by Mary Stewart
This valley is little more than a gully carrying a small stream to the sea. At its widest the stream is not more than three paces broad, and so shallow that a horse can ford it anywhere. At the foot of the valley the water drops over a low cliff straight to a beach of slaty shingle. We rode in single file down the track, with the stream running deep down on the left, and to our right a high bank covered with bushes. Since the wind was from the south-west and the valley was deep and running almost north, we were sheltered from the gale, but at the top of the bank the bushes were screaming in the wind, and twigs and even small boughs hurtled through the air and across our path. Even without this and the steepness of the stony path and the darkness, it was not easy riding; the horses, what with the storm and some tension which must have been generated by the three of us -- Cadal was as solid as a rock, but then he was not going into the castle -- were wild and white-eyed with nerves. When, a quarter of a mile from the sea, we turned down to the stream and set the beasts to cross it, mine, in the lead, flattened its ears and balked, and when I had lashed it across and into a plunging canter up the narrow track, and a man's figure detached itself from the shadows ahead beside the path, the horse stopped dead and climbed straight up into the air till I felt sure it would go crashing over backwards, and me with it.
The shadow darted forward and seized the bridle, dragging the horse down. The beast stood, sweating and shaking.
"Brithael," I said. "Is all well?"
I heard him exclaim, and he took a pace, pressing closer to the horse's shoulder, peering upwards in the dark. Behind me Uther's grey hoisted itself up the track and thudded to a halt. The man at my horse's shoulder said, uncertainly: "My lord Gorlois...? We did not look for you tonight. Is there news, then?"
It was Ralf's voice. I said in my own: "So we'll pass, at least in the dark?" I heard his breath go in. "Yes, my lord...For the moment I thought it was indeed Brithael.
And then the grey horse...Is that the King?"
"For tonight," I said, "it is the Duke of Cornwall. Is all well?"
"Yes, sir."
"Then lead the way. There is not much time."
He gripped my horse's bridle above the bit and led him on, for which I was grateful, as the path was dangerous, narrow and slippery and twisting along the steep bank between the rustling bushes; not a path I would have wished to ride even in daylight on a strange and frightened horse. The others followed, Cadal's mount and Ulfin's plodding stolidly along, and close behind me the grey stallion snorting at every bush and trying to break his rider's grip, but Uther could have ridden Pegasus himself and foundered him before his own wrists even ached.
Here my horse shied at something I could not see, stumbled, and would have pitched me down the bank but for Ralf at its head. I swore at it, then asked Ralf: "How far now?"
"About two hundred paces to the shore, sir, and we leave the horses there. We climb the promontory on foot."
"By all the gods of storm, I'll be glad to get under cover. Did you have any trouble?"
"None, sir." He had to raise his voice to make me hear, but in that turmoil there was no fear of being heard more than three paces off. "My lady told Felix herself -- that's the porter -- that she had asked the Duke to ride back as soon as his troops were disposed at Dimilioc. Of course the word's gone round that she's pregnant, so it's natural enough she'd want him back, even with the King's armies so close. She told Felix the Duke would come by the secret gate in case the King had spies posted already. He wasn't to tell the garrison, she said, because they might be alarmed at his leaving Dimilioc and the troops there, but the King couldn't possibly be in Cornwall for another day at soonest...Felix doesn't suspect a thing. Why should he?"
"The porter is alone at the gate?"
"Yes, but there are two guards in the guard-room."
He had told us already what lay inside the postern. This was a small gate set low in the outer castle wall, and just inside it a long flight of steps ran up to the right, hugging the wall. Halfway up was a wide landing, with a guardroom to the side. Beyond that the stairs went up again, and at the top was the private door leading through into the apartments.
"Do the guards know?" I asked.
He shook his head. "My lord, we didn't dare. All the men left with the Lady Ygraine were hand-picked by the Duke."
"Are the stairs well lighted?"
"A torch. I saw to it that it will be mostly smoke."
