The Hollow Hills

1

There was a lark singing somewhere high above. Light fell dazzling against my closed eyelids, and with it the song, like a distant dance of water. I opened my eyes. Above me arched the sky, with its invisible singer lost somewhere in the light and floating blue of a spring day. Everywhere was a sweet, nutty smell which made me think of gold, and candle flames, and young lovers. Something, smelling not so sweet, stirred beside me, and a rough young voice said: “Sir?”

I turned my head. I was lying on turf, in a hollow among furze bushes. These were full of blossom, golden, sweet-smelling flames called out by the spring sun. Beside me a boy knelt. He was perhaps twelve years old, dirty, with a matted shag of hair, and clad in some coarse brown cloth; his cloak, made of skins roughly stitched together, showed rents in a dozen places. He had a stick in one hand. Even without the way he smelled I could have guessed his calling, for all around us his herd of goats grazed among the furze bushes, cropping the young green prickles.

At my movement he got quickly to his feet and backed off a little, peering, half wary and half hopeful, through the filthy tangle of hair. So he had not robbed me yet. I eyed the heavy stick in his hand, vaguely wondering through the mists of pain whether I could help myself even against this youngster. But it seemed that his hopes were only for a reward. He was pointing at something out of sight beyond the bushes. “I caught your horse for you. He's tied over there. I thought you were dead.”

I raised myself to an elbow. Round me the day seemed to swing and dazzle. The furze blossom smoked like incense in the sun. Pain seeped back slowly, and with it, on the same tide, memory.

“Are you hurt bad?”

“Nothing to matter, except my hand. Give me time, I'll be all right. You caught my horse, you say? Did you see me fall?”

“Aye. I was over yonder.” He pointed again. Beyond the mounds of yellow blossom the land rose, smooth and bare, to a rounded upland broken by grey rock seamed with winter thorn. Behind the shoulder of the land the sky had that look of limitless and empty distance which spoke of the sea. “I saw you come riding up the valley from the shore, going slow. I could see you was ill, or maybe sleeping on the horse. Then he put his foot wrong — a hole, likely — and you came off. You've not been lying long. I'd just got down to you.”

He stopped, his mouth dropping open. I saw shock in his face. As he spoke I had been pushing myself up till I was able to sit, propped by my left arm, and carefully lift my injured right hand into my lap. It was a swollen, crusted mass of dried blood, through which fresh red was running. I had, I guessed, fallen on it when my horse had stumbled. The faint had been merciful enough. The pain was growing now, wave on wave grinding, with the steady beat and drag of the tide over shingle, but the faintness had gone, and my head, though still aching from the blow, was clear.

“Mother of mercy!” The boy was looking sick. “You never did that falling from your horse?”

“No. It was a fight.”

“You've no sword.”

“I lost it. No matter. I have my dagger, and a hand for it. No, don't be afraid. The fighting's done. No one will hurt you. Now, if you'll help me onto my horse, I'll be on my way.”

He gave me an arm as I got to my feet. We were standing at the edge of a high green upland studded with furze, with here and there stark, solitary trees thrust into strange shapes by the steady salt wind. Beyond the thicket where I had lain the ground fell away in a sharp slope scored by the tracks of sheep and goats. It made one side of a narrow, winding valley, at the foot of which a stream raced, tumbling, down its rocky bed. I could not see what lay at the foot of the valley, but about a mile away, beyond the horizon of winter grass, was the sea. From the height of the land where I stood one could guess at the great cliffs which fell away to the shore, and beyond the land's farthest edge, small in the distance, I could see the jut of towers.

The castle of Tintagel, stronghold of the Dukes of Cornwall. The impregnable fortress rock, which could only be taken by guile, or by treachery from within. Last night, I had used both.

I felt a shiver run over my flesh. Last night, in the wild dark of the storm, this had been a place of gods and destiny, of power driving towards some distant end of which I had been given, from time to time, a glimpse. And I, Merlin, son of Ambrosius, whom men feared as prophet and visionary, had been in that night's work no more than the god's instrument.

It was for this that I had been given the gift of Sight, and the power that men saw as magic. From this remote and sea-locked fortress would come the King who alone could clear Britain of her enemies, and give her time to find herself; who alone, in the wake of Ambrosius, the last of the Romans, would hold back the fresh tides of the Saxon Terror, and, for a breathing space at least, keep Britain whole. This I had seen in the stars, and heard in the wind: it was I, my gods had told me, who would bring this to pass; this I had been born for. Now, if I could still trust my gods, the promised child was begotten; but because of him — because of me — four men had died. In that night lashed by storm and brooded over by the dragon-star, death had seemed commonplace, and gods waiting, visible, at every corner. But now, in the still morning after the storm, what was there to see? A young man with an injured hand, a King with his lust satisfied, and a woman with her penance beginning. And for all of us, time to remember the dead.

The boy brought my horse up to me. He was watching me curiously, the wariness back in his face.

“How long have you been here with your goats?” I asked him.

“A sunrise and a sunrise.”

“Did you see or hear anything last night?”

Wariness became, suddenly, fear. His eyelids dropped and he stared at the ground. His face was closed, blank, stupid. “I have forgotten, lord.”

I leaned against my horse's shoulder, regarding him. Times without number I had met this stupidity, this flat, expressionless mumble; it is the only armour available to the poor. I said gently: “Whatever happened last night, it is something I want you to remember, not to forget. No one will harm you. Tell me what you saw.”

He looked at me for perhaps ten more seconds of silence. I could not guess what he was thinking. What he was seeing can hardly have been reassuring; a tall young man with a smashed and bloody hand, cloakless, his clothes stained and torn, his face (I have no doubt) grey with fatigue and pain and the bitter dregs of last night's triumph. All the same the boy nodded suddenly, and began to speak.

“Last night in the black dark I heard horses go by me. Four, I think. But I saw no one. Then, in the early dawn, two more following them, spurring hard. I thought they were all making for the castle, but from where I was, up there by the rocks, I never saw torches at the guard-house on the cliff top, or on the bridge going across to the main gate. They must have gone down the valley there. After it was light I saw two horsemen coming back that way, from the shore below the castle rock.” He hesitated. “And then you, my lord.”

I said slowly, holding him with my eyes: “Listen now, and I will tell you who the horsemen were. Last night, in the dark, King Uther Pendragon rode this way, with myself and two others. He rode to Tintagel, but he did not go by the gate-house and the bridge. He rode down the valley, to the shore, and then climbed the secret path up the rock and entered the castle by the postern gate. Why do you shake your head? Don't you believe me?”

“Lord, everyone knows the King had quarrelled with the Duke. No one could get in, least of all the King. Even if he did find the postern door, there's none would dare open it to him.”

“They opened last night. It was the Duchess Ygraine herself who received the King into Tintagel.”

“But — ”

“Wait,” I said. “I will tell you how it happened. The King had been changed by magic arts into a likeness of the Duke, and his companions into likenesses of the Duke's friends. The people who let them into the castle thought they were admitting Duke Gorlois himself, with Brithael and Jordan.”

Under its dirt the boy's face was pale. I knew that for him, as for most of the people of this wild and haunted country, my talk of magic and enchantment would come as easily as stories of the loves of kings and violence in high places. He said, stammering: “The King — the King was in the castle last night with the Duchess?”

“Yes. And the child that will be born will be the King's child.”

A long pause. He licked his lips. “But — but — when the Duke finds out...”

“He won't find out,” I said. “He's dead.”

One filthy hand went to his mouth, the fist rammed against his teeth. Above it his eyes, showing white, went from my injured hand to the bloodstains on my clothing, then to my empty scabbard. He looked as if he would have liked to run away, but did not dare even do that. He said breathlessly: “You killed him? You killed our Duke?”

“Indeed no. Neither I nor the King wished him dead. He was killed in battle. Last night, not knowing that the King had already ridden secretly for Tintagel, your Duke sallied out from his fortress of Dimilioc to attack the King's army, and was killed.”

He hardly seemed to be listening. He was stammering: “But the two I saw this morning...It was the Duke himself, riding up from Tintagel. I saw him. Do you think I don't know him? It was the Duke himself, with Jordan, his man.”

“No. It was the King with his servant Ulfin. I told you the King took the Duke's likeness. The magic deceived you, too.”

He began to back away from me. “How do you know these things? You — you said you were with them. This magic — who are you?”

“I am Merlin, the King's nephew. They call me Merlin the enchanter.”

Still backing, he had come up against a wall of furze. As he looked this way and that, trying which way to run, I put out a hand.

“Don't be afraid. I'll not hurt you. Here, take this. Come, take it, no sensible man should fear gold. Call it a reward for catching my horse. Now, if you'll help me onto his back, I'll be on my way.”

He made a half movement forward, ready to snatch and run, but then he checked, and his head went round, quick as a wild thing's. I saw the goats had already stopped grazing and were looking eastwards, ears pricked. Then I heard the sound of horses.

I gathered my own beast's reins in my good hand, then looked round for the boy to help me. But he was already running, whacking the bushes to chase the goats in front of him. I called to him and, as he glanced over his shoulder, flung the gold. He snatched it up and then was gone, racing up the slope with his goats scampering round him.

Pain struck at me again, grinding the bones of my hand together. The cracked ribs stabbed and burned my side. I felt the sweat start on my body, and round me the spring day wavered and broke again in mist. The noise of approaching hoofs seemed to hammer with the pain along my bones. I leaned against my horse's saddle, and waited.

It was the King riding again for Tintagel, this time for the main gate, and by daylight, with a company of his men. They came at a fast canter along the grassy track from Dimilioc, four abreast, riding at ease. Above Uther's head the Dragon standard showed red on gold in the sunlight. The King was himself again; the grey of his disguise had been washed from his hair and beard, and the royal circlet glinted on his helmet. His cloak of kingly scarlet was spread behind him over his bay's glossy flanks. His face looked still, calm and set; a bleak enough look, and weary, but with over all a kind of contentment. He was riding to Tintagel, and Tintagel was his at last, with all that lay within the walls. For him, it was an end.

I leaned against my horse's shoulder and watched them come level with me.

It was impossible for Uther not to see me, but he never glanced my way. I saw, from the troop behind him, the curious glances as I was recognized. No man was there but must have some inkling now of what had happened last night in Tintagel, and of the part I had played in bringing the King to his heart's desire. It was possible that the simpler souls among the King's companions might have expected the King to be grateful; to reward me; at the very least to recognize and acknowledge me. But I, who had dealt all my life with kings, knew that where there is blame as well as gratitude, blame must be allotted first, lest it should cling to the King himself. King Uther could only see that, by what he called the failure of my foreknowledge, the Duke of Cornwall had died even while he, the King, was lying with the Duchess. He did not see the Duke's death for what it was, the grim irony behind the smiling mask that gods show when they want men to do their will. Uther, who had small truck with gods, saw only that by waiting even one day he might have had his way with honour and in the sight of men. His anger with me was genuine enough, but even if it were not, I knew that he must find someone to blame: what ever he felt about the Duke's death — and he could hardly fail to see it as a miraculously open gate to his marriage with Ygraine — he must in public be seen to show remorse. And I was the public sacrifice to that remorse.

One of the officers — it was Caius Valerius, who rode at the King's shoulder — leaned forward and said something, but Uther might never have heard. I saw Valerius look doubtfully back at me, then with a half-shrug, and a half-salute to me, he rode on. Unsurprised, I watched them go.

The sound of hoofs dwindled sharply down the track towards the sea. Above my head, between one wing-beat and the next, the lark's song shut off, and he dropped from the bright silence to his rest in the grass.

Not far from me a boulder jutted from the turf. I led the horse that way and somehow, from the boulder's top, scrambled into the saddle. I turned the beast's head east by north for Dimilioc, where the King's army lay.

2

Gaps in memory can be merciful. I have no recollection of reaching the camp, but when, hours later, I swam up out of the mists of fatigue and pain I was within doors, and in bed.

I awoke to dusk, and some faint and swimming light that may have been firelight and candle flame; it was a light hazed with colour and drowned with shadows, threaded by the scent of wood-smoke and, it seemed distantly, the trickle and splash of water. But even this warm and gentle consciousness was too much for my struggling senses, and soon I shut my eyes and let myself drown again. I believe that for a while I thought I was back in the edges of the Otherworld, where vision stirs and voices speak out of the dark, and truth comes with the light and the fire. But then the aching of my bruised muscles and the fierce pain in my hand told me that the daylight world still held me, and the voices that murmured across me in the dusk were as human as I.

“Well, that's that, for the moment. The ribs are the worst of it, apart from the hand, and they'll mend soon enough; they're only cracked.”

I had a vague feeling that I knew the voice. At any rate I knew what he was: the touch on the fresh bandages was deft and firm, the touch of a professional. I tried to open my eyes again, but the lids were leaden, gummed together and sticky with sweat and dried blood. Warmth came over me in drowsy waves, weighting my limbs. There was a sweet, heavy smell; they must have given me poppy, I thought, or stunned me with smoke before they dressed the hand. I gave up, and let myself drift back from the shore. Over the dark water the voices echoed, softly.

“Stop staring at him and bring the bowl nearer. He's safe enough in this state, never fear.” It was the doctor again.

“Well, but one's heard such stories.” They were speaking Latin, but the accents were different. The second voice was foreign; not Germanic, nor yet from anywhere on the Middle Sea. I have always been quick at languages, and even as a child spoke several dialects of Celtic, along with Saxon and a working knowledge of Greek. But this accent I could not place. Asia Minor, perhaps? Arabia?

Those deft fingers gently turned my head on the pillow, and parted my hair to sponge the bruises. “Have you never seen him before?”

“Never. I hadn't imagined him so young.”

“Not so young. He must be two and twenty.”

“But to have done so much. They say his father the High King Ambrosius never took a step, in the last year or two, without talking it over with him. They say he sees the future in a candle flame and can win a battle from a hilltop a mile away.”

“They would say anything, of him.” The doctor's voice was prosaic and calm. Brittany, I thought, I must have known him in Brittany. The smooth Latin had some overtone I remembered, without knowing how. “But certainly Ambrosius valued his advice.”

“Is it true he rebuilt the Giants' Dance near Amesbury, that they call the Hanging Stones?”

“That's true enough. When he was a lad with his father's army in Brittany he studied to be an engineer. I remember him talking to Tremorinus — that was the army's chief engineer — about lifting the Hanging Stones. But that wasn't all he studied. Even as a youth he knew more about medicine than most men I've met who practise it for a livelihood. I can't think of any man I'd rather have by me in a field hospital. God knows why he chooses to shut himself away in that godforsaken corner of Wales now — at least, one can guess why. He and King Uther never got on. They say Uther was jealous of the attention his brother the King paid Merlin. At any rate, after Ambrosius' death, Merlin went nowhere and saw no one, till this business of Uther and Gorlois' Duchess. And it seems as if that's brought him trouble enough...Bring the bowl nearer, while I clean his face. No, here. That's right.”

“That's a sword cut, by the look of it.”

“A glancing scratch from the point, I'd say. It looks worse than it is, with all the blood. He was lucky there. Another inch and it would have caught his eye. There. It's clean enough; it won't leave a scar.”

“He looks like death, Gandar. Will he recover?”

“Of course. How not?” Even through the lulling of the nepenthe, I recognized the quick professional reassurance as genuine. “Apart from the ribs and the hand, it's only cuts and bruising, and I would guess a sharp reaction from whatever has been driving him the last few days. All he needs is sleep. Hand me that ointment there, please. In the green jar.”

The salve was cool on my cut cheek. It smelled of valerian. Nard, in the green jar...I made it at home. Valerian, balm, oil of spikenard...The smell of it took me dreaming out among the mosses at the river's edge, where water ran sparkling, and I gathered the cool cress and the balsam and the golden moss...

No, it was water pouring at the other side of the room. He had finished, and had gone to wash his hands. The voices came from farther off.

“Ambrosius' bastard, eh?” The foreigner was still curious. “Who was his mother, then?”

“She was a king's daughter, Southern Welsh, from Maridunum in Dyfed. They say he got the Sight from her. But not his looks; he's a mirror of the late King, more than Uther ever was. Same colouring, black eyes, and that black hair. I remember the first time I saw him, back in Brittany when he was a boy; he looked like something from the hollow hills. Talked like it, too, sometimes; that is, when he talked at all. Don't let his quiet ways fool you; it's more than just book-learning and luck and a knack of timing; there's power there, and it's real.”

“So the stories are true?”

“The stories are true,” said Gandar flatly. “There. He'll do now. No need to stay with him. Get some sleep. I'll do the rounds myself, and come and take a look at him again before I go to bed. Good night.”

The voices faded. Others came and went in the darkness, but these were voices without blood, belonging to the air. Perhaps I should have waited and waked to listen, but I lacked the courage. I reached for sleep and drew it round me like a blanket, muffling pain and thought together in the merciful dark.

When I opened my eyes again it was to darkness lit by calm candle-light. I was in a small chamber with a barrel roof of stone and rough-hewn walls where the once bright paint had darkened and flaked away with damp and neglect. But the room was clean. The floor of Cornish slate had been well scrubbed, and the blankets that covered me were fresh-smelling and thick, and richly worked in bright patterns.

The door opened quietly, and a man came in. At first, against the stronger light beyond the doorway, I could only see him as a man of middle height, broad shouldered and thickly built, dressed in a long plain robe, with a round cap on his head. Then he came forward into the candle-light, and I saw that it was Gandar, the chief physician who travelled with the King's armies. He stood over me, smiling.

“And about time.”

“Gandar! It's good to see you. How long have I slept?”

“Since dusk yesterday, and now it's past midnight. It was what you needed. You looked like death when they brought you in. But I must say it made my job a lot easier to have you unconscious.”

I glanced down at the hand which lay, neatly bandaged, on the coverlet in front of me. My body was stiff and sore inside its strapping, but the fierce pain had died to a dull aching. My mouth was swollen, and tasted still of blood mingled with the sick-sweet remnants of the drug, but my headache had gone, and the cut on my face had stopped hurting.

“I'm thankful you were here to do it,” I said. I shifted the hand a little to ease it, but it was no use. “Will it mend?”

“With the help of youth and good flesh, yes. There were three bones broken, but I think it's clean.” He looked at me curiously. “How did you come by it? It looked as if a horse had trodden on you and then kicked your ribs in. But the cut on your face, that was a sword, surely?”

“Yes. I was in a fight.”

His brows went up. “If that was a fight, then it wasn't fought by any rules I ever heard of. Tell me — wait, though, not yet. I'm on fire to know what happened — we all are — but you must eat first.” He went to the door and called, and presently a servant came in with a bowl of broth and some bread. I could not manage the bread at first, but then sopped a little of it in the broth, and ate that. Gandar pulled a stool up beside the bed, and waited in silence till I had finished. At length I pushed the bowl aside, and he took it from me and set it on the floor.

“Now do you feel well enough to talk? The rumours are flying about like stinging gnats. You knew that Gorlois was dead?”

“Yes.” I looked about me. “I'm in Dimilioc itself, I take it? The fortress surrendered, then, after the Duke was killed?”

“They opened the gates as soon as the King got back from Tintagel. He'd already had the news of the skirmish, and the Duke's death. It seems that the Duke's men, Brithael and Jordan, rode to Tintagel as soon as the Duke fell, to take the Duchess the news. But you'd know that; you were there.” He stopped short, as he saw the implications. “So that was it! Brithael and Jordan — they ran into you and Uther?”

“Not into Uther, no. They never saw him; he was still with the Duchess. I was outside with my servant Cadal — you remember Cadal? — guarding the doors. Cadal killed Jordan, and I killed Brithael.” I smiled, wryly, with my stiff mouth. “Yes, you may well stare. He was well beyond my weight, as you can see. Do you wonder I fought foul?”

“And Cadal?”

“Dead. Do you think otherwise that Brithael would have got to me?”

“I see.” His gaze told again, briefly, the tally of my hurts. When he spoke, his voice was dry. “Four men. With you, five. It's to be hoped the King counts it worth the price.”

“He does,” I said. “Or he will soon.”

“Oh, aye, everyone knows that. Give him time only to tell the world that he is guiltless of Gorlois' death, and to get him buried with honour, so that he can marry the Duchess. He's gone back to Tintagel already, did you know? He must have passed you on the road.”

“He did,” I said dryly. “Within a yard or two.”

“But didn't he see you? Or surely — he must have known you were hurt?” Then my tone got through to him. “You mean he saw you, like that, and left you to ride here alone?” I could see that he was shocked, rather than surprised. Gandar and I were old acquaintances, and I had no need to tell him what my relationship had been with Uther, even though he was my father's brother. From the very beginning, Uther had resented his brother's love for his bastard son, and had half feared, half despised my powers of vision and prophecy. He said hotly: “But when it was done in his service — ”

“Not his, no. What I did, I did because of a promise I made to Ambrosius. It was a trust' he left with me, for his kingdom.” I left it at that. One did not speak to Gandar of gods and visions. He dealt, like Uther, with things of the flesh. “Tell me,” I said, “those rumours you were talking of. What are they? What do people think happened at Tintagel?”

He gave a half-glance over his shoulder. The door was shut, but he lowered his voice. “The story goes that Uther had already been in Tintagel, with the Duchess Ygraine, and that it was you who took him there and put him in the way of entering. They say you changed the King by enchantment into a likeness of the Duke, and got him past the guards and into the Duchess's bedchamber. They say more than that; they say she took him to her bed, poor lady, thinking he was her husband. And that when Brithael and Jordan took her the news of Gorlois' death, there was 'Gorlois' sitting large as life beside her at breakfast. By the Snake, Merlin, why do you laugh?”

“Two days and nights,” I said, “and the story has grown already. Well, I suppose that is what men will believe, and go on believing. And perhaps it is better than the truth.”

“What is the truth, then?”

“That there was no enchantment about our entry into Tintagel, only disguise, and human treachery.”

I told him the story then, exactly as it had happened, with the tale I had given the goat-herd. “So you see, Gandar, I sowed that seed myself. The nobles and the King's advisers must know the truth, but the common folk will find the tale of magic, and a blameless Duchess, better to believe — and, God knows, easier — than the truth.”

He was silent for a while. “So the Duchess knew.”

“Or we would not have got in,” I said. “It shall not be said, Gandar, that this was a rape. No, the Duchess knew.”

He was silent again, for rather longer. Then he said, heavily: “Treachery is a hard word.”

“It is a true one. The Duke was my father's friend, and he trusted me. It would never have occurred to him that I would help Uther against him. He knew how little I cared for Uther's lusts. He could not guess that my gods demanded that I should help him satisfy this one. Even though I could not help myself, it was still treachery, and we shall suffer for it, all of us.”

“Not the King.” He said it positively. “I know him. I doubt if the King will feel more than a passing guilt. You are the one who is suffering for it, Merlin, just as you are the one who calls it by its name.”

“To you,” I said. “To other men this will remain a story of enchantment, like the dragons which fought at my bidding under Dinas Emrys, and the Giants' Dance which floated on air and water to Amesbury. But you have seen how Merlin the King's enchanter fared that night.” I paused, and shifted my hand on the coverlet, but shook my head at the question in his face. “No, no, let be. It's better already. Gandar, one other truth about that night must be known. There will be a child. Take it as hope, or take it as prophecy, you will see that, come Christmas, a boy will be born. Has he said when he will marry her?”

“As soon as it's decent. Decent!” He repeated the word on a short bark of laughter, then cleared his throat. “The Duke's body is here, but in a day or two they'll carry him to Tintagel to bury him. Then, after the eight days' mourning, Uther is to marry the Duchess.”

I thought for a moment. “Gorlois had a son by his first wife. Cador, he was called. He must be about fifteen. Have you heard what is to become of him?”

“He's here. He was in the fight, beside his father. No one knows what has passed between him and the King, but the King gave an amnesty to all the troops that fought against him in the action at Dimilioc, and he has said, besides, that Cador will be confirmed Duke of Cornwall.”

“Yes,” I said. “And Ygraine's son and Uther's will be King.”

“With Cornwall his bitter enemy?”

“If he is,” I said wearily, “who is to blame him? The payment may well be too long and too heavy, even for treachery.”

“Well,” said Gandar, suddenly brisk, gathering his robe about him, “that's with time. And now, young man, you'd better get some more rest. Would you like a draught?”

“Thank you, no.”

“How does the hand feel?”

“Better. There's no poison there; I know the feel of it. I'll give you no more trouble, Gandar, so stop treating me like a sick man. I'm well enough, now that I've slept. Get yourself to bed, and forget about me. Good night.”

When he had gone I lay listening to the sounds of the sea, and trying to gather, from the god-filled dark, the courage I would need for my visit to the dead.

Courage or no, another day passed before I found the strength to leave my chamber. Then I went at dusk to the great hall where they had put the old Duke's body. Tomorrow he would be taken to Tintagel for burial among his fathers. Now he lay alone, save for the guards, in the echoing hall where he had feasted his peers and given orders for his last battle.

The place was cold, silent but for the sounds of wind and sea. The wind had changed and now blew from the northwest, bringing with it the chill and promise of rain. There was neither glazing nor horn in the windows, and the draught stirred the torches in their iron brackets, sending them sideways, dim and smoking, to blacken the walls. It was a stark, comfortless place, bare of paint, or tiling, or carved wood; one remembered that Dimilioc was simply the fortress of a fighting man; it was doubtful if Ygraine had ever been here. The ashes in the hearth were days old, the half-burned logs dewed with damp.

The Duke's body lay on a high bier in the center of the hall, covered with his war cloak. The scarlet with the double border of silver and the white badge of the Boar was as I had seen it at my father's side in battle. I had seen it, too, on Uther as I led him disguised into Gorlois' castle and his bed. Now the heavy folds hung to the ground, and beneath them the body had shrunk and flattened, no more than a husk of the tall old man I remembered. They had left his face uncovered. The flesh had sunk, grey as twice-used tallow, till the face was a moulded skull, showing only the ghost of a likeness to the Gorlois I had known. The coins on his eyes had already sunk into the flesh. His hair was hidden by his war helm, but the familiar grey beard jutted over the badge of the Boar on his chest.

I wondered, as I went forward soft-footed over the stone floor, by which god Gorlois had lived, and to which god he had gone in dying. There was nothing here to show. Christians, like other men, put coins on the eyes. I remembered other death-beds, and the press of spirits waiting round them; there was nothing here. But he had been dead three days, and perhaps his spirit had already gone through that bare and windy gap in the wall. Perhaps it had already gone too far for me to reach it and make my peace.

I stood at the foot of his bier, the man I had betrayed, the friend of my father Ambrosius the High King. I remembered the night he had come to ask me for my help for his young wife, and how he had said to me: “There are not many men I'd trust just now, but I trust you. You're your father's son.” And how I had said nothing, but watched the firelight stain his face red like blood, and waited my chance to lead the King to his wife's bed.

It is one thing to have the gift of seeing the spirits and hearing the gods who move about us as we come and go; but it is a gift of darkness as well as light. The shapes of death come as clear as those of life. One cannot be visited by the future without being haunted by the past; one cannot taste comfort and glory without the bitter sting and fury of one's own past deeds. Whatever I had thought to encounter near the dead body of the Duke of Cornwall, it would hold no comfort and no peace for me. A man like Uther Pendragon, who killed in open battle and open air, would think no more of this than a dead man dead. But I, who in obeying the gods had trusted them even as the Duke had trusted me, had known that I would have to pay, and in full. So I had come, but without hope.

There was light here from the torches, light and fire. I was Merlin; I should be able to reach him; I had talked with the dead before. I stood still, watching the flaring torches, and waited.

Slowly, all through the fortress, I could hear the sounds dwindling and sinking to silence as men finally went to rest. The sea soughed and beat below the window, the wind plucked at the wall, and ferns growing there in the crevices rustled and tapped. A rat scuttled and squeaked somewhere. The resin bubbled in the torches. Sweet and foul, through the sharp smoke, I smelled the smell of death. The torchlight winked blank and flat from the coins on the dead eyes.

The time crawled by. My eyes ached with the flame, and the pain from my hand, like a biting fetter, kept me penned in my body. My spirit was pared down to nothing, blind as the dead. Whispers I caught, fragments of thought from the still and sleepy guards, meaningless as the sound of their breathing, and the creak of leather or chime of metal as they stirred involuntarily from time to time. But beyond these, nothing. What power I had been given on that night at Tintagel had drained from me with the strength that had killed Brithael. It had gone from me and was working, I thought, in a woman's body; in Ygraine, lying even now beside the King in that grim and battered near-isle of Tintagel, ten miles to the south. I could do nothing here. The air, solid as stone, would not let me through.

