The Road to Avalon

by Joan Wolf

  At Arthur’s almost imperceptible nod, he went on. “Very well. Constantine is as good a place as any to start.” He frowned a little, fixed his eyes on the little splash of sunlight on the table, and began.

  “Constantine came from a great Roman military family. When he was about your age,” and his eyes briefly scanned the politely attentive face of his grandson, “he was sent to Constantinople to attend the Emperor Theodosius’ Imperial School. This was a school for future Roman generals, and it included all the finest highborn barbarian princes, as well as Romans like Constantine. Alaric the Goth was one of the pupils.”

  “Alaric!” It was Cai’s quick exclamation. “Do you mean the Alaric who sacked Rome?”

  “Yes,” said Merlin dryly. “I do.”

  “He learned his lessons too well,” said Morgan. She was gazing now at her father, her small chin propped on her hand. She had begun to pay attention once Merlin started to talk about Constantine.

  “So it would seem,” Arthur murmured, and cast her a look of affectionate amusement.

  Merlin went back to gazing at the splash of sunlight. “The Imperial School flourished until the year 394,” he continued. “That was the year of the Battle of Aquileia against the traitor Arbogast. Constantine, along with most of the other boys from the school, fought in that terrible battle.” He looked from the sun spot to Cai and then to Arthur. “We will study that battle someday,” he promised.

  Arthur’s black eyebrows rose fractionally and he nodded.

  Merlin continued. “Constantine’s brave leadership at Aquileia caught the eye of the great Roman general Stilicho. He became a prodigy of Stilicho’s and rose high in the ranks of the army. Then, in 408, Stilicho was treacherously executed by the Emperor Honorius, and Constantine was banished from Rome. In 410, as you know”—he cocked an eyebrow at Morgan—“Alaric sacked Rome. The last of our own legions were recalled from Britain, and we were left to defend ourselves as best we could against the Saxons and the painted people from the north. Britain continued to beg the empire for help, however, and in 415 Honorius created the position of the Count of Britain. The count’s job was to assist the native British tribes defend what was left of Rome in Britain. In order to do this, Honorius detached a mobile field army from his legions in Gaul and sent it to Britain under the command of the count.”

  Merlin raised one elegantly groomed eyebrow. “The job of Count of Britain was not, as you correctly surmised, Arthur, a desirable one and so it was given to a man who had fallen from imperial favor: Constantine.”

  “Was Constantine successful in pushing back the barbarians?” asked Morgan.

  “He was successful against the Saxons, but then the painted people began to raid across the wall. We went north, to try to push them back . . . ”

  Merlin broke off. Even after all these years, it hurt him to speak of that terrible time. He had been eighteen years old when he first joined Constantine and he had loved the Roman more than any other man in the world. “Constantine was betrayed,” he said in a hard, cold voice. “It was said he was killed in a Pictish raid, but that was not true. It was the Celts. He was killed by one of Vortigern’s men. I could never prove it, but I know it is so. The Celts were afraid Constantine would restore the empire in Britain, and so they killed him and set up one of their own, Vortigern, as high king. If I had not gotten Constantine’s sons, Ambrosius and Uther, away to Armorica, they would have been killed too.”

  The rest of the lesson was spent in recounting the history of Vortigern’s rule and Ambrosius’ triumphant return. The children were satisfactorily attentive and Merlin dismissed them two hours before dinner.

  Morgan and Arthur went to their usual place by the river. They had constructed a platform in a beech tree the previous year, and they loved to sit there, high above the ground, screened from view by the beech’s branches, and watch the river, read, or talk. Morgan had changed into breeches and she and Arthur sat now, crossed-legged and identically dressed, throwing dice and talking.

  “Poor Father,” Morgan said as she idly rolled the dice in her palm. “I think he finds it very frustrating not to be on better terms with Uther.”

  “I think so too,” Arthur returned. They spoke in British, as they invariably did when they were alone. Arthur’s thick black hair slid down across his forehead and he pushed it back with a quick, characteristic gesture. “Why isn’t he, Morgan?”