I looked over my shoulder to where the grey horse came ghostly behind me through the dark. Ralf had had to raise his voice to make me hear above the wind which screamed across the top of the valley, and I would have thought that the King would be waiting to know what passed between us. But he was silent, as he had been since the beginning of the ride. It seemed he was indeed content to trust the time. Or to trust me.
I turned back to Ralf, leaning down over my horse's shoulder. "Is there a password?"
"Yes, my lord. It is pilgrim. And the lady has sent a ring for the King to wear. It is one the Duke wears sometimes. Here's the end of the path, can you see? It's quite a drop to the beach." He checked, steadying my horse, then the beast plunged down and its hoofs grated on shingle. "We leave the horses here, my lord."
I dismounted thankfully. As far as I could see, we were in a small cove sheltered from the wind by a mighty headland close to our left, but the seas, tearing past the end of this headland and curving round to break among the offshore rocks, were huge, and came lashing down on the shingle in torrents of white with a noise like armies clashing together in anger. Away to the right I saw another high headland, and between the two this roaring stretch of white water broken by the teeth of black rocks. The stream behind us fell seawards over its low cliff in two long cascades which blew in the wind like ropes of hair. Beyond these swinging waterfalls, and in below the overhanging wall of the main cliff, there was shelter for the horses.
Ralf was pointing to the great headland on our left. "The path is up there. Tell the King to come behind me and to follow closely. One foot wrong tonight, and before you could cry help you'd be out with the tide as far as the western stars."
The grey thudded down beside us and the King swung himself out of the saddle. I heard him laugh, that same sharp, exultant sound. Even had there been no prize at the end of the night's trail, he would have been the same. Danger was drink and dreams alike to Uther.
The other two came up with us and dismounted, and Cadal took the reins. Uther came to my shoulder, looking at the cruel race of water. "Do we swim for it now?"
"It may come to that, God knows. It looks to me as if the waves are up to the castle wall."
He stood quite still, oblivious of the buffeting of wind and rain, with his head lifted, staring up at the headland. High against the stormy dark, a light burned.
I touched his arm. "Listen. The situation is what we expected. There is a porter, Felix, and two men-at-arms in the guard-room. There should be very little light. You know the way in. It will be enough, as we go in, if you grunt your thanks to Felix and go quickly up the stair. Marcia, the old woman, will meet you at the door of Ygraine's apartments and lead you in. You can leave the rest to us. If there is any trouble, then there are three of us to three of them, and on a night like this there'll be no sound heard. I shall come an hour before dawn and send Marcia in for you. Now we shall not be able to speak again. Follow Ralf closely, the path is very dangerous. He has a ring for you and the password. Go now."
He turned without a word and trod across the streaming shingle to where the boy waited. I found Cadal beside me, with the reins of the four horses gathered in his fist. His face, like my own, was streaming with wet, his cloak billowing round him like a storm cloud.
I said: "You heard me. An hour before dawn."
He, too, was looking up at the crag where high above us the castle towered. In a moment of flying light through the torn cloud I saw the castle walls, growing out of the rock. Below them fell the cliff, almost vertical, to the roaring waves. Between the
promontory and the mainland, joining the castle to the mainland cliff, ran a natural ridge of rock, its sheer side polished flat as a sword-blade by the sea. From the beach where we stood, there seemed to be no way out but the valley; not mainland fortress, nor causeway, nor castle rock, could be climbed. It was no wonder they left no sentries here. And the path to the secret gate could be held by one man against an army.
Cadal was saying: "I'll get the horses in there, under the overhang, in what shelter there is. And for my sake, if not for yon lovesick gentleman's, be on time. If they as much as suspicion up yonder that there's something amiss, it's rats in a trap for the lot of us. They can shut that bloody little valley as sharp as they can block the causeway, you know that? And I wouldn't just fancy swimming out the other way, myself."
"Nor I. Content yourself, Cadal, I know what I'm about."
"I believe you. There's something about you tonight...The way you spoke just now to the King, not thinking, shorter than you'd speak to a servant. And he said never a word, but did as he was bid. Yes, I'd say you know what you're about. Which is just as well, master Merlin, because otherwise, you realize, you're risking the life of the King of Britain for a night's lust?"