One of the guards, the one nearest me, moved restlessly, and the butt of his grounded spear scraped on the stone. The sound jarred the silence. I glanced his way involuntarily, and saw him watching me.

He was young, rigid as his own spear, his fists white on the shaft. The fierce blue eyes watched me unwinkingly under thick brows. With a shock that went through me like the spear striking I recognized them. Gorlois' eyes. It was Gorlois' son, Cador of Cornwall, who stood between me and the dead, watching me steadily, with hatred.

In the morning they took Gorlois' body south. As soon as he was buried, Gandar had told me, Uther planned to ride back to Dimilioc to rejoin his troops until such time as he could marry the Duchess. I had no intention of waiting for his return. I called for provisions and my horse and, in spite of 'Gandar's protestations that I was not yet fit for the journey, set out alone for my valley above Maridunum and the cave in the hill which the King had promised should remain, in spite of everything, my own.

3

No one had been inside the cave during my absence. This was hardly to be wondered at, since the people held me in much awe as an enchanter, and moreover it was commonly known that the King himself had granted me the hill Bryn Myrddin. Once I left the main road at the water-mill, and rode up the steep tributary valley to the cave which had become my home, I saw no one, not even the shepherd who commonly watched his flocks grazing the stony slopes.

In the lower reaches of the valley the woods were thick; oaks still rustled their withered leaves, chestnut and sycamore crowded close, fighting for the light, and hollies showed black and glinting between the beeches. Then the trees thinned, and the path climbed along the side of the valley, with the stream running deep down on the left, and to the right slopes of grass, broken by scree, rising sharply to the crags that crowned the hill. The grass was still bleached with winter, but among the rusty drifts of last year's bracken the bluebell leaves showed glossy green, and blackthorn was budding. Somewhere, lambs were crying. That, and the mewing of a buzzard high over the crags, and the rustle of the dead bracken where my tired horse trod, were all the sounds in the valley. I was home, to the solace of simplicity and quiet.

The people had not forgotten me, and word must have gone round that I was expected. When I dismounted in the thorn grove below the cliff and stabled my horse in the shed there I found that bracken had been freshly strewn for bedding, and a netful of fodder hung from a hook beside the door; and when I climbed to the little apron of lawn which lay in front of my cave I found cheese and new bread wrapped in a clean cloth, and a goatskin full of the local thin, sour wine, which had been left for me beside the spring.

This was a small spring, a trickle of pure water welling out of a ferny crack in the rock to one side of the entrance to the cave. The water ran down, sometimes in a steady flow, sometimes no more than a sliding glimmer over the mosses, to drip into a rounded basin of stone. Above the spring the little statue of the god Myrddin, he of the winged spaces of the air, stared from between the ferns. Beneath his cracked wooden feet the water bubbled and dripped into the stone basin, lipping over into the grass below. Deep in the clear water metal glinted; I knew that the wine and bread, like the thrown coins, had been left as much as an offering to the god as to me; in the minds of the simple folk I had already become part of the legend of the hill, their god made flesh who came and went as quietly as the air, and brought with him the gifts of healing.

I lifted down the cup of horn which stood above the spring, filled it from the goatskin, then poured wine for the god, and drank the rest myself. The god would know whether there was more in the gesture than ritual homage. I myself was tired beyond thought, and had no prayer to offer; the drink was for courage, nothing more.

To the other side of the cave entrance, opposite the spring, was a tumble of grass-grown stones, where saplings of oak and mountain ash had seeded themselves, and grew in a thick tangle against the rocky face. In summer their boughs cast a wide pool of shade, but now, though overhanging it, they did nothing to conceal the entrance to the cave. This was a smallish arch, regular and rounded, as if made by hand. I pushed the hanging boughs aside and went in.

Just inside the entrance the remnants of a fire still lay in white ash on the hearth, and twigs and damp leaves had drifted over it. The place smelled already of disuse. It seemed strange that it was barely a month since I had ridden out at the King's urgent summons to help him in the matter of Ygraine of Cornwall. Beside the cold hearth stood the unwashed dishes from the last, hasty meal my servant had prepared before we set out.

Well, I would have to be my own servant now. I put the goatskin of wine and the bundle of bread and cheese on the table, then turned to re-make the fire. Flint and tinder lay to hand where they had always lain, but I knelt down by the cold faggots and stretched out my hands for the magic. This was the first magic I had been taught, and the simplest, the bringing of fire out of the air. It had been taught me in this very cave, where as a child I had learned all I knew of natural lore from Galapas, the old hermit of the hill. Here, too, in the cave of crystal which lay deeper in the hill, I had seen my first visions, and found myself as a seer. “Some day,” Galapas had said, “you will go where even with the Sight I cannot follow you.” It had been true. I had left him, and gone where my god had driven me; where none but I, Merlin, could have gone. But now the god's will was done, and he had forsaken me. Back there in Dimilioc, beside Gorlois' bier, I had found myself to be an empty husk; blind and deaf as men are blind and deaf; the great power gone. Now, weary though I was, I knew I would not rest until I saw if, here in my magic's birthplace, the first and smallest of my powers was left to me.

I was soon answered, but it was an answer I would not accept. The westering sun was dropping red past the boughs at the cave mouth, and the logs were still unkindled, when finally I gave up, with the sweat running scalding on my body under my gown, and my hands, outstretched for the magic, trembling like those of an old man. I sat by the cold hearth and ate my supper of bread and cheese and watered wine in the chill of the spring dusk, before I could gather even strength enough to reach for the flint and tinder and try with them.

Even this, a task that every wife does daily and without thought, took me an age, and set my maimed hand bleeding. But in the end fire came. A tiny spark flew in among the tinder and started a slow, creeping flame. I lit the torch from it, and then, carrying the flame high, went to the back of the cave. There was something I still must do.

The main cavern, high-roofed, went a long way back. I stood with the torch held high, looking up. At the back of the cave was a slope of rock leading up to a wide ledge, which in its turn climbed into the dark, high shadows. Invisible among these shadows was the hidden cleft beyond which lay the inner cave, the globed cavity lined with crystals where, with light and fire, I had seen my first visions. If the lost power lay anywhere, it lay there. Slowly, stiff with fatigue, I climbed the ledge, then knelt to peer through the low entrance to the inner cave. The flames from my torch caught the crystals, and light ran round the globe. My harp still stood where I had left it, in the center of the crystal-studded floor. Its shadow shot towering up the shimmering walls, and flame sparked from the copper of the string-shoes, but no stir of the air set it whispering, and its own arching shadows quenched the light. I knelt there for a long time, eyes wide and staring, while round me light and shadow shivered and beat. But my eyes ached, empty of vision, and the harp stayed silent.

At length I withdrew, and made my way down into the main cave. I remember that I picked my way slowly, carefully, like a man who has never been that way before. I thrust the torch under the dry wood I had piled for a fire, till the logs caught, crackling; then went out and found my saddle-bags, and lugged them back into the human comfort of the firelight, and began to unpack them.

My hand took a long time to heal. For the first few days it pained me constantly, throbbing so that I was afraid it was infected. During the day this did not matter so much, for there were tasks to do; all that my servant had done for me for so long that I hardly knew how to set about it; cleaning, preparing food, tending my horse. Spring came slowly to South Wales that year, and there was no grazing yet on the hill, so I had to cut and carry fodder for him, and walk farther than I cared to in search of the healing plants I needed. Luckily food for myself was always forthcoming; gifts were left almost daily at the foot of the small cliff below the lawn. It may have been that the country folk had not yet heard that I was out of favour with the King, or it may simply have been that what I had done for them in the way of healing outweighed Uther's displeasure. I was Merlin, son of Ambrosius; or, as the Welsh say it, Myrddin Emrys, the enchanter of Myrddin's Hill; and in another way, I suppose, the priest of the old god of the hollow hill, Myrddin himself. What gifts they would have brought for him they brought now for me, and in his name I accepted them.

But if the days were full enough, the nights were bad. I seemed always wakeful, less perhaps from the pain of my hand than from the pain of my memories: where Gorlois' death chamber had been empty, my own cave was full of ghosts. Not the spirits of the loved dead whom I would have welcomed; but the spirits of those I had killed went past me in the dark with thin sounds like the cry of bats. At least, this is what I told myself. I believe now that I was often touched with fever: the cave still housed the bats that Galapas and I had studied, and it must have been these I heard, passing to and from the cave mouth during the night. But in my memory of this time they are the voices of dead men, restless in the dark.

April went by, wet and chill, with winds that searched you to the bone. This was the bad time, empty except for pain, and idle except for the barest efforts to live. I believe I ate very little; water and fruit and black bread was my staple diet. My clothes, never sumptuous, became threadbare with no one to care for them, and then ragged. A stranger seeing me walking the hill paths would have taken me for a beggar. Days passed when I did little but huddle over the smoking fire. My chest of books was unopened, my harp was left where it stood. Even had my hand been whole, I could have made no music. As for magic, I dared not put myself to the test again.

But gradually, like Ygraine waiting in her cold castle to the south, I slid into a sort of calm acceptance. As the weeks went by my hand healed, cleanly enough. I was left with two stiff fingers, and a scar along the outer edge of the palm, but the stiffness passed with time, and the scar never troubled me. And as time passed the other wounds healed, too. I grew used to loneliness, as I had been accustomed to solitude, and the nightmares ceased. Then as May drew on the winds changed, grew warm, and grass and flowers came springing. The grey clouds packed away, and the valley was full of sunlight. I sat for hours in the sun at the mouth of the cave, reading, or preparing the plants I had gathered, or from time to time watching — but no more than idly — for the approach of a rider which would mean a message. (Even so, I thought, must my old teacher Galapas have sat here many a time in the sunlight, looking down the valley where, one day, a small boy would come riding.) And I built up again my stock of plants and herbs, wandering farther and farther from the cave as my strength came back to me. I never went into the town, but now and again when poor folk came for medicines or for healing, they brought snatches of news. The King had married Ygraine with as much pomp and ceremony as such a hasty union would permit, and he had seemed merry enough since the wedding, though quicker to anger than he used to be, and would have sudden morose fits when folk learned to avoid him. As for the Queen, she was silent, acceding in everything to the King's wishes, but rumour had it that her looks were heavy, as if she mourned in secret...

Here my informant shot a quick sidelong look at me, and I saw his fingers move to make the sign against enchantment. I let him go on, asking no more questions. The news would come to me in its own time.

It came almost three months after my return to Bryn Myrddin.

One day in June, when a hot morning sun was just lifting the mist from the grass, I went up the hill to find my horse, which I had tethered out to graze on the grassland above the cave. The air was still, and the sky was full of singing larks. Over the green mound where Galapas lay buried the blackthorns showed green leaves budding through fading snowbanks of flowers, and bluebells were thick among the fern.

I doubt if I actually needed to tether my horse. I usually carried with me the remnants of the bread my benefactors left for me, so when he saw me coming he would advance to the end of his tether and stand waiting, expectant.

But not today. He was standing at the far stretch of his rope, on the edge of the hill, head up and ears pricked, apparently watching something away down the valley. I walked over to him and, while he nuzzled in my hand for the bread, looked where he had been looking.

From this height I could see the town of Maridunum, small in the distance, clinging to the north bank of the placid Tywy as it wound its way down its wide green valley towards the sea. The town, with its arched stone bridge and its harbour, lies just where the river widens towards the estuary. There was the usual huddle of masts beyond the bridge, and nearer, on the towpath that threaded its way along the silver curves of the river, a slow grey horse towed a grain barge up to the mill. The mill itself, lying where the stream from my own valley met the river, was hidden in woodland; out of these trees ran the old military road which my father had repaired, straight as a die through five open miles, to the barracks near Maridunum's eastern gate.

On this road, perhaps a mile and a half beyond the water-mill, there was a cloud of dust where horsemen skirmished. They were fighting; I saw the flash of metal. Then the group resolved itself, clearer through the dust. There were four mounted men, and they were fighting three to one. The lone man seemed to be trying to escape, the others to surround him and cut him down. At length he burst free in what looked like a desperate bid for escape. His horse, pulled round hard, struck one of the others on the shoulder, and its rider fell, dislodged by a heavy blow. Then the single man, crouched and spurring hard, turned his horse off the road and across the grass, making desperately for the cover afforded by the edge of the woodland. But he did not reach it. The other two spurred after him; there was a short, wild gallop, then they had caught him up, one on each side, and as I watched he was dragged from his horse and beaten to his knees. He tried to crawl away, but he had no chance. The two horsemen circled, their weapons flashing, and the third man, apparently uninjured, had remounted and was galloping to join them. Then suddenly he checked his horse, so sharply that it reared. I saw him fling up an arm. He must have shouted a warning, for the other two, abruptly abandoning their victim, wheeled their beasts, and the three of them galloped off, full stretch, with the loose horse pelting behind them, to be lost to sight eastwards beyond the trees.

Next moment I saw what had startled them. Another group of horsemen was approaching from the direction of the town. They must have seen the retreating trio, but it soon appeared that they had seen nothing of the attack, for they came on at a canter, riding at ease. I watched them as they drew level with the place where the fallen man — injured or dead — must be lying. They passed it without slackening pace. Then they, too, were lost to sight below the woodland.

My horse, finding no more bread, nipped me, then jerked his head away sharply, ears flattened. I caught him by the halter, pulled up the tether, peg and all, and turned his head downhill.

“I stood on this spot once before,” I told him, “while a King's messenger came riding to see me and bid me go and help the King to his desire. I had power that day; I dreamed I held the whole world cupped in my hands, shining and small. Well, maybe I've nothing today but the hill I stand on, but that might be a Queen's messenger lying down yonder, with a message still in his pouch. Message or not, he'll need help if he's still alive. And you and I, my friend, have had our fill of idleness. It's time to be doing again.”

In a little less than twice the time it would have taken my servant to do the job, I had the horse bridled, and was on my way down the galley. Reaching the mill road, I turned my horse's head to the right, and drove my heels in.

The place where I had seen the horseman fall was near the edge of the woods, where the bushes were thick, a place of bracken and undergrowth and scattered trees. The smell of horses still hung in the air, with the tang of trampled bracken and sweet briar and, foul through it all, the smell of vomit. I dismounted and tethered my horse, then pushed my way forward through the thick growth.

He lay on his face, half hunched as he had crawled and collapsed, one hand still trapped under his body, the other outflung and gripping a tuft of bracken. A youth, lightly built but well grown, fifteen, perhaps, or a little more. His clothes, torn and grimed and bloodstained by the fight and his crawl through the thorns, had been good, and there was a glint of silver on one wrist, and a silver brooch at his shoulder. So they had not managed to rob him, if robbery had been the motive for the attack. His pouch was still at his belt, and fastened.

He made no move as I approached him, so I thought him insensible, or dead, but when I knelt beside him I saw the slight movement as his hand clenched more tightly on the stems of bracken, and I realized that he was exhausted or hurt beyond all caring. If I were one of his murderers come to finish him off, he would lie there and let me.

I spoke gently. “Be easy, I shan't hurt you. Lie still a moment. Don't try to move.”

There was no response. I laid careful hands on him, feeling for wounds and broken bones. He flinched from my touch, but made no sound. I satisfied myself soon that no bones were broken. There was a bloodied swelling near the back of his head, and one shoulder was already blackened with bruising, but the worst that I could see was a patch of crushed and bleeding flesh on the hip, which looked — and indeed later proved — to be where a horse's hoof had struck him.

“Come,” I said at length, “turn over, and drink this.”

He moved then, though wincing from the touch of my arm round his shoulder, and turned slowly round. I wiped the dirt and sickness from his mouth and held my flask to his lips; he gulped greedily, coughed, and then, losing strength again, leaned heavily against me, his head drooping against my chest. When I put the flask back to his mouth he turned his head away. I could feel him using all his strength not to cry out against the pain. I stoppered the flask and put it away.

“I have a horse here. You must try and sit him somehow, and I'll get you home, where I can see to your hurts.” Then, when he made no response: “Come now. Let's get you out of this before they decide to come back and finish what they started.”

He moved then, abruptly, as if these were the first words that had got through to him. I saw his hand grope down to the pouch at his belt, discover it was still there, and then fall limply away. The weight against my chest sagged suddenly. He had fainted.

So much the better, I thought, as I laid him down gently and went to bring up my horse. He would be spared the painful jolting of the ride, and by the gods' mercy I might have him in bed with his hurts bandaged before he woke. Then in the very act of stooping to lift him again I paused. His face was dirty, grime mingled with bloodstains from scratches and a cut above the ear. Under the mask of dirt and blood the skin was drained and grey. Brown hair, shut eyes, a slack mouth. But I recognized him. It was Ralf, Ygraine's page, who had let us into Tintagel that night, and who with Ulfin and myself had guarded the Duchess's chamber until the King had had his desire.

I stooped and lifted the Queen's messenger, and heaved his unconscious body across my waiting horse.

4

Ralf did not regain his senses during the journey up to the cave, and only after I had washed and bound his wounds and put him into bed did he open his eyes. He stared at me for a few moments, but without recognition.

“Don't you know me?” I said. “Merlinus Ambrosius. You brought your message safely enough. See.” I held up the wallet, still sealed. But his eyes, cloudy and unfocused, slid past it, and he turned his head against the pillow, wincing as he felt the pain from the bruising on the back of his neck. “Very well,” I told him, “sleep now. You're in safe hands.”

I waited beside him till he drifted back into sleep, then took the wallet and its contents out to my seat in the sunlight. The seal was, as I had expected, the Queen's, and the superscription was mine. I broke the seal and read the letter.

It was not from the Queen herself, but from Marcia, Ralf's grandmother and the Queen's closest confidante. The letter was brief enough, but held all I wanted to know. The Queen was indeed pregnant, and the child would be born in December. The Queen herself — said Marcia — seemed happy to be bearing the King's child, but, where she spoke of me at all, spoke with bitterness, throwing on me the responsibility for her husband Gorlois' death. “She says little, but it is my belief that she mourns in secret, and that even in her great love for the King there will always be the shadow of guilt. Pray God her feeling for the child may not be tainted with it. As for the King, it is seen that he is angry, though he is as ever kind and loving to my lady, and there is no man who doubts but that the child is his. Alas, I could find it in me to fear for the child at the King's hands, if it were not unthinkable that he should so grieve the Queen. Wherefore, Prince Merlin, I beg by this letter to commend to you as your servant my grandson Ralf. For him, too, I fear at the King's hands; and I believe that, if you will take him, service abroad with a true prince is better than here with a King who counts his service as betrayal. There is no safety for him in Cornwall. So pray you, lord, let Ralf serve you now, and after you, the child. For I think I understand what you were speaking of when you said to my lady, 'I have seen a bright fire burning, and in it a crown, and a sword standing in an altar like a cross.' ”

Ralf slept until dusk. I had lit the fire and made broth, and when I took it to the back of the cave where he lay I saw his eyes open, watching me. There was recognition in them now, and a wariness that I could not quite understand.

“How do you feel now?”

“Well enough, my lord. I — this is your cave? How did I come here? How did you find me?”

“I had gone up to the hill above here, and from there I saw you being attacked. The men were frightened off, and ran away, leaving you. I went down to get you, and carried you up here on my horse. So you recognize me now, do you?”

“You've let your beard grow, but I'd have known you, my lord. Did I speak to you before? I don't remember anything. I think they hit me on the head.”

“They did. How is it now?”

“A headache. But not bad. It's my side” — wincing — “that hurts most.”

“One of the horses struck you. But there's no real damage done; you'll be well enough in a few days. Do you know who they were?”

“No.” He knitted his brows, thinking, but I could see the effort hurt him, so I stopped him.

“Well, we can talk later. Eat now.”

“My lord, the message — ”

“I have it safely. Later.”

When I went back to him he had finished the broth and bread, and looked more like himself. He would not take more food, but I made him drink a little wine, and watched the colour come back into his face. Then I drew up a chair, and sat down beside the bed.

“Better?”

“Yes.” He spoke without looking at me. He looked down at his hands, nervously plucking at the covers in front of him. He swallowed. “I — I haven't thanked you yet, my lord.”

“For what? Picking you up and bringing you here? It was the only way to get your news.”

He glanced up at that, and for a startled second I realized that he thought it was no more than the truth. I saw then what there was in that look he had given me; he was afraid of me. I thought back to that night in Tintagel, the gay youth who had dealt so bravely for the King, and so truly with me. But for the moment I let it go. I said:

“You brought me the news I wanted. I've read your grandmother's letter. You know what she tells me in it about the Queen?”

“Yes.”

“And about yourself?”

“Yes.” He shut his mouth on the syllable, and looked away, sullen, like someone unfairly trapped and held for questioning, who is determined not to answer. It seemed that, whatever Marcia's motives for sending him to me, he himself was far from willing to offer me service. From which I guessed that she had told him nothing about her hopes for the future.

“All right, we'll leave that for the moment. But it seems that somebody wants to harm you, whoever it may be. If those men this morning weren't just roadside cutthroats, it would help to know who they were, and who paid them. Have you no idea who they might have been?”

“No,” still mumbling.

“It's of some interest to me,” I said mildly. “They might conceivably want to kill me, too.”

That startled him out of his resentment. “Why?”

“If you were attacked out of revenge for the part you played at Tintagel, then presumably they will attack me as well. If you were attacked for the message you carried to me, I want to know why. If they were plain thieves, which seems the most likely, then they may still be hereabouts, and I must get a message to the troopers down at the barracks.”

“Oh. Yes, I see.” He looked disconcerted and slightly ashamed. “But it's true, my lord; I don't know who they were. I — it was of interest to me, too. I've been trying to think, all this time, but I've no idea. There's no clue that I can remember. They didn't wear badges; at least I don't think so...” His brows drew together, painfully. “I'd have noticed badges, surely, if they'd had them?”

“How were they dressed?”

“I — I hardly noticed. Leather tunics, I think, and chain-mail caps. No shields, but swords and daggers.”

“And they were well mounted. I saw that. Did you hear their speech?”

“Not that I remember. They hardly spoke, a shout or two, that was all. British speech, but I couldn't tell where from. I'm not good at accents.”

“There was nothing you can think of that might have marked them for King's men?”

This was probing too near the wound. He went scarlet, but said levelly enough: “Nothing. But is it likely?”

“I wouldn't have thought so,” I said. “But kings are queer cattle, and queerest of all when they have bad consciences. Well, then, Cornishmen?”

The flush had ebbed, leaving him if possible more sickly pale than before. His eyes were sullen and unhappy. This was the wound itself; this was a thought he had lived with. “Duke's men, you mean?”

“They told me before I left Dimilioc that the King was to confirm young Cador as Duke of Cornwall. That's one man, Ralf, who will have no love for you. He won't stop to consider that you were the Duchess's man, and were serving her as you were bidden. He is full of hatred, and it might extend to vengeance. One could hardly blame him if it did.”

He looked faintly surprised, then in some odd way set at ease by this dispassionate handling. After a bit he said, with an attempt at the same tone: “They might have been Cador's men, I suppose. There was nothing to show it, one way or the other. Maybe I'll remember something.” He paused. “But surely, if Cador intended to kill me, he could have cut me down in Cornwall. Why come all the way here? To follow me to you? He must hate you as much.”

“More,” I said. “But if he had intended to kill me, he knew where to find me; the whole world knows that. And he'd have come before this.”

He eyed me doubtfully. Then he appeared to find an explanation for my apparent lack of fear. “I suppose no one would dare come after you here, for fear of your magic?”

“It would be nice to think so,” I agreed. There was no point in telling him how thin my defenses were. “Now, that's enough for the moment. Rest again, and you'll find you feel better tomorrow. Will you sleep, do you think? Are you in pain?”

“No,” he said, not truthfully. Pain was a weakness he would not admit to me. I stooped and felt for the heartbeat in his wrist. It was strong and even. I let the wrist drop, and nodded at him. “You'll live. Call me in the night if you want me. Good night.”

Ralf did not in fact remember anything more next morning that would give a clue to the identity of his attackers, and I forbore for a few days from questioning him further about the contents of Marcia's letter. Then one evening, when I judged he was better, I called him to me. It had been a damp day, and the evening had brought a chill with it, so I had lit a fire, and sat with my supper beside it.

“Ralf, bring your bowl and eat beside me where it's warm. I want to talk to you.”

He came obediently. He had somehow managed to mend and tidy his clothes, and now, with the cuts and bruises fading, and with colour back in his face, he was almost himself again, except for a limp where the wound on his hip had not yet mended; and except, still, for his silence, and the sullen shadow of wariness in his face. He limped across and sat where I pointed.

“You said you knew what else was in your grandmother's letter to me besides news of the Queen?” I asked him.

“Yes.”

“Then you know she sent you to take service with me, because she feared the King's displeasure. Did the King himself give you any reason to fear him?”

A slight shake of the head. He would not meet my eyes. “Not to fear him, no. But when the alarm came of a Saxon landing on the south coast, and I asked to ride with his men, he would not take me.” His voice was sullen and furious. “Even though he took every other Cornishman who had fought against him at Dimilioc. But myself, who had helped him, he dismissed.”

I looked thoughtfully at the bent head, the hot averted cheek. This, of course, was the reason for his attitude to me, the wary resentment and anger. He could only see, understandably enough, that through his service to me and the King he had lost his place near the Queen; worse, he had incurred his Duke's anger, had been disgraced as a Cornish subject and banished from his home to a kind of service he disdained.

I said: “Your grandmother tells me little except that she feels you had better seek a career for yourself outside Cornwall. Leave that for a moment; you can't seek anything much until your leg is healed. But tell me, did the King ever say anything to you directly about the night of Gorlois' death?”

A pause, so long that I thought he would not answer. Then he said: “Yes. He told me that I had served him well, and he — he thanked me. He asked me if I wanted a reward. I said no, the service was reward enough. He didn't like that. I think he wanted to give me money, and requite me, and forget it. He said then that I could no longer serve him or the Queen. That in serving him I had betrayed my master the Duke, and that a man who had betrayed one master could betray another.”

“Well?” I said. “Is that all?”

“All.?” His head jerked up at that. He looked startled and contemptuous. “All? An insult like that? And it was a lie, you know it was! I was my lady's man, not Duke Gorlois'! I did not betray the Duke!”

“Oh, yes, it was an insult. You can't expect the King to be level-headed yet, when he himself feels as guilty as Judas. He's got to put the betrayal on someone's shoulders, so it's yours and mine. But I doubt if you're in actual danger from him. Even a doting grandmother could hardly call that a threat.”

“Who was talking about threats?” said Ralf hotly. “I didn't come away because I was afraid! Someone had to bring the message, and you saw how safe that was!”

It was hardly the tone a servant uses. I hid my amusement and said mildly: “Don't ruffle your feathers at me, young cockerel. No one doubts your courage. I'm sure the King does not. Now, tell me about this Saxon landing. Where? What happened? I've had no news from the south for over a month now.”

In a little while he answered me civilly enough. “It was in May. They landed south of Vindocladia. There's a deep bay there, they call it Potters' Bay. I forget its real name. Well, it's outside federated territory, in Dumnonia, and that was against all the agreements the Federates made. You would know that.”

I nodded. It is hard to remember now, looking back down the years to the time I write of, Uther's time, that today men hardly remember even the name of Federate. The first of the Federated Saxons were the followers of Hengist and Horsa, who had been called in by King Vortigern as mercenary help to establish him on his stolen throne. When the fighting was done, and the rightful princes Ambrosius and Uther had fled to Brittany, the usurper Vortigern would have dismissed his Saxon mercenaries; but they refused to withdraw, demanding territory where they could settle, and promising, as federated settlers, to fight as Vortigern's allies. So, partly because he dared not refuse them, partly because he foresaw that he might need them again, Vortigern gave them the coastal stretches in the south, from Rutupiae to Vindocladia — the stretch that was called the Saxon Shore. In the days of the Romans it had been so called because the main Saxon landings had been there; by Uther's time the name had taken on a direr and truer significance. On a clear day you could see the Saxon smoke from London Wall.

It had been from this secured base, and from similar enclaves in the north-east, that the new attacks had come when my father was King. He had killed Hengist and his brother, and had driven the invaders back, some northwards into the wild lands beyond Hadrian's Wall, and others behind their old boundaries, where once again — but this time forcibly — they had been bound by treaty. But a treaty with a Saxon is like writing in water: Ambrosius, not trusting to the prescribed boundaries, had thrown up a wall to protect the rich lands which marched with the Saxon Shore. Until his death the treaty — or the Wall — had held them, nor had they openly joined in the attacks led by Hengist's son Octa and Eosa his kinsman in the early days of Uther's reign; but they were uneasy neighbours: they provided a beach-head for any wandering longships, and the Saxon Shore grew crowded and still more crowded, till even Ambrosius' Wall looked frail protection. And everywhere along the eastern shores raiders came in from the German Sea, some to burn and rape and sail again, others to burn and rape and stay, buying or extorting new territory from the local kings.

