The Sword and The Quest: Lady Merlin's Saga (Epic Fantasy) (32 page)

The slave said, “Send them to kill Burgundians and Huns, Duke.  That’s a use for them…”

“Yes!  Where’re your weapons?”

“We’re all under oath not to make war,” Arthur said.

“All?  You mean your pet apes have taken the oath, too?”

Bedivere, Kay, Percival, and Lucan cried, in tiny, squeaky voices, “Not us!”

“What do they say?” Cator said to his slave.

“They’re speaking ape, Duke, who knows what apes say?”

“Will they frighten the dogs at their feed, you think?”

“Do those beasts eat dogs?” the slave said to Arthur.

“They’ll eat anything given them,” Arthur said.

“I eat dog m’self,” Cator said, “but not the hunting hounds.”

He worked his jaws remembering the sweetness of dog.

“Would’ve been pleasant,” Cator said, “had Gurthrygen also sent me one of his fat pigs to encourage me to take you on.”

The slave woman said around her sagging mustaches, “Give Arthur to me, Duke…”

“What do you want with him?”

“Give a prince to a slave?” Arthur cried.

Cator said, “This’s no slave.”

“But look how she’s dressed…”

“No worse than I.  This’s m’merlin and first minister.”

“This slave is your minister?  Are you a Turk with a mustache?”

Cator said to the slave-minister, “Take him.  He’s too stupid for me to want in m’own company for a year.”

“Remember, Cator,” I said, “he’s brother to a king and can be elected king himself…”

“Yes, yes, that’s right, Lady Beauty!  I suddenly feel a near enthusiasm for the boy.”

A trumpet blast outside, the shout and bustle of an arriving entourage.

Cator shouted, happy, “M’prince!”

He craned to look through the doorway.

“You remember our new policy?” the slave-minister said to Cator.

“I remember every word you say like I remember where every one of m’coins is buried.  I’m a dog with a bone he won’t lose.”

Cator shoved aside Arthur and me and crossed the room to a young warrior who clanked and glittered as he entered in full gaudy display.  He was in buffed mail, double string of pearls rattling on his painted breastplate, a gorgon-faced helmet shoved back on his head, his long black hair limed yellow at the tips and braided with gold rings, his ungloved fighting hand stretching out to bring to his lips for a kiss a bit of the rotting fabric Cator wore.

“Who’s this wonder?” Arthur said, goggling.

“Lancelot,” said the slave-minister.  “Would-be king of the Gauls.  No, pardon, merely king of one Gallic tribe, the virgin-slaughtering Franks.  But nonetheless a tasty match for one of Cator’s brood.”

“For Guenevere?” I said.

“That’s the trend of current policy.”

The four gnomes gnashed their teeth.  “Arthur, free us to eat him alive!”

“What do they say, your pets?” the slave-minister said to Arthur.

She put a withered hand on Arthur’s arm, whispering, “I’ll let you lose no more British territory here.”

Hers was a chill hand, its cold penetrating the rain-wet wool of Arthur’s sleeve and making such a charge of surprise in Arthur’s flesh that I felt it, too.

In the minister’s office, scribes, counters, and lackeys fled from stools and tables, abandoning coin boxes, rich silk bolts, and wax tablets of accounts as though a gale preceding the minister had hurled them out of the office.

The minister herded the four gnomes into a cabinet and locked them there.

“Who are you?” Arthur said.

“Hail, Mother Merlin,” the minister said to me, dropping to her knees and kissing the floor at my feet, her mustaches slapping my boot toes.

Arthur gawked.  “When have I ever had a slave do that for me?”

The old woman pulled cloak and hood from white hair woven with Cator-blue ribbons.  She began to undrape a palla, the indoor garment of those who preserved Roman styles.  She pulled off the palla to reveal a woman’s linen tunica and took off that to show a young woman’s body beneath the withered old head.

Hers was a body round and cream-white as promised by the rumor of Breton women, but not much cow-like.  It held a coldness that burnt to Arthur’s sudden, compulsive touch.

She said to Arthur, “Eratosthenes measured the roundness of the world with a stick and a shadow at Alexandria – 28,700 Roman miles around, he said.”

“What’s that to me?” said Arthur, suddenly hungry for her.

