by Mary Stewart
I watched, and pitied, then turned from the smoking logs and left them to their privacy.
9
Eight weeks later the King came home. He had caught up with Heuil, beaten him in fair fight, burned his ships, and levied a fine which would keep him singing small for some time to come.
Once again he had crushed back his instincts in favor of policy. He had been met on his journey north with the tidings that Caw of Strathclyde had died, quietly in his bed. Quietly, that is, for Caw; he had spent the day hunting and half the night feasting, then, when the inevitable penalties struck his ninety-year-old body in the small hours of the dawning, had died, surrounded by such of his sons and their mothers as could get to the death-bed in time. He had also named his heir, the second son Gwarthegydd (the eldest had been badly maimed in fighting some years back). The messenger who brought Arthur the news also carried assurances of Gwarthegydd's friendship. So Arthur, till he had met and spoken with Gwarthegydd, and seen how he stood with his brother Heuil, would not put the friendship at risk.
He need not have been so careful. It was said that when Gwarthegydd heard the news of Heuil's defeat he let out a guffaw almost as hearty as his father's great bellow, and drank down a full horn of mead to Arthur's health. So the King rode north with Urbgen and Ector into Dumbarton and sat down with Gwarthegydd for nine days, and watched him crowned at the end of it. Then, well satisfied, he rode south again. He went by the east road to Elmet, found the Vale and the Saxon lands quiet, then crossed the country by the Pennine Gap to Caerleon. There he stayed for a month, and in the first days of June came home to Camelot.
It was time. Again and again in the fire I had seen the lovers, tossed between desire and faith, Bedwyr finedrawn and silent, the Queen with great eyes and nervous hands. They were never again alone: always with them her ladies sat and sewed, or his men rode in attendance. But they would sit or ride a little way apart from the rest, and talk and talk, as if in speech, and now and again a light and desperate touch, there was comfort to be had.
And they watched day and night for Arthur's coming: Bedwyr, because he could not quit his post of torment without the King's leave; Guinevere with the forebodings of a lonely young woman who is half in awe of her husband, but has to depend on him for protection and comfort and what companionship he has time to give.
He was home in Camelot for ten days or so before he came to see me. It was a soft bright morning in June. I had risen soon after dawn, as was my habit, and went walking across the rolling hilltops above the house. I went alone; there was usually no sign of Ninian until Mora called him to breakfast. I had walked for an hour, thinking, and pausing from time to time to gather the plants I was looking for, when, beyond a fold of the downs, I heard hoof-beats, coming easily. Don't ask me how I knew it was Arthur; one hoof-beat is very like another, and there was no foresight in the air that day; but love has stronger wings than vision, and I merely turned and waited for him, in the lee of one of the groves of thorn that here and there break the pale sweep of the high downlands. The thorn trees crowned the edge of a little valley where ran a track as old as the land itself. Up this, presently, I saw him coming, sitting at ease on a pretty bay mare, and with his young hound, Cabal's successor, at heel.
He lifted a hand to me, turned the mare up the slope, then slid from the saddle, and greeted me with a smile.
"Well, so you were right. As if I had to tell you that! And now I suppose I don't even have to tell you what happened? Have you ever thought, Merlin, what a dull thing it is to have a prophet who knows everything before it has happened? Not only can I never lie to you, but I can hardly even come to you afterwards and boast about it."
"I'm sorry. But I assure you, this time, your prophet waited for your dispatches just as eagerly as anyone else. Thank you for sending the letters...How did you find me? Have you been to Applegarth?"
"I was on the way there, but a fellow with an oxcart -- one of the sawyers -- said he had seen you come this way. Are you going farther? I'll walk with you if I may."
"Of course. I was just going to turn for home...Your letters were very welcome, but I still want to hear everything at first hand. It's strange to think that old Caw has gone at last. He's been sitting on that crag of his at Dumbarton for as long as I can remember. Do you think Gwarthegydd can hold his own now?"
