by Mary Stewart
She went scarlet. For the first time her gaze dropped from his. "I did not see you, sir. I told you, I was watching Merlin."
There was a flat pause of silence, as when a hand is laid across the harp-strings, killing the sound. I saw Arthur's mouth open and shut, then the flash of a vivid laughter in his face. She, looking steadfastly at the table, saw nothing of it. He shot me a look brimful of amusement, then drained his cup and sat back in the chair. His voice never altered, but the challenge had gone; he had lowered his sword.
"But you knew that Merlin was not likely to accept you as a pupil, even if the Lady could be persuaded to let you leave her cloisters."
"Yes. I knew that. I had no hope. But after that I settled even less easily into the life there among the other women. They seemed, oh, so contented to be penned there with the small magics and the prayers and spells, and looking backward always toward the times of legend...It's hard to explain. If there is something within oneself, something burning to be free, one knows of it." A look straight at him, equal to equal. "You must have known it. I was still unborn, hammering at the egg, to get out into the air. But the only way I could have escaped from theIsland would have been if some man had offered for me, and for that I would not have gone, nor would my father have made me."
He gave a brief nod, of acceptance and, I thought, of understanding. "So?"
"It wasn't easy, even, to find time to be alone. I would watch and wait my chance, and slip out sometimes, only to be alone with my own thoughts, and with the water and sky...Then, on the night when Queen Guinevere was missing, and the Island was in uproar, I — I'm afraid all I thought of was my chance to get out without being missed...There was a boat I sometimes borrowed. I went out. I knew no one would see me in the mist. Then Merlin came along the Lake road, and spoke to me." She paused. "I think you must know the rest."
"Yes. So when chance — the god, you would say, if you are Merlin's pupil — made Merlin mistake you for the boy Ninian, and ask you to come and learn from him, you made the second chance for yourself."
She bent her head. "When he spoke first, I was confused. It was like a dream. Afterwards I realized what had happened, that he had mistaken me for some boy he had known."
"How did you get free of the shrine in the end? What did you tell the lady?"
"That I had been called for higher service. I did not explain. I let her think I was going back to my father's house. I think she imagined that I had to go back to the River Isles, perhaps to be married to my cousin, who rules there now. She did not ask. She put no rub in my way."
No, I thought to myself; that imperious lady would be glad to rid herself of an adept who must have bidden fair to outshine her. Among those white-robed girls this young enchantress must have shone out like a diamond in white flax.
Behind me, the redbreast flew back to his perch on the window-sill, and tried a stave of song. I doubt if either Nimue or Arthur heard it. His questions had changed direction: "Do you need fire for the vision, or can you see, like Merlin, in the small drops of dew?"
"It was in dewdrops that I saw the vision of Heuil."
"And that was a true one. So. It seems you already have something of the greater power. Well, there is no fire, but will you look for me again, and tell me now if there is any other warning in the stars?"
"I can see nothing to order."
I bit my lip. It was my own voice as a young man, confident, perhaps a little pompous. He recognized it, too. He said gravely: "I am sorry. I should have known."
He got to his feet then, and reached for the cloak that I had laid across a chair. There was a perceptible flaw in her composure, as she hurried to help him with it. He was saying goodbye to me, but I hardly heard him. My own composure bade fair to be in ruins. I, who was never at a loss, had not had time to think what I must say.
The King was in the doorway. The sun caught him and sent his shadow streaming back between us. The great emeralds on Caliburn's hilt flashed in the light.
"King Arthur!" said Nimue sharply.
He turned. If he found her tone peremptory he gave no sign of it.
She said: "If your sister, the lady Morgan, comes to Camelot, lock up your sword and watch for treachery."
He looked startled, then said harshly: "What do you mean by that?"
She hesitated, looking in her turn surprised by what she had said. Then she lifted her palms out, in a gesture like a shrug. "My lord, I don't know. Only that. I am sorry."
"Well..." said Arthur. He looked across at me, lifted his brows, then shrugged in his turn, and went out.
Silence, so long that the robin hopped right into the room and onto the table where the breakfast lay, barely touched.
"Nimue," I said.
