by Mary Stewart
"As effectively as a mother hen calling the young swan out of the water. You will do as you think fit." I looked out across the water-logged plain, toward the Tor and the low-lying shape of its neighbor island, where the harbor lay. I added, thoughtfully: "It's a pity that he sees fit to charge harbor dues -- and exorbitant ones at that -- to the war-leader who protects him."
His eyes widened speculatively. A smile tugged at his mouth. He said slowly: "Yes, isn't it? And then there's the matter of the toll on the road along the ridge. If my captains should by any chance refuse to pay, then no doubt Melwas will bring the complaint here himself, and who knows, it may even be the first that comes to the new council chamber? Now, since that is what I told the scribe you were coming for, shall we go and see it? And tomorrow, at the third hour, I'll send the royal escort, to bring her home."
6
With Bedwyr still on Ynys Witrin, the royal escort was led by Nentres, one of the western rulers who had fought under Uther, and who now brought his allegiance and that of his sons to Arthur. He was a grizzled veteran, spare of body, and as supple in the saddle as a youth. He left the escort fidgeting under its Dragon banners on the road below my house, and came riding himself up the curving track by the stream, followed by a groom leading a chestnut horse trapped with silver. Horse and trappings alike were burnished to a glitter as bright as Nentres' shield, and jewels winked on the breast-band. The saddle-cloth was of murrey, worked with silver thread.
"The King sent this for you," he said with a grin. "He reckons your own would look like a dealer's throw-out among the rest. Don't look at him like that, he's much quieter than he appears."
The groom gave me a hand to mount. The chestnut tossed his head and mouthed the bit, but his stride was smooth and easy. After my stolid old black gelding he was like a sailing-boat after a poled barge.
The morning was cold, in the wake of the north wind that had frozen the fields since mid-March. At dawn that day I had climbed to the hilltop beyond Applegarth, and had felt against my skin that indefinable difference that heralds a change of wind. The hilltop thorns were no more than breaking into bud, but down in the valley one could see the green haze on the distant woods, and the sheltered banks nearby were thick with primroses and wild garlic. Rooks cawed and tumbled about the ivied trees. Spring was here, waiting, but held back by the cold winds, as the blackthorn flowers were locked in the bud. But still the sky was overcast and heavy, almost as if threatening snow, and I was glad of my cloak with all its regal splendors of fur and scarlet.
All was ready for us at Melwas' hall. The king himself was dressed in rich dark blue, and was, I noticed, fully armed. His handsome face wore a smile, easy and welcoming, but his eyes had a wary look, and there were altogether too many men-at-arms crowded into the hall, besides the full company outside, brought down at readiness from his hilltop fortress, to throng into the orchard-fields that served the palace for garden. Banners and bright trappings gave the welcome a festive air, but it was to be seen that every man wore both sword and dagger.
He had, of course, expected Arthur. When he saw me his look at first lightened with relief, then I saw the wariness deepen, and tight lines draw themselves around his mouth. He greeted me fairly, but very formally, like a man making the first move of a gambit at chess. I replied, with the long, studied speech of Arthur's deputy, then turned to the old queen, his mother, who stood beside him at the end of the long hall. She showed no such caution as her son's. She greeted me with easy authority, and made a sign toward a door on the right of the hall. There was a stir as the crowd parted, and Queen Guinevere came in among her ladies.
She, too, had expected Arthur. She hesitated, looking for him in the glitter of the packed hall. Her gazed passed me, unseeing. I wondered what god had moved her to wear green, spring green, with flowers embroidered on the breast of her gown. Her mantle was green, too, with a collar of white marten, which framed her face and gave her a fragile look. She was very pale, but bore herself with rigid composure.