"Against the Irish and the Saxons, yes, I wouldn't doubt him there. How he makes out with the seventeen other claimants to the kingdom is another matter." He grinned. "Sixteen, I suppose, since I clipped Heuil's wings for him."
"Make if fifteen. You can hardly count young Gildas, since he went to serve Blaise as his clerk."
"That's true. A clever boy, that, and was always Heuil's shadow. I fancy that when Blaise dies he'll be headed for a monastery. Perhaps it's as well. Like his brother, he has never loved me."
"Then it's to be hoped he can be trusted with the master's papers. You should get some of your own scribes to set your records down."
He cocked a brow at me. "What's this? A prophet's warning?"
"Nothing of the kind. A passing thought, merely. So Gwarthegydd is your man? There was a time when he threw Caw off and wooed the Irish kings."
"He was younger then, and Caw's hand was heavy. That's over. I think he will be well enough. What really matters at this stage is that he agrees with Urbgen..."
He talked on, telling me all the burden of the weeks away, while we walked slowly back across the downs with the mare following, and the great hound coursing, nose down, in widening circles round our path.
In essence, I thought, listening, nothing had changed. Not yet. Less and less did he need to come to me for counsel, but, as always since his boyhood, he needed the chance to talk over -- to himself as much as to me -- the course of events, and the problems of the newly built concourse of kingdoms as they arose. Usually, at the end of an hour or two, after a conversation to which I might have contributed much, or sometimes nothing at all, I could both hear and see that the knots were in a fair way to being unraveled. Then he would rise suddenly, stretch, give me farewell, and go; an abrupt disappearance with anyone else, but between us there was no need for more. I was the strong tree on which the eagle alighted in passing, for rest or thought. But now the oak showed a withered bough or two. How long would it take the sapling to be up to his weight?
He had come to the end of his narrative. Then, as if my thoughts had communicated themselves to him, he gave me a long look, with trouble in it. "Now, about you. How have you been during these last weeks? You look tired. Have you been ill again?"
"No. My health need not trouble you."
"I've thought more than once about my last visit to you. You said that it was this -- " he hesitated over it, " -- your assistant who 'saw' Heuil and his rabble at their work."
"Ninian. Yes, it was."
"And you yourself saw nothing?"
"Yes," I said. "Nothing."
"So you told me. I still find that strange. Don't you?"
"I suppose so. But if you remember, I wasn't well that day. I suppose I had not fully recovered from that chill I caught."
"He's been with you -- how long?"
"He came in September. That makes it, what? Nine months?"
"And you have taught him all you know?" I smiled. "Hardly. But I have taught him a good deal. You need never lack a prophet, Arthur." He did not smile in response. He was looking deeply troubled. He walked on across the flinty turf, with the mare's nose at his shoulder, and the hound running ahead. It was quartering the acres of furze with their loads of scented yellow blossom. Wherever it went it dislodged the tiny blue butterflies in clouds, and scattered the glossy scarlet of the ladybirds. There had been a plague of them that spring, and the furze bushes held them in their hundreds, like berries on the thorn.
Arthur was silent for a space, frowning at his thoughts. Then he came, apparently, to a sudden decision. "Do you trust him?"
"Ninian? Of course. Why not?"
"What do you know
about him?"
"As much as I need to," I said, perhaps a little stiffly. "I told you how he came to me. I was certain then, and I am still certain, that it was the god who drew us together. And I could not have an apter pupil. Everything I have to teach him he is more than eager to learn. I don't have to drive him; I have to hold him back." I glanced at him. "Why I would have thought you had seen the proof of his aptitude. His vision was true."
"Oh, I don't doubt his aptitude." He spoke dryly. I caught the faintest of emphasis on the last word.