I did something which I had never done before; which I do not commonly do. I put a hand out and laid it over Cadal's where it held the reins. The horses were quiet now, wet and unhappy, huddling with their rumps to the wind and their heads drooping.
I said: "If Uther gets into the place tonight and lies with her, then before God, Cadal, it will not matter as much as the worth of a drop of that sea-foam there if he is murdered in the bed. I tell you, a King will come out of this night's work whose name will be a shield and buckler to men until this fair land, from sea to sea, is smashed down into the sea that holds it, and men leave earth to live among the stars. Do you think Uther is a King, Cadal? He's but a regent for him who went before and for him who comes after, the past and future King. And tonight he is even less than that: he is a tool, and she a vessel, and I...I am a spirit, a word, a thing of air and darkness, and I can no more help what I am doing than a reed can help the wind of God blowing through it. You and I, Cadal, are as helpless as dead leaves in the waters of that bay." I dropped my hand from his. "An hour before dawn."
"Till then, my lord."
I left him then, and, with Ulfin following, went after Ralf and the King across the shingle to the foot of the black cliff.
7
I do not think that now, even in daylight, I could find the path again without a guide, let alone climb it. Ralf went first, with the King's hand on his shoulder, and in my turn I held a fold of Uther's mantle, and Ulfin of mine. Mercifully, close in as we were to the face of the castle rock, we were protected from the wind: exposed, the climb would have been impossible; we would have been plucked off the cliff like feathers. But we were not protected from the sea. The waves must have been rushing up forty feet, and the master waves, the great sevenths, came roaring up like towers and drenched us with salt fully sixty feet above the beach.
One good thing the savage boiling of the sea did for us, its whiteness cast upwards again what light came from the sky. At last we saw, above our heads, the roots of the castle walls where they sprang from the rock. Even in dry weather the walls would have been unscalable, and tonight they were streaming with wet. I could see no door, nothing breaking the smooth streaming walls of slate. Ralf did not pause, but led us on under them towards a seaward corner of the cliff. There he halted for a moment, and I saw him move his arm in a gesture that meant "Beware." He went carefully round the corner and out of sight. I felt Uther stagger as he reached the corner himself and met the force of the wind. He checked for a moment and then went on, clamped tight to the cliff's face. Ulfin and I followed. For a few more hideous yards we fought our way along, faces in to the soaking, slimy cliff, then a jutting buttress gave us shelter, and we were stumbling suddenly on a treacherous slope cushiony with sea-pink, and there ahead of us, recessed deep in the rock below the castle wall, and hidden from the ramparts above by the sharp overhang, was Tintagel's emergency door.
I saw Ralf give a long look upwards before he led us in under the rock. There were no sentries above. What need to post men on the seaward ramparts? He drew his dagger and rapped sharply on the door, a pattern of knocks which we, standing as we were at his shoulder, scarcely heard in the gale.
The porter must have been waiting just inside. The door opened immediately. It swung silently open for about three inches, then stuck, and I heard the rattle of a chain bolt. In the gap a hand showed, gripping a torch. Uther, beside me, dragged his hood closer, and I stepped past him to Ralf's elbow, holding my mantle tightly to my mouth and hunching my shoulders against the volleying gusts of wind and rain.
The porter's face, half of it, showed below the torch. An eye peered. Ralf, well forward into the light, said urgently: "Quick, man. A pilgrim. It's me back, with the Duke."
The torch moved fractionally higher. I saw the big emerald on Uther's finger catch the light, and said curtly, in Brithael's voice: "Open up, Felix, and let us get in out of this, for pity's sake. The Duke had a fall from his horse this morning, and his bandage is soaking. There are just the four of us here. Make haste."
The chain bolt came off and the door swung wide. Ralf put a hand to it so that, ostensibly holding it for his master, he could step into the passage between Felix and Uther as the King entered.
