany and Galava." When he questioned me further, I laughed, and refused to enlighten him.
"Truth to tell, my plans are not yet fixed. Now, I've kept you out of your bed for long enough. Your wife will be wondering what sort of mystery man you have been closeted with all these hours. I'll make my apologies when you present me in the morning."
"And I'll make my own now," he said, getting to his feet. "But that's one apology I enjoy making. You miss a lot, you know, Merlin — but then you can't know."
"I know," I said.
"You do? Then you must think it's worth it, life without women?"
"For me, yes."
"Well, then, come this way to your cold bed," he said, and held the door for me.
11
THE BOY WAS BORN ON THE EVE of Christmas, an hour before midnight.
Just before the birth I and the two nobles appointed as witnesses were called into the Queen's chamber, where Gandar attended with Marcia and other women of the Queen's household. One of these was a girl called Branwen who had lately been brought to bed of a dead child; she was to be the child's wet-nurse. When all was done, the baby washed and swaddled, and the Queen sleeping, I took my leave and rode out of the castle and along the track towards Dimilioc. As soon as the lights of the gate-house were out of view I turned my horse aside down the steep path into the valley which runs from the high fields above the headland down to the shore.
The castle at Tintagel is built on a promontory of rock, or near-island, a crag jutting up out of the fearsome seas, which is joined to the cliffs of the mainland only by a narrow causeway. To either side of this causeway the cliffs drop away sheer to small bays of rock and shingle tucked in under the cliff. From one of these a path, narrow and precarious, and passable only on a receding tide, leads up the face of the cliff to a small gate let into the roots of the castle wall. This is the postern, the secret entrance to the castle. Inside is a narrow stairway of stone leading up to the private door of the royal apartments.
Halfway up the steep stairway was a broad landing, and a guard-room. Here I was to wait, until the child was judged fit to be taken abroad into the winter's cold. There were no guards: months past, the King had had the postern sealed, and the guard-room's other door, giving on the main part of the castle, had been built up. For tonight the postern gate had been opened, but no porter manned it; only Ulfin the King's man, and Valerius, his friend and trusted officer, waited there to let me in. Valerius took me up to the guardroom, while Ulfin went out down the path into the bay to take my horse. Ralf was not with me. He had gone to ensure that the Breton ship was waiting as it had promised, and he was also to bring horses and to keep watch each night in the bay below the secret path.
I waited for two days and nights. There was a pallet in the guard-room, and Ulfin himself had kindled a fire to banish the disused chill of the place, and from time to time brought food and fuel, and the news from above stairs. He would have waited on me if I had let him; he was grateful still for some kindness I had shown to him in the past, and I think the King's disfavour had distressed him. But I sent him back to his post at the Queen's door, and spent the waiting time alone.
At the other side of the landing, in the outer wall of the castle and opposite the guard-room door, was another door leading out onto a narrow, level platform skirted waist-high by a battlement. It was not overlooked by any of the castle windows, and below it, between the castle wall and the sea, was an apron of grass sloping down to the edge of the sheer cliffs. In summer the place was alive with nesting sea birds, but now, in midwinter, it was barren and crisp with frost. From below, incessantly, came the suck and hush and thud of the winter sea.
Each day, at dawn and sunset, I walked out to this platform to see if the weather had changed. But for three days there was no change. The air was cold, and below me the grass, grey with rime, was barely distinguishable in the thick mist that held the whole place shrouded, from the invisible sea below the invisible cliffs to the pale blur where the winter sun fought to clear the sky. Below the blanket of mist the sea was quiet, as quiet as it ever is on that raging coast. And every midnight, before I slept, I went out into the icy dark and looked upwards for the stars. But there was only the blank pall of the mist.
Then on the third night, the wind came. A small wind from the west, that crept across the battlements and in under the doors and set the flames fluttering blue round the birch logs. I stood up, listening. I had a hand to the latch of the door when I heard a sound, in the quiet, from the head of the stairway. The door to the Queen's apartments had opened and shut again, gently. I opened the door and looked upwards.
Someone was coming softly down the stairs; a woman, shrouded in a mantle, carrying something. I stepped out onto the landing, and the light from the guard-room door came after me, firelight and shadow.
It was Marcia. I saw the tears glisten on her cheeks as she bent her head over what lay-in her arms. A child, wrapped warm against the winter night. She saw me and held her burden out to me. "Take care of him," she said. "Take care of him, as God loves him and you."
I took the child from her. Inside the woollen wrappings I caught the glint of cloth of gold, "And the token?" I asked. She handed me a ring. It was one I had often seen on Uther's hand, made of gold, enclosing a stone of red jasper with a dragon crest carved small. I slipped it on my own finger, and saw her instinctive movement of protest, stilled as she remembered who I was.
I smiled. "For safekeeping only. I shall put it away for him."
"My lord prince..." She bent her head. Then she threw a quick glance over her shoulder to where the girl Branwen, hooded and cloaked, was coming down the stairway, with Ulfin behind her carrying a pack with her effects. Marcia turned back to me swiftly and laid a hand on my arm. "You will tell me where you are taking him?" It was a plea, whispered.