She said to me, “Shall I measure Arthur now, in a different way but with the same tools, Greatest Merlin?”

“Hail, Phyllis Merlin,” I said to her, “old friend.”

“This is Phyllis Merlin?” Arthur cried.  “The beautiful magus you infested to create the Round Table to save Guenevere from her murdering father?”

Phyllis said to Arthur, “Your Mother Merlin knew me a lifetime ago and now I’ll know you, Arthur.  I’m going to train the brute out of you and the king into you.  We’ll start with this.”

She shoved Arthur onto her counting table, among spilling coins, sliding silks, and tumbling account books.

Arthur shouted when he realized he would have the pleasure of one small conquest after so much failure.

He deserved his moment of success.  Misery was to follow.  That much I remembered of his future.

In the Julian Year 5210 and of Our Lord 497

“What are you good for besides skewering things?” Cator said to Arthur.

We were at table in the dusty main hall.  The food served was worse than the cheapest peasant fare in Britain – raw vegetables and gruel, no meat.  I sat on the bench between Cator and smirking Phyllis Merlin.  Arthur sat across with his “pets,” each of them grabbing for fallen scraps.

“I’ve given you a day’s leisure to recover from your crossing the Narrow Sea,” Cator said to Arthur.  “You’ve eaten m’eatables, ridden m’rideables, dallied with m’dalliables, and dawdled with m’merlin.  But you’ve done me no service yet.  What do you propose doing for me while I fatten you at my expense?”

“I’ve an answer,” I said for Arthur.

Bedivere lurked too near Cator’s knee, waiting for fallen food.  Cator kicked him away as he would a cat.

“Let me hear it,” Cator said to me.

“Give over the administration of the duchy to Arthur…”

“To a half-fledged youth?”

“It will fledge him…”

“Is this what Gurthrygen sent you to ask of me?  To abandon my duchy to his half-wit little brother?”

“Gurthrygen,” Phyllis said to Cator, “is a man never without a dozen motives for any act…”

“Yes, yes, clever enough to be a Roman and damn him for it,” said Cator.

“If he hadn’t a Saxon wife,” Phyllis said, “we might’ve sent him one of your daughters to buy peace…”

“Hold!  What are you trying to put into my mind, Trickster?  Everyone knows all m’brats are parricides the way they lap up m’treasure.”

“Your brother Hoel has no children,” Phylllis said.  “The issue of Arthur and Guenevere…”

“M’grandbrats!”

“Would be ruler of the ‘Kingdom of Britain and Brittany,’” I said.

Cator goggled around at us.  “There’s a way to pay m’debts!”

“And to accrue a few more besides,” said Cator’s bishop from across the room, where he sat in lonely gloom on the hard chair assigned to him.

The duke squinted at the bishop in his red toga, bright chains, and crucifix as though the duke had never before seen the man who claimed to be his chief moneylender.  The bishop shriveled in despair for the return of his money.

Cator glanced at the others of his court – his magicians and musicians, his ministers, generals, sycophants, concubines, and slaves.  From all of them he had borrowed money.  For each of them he gave the same vacant glance that said,
Who could you be
? and,
What money do you claim I owe you?
They shriveled, too
.

“To marry one daughter into Britain with Duke Arthur,” said Cator, “and another into Frankish Gaul for Sir Lancelot would produce an
empire
to pay m’debts.  I could accrue more debt!”

Phyllis Merlin said, “Marrying one daughter here and another there is always fair policy…”

“Only ‘fair?’” said the Duke.

“Considering you’ve only one marriageable daughter left…”

“Oh, well, yes.”

“Considering the Franks are not all of Gaul and the Britons not all of Britain…”

“Should I find Guenevere a Saxon husband, instead?” said Cator, suddenly dreaming of Saxon silver pennies piled up in his treasury.

“It’s becoming a Saxon world, Duke…”

“Is he” – Cator gestured at Arthur – “really going to make this ‘Camelot’ kingdom?”

“That’s his Fate,” I said. 
I hope,
I should have added.

“Well, the Frank’s a better candidate for marriage,” said Cator.  “He dresses like a prince.  Plenty of coin in his purse.  His mother’s rich in her convent where she’s not likely to spend much that I want.  But look at Arthur here in his beggar’s rags!”