  She lifted her head, and the sun, shining through the leaves of the tree, dappled her hair and face with light. Her hair had just been trimmed and it hung like soft brown silk halfway down her back. Almost absently, Arthur reached out and touched the shining, evenly trimmed ends. Morgan said seriously, “He used to be, I think, until he married my mother.”

  Arthur rubbed his thumb gently back and forth across the lock of hair he held. “What do you mean?”

  “I heard this from Justina, you understand,” Morgan cautioned with amusement. Justina was her nurse and an inveterate gossip.

  Arthur’s eyes mirrored the expression in hers. “Go on,” he prompted. He dropped her hair and she leaned back against the tree trunk and rested her arms around her drawn-up knees.

  “According to Justina,” she began, “my father and Uther used to be fast friends. As my father was friends with Ambrosius. When Ambrosius died and Uther became king and married Igraine, my father was his closest adviser. Then Merlin married my mother, and Uther and Igraine turned against him.”

  Arthur’s black brows drew together. “But why?”

  “Well, Nimue, my mother, was a granddaughter of Maximus, the Maximus the British legions raised to be emperor. Uther was afraid that Merlin was setting up a royal house to rival his own.” Morgan waved an insect away from her face. “Actually, Justina blames Igraine for the quarrel more than Uther.” She shrugged. “At any rate, both Uther and Igraine insisted that Nimue was an enchantress, to have seduced my poor old father into marriage. Father was furious, as you can well imagine. He does not think of himself as old.”

  Arthur grinned. “He does not,” he agreed.

  Morgan continued, matter-of-factly, “Then I was born and my mother died. Father and Uther made it up after a bit, but I don’t think Father ever quite forgave Igraine.”

  “She never comes here.” Arthur produced two pears and handed one to Morgan, who took a healthy bite.

  “I met her once,” she said around the pear in her mouth, “when I was little and my sister Morgause was married. She came to the wedding and left again almost immediately.” Morgan finished chewing and said penitently, “I shouldn’t be unkind. She has had a very sad life, Igraine. All those dead babies!”

  “You have never been unkind in your life,” Arthur said. His strong young teeth crunched into his own pear.

  “But isn’t it sad, Arthur?”

  “It’s sad for Igraine, I suppose.” Arthur took another bite. “But it’s even sadder for Britain. Uther has no son to follow him in the high kingship.”

  “Justina says it’s a judgment on Igraine for betraying her first husband, Gorlois.”

  Arthur’s fine nostrils quivered with derision. “Justina would.” He finished his pear, picked up the three dice, and began to roll them in his palm.

  Morgan watched his thin brown hand, a frown puckering her brow. “I think Father has started his own imperial school,” she said after a short pause. Her eyes were still on his hand. “And it’s not for Cai.”

  The hand stilled. “I know,” said Arthur, and she looked at his face. His hair had fallen forward again, almost to the level black line of his brows. Their eyes met. “He has some plan for me. I wish I knew what it was.”

  “Everyone thinks it is because you are his son.”

  “Well, I’m not.” They had talked of this before. “My mother told me too many times that I looked just like my father. I don’t look at all like Merlin.” There were two sharp lines between his brows. “My mother didn’t lie.”

  Morgan nodded solemnly and took a last bite out of
her pear. “We’ll find out who you are one day.” She tossed the core out of the tree and gave him a humorous look. “I liked it better when we were reading Virgil.”

  The frown lifted from Arthur’s face. “Pius Aeneas,” he said. “So noble. And so tedious.”

  “Don’t let Merlin catch you saying that,” she warned, and he laughed.

  “Never!” he said in Latin. Then, rising to his feet, “It’s getting late. We’ll miss dinner if we don’t hurry.”

  The two children climbed out of the tree, Morgan as nimbly as Arthur, and began to walk hand in hand back to the house.

  As time went on, Morgan continued to attend Merlin’s lectures, but left the boys to themselves when they went into the field to learn the physical arts of war. Ector was their chief instructor at first; then, as the boys improved, Merlin began to import a series of “experts” for the various disciplines of war and leadership. Over the years, Avalon became accustomed to a procession of strange men who would spend a few months instructing Arthur and Cai before they departed as mysteriously as they had come.