Such an attack, now, Raff was describing to me.

“Well, of course the Federates broke the agreement. A new war-band — thirty ships it was — landed in Potters' Bay, well west of the boundary, and the Federates welcomed them and came out in force to help them. They established a beach-head near the river's mouth and started to push up towards Vindocladia. I think if they had once got to Badon Hill — what is it?”

He broke off, staring at me. There was amazement in his face, and a touch of fear.

“Nothing,” I said. “I thought I heard something outside, but it's only the wind.”

He said slowly: “You looked for a moment the way you did that night at Tintagel, when you said the air was full of magic. Your eyes went strange, all black and blurred, as if you were seeing something, out there beyond the fire.” He hesitated. “Was it prophecy?”

“No. I saw nothing. All I heard was a sound like horses galloping. It was only the wild geese going over in the wind. If it was prophecy, it will come again. Go on. You were speaking of Badon Hill.”

“Well, the Saxons can't have known that King Uther was in Cornwall, with all the force he'd brought down to fight Duke Gorlois. He gathered his army and called on the Dumnonians to help him, and marched to drive the Saxons back.” He paused, compressing his lips, then finished briefly: “Cador went with him.”

“Did he indeed?” I was thoughtful. “You didn't happen to hear what had passed between them?”

“Only that Cador had been heard to say that since he couldn't defend his part of Dumnonia alone he didn't mind fighting alongside the Devil himself, as long as the Saxons could be cleared from the coast.”

“He sounds a sensible young man.”

Ralf, hot on his grievance, was not listening. “You see, he didn't exactly make peace with Uther — ”

“Yes. One gathers that.”

“ — but he did march with him! And I could not! I went to him, and to my lady, and begged to go, but he wouldn't take me!”

“Well,” I said, reasonably, “how could he?”

That stopped him. He stared at me, ready to be angry again. “What do you mean? If you think me a traitor — ”

“You're the same age as Cador, aren't you? Then try to show as much common sense. Think. If Cador was to go into battle beside the King, then the King, for your sake, could hardly take you. Uther may surfer a few pangs of conscience when he lays eyes on you, but Cador must see you as one of the causes of his father's death. Do you think he would bear you near him, however much he may need the King and his legions? Now do you see why you were left at home, and then sent north to me?”

He was silent. I said, gently: “What's done is done, Ralf. Only a child expects life to be just; it's a man's part to stand by the consequence of his deeds. As we both shall, believe me. So put all this behind you, and take what the gods send. Your life is not over because you have had to leave the court, or even because you have had to leave Cornwall.”

There was a longer silence. Then he picked up his empty bowl and mine and got to his feet. “Yes, I see. Well, since for the moment I can't do much else, I'll stay and serve you. But not because I'm afraid of the King, or because my grandmother wants to get me out of Duke Cador's way. It's because I choose. And indeed” — he swallowed — “I reckon I owe it to you.” His tone was neither grateful nor conciliatory. He stood there like a soldier, stiffly, the bowls clutched to his ribs.

“Then start paying your debt and wash the supper dishes,” I said equably, and picked up a book.

He hung on his heel a moment, but I neither spoke nor looked up. He went then, without another word, to draw water from the spring outside.

5

Bruises on the young heal quickly, and Ralf was soon active again, and insistent that he no longer needed doctoring. The wound on his hip, however, gave some trouble, and left him limping for a week or two.

In “choosing” to stay with me, he had made the best of a bad job, since for the time being he was tied to the cave by his injury and by the loss of his horse, but he served me well, mastering what resentment he might yet feel towards me and his new position. He was silent still, but this suited me, and I went quietly about my affairs, while Ralf gradually fell into my ways, and we got along tolerably well together. Whatever he thought of my quarters in the cave, and the menial tasks which between us we had to do, he made it clear that he was a page serving a prince. Somehow, through the days that followed, I found myself relieved, bit by bit, of burdensome work which I had begun to take for granted; I had leisure again to study, to replenish my store of medicines, even to make music. It was strange at first, and then in some way comforting, to lie wakeful in the night and hear the boy's untroubled breathing from the other side of the cave. After a while, I found I was sleeping better; as the nightmares receded, strength and calmness came back; and if power still withheld itself, I no longer despaired of its return.

As for Ralf, though I could see that he still fretted against his exile — to which, of course, he could see no clear end — he was never less than courteous, and as time went on seemed to accept his banishment with a better grace, and either lost or hid his unhappiness in a kind of contentment.

So the weeks went by, and the valley fields yellowed towards harvest, and the message came at last from Tintagel. One evening in August, towards dusk, a messenger came spurring up the valley. Ralf was not with me. I had sent him that afternoon across the hill to the hut where the shepherd, Abba, lived all summer. I had been treating Abba's son Ban, who was simple, for a poisoned foot; this was almost healed, but still needed salves.

I went out to meet the messenger. He had dismounted below the cliff, and now clambered up to the flat alp in front of the cave. He was a young man, spruce and lively, and his horse was fresh. I guessed from this that his message was not urgent; he had taken his time, and come at his ease. I saw him take in my ragged robe and threadbare mantle in one swift, summing glance, but he doffed his cap and went on one knee. I wondered if the salute was for the enchanter, or for the King's son.

“My lord Merlin.” .

“You are welcome,” I said. “From Tintagel?”

“Yes, sir. From the Queen.” A quick upward glance. “I came privily, without the King's knowledge.”

“So I had imagined, or you would have borne her badge. Get up, man. The grass is damp. Have you had supper?”

He looked surprised. It was not thus, I reckoned, that most princes received their messengers. “Why, no, sir, but I bespoke it at the inn.”

“Then I won't keep you from it. I've no doubt it will be better than you'd get here. Well then, your business? You've brought a letter from the Queen?”

“No letter, sir, just the message that the Queen desires to see you.”

“Now?” I asked sharply. “Is there anything wrong with her, or with the child she bears?”

“Nothing. The doctors and the women say that all is well. But” — he dropped his eyes — “it seems she has that on her mind which makes her want to talk with you. As soon as possible, she said.”

“I see.” Then, with my voice as carefully neutral as his: “Where is the King?”

“The King plans to leave Tintagel in the second week of September.”

“Ah. So any time after that it will be 'possible' for me to see the Queen.”

This was rather more frank than he cared for. He flashed me a glance, then looked at the ground again. “The Queen will be pleased to receive you then. She has bidden me make arrangements for you. You will understand that it will not do for you to be received openly in the castle of Tintagel.” Then, in a burst of candour: “You must know, my lord, there is no man's hand in Cornwall but will be against you. It would be better if you came disguised.”

“As for that,” I said, fingering my beard, “you will see that I'm half disguised already. Don't worry, man, I understand; I'll be discreet. But you'll have to tell me more. She gave no reason for this summons?”

“None, my lord.”

“And you heard nothing — no gossip from among the women, things like that?”

He shook his head, then, at the look in my face, added quickly: “My lord, she was urgent. She did not say so, but it must concern the child, what else?”

“Then I will come.” I thought he looked shocked. As he lowered his eyes, I said, sharply: “Well, what did you expect? I am not the Queen's man. No, nor the King's either, so there's no need to look scared.”

“Whose, then?”

“My own, and God's. But you can go back to the Queen and tell her I will come. What arrangements have you made for me?”

He hurried, relieved, on to his own ground. “There is a small inn at a ford of the river Camel, in the valley about five miles from Tintagel. It is kept by a man called Caw. He is a Cornishman, but his wife Maeve was one of the Queen's women, and he will keep his counsel. You can stay there without fear; they will expect you. You may send messages to Tintagel, if you will, by one of Maeve's sons — it would not be wise to go near the castle until the Queen sends for you. Now for the journey. The weather should still be fine in mid-September, and the seas are usually calm enough, so — ”

“If you are about to advise me that it is easier to go by sea, you're wasting your breath,” I said. “Has no one ever told you that enchanters can't cross water? At least, not with any comfort. I should be seasick did I so much as cross the Severn River in the ferry. No, I go by road.”

“But the main road takes you past the barracks at Caerleon. You might be recognized. And then the bridge at Glevum is guarded by King's troops.”

“Very well. I'll take the river crossing, but make it a short one.” I knew that he was right. To go by the main road through Caerleon and then by the Glevum Bridge would, even without the prospect of discovery by Uther's troops, put several days on my journey. “I'll avoid the military road. There's a good track along the coast through Nidum; I'll go that way, if you can bespeak me a boat at the mouth of the Ely River?”

“Very well, my lord.” And so it was arranged. I would cross from the Ely to the mouth of the Uxella in the country of the Dumnonii, and from there I would find my way south-west by the tracks, avoiding the roads where I might fall in with Uther's troops or Cador's men.

“Do you know the way?” he asked me. “For the last part, of course, Ralf can guide you.”

“Ralf will not be with me. But I can find it. I've been through that country before, and I have a tongue in my head.”

“I can arrange for horses — ”

“Better not,” I said. “We agreed, did we not, that I would be better disguised? I'll use a disguise that has served me before. I'll be a travelling eye doctor, and a humble fellow like that doesn't expect to post with fresh horses all the way. Have no fear, I shall be safe, and, when the Queen wants me, I shall be there.”

He was satisfied, and stayed for a while longer answering my questions and giving me what news there was. The King's brief punitive expedition against the coastal raiders had been successful, and the newcomers had been pushed back behind the agreed boundaries of the Federated West Saxons. For the moment things were quiet in the south. From the north had come rumours of tougher fighting where Anglian raiders, from Germany, had crossed the coast near the Alaunus River in the country of the Votadini. This is the country that we of Dyfed call Manau Guotodin, and it is from here that the great King Cunedda came, invited a century ago by the Emperor Maximus, to drive the Irish from Northern Wales and settle there as allies to the Imperial Eagles. These were, I suppose, the first of the Federates; they drove the Irish out, and afterwards remained in Northern Wales, which they called Gwynedd. A descendant of Cunedda held it still; Maelgon, a stark king and a good warrior, as a man would have to be to keep that country in the wake of the great Magnus Maximus.

Another descendant of Cunedda still held the Votadini country: a young king, Lot, as fierce and as good a fighter as Maelgon; his fortress lay near the coast south of Caer Eidyn, in the center of his kingdom of Lothian. It was he who had faced and beaten off the latest attack of the Angles. He had been given his command by Ambrosius, in the hope that with him the kings of the north — Gwalawg of Elmet, Urien of Gore, the chiefs of Strathclyde, King Coel of Rheged — would form a strong wall in the north and east. But Lot, it was said, was ambitious and quarrelsome; and Strathclyde had sired nine sons already and (while they fought like young bull seals each for his square of territory) was cheerfully siring more. Urien of Gore had married Lot's sister and would stand firm, but was, it was said, too close in Lot's shadow. The strongest of them was still (as in my father's time) Coel of Rheged, who held with a light hand all the smaller chiefs and earls of his kingdom, and brought them together faithfully against the smallest threat to the sovereignty of the High Kingdom.

Now, the Queen's messenger told me, the King of Rheged, with Ector of Galava and Ban of Benoic, had joined with Lot and Urien to clear the north of trouble, and for the time being they had succeeded. On the whole the news was cheering. The harvest had been good everywhere, so hunger would not drive any more Saxons across before winter closed the seaways. We should have peace for a time; enough time for Uther to settle any unrest caused by the quarrel with Cornwall and his new marriage, to ratify such alliances as Ambrosius had made, and to strengthen and extend his system of defenses.

At length the messenger took his leave. I wrote no letters, but sent news of Ralf to his grandmother, and a message of compliance to the Queen, With thanks for the gift of money she had sent me by the messenger's hand to provide for my journey. Then the young man rode off cheerfully down the valley towards the good company and the better supper that awaited him at the inn. It remained now for me to tell Ralf.

This was more difficult even than I had expected. His face lit when I told him about the messenger, and he looked eagerly about for the man, seeming very disappointed when he found that he had already gone. Messages from his grandmother he received almost impatiently, but plied me with questions about the fighting south of Vindocladia, listening with such eagerness to all I could tell him of that and the larger news that it was obvious that his forced inaction in Maridunum fretted him far more than he had shown. When I came to the Queen's summons he showed more animation than I had seen in him since he had come to me.

“How long before we set out?”

“I did not say 'we' would set out. I shall go alone.”

“Alone?” You would have thought I had struck him. The blood sprang under the thin skin and he stood staring with his mouth open. Eventually he said, sounding stifled: “You can't mean that. You can't.”

“I'm not being arbitrary, believe me. I'd like to take you, but you must see it isn't possible.”

“Why not? You know everything here will be perfectly safe; in any case, you've left it before. And you can't travel alone. How would you go on?”

“My dear Ralf. I've done it before.”

“Maybe you have, but you can't deny I've served you well since I've been here, so why not take me? You can't just go to Tintagel — back to where things are happening — and leave me here! I warn you” — he took a breath, eyes blazing, all his careful courtesy collapsing in ruins — “I warn you, my lord, if you go without me, I shan't be here when you come back!”

I waited till his gaze fell, then said mildly: “Have some sense, boy. Surely you see why I can't take you? The situation hasn't changed so much since you had to leave Cornwall. You know what would happen if any of Cador's men recognized you, and everyone knows you round about Tintagel. You'd be seen, and the word would go round.”

“I know that. Do you still think I'm afraid of Cador? Or of the King?”

“No. But it's foolish to run into danger when one doesn't need to. And the messenger certainly seemed to think there was still danger.”

“Then what about you? Won't you be in danger, too?”

“Possibly. I shall have to go disguised, as it is. Why do you think I've been letting my beard grow all this while?”

“I didn't know. I never thought about it. Do you mean you've been expecting the Queen to send for you?”

“I didn't expect this summons, I admit,” I said. “But I know that, come Christmas, when the child is born, I must be there.”

He stared. “Why?”

I regarded him for a moment. He was standing near the mouth of the cave, against the sunset, just as he had come in from his trip across the hill to the shepherd's hut. He was still clutching the osier basket which had held the salves. It held a small bundle now, wrapped in a clean linen cloth. The shepherd's wife, who lived across in the next valley, sent bread up weekly to her man; some of this Abba regularly sent on to me. I could see the boy's fists clenched bone-white on the handle of the basket. He was tense, as angry and fretting as a fighting dog held back in the slips. There was something more here, I was sure, than homesickness, or disappointment at missing an adventure.

“Put that basket down, for goodness' sake,” I said, “and come in. That's better. Now, sit down. It's time that you and I talked. When I accepted your service, I did not do so because I wanted someone to scour the cooking pots and carry gifts from Abba's wife on baking day. Even if I am content with my life here on Bryn Myrddin, I'm not such a fool as to think it contents you — or would do so for long. We are waiting, Ralf, no more. We have fled from danger, both of us, and healed our hurts, and now there is nothing to do but wait.”

“For the Queen's childbed? Why?”

“Because as soon as he is born, the Queen's son will be given to me to care for.”

He was silent for a full minute before he said, sounding puzzled: “Does my grandmother know this?”

“I think she suspects that the child's future lies with me. When I last spoke with the King, on that night at Tintagel, he told me he would not acknowledge the child who would be born. I think this is why the Queen has sent for me.”

“But...not to acknowledge his eldest son? You mean he will send him away? Will the Queen agree? A baby — surely they would never send it to you? How could you keep it? And how can you even know it will be a boy?”

“Because I had a vision, Ralf, that night in Tintagel. After you had let us in through the postern gate, while the King was with Ygraine, and Ulfin kept guard outside the chamber, you diced with the porter in the lodge by the postern. Do you remember?”

“How could I ever forget? I thought that night would never end.”

I did not tell him that it had not ended yet. I smiled. “I think I felt the same, while I waited alone in the guardroom. It was then that I saw — was shown — for certain why God had required me to do as I had done, shown for sure that my prophecies had been true. I heard a sound on the stairs, and went out of the guard-room onto the landing. I saw Marcia, your grandmother, coming down the steps towards me from the Queen's room, carrying a child. And though it was only March, I felt the chill of midwinter, and then I saw the stairs and the shadows clear through her body, and knew it was a vision. She put the child into my arms and said, 'Take care of him.' She was weeping. Then she vanished, and the child too, and the winter's chill went with her. But this was a true picture, Ralf. At Christmas I shall be there, waiting, and Marcia will hand the Queen's son into my care.”

He was silent for a long time. He seemed awed by the vision. But then he said, practically: “And I? Where do I come into this? Is this why my grandmother told me to stay with you and serve you?”

“Yes. She saw no future for you near the King. So she made sure you would be near his son.”

“A baby?” His voice was blank. He sounded horrified, and far from flattered. “You mean that if the King won't acknowledge the child, you'll have to keep it? I don't understand. Oh, I can see why my grandmother concerns herself, and even why you do, but not why she dragged me into it! What sort of future does she think there is in looking after a king's bastard that won't be acknowledged?”

“Not a king's bastard,” I said. “A king.”

There was silence but for the fluttering of the fire. I had not spoken with power, but with the full certainty of knowledge. He stared, open-mouthed, and shaken.

“Ralf,” I said, “you came to me in anger, and you stayed from duty, and you have served me as well and as faithfully as you knew how. You were no part of my vision, and I don't know if your coming here, or the wounds that held you here with me, were part of God's plan; I have had no message from my gods since Gorlois died. But I do know now, after these last weeks, that there is no one I would sooner choose to help me. Not with the kind of service you have given till now: when this winter comes it isn't a servant I shall need; I shall need a fighting man who is loyal, not to me or to the Queen, but to the next High King.”

He was pale, and stammering. “I had no idea. I thought...I thought...”

“That you were suffering a kind of exile? In a way, we both were. I told you it was a waiting time.” I looked down at my hands. It was dark now outside the cave; the sun had gone, and dusk drew in. “Nor do I know clearly what lies ahead, except danger and loss and treachery, and in the end some glory.”

He sat quiet, without moving, till I roused myself from my thoughts and smiled at him. “So now, perhaps, you will accept that I don't doubt your courage?”

“Yes. I'm sorry I spoke as I did. I didn't understand.” He hesitated, chewing his lip, then sat forward, hands on knees. “My lord, you really don't know why the Queen has sent for you now?”

“No.”

“But because you know that your vision of the birth was a true one, you know that you will go safely this time to Cornwall, and return?”

“You could say so.”

“Then if your magic is always true, might it not be because I go with you to protect you that you make the journey safely?”

I laughed. “I suppose it's a good quality in a fighting man, never to admit defeat. But can't you see, taking you would only be taking two risks instead of one. Because my bones tell me I shall be safe, it doesn't mean that you will.”

“If you can be disguised, so can I. If you even say that we must go as beggars and sleep in the ditches...whatever the danger...” He swallowed, sounding all at once very young. “What is it to you if I run a risk? You are to be safe, you told me so. So taking me can't endanger you, and that's all that matters. Won't you let me take my own risks? Please?”

His voice trailed away. Silence again, and the fire flickering. Time was, I thought, not without bitterness, when I would only have had to watch the flames to find the answer there. Would he be safe? Or would I carry the burden of yet another death? But all that the firelight showed me was a youth who needed to find manhood. Uther had denied it to him; I could not let my conscience do the same.

At length I said heavily: “I told you once that men must stand by their own deeds. I suppose that means I have no right to stop you taking your own risks. Very well, you may come...No, don't thank me. You'll dislike me thoroughly enough before we're done. It will be a damned uncomfortable journey, and before we set out, you'll have work to do that won't suit you.”

“I'm used to that,” he said, and straightened, laughing. He was shining, excited, the gaiety that I remembered back in his face. “But you don't mean you're going to teach me magic?”

“I do not. But I shall have to teach you a little medicine, whether you like it or not. I shall be a travelling eye doctor; it's a good passport anywhere, and one can pay one's way easily without spending the Queen's gold abroad where questions might be asked. So you will have to be my assistant, and that means learning to mix the salves properly.”

“Well, if I must, but God help the patients! You know I can't tell one herb from the other.”

“Never fear, I wouldn't let you touch them. You can leave me to select the plants. You'll just prepare them.”

"And if any of Cador's men show signs of recognizing us, just try some of my salves on them," he said buoyantly. "Talk about magic, it'll be easy. The eye doctor's skilled assistant will simply strike them blind."

6

We came to the inn at Camelford two days before the middle of September.

The Camel valley is winding, with steep sides clothed with trees. For the last part of the way we followed the track along the waterside. The trees were closely crowded, and the path where we rode was so thickly padded with moss and small, dark-green ferns that our horses' hoofs made no sound. Beside us the river wrangled its way down through granite boulders that glittered in the sun. Around and above us the dense hangers of oak and beech were turning yellow, and acorns crunched among the dead leaves where the horses trod. Nuts ripened in the thickets; the willows trailed amber leaves in the tugging shallows; and wherever the bright sun splashed through the boughs it shimmered on the spiders' webs of autumn furred and glittering, sagging deep with dew.

Our journey had been uneventful. Once south of the Severn and beyond hourly danger of recognition, we had ridden at ease, and in pleasant stages. The weather, as so often in September, was warm and bright, but with a crisp feel to the air that made riding a pleasure. Ralf had been in high spirits all the way, in spite of poor clothes, an undistinguished horse (bought with some of the Queen's gold) and the work he had had to do for me making the washes and ointments with which I largely paid our way. We were only questioned once, by a troop of King's men who came on us just short of Hercules Point. Uther kept the old Roman camp there garrisoned as a strongpoint, and by the purest mischance we fell foul of a scouting party which was making its way home by the moorland track we followed. We were taken to the camp and questioned, though it seemed this was merely a matter of form as, after a cursory look at our baggage, my story was accepted. We were sent on our way with our flasks refilled with the ration wine, the richer for a copper coin given me by a man off duty who followed us out of camp and begged a pot of salve from me.

I found the men's vigilance interesting, and would have liked to know more of the state of affairs in the north, but that would have to wait. To have asked questions here would have attracted attention I did not want. No doubt I would find out what I wished to know from the Queen herself.

“Did you see anyone you knew?” I asked Ralf, as we headed over the moors at a brisk canter away from the gate of the camp.

“None. Did you?”

“I'd met the officer before, a few years ago. His name is Priscus. But he gave no sign of recognizing me.”

“I wouldn't have known you myself,” said Ralf. “And it isn't just the beard. It's the way you walk, your voice, everything. It's like that night at Tintagel, when you were disguised as the Duke's captain. I'd known him all my life, and I'd have sworn you were he. It's no wonder folks are talking about magic. I thought it was magic myself.”

“This is easier,” I said. “If you carry a trade or a skill with you men think about that, instead of looking at you too closely.”

Indeed, I had troubled very little with disguise. I had bought a new riding cloak, brown, with a hood which could be pulled about my face, and I spoke Celtic with the accent of Brittany. This is a tongue close to the Cornish one, and would be understood where we were going. This, with the beard, and my humble tradesman's bearing, should keep any but my intimates from knowing me. Nothing would part me from the brooch my father had given me, with its royal cipher of the Red Dragon on gold, but I wore it clipped inside the breast of my tunic, and had threatened Ralf with every face in the Nine Books of Magic if he called me “my lord” even in private.

We reached Camelford towards evening. The inn was a small squat building of daubed stone built where the coast road ran down into the ford. It was at the top of the bank, just clear of flood level. Ralf and I, approaching by the country track along the river, came on it from the rear. It seemed a pleasant place, and clean. Someone had given the stones a wash of red ochre, the colour of the rich earth thereabouts, and fat poultry picked about among the ricks at the edge of a swept yard. A chained dog dozed in the shade of a mulberry tree heavy with fruit. There was a tidy stack of firewood against the byre, and the midden was fully twenty feet from the back door.

As luck would have it, the innkeeper's wife was out at the back with a maidservant, taking in bedding which had been spread over the bushes in the sun. As we approached the dog flew out, barking, at the length of his chain. The woman straightened, shading her eyes against the light, and staring.

She was a young woman, broadly built and lively looking, with a fresh, high colour and prominent light-blue eyes. Her bad teeth and plump figure gave away a rash passion for sweetmeats, and the lively blue eyes spoke even more clearly of other pleasures. They ran now over Ralf, who rode ahead of me, appraised him as likely, but young for it; then, more hopefully, over me, to dismiss me finally as less likely, and probably too poor to pay my shot anyway. Then, as her gaze returned to Ralf, I saw her recognize him. She stiffened, looking quickly back at me. Her mouth fell open, and I thought for an anxious moment that she was going to curtsy, but then she had command of herself. A word sent the maid packing indoors with an armful of bedding, a shrill bidding to the dog drove him back, ears down and growling, into the mulberry shade, then she was greeting us, smiling widely, eyes curious and excited.

“You'll be the eye doctor, likely?”

We drew our horses to a halt in the dust of the yard. “Indeed, mistress. My name is Emrys, and this is my servant Ban.”

“We've been expecting you. Your beds is bespoke.” Then under her breath as she came close to my horse's shoulder: “You be very welcome, my lord, and Ralf, too. I declare he do look a handspan taller than when I seen him last. Will you be pleased to come in?”

I dismounted and handed the reins to Ralf. “Thank you. It's good to be here; we're both weary. Ralf will look after the horses himself. Now before we go in, Maeve, give me the news from Tintagel. Is all well with the Queen?”

“Yes, indeed, sir, praise be to all the saints and fairies. You need have no worries there, surely.”

“And the King? He's still at Tintagel?”

“Aye, my lord, but the word goes that he'll ride out any day now. You'll not have long to bide. You're as safe here as anywhere in Cornwall. We'll have good enough warning of troops moving, and you can hear them on this road a mile off. And never worry about Caw — that's my husband; he's a Duke's man, sure enough, but he'll do nothing to harm my lady, and besides, he always does as I tell him. Leastways, not always. There's some things he don't do near often enough for my liking.” This with a burst of cheery laughter. I saw Ralf grinning as he led the horses away, then Maeve, talking loudly about beds and supper-time, and the sore eyes of her youngest which could do with looking at, led me through the back door of the inn.

When I saw her husband later that evening I knew that I need have no fears for his discretion. He was a dry stick of a man, and silent as an oyster. He came in as we were sitting down to supper, stared at Ralf, nodded at me, then went about his business of serving wine without a word spoken. His wife treated him — and all comers — with the same rough, frank kindliness, and saw to it without fuss that we were well served and comfortably housed. It was as good a house of its kind as I have ever been in, and the food was excellent.

Understandably, the inn was always busy, but there was little danger of our being recognized. My character as a travelling healer was not only my pass to people's incurious acceptance; it gave Ralf and me the excuse to be abroad in the countryside. Each day early we would take food and wine with us, and make our way up by one of the deep, densely wooded glens that fed the Camel valley, to the windy upland that lay between Camelford and the sea. Ralf knew all the ways. We would separate, more often than not, and each choose some hidden point of vantage from which he could watch the two roads which Uther and his men might take out of Tintagel. He might turn north-east along the coast for Dimilioc and the camp near Hercules Point, or — if he was making straight for Winchester or the trouble centers along the Saxon Shore — he would follow the valley tracks through Camelford and from there climb south-east to the military road which ran along the spine of Dumnonia. Here on the wind-swept heights the forest thins, and there ate great tracts of broken moorland treacherous with bog and watched over by strange stony hills. The old Roman road, crumbling fast in that wild country, but still service-runs straight through Isca, into the kinder lands behind Ambrosius' Wall. It was my guess that this latter was the way that Uther would take, and I wanted to see who rode with him. Ralf and I gave it out that I was searching for plants for my medicines, and indeed I came back each evening to my meeting-place with him with a pouch full of roots and berries which did not grow at home, and which I was glad to have. Luckily the weather continued fine, and no one wondered to see us ride abroad. They were too glad to have a doctor staying there who, each evening, would treat any who came to him, and ask no more than they could afford to pay.

So the days went by, serene and still, while we waited for the King to move, and the Queen to send word.

It was a week before he rode out. He went the way I had expected, and I was there watching.

There is a place where the track from Tintagel to Camelford runs straight for some quarter of a mile along the foot of a steeply wooded bank. For the most part the wood is too steep and thickly grown to penetrate, but there were places at the wood's edge open to the sun, stony banks deep in ferns and drifting thistledown, where brambles and bracken grew in thickets over the rocks. The blackthorn bushes were high, and glinting with fruit. Some of the little sloe-plums were still greenish, but most were ready; black bloomed over pale blue with ripeness. There is an extract one can make of the fruit which is sovereign for a flux of the bowels: one of Maeve's children had been suffering in this way, and I had promised a draught that night. It would need no more than a handful, but the fruit was ripe to perfection, and so tempting that I went on gathering. If the berries are crushed and added in a certain way to juniper-wine they make a good drink, rich, astringent and powerful. I had told Maeve of it, and she wanted to try it.