She looked at me then, and I saw that although she had stood in no awe of the King, she was afraid to meet my eyes. I smiled at her, and saw to my amazement the grey eyes fill with tears.
I put out both my hands. Hers met them. In the end there was no need of words. We did not hear the King's horse go down the hill, or, much later, Mora come back from the market to find the breakfast still uneaten.
BOOK IV Bryn Myrddin 1
So, toward the end of my life, I found a new beginning. A beginning it was in love, for both of us. I had no skill, and she, vowed from childhood to be one of theLake maidens, had hardly thought of love. But what we had was enough and more than enough. She, for all she was many years younger than I, seemed happy and satisfied; and I, calling myself in private dotard, old fool, wisdom dragged at mockery's chariot wheels, knew that I was none of these: between myself and Nimue was a bond stronger than any between the best-matched pair in the flower of their age and strength. We were the same person. We were part of each other as are night and daylight, dark and dawn, sun and shadow. When we lay together we lay at the edge of life where opposites fuse and make new entities, not of the flesh, but of the spirit, the issue as much of the ceaseless traffic of mind with mind, as of the body's pleasure.
We did not marry. Looking back now, I doubt if either of us even thought of cementing the relationship in this way; it was not clear what rites we could have used, what faster bond we could have hoped for. With the passing of the days and nights of that sweet summer, we found ourselves closer and yet more close, as if cast in a common mould: we would wake in the morning and know we had shared the same dream; meet at evening and each know what the other had learned and done that day. And all the time, as I believed, each of us harboured our own private and growing joy: I to watch her trying the wings of power like a strong young bird feeling for the first time the mastery of air; she to receive this waxing strength, and to know, with love but without pity, that at the same time the power was leaving me.
So the month of June flew by, and then high summer was with us. The cuckoo vanished from the brakes, the meadow-sweet was out with its heavy honey smell, the bees droned all day in the blue borage and the lavender. Nimue called to Varro to set a saddle on the chestnut — Arthur had made her a present of him — then she kissed me and rode off towards the Lake. It was, of course, known now that the former servant of the Goddess was with Merlin at Applegarth.
There must have been speculation and gossip, some of it no doubt malicious — and (I was sure) all of it amazed at the impulse that had taken a young and lovely girl into the ageing enchanter's bed. But the High King had stated publicly, and had moreover made it clear by gifts and visits, that our relationship had his approval; so even the Lady of the shrine had not attempted to close her doors against Nimue; she had, rather, made her welcome, in the hope (Nimue suggested with amusement) that the shrine might fall heir to some of Merlin's secrets. Nimue herself did not often leave Applegarth, either for theIsland or the court at Camelot. But she was hardly to be blamed if she was a trifle flown with the power and excitement of these first months, and as a young bride enjoys showing off her new status among her maiden colleagues, so, I guessed, Nimue was eager to revisit her friends among the Goddess's ancillae. She had
not yet been to the court of Camelot without me; I guessed what she did not say, that even with the King's support she was doubtful of her reception there. But on three occasions she had been back to theIsland, and this time, she told me, she would see about the promise of some plants from the garden near the holy well. She would be back at dusk. I saw her off, then checked over my bag of medicines, put on a straw hat against the sun, and set out across the hill to visit the house of a woman who was recovering from a bout of fever. I went blithely. The day was fine but fresh, and lark-song poured down from a clear sky like rillets of bright water. I reached the hilltop and followed the track between gorse bushes ablaze with flowers. A flock of goldfinches fluttered and dipped through a patch of tall, seeding thistles, making the sweet, plaintive call that the Saxons call "chirm," or "charm." The breeze smelled of thyme.
That is all I remember. Next — it seemed all in a moment — the world was dark, and the stars were out, with that clear sparkle that one can feel pricking down into the eyes and brain. I was lying on my back, flat on the turf, staring up at them. The gorse bushes were all round me, humped and dark, and gradually, as if sense were coming back from a limitless distance, I felt the stab of their prickles biting into hands and arms. Starlight sparked from the dew. Everywhere there was a great silence, like a held breath. Then above me, high in the black sky, another point of light began to grow. The darkness lit. Into this single, waxing point of light the smaller stars, like metal dust to a lodestone, like a swarm into the hive, fled, till in all the sky there was no other light. My eyes dazzled. I could not move, but lay there, it seemed alone on the curve of the world, watching the star. Then, intolerably bright, it started from its place, and swiftly, like a brand flung across the sky, it arched from the zenith to the earth's edge, trailing behind it a great train of light shaped like a dragon.