  The boys learned the correct use of the lance, pike halberd-ax, long-sweep sword from horseback, short sword for afoot, and the long sword. They learned about siege engines and circumvallation and entrenchment. They learned how to use their voices so they could reach every corner of a battlefield and still be understood. And every day Ector had them out on the grass wrestling. The sport that Arthur and Cai had once played merely as a release for excess boyish energy now became a daily occupation of forced excellence.

  “Excellence” was Merlin’s favorite word. “Your Christian religion teaches you why you are in this world: to serve God,” he told them. “But the thing you must teach yourselves is that the highest service is to excel. It was to excel in everything that you were born into this world. If you do not excel, then you were born in vain.”

  Merlin’s lectures were always addressed impartially to both boys, but Arthur knew the old man was talking to him. Why this should be so, he did not know. But that it was so, he was certain.

  And it was in his nature to excel. He could feel it in himself as he answered the challenges constantly posed by his teachers. Even the wrestling with Cai became a challenge, and it was not long before Arthur had learned to use leverage to compensate for his slighter weight.

  He could ride better than Cai, too. He could ride better than the cavalryman Merlin brought to Avalon to teach them. It was the use of horse in battle that most interested Arthur. He read all of Xenophon’s comments on cavalry, and he questioned Merlin relentlessly on Constantine’s use of horse.

  “The Battle of Adrianople established definitively the value of heavy cavalry,” Merlin told his pupil. “It was one of the most nearly total defeats ever suffered by a Roman army. The cavalry of the Goths cut the legions to pieces. From Adrianople on, cavalry formed an important part of the Roman army. Stilicho used it at Aquileia when he defeated Arbogast.”

  Arthur, however, drew his own conclusions from Merlin’s talk. “It seems to me that the Romans never learned the proper use of heavy cavalry,” he said to Cai one chill winter day when the boys were in the baths after some strenuous work with lances. “Constantine had light cavalry, but he never used it in direct attack.”

  “Don’t say that to Merlin,” Cai replied humorously. “You know how he feels about everything Roman.”

  “I know.” Arthur ducked under the water and came up, his dark head sleek as a seal’s. He gave Cai an ironic look. “The empire is more his religion than Christ.”

  Cai sat on the side of the bath. At fourteen he was very tall, with shoulders that would one day be massive as his father’s. At present, however, he had an unfinished look. He had grown so quickly that the rest of his body had never quite caught up to his height. He was intelligent, kind, steady as a rock. He was a year older than Arthur, but had resigned himself without resentment to the fact that he would never quite be the younger boy’s equal.

  Arthur got out of the bath and began to towel his hair. Cai took the opportunity to study the scars on the other boy’s back. If Arthur knew he was looking at them, he would be angry. He hated anyone to notice his scars, and he had a collection of them. There was one above his right eyebrow, one on the side of his chin, and a particularly wicked-looking one on his left knee. Cai had asked only once about them. It was then that he had discovered that Arthur had the nastiest tongue of anyone he had ever met.

  He had learned the origin of those scars from Ector, and had immediately forgiven Arthur his bad temper. Over the years his feelings for the younger boy had coalesced into a mixture of pride, admiration, and protectiveness—the feelings of a generous-hearted older brother toward a particularly brilliant younger sibling.

  Arthur tossed his hair back and began to dry his shoulders with another towel. At thirteen he had the body of a dancer, light-framed, graceful, quick.

  “In some ways Merlin is right,” he said to Cai as he began to dress. “Romanitas still stands for civilization. It stands for regulated government and the freedom to live in peace. But the empire itself is crumbling. We in Britain are only a small part of the fight against the darkness.”

  Cai too began to dress. “My father says that the Saxons are massing for a strike in the spring. The high king is trying to gather the Celtic princes to his standard to oppose them.”

  Arthur stared at him, a line like a sword between his straight black brows. “If only I were not so young!”