My bag was almost full when I heard, like a soft thunder in the distance, horses coming steadily along the track below me. I withdrew quickly into the edge of the wood, and watched from hiding. Soon the head of the column came in sight; then the long train of dust, filled with the beat of trotting hoofs, the clash of mail, the coloured glint of pennants, rolled past along the foot of the slope. A thousand, perhaps more I stood stone-still in the shadow of the trees, and watched them go by.

A horse's length to the front the King rode, and behind him, on his left hand, his standard-bearer carried the Red Dragon. Other colours showed through the dust, but there was no wind to move the banners, and though I strained my eyes the length of the column, I could not swear to most that I saw. Nor did I glimpse the one I was watching for, though it might well have been there. I waited till the last horseman disappeared at a smart trot round a bend in the road, then I made my way to the place where I had arranged to meet Ralf.

He met me halfway, panting. “Did you see them?”

“Yes. Where were you? I sent you to watch the other road.”

“I was watching. There was nothing stirring there, nothing at all. I was on my way back here when I heard them, so I ran. I almost missed them — only saw the tail end. It was the King, wasn't it?”

“It was. Ralf, could you pick out the devices? Did you see any that you knew?”

“I saw Brychan, and Cynfelin, but no others from Dyfnaint that I recognized. The men from Garlot were there, and Cernyw, too, I think, and others I thought I knew, but there was too much dust to make sure. They were round that bend before I could get a good sight of them.”

“Was Cador there?”

“My lord, I'm sorry, I didn't see.”

“No matter. If the others were there from Cornwall, you may be sure he would be. No doubt they'll know at the inn. And had you forgotten that you were not to call me 'my lord,' even when we were alone?”

“I'm sorry...Emrys.” It was a measure of our new, easier relationship that he should add, with a suspicious meekness: “And had you forgotten that my name is Ban?” Then, laughing as he dodged my cuff at his head: “Do you have to call me after the half-wit?”

“It's the first name that came into my head. It's a king's name too, the King of Benoic, so you can take your choice which was your sponsor.”

“Benoic? Where's that?”

“In the north. Come now, we'll get back to the inn. I doubt if the Queen will send before tomorrow, but I've a draught to make tonight, and it's a decoction that takes time. Here, carry these.”

I was right; the messenger came next morning. Ralf had gone out down the road' to watch for him, and the two of them came back together, with the news that I was to ride to Tintagel immediately for my audience with the Queen.

I had not confessed it to Ralf, nor even hardly admitted it to myself, but I was apprehensive about the coming interview with Ygraine. On that night at Tintagel when the child was conceived I had been certain, in every way a seer can be certain, that the boy who was to be born would be given to me to foster, and that I should be the guardian of a great King. Uther himself, in his bitterness and anger over Gorlois' death, had sworn to reject the “bastard” he had begotten, and from Marcia's letter I knew he was still of the same mind. But in the six long months since that March night I had had no direct message from Ygraine, and no means of knowing whether she would obey her husband, or whether as the time drew near she would find it impossible to face separation from her child. I had gone over in my mind a hundred times all the arguments I might bring to bear, remembering half incredulously the sureness with which I had spoken to her before, and to the King. Indeed my god had been with me then. And in truth, and how bitterly, was he gone from me now. There were even times when, lying wakeful in the night, I saw my sure visions in the past as chances, illusions, dreams fed by desire. I remembered the King's bitter words to me. “I see now what your magic is, this 'power' you talk of. It is nothing but human trickery, an attempt at statecraft which my brother taught you to like and to play for, and to believe was your mystery. You use even God to gain your ends. 'It is God who tells me to do these things, it is God who exacts the price, it is God who sees that others should pay...' For what, Merlin? For your ambition? And who is it pays this debt to God for carrying out your plans? Not you. The men who play your game for you, and pay the price. But you pay nothing.” When I listened to such words as these, heard clearly in the nights when nothing else spoke to me, I wondered if I had read my vision of the future aright, or if everything I had done and dreamed of had been a mockery. Then, thinking of those who had paid with death for my dream, I would wonder if that death had not been kinder than this desert of self-doubt where I lay fixed, waiting in vain for even the smallest of my gods to speak to me. Oh, yes, I paid. Every night of those nine long months I paid.

But now it was day, and I would soon find out what the Queen wanted with me. I remember how restlessly I fidgeted around while Ralf saddled my horse and made ready. Maeve was with the maids in the kitchen, washing the sloes for the wine-making. A pan of them was on the stove, coming to the simmer. It seemed a strange memory to take with me on my visit to the Queen, the smell of sloe wine. Suddenly I found the pungent sweetness intolerable, and made, choking, for the air outside. But then one of the girls came running to ask something about the mixing, and in answering her I forgot my sickness, and then all at once Ralf was at my elbow to summon me, and the three of us — Ralf, the messenger and I — were heading for Tintagel at a hand-gallop through the soft, blowing September noon.

7

It was only a few months since I had last seen Ygraine, but she seemed very much changed. At first I thought this was only the pregnancy; her once-slim body was greatly swollen and, though her face was full of the bloom of health, she had that pinched and shadowy look that women get around the eyes and mouth. But the change was deeper than this; it was in the expression of her eyes, in her gestures, the way she sat. Where before she had seemed young and burning, a wild bird beating her wings against the wires of the cage, now she seemed to brood, wings clipped, gravid, a creature of the ground.

She received me in her own chamber, a long room above the curtain wall, with a deep circular recess where the turret stood at the north-west corner. There were windows in the long wall facing south-west, and through these the sunlight fell freely, but the Queen was sitting by one of the narrow turret windows, through which came the breeze of the soft September afternoon, and the eternal noise of the sea on the rocks below. So much was still here, then, of the Ygraine I remembered. It was like her, I thought, to choose the wind and the sea sounds, rather than the sunlight. But even here, in spite of the light and air, one got the feeling of a cage: this was the room in which the young wife of Gorlois the old Duke had passed those pent years before the fateful trip to London where she had met the King. Now, after that brief flight, she was penned again, by her love for the King, and by the weight of his child. I never loved a woman, except one, but I have pitied them. Now, looking at the Queen, young, beautiful, and with her heart's desire, I pitied her even as I feared her for what she might say to me.

She was alone. I had been led by a chamberlain through the outer room where the women span and weaved and gossiped. Bright eyes looked at me in momentary curiosity, and the chattering was stilled, only to begin again as soon as I had passed. There was no recognition in their faces, only perhaps here and there some disappointment at the sight of so ordinary and humble a fellow. No diversion here. To them I was a messenger, to be received by the Queen in the King's absence; that was all.

The chamberlain rapped on the door of the inner chamber and then withdrew. Marcia, Ralf's grandmother, opened the door. She was a grey-haired woman with Ralf's eyes in a lined and anxious face, but in spite of her age she bore herself as straight as a girl. Though she was expecting me, I saw her eyes rest on me for a moment without recognition, then with a flicker of surprise. Even Ygraine looked startled for a moment, then she smiled and held out her hand.

“Prince Merlin. Welcome.” Marcia curtsied to the air somewhere between me and the Queen, and withdrew. I went forward to kneel and kiss the Queen's hand.

“Madam.”

She raised me kindly. “It was good of you to come so quickly for such a strange summons. I hope the journey was easy?”

“Very easy. We are well lodged with Maeve and Caw, and so far no one has recognized me, or even Ralf. Your secret is safe.”

“I must thank you for taking so much care of it. I promise you I'd not have known you until you spoke.”

I fingered my chin, smiling. “As you see, I've been preparing for some time.”

“No magic this time?”

“As much as there was before,” I said.

She looked at me straightly then, the beautiful dark-blue eyes meeting mine in the way I remembered, and I saw that this was still the old Ygraine, direct as a man, and with the same high pride. The heavy stillness was just an overlay, the milky calm that seems to come on women in pregnancy. Beneath the stillness, the placidity, was the old fire. She spread her hands out. “Looking at me now, do you still tell me that when you spoke to me that night in London, and promised me the King's love, there was no magic there?”

“Not in the ruse that brought the King to you, madam. In what happened after, perhaps.”

“ 'Perhaps'?” There was a quick lift to her voice that warned me. Ygraine might be a Queen, with mettle as high as a man's, but she was a woman nearing her seventh month. My fears were my own, and must stay my own. I hesitated, searching for words, but she went on quickly, burningly, as if to convince herself across my silence: “When you first spoke with me and told me you could bring the King to me, there was magic there, I know there was. I felt it, and I saw it in your face. You told me that your power came from God, and that in obeying you I was God's creature, even as you were. You said that because of the magic that would bring Uther to me, the kingdom should have peace. You spoke of crowns and altars...And now, see, I am Queen, with God's blessing, and I am heavy with the King's child. Dare you tell me now that you deceived me?”

“I did not deceive you, madam. That was a time full of visions, and a passion of dreams and desires. We are quit of those now, and we are sober, and it is daylight. But magic is here, growing in you, and this time it is fact, not vision. He will be born at Christmas, they tell me.”

“ 'He'? You sound very sure.”

“I am sure.”

I saw her press her lips together as if at a sudden spasm of pain, then she looked away from me, down at her hands which lay folded across her belly. When she spoke, she spoke calmly, straight to her hands, or to what they covered. “Marcia told me of the messages she sent to you in the summer. But you must have known, without her telling you, the way my lord the King thinks of this matter.”

I waited, but she seemed to expect an answer. “He told me himself,” I said. “If he's still of the same mind now as he was then, he won't acknowledge the child as his heir.”

“He is still of the same mind.” Her eyes came swiftly up to mine again. “Don't misunderstand me, he has not the faintest doubt of me, nor ever had. He knows that I was his from the first moment I saw him, and that from that moment, on one excuse or another, I never lay with the Duke. No, he does not doubt me; he knows the child is his. And for all his high speech” — there was the glimmer of a smile, and suddenly her voice was indulgent, the voice of a woman speaking of her child or of a loved husband — “and for all his rough denials, he knows your power and fears it. You told him a child would come out of that night, and he would trust your word, even if he could not trust mine. But none of this alters the way he feels about it. He blames himself — and you, and even the child — for the Duke's death.”

“I know.”

“If he had waited, he says, Gorlois would still have died that night, and I would have been Queen, and the child conceived in wedlock, so that no one could question his parentage or call him bastard.”

“And you, Ygraine?”

She was silent for a long time. She turned that lovely head of hers and gazed out of the window, where the sea birds swung and tilted, crying, on the wind. I saw, I am not sure how, that her calm was that of a soldier who has won one battle, and rests before the next. I felt my nerves tighten. I did not hold Ygraine lightly, should the battle be with me.

She said, very quietly: “What the King says may well be true. I don't know. But what's done is done, and it is the child who must concern me now. This is why I sent for you.” A pause. I waited. She faced me again. “Prince Merlin, I fear for the child.”

“At the King's hands?” I asked.

This was too straight, even for Ygraine. Her eyes were cold, and her voice. “This is insolence, and folly, too. You forget yourself, my lord.”

“I?” I spoke as coldly. “It is you who forget, madam. If my mother had been wed to Ambrosius when he begot me, Uther would not now be King, nor would I have helped him to your bed to beget the child you carry. There should be no talk of insolence or folly from you to me. I know, who better, what chance there is in Britain for a prince conceived out of wedlock and unacknowledged by his sire.”

She had flushed as red as she was pale before. Her eyes dropped from mine, their anger dying. She spoke simply, like a girl. “You are right, I had forgotten. I ask your pardon. I'd forgotten, too, what it was like to talk freely. There is no one here besides Marcia and my lord, and I cannot talk to Uther about the child.”

I had been standing all this while; now I turned aside to bring up a chair and set it near her in the turret embrasure. I sat down. Things had changed between us, suddenly, as when a wind changes. I knew then that the battle was not with me, but with herself, her own woman's weakness. She was watching me now as a woman in pain watches her doctor. I said gently: “Well, I am here. And I am listening. What did you send for me to tell me?”

She drew in her breath. When she spoke her voice was calm, but no more than a whisper. “That If this child is a boy, the King will not allow me to rear him. If it's a girl I may keep her, but a boy so begotten cannot be acknowledged as a prince and legitimate heir, so he must not remain here, even as a bastard.” Visibly, she steadied herself. “I told you, Uther does not doubt me. But because of what happened that night, my husband's death, and all the talk of magic, he swears that men may still believe that the Duke and not himself begot this child. There will be other sons, he says, whose begetting no man will question, and among them he will find the heir to the High Kingdom.”

“Ygraine,” I said, “I know what a heavy thing it is — however it happens — for a woman to lose her child. Perhaps there is no heavier grief. But I think the King is right. The boy should not remain here to be reared as a bastard in times so wild and uncertain. If there should be other heirs, declared and acknowledged by the King, they might count him a danger to themselves, and certainly they would be a danger for him. I know what I'm talking about; this is what happened in my own childhood. And I, as a royal bastard, found fortune as this prince may never find it; I had my father's protection.”

A pause. She nodded without speaking, her eyes once again on the hands that lay in her lap.

“And if the child is to be sent away,” I said, “it's better that he should be taken straight from the birth chamber, before you have had time even to hold him. Believe me” — I spoke quickly, though she had not moved — “this is true. I'm speaking now as a doctor.”

She moistened her lips. “Marcia says the same.”

I waited a moment, but she said no more. I started to speak, found my voice come hoarsely, and cleared my throat. In spite of myself, my hands tightened on the arms of my chair. But my voice was calm and steady as I came to the core of the interview. “Has the King told you where the child is to be fostered?”

“No. I told you it wasn't easy to talk to him about it. But when he last spoke of it he said he would take counsel; and he spoke of Brittany.”

“Brittany?” For all my care, the word came out with a cutting edge. I fought to recover my calm. My hands had clenched on the chair, and I relaxed them and held them still. So, my doubts were real. Oddly enough, the knowledge hardened me. If I must fight the King as well as Ygraine — yes, and my Delphic gods as well — then I would do so. As long as I could see the ground to fight from... “So Uther will send him to King Budec?”

“It seems so.” She seemed to have noticed nothing strange in my manner. “He sent a messenger a month ago. That was just before I sent to ask you to come. Budec is the obvious choice, after all.”

This was true. King Budec of Less Britain was a cousin of the King's. It was he who, some thirty years ago, had taken my father and the young Uther under his protection when the usurper Vortigern murdered their elder brother King Constans, and in his capital of Kerrec they had assembled and trained the army which had won the High Kingdom back from Vortigern. But I shook my head. “Too obvious. If anyone should look for the boy to harm him, they'll guess where to go. Budec can't protect him all the time. Besides — ”

“Budec cannot care for my child as he should be cared for!” The words came forcibly, stopping me short, but the interruption was not uncivil. It came almost like a cry. It was plain that she had not heard a word I had said. She was fighting herself, choosing words. “He is old, and besides, Brittany is a long way off, and less secure even than this Saxon-ridden land. Prince Merlin, I — Marcia and I — we think that you — ” The hands suddenly twisted together in her lap. Her voice changed. “There is no one else we can trust, And Uther — whatever Uther says, he knows that his kingdom, or any part of it, would be safe in your hands. You are Ambrosius' son, and the child's closest kinsman. Everyone knows your power, and fears it — the child would be safe with you to protect him. It's you who must take him, Merlin!” She was begging me now. “Take him safe, somewhere away from this cruel coast, and rear him for me. Teach him as you were taught, and rear him as a King's son should be reared, and then when he is grown, bring him back and let him take his place as you did, at the next King's side.”

She faltered. I must have been staring at her like a fool. She fell quiet, twisting her hands. There was a long silence, filled with the scent of the salt wind and the crying of the gulls. I had not been aware of rising, but I found myself standing at the window with my back to the Queen, staring out at the sky, Below the turret wall the gulls wheeled and mewed in the wind, and far below, at the foot of the black cliff, the sea dashed and whitened. But I saw and heard nothing. My hands were pressed down hard on the stone of the sill, and when at length I lifted them and straightened they showed a mottled bar of bloodless flesh where the stone had bitten in. I began to chafe them, only now feeling the small hurt as I turned back to meet the Queen's eyes. She too had hold of herself again, but I saw strain in her face, and a hand plucked at her gown.

I said flatly: “Do you think you can persuade the King to give him to me?”

“No. I don't think so. I don't know.” She swallowed. “Of course I can talk to him, but — ”

“Then why send for me to ask me this, if you have no power to sway the King?”

She was white, and her lips worked together, but she kept her head up and faced me. “I thought that if you agreed, my lord, you could — you would — ”

“I can do nothing with Uther now. You should know that.” Then, in sudden, bitter comprehension: “Or did you send for me as you did last time, hoping for magic to order, as if I were an old spell-wife, or a country druid? I would have thought, madam — ” I stopped. I had seen the flinching in her eyes, and the drawn pallor round her mouth, and I remembered what she carried in her. My anger died. I turned up a hand, speaking gently: “Very well. If it can be done, Ygraine, I will do it, even if I have to talk to Uther myself to remind him of his promise.”

“His promise? What did he promise you, and when?”

“When he first sent for me, and told me of his love for you, he swore to obey me in anything, if only he could have his way.” I smiled at her. “It was meant as a bribe rather than a promise, but no matter, we'll hold it to him as a royal oath.”

She began to thank me, but I stopped her. “No, no, keep your thanks. I may not succeed with the King; you know how little he loves me. You were wise to send secretly, and you'll be wiser not to let him know we talked of this together.”

“He shan't know from me.”

I nodded. “Now, for the child's sake and your own, you must put your fears aside. Leave this to me. Even if we can't move the King, I promise you that wherever the child is fostered, I shall make it my business to watch over him. He will be kept safely, and reared as a King's son should be reared. Will that content you?”

“If it has to, yes.”

She drew a long breath then and moved at last, rising from her chair and, still gracefully in spite of her bulk, pacing down the long room to one of the far windows. I made no move to follow her. She stood there for a while with her back to me, in silence. When at length she turned, she was smiling. She lifted a hand to beckon me and I went to her.

“Will you tell me one thing, Merlin?”

“If I can.”

“That night when we spoke in London, before you brought the King to me here. You talked of a crown, and a sword standing in an altar like a cross. I have wondered so much about it, thinking...Tell me now, truly. Was it my crown you saw? Or did you mean that this child — this boy who has cost so much — that he will be King?”

I should have said to her: “Ygraine, I do not know. If my vision was true, if I was a true prophet, then he will be King. But the Sight has left me, and nothing speaks to me in the night or in the fire, and I am barren. I can only do as you do, and take the time on trust. But there is no going back. God will not waste all the deaths.”

But she was watching me with the eyes of a woman in pain, so I said to her: “He will be King.”

She bent her head and stood silent for a few moments, watching the sunlight on the floor, not as if thinking, but as if listening to what stirred within her. Then she looked up at me again.

“And the sword in the altar?”

I shook my head. “Madam, I don't know. It has not come yet. If I am to know, I will be shown.”

She put out a hand. “One more thing...” From something in her voice, I knew that this mattered most to her. Not knowing what was coming, I braced myself to lie. She said: “If I must lose this child...Shall I have others, Merlin?”

“That is three things you have asked me, Ygraine.”

“You won't answer?”

I had spoken only to gain time, but at the flash of fear and doubt in her eyes I was glad to tell her the truth. “I would answer you, madam, but I do not know.”

“How is that?” she asked sharply.

I lifted my shoulders. “That again I cannot answer. Further than this boy you carry, I have not seen. But it seems probable, since he is to be King, that you will have no other sons. Girls, maybe, to bring you comfort.”

“I shall pray for it,” she said simply, and led the way back to the embrasure. She gestured me to sit. “Will you not take a cup of wine with me now, before you leave? I've received you poorly, I'm afraid, after asking such a journey of you, but I was in torment until I had talked with you. Won't you sit down with me now for a little while, and tell me what the news is with you?”

So I stayed a short while longer and, after I had given her my meager news, I asked where Uther was bound with his troops. She told me that he was heading, not for his capital at Winchester as I had supposed, but northwards to Viroconinm, where he had called a council of leaders and petty kings from the north and north-east. Viroconium is the old Roman town which lies on the border of Wales, with the mountains of Gwynedd between it and the threat of the Irish Shore. It was still at this time a market center, and the roads were well maintained. Once out of the Dumnonian Peninsula, Uther could make good speed north by the Glevum Bridge. He might even, if the weather stayed fair and the country quiet, be back for the Queen's lying-in. For the moment, Ygraine told me, the Saxon Shore was quiet; after Uther's victory at Vindocladia the invaders had retired on the hospitality of the federated tribes. There was no clear news from the north, but the King (she told me) feared some kind of concerted action there in the spring between the Picts of Strathclyde and the invading Angles: the meeting of the Kings at Viroconium had been called in an attempt to thrash out some kind of united plan of defense.

“And Duke Cador?” I asked her. “Does he stay here in Cornwall, or go on to Vindocladia to watch the Saxon Shore?”

Her answer surprised me. “He is going north with the King, to the council.”

“Is he indeed? Then I'd better guard myself.” At her quick look I nodded. “Yes, I shall go straight to the King. Time grows short, and it's luck for me that he's travelling north. He's bound to take his troops by the Glevum Bridge, so Ralf and I can cross by the ferry and get there before him. If I intercept him north of the Severn, there's nothing to show him that I ever left Wales.”

Soon after that I took my leave. When I left her she was standing by the window again. Her head was held high, and the breeze was ruffling her dark hair. I knew then that when the time came the child would not be taken from a weeping and regretful woman, but from a Queen, who was content to let him go to his destiny.

Not so with Marcia. She was waiting for me in the anteroom, bursting with questions, regrets, and anger against the King which she barely smothered into discretion. I reassured her as best I could, swore several times on every god in every shrine and hollow hill in Britain that I would do my utmost to get possession of the child and keep him safe, but when she started to ask me for spells for protection in childbed, and to talk of wet-nurses, I left her talking, and made for the door.

Forgetting herself in her agitation, she followed me and grabbed my sleeve. “And did I tell you? The King says she must have his own physician, a man he can trust to put the right stories about afterwards, and say nothing about where the poor mite goes for fostering. As if it wasn't more important that my lady should be properly looked after! Give any doctor enough gold, and he'd swear his own mother's life away, everybody knows that.”

“Certainly,” I said gravely. “But I know Gandar well, and there's no one better. The Queen will be in good hands.”

“But an army doctor! What can he know about childbirth?”

I laughed. “He served with my father's army in Brittany for a long time. Where there are fighting men, there are also their women. My father had a standing army in Brittany of fifteen thousand men, encamped. Believe me, Gandar has had plenty of experience.”

With that she had to be content. She was talking again about wet-nurses when I left her.

She came to the inn that night, cloaked and hooded, and riding straight as a man. Maeve led her to the room her family shared, drove out everyone — including Caw — who was still awake, then took Ralf in to talk to his grandmother. I was in bed before she left.

Next morning Ralf and I set out for Bryn Myrddin, with a flask or two of sloe wine to cheer us on our way. To my surprise, Ralf seemed every bit as cheerful as he had been on the way south. I wondered if, after the brief spell back in the scene of his childhood, service with me had begun to look like freedom. He had heard all the news from his grandmother; he told it me as we rode; most of it was what I had learned already from the Queen, with some court gossip added which was entertaining but hardly informative, except for the talk which was inevitably going round about Uther's rejection of the child.

Ralf, to my secret amusement, seemed as anxious now as Marcia for me to get custody of the baby.

“If the King refuses, what will you do?”

“Go to Brittany to talk to King Budec,”

“Do you think he'll let you stay with the prince?”

“Budec is my kinsman too, remember.”

“Well, but would he risk offending King Uther? Would he keep it secret from him?”

“That I can't tell you,” I said, “If it had been Hoel, now — Budec's son — that would be different. He and Uther always fought like dogs after the same bitch.”

I did not add that the description was in fact more accurate than was decent. Ralf merely nodded, chewing (we had stopped on a sunny hillside to eat), and reached for a flask. “Have some of this?” He was offering me the sloe wine.

“God of green grapes, boy, no! It won't be ready to drink for a year. Wait till next harvest's ripe, and open it then.”

But he insisted, and unstoppered the flask. It certainly smelled odd and, he admitted, tasted worse. When I suggested, not unkindly, that Maeve had probably made a mistake and given him the medicine for the flux, he spat the mouthful out on the grass, then asked me a little stiffly what I was laughing at.

“Not at you. Here, let me taste the stuff...Well, there's nothing in it that there shouldn't be; but I must have been thinking of something else when they asked me about the mixing. No, I was laughing at myself. All these months — these years, even — hammering at heaven's doors to get what? A baby and a wet-nurse. If you insist on staying with me, Ralf, the next few years will certainly bring new experiences for both of us.”

He merely nodded; he was busy pursuing present anxieties.

“If we have to go to Brittany, you mean we might have to stay disguised like this? For years?” He flicked with a contemptuous finger at the coarse stuff of his cloak.

“That will depend. Not quite like this, I hope. Hold step till you reach your bridges, Ralf.”

His face showed me that this was not how enchanters were expected to talk. They built their own bridges, or flew across without them. “Depend on the King, you mean? Must you seek him out? My grandmother says, if it's put about that the baby's stillborn, it could be handed to you secretly, and the King never know.”

“You forget. Men must know if a prince is born. How else, when Uther dies, can they be brought to accept him?”

“Then what are you going to do, my lord?”

I shook my head, not answering. He took my silence for refusal to tell him, and accepted it with no more questions. For my part, I had perforce to take my own advice about crossing bridges; I was waiting to see a way over. With the Queen won, the harder half of the game was played; now I must plan how best to deal with the King — whether to seek his consent openly, or go first to Budec. But as we sat finishing our meal I was not thinking overmuch about Brittany, or the King, or even the child; I was content to rest in the sun and let the time go over. What had just happened at Tintagel had happened without my contriving. Something was moving; there was a kind of breathing brightness in the air, the wind of God brushing by, invisible in sunlight. Even for men who cannot see or hear them, the gods are still there, and I was not less than a man. I had not the arrogance — or the hardihood — to test my power again, but I put on hope, as a naked man welcomes rags in a winter storm.

8

The weather held, so we went easily, taking care not to tread too closely on the heels of Uther's force; if we were caught west of the Uxella marshes — or indeed south of the Severn at all — it would be only too obvious where we had been, Uther usually moved fast, and there was nothing to delay him here in settled country, so we followed cautiously, waiting until his army should be clear of the southern end of the Severn ferry. If we were lucky with the ferry and, once we were across the Severn, made good speed northwards, we should be able (having apparently just come innocently for the purpose from Maridunum) to fall in with the troops on their way up the Welsh border, and try to have speech with the King.

On the way south we had avoided the main road, but had used the pack tracks which run near the coast, winding in and out of the valleys. Now, since we dared not fall too far behind Uther, we kept as closely as we dared to the straight route along the ridges, but avoiding the paved road where the posting stations might be left guarded in the army's wake.

We were even more careful than we had been formerly. After we had left the shelter of Maeve's roof we sought out no more inns. Indeed, the ways we went boasted of no inns even had we looked for them; we lodged where we could — in wood-cutters' cabins, sheep shelters, even once or twice in the lee of a stack of bracken cut for bedding — and blessed the mild weather. It was wild country through which we went. There are high ridged stretches of moorland, where heather grows among the granite tors, and the land is good to feed nothing except the sheep and the wild deer; but just below the rocky spine of the land the forest begins. On the uplands the trees grow sparsely, raked by the wind, already in early autumn half scoured of leaves. But lower, in every dip and valley, the forest is dense, of trees crowded and hugely grown, impassable with undergrowth as toughly woven as a fisherman's net. Here and there, unnoticed until you stumble across them, are crags and bouldered screes of rock thickly clothed with thorn and creeper, invisible and deadly as a wolf trap. Even more dangerous are the stretches of bog, some black and slimy, some innocent and green as a meadow, where a man on horseback can sink from sight as easily and almost as quickly as a spoon sinking into a bowl of gruel. There are secret ways through these places, known to the beasts and the forest dwellers, but mostly men shun them. At night the soft ground flickers with marshlights and strange dancing flames which, men say, are the souls of the wandering dead.