I shook my head. "I'm sorry. It's better that no one should know."
She was silent, her lips working. Then she straightened herself. "Very well. But you promise me that he will be safe? I'm not asking you as a man, or even as a prince. I'm asking you from your power. He will be safe?"
So Ygraine had said nothing, even to Marcia. Marcia's guess at the future was still only a guess. But in the days to come both these women would feel the bitter need for each other's confidence. It would be cruel to leave the Queen isolated with her knowledge and her hopes. It is not true that women cannot keep secrets. Where they love, they can be trusted to death and beyond, against all sense and reason. It is their weakness, and their great strength.
I met Marcia's eyes full for a moment. "He will be King," I said. "The Queen knows it. But for the child's sake, you will tell no one else."
She bent her head again, without replying. Ulfin and Branwen were beside us. Marcia leaned forward gently and drew back a fold of the shawl from the child's face. The baby was sleeping. The eyelids, curiously full, lay over the shut eyes like pale shells. There was a thick down of dark hair on his head. Marcia stooped and kissed him lightly on the head. He slept on, undisturbed. She pulled the fold of wool back to shelter him, then with gentle expert hands settled the bundle closer into my arms. "So. Hold his head so. You will be careful going down the path?"
"I will be careful."
She opened her mouth to speak again, then shook her head quickly, and I saw a tear slide from her cheek to fall on the child's shawl. Then she turned abruptly away, and started back up the stairs.
I carried the baby down the secret path. Valerius went ah
ead, with his sword drawn and ready, and behind me, with Ulfin's arm to help her, came Branwen. As we reached the bottom and stepped on the grating pebbles, Ralf's shadow detached itself from the immense darkness of the cliffs, and we heard his quick, relieved greeting, and the tread of hoofs on the shingle.
He had brought a mule for the girl, tough and sure-footed. He settled her in the saddle, then I handed the baby up to her, and she folded him close in the warmth of her cloak. Ralf vaulted to the back of his own horse and took the mule's rein in hand. I was to lead the pack-mule. This time I planned to travel as an itinerant singer — a harper is free of kings' courts where a drug-peddler is not — and my harp was strapped to the mule's saddle. Ulfin gave me the lead-rein, then held my gelding for me; it was fresh, and anxious to be moving and warm itself. I said my thanks and farewells, then he and Valerius started back up the cliff path. They would seal the postern again behind them.
I turned my horse's head into the wind. Ralf and the girl had already put their mounts to the bank. I saw the dim shapes pause above me, waiting, and the pale oval of Ralf's face as he turned back to watch me. Then his arm went out, pointing.
"Look!"
I turned.
The mist was lifting, drawing back from a sparkling sky. Faintly, high over the castle promontory, grew a hazy moon of light. Then the last cloud blew clear, billowing before the west wind like a sail blowing towards Brittany, and in its wake, blazing through the sparkle of the lesser stars, grew the great star that had lit the night of Ambrosius' death, and now burned steady in the east for the birth of the Christmas King.
We set spurs to our horses and rode for the ship.
12
THE WIND STAYED FAIR FOR BRITTANY, and we came in sight of the Wild Coast at dawn on the fifth day. Here the sea is never quiet; the cliffs, high and dangerous, towered black with the early light behind them and the teeth of the sea gnawing white at the base; but once round Vindanis Point the seas flattened and ran calmer, and I was even able to leave my cabin in time to watch our arrival at the wharf south of Kerrec which my father and King Budec had built years back when the invasion force was being assembled here.
The morning was still, with a touch of frost and a thin mist pearling the fields. The country hereabouts is flat, field and moorland stretching inland where the wind scours the grass with salt, and for miles nothing grows but pine and wind-bitten thorn. Thin streams wind between steep mud-banks down to the bays and inlets that bite everywhere into the coast, and at low tide the flats teem with shellfish and are loud with the cries of wading birds. For all its dour- seeming it is a rich country, and had provided a haven not only for Ambrosius and Uther when Vortigern murdered their brother the King, but for hundreds of other exiles who fled from Vortigern and the threat of the Saxon Terror. Even then, they found parts of the country already peopled by the Celts of Britain. When the Emperor Maximus, a century before, had marched on Rome, those British troops who survived his defeat had straggled back to the refuge of this friendly land. Some had gone home, but a great many had remained to marry and settle; my kinsman, King Hoel, came of one such family. The British had indeed settled in such numbers that men called the peninsula Britain also, dubbing it Less Britain, as their homeland was known as Greater Britain. The language spoken here was still recognizably the same as that of home, and men worshipped the same gods, but the memories of older gods still visibly held the land, and the place was strange. I saw Branwen gazing out over the ship's rail with wide eyes and wondering face, and even Ralf, who had travelled here before as my messenger, had a look of awe as we drew nearer the wharf and saw, beyond the huts and the piles of casks and bales, the first ranks of the standing stones.
