The Merlin Chronicles: Box Set (All Three Novels)

by Daniel Diehl

  At this point the conversation broke down into uncontrollable laughter and Beverley’s attention wandered across the room to where Jason was deep in animated conversation with the king, Merlin, and another man who stood with the ramrod straight back of a professional soldier. She also noticed that the men had been served drinks, but rather than the goblets used by the women they were drinking out of what appeared to be cow’s horns. The horns Jason and the newcomer were holding looked like they came off of a normal cow, but Merlin’s was twice that size; at least two feet in length. When the king turned momentarily, Beverley saw a gleam of light flash off of the drinking horn in his hand; only then did she realize that it may have been shaped like a horn but it was, in fact, made of gold, carved with intricate designs and set with some kind of gemstones.

  “Help yourself to more ale, Jason. It’s there to be shared by all.” The king waved his hand idly in the direction of the big earthenware pitcher from which Merlin was refilling his massive drinking horn. Before setting the ale back on the table near where the four men stood, he held it out toward Jason who shook his head and waved it away.

  Merlin winked at the king and said “I fear, my Lord, that young Master Jason does not appreciate the benefits of strong ale.”

  The fourth man, who had been lost in thought, scratched his temple and spoke. “Look, I don’t care what this thing is, or how it works; if it can kill a dragon I’m all for it. And I’m sure that at least some of my men can learn how to operate it. I just need to understand what it is.”

  The speaker’s name was Griffudd and as far as Jason had been able to gather he commanded a division of three hundred soldiers. Although Griffudd lived at Baenin and dealt directly with Arthur when the kingdom was at peace, during times of war he took his orders from Arthur’s uncle – a man named Ambrosius - who was the over-all head of the army and field commander during battles. Another man, named Llewellyn, who was nowhere to be seen, commanded Arthur’s mounted troops which were apparently called equites. At least that was what Jason had gathered from the general flow of conversation. Laying his empty drinking horn on the table, Jason tried to explain for the third time the concept of a ballista. He had already tried to compare the ballista to a huge crossbow because he knew the Romans had used both ballistae and crossbows, but either they had not used either weapon in the British Isles or everybody had forgotten what they were. But that was why he had agreed to come here - to give the Britons a military edge without introducing modern technology.

  “Ok. Think of a bow, but think of it lying horizontally rather than the way you hold it when you shoot it.” Arthur and Griffudd nodded silently, their eyes focused on Jason’s hands. “Now imagine a long post attached to the center of the bow. Along the top of this post there is a shallow depression to lay the arrow in. At the back end of the post is a hook that holds the bowstring tight until you’re ready to fire it.” Looking at the faces of his audience, he asked “Does that make any sense?”

  “I understand the concept” the king nodded, squinting his eyes in concentration. “But how is this ballista device better than a regular bow?”

  “Because it’s five times the size of a regular bow and way too powerful for anyone to draw it back by hand. This is a machine, not a handheld device. The arrow it throws is half again as long as a man’s arm, twice as big around as your thumb and made of iron.”

  Griffudd scratched the back of his head, looking unsure. “And you think this thing can launch an arrow hard enough to break through the scales of a dragon and go deep enough to kill it?”

  For the first time in more than an hour Merlin interjected himself into the conversation.

  “Don’t doubt the power of Jason’s machine. The process of killing a dragon is slightly more complex than his short explanation might lead you to believe, but I stood next to him when he killed one of the creatures with a ballista exactly like the one he’s describing. When the bolt struck the dragon I watched the creature consume itself in its own fire and fall from the sky – dead before it hit the ground.”

  Arthur laid a hand on Jason’s shoulder, offering a lopsided smile. “If Merlin says this ballista of yours can kill a dragon, then it can kill a dragon. You are now my chief military engineer. What should we do next?”

  Blinking in amazement, Jason tried not to stammer when he answered. “Well, I guess we should build one so I can demonstrate it for you. But if you’re going to go into battle against the dragons you’re going to need a lot more than one of them.”