Ralf had known the ways in his own country, but once we struck the low-lying marshy forests through which the Uxella and its tributaries flow towards the Severn we had to go more cautiously, relying on information from the people of the forest, charcoal-burners and woodmen, and once or twice a solitary hermit or holy man who offered us a night's shelter in some cave or woodland shrine. Ralf seemed to enjoy the rough travel and rougher lodging, and even the danger that seemed to lie about us in forest and track, and the threat of the army so few miles ahead. Both of us grew daily more unkempt and more like the roles we had assumed. It might be said that our disguise was more necessary here even than in Tintagel; woe betide the King's messenger or merchant who rides off the guarded road in these parts, but the poor are received kindly, vagrants or holy men with nothing to steal, and Ralf and I, as poor travelling healers, met welcome everywhere. There was nowhere we could not buy food and shelter with a copper penny and a pot of medicine. The marsh folk always need medicine, living as they do at the edge of the fetid bogland, with agues and swollen joints and the fear of fever. They build their huts right at the borders of the scummed pools, just clear of the deep black mud at the edge, or even set them on stilts right over the stagnant water. The huts crack and rot and fall to pieces every year, and have to be patched each spring, but in spring and autumn the flocks of travelling birds fly down to drink, in summer the waters are full of fish and the forest of game, and in winter the folk break the ice and lie in wait for the deer to come and drink. And always the place is loud with frogs; I have eaten these many times in Brittany, and it is true that they make a good meal So the folk of the marshes cling to their stinking cabins, and eat well and drink the standing water, and die of the fever and the flux; nor do they fear the walking fires which haunt the marsh at night, for these are the souls of men they knew.

We were still twelve miles short of the ferry, and it was growing dusk, when the first hint of trouble came. The oak forests had given way to a lighter woodland of birch and alder, the trees crowding so closely to the sides of the track that we had to lie low on the horses' necks to avoid the whipping branches. Though there had been no rain the ground was very soft, and now and again our horses' hoofs splashed deep in the black mire. Soon, somewhere near us, I smelled the marsh, and before long through the thinning trees we could see the dull glimmer of the bog pools reflecting the last light from the sky. My horse stumbled, floundering, and Ralf, who was riding ahead of me, checked and put a quick hand to my rein. Then he pointed ahead.

Ahead of us, a different light pricked the dusk: the steady, yellow of candle or rushlight. The hut of a marsh dweller. We rode towards it.

The dwelling was not set over the water, but the ground was very wet, and was no doubt flooded in bad weather, for the hut was raised on piles, and approached by a narrow causeway of logs sawn short and jammed together across a ten-foot moat of mud.

A dog barked. I could see a man, a shadow against the dully lit interior of the hut, peering out at us. I hailed him. The marsh dwellers speak a tongue of their own, but they understand the Celtic of the Dumnonii.

“My name is Emrys. I'm a travelling doctor, and this is my servant. We're making for the ferry at Uxella. We came by the forest because the King's army is on the road. We're looking for shelter, and can pay for it.”

If there was one thing the poor folk of these parts understood, it was the need for a man to keep out of the way of troops on the march. In a few moments a bargain was struck, the dog was hauled back into the hut and tied up, and I was picking my way gingerly across the slippery logs, leaving Ralf to tend the horses and tether them on the driest piece of ground he could find.

Our host's name was Nidd; he was a short, agile-looking fellow with black hair and a black bristle of beard. His shoulders and arms looked immensely strong, but he limped badly from a leg which had been broken, then set by guesswork and left to knit crooked. His wife, who was probably little more than thirty, was white-haired and bent double on herself with rheumatism; she looked and moved like an old woman, and her face was drawn into tight lines round a toothless mouth. The hut was cramped and foul-smelling, and I would rather have slept in the open, but the evening had turned chilly, and neither Ralf nor I wished to spend a night out in the sodden forest. So when we had had our fill of black bread and broth we accepted the space of floor offered us, and prepared to lie down wrapped in our cloaks, and take what rest we could. I had mixed a potion for the woman, and she was already asleep, huddled against the other wall under a pile of skins, but Nidd made no move to join her. He went instead to the doorway, peering again into the night, as if expecting someone. Ralf's eyes met mine, and his brows lifted; his hand moved towards his dagger. I shook my head. I had heard the light, quick footsteps on the causeway. The dog made no sound, but his tail beat the floor. The curtain of rough-tanned deerhide was pushed aside from the doorway, and a boy came running in, his mouth one huge grin in a filthy face. He stopped short when he saw Ralf and me, but his father said something in patois and the boy, still eyeing us curiously, dumped the bundle of faggots he carried on the table and undid the thong that held it together. Then, with a swift wary look at me, he pulled from the middle of the faggots a dead fowl, a few strips of salted pork, a bundle which he shook out to reveal a pair of good leather trews, and a well-sharpened knife of the kind issued to the soldiers of the King's armies.

I approached the table, holding out my hand. The man stood watchful, but made no move, and after a moment the boy dropped the knife into my palm. I weighed it in my hand, considering. Then I laughed and dropped it point down, to the table. It stuck there beside the fowl, quivering.

“You've had good hunting tonight, haven't you? That's easier than waiting for the wild duck to flight in at dawn. So, the King's army lies nearby? How near?”

The boy merely stared, too shy to answer, but with the help of his father I got the information bit by bit.

It was not reassuring. The army had made camp barely five miles away. The boy had lurked in a tree at the forest's edge, watching his chance to steal food, and had overheard scraps of talk among the men who had gone in among the trees to relieve themselves. It seemed, if the boy had rightly understood what he had heard, that though the main body of the army would no doubt head on its way in the morning, a troop was to be detached and sent directly to Caerleon, with a message for the commander there. They would obviously go by the quickest way, the river crossing. They would certainly commandeer whatever boats were available.

I looked at Ralf. He was already fastening his cloak. I nodded, and turned to Nidd.

“We must go, I'm afraid. We must get to the ferry before the King's troops, and no doubt they'll ride at first light. We'll have to leave now. Can the boy guide us?”

The boy would do anything, it seemed, for the copper penny I gave him, and he knew all the ways through the marsh. We thanked our host, left the fee and medicines we had promised, and were soon on our way, with the boy — whose name was Ger — at my horse's head.

There were stars, and a quarter moon, but hazed over with fitful cloud. I could barely see the path, but the boy never hesitated. He seemed able to see even in the dark under the trees. The beasts trod softly enough on the forest floor, but the boy made no sound at all.

It was difficult to tell, what with the dark, the bad going and the winding track, what kind of distance we were covering. It seemed a long time before the trees dwindled and thinned, and the way stretched clearer ahead of us. As the moon grew stronger, the clouds diffusing her pale light, I could see more clearly. We were still in the marsh; water gleamed on either hand, islanded with blackness. Underfoot mud pulled and sucked at the horses' hoofs. Rushes swished and rustled shoulder high. There was a noise of frogs everywhere, and now and again a splash as something took to the water. Once, with a clap and a call and a flash of white, a feeding bird shot off not a yard in front of my horse's hoofs, and, had it not been for the boy's hand on the reins, I must have been unseated and thrown into the water. After that my horse picked his way nervously, starting even at the faint sucking sounds from the pools where the marshlights flickered and bubbles popped under the wisps of vapour which hung and floated over the water. Here and there, sticking up black out of the bog, was the stripped skeleton of a tree.

It was a strange, dead-looking landscape, and smelling of death. From Ralf's silence, I knew that he was afraid. But our guide, at my horse's head, plodded on through the wandering mists and the wisps of fire that were the souls of his fathers. The only sign he gave was when, at a fork in the track, we passed a hollow tree, a thick trunk twice the height of a man, with a gaping hole in the bark, and inside this a greenish glow that, with the help of the moonlight, faintly lit a crouching shape of eyes, mouth, and crudely carved breasts. The old goddess of the crossways, the Nameless One, who sits staring from her hollowed log like the owl who is her creature; and in front of her, decaying with the greenish glow that folk call enchanter's light, an offering of fish, laid in an oyster shell. I heard Ralf's breath go in, and his hand flickered in a defensive gesture. The boy Ger, without even looking aside, muttered the word under his breath, and held straight on.

Half an hour later, from the head of a rise of solid ground, we saw the wide, moonlit stretch of the estuary, and smelled salt on the clean and moving air.

Down by the shore where the ferry plied there was a red glimmer of light, the flame of the cresset on the wharf. The road to it, clear in the moonlight, crossed the ridge not far from us and ran straight downhill to the shore. We drew rein, but when I turned to thank the boy I found that he had already vanished, melting back into the darkness as silently as one of the wandering marshlights fading. We headed our weary horses down towards the distant glimmer.

When we reached the ferry we found that our luck had deserted us as swiftly and as decisively as our guide. The cresset burned on its post at the strip of shingle where the ferry beached, but the ferry was not there. Straining my ears, I thought I heard, above the ripple of water, the splashing of oars some way out on the estuary. I gave a hail, but got no reply.

“It looks as if he expects to come back to this side soon,” said Ralf, who had been exploring. “There's a fire in the hut, and he's left the door open.”

“Then we'll wait inside,” I said. “It's not likely the King's troops will set out before cock-crow. I can't imagine his message to Caerleon is as urgent as that, or he'd have sent a rider posting last night. See to the horses, then come in and get some rest.”

The ferryman's hut was empty, but the remains of a fire still glowed in the ring of stones that served for a hearth. There was a pile of dry kindling beside it, and before long a comforting tongue of flame licked up through the wood and set the turf glowing. Ralf was soon dozing in the warmth, while I sat watching the flames and listening for the return of the ferry.

But the sound that roused me was not the sound of a keel grating on shingle; it was the soft and distant thudding of a troop of horse coming at the canter.

Before my hand could reach Ralf's shoulder to shake him awake, he was on his feet.

“Quick, my lord, if we ride fast along the shingle — the tide's not full yet — ”

“No. They'd hear us, and in any case the horses are too tired. How far away would you say they were?”

He was at the door in two strides, his head slanted, listening. “Half a mile. Less. They'll be here in a few minutes. What are you going to do? We can't hide. They'll see the horses, and the country's open as a map in the sand.”

This was true. The road down which the horsemen were coming ran straight up from the shore to the head of the ridge. To right and left of it lay the marshlands, glinting with water, and white with mist. Behind us the estuary stretched glimmering, throwing back the moonlight.

“What you can't run from, you must face,” I said. “No, not like that” — as the boy's hand went to his sword — “not against King's men, and we wouldn't stand a chance anyway. There's a better way. Get the bags, will you?”

I was already stripping off my stained and ragged tunic. He threw me a doubtful look, but ran to obey. “You won't get away with that doctor disguise again.”

“I don't intend to try. When fate forces your hand, Ralf, go with it. It looks as if I may get to see the King sooner than I'd hoped to.”

“Here? But you — he — the Queen — ”

“The Queen's secret will be safe. I've been thinking how ' to deal with this if it happened. We'll let them think we've just come south from Maridunum, hoping to see the King,”

“But the ferryman? If they check with him?”

“It could be awkward, but we'll have to chance it. Why should they, after all? Even if they do, I can deal with it. Men will believe anything of the King's enchanter, Ralf, even that he could cross the estuary on a cloud, or ford it knee high at flood-tide.”

While we were talking he had unstrapped one of the saddle-bags and pulled out of it the decent dark robe and stitched doeskin boots I had worn for my interview with the Queen, while I bent over the bucket of water by the door and swilled the weariness of the journey and the stench of the marshlander's hut off my face and hands. When fate forces you, I had said to Ralf. I felt my blood running fast and light with the hope that this stroke — ill luck we had thought it — might be the first cold, dangerous touch of the god's hand.

When the troop rode up, halting with a clatter and slither of shingle in front of the ferryman's hut, I was standing waiting for them in the open doorway, with the firelight behind me, and the bright moonlight catching the royal Dragon at my shoulder.

Behind me in the shadows I heard Ralf mutter thankfully: “Not Cornwall's men. They won't know me.”

“But they'll know me,” I said. “That's Ynyr's badge. They're Welshmen from Guent.”

The officer was a tall man, with a thin hawk face and a white scar twisting the corner of his mouth. I did not remember him, but he stared, saluted, and said: “By the Raven himself! How came you here, sir?”

“I must have words with the King. How far away is his camp?”

As I spoke, a kind of ripple of movement went among the troop, horses fidgeting and one suddenly rearing as if curbed too nervously. The officer snapped something over his shoulder, then turned back to me. I heard him swallow before he answered me.

“Some eight miles off, sir.”

There was something more here, I thought, than surprise at finding me in this deserted place, and the awe that I was accustomed to meeting among common men. I felt Ralf move up close behind me to my shoulder. A half-glance showed me the sparkle in his eyes; show Ralf danger, and he came alive.

The officer said abruptly: “Well, my lord, this has saved us something. We were on the way to Caerleon. We had the King's orders to find you and bring you to him.”

I caught the sharp intake of Ralf's breath. I thought fast, through a sudden quickening of the heart. This explained the soldiers' reaction; they thought the King's enchanter must have had magical foreknowledge of the King's will. On a plainer level, it settled the matter of the ferryman; if this troop was an escort for me, they would not now need to cross the ferry. Ralf could buy the man's silence when I had gone with the troops. I would not risk taking the boy back within reach of Uther's displeasure.

There was no harm in driving the point home. I said pleasantly: “So I have saved you the trip to Bryn Myrddin. I'm glad. Where did the King plan to receive me? At Viroconium? I didn't think he meant to lie at Caerleon.”

“Nor does he,” said the man. I could hear the effort of control, but his voice was hoarse, and he cleared his throat. “You — you knew the King was travelling north to Viroconium?”

“How not?” I asked him. From the edge of my eye I saw the nods and head-turning among the men that also asked How not? “But I had a mind to talk to him sooner than that. Did he charge you with a letter for me?”

“No, sir. Instructions to take you to him, that was all.” He leaned forward in the saddle. “I think it was on account of the message he got last evening from Cornwall. Ill news, I think, though he told no one what it was. He seemed angry. Then he gave the order to fetch you.”

He waited, looking down at me as if I would be sure to know the contents of the message.

I was only too afraid that I did. Someone had recognized us, or made a guess, and sent to tell the King. The messenger could easily have passed us on the road. So, whatever was to happen between Uther and myself, I had to get Ralf out of danger first. And although I was not afraid for the Queen at Uther's hands, there were others — Maeve, Caw, Marcia, the child himself...The skin on my nape stung and roused like a dog's that smells danger. I took a long, steadying breath and looked about me. “You have a spare horse? My beast is weary and must be led. My servant will rest here, and go back at first light with the ferry, to make ready for me at home. The King will no doubt see me escorted there when my business with him is done.”

The officer's voice, apologetic but definite, cut across Ralf's furious whisper of dissent. “If it please you, sir, you will both come. Those were my orders. We have horses. Shall we ride?”

At the lift of his hand the men were already moving forward to close us round. There was nothing to be done. He had his orders, and I would risk more by arguing than by obeying. Besides, every minute's delay might bring the ferry back. I had heard nothing, but the fellow must have seen the soldiers' torches, and might even now be heading back for custom.

A trooper came up with the spare horses and took our own beasts in hand. We mounted. The officer barked an order, and the troop wheeled and fell in behind us.

We were barely two hundred paces from the shore when I heard, clear behind me, the sound of a boat's bottom grating on shingle. No one else paid any attention. The officer was busy telling me about the council to be held in the north, and behind me I could hear Ralf's voice, gay and amused, promising the troopers “a skin of sloe wine, the best stuff you ever tasted. A recipe of my master's. It's what they give you with the rations now in Caerleon, so you'll see what you've missed. That's what comes of sending messages for a wizard, who knows everything that's happened before it's even happened at all...”

The King was abed when we arrived at the camp, and we were lodged — and guarded — in a tent not far from his. We said nothing to each other that could not be overheard. And, danger or no danger, it was the most comfortable lodging we had had since we left the inn at Camelford. Ralf was soon asleep, but I lay wakeful, watching the empty dark, listening to the little wind which had sprung up throwing handfuls of rain against the walls of the tent, and telling myself: “It must happen. It must happen. The god sent me the vision. The child was given to me.” But the dark stayed empty, and the wind swept the tent walls and withdrew into silence, and nothing came.

I turned my head on its uneasy pillow, and saw dimly the shine of Ralf's eyes, watching me. But he turned over without speaking, and soon his breathing slackened again into sleep.

9

The King received me alone, soon after dawn.

He was armed and ready for the road, but bareheaded. His helmet with its gold circlet lay on a stool beside his chair, and his sword and shield stood propped against the box which held the travelling altar of Mithras that he always carried with him. The tent was hung with skins and worked curtains, but it was chilly, and draughts crept everywhere. Outside were the sounds of the army breaking camp. I could hear the snap and flutter of the Dragon standard by the entrance.

He greeted me briefly. His face still wore the bleak expression I remembered, empty of friendliness, but I could see neither anger nor enmity there. His look was cool and summing, his voice brisk.

“You and your Sight have saved me a little trouble, Merlin.”

I bent my head. If he asked no questions I need answer none. I came to the point. “What do you want with me?”

“Last time we spoke together I was harsh with you. I have since thought that this was perhaps unworthy of a king to whom you had just done a service.”

“You were bitter at the Duke's death.”

“As to that, he fought against his King. Whatever the circumstances, he raised a sword to me, and he died. It's done, and it is past. We, you and I, are left with the future. This is what concerns me now.”

“The child,” I said, assenting.

The blue eyes narrowed. “Who sent you the news? Or is this still the Sight?”

“Ralf brought the news. When he left your court, he came to me. He serves me now.”

He considered that for a moment, his brows drawing together, then smoothing as he found no harm in it. I watched him. He was a tall man, with reddish hair and beard, and a fair, high-coloured skin that made him look younger than his years. It was just over a year, I thought, since my father had died and Uther had lifted the Pendragon standard. Kingship had steadied him; I could see discipline in his face as well as the lines drawn there by passion and temper, and kingship along with his victories clothed him like a cloak.

He moved a hand, dismissively, and I knew that Ralf need fear him no longer. “I said the past was past, but there is one thing I must ask you. On that night in Tintagel when this child was begotten, I bade you keep away from me and trouble me no more. Do you remember?”

“I remember.”

“And you replied that you would not trouble me again, that I should not need your service again. Was this foresight, or only anger?”

I said quietly: “When I spoke, I spoke the words that came to me. I thought they were foresight. All the words I spoke and the things I did throughout that night I took as if they came straight from the gods. Why do you ask? Have you sent for me now to command service of me?”

“To ask it, rather.”

“As a prophet?”

“No. As a kinsman.”

“Then I'll tell you, as a kinsman, that it was not prophecy that night, nor was it anger, sir, but only grief. I was grieving for my servant's death, and for the deaths of Gorlois and his companions. But now, as you say, the past is past. If I can serve you, you have only to command me.”

But, I thought, as I waited for him to speak, if it was no prophecy, then none of that night was God's and He never spoke to me. No, I had told the truth when I said that Uther would have no need of my service; it had not been Uther whom I served that night; it was not Uther I would serve now. I remembered the words of the other King, my father: “You and I between us, Merlin, we will make such a king as the world has never known” It was the dead King, and the one still unborn, who commanded me.

If there had been any hesitation in my manner, Uther had not noticed it. He nodded, then set his elbow on his knee and his chin on his fist and thought for a while, frowning.

“There is one other thing I said that night. I told you that I would not acknowledge the child begotten then. I spoke in anger, but now I speak coldly, after taking thought and counsel, and I tell you, Merlin, that I'm still of the same mind.”

He seemed to expect an answer, but I was silent. He went on, half irritably: “Don't misunderstand me, I don't doubt the Queen. I believe her when she tells me that she never lay with Gorlois after he brought her to London. The child is mine, yes, but he cannot be my heir, nor can he be reared in my house. If the child is a girl, then none of this matters, but if it is a boy it would be folly to rear him as heir to the High Kingdom, when men will only have to count on their fingers to say that Gorlois begot him of his wife Ygraine, half a month before the High King married her.” He looked at me. “You must know this as well as I do, Merlin. You have lived in kings' houses. There will always be those who doubt his birth, so there will always be those who would try to pull him off the throne in favour of men with a 'better claim,' and God knows there will always be claims in plenty. And the best claims will be those of my other sons. So, even brought up as my bastard at my court, the child is dangerous. He may try to come at the kingship by the deaths of my other children. By the Light, this is not unknown. I will not have my house a battleground. I must beget myself another son, an undoubted heir, conceived in wedlock to the satisfaction of all men, and reared at my side when the kingdom is settled and the Saxon wars are over. Do you accept this?”

“You are the King, Uther, and the child's father.”

It was hardly an answer, but he nodded as if I had agreed. “There is more. This child is not only dangerous, he'll be a victim of danger. If men can say that he was not mine, that he must have been begotten by Gorlois on Ygraine his wife, then it follows that he is the true son of the Duke of Cornwall, with a claim on the younger son's portion of the lands which Cador holds, now that I've confirmed him as Duke in his father's place. You see? King's son or Duke's, Cador is bound to be the child's enemy, and there are some who'd follow him quickly enough.”

“Is Cador loyal to you?”

“I trust him,” He gave a short laugh. “So far. He's young, but hard-headed. He wants Cornwall, and he won't risk anything that could lose it — yet. But later, who knows? And when I am gone...” He let it hang. “No, Cador is not my enemy, but there are others who are.”

“Who?”

“God knows, but what king was ever without them? Even Ambrosius...they're still saying he died of poison. I know you told me this was not true, but even so I have Ulfin taste my food. Ever since I took Octa and Eosa prisoner, they've been the storm center for every disaffected leader who thinks he can see his way to a crown like Vortigern's — backed with Saxon forces, and paid for with British lives and lands. But what else can I do? Let them go, to raise the Federates against me? Or kill them, and give their sons in Germany a grievance to be wiped out in blood? No, Octa and his cousin are my hostages. Without them, Colgrim and Badulf would have been here long since, and the Saxon Shore would have burst its bounds and be lapping at Ambrosius' Wall. As it is, I'm buying time. You can't tell me anything, Merlin? Have you heard anything, or seen?”

He was not asking for prophecy; Uther looked askance and white-eyed at things of the Otherworld, like a dog that sees the wind. I shook my head.

“Of your enemies? Nothing, except that when Ralf came to me after leaving your court, he was set upon, and nearly killed. The men had no badge. They may have thought he was your messenger, or perhaps the Queen's. Troops from the barracks hunted the woods, but found no trace of them. More than that, I've heard nothing. But be sure that if I ever learn anything I will tell you.”

He gave a brief nod, then went on, slowly, choosing his words. His manner was abrupt, almost reluctant. For myself, my mind was spinning, and I had to fight to hold myself calm and steady. We were coming now onto the battleground, but it must be a very different battle from the one I had planned for. “You and I,” he had said. He would hardly have sent for me unless I was to have some concern in the child's future.

He was going over the same ground that Ygraine and I had covered. “...so you see why, if the child is a boy, he cannot stay with me, yet if I send him away, he is beyond my power to protect. But protection he must have. Bastard or no, he is my child and the Queen's, and if we have no other sons he must one day be declared my heir to the High Kingdom.” He turned up a hand. “You see where this leaves me. I must consign him to a guardian who will keep him in safety for the first few years of his life...at least until this torn kingdom is settled and safe, and in the hands of strong and loyal allies, and my own declared heirs.”

He waited again for my agreement. I nodded, then said, carefully neutral: “Have you chosen this guardian?”

“Yes. Budec.”

So the Queen had been right, and the decision was made. But still he had sent for me. I held myself still and said, so flatly that it sounded indifferent: “It was the obvious choice.”

He shifted in his chair and cleared his throat. I saw with some surprise that he was uneasy, nervous even. He even looked half pleased at my commendation of his choice. The knowledge steadied me. I realized that I had been so single-minded — so wrapped in what I had believed was my and the child's driving fate — that I had seen Uther falsely as the enemy. He was not so concerned: the plain fact was that Uther was a war-leader harassed perpetually by the strife in and around his borders, working desperately against time to patch a dam here, a sea-wall there, against the piling flood-water; and to him this affair of the child, though it might prove one day vitally important, was now little but a rub in the way of major issues, something he wanted out of the way and delegated. He had spoken without emotion, and indeed had set the thing out fairly enough. It was possible that he had sent for me, genuinely, to ask my advice, as his brother had been used to do. In which case...I wetted dry lips, and schooled myself to listen quietly, an adviser with a man beset by trouble.

He was speaking again, something about a letter. The message which had come yesterday. He pointed to the stool beside him where the parchment lay, crumpled as if he had thrown it down in anger. “Did you know about this?”

I picked the letter up and smoothed it out. It was brief, a message from Brittany, that had been sent to the King at Tintagel and brought here after him. King Budec had fallen sick of a fever, it said, during the summer. He had seemed on the way to recovery, then, towards the end of August, he had quite suddenly died. The letter finished with protestations of formal friendship from the new king, Hoel, Uther's “devoted cousin and ally...”

I looked up. Uther had sat back in his chair, shifting a fold of the scarlet mantle over his arm. Everything seemed quite still. Outside, the wind had dropped. The sounds of the camp came from far away, faintly. Uther's chin was sunk on his chest, and he was watching me with a mixture of worry and impatience.

I was noncommittal. “This is heavy news. Budec was a good man and a good friend.”

“Heavy enough, even if it had not destroyed my plans. I was preparing to send messages even when this letter came. Now I can't see my way clear. Have they told you that I go to a council of kings at Viroconium?”

“Audagus told me.” Audagus was the officer who had escorted us from the ferry.

He threw out a hand. “Then you see how much I want to turn aside to deal with this. But it must be dealt with now. This is why I sent for you.”

I flicked the seal with a forefinger. “You won't send the child to Hoel, then? He swears himself your devoted cousin and ally.”

“He may be my devoted cousin and ally, but he's also a — ” Uther used a phrase that became a soldier rather than a king in council. “I never liked him, nor he me. Oh, Mithras knows he would never mean harm to a son of mine, but he's not the man his father was, and he might not be able to protect the boy from his ill-wishers. No, I'll not send him to Hoel. But what other court can I send him to? Reckon it for yourself.” He told over a few names, all powerful men, all of them kings whose lands lay in the southern part of the country, behind the Wall of Ambrosius. “Well? Do you see my problem? If he goes to one of the nobles or petty kings here in safe country he could still be in danger from an ambitious man; or worse, become a tool of treachery and rebellion.”

“So?”

“So I come to you. You are the only man who can steer me between these clashing rocks. On the one hand, the child must be sworn and acknowledged my own, in case there is no other heir. On the other, he must be taken away out of danger for himself and the kingdom, and brought up in ignorance of his birth until the time comes when I send for him.” He turned over a hand on his knee and asked me as simply as he had asked me once before; “Can you help me?”

I answered him as simply. .The bewilderment, the confused whirl of thought, settled suddenly into a pattern, like coloured leaves blown down into a tapestry on the grass when the spinning wind drops still. “Of course. You need wreck no part of your kingdom on either of these rocks. Listen, and I will tell you how. You told me you had 'taken counsel.' Other men, then, know of your plans to send the boy to Budec?”

“Yes.”

“Have you spoken to anyone of this letter, and your doubts of Hoel?”

“No.”

“Good. You will give it out that your plan stays as formerly, and that the boy will go to Hoel's court at Kerrec. You will write to Hoel requesting this. Have someone make all arrangements to send the boy with his nurse and attendants as soon as the weather allows. See that it is given out that I will accompany him there myself.”

He was frowning, intent, and I could see protest in his face, but he made none. He said merely: “And?”

“Next,” I said, “I must be at Tintagel for the birth. Who is her physician?”

“Gandar.” He seemed about to say something more, then changed his mind and waited.

“Good. I'm not suggesting I should attend her.” I smiled. “In view of what I shall suggest, that might lead to some rather dangerous rumours. Now, will you be there yourself for the lying-in?”

“I shall try, but it's doubtful.”

“Then I shall be there to attest the child's birth, as well as Gandar and the Queen's women, and whoever you can appoint. If it is a boy, the news will be sent to you by beacon, and you will declare him your son by the Queen, and, in default of a son begotten in wedlock, your heir until another prince shall be born.”

He took some time over that, frowning, and obviously reluctant to commit himself. But it was only the conclusion of what he had himself said to me. Finally he nodded and spoke a little heavily: “Very well. It is true. Bastard or not, he is my heir until I get another. Go on.”

“Meantime the Queen will keep her chamber, and once he has been seen and sworn to, the child will be taken back to the Queen's apartments and kept there, seen only by Gandar and the women. Gandar can arrange this. I myself will leave openly, by the main gate and the bridge. Then after dark I shall go down secretly to the postern gate on the cliff, to receive the child.”

“And take him where?”

“To Brittany. No, wait. Not to Hoel, nor by the ship which everyone will be watching. Leave that part of it to me. I shall take him to someone I know in Brittany, on the edge of Hoel's kingdom. He will be safe, and well cared for. You have my word for it, Uther.”

