Legacy: Arthurian Saga (130 page)

And now? She had magic of a kind. It
was possible that she knew, as I knew, that in that night's incest
with Arthur she had conceived. A husband she must have, and who
better than Lot? If he could be persuaded that the child was his,
she might cheat the hated young sister of marriage and kingdom, and
build a nest where the cuckoo could hatch out in safety.

It looked as if she would succeed.
When next I saw through the dream-smoke they were laughing
together, and she had freed her body of the covers and was seated
high on the furs against the crimson curtains of the bedhead, with
the rose-gold hair streaming down behind her shoulders like a
mantle of silk. The front of her body was bare, and on her head was
Lot's royal circlet of white gold, glimmering with citrines and the
milk-blue pearls of the northern rivers. Her eyes shone bright and
narrow as a purring cat's, and the man was laughing with her as he
lifted the cup and drank what looked like a toast to her. As he
lifted it the cup rocked, and wine slopped over the brim to spill
down her breasts like blood. She smiled, not stirring, and the king
leaned forward, laughing, and sucked it off.

The smoke thickened. I could smell it,
as if I was there in the room, close by the brazier. Then
mercifully I was awake in the cool and tranquil night, but with the
nightmare still crawling like sweat on the skin.

To anyone but me, knowing them as I
knew them, the scene would have offered no offense. The girl was
lovely, and the man fine enough, and if they were lovers, why,
then, she had the right to look toward his crown. There should have
been nothing to flinch at in the scene, any more than in a dozen
such that one sees on any summer evening along the hedgerows, or in
the midnight hall. But about a crown, even such a one as Lot's,
there is something sacred: it is a symbol of that mystery, the link
between god and king, king and people. So to see the crown on that
wanton head, with the king's own head, bared of its royalty, bent
below it like a beast's pasturing, was profanity, like spittle on
an altar.

So I rose, and plunged my head in
water, and washed the sight away.

5

When we reached Caerleon at noon next
day, a bright October sun was drying the ground, and frost lay
indigo-blue in the lee of walls and buildings. The alders along the
river bank, their black boughs hung with yellow coins of leaves,
looked bright and still, like stitchery against the background of
pale sky. Dead leaves, still rimmed with frost, crunched and
rustled under our horses' hoofs. The smells of new bread and
roasting meat wound through the air from the camp kitchens, and
brought sharply to mind my visit here with Tremorinus, the master
engineer who had rebuilt the camp for Ambrosius, and included in
his plans the finest kitchens in the country.

I said as much to my companion -- it
was Caius Valerius, my friend of old -- and he grunted
appreciatively.

"Let us hope the King takes due time
for a meal before he starts his inspection."

"I think we can trust him for
that."

"Oh, aye, he's a growing boy." It was
said with a sort of indulgent pride, with no faintest hint of
patronage. From Valerius it came well; he was a veteran who had
fought with Ambrosius at Kaerconan and since then with Uther; he
was also one of the captains who had been with Arthur at the battle
on the River Glein. If men of this stamp could accept the youthful
King with respect, and trust him for leadership, then my task was
indeed done. The thought came unmixed with any sense of loss or
declining, but with a calm relief that was new to me. I thought: I
am growing old.

I became conscious that Valerius had
asked me something. "I'm sorry. I was thinking. You
said?"

"I asked if you were going to stay
here till the crowning?"

"I think not. He may need me here for
a while, if he's set on rebuilding. I'm hoping I shall have leave
to go after Christmas, but I'll come back for the
crowning."

"If the Saxons give us leave to hold
it."

"As you say. To leave it till
Pentecost would seem to be a little risky, but it's the bishops'
choice, and the King would be wiser not to gainsay
them."

Valerius grunted. "Maybe if they put
their minds to it and do some serious praying, God will hold the
spring offensive back for them. Pentecost, eh? Do you suppose
they're hoping for fire from heaven again...theirs, this time,
perhaps?" He eyed me sideways. "What do you say?"