  “How many?”

  “I don’t know. I understand that the dragons appear by the dozen, so we have to have enough to effectively counter all of them. And we want to spread them out across the battlefield, so I suppose at least twenty, or preferably thirty, of them.”

  Arthur was mentally tallying up the cost of this new military expenditure in terms of material and manpower. “And how many men does it take to operate one of your ballistae?”

  “Umm, at least two. And they’re really heavy so if you expect to move them around the battlefield we’ll have to put wheels on them, or something, and then you’re going to need at least three men per ballista.”

  “This gives me a great deal to think about, but not even a king should have to think on an empty stomach. We can talk more about it in the morning, but right now you must be exhausted. One of Gwenhwyfar’s ladies in waiting will show you and your wife to your room so you can refresh yourselves and rest before dinner. Tonight you will enjoy the hospitality of my court and my kingdom; defeating the dragons can wait until tomorrow.”

  With two sharp claps of his hands King Arthur brought the discussion – and the strangest day in Jason and Beverley’s lives – to a close.

  Chapter Eight

  Beverley furrowed her brow and picked what appeared to be a grain of sand from the tip of her tongue. Staring at it for a second before setting it carefully on the edge of her wooden plate, she turned to Merlin and asked “Is it me or is this bread gritty? I’m sure there was sand in the bread at dinner last night and I just found some again.”

  An hour earlier the queen’s lady in waiting, Bronwyn, had tapped lightly on Jason and Beverley’s door, delivering Merlin’s invitation for them to join him in his laboratory for breakfast. When they arrived they found the great magician whistling tunelessly, happily wiping a thin layer of dust from his bookshelves, placing the volumes he had brought back from the twenty-first century next to the ones already there. One end of a long wooden table, its rough-hewn top worn smooth from decades of use, had been cleared and set with three wooden plates and three turned wooden goblets. Between them were a large pitcher and two platters, one containing a selection of cheeses and the other a large, freshly baked loaf of bread that filled the room with its warm, rich smell. Now, nearly an hour later, Jason and Beverley were working their way through their second meal in the distant past, and feeling less than enthusiastic about it. Jason complained about the absolute impossibility of making sense of the day without multiple cups of steaming hot coffee and Beverley plucked yet another tiny bit of grit from her lip.

  “What are these little stones in the bread?”

  “You should know the answer to that, my dear; you’re an archaeologist, after all. We grind the wheat into flower between two millstones and, inevitably, as the stones wear against each other, tiny bits of granite get mixed in with the flour.

  “Oh, God, that can’t be good for your teeth.”

  “But the cheese is great.” Trying valiantly to resign himself to a world without coffee and smiling happily, Jason cut another chunk of the soft, brie-like cheese and popped it into his mouth. As he swallowed the cheese he lifted the goblet but halted halfway to his lips. “But this beer is just weird. It’s flat. The beer we had yesterday was flat, too.”

  “Children, children. For all of your scholastic achievements you know so little about my time. It isn’t beer, it’s ale – there isn’t any hops in it – and it isn’t flat, it’s ‘still’. Ale a
nd beer are both still until you find a way to give it a head…and as much as I came to enjoy your foamy beer, that won’t happen for another fourteen centuries.” Stretching sideways toward the nearby workbench running the length of the outside wall, he chuckled and added “So learn to enjoy it because it isn’t going to get any better for a long, long time.”

  When he lurched back into his seat he was holding a golden torque much like the ones the king and queen had been wearing. Taking a moment to polish it for the third time this morning, he pulled the ends apart just far enough to slip it over his neck. After adjusting it so the decorative ends hung at the front of his throat he asked “So, how do I look?”

  Jason’s eyebrows shot skyward and he reared his head back to stare at the gleaming necklace. “You get one of those too? The only people I saw with them yesterday were Arthur and Guinevere – or, I guess I should start calling her Gwenhwyfar.”