I heard someone call out: "The Dragon! The Dragon! See where the Dragon falls!" and knew the voice was my own.
Then lights, and hands, and Nimue's face, white in the lantern light, with Varro behind her, and a youth I vaguely recognized as the shepherd who watched his flock on the down. Then voices. "Is he dead?" "No. Come, quickly, cover him. He's cold." "He's dead, mistress." "No! Never! I'll never believe it! Do as I say!" Then, with anguish: "Merlin, Merlin!" And a man's voice, fearfully: "Who will tell the King?"
After that a gap of time, and my own bed, and the taste of hot wine with herbs infused in it, and another long gap, this time of sleep.
Now we come to the part of my chronicle that is the most difficult to tell. Whether or not (as the popular belief went) the falling comet with the dragon's tail betokened the true end of Merlin's greater powers, I know that, looking back at the days and nights — more, the weeks and months — that followed, I cannot tell for certain whether what I remember was reality, or a dream. It was the year of my journeying with Nimue. Looking back now, I see it, scene after scene, like reflections sliding past a boat, blurred and repeated, and broken, as the oars stir the water's glass. Or like the moments just before sleep, when scene after scene swims up into the mind's eye, the true memories like dreams, and the dreams as real as memory.
I still only have to close my eyes to see Applegarth, serene in the sun, with the silver lichen thick on the old trees, where, the green fruit, slowly swelling, shone like lamps, and in the sheltered garth lavender and sage and sweet briar breathed their scent into the air as thickly as smoke. And on the hill behind the tower the thorn trees, those strange thorns that flower in winter and have small flowers with stamens like nails. And the doorway where the girl Nimue first stood shyly, with the light behind her, like the gentle ghost of the drowned boy who might have been a greater enchanter than she. And the ghost itself; the "boy Ninian" who still haunts my memories of the garth, alongside the slender girl who sat at my feet in the sun.
For perhaps a week after my falling fit on the hilltop, I spent most of my time sitting on the carved seat in the garth. Not from weakness, but because Nimue insisted, and I needed time to think.
Then one evening, in the warm dusk, I called her to me. She nestled down in her old place, on a cushion at my feet. Her head was against my knee, and my hand stroked the thick hair. This was growing now, and had reached her shoulder-blades. I wondered daily at my old blindness that had not seen the curves of her body, and the sweet lines of throat and brow and wrist.
"You've been busy this week." "Yes," she said. "Housewife's jobs. Cutting the herbs and bunching them to dry." "Are they done?" "Just about. Why?" "I've been idle all this time while you have been working, but I have been thinking." "About?" "Among other things, Bryn Myrddin. You have never been there. So before the summer ends, I think we must leave Applegarth, you and I —" "Leave Applegarth?" She started away from me, looking up in dismay. "Do you mean live at Bryn Myrddin again...both of us live there?" I laughed. "No. Somehow I don't see that happening. Do you?" She subsided against my knee, her head bent. She was silent for a while, then she said, muffled: "I don't know. I've never glimpsed even a dream of it. But you have told me that you will die there. Is that what you mean?" I put out a hand again and touched her hair. "I know I have said that that will happen, but I've had no warning of it yet. I feel very well, better than for many months. But look at it like this: when my life does end, yours must begin. And for that to happen you must do one day as I did, and enter the crystal cave of vision. You know this. We've spoken of it before."