As it happened, I knew the legend to
which he referred. Since the coming of the white fire into the
Perilous Chapel, the Christians had been wont to refer to their own
story, that once, at Pentecost, fire had fallen from heaven onto
their god's chosen servants. I saw no reason to quarrel with such
an interpretation of what had happened at the Chapel: it was
necessary that the Christians, with their growing power, should
accept Arthur as their God-appointed leader. Besides, for all I
knew, they were right.

Valerius was still waiting for me to
answer. I smiled. "Only that if they know from whose hand the fire
falls, they know more than I do."

"Oh, aye, that's likely." His tone was
faintly derisive. Valerius had been on garrison duty in Luguvallium
on the night when Arthur lifted the sword from the fire in the
Perilous Chapel, but, like everyone else, he had heard the tale.
And, like everyone else, he shied away from what had happened
there. "So you're leaving us after Christmas? Are we to know where
for?"

"I'm going home to Maridunum. It's
five -- no, six years since I was there. Too long. I'd like to see
that all is well."

"Then see that you do get back for the
crowning. There will be great doings here at Pentecost. It would be
a pity to miss them."

By then, I thought, she would be near
her time. I said aloud: "Oh, yes. With or without the Saxons, we
shall have great doings at Pentecost."

Then we spoke of other things until
our quarters were reached, and we were bidden to join the King and
his officers for meat.

Caerleon, the old Roman City of the
Legions, had been rebuilt by Ambrosius, and since then kept
garrisoned and in good repair. Arthur now set himself to enlarge it
almost to its original capacity, and make it, besides, a king's
stronghold and dwelling-place as well as a fortress. The old royal
city of Winchester was reckoned now to be too near the borders of
the Saxon federated territory, and too vulnerable, besides, to new
invasion, situated as it is on the Itchen River, where longboats
had landed before now, London was still safely held by the British,
nor had any Saxons attempted to thrust up into the Thames valley,
but in Uther's time the longboats had penetrated as far as
Vagniacae, and Rutupiae and the Isle of Thanet had long been
securely in Saxon hands. The threat was felt to be there, and
growing yearly, and since Uther's accession London had begun --
imperceptibly at first, and then with increasing speed -- to show
decay. Now it was a city fallen on evil days; many of its buildings
had collapsed through age and neglect; poverty showed itself
everywhere, as markets moved away, and those who could afford to do
so left for safer places. It would never, men said, be a capital
city again.

So until his new stronghold should be
ready to counter any serious invasion from the Saxon Shore, Arthur
planned to make Caerleon his headquarters. It was the obvious
choice. Within eight miles of it was Ynyr's capital of Guent, and
the fortress itself, lying in a loop of the river but beyond the
danger of flood, had mountains at its back, and was additionally
protected on the east by marshes at the watersmeet of the Isca and
the little Afon Lwyd. Of course Caerleon's very strength restricted
it; it could defend only a small portion of the territory under
Arthur's shield. But for the present it could provide the
headquarters for his policy of mobile defense.

I was with him all through that first
winter. He did ask me once, with a smiling lift of the brows, if I
was not going to leave him for my cave in the hills, but I said
merely: "Later," and let it be.

I told him nothing about the dream I
had had that night at Nodens' shrine. He had enough to think about,
and I was only too thankful that he seemed to have forgotten the
possible consequences of that night with Morgause. Time enough to
talk to him when the news came from York about the
wedding.

Which it did, in good time to stop the
court's preparation to go north for the celebrations at Christmas.
A long letter came first, from Queen Ygraine to the King; one came
for me with the same courier, and was brought to me where I walked
by the river. All morning I had been watching the laying of a
conduit, but for the moment work had ceased, as the men went for
their midday bread and wine. The troops drilling on the parade
ground near the old amphitheatre had dispersed, and the winter day
was still and bright, with a pearled mist.