I remembered how, that night, I had found her shaking in my grasp; and on the thought, as if I had been dipped in cold water, I saw that Arthur had been right about her. She might be a queen in bearing and in courage, but under it all there was a timid girl, and one looking, all the time, for love. The gaiety, the ready laughter and high spirits of youth, had masked an exile's eager search for friendship among the strangers of a court vastly different from the homely hearthstone of her father's kingdom. I would never, wrapped in Arthur as I had been for twenty years, even have troubled to think about her, except as his people thought: a vessel for his seed, a partner for his pleasure, a glowing pillar of beauty to shine, silver beside his gold, on the hilltop of his glory. Now I saw her as if I had never seen her before. I saw a girl, tender of flesh and simple enough of spirit, who had had the fortune to marry the greatest man of the age.
To be Arthur's Queen was no mean burden, with all that it entailed of loneliness, and a life of banishment in an alien country, with, as often as not, no husband near to come between her and the flatterers, the power-hungry schemers, those envious of her rank or beauty, or -- perhaps most dangerous of all -- the young men ready to worship her. Then there would be those (and you could trust them to be many) who would tell her, over and over again, about the "other Guinevere," the pretty Queen who had conceived from the King's first bedding of her, and for whom he had grieved so bitterly. It would lose nothing in the telling. But all this would have been nothing, would have passed and been forgotten in the King's love, and her new, exciting power, if only she had been able to conceive a child. That Arthur had not used the Melwas affair to have her put aside, to take a fertile woman to his bed, was proof indeed of his love; but I doubted if she had yet had time to see it so. He had been right when he told me that she was afraid of life, afraid of the people round her, afraid of Melwas; and -- I could see it now -- more than any of them she was afraid of me.
She had seen me. The blue eyes widened, and her hands moved up to clasp the fur at her throat. Her step checked momentarily, then, once more held in that pale composure, she took her place beside the queen, on the side away from Melwas. Neither she nor the king had glanced at one another.
There was a resounding silence. Someone's robe rustled, and it sounded like a tree in the wind.
I walked forward. As if Guinevere had been the only person there, I bowed low, then straightened.
"Greetings, madam. It's good to see you recovered. I have come, with others of your friends and servants, to escort you home. The High King is waiting to receive you in your Palace of Camelot."
The color washed into her face. She only came up as high as my throat. I have seen eyes like hers on a young deer pulled down and waiting for the spear. She murmured something, and fell dumb. To cover it, and give her time, I turned to Melwas and his mother, and went smoothly into a courtly, over-elaborate speech, thanking them for their care of Queen Guinevere. It had become patent, while I was speaking, that Melwas' mother still had no idea that anything might be wrong. While her son watched me with a bold look glossing over that mixture of wariness and bravado, the old queen answered me with equally courtly thanks, messages for Arthur, compliments for Guinevere, and, finally, a pressing offer of hospitality. At that the young Queen looked up, briefly, then her eyelids hid her eyes again. As I declined, I saw her hands relax. I guessed that there had been no chance, since that parting in the marshes, for Melwas to speak with her and try to find out what she had told Arthur. I think, indeed, that he was going to insist on our staying, but something in my eyes stopped him, and then his mother, accepting the decision, came with obvious eagerness to the question that interested her.
"We looked for you that night, Prince Merlin. I understand that you were led by your vision to find the Queen, before even my son got back to the Island with the news. Will you not tell us, my lord, what this vision was?"
Melwas had jerked to attention. His bold look defied me to elaborate. I smiled, and my gaze b
ore his down. Without my prompting, the old woman had asked the very question that I wanted. I raised my voice.
"Willingly, lady. It is true that I had a vision, but whether it came from the gods of air and silence who have spoken to me in the past, or from the Mother Goddess to whose worship the shrine beyond those apple trees is sacred, I cannot tell. But I had a vision that led me straight through the marshland like a fledged arrow to its mark. It was a double vision, a bright dream through which the dreamer passes to a darker dream below; a reflection seen in deep water where the surface color lies like glass over the dark world beneath. The visions were confused, but their meaning was clear. I would have followed them more quickly, but I think the gods willed it otherwise."
Guinevere's head came up at that, and her eyes widened. Again, in Melwas', that spark of doubt. It was the old queen who asked: "How otherwise? They did not want the Queen found? What riddle is this, Prince Merlin?"