  Cai reached out to put a hand on the other boy’s shoulder. “Don’t worry,” he said comfortably. “The Saxons will wait for you, Arthur.” And he reached for his own tunic.

  Chapter 4

  “LEADERSHIP is always the management of men,” said Merlin. “Failure in the management of men cannot be compensated for by success in other things. A leader must always be aware of his public function. He cannot consider his affairs as private, even to himself.”

  The window was open and the soft air of July came blowing in. Merlin’s pupil appeared to be listening attentively, but Merlin was certain his thoughts were elsewhere. The sound of laughter floated in the window with the breeze and Merlin looked out into the courtyard and saw his daughter. She was carrying a basket of berries and her pony was following her, trying to eat them.

  Arthur was now Merlin’s sole pupil. It had been a very long time since Morgan had come to class. And this year Cai, now sixteen, had gone off to join the high king’s army. The Saxons grew ever more aggressive, and Uther was hard-put to contain them.

  “The Celtic princes are sorry now for the error they made when they invited Hengist and his kind to settle in Britain,” Merlin said, following this line of thought. He looked at Arthur, inviting a reply.

  The boy’s long lashes lowered, half-screening his eyes. “Vortigern may have been a Celt, but he was following good Roman precedent,” he answered. “The painted people of the north were pouring across the wall and Vortigern could not contain them. So he invited one set of barbarians in to harry the other.” He raised his lashes and looked at Merlin. “It worked often enough for Rome.”

  Merlin stared back at his grandson’s light eyes and deeply suntanned face. Even now, after six years, it was difficult for him to know what Arthur was thinking. “It worked for Rome, but it didn’t work for Vortigern. Why, Arthur?”

  The boy had evidently worked that one out long ago; he didn’t even have to think about his reply. “Vortigern did not have Rome’s resources,” he said. “Nor did he have any understanding of what was happening in the world around him. The barbarian tribes had been on the move for a hundred years before his time: the Huns, the Goths, the Alanni, pushing westward, always westward.” Arthur’s thin brown fingers played with the stylus he was holding. “Vortigern unwittingly opened the door of Britain to a part of this mass migration of people, the Saxons.” He put the stylus down. “He let the wolf into the fold,” he concluded soberly, “and now they come by the thousands, pushing ever further in from the c
oast, sacking our towns and laying waste the country, harrying our people as wolves harry the sheep in a time of famine.”

  “A very good analysis,” Merlin said after a moment. “The Celtic princes saw their mistake only when it was too late. Then they killed Vortigern and welcomed Ambrosius back from Armorica and installed him as high king. They learned at last that it is Roman leadership and Roman ability that are Britain’s only hope against the Saxons.”

  It was the gospel he had preached to Arthur for six long years. This time Arthur answered him quietly, almost casually, “The only hope for us lies in our forgetting that we are Celts or Romans and remembering only that we are Britons.”

  Merlin was staring at his grandson’s profile when there came the sound of a dog’s joyous bark from the courtyard. A smile touched Arthur’s mouth. “Horatius has been reunited with Morgan,” he said.

  “Run along,” Merlin said abruptly. “It’s too lovely a day to be indoors.”

  In less than two minutes he saw Arthur join Morgan in the courtyard.

  They took their ponies and went out to the open country, away from the vale of Avalon and into the hills. There was a particular place they often visited, a wild valleyside where the flowers were riotous and there were tufts of heather, and it was there that they stopped and unbridled their ponies to let them graze. Horatius stretched out in the shade near Morgan, and Arthur did the same, resting his head in her lap as she leaned back against a fir tree. It was cool here, out of the sun, and he closed his eyes in pleasure, confiding the weight of his head to her with long-accustomed ease. She put her hand on his black hair, tousled by the ride and now on a level with her knees.

  “Father was unusually brief this morning,” she said.

  “There’s nothing more he can teach me.” His voice was matter-of-fact. Sleepy. He was clearly enjoying the touch of her hand. “He has his instrument, all tuned and ready. Now we must see what he plans to do with it.”