Uther strode in past the bowing man, shaking the wet off himself like a dog, and returning some half-heard sound in answer to the porter's greeting. Then with a brief lift of the hand which set the emerald flashing again, he turned straight for the steps which led upwards on our right, and began quickly to mount them.
Ralf grabbed the torch from the porter's hand as Ulfin and I pressed in after Uther. "I'll light them up with this. Get the door shut and barred again. I'll come down later and give you the news, Felix, but we're all drenched as drowned dogs, and want to get to a fire. There's one in the guard-room, I suppose?"
"Aye." The porter had already turned away to bar the door. Ralf was holding the torch so that Ulfin and I could go past in shadow.
I started quickly up the steps in Uther's wake, with Ulfin on my heels. The stairs were lit only by a smoking cresset which burned in a bracket on the wall of the wide landing above us. It had been easy.
Too easy. Suddenly, above us on the landing, the sullen light was augmented by that from a blazing torch, and a couple of men-at-arms stepped from a doorway, swords at the ready.
Uther, six steps above me, paused fractionally and then went on. I saw his hand, under the cloak, drop to his sword. Under my own I had my weapon loose in its sheath.
Ralf's light tread came running up the steps behind us.
"My lord Duke!"
Uther, I could guess how thankfully, stopped and turned to wait for him, his back to the guards.
"My lord Duke, let me light you -- ah, they've a torch up there." He seemed only then to notice the guards above us, with the blazing light. He ran on and up past Uther, calling lightly: "Holà, Marcus, Sellic, give me that torch to light my lord up to the Duchess. This wretched thing's nothing but smoke."
The man with the torch had it held high, and the pair of them were peering down the stairs at us. The boy never hesitated. He ran up, straight between the swords, and took the torch from the man's hand. Before they could reach for it, he turned swiftly to douse the first torch in the tub of sand which stood near the guard-room door. It went out into sullen smoke. The new torch blazed cleanly, but swung and wavered as he moved so that the shadows of the guards, flung gigantic and grotesque down the steps, helped to hide us. Uther, taking advantage of the swaying shadows, started again swiftly up the flight. The hand with Gorlois' ring was half up before him to return the men's salutes. The guards moved aside. But they moved one to each side of the head of the steps, and their swords were still in their hands.
Behind me, I heard the faint whisper as Ulfin's blade loosen
ed in its sheath. Under my cloak, mine was half-drawn. There was no hope of getting past them. We would have to kill them, and pray it made no noise. I heard Ulfin's step lagging, and knew he was thinking of the porter. He might have to go back to him while we dealt with the guards.
But there was no need. Suddenly, at the head of the second flight of steps, a door opened wide, and there, full in the blaze of light, stood Ygraine. She was in white, as I had seen her before; but not this time in a night-robe. The long gown shimmered like lake water. Over one arm and shoulder, Roman fashion, she wore a mantle of soft dark blue. Her hair was dressed with jewels. She stretched out both her hands, and the blue robe and the white fell away from wrists where red gold glimmered.
"Welcome, my lord!" Her voice, high and clear, brought both guards round to face her. Uther took the last half dozen steps to the landing in two leaps, then was past them, his cloak brushing the sword-blades, past Ralf's blazing torch, and starting quickly up the second flight of steps.
The guards snapped back to attention, one each side of the stair-head, their backs to the wall. Behind me I heard Ulfin gasp, but he followed me quietly enough as, calmly and without hurry, I mounted the last steps to the landing. It is something, I suppose, to have been born a prince, even a bastard one; I knew that the sentries' eyes were nailed to the wall in front of them by the Duchess's presence as surely as if they were blind. I went between the swords, and Ulfin after me.
Uther had reached the head of the stairway. He took her hands, and there in front of the lighted door, with his enemies' swords catching the torchlight below him, the King bent his head and kissed Ygraine. The scarlet cloak swung round both of them, engulfing the white. Beyond them I saw the shadow of the old woman, Marcia, holding the door.
Then the King said: "Come," and with the great cloak still covering them both, he led her into the firelight, and the door shut behind them.