Arthur said, “What I stand up in is all I own this side of the Narrow Sea, Duke…”

“I pity Gurthrygen,” said the duke.  “What a shameful thing to have a ragged display like you for a brother.”

“You’re no better dressed…”

“I’m in m’own duchy!  Who cares how I dress here?”

“I’ve seen you in these same rags in Rome,” said Phyllis.

“Among foreigners!  Who cares how I dress there?”

Cator prodded Arthur with a dirty boot toe.  “You’re not a bad fellow but not so jolly a companion as your father.  He knew how to drink and wench!  You’ve Celtic heat in your veins, all right.  Merlin Phyllis gave me every sweaty detail of her interview with you last night.”

Arthur flushed.  Phyllis smirked.

“But when Uther and I were your age, Arthur, we went through the world together mad with hunger for human meat to test our steel blades and maidens to test our more steely…”

The duke stopped and stared at Arthur.  “Wrong!  Good thing you’re not at all like your old man if you marry my Guenevere.”

Phyllis said, “The policy is, Lord Duke…”

“Policy, policy!  Must you always remind me of m’policy?”

“The policy is we marry Guinevere to Lancelot and onto the throne of Clovis to have peace with the Franks…”

“I’m thinking of Camelot now.”

“But there’s no money in Camelot, Duke,” said Phyllis.

“Sometimes a dream is worth a penny,” said Cator.  “Sometimes it’s worth the dream.”

“What’s the matter with you?” said Phyllis  “Money is your only policy.”

She whispered to me, “What have you done to him?”

“Nothing,” I said, as puzzled as she.  “I barely have the power to cross a continent in an afternoon anymore.”

Cator shoved aside the plate with his thin lunch and leaned across to Arthur.

“Prince,” he said, “will you make Camelot with my Guenevere?”

“I want my son,” Arthur said.  “I have to make myself king of Britain to take him out of Orkney castle.  What comes after, I don’t know.  I don’t care.  My merlin-mother doesn’t know – she can’t remember the future anymore.”

“I know your merlin-mother,” Cator said.  “You’re a fool to doubt anything she decides to do.  No matter how weak she may become, she remains the greatest merlin of the age.”

Cator said, with a surprise earnestness, “Tell me, boy, did you try the sword in the stone?”

“It refuses to come to me.”

Cator thought about that, staring at Arthur as though measuring him.

Then Cator turned to me and said, “Lady Merlin, is this your Arthur?”

“He’s the one I chose.”

Cator stared again at Arthur.

“But is he the one to make Camelot?”

“He has to be,” I said.  “I can’t live this life again.”

Phyllis cut in, “What about Lancelot, Duke?  If Arthur takes Guenevere to make Camelot, he opens a war between Britain and the Franks and us...”

“What’re the Franks?” said Cator.  “Boys in silver plate.  Look at Lancelot, smell him.  I’ve roses that cloy less.”

“His mother’s Vivien of the Lake...”

“Ah, yes.  Does she still witch, d’you think?”

“Not there in her nunnery…”

“Then we have to keep her there.”

“How do we do that?” said Phyllis, exasperated.  “How do we reshape the whole world around a dream of Camelot?”

“I don’t know,” Cator said.  “I only know the dream.”

Cator said to me, “What does the boy lack?”

“I’m too young to remember!” I cried.

I felt desperate.  I felt a failure.  I felt I ought to cut my throat.  I wanted to strangle the White Druid.  I wanted to…

“You made a bad bargain at the beginning of it all, Merlin,” Cator said.  “But you applied your old woman’s wisdom well in raising up a warrior with an independent mind and a hunger to give and receive love.”

Arthur reached across the food table to put his hand on mine.  His unexpected touch was like the thrill of answered prayer.  It made me weep in a mother’s happiness.

Arthur said, “You were a good mother to a boy thrown away by his own parents.  The sword won’t have me and I’m not Camelot, but I love you, Mother.”

Cator and Phyllis watched all this in surprised silence.

Cator said to Phyllis, “What d’you think, any chance we can teach him to pull the sword stuck in that ugly stone?”

“It violates all your policy, Duke...”

“He has to do it.  Merlin’s made half a king.  You and I have to make the other half.”