These line the fields of Less Britain, rank on rank, like old grey warriors waiting, or armies of the dead. They have stood there, men say, since time began. No one knows why, or how they came there. But I had long known that they were raised, not by giants or gods or even enchanters, but by human engineers whose skill lives on only in song. These skills I learned, when as a boy I lived in Brittany, and men called it magic. For all I know they may be right. One thing is certain, though men's hands lifted the stones, and are long since dust under their roots, the gods they served still walk there. When I have gone between the stones at night, I have felt eyes on my back.
But now the sun was up, gilding the granite surfaces, and throwing the shadows of the stones slanting blue across the frost. The wharf-side was already busy; carts stood ready for loading, and men and boys ran about the business of tying up and unloading the ship. We were the only passengers, but no one cast more than a glance at the travellers in their decent, sober clothes; the musician with the harp in his baggage and his wife and baby beside him, with his servant in attendance. Ralf had lifted the baby from Branwen's arms, and supported her as she trod gingerly down the gangplank. She was silent and pale, and leaned heavily on him. I saw, as he bent over her, how — suddenly, it seemed — he had grown from boy to man. He would be turned sixteen now, and though Branwen was perhaps a year older than he, Ralf might well be taken for her husband, rather than I. He looked brisk and bright, sleek as a springtime cockerel in his neat new clothes. He was the only one of our party, I thought sourly, feeling the wharf tilt and sway under me as if it had still been the heaving deck, who had weathered the passage well.
The escort he had arranged was waiting for us. Not the escort of troops which King Hoel had wanted to provide, but simply a mule litter for Branwen and the child, with a muleteer and one other man, who had brought horses for Ralf and myself. This man came forward now to greet me. From his bearing I judged him to be an officer, but he was not in uniform, and there was nothing to show that the escort came from the King. Nor apparently had the officer been told anything about us, beyond the fact that we were to be led into town and housed there until the King should send for us.
He greeted me civilly, but without the courtesies of rank. "You are welcome, sir. The King sends his greetings, and I am here to escort you into town. I trust you had a good voyage?"
"They tell me so," I said, "but neither I nor the lady are inclined to believe them."
He grinned. "I thought she looked a little green. I know how she feels. I'm not a great one for the sea, myself. And you, sir? Can you ride as far as the town? It's little more than a mile."
"I can try," I said. We exchanged courtesies while Ralf helped Branwen into the litter and drew the curtains against the morning chill. As she settled herself into the warmth the baby woke and began to cry. He had very good lungs, had Arthur. I suppose I must have winced. I saw a gleam of amusement in the officer's face, and said dryly:
"Are you married?"
"Yes, indeed."
"I used to think sometimes what I might be missing. Now I begin to know."
He laughed at that. "One can always escape. It's the best reason I know for being a soldier. Will you mount, sir?"
He and I rode side by side on the way into the town. Kerrec was a sizeable settlement, half civil, half military, walled and moated, clustered round a central hill where the King's stronghold lay. Near the ramp which led up to the castle gate was the house where my father had lived during his years of exile, while he and King Budec assembled and trained the army which had invaded Britain to claim it back for him, her rightful King.
And now, perhaps, her next and greater King was here at my side, still yelling lustily, muffled in a litter, and being carried over the wooden bridge that spanned the moat, and in through the gate of the town.
My companion was silent beside me. Behind us the others rode at ease; they chatted among themselves, the sound of their voices and the sharp clop of the horses' hoofs on the cobbles and the jingling of bits sounding loud in the still and misty daybreak. The town was just waking. Cocks crowed from yards and middens; here and there doors were opened and women, shawled against the cold, could be seen moving with pails or armfuls of kindling to start the day's work.
I was glad of my companion's
silence as I looked about me. Even in the five years since I had left it the place seemed to have changed completely. I suppose one cannot pull a standing army out of a town where it has been built and trained for years, and not leave an echoing shell. The army, indeed, had been mainly quartered outside the walls, and the camps had long since been dismantled and gone back to grassland. But in the town, though King Budec's own troops remained, the orderly bustle and the air of purpose and expectancy which had characterized the place in my father's time had gone. In the street of the engineers, where I had served my apprenticeship with Tremorinus, there were a few workshops open and already clanging in the early dawn, but the air of high purpose had gone with the crowd and the clamour, and something almost like desolation had taken its place. I was glad that the way to our lodging did not pass my father's house.
We were lodged with a decent couple, who made us welcome; Branwen and the baby were carried straight off to some women's fastness, while I was shown to a good room where a fire blazed and breakfast was spread waiting beside it. A servant carried the baggage in, and would have stayed to wait on me, but Ralf dismissed him and served the meal himself. I bade him eat with me, and he did so, cheerful and brisk as if the last week or so had been spent holidaying, and when we had done asked if I wanted to go out to explore the town. I gave him leave, but said that I would stay within doors. I am a strong man, and do not readily tire, but it takes more than a mile on dry land and a good breakfast to dispel the grinding sickness and exhaustion of a winter voyage. So I bade Ralf merely see to it that Branwen and the child were comfortable, and, after he had gone, composed myself to rest and wait for the King's summons.