  “Think of it as a medal, a reward for long years of service to the royal family. I left it behind when I had to flee from Morgana all those centuries ago and I’ve felt a bit naked ever since.” Patting the thick golden rope, he muttered “But it’s all better now.”

  Beverley leaned forward, staring at the intricately worked torque. The main body was carved gold, worked to look like a twisted rope. Unlike the torques worn by the king and queen, the finials on Merlin’s were in the shape of serpents’ heads.

  “Yours has snake’s heads on the end, the king’s had lions and the queen’s had dogs. Is there some kind of significance that I’m missing?”

  Merlin smiled at Beverley and nodded. “Very observant, my dear. Arthur’s lions signify bravery and Gwenhwyfar’s dogs are for gentleness and obedience.”

  When he failed to complete the explanation, Beverley prompted him. “And yours?”

  “Ah, while I hesitate to brag, the serpents would indicate cunning and cleverness.”

  “Cunning, as in sneaky?” Beverley had leaned forward, resting her chin in the palm of her hand, a huge grin breaking across her face. “As in never telling people what’s really going on in that head of yours?”

  While Beverley and Merlin were goading each other gently and finishing their breakfasts, Jason had begun moving around the room, looking at the contents of the dozens of shelves hung at random positions and heights along the walls of the laboratory. There were literally hundreds of pottery containers crammed onto the shelves or sitting on an array of tables and benches. There were pots filled with extracts, elixirs, spirits, essences and oils. There were jars brimming with mixtures, extractions, excretions, concoctions and decoctions, and tubs of all sizes containing things ground and pulverized, sliced and chopped and concentrates of ingredients both common and rare. From the ceiling hung bunches of dried plants, herbs and flowers of every description. Jason considered asking about the nature of the things in the jars but decided he might not want to know the answer, and it was not until he came to the single shelf holding fourteen or fifteen books that he turned to Merlin.

  “You don’t have nearly as many books here as you brought with you to the twenty-first century. What happened to the rest of them?”

  “I don’t have them yet. And I won’t have them until I rob Morgana’s library; remember?”

  “Oh, right. So that hasn’t happened yet? Are you still going to do that?”

  Merlin raised one hand to cover a small smile when he mumbled “Not yet, but we will.”

  Only half listening, Jason had resumed his examination of the room. Now, after inspecting the one small window that looked out onto the green pastures beyond the villa, he was pacing off the length and width of the laboratory. While Beverley and Merlin watched him walk back and forth, muttering to himself, glancing constantly at the wall joining the laboratory to the villa’s main building. Suddenly he stopped and looked up.

  “I know this place.” Waving his arms around, pointing at the walls and the window, his voice became tight with excitement. “This is the last place I excavated. This is the addition to the villa that I couldn’t figure out and that’s the window.”

  “What window?”

  “The one that I found the pieces of broken glass from; the one where I saw your face.”

  Moving across the room with Beverley in tow, Merlin patted Jason on the shoulder.

  “But it isn’t broken.”

  “But it will be. Time works both ways. Someday this will all be gone and buried under two feet of dirt.”

  “But not for centuries. Stop worrying about things that won’t happen for another thousand years. Make the most of your time here.” Walking toward a small door in the outside wall, he continued “Come. Let’s take a walk around Baenin. I’ll introduce you to the man who will be building the ballista.”

  Stepping through the low, rough-hewn door they came into what had once been the massive courtyard garden in the center of the Roman villa complex. Originally surrounded on all sides by ranges of long, low buildings, the courtyard covered at least two acres and had, in its prime, contained a huge ornamental garden complete with walkways, decorative shrubs and flowers. Now, a century after its Roman occupants had fled, one entire range of barns and storage buildings had been robbed out and another was in the process of being dismantled, their stones and timbers being used to build Arthur’s new capital inside the high walls of the ancient hill fort. The ornamental garden, too, had made way for more practical things; the old flagstone walkways now separated carefully tended vegetable and herb gardens and one corner near the door to Merlin’s workshop had obviously been allotted to the selection of plants used in the sorcerer’s spells and potions.