"What then? What are you trying to say?" Even I was not prepared for the degree of cold surprise in my voice. He said quickly: "I'm sorry, Merlin. But I have to say this. I doubt his intentions toward you." Though he had signaled the blow, it still struck with paralyzing force. I felt the blood leave my heart. I stopped and faced him. Around us the scent of the gorse rose, sweet and strong. With it, unconsciously, I recognized thyme and sorrel and the crushed fescue as the bay mare put her head down and tore at a mouthful of grass.
I am not lightly made angry, least of all by Arthur. It was only a moment or two before I could say, levelly: "Whatever you have to say, you had certainly better say now. Ninian is more than my assistant, he bids fair to be my second self. If I have ever been a staff to your hand, Arthur, he will be such another when I am dead. Whether or not you like the boy -- and why should you not, you hardly know him? -- you may have to accept him so. I shall not live forever, and he has the power. He has power already, and it will grow."
"I know. That is what troubles me." He looked away from me again. I could not judge if it was because he could not face me. "Don't you see, Merlin? He has the power. It was he who had the vision. And you did not. You say you were tired, you had been ill. But when did your god ever take that into account? This was no trivial 'seeing'; it was not something that normally you would have missed. Because of it I was already there, on the borders of Rheged, when Caw died, and was able to support Gwarthegydd and prevent God knows how much trouble among those warring princes. So why did no vision come to you?"
"Must I keep repeating it? I --"
"Yes, you were ill. Why?"
Silence. A breeze came across the miles of downland, smelling of honey. Under it, through the immense stillness of the day, the grasses rustled. The mare cropped eagerly; the hound had come back to its master's feet and sat there, tongue lolling. Arthur stirred, and began to speak again, but I forestalled him.
"What are you saying?...No, don't answer. I know quite well what you are saying. That I have taken in this unknown boy, become infatuated, opened to him all the secret lore of drugs, and something of magic, and now he schemes to take my place and usurp my power. That he cannot be acquitted of using my own drugs against me. Is that it?"
Something of a smile touched his lips, though without lightening his grim look. "You never did deal in ambiguities, did you?"
"I never hid the truth, least of all from you."
"But then, my dear, you do not always see the truth."
For some reason the very gentleness of the reply touched me with foreboding. I looked at him, frowning. "I am willing to accept that. So now, since I hardly imagine that all this springs from some vague suspicion, I must assume that you know something about Ninian that I don't. If that's so, why not tell me, and let me be the judge of its importance?"
"Very well. But -- " Some change in his expression made me turn and follow his gaze. He was looking past me, away beyond the shoulder of the down, where a little valley held a stream fringed with birch and willow. Beyond this rose the green hill that sheltered Applegarth. Among the willows I caught a glint of blue, and then saw Ninian, who must have been up early after all, stooping over something at the edge of the stream. He straightened, and I saw that his hands were full of greenstuff. Watercress grew there, and wild mint among the king-cups. He stood for a moment, as if sorting the plants in his hands, then jumped the stream and ran away up the far slope, with his blue cloak flying out behind him like a sail.
"Well?" I said.
"I was going to say, let's go down there. We have to talk, and there must be more comfortable ways of doing it than standing face to face on top of the world. You unnerve me still, you know, Merlin, even when I know I'm right."
"That wasn't my intention. By all means let us go down."
He tugged the mare's head up from the grass, and led the way downhill to where the little wood crowded along the stream's edge. The trees were mostly birches, with here and there a twisted trunk of alder, overgrown with bramble and honeysuckle. One birch tree lay newly fallen, clean with silver bark. The King loosened a buckle from the mare's bit, tied one end of the rein to a sapling, then left her to graze, and came back to sit beside me on the birch trunk.
He came straight to the point. "Has Ninian ever told you anything about his parentage? His home?"
"No. I never pressed him. I suspected base origins, or at any rate bastardy -- he hasn't the peasant look or way of speech. But both you and I know how little those questions can be welcomed."
"I have not had your scruples. I have wondered about him since that day when I met him with you at Applegarth. Since I came home I have asked about him."
"And found out what?"