"Yes, I know." She did not sound reassured. "Well," I told her cheerfully, "we shall go to Bryn Myrddin, but at the end of our journey. Before we get there we shall have traveled widely, and seen many places and many things. I want you to visit the places where I have passed my life, and see the things I have seen. I have told you as much as I can; now you must see as much as I am able to show you. Do you understand?" "I think so. You are giving me the sum of your life, on which to build my own." "Exactly that. For you, the stones on which to build the life you want; for me, the crown and harvest." "And when I have it all?" she asked, subdued. "Then we shall see." Amused, I caressed her hair again. "Don't look like that, child, take it lightly. It's a wedding journey, not a funeral procession. Our travels may have a purpose, but we'll take them for pleasure, be sure of that. I've had this in mind sometime; it wasn't just suggested by this last sick turn of mine. We've been happy here in Applegarth, and no doubt we shall be happy here again, but you are too young to fold your wings here year after year. So we'll go traveling. I have a suspicion that my real object is just to show you the places I've known and loved, for no more serious reason than that I have known and loved them."
She sat up, looking easier. Her eyes began to sparkle. She was young. "A kind of pilgrimage?"
"You could call it that."
"Tintagel, you mean, and Rheged, and the place where you found the sword, and the lake where you laid it to wait for the King?"
"More than that. God help us both, we must sail toBrittany. My story and the High King's has been bound up — as yours will be, too — in that great sword of his. I have to show you where the god himself first came to me, with the first sign of the sword. Which is why we should go soon. The seas are calm, but in another month or so the gales will start."
She shuddered. "Then by all means let us go now." Then, suddenly, all uncomplicated pleasure, a young woman setting out on an exciting journey, with no other thought in her head: "And you'll have to take me to Camelot. I really haven't got anything fit to wear..."
So next day I spoke with Arthur's courier, and not very long after that Arthur himself came to tell me that escort and ship were ready, and that we could go.
We set sail from theIsland at the end of July, and Arthur and the Queen rode down to the harbour to see us on our way. Bedwyr was with us, his face a mixture of relief and misery: he had been sent to escort us across the sea, and he was like a man released from the torment of a drug which he knows will kill him, but for which, night and day, he craves. He was charged with dispatches from Arthur to his cou
sin King Hoel of Brittany, and would escort us as far as Hoel's court at Kerrec.
When we came to the quay the ship was still loading, but soon all was ready, and Arthur bade us farewell, with an admonition to Nimue to "take care of him" which brought forcibly back to me memories of the voyage I had made with Arthur himself a squalling baby in his wet-nurse's arms, and King Hoel's escort scowling at the noise, and trying to give me due greeting through it all. Then he kissed Bedwyr, with nothing apparent in his look save warm affection, and Bedwyr muttered something, holding him, before turning to take his leave of the Queen. Smiling by the King's side, she had command of herself; her light touch of Bedwyr's hand, and the serene "Godspeed" she wished him showed barely more warmth than that given to Nimue, and rather less than to me. (Since the Melwas affair, she had shown a pretty gratitude and liking, such as a girl might have for her elderly father.) I said my goodbyes, cast a wary eye at the smooth summer sea, and went on board. Nimue, already pale, came with me. It needed no prophetic vision to foretell that we would see nothing of one another until the ship docked in the Small Sea.
It is no part of this tale to follow our travels league by league. Indeed, as I have explained, I cannot do so. We went to Brittany, that I know, and were welcomed there by King Hoel, and spent the autumn and winter in Kerrec, and I showed Nimue the roads through the Perilous Forest, and the humble inn where Ralf, my page, guarded the child Arthur through the dangerous hidden years. But here already the memories are confused; as I write I can see them all, crossing each other like ghosts that crowd, century by century, into an old dwelling house. Each is as clear as the others. Arthur as a baby, asleep in the manger straw. My father watching me in the lamplight, asking, "What will come to Britain?" The druids at their murderous work in Nemet. Myself, a frightened boy, hiding in the cattle-shed. Ralf riding post-haste through the trees with messages for Hoel to send to me. Nimue beside me in the budding woods of April, lying on green turf in a forest glade. The same glade, with the white doe fleeing like magic, to draw danger away from Arthur. And across this, confusedly, other memories or other dreams: a white stag with ruby eyes; the deer fleeing through the dusk under the oaks at Nodens' shrine; magic on magic. But through all, like a torch relit for another quest, the stars, the smiling god, the sword.