  Following Merlin’s lead, they trod the stone path across the gardens and tramped through the dusty rubble where a range of buildings had once stood. To the east and west of them, plowmen whistled to teams of great, placid oxen as they cut the soft springtime ground with crude wooden plows tethered to the beast’s massive shoulders, digging long, straight furrows for the planting yet to come. Far to the west, a group of teenage boys shouted to their dogs, directing them to drive a few errant sheep back into the flock. As charming as these scenes were, they were not the reason Merlin had brought them here. Directly in front of them, just to the north of the villa complex, rose the ancient Iron Age mound that would eventually come to be called Barbury hill fort. But today it was known as Baenin, and from where the three of them stood they could see dozens of men working on the tall, wooden fortification walls. Striding through the rubble of the stables and across the grassy plain beyond, Merlin kept up a running commentary on the scene before them.

  “The area inside the fortification walls covers more than twelve acres. There are two rows of steep, concentric palisades and ditches running all the way around the fort. These are already twelve feet in height and Arthur has built fifteen-foot-tall stockade walls around the top palisade and the workers are about half finished with walls the same height around the lower one. This will give us two sets of walls, each one more than twenty-five feet in height, separated by a ten foot wide ditch that will be faced with smooth stone. If anybody manages to get past the first stockade wall, they’ll be trapped in the ditch and the men can pick them off from the walkway around the inner wall.”

  Wide-eyed, Jason turned to Beverley. “It’s a fully developed wooden castle. I didn’t think anything this sophisticated would exist for another five hundred years. It’s amazing.”

  Moving faster now, Merlin led them around the east side of the massive manmade hill toward a semicircular wall of earth as tall as Jason’s head and about thirty feet in diameter. As they rounded the northern-most end of the wall they came to a fortified gatehouse made of heavy logs, its flat roof surrounded by a chest high wall of tightly woven wicker. Directly in front of them, an imposing pair of gates protecting the entrance to Baenin stood open as cartloads of stones and timbers moved from the demolition sites at the villa up the steep track leading to the expansive plateau that formed the top of the hill fort. Puffing their way up
the steep incline, Merlin, Jason and Beverley moved past the lower and upper palisade walls. When they emerged at the top, spread out in front of them was the half built town that would be Arthur’s new capital.

  Constant use by carts and workmen had pounded the four roadways bisecting the little town into hard, bare streets. When combined with the ring road running immediately inside the stockade wall, the streets formed a neat grid, dividing the settlement into nine rectangles that struck Jason as looking like a tic-tac-toe grid, what the English called naughts and crosses.

  Around the perimeter of seven of the grid’s neat rectangles were more than a hundred and fifty, one or two room houses in various stages of completion. Behind the cottages, at the center of each rectangle, were individual garden plots, small pastures and animal enclosures. One of the two remaining rectangles was given over to rows of stables and small paddocks. But it was toward the final rectangle, located at the very center of the grid, that Merlin led his little parade of gaping tourists. At one corner of the rectangle was a large, cross shaped outline of foundation stones; each of its arms roughly forty feet in length. This, Merlin explained as they walked past, would be a church open to the entire community. A few paces further along was a single story building with exterior walls of neatly dressed stone. Above them workmen were reassembling roof trusses that had clearly been taken from one of the barn complexes at the old villa. At a glance, Jason guessed the building was about thirty feet wide and sixty feet long. Merlin motioned for them to precede him through the opening where the door would be.

  “This is Arthur’s palace; his private quarters. The public meeting hall and offices will be in an adjacent building.”

  Stepping inside, they found themselves standing on a neat floor of smooth flagstones laid directly on the bare earth. At one end of the room two doorways led to more rooms beyond. In the center of the great hall a rectangular outline of large, neatly cut stones marked the location of a fire pit. Standing next to it was a short, bald man who was waving his arms in the air, shouting at a team of workmen standing on the top edge of the narrow stone wall and struggling to position one end of a roof truss.