He brushed that aside as if there had been no need for me to say it. He was already looking lighter, glad to be relieved of a care that must, among the weighty cares of the kingdom, seem trivial, and — with the child still only a weight in a woman's womb — unreal. “I'll have to know where you take him.”

“To my own nurse, who reared me and the other royal children, bastard and true alike, in the nurseries at Maridunum. Her name is Moravik, and she's a Breton. After the sack by Vortigern she went home to her people. She has married since. While the child is sucking, I can think of no better place. He won't be looked for in such a humble home. He will be guarded, but better than that, he will be hidden and unknown.”

“And Hoel?”

“He will know. He must. Leave Hoel to me.”

Outside a trumpet sounded. The sun was growing stronger, and the tent was warm. He stirred, and flexed his shoulders, as a man does when he lays off his armour. “And when men find that the child is not on the royal ship, but has vanished? What do we tell them?”

“That for fear of the Saxons in the Narrow Sea the prince was sent, not by the royal ship, but privily, with Merlin, to Brittany.”

“And when it is found he is not at Hoel's court?”

“Gandar and Marcia will swear to it that I took the child safely. What will be said I can't tell you, but there's no one who will doubt me, or that the child is safe as long as he's under my protection. And what my protection means you know. I imagine that men will talk of enchantments and vanishings, and wait for the child to reappear when my spells are lifted.”

He said prosaically: “They're more like to say the ship foundered and the child is dead.”

“I shall be there to deny it.”

“You mean you won't stay with the boy?”

“I must not, not yet. I'm known.”

“Then who will be with him? You said he would be guarded.”

For the first time I hesitated fractionally. Then I met his eyes. “Ralf.”

He looked startled, then angry, then I saw him thinking back past his anger. He said slowly: “Yes. I was wrong there, too. He will be true.”

“There is no one truer.”

“Very well, I am content. Make what arrangements you please. It's in your hands. You of all men in Britain will know how to protect him.” His hands came down hard on the arms of his chair. “So, that is settled. Before we march today I shall send a message to the Queen telling her what I have decided.”

I thought it wise to ask: “Will she accept it? It's no easy thing for a woman to bear, even a queen.”

“She knows my decision, and she will do as I say. There's one thing, though, where she'll have her way; she wants the child baptized a Christian.”

I glanced at the Mithras altar against the tent wall. “And you?”

He lifted his shoulders. “What does it matter? He will never be King. And if he were, then he would pay service where he had to, in the sight of the people.” A hard, straight look. “As my brother did.”

If it was a challenge I declined it, saying merely: “And the name?”

“Arthur.”

The name was strange to me, but it came like an echo of something I had heard long before. Perhaps there had been Roman blood in Ygraine's family...The Artorii; that would be it. But that was not where I had heard the name...

“I'll see to it,” I said. “And now, with your permission, I'll send the Queen a letter, too. She'll lie the easier for being assured of my loyalty.”

He nodded, then stood up and reached for his helmet. He was smiling, a cold ghost of the old malicious smile with which he had baited me when I was a child. “It's strange, isn't it, Merlin the bastard, that I should talk so easily of trusting the body of my own ill-begotten son to the one man in the kingdom whose claim to the throne is better than his? Are you not flattered?”

“Not in the least. You'd be a fool if you didn't know by now that I have no ambitions towards your crown.”

“Then don't teach my bastard any, will you?” He turned his head, shouting for a servant, then back to me. “And none of your damned magic, either.”

“If he's your son,” I said dryly, “he won't take very kindly to magic. I shall teach him nothing except what he has the need and the right to know. You have my word on it.”

On that we parted. Uther would never like me, nor I him, but there was a kind of cold mutual respect between us, born of our shared blood and the different love and service we had given to Ambrosius. I should have known that he and I were linked in this as closely as the two sides of the same counter, and that we would move together whether we willed it or not. The gods sit over the board, but it is men who move under their hands for the mating and the kill.

I should have known; but I had been so used to God's voice in the fire and stars that I had forgotten to listen for it in the counsels of men.

Ralf was waiting, alone in the guarded tent. When I told him the result of my talk with the King, he was silent a long time. Then he said: “So it will all happen, just as you said it would. Did you expect it to come like this? When they brought us here last night, I thought you were afraid.”

“I was, but not in the way you mean.”

I expected him to ask how, but oddly, he seemed to understand. His cheek flushed and he busied himself over some detail of packing. “My lord, I have to tell you...” His voice was stifled. “I have been very wrong about you. At first I — because you are not a man of war, I thought — ”

“You thought I was a coward? I know.”

He looked up sharply. “You knew? You didn't mind?” This, obviously, was almost as bad as cowardice.

I smiled. “When I was a child among budding warriors, I grew used to it. Besides, I have never been sure myself how much courage I have.”

He stared at that, then burst out: “But you are afraid of nothing! All the things that have happened — this journey — you'd have thought we were riding out on a summer morning, instead of going by paths filled with wild beasts and outlaws. And when the King's men took us — even if he is your uncle, that's not to say you'd never be in danger from him. Everyone knows the King's unchancy to cross. But you just looked cold as ice, as if you expected him to do what you wanted, just as everyone does! You, afraid? You're not afraid of anything that's real.”

“That's what I mean,” I said. “I'm not sure how much courage is needed to face human enemies — what you'd call 'real' — knowing they won't kill you. But foreknowledge has its own terrors, Ralf. Death may not lie just at the next corner, but when one knows exactly when it will come, and how...It's not a comfortable thought.”

“You mean you do know?”

“Yes. At least, I think it's my death that I see. At any rate it is darkness, and a shut tomb.”

He shivered. “Yes, I see. I'd rather fight in daylight, even thinking I might die perhaps tomorrow. At least it's always 'perhaps tomorrow,' never 'now.' Will you wear the doeskin boots for riding, my lord, or change them now?”

“Change them. Thank you.” I sat down on a stool and stretched out a foot for him. He knelt to pull off my boots. “Ralf, there is something else I must tell you. I told the King you were with me, and that you would go to Brittany to guard the child.”

He looked up at that, struck still. “You told him that? What did he say?”

“That you were a true man. He agreed, and approved you.”

He sat back on his heels, my boots in his hands, gaping at me.

“He has had time to think, Ralf, as a king should think. He has also had time — as kings do — to still his conscience. He sees Gorlois now as a rebel, and the past as done with. If you wish to go back into his service he will receive you kindly, and give you a place among his fighting men.”

He did not answer, but stooped forward again and busied himself fastening my boots. Then he got to his feet and pulled back the flap of the tent, calling to a man to bring up the horses. “And hurry. My lord and I ride now for the ferry.”

“You see?” I said. “Your own decision this time, freely given. And yet who can say it is not as much a part of the pattern as the 'chance' of Budec's death?” I got to my feet, stretching, and laughed. “By all the living gods, I'm glad that things are moving now. And gladder for the moment of one thing more than any other.”

“That you're to get the child so easily?”

"Oh, that, of course. No, I really meant that now at last I can shave off this damnable beard."

10

By the time Ralf and I reached Maridunum my plans, so far as could be at this stage, were made. I sent him by the next ship to Brittany, with letters of condolence to Hoel, and with messages to supplement the King's. One letter, which Ralf carried openly, merely repeated the King's request that Hoel should give shelter to the baby during his infancy; the other, which Ralf was to deliver secretly, assured Hoel that he would not be burdened with the charge of the child, nor would we come by the royal ship or at the time ostensibly fixed. I begged his assistance for Ralf in all the arrangements for the secret journey at Christmas that I planned. Hoel, easy-going and lazy by nature, and less than fond of his cousin Uther, would be so relieved, I knew, that he would help Ralf and myself in every way known to him.

With Ralf gone, I myself set out for the north. It was obvious that I would not be able to leave the baby too long in Brittany; the refuge with Moravik would serve for a while, till men's interest died down, but after that it might be dangerous. Brittany was the place (as I had said to the Queen) where Uther's enemies would look for the child; the fact that the child was not — had never been — at his publicly declared refuge at Hoel's court might make them believe that the talk of Brittany had been nothing but a false trail I would make certain that no real trail would lead them to Moravik's obscure village. But this was only safe as long as the boy was an infant. As soon as he grew and began to go about, some query or rumour might start. I knew how easily this could happen, and for the child of a poor house to be so cared for and guarded as must happen here, it would be very easy for some question to start a rumour, and a rumour to grow too quickly into a guess at the truth.

More than this, once the child was weaned from women and the nursery, he would have to be trained, if not as a young prince, then as a young noble and a warrior. It was obvious that Bryn Myrddin, on no count, could be his home: he must have the comfort and safety of a noble house around him. In the end I had thought of a man who had been a friend of my father's, and whom I had known well. His name was Ector, styled Count of Galava, one of the nobles who fought under King Coel of Rheged, Uther's most considerable ally in the north.

Rheged is a big kingdom, stretching from the mountainous spine of Britain right to the western coast, and from the Wall of Hadrian in the north clear down to the plain of Deva. Galava, which Ector held under Coel, lies about thirty miles in from the sea, in the north-west corner of the kingdom. Here there is a wild and mountainous tract of country, all hills and water and wild forest; in fact, one of the names it goes by is the Wild Forest. Ector's castle lies on the flat land at the end of one of the long lakes that fill these valleys. There was in past time a Roman fortress there, one of a chain on the military road running from Glannaventa on the coast to join the main way from Luguvallium to York. Between Galava and the port of Glannaventa lie steep hills and wild passes, easily defended, and inland is the well-guarded country of Rheged itself.

When Uther had talked of fostering the child in some safe castle he had thought only of the rich, long-settled lands inside Ambrosius' Wall, but even without his fears of the nobles' loyalty, I would have counted that country dangerous; these were the very lands that the Saxons, immured along the Shore, coveted most dearly. It was these lands which, I guessed, they would fight for first and most bitterly. In the north, in the heart of Rheged, where no one would look for him and where the Wild Forest itself would guard him, the boy could grow up as safely as God would allow, and as freely as a deer.

Ector had married a few years back. His wife was called Drusilla, of a Romano-British family from York. Her father, Faustus, had been one of the city magistrates who had defended the city against Hengist's son Octa, and had been one of those urgent to advise the Saxon leader to yield himself to Ambrosius. Ector himself was fighting at the time in my father's army. It was in York that he had met Drusilla, and had married her. They were both Christians, and this was possibly why their paths and Uther's had not often crossed. But I, along with my father, had been to Faustus' house in York, and Ambrosius had there taken part in many long discussions about the settlement of the northern provinces.

The castle at Galava was well protected, being built on the site of the old Roman fort, with the lake before it, and a deep river on the one hand, and the wild mountains near. It could be approached only from the open water, or by one of the easily watched and defended valley passes. But it did not have the air of a fortress. Trees grew near it, now rich with autumn, and there were boats out and men fishing where the river flowed deep and still through its sedgy flat-lands. The green meadows at the waters' head were full of cattle, and there was a village crowded under the castle walls as there had been in the Roman Peace. Two full miles beyond the castle walls lay a monastery, and so secluded were the valleys that right up on the heights above the tree-line, where the land stretched bare of all but short grass and stones, one saw the strange little blue-fleeced sheep that breed in Rheged, with some shepherd boy cheerfully braving the wolves and fierce hill foxes with the protection of a stick and a single dog.

I travelled alone, and quietly. Though the hated beard had gone, and with it the heavy disguise, I managed the journey unnoticed and unrecognized, and came to Galava towards late afternoon on a bright, crisp October day.

The great gates were wide open, giving on a paved yard where men and boys were unloading a wagon of straw. The oxen stood patiently, chewing their cud; near them a lad was watering a pair of sweating horses. Dogs barked and skirmished, and hens pecked busily among the fallen straw. There were trees in the yard, and to either side of the steps up to the main door someone had planted beds of marigolds, which blazed orange and yellow in the late sunshine. It looked like a prosperous farm rather than a fortress, but through an open door I could see the rows of freshly burnished weapons, and from behind one of the high walls came shouted orders and the clash of men drilling.

I had barely paused between the posts of the archway when the porter was barring my way and asking my business. I handed him my Dragon brooch, wrapped in a small pouch, and bade him take it to his master. He came hurrying back to the gate within minutes, and the chamberlain, puffing in his wake, showed me straight in to Count Ector.

Ector was not much changed. He was a man of medium height, growing now into middle age; if my father had lived they would have been of an age now, I reckoned, which made him something over forty. He had a brown beard going grey, and brown skin with the blood springing healthily beneath it. His wife was more than ten years younger; she was tall, a statuesque woman still in her twenties, reserved and a little shy, but with smoky-blue eyes that belied her cool manner and distant speech. Ector had the air of a contented man.

He received me alone, in a small chamber where spears and bows stood stacked against the walls, and the hearth was four deep in deer-hounds. The fire was heaped as high as a funeral pyre with pine logs blazing, and small wonder, for the narrow windows were unglazed and open to the brisk October air, and the wind whined like another hound in the bowstrings that were stacked there.

He gripped my arms with a bearlike welcome, beaming. “Merlinus Ambrosius! Here's a pleasure indeed! What is it, two years? Three? There's been water under the bridge, aye, and stars fallen, since we last met, eh? Well, you're welcome, welcome. I can't think of any man I'd rather see under my roof! You've been making a name for yourself, haven't you? The tales I've heard tell...Well, well, but you can tell me the truth of it yourself. God's sweet death, boy, you get more like him by the day! Thinner, though, thinner. You look as if you've seen no red meat for a year. Come, sit down by the fire now, and let me send for supper before we talk.”

The supper was enormous and excellent, and would have served me ten times over. Ector ate enough for three, and pressed me to finish the rest. While we ate we exchanged news. He had heard of the Queen's pregnancy, and spoke of it, but for the moment I let it go, and asked him instead what had happened at Viroconium. Ector had attended the King's council there, and was but newly returned home.

“Success?” he asked, in reply to my question. “It's hard to say. It was well attended. Coel of Rheged, of course, and all from these lands” — he named half a dozen neighbours — “except Riocatus of Verterae, who sent to say he was sick.”

“I gather you didn't believe it?”

“When I believe anything that jackal says,” said Ector forcibly, “I'm a spit-licker too. But the wolves were there, all of them, so the scavengers hardly matter.”

“Strathclyde?”

“Oh, aye, Caw was there. You know the Picts in the western half of his land have been giving trouble — when haven't they given trouble, come to that? But for all Caw's Pictish himself, he'll cooperate with any plan that'll help him keep control of that wild territory of his, so he was well disposed to the idea of the council. He'll help, I'm sure of it. Whether he can control that pack of sons he's sired is another matter. Did you know that one of them, Heuil, a wild young blackguard scarcely old enough (you'd have thought) to lift a spear, took one of Morien's girls by force last spring when she was on her way to the monastery her father had promised her to since birth? He lifted his spear to her easily enough; by the time her father got the news she was over the border with him, and in no condition for any monastery, however broad-minded.” He chuckled. “Morien cried rape, of course, but everyone was laughing, so he made the best of it. Strathclyde had to pay, naturally, and he and Morien sat on opposite benches at Viroconium, and Heuil wasn't there at all. Ah, well, but they agreed to sink their differences. King Uther managed it well enough, so what between Rheged and Strathclyde, there's half the northern frontier solid for the King.”

“And the other half?” I asked. “What about Lot?”

“Lot?” Ector snorted. “That braggart! He'd swear allegiance to the Devil and Hecate combined if it would get him a few more acres for himself. He cares no more for Britain than that hound by the hearthstone. Less, He and his wild brood of brothers sitting on that cold rock of theirs. They'll fight when it pays them, and that's all.” He fell silent, scowling at the fire, poking with a foot at the hound nearest him; it yawned with pleasure, and flattened its ears. “But he talks well, and maybe I'm blackguarding him. Times are changing, and even barbarians like Lot ought to be able to see that unless we band together with a strong oath, and keep it, it'll be the Flood Year all over again.”

He was not referring to an actual flood, but to the year of the great invasion a century ago, when the Picts and Saxons, joined with the Scots from Ireland, poured across Hadrian's Wall with axe and fire. Maximus commanded then, in Segontium. He drove them back and broke them, and won for Britain a time of peace, and for himself an empire and a legend.

I said: “Lothian is a key to the defense that Uther's planning, even more than Rheged or Strathclyde. I'd heard tell — I don't know if it's true? — that there are Angles settled on the Alaunus, and that the strength of the Anglian Federates south of York along the Abus has doubled since my father's death?”

“It's true.” He spoke heavily. “And south of Lothian there's only Urien on the coast, and he's another carrion crow, picking at Lot's leavings. Nay, that may be another one I'm doing an injustice to. He's married to Lot's sister, when all's done, so he'd be bound to cry the same way. Talking of which — ”

“Talking of what?” I asked, as he paused.

“Marriage.” He scowled, then began to grin. “If it wasn't so plaguy dangerous, it would be funny. You knew Uther had a bastard girl, I forget her name, she must be seven or eight years old?”

“Morgause. Yes, I remember her. She was born in Brittany.”

Morgause was a sideslip of Uther's by a girl in Brittany who had followed him to Britain hoping, I suppose, for marriage, since she was of good family, and the only woman, so far as anyone knew then for certain, who had borne him a child. (It had always been a matter of amazement, and a good deal of private and public conjecture among Uther's troops, how he managed to avoid leaving a train of bastards in his wake like seedlings following the sower down a furrow. But this girl was, to public knowledge, the only one. And I believe to Uther's knowledge, too. He was a fair man and a generous one, and no girl had suffered any loss worse than maidenhead through him.) He had acknowledged the child, kept both child and mother at one of his houses, and after the mother's marriage to a lord of his household, had taken the girl into his own. I had seen her once or twice in Brittany, a thin pale-haired girl with big eyes and a mouth folded small.

“What about Morgause?” I asked.

“Uther was casting out feelers for marrying her to Lot, come the time she'll be ready for bedding.”

I cocked an eyebrow at him. “And what did Lot think about that?”

“Eh, you'd have laughed to watch him. Black as a wolverine at the suggestion that Uther's byblow was good enough, but careful to keep his talk sweet in case there's no other daughter born in the right bed now the King's wedded. Bastards — and their mates — have inherited kingdoms before now. Saving your presence, of course.”

“Of course. Lot casts his eyes as high as that, then?”

He gave a short nod. “High as the High Kingdom itself, you can take my word for it.”

I digested that, frowning. I had never met Lot; he was at this time scarcely older than myself — somewhere in his early twenties — and though he had fought under my father, his path and mine had not crossed. “So Uther wants to tie Lothian to him, and Lot wants to be tied? Whether it's for his own ambition or not, it means surely that Lot will fight for the High King when the time comes? And Lothian is our main bulwark against the Angles and the other invaders from the north.”

“Oh, aye, he'll fight,” said Ector. “Unless the Angles offer him a better bribe than Uther does.”

“Do you mean that?” I was alarmed. Ector, for all his bluff ways, was a shrewd observer, and few men knew more about the changing shifts of power along our shores.

“Maybe I was putting it a trifle high. But for my money Lot's unscrupled and ambitious, and that's a combination that spells danger to any overlord who can't placate him.”

“How is he with Rheged?” I was thinking of the child to be lodged here perhaps at Galava, with Lot east by north across the Pennines.

“Oh, friends, friends. As good friends as two big hounds each with his own full platter of meat; No, it's not yet a matter for concern, and may never be. So forget it, and drink up.” He drank deeply himself, set down his cup and wiped his mouth. Then he fixed me with a sharp and curious eye. “Well? You'd better get to it, boy. You didn't come all this way for a good supper and a brattle with an old farmer. Tell me how I can serve Ambrosius' son?”

“It is Ambrosius' nephew you will be serving,” I said, and told him the rest. He heard me out in silence. For all his warmth and heartiness, there was nothing impulsive or over-quick about Ector. He had been a cold-brained and calculating officer; a valuable man in any circumstance, from a pitched fight to a long and careful siege. After a sharp glance of surprise and a lift of the brows when I spoke of the King's decision and my guardianship of the child, he listened without moving and without taking his eyes off me.

When I had finished, he stirred. “Well...I'll say one thing to start with, Merlin; I'm glad and proud you should have come to me. You know how I felt about your father. And to tell you the truth, boy” — he cleared his throat, hesitated, then looked away into the fire as he spoke — “it always sorrowed my heart that you yourself were a bastard. And that's between these four walls, I don't have to tell you. Not that Uther's made a bad shot at being High King — ”

“A far better shot than I'd ever have made,” I said, smiling. “My father used to say that Uther and I, between us, shared out some of the qualities of a good king. It was a dear dream of his that some day, between us, we might fashion one. And this is the one.” Then, as his head went up, “Oh, I know, a baby not yet born. But all the first part has happened as I knew it must happen: a child begotten by Uther and given to me to raise. I know this is the one. I believe he will be such a king as this poor country has never had before, and may never see again.”

“Your stars tell you this?”

“It has been written there, certainly, and who writes among the stars but God?”

“Well, God grant it is so. There's coming a time, Merlin, maybe not next year, or for five years, or even for ten, but it is coming — when the Flood Year will come again, and pray God that this time there's a king here to raise the sword of Maximus against it.” He turned his head sharply. “What's that? That sound?”

“Only the wind in the bowstrings.”

“I thought it was a harp sounding. Strange. What is it, boy? Why do you look so?”

“Nothing.”

He looked at me doubtfully for a moment longer, then grunted and fell silent, and behind us the long humming stretched out, a cold music, something from the air itself. I remembered how, as a child, I had lain watching the stars and listening for the music which (I had been told) they made as they moved. This must, I thought, be how it sounded.

A servant came in then with logs to replenish the fire, and the sound died. When he had gone, and the door had shut behind him, Ector spoke again in quite a different tone. “Well, I'll do it, of course, and proud to. You're right; in the next few years I can't see that Uther will have much time for him, and for that matter he'd be hard put to it to keep the child safe. Tintagel might have done, but as you say, there's Cador there...Does the King know that you've come to me?”

“No. Nor will I tell him, yet.”

“Indeed?” He thought it over for a moment, frowning a little. “Do you think he'll be content with that?”

“Possibly. I don't know. He didn't press me too hard about Brittany. I think that just now he wants as little to do with it as need be. The other thing is” — I smiled a little wryly — “the King and I have a truce declared, but I wouldn't bank on its staying that way; and out of sight, out of mind. If I'm to have anything to do with the child's teaching, then it had better be at a fair distance from the High King.”

“Aye, I've heard that, too. It's never a wise thing to help kings to their heart's desire. Will the boy be a Christian?”

“The Queen wants it, so he'll be baptized in Brittany if I can arrange it. He's to be called Arthur.”

“You'll stand for him?”

I laughed. “I believe the fact that I was never baptized myself puts me out of the running.”

His teeth showed. “I forgot you were a pagan. Well, I'm glad to hear about the boy. There'd have been a peck of trouble else.”

“Your wife, you mean? She's so devout?”

“Poor lass,” he said, “she has nothing else since our second died. There'll be no more, they say. In fact it will be God's mercy if we take this boy into our house; my son Cei's a headstrong little ruffian for all he's only three, and the women spoil him. It will be good to have the second child. What did you say his name was to be? Arthur? You'll leave this with me to talk over with Drusilla? Though there's no question, she'll be as glad as I am to have him. And I can tell you that she's close-mouthed enough, for all she's a woman. He'll be safe with us.”

“I was sure of it. It doesn't need the stars to tell me that.” But when I began to thank him, he cut me short.

“Well, then, that's settled. We can talk over the details later. I'll speak with Drusilla tonight. You'll stay a while, of course?”

“Thank you, but I can't — no longer than it takes to rest myself and my horse. I have to be at Tintagel again in December, and before that I must be home when Ralf gets back from Brittany. There's a lot to be arranged.”

“A pity. But you'll be back. I'll look forward to it.” He grinned, stirring the hounds again. “I'll enjoy seeing you installed as tutor to the household, or whatever you think will give you some claim on the boy. And I own I should like to see Cei licked into shape. Maybe he'll mind his manners with you, if he thinks he can be turned into a toad for disobeying you.”

“Bats are my speciality,” I said, smiling. “You are very good, and I'll never be out of your debt. But I'll find a place of my own.”

“Look, boy, Ambrosius' son doesn't wander the countryside looking for a home while I have four walls and a fireplace to offer him. Why not here?”

“Because I might be recognized, and where Merlin is for the next few years, men will look for Arthur near him. No, I must stay unknown. A household as big as this is too risky, and, with all my thanks to you, four walls are not always the best shelter for such as me.”

“Ah, yes. A cave, isn't it? Well, there are a few hereabouts, they tell me, if you turn the wolves out first. Well, you know your own business. But tell me, what of the Queen? You didn't say where she stood in this? What woman would let her first child be taken from the bed where she bore him, and never try to see him again or make herself known to him?”

“The Queen herself sent for me secretly, and asked me to take him. She has suffered, I know, but it's the King's will, and she knows that it's more than a whim born of anger; she sees the dangers as well as he. And she is a queen before she is a woman.” I added, carefully: “I think that the Queen is not a woman for a family, any more than Uther is a family man. They are man and woman for each other, and outside their bed they are King and Queen. It may be that in the future Ygraine will wonder, and ask questions; but that is with the future. For the moment she is content to let him go.”

After this we talked on, late into the night, arranging as far as we could the details of the time ahead. Arthur would be left in Brittany until he was three or four years old, then at a safe time of year Ralf would bring him across from Brittany to Ector's home.

“And you?” asked Ector. “Where will you be?”

“Not in Brittany, for the same reason that I can't live here. I shall vanish, Ector. It's a talent that magicians have. And when I do appear again, it will be somewhere that draws men's eyes away from Brittany and Galava.” When he questioned me further, I laughed, and refused to enlighten him.

“Truth to tell, my plans are not yet fixed. Now, I've kept you out of your bed for long enough. Your wife will be wondering what sort of mystery man you have been closeted with all these hours. I'll make my apologies when you present me in the morning.”

“And I'll make my own now,” he said, getting to his feet. “But that's one apology I enjoy making. You miss a lot, you know, Merlin — but then you can't know.”

“I know,” I said.

“You do? Then you must think it's worth it, life without women?”

“For me, yes.”

"Well, then, come this way to your cold bed," he said, and held the door for me.

11

The boy was born on the eve of Christmas, an hour before midnight.

Just before the birth I and the two nobles appointed as witnesses were called into the Queen's chamber, where Gandar attended with Marcia and other women of the Queen's household. One of these was a girl called Branwen who had lately been brought to bed of a dead child; she was to be the child's wet-nurse. When all was done, the baby washed and swaddled, and the Queen sleeping, I took my leave and rode out of the castle and along the track towards Dimilioc. As soon as the lights of the gate-house were out of view I turned my horse aside down the steep path into the valley which runs from the high fields above the headland down to the shore.

The castle at Tintagel is built on a promontory of rock, or near-island, a crag jutting up out of the fearsome seas, which is joined to the cliffs of the mainland only by a narrow causeway. To either side of this causeway the cliffs drop away sheer to small bays of rock and shingle tucked in under the cliff. From one of these a path, narrow and precarious, and passable only on a receding tide, leads up the face of the cliff to a small gate let into the roots of the castle wall. This is the postern, the secret entrance to the castle. Inside is a narrow stairway of stone leading up to the private door of the royal apartments.

Halfway up the steep stairway was a broad landing, and a guard-room. Here I was to wait, until the child was judged fit to be taken abroad into the winter's cold. There were no guards: months past, the King had had the postern sealed, and the guard-room's other door, giving on the main part of the castle, had been built up. For tonight the postern gate had been opened, but no porter manned it; only Ulfin the King's man, and Valerius, his friend and trusted officer, waited there to let me in. Valerius took me up to the guardroom, while Ulfin went out down the path into the bay to take my horse. Ralf was not with me. He had gone to ensure that the Breton ship was waiting as it had promised, and he was also to bring horses and to keep watch each night in the bay below the secret path.

I waited for two days and nights. There was a pallet in the guard-room, and Ulfin himself had kindled a fire to banish the disused chill of the place, and from time to time brought food and fuel, and the news from above stairs. He would have waited on me if I had let him; he was grateful still for some kindness I had shown to him in the past, and I think the King's disfavour had distressed him. But I sent him back to his post at the Queen's door, and spent the waiting time alone.

At the other side of the landing, in the outer wall of the castle and opposite the guard-room door, was another door leading out onto a narrow, level platform skirted waist-high by a battlement. It was not overlooked by any of the castle windows, and below it, between the castle wall and the sea, was an apron of grass sloping down to the edge of the sheer cliffs. In summer the place was alive with nesting sea birds, but now, in midwinter, it was barren and crisp with frost. From below, incessantly, came the suck and hush and thud of the winter sea.