I thanked the man, waiting, letter in
hand, until he had gone. Then I broke the seal.

The dream had been a true one, Lot and
Morgause were married. Before even Queen Ygraine and her party
reached York, the news had gone before them, that the lovers were
handfast. Morgause -- I was reading between the lines here -- had
ridden into the city with Lot, flushed with triumph and decked with
his jewels, and the city, preparing for a royal wedding, with a
sight of the High King himself, made the best of its
disappointment, and, with northern thrift, held the wedding feast
just the same. The King of Lothian, said Ygraine, had borne himself
meekly to her, and had made gifts to the chief men of the city, so
his welcome had been warm enough. And Morgan -- I could read the
relief in the plain words -- Morgan had showed neither anger nor
humiliation; she had laughed aloud, and then wept with what
appeared to be sheer relief. She had gone to the feasting in a gay
red gown, and no girl had been merrier, even though (finished
Ygraine with the touch of acid that I remembered) Morgause had worn
her new crown from rising to bedtime...

As for the Queen's own reaction, I
thought that this, too, was one of relief. Morgause,
understandably, had never been dear to her, whereas Morgan was the
only child she had had by her to rear. It was clear that, while
prepared to obey King Uther, both she and Morgan had disliked the
marriage with the black northern wolf. I did, indeed, wonder if
Morgan knew more about him than she had told her mother. It was
even possible that Morgause, being what she was, had boasted that
she and Lot had already lain together.

Ygraine herself showed no suspicion of
this, nor of the bride's pregnancy as a possible reason for the
hasty marriage. It was to be hoped that there was no hint, either,
in the letter she had sent to Arthur. He had too much on his mind
now; there would be time yet for the anger and the distress. He
must be crowned first, and then be free to go about his formidable
task of war without being shackled by what was women's business --
and would, all too soon, be mine.

Arthur flung the letter down, was
angry, that was plain, but holding it on the rein. "Well? I take it
you know?"

"Yes."

"How long have you known?"

"The Queen your mother wrote to me. I
have just read the letter. I imagine it carries the same news as
yours."

"That is not what I asked you." I said
mildly: "If you are asking me, did I know this was going to happen,
the answer is yes." The angry dark gaze kindled. "You did? Why did
you not tell me?"

"For two reasons. Because you were
occupied with things that matter more, and because I was not quite
sure."

"You? Not sure? Come, Merlin! This
from you?"

"Arthur, all that I knew or suspected
of this came to me in a dream, one night some weeks ago. It came
not like a dream of power, or divination, but like a nightmare
brought on by too much wine, or by too much thinking about that
hellcat and her works and ways. King Lot had been in my mind, and
so had she. I dreamed I saw them together, and she was trying on
his crown. Was that enough, do you think, for me to make you a
report that would have set the court by the ears, and you, maybe,
racing up to York to quarrel with him?"

"It would have been enough, once." His
mouth showed a stubborn and still angry line. I saw that the anger
sprang from anxiety, striking at the wrong time about Lot's
intentions.

"That," I said, "was when I was the
King's prophet. No," at his quick movement, "I belong to no man
else. I am yours, as always. But I am a prophet no longer, Arthur.
I thought you understood."

"How could I? What do you
mean?"

"I mean that the night at Luguvallium,
when you drew the sword I had hidden for you in the fire, was the
last time that the power visited me. You did not see the place
afterwards, when the fire was gone and the chapel empty. It had
broken the stone where the sword lay, and destroyed the sacred
relics. Me, it did not destroy, but I think the power was burned
out of me, perhaps forever. Fires fade to ash, Arthur. I thought
you must surely have guessed."

"How could I?" he said again, but his
tone had changed. It was no longer angry and abrupt, but slow and
thinking. As I, after Luguvallium, had felt myself ageing, then
Arthur had, for good and all, left his boyhood. "You've seemed the
same as always. Clear-headed, and so sure of yourself that it's
like asking advice of an oracle."