Cator kicked Arthur under the table.  “Eating’s over, boy.  Leave some scraps for m’servants.  Get off that bench.”

“What am I do?” said Arthur, startled.

“Go administer m’holdings.  Be m’warden.  Find Guenevere.  Make her love you instead of Lancelot.  That’s the only way to win her that won’t start a war with the sweet-smelling Franks.  They’re stupidly sentimental about true love.  Love excuses everything for them.  Out, out!  Take your horrid little pets with you.”

Arthur fled to the door with his skin-flapping war band.

“Hold!” shouted Cator.

The duke waited, listening.

A trumpet blast outside.

Cator said, “The perfumed Frank!”

Phyllis said, “Let’s see how your new policy appeals to Sir Lancelot and his human-roasting comrades.”

* * *

Naked girl heralds strewing rose petals ran into the auditorium shouting, “Lancelot!  Lancelot!  Prince of the Franks!”

Lancelot entered – black hair limed at its tips, jangling earrings, glistening gilt armor, a long mustache twined with blue ribbons in honor of Cator’s blue-fanged gorgon, and perhaps in the meaning of Lancelot’s hunger to eat up Cator’s Guenevere.

Lancelot bowed on all sides, Cator’s impoverished court gaping at his rich and gaudy entrance.

Cator seized the young man and lifted him as though weighing the value of his armor’s gilding, then led the breath-gasping young man to a chair by the ducal throne.

“That,” said Cator, gesturing at Arthur and his midget war band, “is Arthur, Duke of Cornwall and brother to Gurthrygen, with his ghastly pets.  This other’s Princess Merlin.”

Lancelot’s blue eyes turned from Arthur glaring at him to me.  The eyes goggled.  He cried, “What a beauty!  How can she be a merlin?  Where’s the forked beard?”

“Well, there you have it,” said Cator to me.

Yes, I had it.  Lancelot was a gorgeous idiot.

His eyes were as beautiful as any I had seen in depictions of the Madonna.  But as though a door had been shut behind them.  They let out the illuminating light of seeing but not the light of soul.

I said in my soul’s voice, to test him,
Tell me your soul-name, Lancelot.

No reply.  Answer enough.

Cator said to Lancelot, “Arthur wants Guenevere.  Gurthrygen sent him to take her.  What do you think of that?  Worth a good brawl this afternoon?  Some cheap entertainment?”

“She’s mine,” Lancelot said, simply and unperturbed.

“She is by the rules of love,” said the duke.  “But not by the rules of rank.  A king outranks your mother huddling in her convent.”

“She’s mine,” Lancelot said again.

“But Arthur’s her own blood and you aren’t,” said Cator.  “Makes a difference, don’t you see?”

“Let me stroke Arthur with my war club and let out some of that cousinly blood,” said Lancelot.  “That will end the problem.”

Lancelot put out his hand.  A slave leaped to put into it his gilt war club.

Cator gazed at the rich war club with lascivious and covetous eyes.

“Much as I’d like to see that heaving mass of gold in action,” he said, “Gurthrygen wants Guenevere to keep peace between the two Britains.”

“Peace?” said Lancelot, as though that were an alien concept.

“But there is a solution,” said Cator.

“She’s mine,” said Lancelot.  “That’s the only solution.”

“I’ve made Arthur the Warden of Brittany.”

“Does that mean when I marry Guenevere I inherit him with the duchy?” said Lancelot.

“Or the reverse,” I said.

“The reverse what?” Lancelot said to me.

Oh, yes, thick as the shine off his war club.

Cator said, “I make you Count of the Borderlands.”

“What’s that?”

“Defender of Brittany against the Huns, Burgundians, Franks, and other barbarians.”

“Defender of Brittany against the Franks?  You mean against myself?” Lancelot was confused.  “What sort of division of your territory is that?”

“It keeps you from killing one another and creating a new war for me to sort out,” said the duke.

“How does it do that?” said Lancelot.

“Arthur administers m’holdings and proves himself worthy of Guenevere by making me rich.  Lancelot defends m’borders against the barbarians and proves himself worthy of Guenevere.  I choose the man who proves himself better at the task I give him.  Otherwise, you two wander off home and I look elsewhere for a prince for the girl.”