"I shall tell you. But first I will tell you about the dream that came to me. I saw a king's hall paved with marble, and pillared with silver and gold, where no servants waited, but where the lamps and tapers burned with scented smoke, bright as day..." I had let my voice take on the rhythm of the bard who sings in hall; its resonance filled the room and carried the words right out through the colonnade to the silent crowds outside. Fingers moved to make the sign against strong magic; even Guinevere's. The old queen listened with evident satisfaction and pleasure; it was to be remembered that she was the chief patroness of the Goddess's sacred shrine. As for Melwas, as I spoke I watched him move from suspicion and apprehension into bewilderment, and, finally, awe.
To everyone there, already, the dream had taken on a familiar pattern, the archetype of every man's journey into the world from which few travelers return.
"...And on the precious table a set of gold chessmen, and nearby a great chair with arms curled like lions' heads, waiting for the King, and a stool of silver with doves' claws, waiting for the Lady. So I knew it for Llud's hall, where the sacred vessel is kept, and where once the great sword hung that now hangs on Arthur's wall in Camelot. And from overhead, in the sky beyond the hollow hill, I heard them galloping, the Wild Hunt, where the knights of the Otherworld course down their prey, and carry them deep, deep, into the jeweled halls of no return. But just as I began to wonder if the god was telling me the Queen was dead, the vision changed --"
To my right was a window, high in the wall. Outside was a prospect of sky, cloudy above the tops of the orchard trees. The budding apple boughs showed lighter, in their young sorrel-and-green, than the slaty sky. The poplars stood pale like spears. But there had been that breath of change in the morning; I felt it still; I kept my eye on that indigo cloud, and spoke again, more slowly.
"...And I was in an older hall, a deeper cavern. I was in the Underworld itself, and the dark King was there, who is older even than Llud, and by him sat the pale young Queen who was left from the bright fields of Enna and carried out of the warm world to be the Queen of Hell; Persephone, daughter of Demeter, the Mother of all that grows on the face of the earth"
The cloud was moving slowly, slowly. Beyond the budding boughs I could see the edge of its shadow drawing its veil aside. From somewhere a breeze came wandering to shiver the tall poplars that edged the orchard.
Most of the people there would not know the story, so I told it, to the obvious satisfaction of the old queen, who must, like all devotees of the Mother's cult, be feeling the cold threat of change even here in this, its ancient stronghold. Once, when Melwas, doubting my drift, would have spoken, she silenced him with a gesture, and (herself perhaps with more instinctive understanding) put out a hand and drew the Queen closer to her side. I looked neither at the dark Melwas nor at Guinevere, pale and wondering, but watched the high window out of the side of my eye, and told the old tale of Persephone's abduction by Hades, and the long, weary search for her that Demeter, the Mother Goddess, undertook, while the earth, robbed of its spring growth, languished in cold and darkness.
Beyond the window the poplars, brushed with the early light, bloomed suddenly golden.
"And when the vision died I knew what I had been told. Your Queen, your young and lovely Queen, was alive and safe, succored by the Goddess and waiting only to be carried home. And with her coming, spring will come at last, and the cold rains will cease, and we shall have a land growing rich once again to harvest, in the peace brought by the High King's sword, and the joy brought by the Queen's love for him. This was the dream I had, and which I, Merlin, prince and prophet, interpret to you." I spoke straight past Melwas to the old queen. "So I beg you now, madam, to let me take the Queen home, with honor and with joy."
And at that moment, the blessed sun came bursting out and laid a shaft of light clear across the floor to the Queen's feet, so that she stood, all gold and white and green, in a pool of sunshine.
We rode home through a brilliant day smelling of primroses. The clouds had packed away, and the Lake showed blue and glittering under its golden willows. An early swallow hawked for flies, close over the bright water. And the Spring Queen, refusing the litter we had brought for her, rode beside me.
She spoke only once, and then briefly.
"I lied to you that night. You knew?"
"Yes."
"You do see, then? You really do? You see all?"
"I see a great deal. If I set out to look, and if God wills it, I see."