Each day, at dawn and sunset, I walked out to this platform to see if the weather had changed. But for three days there was no change. The air was cold, and below me the grass, grey with rime, was barely distinguishable in the thick mist that held the whole place shrouded, from the invisible sea below the invisible cliffs to the pale blur where the winter sun fought to clear the sky. Below the blanket of mist the sea was quiet, as quiet as it ever is on that raging coast. And every midnight, before I slept, I went out into the icy dark and looked upwards for the stars. But there was only the blank pall of the mist.

Then on the third night, the wind came. A small wind from the west, that crept across the battlements and in under the doors and set the flames fluttering blue round the birch logs. I stood up, listening. I had a hand to the latch of the door when I heard a sound, in the quiet, from the head of the stairway. The door to the Queen's apartments had opened and shut again, gently. I opened the door and looked upwards.

Someone was coming softly down the stairs; a woman, shrouded in a mantle, carrying something. I stepped out onto the landing, and the light from the guard-room door came after me, firelight and shadow.

It was Marcia. I saw the tears glisten on her cheeks as she bent her head over what lay-in her arms. A child, wrapped warm against the winter night. She saw me and held her burden out to me. “Take care of him,” she said. “Take care of him, as God loves him and you.”

I took the child from her. Inside the woollen wrappings I caught the glint of cloth of gold, “And the token?” I asked. She handed me a ring. It was one I had often seen on Uther's hand, made of gold, enclosing a stone of red jasper with a dragon crest carved small. I slipped it on my own finger, and saw her instinctive movement of protest, stilled as she remembered who I was.

I smiled. “For safekeeping only. I shall put it away for him.”

“My lord prince...” She bent her head. Then she threw a quick glance over her shoulder to where the girl Branwen, hooded and cloaked, was coming down the stairway, with Ulfin behind her carrying a pack with her effects. Marcia turned back to me swiftly and laid a hand on my arm. “You will tell me where you are taking him?” It was a plea, whispered.

I shook my head. “I'm sorry. It's better that no one should know.”

She was silent, her lips working. Then she straightened herself. “Very well. But you promise me that he will be safe? I'm not asking you as a man, or even as a prince. I'm asking you from your power. He will be safe?”

So Ygraine had said nothing, even to Marcia. Marcia's guess at the future was still only a guess. But in the days to come both these women would feel the bitter need for each other's confidence. It would be cruel to leave the Queen isolated with her knowledge and her hopes. It is not true that women cannot keep secrets. Where they love, they can be trusted to death and beyond, against all sense and reason. It is their weakness, and their great strength.

I met Marcia's eyes full for a moment. “He will be King,” I said. “The Queen knows it. But for the child's sake, you will tell no one else.”

She bent her head again, without replying. Ulfin and Branwen were beside us. Marcia leaned forward gently and drew back a fold of the shawl from the child's face. The baby was sleeping. The eyelids, curiously full, lay over the shut eyes like pale shells. There was a thick down of dark hair on his head. Marcia stooped and kissed him lightly on the head. He slept on, undisturbed. She pulled the fold of wool back to shelter him, then with gentle expert hands settled the bundle closer into my arms. “So. Hold his head so. You will be careful going down the path?”

“I will be careful.”

She opened her mouth to speak again, then shook her head quickly, and I saw a tear slide from her cheek to fall on the child's shawl. Then she turned abruptly away, and started back up the stairs.

I carried the baby down the secret path. Valerius went ahead, with his sword drawn and ready, and behind me, with Ulfin's arm to help her, came Branwen. As we reached the bottom and stepped on the grating pebbles, Ralf's shadow detached itself from the immense darkness of the cliffs, and we heard his quick, relieved greeting, and the tread of hoofs on the shingle.

He had brought a mule for the girl, tough and sure-footed. He settled her in the saddle, then I handed the baby up to her, and she folded him close in the warmth of her cloak. Ralf vaulted to the back of his own horse and took the mule's rein in hand. I was to lead the pack-mule. This time I planned to travel as an itinerant singer — a harper is free of kings' courts where a drug-peddler is not — and my harp was strapped to the mule's saddle. Ulfin gave me the lead-rein, then held my gelding for me; it was fresh, and anxious to be moving and warm itself. I said my thanks and farewells, then he and Valerius started back up the cliff path. They would seal the postern again behind them.

I turned my horse's head into the wind. Ralf and the girl had already put their mounts to the bank. I saw the dim shapes pause above me, waiting, and the pale oval of Ralf's face as he turned back to watch me. Then his arm went out, pointing.

“Look!”

I turned.

The mist was lifting, drawing back from a sparkling sky. Faintly, high over the castle promontory, grew a hazy moon of light. Then the last cloud blew clear, billowing before the west wind like a sail blowing towards Brittany, and in its wake, blazing through the sparkle of the lesser stars, grew the great star that had lit the night of Ambrosius' death, and now burned steady in the east for the birth of the Christmas King.

We set spurs to our horses and rode for the ship.

12

The wind stayed fair for Brittany, and we came in sight of the Wild Coast at dawn on the fifth day. Here the sea is never quiet; the cliffs, high and dangerous, towered black with the early light behind them and the teeth of the sea gnawing white at the base; but once round Vindanis Point the seas flattened and ran calmer, and I was even able to leave my cabin in time to watch our arrival at the wharf south of Kerrec which my father and King Budec had built years back when the invasion force was being assembled here.

The morning was still, with a touch of frost and a thin mist pearling the fields. The country hereabouts is flat, field and moorland stretching inland where the wind scours the grass with salt, and for miles nothing grows but pine and wind-bitten thorn. Thin streams wind between steep mud-banks down to the bays and inlets that bite everywhere into the coast, and at low tide the flats teem with shellfish and are loud with the cries of wading birds. For all its dour-seeming it is a rich country, and had provided a haven not only for Ambrosius and Uther when Vortigern murdered their brother the King, but for hundreds of other exiles who fled from Vortigern and the threat of the Saxon Terror. Even then, they found parts of the country already peopled by the Celts of Britain. When the Emperor Maximus, a century before, had marched on Rome, those British troops who survived his defeat had straggled back to the refuge of this friendly land. Some had gone home, but a great many had remained to marry and settle; my kinsman, King Hoel, came of one such family. The British had indeed settled in such numbers that men called the peninsula Britain also, dubbing it Less Britain, as their homeland was known as Greater Britain. The language spoken here was still recognizably the same as that of home, and men worshipped the same gods, but the memories of older gods still visibly held the land, and the place was strange. I saw Branwen gazing out over the ship's rail with wide eyes and wondering face, and even Ralf, who had travelled here before as my messenger, had a look of awe as we drew nearer the wharf and saw, beyond the huts and the piles of casks and bales, the first ranks of the standing stones.

These line the fields of Less Britain, rank on rank, like old grey warriors waiting, or armies of the dead. They have stood there, men say, since time began. No one knows why, or how they came there. But I had long known that they were raised, not by giants or gods or even enchanters, but by human engineers whose skill lives on only in song. These skills I learned, when as a boy I lived in Brittany, and men called it magic. For all I know they may be right. One thing is certain, though men's hands lifted the stones, and are long since dust under their roots, the gods they served still walk there. When I have gone between the stones at night, I have felt eyes on my back.

But now the sun was up, gilding the granite surfaces, and throwing the shadows of the stones slanting blue across the frost. The wharf-side was already busy; carts stood ready for loading, and men and boys ran about the business of tying up and unloading the ship. We were the only passengers, but no one cast more than a glance at the travellers in their decent, sober clothes; the musician with the harp in his baggage and his wife and baby beside him, with his servant in attendance. Ralf had lifted the baby from Branwen's arms, and supported her as she trod gingerly down the gangplank. She was silent and pale, and leaned heavily on him. I saw, as he bent over her, how — suddenly, it seemed — he had grown from boy to man. He would be turned sixteen now, and though Branwen was perhaps a year older than he, Ralf might well be taken for her husband, rather than I. He looked brisk and bright, sleek as a springtime cockerel in his neat new clothes. He was the only one of our party, I thought sourly, feeling the wharf tilt and sway under me as if it had still been the heaving deck, who had weathered the passage well.

The escort he had arranged was waiting for us. Not the escort of troops which King Hoel had wanted to provide, but simply a mule litter for Branwen and the child, with a muleteer and one other man, who had brought horses for Ralf and myself. This man came forward now to greet me. From his bearing I judged him to be an officer, but he was not in uniform, and there was nothing to show that the escort came from the King. Nor apparently had the officer been told anything about us, beyond the fact that we were to be led into town and housed there until the King should send for us.

He greeted me civilly, but without the courtesies of rank. “You are welcome, sir. The King sends his greetings, and I am here to escort you into town. I trust you had a good voyage?”

“They tell me so,” I said, “but neither I nor the lady are inclined to believe them.”

He grinned. “I thought she looked a little green. I know how she feels. I'm not a great one for the sea, myself. And you, sir? Can you ride as far as the town? It's little more than a mile.”

“I can try,” I said. We exchanged courtesies while Ralf helped Branwen into the litter and drew the curtains against the morning chill. As she settled herself into the warmth the baby woke and began to cry. He had very good lungs, had Arthur. I suppose I must have winced. I saw a gleam of amusement in the officer's face, and said dryly:

“Are you married?”

“Yes, indeed.”

“I used to think sometimes what I might be missing. Now I begin to know.”

He laughed at that. “One can always escape. It's the best reason I know for being a soldier. Will you mount, sir?”

He and I rode side by side on the way into the town. Kerrec was a sizeable settlement, half civil, half military, walled and moated, clustered round a central hill where the King's stronghold lay. Near the ramp which led up to the castle gate was the house where my father had lived during his years of exile, while he and King Budec assembled and trained the army which had invaded Britain to claim it back for him, her rightful King.

And now, perhaps, her next and greater King was here at my side, still yelling lustily, muffled in a litter, and being carried over the wooden bridge that spanned the moat, and in through the gate of the town.

My companion was silent beside me. Behind us the others rode at ease; they chatted among themselves, the sound of their voices and the sharp clop of the horses' hoofs on the cobbles and the jingling of bits sounding loud in the still and misty daybreak. The town was just waking. Cocks crowed from yards and middens; here and there doors were opened and women, shawled against the cold, could be seen moving with pails or armfuls of kindling to start the day's work.

I was glad of my companion's silence as I looked about me. Even in the five years since I had left it the place seemed to have changed completely. I suppose one cannot pull a standing army out of a town where it has been built and trained for years, and not leave an echoing shell. The army, indeed, had been mainly quartered outside the walls, and the camps had long since been dismantled and gone back to grassland. But in the town, though King Budec's own troops remained, the orderly bustle and the air of purpose and expectancy which had characterized the place in my father's time had gone. In the street of the engineers, where I had served my apprenticeship with Tremorinus, there were a few workshops open and already clanging in the early dawn, but the air of high purpose had gone with the crowd and the clamour, and something almost like desolation had taken its place. I was glad that the way to our lodging did not pass my father's house.

We were lodged with a decent couple, who made us welcome; Branwen and the baby were carried straight off to some women's fastness, while I was shown to a good room where a fire blazed and breakfast was spread waiting beside it. A servant carried the baggage in, and would have stayed to wait on me, but Ralf dismissed him and served the meal himself. I bade him eat with me, and he did so, cheerful and brisk as if the last week or so had been spent holidaying, and when we had done asked if I wanted to go out to explore the town. I gave him leave, but said that I would stay within doors. I am a strong man, and do not readily tire, but it takes more than a mile on dry land and a good breakfast to dispel the grinding sickness and exhaustion of a winter voyage. So I bade Ralf merely see to it that Branwen and the child were comfortable, and, after he had gone, composed myself to rest and wait for the King's summons.

It came at lamplighting, and Ralf with it, wide-eyed, with a robe over his arm of soft combed wool dyed a rich dark blue, with a border worked in gold and silver thread.

“The King sent this for you. Will you wear it?”

“Certainly. It would be an insult to do anything else.”

“But it's a prince's robe. People will wonder who you are.”

“Not a prince's, no. A singer's robe of honour. This is a civilized country, Ralf, like my own. It's not only princes and soldiers who are held in high esteem. When will King Hoel receive me?”

“In an hour's time, he says. He will receive you alone, before you sing in the hall. What are you laughing at?”

“King Hoel being cunning from necessity. There's only one catch about going as a singer to Hoel's court; he happens to be tone deaf. But even a tone deaf king will receive a travelling singer, to get his news. So he receives me alone. Then if the barons in his hall want to hear me, he doesn't have to sit through it.”

“He sent that harp along, though.” Ralf nodded to the instrument which stood shrouded near the lamp.

“He sent it, yes, but it was never his; it's my own.” He looked at me in surprise. I had spoken more curtly than I had meant to. All day the silent harp had stood there, untouched, but speaking to me of memories, of most, indeed, that I had ever had of happiness. As a boy here in Kerrec, in my father's house, I had played it almost nightly. I added: “It was one I used here, years ago. Hoel's father must have kept it for me. I don't suppose it's been touched since I last played it. I'd better try it before I go. Uncover it, will you?”

A scratch at the door then heralded a slave with a ewer of steaming water. While I washed, and combed my hair, then let the slave help me into the sumptuous blue robe, Ralf uncovered the harp and set it ready.

It was bigger than the one I had brought with me. That was a knee harp, easy to transport; this was a standing harp, with a greater range and a tone which would reach the corners of a King's hall. I tuned it carefully, then ran my fingers over the strings.

To remember love after long sleep; to turn again to poetry after a year in the market place, or to youth after resignation to drowsy and stiffening age; to remember what once you thought life could hold, after telling over with muddied and calculating fingers what it has offered; this is music, made after long silence. The soul flexes its wings, and, clumsy as any fledgling, tries the air again. I felt my way, groping back through the chords, for the passion that slept there in the harp, exploring, testing as a man tests in the dark ground which once he knew in daylight. Whispers, small jags of sound, bunches of notes dragged sharply. The wires thrilled, catching the firelight, and the long running chords lapsed into the song.

King Hoel was a big, thick-bodied man in his middle thirties. During the time I had spent in Kerrec — from my twelfth to my seventeenth year — I had seen very little of him. He had been a lusty and dedicated fighting man, while I was only a youth, and busy with my studies in hospital and workshop. But later he had fought with my father's troops in Greater Britain, and there we had come to know and to like one another. He was a man of big appetites and, as such men often are, good natured and tending to laziness. Since I had last seen him he had put on flesh, and his face had the flush of good living, but I had no doubt he would be as stalwart as ever in the field.

I started by speaking of his father King Budec and the changes that had come, and we talked for a while of past times.

“Ah, yes, those were good years.” He stared, chin on fist, into the fire. He had received me in his private chamber, and after we had been served with wine, had dismissed the servants. His two deer-hounds lay stretched on the skins at his feet, dreaming still of the chase they had had that day. His hunting spears, freshly cleaned, stood against the wall behind his chair, their blades catching the firelight. The King stretched his massive shoulders, and spoke wistfully. “I wonder, when will such years come again?”

“You are talking of the fighting years?”

“I am talking of Ambrosius' years, Merlin.”

“They will come again, with your help now.” He looked puzzled, then startled, and uneasy. I had spoken prosaically enough, but he had caught the implications. Like Uther, he was a man who liked everything normal, open and ordinary. “You mean the child? The bastard? After all we've heard about it, he'll be the one to succeed Uther?”

“Yes. I promise you.”

He fidgeted with his cup, and his eyes slid away from mine. “Ah, yes. Well, we shall keep him safely. But tell me, why the secrecy? I had a letter from Uther asking me openly enough to care for the boy. Ralf couldn't tell me much more than was in the letters he brought. I'll help, of course, every way I can, but I don't want a quarrel with Uther. His letter to me made it pretty clear that this boy's only his heir in default of a better claim.”

“That's true. Don't be afraid, I don't want a quarrel, either, between you and Uther. One doesn't throw a precious morsel down between two fighting-dogs and expect it to survive. Until there is a boy with what Uther calls a better claim, he's as anxious as I am to keep this one safe. He knows what I'm doing, up to a point.”

“Ah.” He cocked an eye at me, intrigued. I had been right about him. He might be well disposed towards Britain, but he was not above doing a quietly back-handed turn to Britain's King. “Up to what point?”

“The time when the baby is weaned, and grown enough to need men's company and to be taught men's arts. Four years, perhaps, or less. After that I shall take him back from you, and he must go home to Britain. If Uther asks where he is, he will have to be told, but until he does — well, there's no need to seek him out, is there? Myself, I doubt if Uther will question you at all. I think he would forget this child if he could. In any case, if there is blame, it is mine. He put the boy in my charge, to rear as I thought fit.”

“But will it be safe to take him back? If Uther's sending him here now because of enemies at home, are you sure it will be better then?”

“It's a risk that will have to be taken. I want to be near the child as he grows. It should be in Britain, and therefore it must be in secret. There are bad times coming, Hoel, for us all. I cannot yet see what will happen, beyond these facts; that this boy — this bastard if you like — will have enemies, even more than Uther has. You call him bastard; so will other men with ambition. His secret enemies will be more deadly even than the Saxons. So he must be hidden until the time comes for him to take the crown, and then he must take it with no cast of doubt, and be raised King in the sight of all Britain.”

“ 'He must be?' You have seen things, then?” But before I could answer he shied quickly away from the strange ground, and cleared his throat. “Well, I'll keep him safe for you, as well as I may. Just tell me what you want. You know your own business, always did. I'll trust you to keep me right with Uther.” He gave his great laugh. “I remember how Ambrosius used to say that your judgment in matters of policy, even when you were a youngling, was worth ten of any bedroom emperor's.” My father, naturally, had said no such thing, and in any case would hardly have said it to Hoel, who had a fair reputation himself as a lover, but I took it as it was intended, and thanked him. He went on: “Well, tell me what you want. I confess I'm puzzled...These enemies you talk of, won't they guess he's in Brittany? You say Uther made no secret of his plans, and when the time comes for the royal ship to sail and it's seen that you and the child aren't on it, won't they simply think he was sent over earlier, and search first for him here in Brittany?”

“Probably. But by that time he'll be disposed of in the place I've arranged for him, and that's not the kind of place where Uther's nobles would think of looking. And I myself will be gone.”

“What place is that? Am I to know?”

“Of course. It's a small village near your boundary, north, towards Lanascol.”

“What?” He was startled, and showed it. One of the hounds stirred and opened an eye. “North? At the edge of Gorlan's land? Gorlan is no friend to the Dragon.”

“Nor to me,” I said. “He's a proud man, and there is an old score between his house and my mother's. But he has no quarrel with you?”

“No, indeed,” said Hoel fervently, with the respect of one fighting man for another.

“So I believed. So Gorlan isn't likely to make forays into the edge of your territory. What's more, who would dream that I would hide the child so near him? That with all Brittany to choose from, I'd leave him within bowshot of Uther's enemy? No, he'll be safe. When I leave him, I'll do so with a quiet mind. But that's not to say I'm not deeply in your debt.” I smiled at him. “Even the stars need help at times.”

“I'm glad to hear it,” said Hoel gruffly. “We mere kings like to think we have our parts to play. But you and your stars might make it a bit easier for us, perhaps? Surely, in all that great forest north of here, there must be safer places than the very edge of my lands?”

“Possibly, but it happens that I have a safe house there. The one person in both the Britains who'll know exactly what to do with the child for the next four years, and will care for him as she would for her own.”

“She?”

“Yes. My own nurse, Moravik. She's a Breton born, and after Maridunum was sacked in Camlach's war she left South Wales and went home. Her father owned a tavern north of here at a place called Coll. Since he'd grown too old for work, a fellow called Brand kept it for him. Brand's wife was dead, and soon after Moravik returned home she and Brand married, just to keep things right in the sight of God...and, knowing Moravik, I'm not just talking about the inn's title deeds...They keep the place still. You must have passed it, though I doubt if you'd ever stop there — it stands where two streams join and a bridge crosses them. Brand's a retired soldier of your own, and a good man — and in any case will do as Moravik bids him.” I smiled. “I never knew a man who didn't, except perhaps my grandfather.”

“Ye-es.” He still sounded doubtful, “I know the village, a handful of huts by the bridge, that's all...As you say, hardly a likely place to hunt a High King's heir. But an inn? Isn't that in itself a risk? With men — Gorlan's, too, since it's a time of truce — coming and going from the road?”

“So, no one will question your messengers or mine. My man Ralf will stay there to guard the boy, and he'll need to stay abreast of news, and get messages to you from time to time, and to me.”

“Yes. Yes, I see. And when you take the child there, what's your story?”

“No one will think twice about a travelling harper plying his trade on a journey. And Moravik has put a story round that will explain the sudden appearance of Ralf and the baby and his nurse. The story, if anyone questions it, will be that the girl, Branwen, is Moravik's niece, who bore a child to her master over in Britain. Her mistress cast her from the house, and she had no other place to go, but the man gave her money for the passage to her aunt's house in Brittany, and paid the travelling singer and his man to escort her. And the singer's man, meanwhile, will decide to leave his master and stay with the girl.”

“And the singer himself? How long will you stay there?”

“Only as long as a travelling singer might, then I'll move on and be forgotten. By the time anyone even thinks to look farther for Uther's child, how can they find him? No one knows the girl, and the baby is only a baby. Every house in the country has one or more to show.”

He nodded, chewing it over this way and that, and asked a few more questions. Finally he admitted: “It will serve, I suppose. What do you want me to do?”

“You have watchers in the kingdoms that march with yours?”

He laughed shortly. “Spies? Who hasn't?”

“Then you'll hear quickly enough if there's any hint of trouble from Gorlan or anyone else. And if you can arrange for some quick and secret contact with Ralf, should it be necessary — ?”

“Easy. Trust me. Anything I can do, short of war with Gorlan...” He gave his deep chuckle again. “Eh, Merlin, it's good to see you. How long can you stay?”

“I'll take the boy north tomorrow, and with your permission will go unescorted. I'll come back as soon as I see all is safe. But I'll not come here again. You might be expected to receive a travelling singer once, but not actually to encourage him.”

“No, by God!”

I grinned. “If this weather holds, Hoel, could the ship stay for me for a few days?”

“For as long as you like. Where do you plan to go?”

“Massilia first, then overland to Rome. After that, eastwards.”

He looked surprised. “You? Well, here's a start! I'd always thought of you being as fixed as your own misty hills. What put that into your head?”

“I don't know. Where do ideas come from? I have to lose myself for a few years, till the child needs me, and this seemed to be the way. Besides, there was something I heard.” I did not tell him that it had only been the wind in the bowstrings. “I've had a mind lately to see some of the lands I learned about as a boy.”

We talked on then for a while. I promised to send letters back with news from the eastern capitals, and, as far as I could, I gave him points of call to which he would send his own tidings and Ralf's about Arthur.

The fire died down and he roared for a servant. When the man had been and gone —

“You'll have to go and sing in the hall soon,” said Hoel. “So if we've got all clear, we'll leave it at that, shall we?” He leaned back in his chair. One of the hounds got to its feet and pushed against his knee, asking for a caress. Over the sleek head the King's eyes gleamed with amusement. “Well now, you've still to give me the news from Britain. And the first thing you can do is to tell me the inside story of what happened nine months ago.”

“If you in your turn will tell me what the public story is.”

He laughed. “Oh, the usual stories that follow you as closely as your cloak flapping in the wind. Enchantments, flying dragons, men carried through the air and through walls, invisibly. I'm surprised, Merlin, that you take the trouble to come by ship like an ordinary man, when your stomach serves you so ill. Come now, the story.”

It was very late when I got back to our lodging. Ralf was waiting, half asleep in the chair by the fire in my room. He jumped up when he saw me, and took the harp from me.

“Is all well?”

“Yes. We go north in the morning. No, thank you, no wine. I drank with the King, and they made me drink again in the hall.”

“Let me take your cloak. You look tired. Did you have to sing to them?”

“Certainly.” I held out a handful of silver and gold pieces, and a jewelled pin. “It's nice to think, isn't it, that one can earn one's keep so handsomely? The jewel was from the King, a bribe to stop me singing, otherwise they'd have had me there yet. I told you this was a cultured country. Yes, cover the big harp. I'll take the other with me tomorrow.” Then as he obeyed me: “What of Branwen and the baby?”

“Went to bed three hours since. She's lying with the women. They seem very pleased to have a baby to look after.” He finished on a note of surprise which made me laugh.

“Did he stop crying?”

“Not for an hour or two. They didn't seem to mind that, either.”

"Well, no doubt he'll start again at cock-crow, when we rouse them. Now go to bed and sleep while you can. We start at first light."

13

There is a road leading almost due north out of the town of Kerrec, the old Roman road which runs straight as a spear-cast across the bare, salty grassland. A mile out of town, beyond the ruined posting station, you can see the forest ahead of you like a slow tidal wave approaching to swallow the salt flats. This is a vast stretch of woodland, deep and wild. The road spears straight into it, aiming for the big river that cuts the country from east to west. When the Romans held Gallia there was a fort and settlement beyond the river, and the road was built to serve it; but now the river marks the boundary of Hoel's kingdom, and the fort is one of Gorlan's strongholds. The writ of neither king runs far into the forest, which stretches for countless hilly miles, covering the rugged center of the Breton peninsula. What traffic there is keeps to the road; the wild land is served only by the tracks of charcoal-burners and wood-cutters and men who move secretly outside the law. At the time of which I write the place was called the Perilous Forest, and was reputed to be magic-bound and haunted. Once leave the road and plunge into the tracks that twist through the tangled trees, and you could travel for days and hardly see the sun.

When my father had held command in Brittany under King Budec, his troops had kept order even in the forest, as far as the river where King Budec's land ended and King Gorlan's began. They had cut the trees well back to either side of the road, and opened up some of the subsidiary tracks, but this had been neglected, and now the saplings and the bushes had crowded in. The paved surface of the road had long since been broken by winter, and here and there it crumbled off into patches of iron-hard mud that in soft weather would be a morass.

We set out on a grey, cold day, with the wind tasting faintly of salt. But though the wind blew damp from the sea it brought no rain with it, and the going was fair enough. The huge trees stood on either hand like pillars of metal, holding a weight of low, grey sky. We rode in silence, and after a few miles the thickly encroaching growth of the underwood forced us, even on this road, to ride in single file. I was in the lead, with Branwen behind me, and Ralf in the rear leading the pack-mule. I had been conscious for the first hour or so of Ralf's tension, the way his head turned from side to side as he watched and listened; but we saw and heard nothing except the quiet winter life of the forest; a fox, a pair of roe deer, and once a shadowy shape that might have been a wolf slipping away among the trees. Nothing else; no sound of horses, no sign of men.

Branwen showed no hint of fear. When I glanced back I saw her always serene, sitting the neat-footed mule stolidly, with an unmoved calm that held no trace of uneasiness. I have said little about Branwen, because I have to confess that I remember very little about her. Thinking back now over the span of years, I see only a brown head bent over the baby she carried, a rounded cheek and downcast eyes and a shy voice. She was a quiet girl who — though she talked easily enough to Ralf — rarely addressed me of her own will, being painfully in awe of me both as prince and enchanter. She seemed to have no inkling of any risk or danger in our journey, nor did she seem stirred — as most girls would have been — by the excitement of travelling abroad to a new country. Her imperturbable calm was not due to confidence in myself or Ralf; I came to see that she was meek and biddable to the point of stupidity, and her devotion to the baby was such as to blind her to all else. She was the kind of woman whose only life is in the bearing and rearing of children, and without Arthur she would, I am sure, have suffered bitterly over the loss of her own baby. As it was, she seemed to have forgotten this, and spent the hours in a kind of dreamy contentment that was exactly what Arthur needed to make the discomforts of the journey tolerable.

Towards noon we were deep in the forest. The branches laced thick overhead, and in summer would have shut out the sky like a pitched shield, but above the bare boughs of winter we could see a pale and shrouded point of light where the sun struggled to be through. I watched for a sheltered place where we could leave the road without showing too many traces, and presently, just as the baby woke and began to fret, saw a break in the undergrowth and turned my horse aside.

There was a path, narrow and winding, but in the sparse growth of winter it was passable. It led into the forest for a hundred paces or so before it divided, one path leading on deeper among the trees, the other — no more than a deer-trod — winding steeply up to skirt the base of a rocky spur. We followed the deer-trod. This picked its way through fallen boulders tufted with dead and rusty fern, then led upwards round a stand of pines, and faded into the bleached grass of a tiny clearing above the rock. Here, in a hollow, the sun came with a faint warmth. We dismounted, and I spread a saddle-cloth in the most sheltered spot for the girl, while Ralf tethered the horses below the pines and threw down feed from the hay nets. Then we sat ourselves down to eat. I sat at the lip of the hollow, with my back against a tree, a post from which I could see the main path running below the rock. Ralf stayed with Branwen. It had been a long time since we had broken our fast, and we were all hungry. The baby, indeed, had begun to yell lustily as the mule scrambled up the steep path. Now he found his cries stifled against the girl's nipple, and fell silent, sucking busily.