"Enough to know that he has been deceiving you from the beginning." Then, striking a fist to his knee, with a sudden violence of exasperation: "Merlin, Merlin, are you so blind? I would swear that no man could be so deceived, except that I know you...Even now, a few minutes ago, watching him down here by the stream, you saw nothing?"
"What should I see? I imagine he had been collecting alder bark. He knew we needed more, and you can see where that tree has been stripped. And he was carrying watercress."
"You see? Your eyes are good enough for that, but not to see what any other man in the world would have seen -- if not straight away, then within days of meeting him! I suspected it in those first few minutes there in your courtyard, while you told me the 'true dream,' and then when I made inquiries I found that it was true. We both watched the same person running uphill just now. You saw a boy carrying watercress, but what I saw was a girl."
I cannot recall at what point during his speech I knew what he was going to tell me; before he got halfway it came like a truth already known; the heat before the lightning strikes, the silence after the lightning that is filled with the coming thunder. What the wise enchanter with his god-sent visions had not perceived, the young man, versed in the ways of women, had seen straight away. It was true. I could only marvel, dumbly, that I had been so easy to deceive. Ninian. The dim-seen figure in the mist, so like the lost boy that I had greeted her and put the words "boy" and "Ninian" into her head before she could even speak. Told her I was Merlin; offered her the gift of my power and magic, gifts that another girl -- the witch Morgause -- had tried in vain to prise from me, but which I had hastened eagerly to lay at this stranger's feet.
Small wonder that she had taken time to think, to arrange her affairs, to cut her hair and change her dress and gather her courage, before coming to me at Applegarth. That she had refused to share the house, preferring the rooms off the colonnade with their separate stair; that she had taken no interest in Mora, but that the two of them were so easy together. Mora had guessed, then? I swept the thought aside as others crowded. The speed with which she had learned from me; the power, with all its suffering, already accepted with dread, with resignation, and finally with willing joy. The grave, gentle look, the gestures of a worship carefully offered, and as carefully constrained. The way she had gone from me when I spoke so lightly of women disturbing men's lives. Her swift condemnation of Guinevere, rather than of Bedwyr, for giving way to a hurtful love. Then, with quickening memory, the feel of her dark hair under my hand, the sweet bones of her face, and the grey eyes watching in the firelight, and the disturbing love that had so troubled me, and now need trouble me no more. It came to me, like the sunlight breaking through the birch trees on the forgotten bluebells of the copse wher
e, long ago, a girl had offered me love, then mocked me for impotence, that this time no jealous god need come between us. At last I was free to give, along with all the rest of the power and effort and glory, the manhood that until now had been the god's alone. The abdication I had feared, and feared to grudge, would not be a loss, but rather a new joy gained.
I came back to the sunshine and a different birch-wood and the faded bluebells of June, to see Arthur staring.
"You don't even look surprised. Did you guess?"
"No. But I should have done; if not by any of the signs that were obvious to you, then by the way I felt...and feel now." I smiled at his look. "Oh, yes. An old fool if you like. But now I know for certain that my gods are merciful."
"Because you think you love this girl."
"Because I love her."
"I thought you were a wise man," he said.
"And because I am a wise man, I know too well that love cannot be gainsaid. It's too late, Arthur. Whatever comes of it, it is too late. It has happened. No, listen. It has all come clear now, like sunlight on water. All the prophecies I have made, things in the future that I have foreseen with dread...I see them approaching me now, and the dread has gone. I have said often enough that prophecy is a two-edged sword; the gods are delphic; their threats, like their promises of fortune, turn in men's hands." I lifted my head and looked up through the gently moving leaves. "I told you that I had seen my own end. There was a dream I had once, a vision in the flame. I saw the cave in the Welsh hillside, and the girl my mother, whose name was Niniane, and the young prince my father, lying together. Then through and over the vision I saw myself, grey-haired, and a young girl with a cloud of dark hair, and closed eyes, and I thought that she, too, was Niniane. And so she was. So she is. Do you see? If she has any part in my end, then it will be merciful."