The color came into her face, and her look lightened, as if something had set her free. Before, I had believed her innocent; now I knew it. "So you, too, have told my lord the truth. When he did not come for me himself, I was afraid."
"You have no need to be, now or ever. I think you need never doubt that he loves you. And I can tell you, too, Guinevere my cousin, that even if you never bear an heir for Britain, he will not put you aside. Your name will stand alongside his, as long as he is remembered."
"I will try," she said, so softly that I could hardly hear it. Then the towers of Camelot came in sight, and she was silent, bracing herself against what was to come.
So the seeds of legend were sown. During the golden weeks of spring that followed, I was more than once to hear men talking under their breaths of the "rape" of the Queen, and how she had been taken down almost to the dark halls of Llud, but brought back by Bedwyr, chiefest of Arthur's knights. So the sting of the truth was drawn; no shame attached to Arthur, none even to the Queen; and to Bedwyr was credited the first of his many glories, the story growing, and its hero gaining in stature, as his hurts healed and at last were well.
As for Melwas, in the way these things have, if the "Dark King" of the Underworld became linked in men's minds with the dark-avised king whose stronghold was the Tor, it was still without blame to Guinevere. What Melwas thought nobody knew. He must have realized that Guinevere had told Arthur the truth. He may have grown tired of being cast as the villain of the story, and of waiting (as everyone was waiting) for the High King to move against him. He may even have cherished hopes, still, that he might in some dim future come to possess the Queen.
Whatever the case, it was he who made the next move, and by doing so gave Arthur his way. One morning he rode to Camelot, and, perforce leaving his armed escort outside the council hall, took his seat in the Chair of Complaining.
The council hall had been built on the style of a smaller hall that Arthur had seen on one of the visits paid to the Queen's father in Wales. That had been merely a larger version of the daub-and-wattle round house of the Celts; this in Camelot was a big circular building, impressively built to last, with ribs of dressed stone, and between them walls of narrow Roman brick from the long-abandoned kilns nearby. There were vast double doors of oak, carved with the Dragon, and finely gilded. Inside, the place was open, with a fine floor of tiles laid out from the center, like a spider's web. And like the outer ring of a web, the walls were not curved, but sectioned off with flat paneling.
These panels were covered with matting of a fine
golden straw to keep out the draughts, but in time would be ablaze with needlework; Guinevere already had her maids set to it. Against each of these sections stood a tall chair, with its own footstool, and the King's was no higher than the next man's. This place was to be, he said, a hall for free discussion between the High King and his peers, and a place where any of the King's leaders could bring their problems. The only thing that marked Arthur's chair was the white shield that hung above it; in time, perhaps, the Dragon would shimmer there in gold and scarlet. Some of the other panels already showed the blazons of the Companions. The seat opposite the King's was blank. This was the one taken by anyone with a grievance to be settled by the court. Arthur had called it the Chair of Complaining. But in later years I heard it called the Perilous Chair, and I think the name was coined after that day.
I was not present when Melwas tabled his complaint. Though I had at that time a place in the Round Hall (as it came to be called), I seldom took it. If his peers were equal there to the King, then the King must be seen to match them in knowledge, and to give his judgments without leaning on the advice of a mentor. Any discussions Arthur and I had were held in private.
We had talked over the Melwas affair for many hours before it came to the council table. To begin with, Arthur seemed sure that I would try to stop him from fighting Melwas, but here was a case where the cold view and the hot coincided. To Arthur it would be satisfying and to me expedient that Melwas should suffer publicly for his actions. The lapse of time, and Arthur's silence, with the legend I had invoked, ensured that Guinevere's honor would not be in question; the people had taken her once more into their love, and wherever she went flowers strewed the way with blessings thrown like petals. She was their Queen -- their darling's darling -- who had almost been taken from them by death, and had been saved by Merlin's magic. So the story went among the common folk. But among the more worldly there were those who looked for the King to move against Melwas, and who would have been quick to despise him had he failed. He owed it to himself, as man and as King. The discipline he had imposed on himself over the Queen's rape had been severe. Now, when he found that I agreed with him, he turned, with a fierce joy, to planning.