The forest was very quiet. Most wild creatures lie still at noon. The only thing moving was a carrion crow, which flapped heavily down onto a pine above us, and began to caw. The horses finished their feed and dozed, hip-shotten, heads low. The baby still fed, but more slowly, drowsing into milky sleep. I leaned back against the stem of the tree. I could hear Branwen murmuring to Ralf. He said something, and I heard her laugh, then through the murmur of the two young voices I caught another, distant, sound. Horses, at the trot.

At my word the boy and girl fell abruptly silent. Ralf was on his feet in the blink of an eye, and kneeling beside me to watch the path below. I signed Branwen to stay where she was. I need not have troubled; she had turned a wondering look on us, then the baby hiccupped, and she held him to her shoulder, patting him, all her attention on him again. Ralf and I knelt at the edge of the clearing, watching the path below.

The horses — there were two of them by the sound of it — could not be wood-cutters' beasts nor the slow train of the charcoal-burners. Trotting horses, in the Perilous Forest, meant only one thing, trouble. And travellers who carried, as we did, gold for the baby's keep were quarry for any outlaws and disaffected men. Hampered as we were by Branwen and Arthur, both fighting and flight were impossible. Nor was it easy, with the baby, to keep silent and let danger pass by so closely. I had made it clear to Ralf that whatever happened he was to stay with the girl and, at the least hint of danger, leave it to me to devise some way of drawing the danger away. Ralf had protested, mutinied, then finally seen the sense of it and sworn to obey.

So now when I whispered, “Only two, I think. If they don't come up this way, they'll not see us. Get to the horses. And for God's sake tell the girl to keep the baby quiet,” he merely nodded, melting back from my side. He stooped to whisper to Branwen, and I saw her nod placidly, shifting the child to her other breast. Ralf slipped like a shadow among the pines where the horses stood. I waited, watching the path.

The riders were approaching. There was no other sound except the crow, still cawing high in the pine tree. Then I saw them. Two horses, trotting single file; poor beasts, heavy bred and none too well fed by the look of them, careless how they put their feet, and having to be hauled up by their cursing riders at every hole or root across the path. It was a fair enough guess that the men were outlaws. They were as unkempt as their beasts, and looked half savage, and dangerous. They were dressed in what looked like old uniforms, and on the arm of one of them was a dirty badge, half torn away. It looked like Gorlan's. The fellow in the rear rode carelessly, lolling in the saddle as if half drunken, but the man in front pricked at the alert, as such men learn to do, his head moving from side to side like that of a questing dog. He held a bow at the ready. Through the rotten leather of the sheath at his thigh I saw the long knife, burnished to a killing point.

They were almost below me. They were passing. There had been no sound from the baby, nor from our horses, hidden among the pines. Only the carrion crow, balancing high in the sunshine, scolded noisily.

I saw the fellow with the bow lift his head. He said something over his shoulder, in a thick accent I could not catch. He grinned, showing a row of rotten teeth, then lifted his bow, notched it, and sent an arrow whizzing into the pine. It hit. The crow shot upwards off the bough with a yell, then fell, transfixed. It landed within two paces of Branwen and the child, flapped for a second or two, then lay still.

As I dodged back and ran for the pines I heard both men laughing. Now the marksman would come to retrieve his arrow. Already I could hear him forcing his beast through the underbrush. I picked up the arrow, crow and all, and flung it out over the edge of the hollow. It landed down among the boulders. From the path the man could not have seen where the bird fell; it was a chance that he might believe it had fluttered there, and would ride no farther. I saw Branwen's eyes, startled and wondering, as I ran past her. But she did not stir, and the baby slept at her breast. I gave her a sign which was meant to convey reassurance, approval, and warning all in one, and ran for my horse.

Ralf was holding the beasts quiet, heads together, muffling eyes and nostrils with his cloak. I paused beside him, listening. The outlaws were coming on. They must not have seen the crow; they came on without pausing, making for the pines.

I seized my sorrel's bridle from Ralf, and turned it to mount. The horse circled, treading the dry stalks and snapping twigs. I heard the sudden clatter and tramp as the outlaws dragged their beasts to a standstill. One of them said, “Listen!” in Breton, and there was the rasp of metal as weapons came hissing out. I was in the saddle. My own sword was out. I pulled the sorrel's head round, and had opened my mouth to shout when I heard another cry from the path, then the same voice yelling “Look! Look there!” and my horse reared sharply back on its haunches as something broke out of the bushes beside me and went by so close that it almost brushed my leg.

It was a hind, white against the winter forest. She scudded through the pines like a ghost, bounded along the top of the hollow where we had lain, stood poised for a moment in view at the edge, then vanished down the steep, boulder-strewn slope, straight into the path of the two outlaws. I heard shouts of triumph from below, the crack of a whip, the sudden thud and flurry of hoofs as the men wrenched their horses back to the path and lashed them to a gallop. They were giving hunting calls. I jumped from the saddle, threw the sorrel's reins to Ralf, and ran back to my place above the rock. I reached it in time to see the two of them going back full tilt the way they had come. Ahead of them, dimly seen for a moment, like a scud of mist through the bare trees, fled the white hind. Then the laughter, the hunting cries, the hammer of hard-driven horses, echoed plunging back through the forest, and was gone.

14

The river which marks the boundary of Hoel's kingdom flows right through the heart of the forest. In places it cuts a deep gorge between overhanging banks of trees, and everywhere in the central part of the forest the land is seamed by small, wild valleys where tributary streams wind or tumble into the main. But there is a place, almost in the center of the forest, where the river valley is wider and more gentle, forming a green basin where men have tilled the fields, and over the years have cut back the forest to make grazing land round the small settlement called Coll, which in Breton means the Hidden Place. Here there had been, in past times, a Roman transit camp on the road from Kerrec to Lanascol. All that remained of this now was the squared outline where the original ditch had been dug beside the tributary. Here lay the village. On two sides of it the stream made a natural defense or moat; for the rest, the Roman ditch had been cleared and widened, and filled with water. Inside this were steep defensive earthworks, crowned with palisades. The bridge had been a stone one in Roman times; the piles still stood and were spanned now with planking. Though the village lay near Gorlan's border, it was accessible from it only through the narrow pass cut by the river, and there the road had crumbled almost back to the original rocky path that wolves and wild men had used before the Romans ever came. Coll was well named.

Brand's tavern lay just inside the gate. The main street of the village was little more than a dirty alley floored unevenly with cobbles. The inn stood a little way back from this, on the right. It was a low building, roughly built of stone, with mortar slapped haphazardly into the gaps. The outbuildings round the yard were no more than wattle huts, daubed with mud. The roof was newly thatched, with good close work of reeds held down by a net of rope weighted with heavy stones. The door was open, as the door of an inn should be, with a heavy curtain of skins hung across the opening to keep the weather out. Through the chimney hole at one end rose a sluggish column of smoke that smelled of peat.

We arrived at dusk when the gates were closing. Everywhere mingled with the peat smoke came the smells of supper cooking. There were few people about; the children had been called in long since, and the men were home at their supper. Only a few hungry-looking dogs skulked here and there; an old woman hurried past with a shawl held over her face and a fowl squawking under her other arm; a man led a yoke of weary oxen along the street. I could hear the clink of a smith's anvil not far away, and smell the sharp fume of burned hoofs.

Ralf eyed the inn dubiously. “It looked better in October, on a sunny day. It's not much of a place, is it?”

“All the better,” I said. “No one will come looking in a place like this for the son of the King of Britain. Go in now and play your part, while I hold the horses.”

He pushed aside the curtain and went in. I helped Branwen dismount, and settled her on one of the benches beside the door. The baby woke, and began to whimper, but almost immediately Ralf came out again, followed by a big, burly man and a boy. The man must be Brand himself; he had been a fighting man and still bore himself like one, and I saw the puckered seam of an old wound across the back of one hand.

He hesitated, uncertain how to greet me. I said quickly: “You'll be the innkeeper? I'm Emrys the singer, who was to bring your wife's niece along with us, with the baby. You're expecting us, I believe?”

He cleared his throat. “Indeed, indeed. You're most welcome. My wife's been looking for you this week past.” He saw the boy staring, and added sharply: “What are you waiting for? Take the horses round the back.”

The boy darted to obey. Brand, ducking his head at me and indicating the door of the inn with a gesture that was half invitation, half salute, said: “Come in, come in. Supper's cooking.” Then, doubtfully, “It's mighty rough company we get here, but maybe — ”

“I'm used to rough company,” I said tranquilly, and preceded him through the door.

This was not a time of year for much coming and going on the roads, so the place was not crowded. There were some half-dozen men, dimly seen in a room lit only by one tallow candle and the light from the peat fire. The talk hushed as we went in, and I saw the looks at the harp I carried, and the whisper that went round. Nobody spared a glance for the girl carrying the baby. Brand said, a shade too quickly; “On through there. That far door, behind the fire.” Then the door shut behind us, and there in the back room stood Moravik, fists on her hips, waiting to greet us.

Like everyone else whom one has not seen since childhood, she had shrunk. When I had last seen her I had been a boy of twelve, and tall for my age. Even then she had seemed much bigger than I was, a creature of bulk and commanding voice, surrounded by the aura of authority and infallible decisions left over from the nursery. Now she came no higher than my collar-bone, but she still had the bulk and the voice, and — I was to find — the authority. Though I had turned out to be the favoured son of the High King of all Britain, I was still, obviously, the wayward small boy from her first nursery.

Her first words were characteristic. “And a fine time of night to come, with the gates just shutting! You could have been out in that forest all night, and a precious lot there'd have been left of you by morning, what with the wolves, and worse, that lives out there. And damp, too, I shouldn't wonder — sweet saints and stars preserve us, look at your cloak! Get it off this minute, and come to the fire. There's a good supper cooking, special for you. I remember all the things you like, and I never thought to see you sitting at my table again, young Merlin, not after that night when the place burned down round you, and there was nothing to be found of you in the morning but a few burned bones in your room.” Then suddenly she came forward with a rush and had hold of me. There were tears on her face. “Eh, Merlin, little Merlin, but it's good to see you again.”

“And you, Moravik.” I embraced her. “I swear you must have got younger every year since you left Maridunum. And now you're putting me in your debt again, you and your good man here. I'll not forget it, and neither will the King. Now, this is Ralf, my companion, and this” — drawing the girl forward — “is Branwen, with the child.”

“Eh, the baby! The good Goddess save us all! What with seeing you, Merlin, I'd forgotten all about him! Come near the fire, girl, don't stand there in the draught. Come to the fire, and let me see him...Eh, the lamb, the bonny lamb...”

Brand touched my arm, grinning. “And now, what with seeing him, she'll forget everything else, my lord. It's lucky she got the supper ready for you before she got a sight of the baby. Sit you down here. I'll serve you myself.”

Moravik had made a rich mutton stew, satisfying and very hot. The mutton of the Breton salt flats is as good even as anything we get in Wales. There were dumplings with the stew, and good new bread hot from the oven. Brand brought a jug of red wine, very much better than anything we can make at home. He waited on us while Moravik busied herself with Branwen and the baby, whose whimpering had broken now into lusty crying, only to be stilled by Branwen's breast. The fire blazed and crackled, the room was warm and smelled of good food and wine, the firelight traced the shape of the girl's cheek, and the baby's head. I became conscious of someone watching me, and turned my head to see Ralf's eyes on my face. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but at that moment some clamour from the outer room made Brand set the wine-jug down on the table, excuse himself quickly to me, and hurry out. He left the door slightly ajar. Beyond it I could hear voices raised in what sounded like persuasion or argument. Brand answered, quietly, but the clamour persisted.

He came back into the room, looking worried, and shut the door behind him. “My lord, there's those outside who saw you come in, and saw you'd a harp with you. Now, well, it's only natural, my lord, they want a song. I tried to argue them out of it, said you were tired, and had come a long way, but they insisted. Said they'd pay for your supper, between them, if the song was a good one.”

“Well,” I said, “why not let them?”

His mouth dropped open. “But — sing to them? You?”

“Don't you hear anything in Brittany?” I asked him. “I really am a singer. And it wouldn't be the first time I've earned my fee.”

From her place near Branwen beside the fire, Moravik looked up quickly. “Here's a new start! Potions and such I knew about, learned from that old hermit above the mill, and even magic — ” crossing herself. “But music? Who taught you?”

“Queen Olwen taught me the notes,” I said, adding, to Brand, “That was my grandfather's wife, a Welsh girl who sang like a laverock. Then later when I was here in Brittany with Ambrosius I learned from a master. You may have heard him, perhaps? An old blind singer, who had travelled and made music in every country in the world.”

Brand nodded as if he knew the man I spoke of, but Moravik looked doubtfully at me, tut-tutting, and shaking her head. I suppose no one who has reared a boy from babyhood, and not seen him since his twelfth year, ever thinks he can be a master at anything. I grinned at them. “Why, I played in front of King Hoel, back there in Kerrec. Not that he's anything of a judge, but Ralf has heard me, too. Ask him, if you think I can't earn my supper.”

Brand said doubtfully; “But you'll not want to be singing to the likes of them, my lord?”

“Why not? A travelling minstrel sings where he's hired to sing. And that's what I am, while I'm in Less Britain.” I got to my feet. “Ralf, bring me the harp. Finish the wine yourself, and then get to bed. Don't wait for me.”

I went out into the tavern's public room. This had filled up now; there were about twenty men there, crowded in the smoky warmth. When I went in there were shouts of “The singer, the singer!” and “A tale, a tale!”

“Make room for me then, good people,” I said. A stool was vacated for me near the fire, and someone poured me a cup of wine. I sat down and began to tune the harp. They fell still, watching me.

They were simple folk, and such folk like tales of marvels. When I asked them what they would have, they asked for this tale and that of gods and battles and enchantments, so in the end — my mind, I think, on the child sleeping in the next room — I gave them the story of Macsen's Dream. This is as much a tale of magic as any of the rest, though its hero is the Roman commander Magnus Maximus, who was real enough. The Celts call him Macsen Wledig, and the legend of Macsen's Dream was born in the singing valleys of Dyfed and Powys, where every man claims Prince Macsen as his own, and the stories have gone from mouth to mouth until, if Maximus himself appeared to tell them the truth, no one would believe him. It's a long story, the Dream, and every singer has his own version of it. This is the one I sang that night:

Macsen, Emperor of Rome, went hunting, and being tired in the heat of the day lay down to sleep on the banks of the great river that flows towards Rome, and he dreamed a dream.

He dreamed that he journeyed along the river towards its source, and came to the highest mountain in the world; and from there followed another fair flowing river through the rich fields and broad woodlands till he reached the mouth of the river, and there at its mouth was a city of turrets and castles crowded round a fair harbour. And in that harbour lay a ship of gold and silver with no man on board, but with all sails set and shivering to the wind out of the east. He crossed a gangplank made of the white bone of a whale, and the ship sailed.

And soon, after a sunset and a sunset, he came to the fairest island of all the world, and leaving the ship, he traversed the island from sea to sea. And there on the western shore he saw an island at hand across a narrow strait. And on the near shore where he stood was a fair castle, with an open gate. Then Macsen entered the castle and found himself in a great hall with golden pillars, and walls dazzling with gold and silver and precious stones. In that hall two youths sat playing chess on a silver board, and near them an old man in an ivory chair carved chessmen for them out of crystal, But Macsen had no eyes for all this splendour. More beautiful than silver and ivory and precious stones was a maiden, who sat still as a queen in her golden chair. The moment the Emperor saw her he loved her, and, raising her, he embraced her and begged her to be his wife. But in the very moment of the embrace he woke, and found himself in the valley outside Rome, with his companions watching him.

Then Macsen leaped to his feet and told his dream; and messengers were sent the length and breadth of the world, to find the land he had traversed, and the castle with the beautiful maiden. And after many months, and a score of false journeys, one man found them, and came home to tell his master. The island, most beautiful in all the world, was Britain, and the castle by the western sea was Caer Seint, by Segontium, and the island across the shining strait was Mona, isle of druids. So Macsen journeyed to Britain, and found everything just as he had dreamed it, and requested the hand of the maiden from her father and her brothers, and made her his Empress. Her name was Elen, and she bore Macsen two sons and a daughter, and in her honour he built three castles, in Segontium, Caerleon and Maridunum, which was called Caer Myrddin in honour of the god of high places.

Then, because Macsen stayed in Britain and forgot Rome, they made a new emperor in Rome, who set his standard on the walls and defied Macsen. So Macsen raised an army of the Britons, and, with Elen and her brothers at his side, set out for Rome; and he conquered Rome. Thereafter he stayed in Rome, and Britain saw him no more, but Elen's two brothers took the British forces back to their homes, and to this day the seed of Macsen Wledig reigns in Britain.

When I had done, and the last note had hummed away to nothing in the smoky stillness, there was a roar of applause, cups thumping on the tables, and rough voices calling for more music, and more wine. Another cupful was pressed on me, and while I drank and rested before singing again, the men went back to talking among themselves, but softly, lest they disturb the singer's thoughts.

It was as well they could not guess at them; I was wondering what they would do if they knew that the last and latest scion of Maximus lay sleeping on the other side of the wall. For this part of the legend, at least, was true, that my father's family was descended straight from Maximus' marriage with the Welsh princess Elen. The rest of the legend, like all such tales, was a kind of dreaming distortion of the truth, as if an artist, reassembling a broken mosaic from a few worn and random fragments, rebuilt the picture in his own shimmering new colours, with here and there the pieces of the old, true picture showing plain.

The facts were these. Maximus, a Spaniard by birth, had commanded the armies in Britain under his general Theodosius at a time when Saxons and Picts were raiding the coasts constantly, and the Roman province of Britain looked like crumbling to its fall. Between them the commanders repaired the Wall of Hadrian, and held it, and Maximus himself rebuilt and garrisoned the great fortress at Segontium in Wales, and made it his headquarters. This is the place that is called Caer Seint by the British; it is the “fair castle” of the Dream, and here it must have been that Maximus met his Welsh Elen, and married her.

Then in the year that Ector had called the Flood Year it was Maximus (though his enemies denied him the credit) who after months of bitter fighting drove the Saxons back and constructed the provinces of Strathclyde and Manau Guotodin, buffer states, in whose shelter the people of Britain — his people — might live in peace. Already “Prince Macsen” to the folk of Wales, he was declared Emperor by his troops, and so might have remained, but for the events everyone knows of which took him abroad to avenge his old general's murder, and thereafter to march on Rome itself.

He never came back; here again the Dream is true; but not because he conquered Rome and stayed to rule it. He was defeated there, and later executed, and though some of the British forces who had gone with him came home and pledged themselves to his widow and his sons, the brief peace was over. With Maximus dead the Flood came again, and this time there was no sword to stop it.

Small wonder, in the dark years that followed, that the short stretch of Maximus' victorious peace should appear to men like a lost age as golden as any the poets sing. Small wonder that the legend of “Macsen the Protector” had grown and grown until his power compassed the earth, and in their dark times men spoke of him as of a god-sent saviour...

My thoughts went back to the baby sleeping in the straw. I lifted the harp again, and when they hushed for me, sang them another song:

“And did you earn your supper?” asked Moravik.

“Plenty to drink, and three copper coins.” I laid them on the table and put the leather bag containing the King's gold beside them. “That's for your care of the child. I'll send more when it's needed. You'll not regret this, you and Brand. You've nursed kings before, Moravik, but never such a king as this one will be.”

“What do I care for kings? That's nought but a bonny bairn, that should never have been set to such a journey in this weather. He should be home in his own nursery, and you can tell your King Uther that from me! Gold, indeed!” But the leather bag had vanished into some fastness of her skirt, and the coins with it.

“He's come to no harm on the journey?” I asked quickly.

“None that I can see. That's a good, strong boy, and like to flourish as well as any of my children. He's abed now, and those two young things with him, poor children, so keep your voice down and let them sleep.”

Branwen and the child' lay on a pallet in the far corner of the room, away from the fire. Their bed was underneath the flight of rough wooden steps which led up to a platform, like a small loft such as they use for hay in kings' stables. Indeed there was hay stacked there, and our beasts had been led in from the yard at the back, and were tethered now under the loft. A donkey, which I suppose was Brand's own, stood near them in the straw.

“Brand brought yours in,” said Moravik. “There isn't much room, but he daren't leave them outside in the byre. That sorrel of yours with the white blaze, someone might know it for King Hoel's own, and there'd be questions asked that weren't too easy to answer. I've put you up above, and the boy. It's maybe not what you're used to, but it's soft, and it's clean.”

“It'll be fine. But don't send me to bed yet, please, Moravik. May I stay up and talk to you?”

“Hm. Send you to bed, indeed! Aye, you always did look meek and talk soft, and you doing exactly as you wanted all the time...” She sat down by the fire, spreading her skirts, and nodded to a stool. “Well, now, sit down and let me look at you. Mercy me, and here's a change! Who'd ever have thought it, back there in Maridunum, with hardly a decent rag to your name, that you'd turn out a son of the High King himself, and a doctor and a singer...and the sweet saints only know what else besides!”

“A magician, you mean?”

“Well, that never surprised me, the way I heard you'd been running off to the old man at Bryn Myrddin.” She crossed herself, and her hand closed on an amulet at her neck. I had seen it glinting in the firelight; it was hardly a Christian symbol. So Moravik still hedged herself around with every talisman she could find. In this she was like most of the folk bred in the Perilous Forest, with its tales of old hauntings, and things seen in the twilight and heard in the wind. She nodded at me. “Aye, you always were a queer lad, with your solitary ways, and the things you'd say. Always knew too much, you did. I thought it was with listening at doors, but it seems I was wrong. 'The King's prophet,' they tell me you're called now. And the doings I've heard about, if the half of them's to be believed, which I doubt they're not...Well, now, tell me. Tell me everything.”

The fire had burned low, almost to ash. There was silence from the next room now; the drinkers had either gone home, or settled to sleep. Brand had climbed the ladder an hour since, and snored softly beside Ralf. In the corner beside the dozing beasts, Branwen and the child slept, unmoving.

“And now here's this new start,” said Moravik softly. “This baby here, you tell me he's the son of the High King, Uther himself, that won't own to him. Why do you have to take it on yourself to look after him? I'd have thought there's others he might ask, that could do it easier.”

“I can't answer for King Uther,” I said, “but for myself, you might say the child was a trust left to me by my father, and by the gods.”

“The gods?” she asked sharply. “What talk is this for a good Christian man?”

“You forget, I was never baptized.”

“Not even yet? Aye, I remember the old King would have none of it. Well, that's no concern of mine now, only of your own. But this child here, is he christened?”

“No. There's been no time. If you want to, then have him christened.”

“ 'If you want to'? What way is that to talk? What 'gods' were you talking of just now?”.

“I hardly know. They — he — will make himself known in his own good time. Meanwhile have the boy christened, Moravik. When he leaves Brittany he's to be reared in a Christian household.”

She was satisfied. “As soon as may be. I'll see him right with the dear Lord and his saints, trust me for that. And I've hung the vervain charm over his crib, and seen the nine prayers said. The girl says his name's Arthur. What sort of a name is that?”

“You would say Artos,” I told her. This is a name meaning “Bear” in Celtic. “But don't call him by that name here. Give him some other name that you can use, and forget the other.”

“Emrys, then? Ah, I thought that would make you smile. I'd always hoped that one day there'd be a child I could call after you.”

“No, after my father Ambrosius, as I was called.” I tried the names over to myself, in Latin and then in the Celtic tongue. “Artorius Ambrosius, last of the Romans...Artos Emrys, first of the British...” Then aloud to Moravik, smiling: “Yes, call him so. Once, long ago, I foretold it, the coming of the Bear, a king called Arthur, who would knit past and future. I had forgotten, till now, where I had heard the name before. Christen him so.”

She was silent for a few minutes. I saw her quick eyes searching my face. “In trust to you, you said. A king such as there hasn't been before. He will be King, then? You swear he will be King?” Then suddenly: “Why do you look like that, Merlin? I saw you look the same way a while back when the girl put the child to her breast. What is it?”

“I don't know...” I spoke slowly, my eyes on the last glimmer of fire where the burned logs hollowed round a red cave. “Moravik, I have done what I have done because God — whichever god he is — drove me to do it. Out of the dark he told me that the child which Uther begot of Ygraine that night at Tintagel would be King of all Britain, would be great, would drive the Saxons out of our shores and knit our poor country into a strong whole. I did nothing of my own will, but just for this, that Britain might not go down into the dark. It came to me whole, out of the silence and the fire, and as a certainty. Then for a time I saw nothing and heard nothing, and wondered if, in my love for my father and my father's land, I had been led astray, and had seen vision where there was nothing but hope and desire. But now, see, there it lies, just as the god told me.” I looked at her. “I don't know if I can make you understand, Moravik. Visions and prophecies, gods and stars and voices speaking in the night...things seen cloudy in the flames and in the stars, but real as pain in the blood, and piercing the brain like ice. But now...” I paused again. “...now it is no longer a god's voice or a vision, it is a small human child with lusty lungs, a baby like any other baby, who cries, and sucks milk, and soaks his swaddling clothes. One's visions do not take account of this.”

“It's men who have visions,” said Moravik. “It's women who bear the children to fulfill them. That's the difference. And as for that one there” — she nodded towards the corner — “we shall see what we shall see. If he lives — and why should he not live, he's strong enough? — if he lives he has a good chance to be King. All we can do now is see that he makes a man. I'll do my part as you've done yours. The rest is with the good God.”

I smiled at her. Her sturdy common sense seemed to have lifted a great weight from me. “You're right. I was a fool ever to doubt. What will come, will come.”

“Then sleep on that.”

“Yes. I'll go to bed now. You have a good man there, Moravik. I'm glad of it.”

“Between us, boy, we'll keep your little King safely.”

“I'm sure of that,” I said, and after we had talked a little longer I climbed the ladder to bed.

That night I dreamed. I was standing in a field I knew near Hoel's town of Kerrec. It was a place of ancient holiness, where once a god had walked and I had seen him. In my dream I knew that I had come in the hope of seeing him again.

But the night was empty. All that moved was the wind. The sky arched high, bright with indifferent stars. Across its black dome, soft through the glitter of the fiercer stars, lay the long track of light they call the Galaxy. There was no cloud. About me stretched the field, just as I remembered it, bitten by the wind and sown by the sea's salt, with bare thorn trees hunched along the banks, and, solitary in the center, a single giant stone. I walked towards it. In the scattered light of the stars I cast no shadow, nor was there a shadow by the stone. Only the grey wind blurring the grass, and behind the stone the faint drifting of the stars that is not movement, but the heavens breathing.

Still the night was empty. My thoughts arrowed up into the shell of silence, and fell back spent. I was trying, with every grain of skill and power which I had fought and suffered for, to recall the god whose hand had been over me then, and whose light had led me. I prayed aloud, but heard no sound. I called on my magic, my gift of eyes and mind that men called the Sight, but nothing came. The night was empty, and I was failing. Even my human vision was failing, night and starlight melting into a blur, like something seen through running water...

The sky itself was moving. The earth held still, but heaven itself was moving. The Galaxy gathered and narrowed into a shaft of light, then froze still as a stream in the bite of winter. A shaft of ice — no, a blade, it lay across the sky like a king's sword, with the great jewels blazing in the hilt. Emerald I saw, topaz, sapphires, which in the tongue of swords mean power and joy and justice and clean death.

For a long time the sword lay there, still, like a weapon newly burnished, waiting for the hand which will lift and wield it. Then, of itself, it moved. Not as a weapon is lifted in battle, or in ceremony, or sport. But as a blade slides home to its housing it slid, how gently, down towards the standing stone, dropping into it as a sword slips resting into its scabbard.

Then there was nothing but the empty field and the whistling wind, and a grey stone standing.

I woke to the darkness of the inn room, and a single star, small and bright, showing through a gap above the rafters. Below me the beasts breathed sweet breath, while all around were the snores and stirrings of the sleepers. The place smelled warmly of horses and peat smoke and hay and mutton stew.

I lay unmoving, flat on my back, watching the little star. I hardly thought about the dream. Vaguely, I remembered that there had been talk of a sword, and now this dream...But I let it pass me. It would come. I would be shown. God was back with me; time had not lied. And in an hour or two it would be morning.