At length, feeling myself again, and not wanting to impose any longer on Stilicho's little household, I prepared to set off for Northumbria, and set Stilicho to make arrangements for me. I decided to go north by sea. A sea voyage is something I never willingly undertake, but by road it would be a long, hard journey, with no guarantee of continued fine weather, and besides, I could hardly have gone alone; Stilicho would have insisted upon accompanying me, even though at this time of year he could ill be spared from the mill. Indeed, he tried to insist on going with me by ship, but in the end let himself be overruled; this not only by expedience, but because I think he believed me still to be the "great enchanter" whom he had served in the past with such awe and pride. In the end I had my way, and one morning early I went quietly downstream on one of the barges, and embarked at Maridunum on a north-bound coastal ship.
I had sent no message to Blaise in Northumbria, because there was no courier I could trust with the news of "Merlin's return from the dead." I would think of some way to prepare him when I came near the place. It was even possible that he had not yet heard news of my death; he lived so retired from the world — held to the times only by my dispatches — it was conceivable that he had only just unrolled my last letter from Applegarth.
This, as it turned out, was the fact; but I did not find out yet for a while. I did not get to Northumbria, but traveled no farther north than Segontium.
The ship put in there on a fine, still morning. The little town sunned itself at the edge of the shining strait, its clustered houses dwarfed by the great walls of the Roman-built fortress that had been the headquarters of the Emperor Maximus. Across the strait the fields of Mona's Isle showed golden in the sun. Behind the town, a little way beyond the fortress walls, stood the remains of the tower that was known as Macsen's Tower. Nearby was the site of the ruined temple of Mithras, where years ago I had found the King's sword of Britain, and where, deep under the rubble of the floor and the ruined altar of the god, I had left the rest of Macsen's treasure, the lance and the grail. This was the place I had promised to show Nimue on our way home from Galava. Beyond the tower the great Snow Hill, Y Wyddfa, reared against the sky. The first white of winter was on its crest, and its cloud-haunted sides, even on that golden day, showed purple-black with scree and dead heather.
We nosed in to the wharf. There were goods to unload, and this would take time, so I went thankfully ashore, and, after a word at the harbour-master's office, made for the wharfside inn. There I could have a meal, and watch the unloading and loading of my ship.
I was hungry, and likely to get hungrier. My idea of any voyage, however calm, is to get below and stay below, without food or drink, until it is over. The harbour master had told me that the ship would not sail before the evening tide, so there was ample time to rest and make ready for the next dreaded stage of the journey. It did cross my mind to wish I might have time to make my way up once again to the temple of Mithras, but I put the thought aside. Even if I were to revisit the place, I would not disturb the treasure. It was not for me. Besides, the privations of the journey had tired me, and I needed food. I made for the inn.
This was built round three sides of a court, the fourth being open to the wharf, for the convenience, I suppose, of carrying goods straight from the ships into the inn's storerooms, which served as warehouses for the town. There were benches and stout wooden tables under the overhanging eaves of the open courtyard, but fine though the weather was, it was not warm enough to persuade me to eat out of doors. I found my way into the main room, where a log fire burned, and ordered food and wine. (I had paid my passage with — appropriately — one of the gold coins which had been the "ferryman's fee"; this had left me change besides, and caused the ship's master to accord me a respect which my apparent style hardly called for.) Now the servant hastened to serve me with a good meal, of mutton and fresh bread, with a flask of rough red wine such as seamen like, then left me in peace to enjoy the warmth of the fire and watch through the open door the scene at the quay-side.
The day wore through. I was more tired than I had realized. I dozed, then woke, and dozed again. Over at the wharf the work went on, with creak of windlass and rattle of chain and straining of ropes as the cranes swung the bales and sacks inboard. Overhead the gulls wheeled and cried. Now and again an ox-cart creaked by on clumsy wheels.
There was little coming and going in the inn itself. Once a woman crossed the courtyard with a basket of washing on her head, and a boy hurried through with a batch of bread. There was another party staying, it seemed, in chambers to the right of the court. A fellow in slave's dress hurried in from the town, carrying a flat basket covered with a linen cloth. He vanished through a doorway, and a short while later some children came running out, boys, well dressed but noisy, and with some kind of outlandish accent I could not place. Two of them — twins by their look — settled down on the sunlit flagstones for a game of knucklebones, while the other two, though ill-matched for size, started some kind of mock fight with sticks for swords, and old box lids for shields. Presently a decent-looking woman, whom I took to be their nurse, came out of the same doorway and sat down on a bench in the sun to watch them. From the way the boys, now and then, ran to gaze toward the wharf, I guessed that their party was perhaps waiting to join my ship, or continue its voyage on another vessel that was tied up a few lengths away along the quay.
From where I was sitting I could see the master of my ship, and at his elbow some sort of tallyman with stilus and wax. The latter had written nothing for some time, and on board the activity seemed to have ceased. It would soon be time to get back to my uneasy bed below decks, and wait miserably until the light breezes carried us northward on the next stage of the journey.
I got to my feet. As I did so I saw the master raise his head, with a movement like that of a dog sniffing the air. Then he swung round to look upward at the inn roof. Straight above my head I heard the long creak of the weathervane swinging round, then whining to and fro in small uneasy arcs as the suddenly rising breeze of evening caught it. To and fro it went, then settled into silence in front of a steady wind. The wind went across the harbour like a grey shadow over the water, and in its wake the moored ships swayed, and ropes sang and rattled against the masts like drumsticks. Beside me the fire flickered and then roared up the open chimney. The master, with a gesture of impatient anger, strode for the ship's gangway, calling out orders. Mingled with my own annoyance was relief; the seas would roughen quickly in this wind, but I would not be on them. With the fickle violence of autumn, the wind had veered. The ship could not sail. The fresh wind was blowing straight from the north.
I walked across to speak to the master, who, watching the sailors stow and rope the cargo against the new weather, glumly confirmed that there was no question of sailing until the wind blew our way again. I sent a boy to bring up my gear, and went back to bespeak a room at the inn. That there would be one vacant I knew, for the ill wind had apparently blown good for the other lodgers in the place. I could see sailors making ready on the other ship, and back at the inn there was a rush and bustle of preparation. The children had vanished from the courtyard, and presently reappeared, cloaked and warmly shod, the smallest boy holding his nurse's hand, the others frolicking around her, lively and noisy and obviously excited at the prospect of the voyage. They waited, skipping with impatience, while the slave I had seen, with another to help him, came out loaded with baggage, followed by a man in the livery of a chamber-groom, sharp-voiced and authoritative. They must be people of consequence, in spite of their strange speech. About the tallest of the boys, I thought, there was something vaguely familiar. I stood in the shadow of the inn's main doorway, watching them. The innkeeper had bustled up now, to be paid by the chamber-groom, and then a woman, his wife, perhaps, came running with a package. I heard the word "laundry," then the two of them backed away from the doorway with bow and curtsy, as the principal guest at length emerged from the chamber.
It was a woman,
cloaked from head to foot in green. She was slightly built, but bore herself proudly. I caught the gleam of gold at her wrist, and there were jewels at her throat. Her cloak was lined and edged with red fox fur, deep and rich, and the hood, too. This was thrown back on her shoulders, but I could not see her face; she was turned away, speaking to someone behind her in the room.
Another woman came out carefully, carrying a box. This was wrapped in linen, and seemed heavy. She was plainly dressed, like a waiting woman. If the box contained her mistress's jewels, these were persons of consequence indeed.
Then the lady turned, and I knew her. It was Morgause, Queen of Lothian and Orkney. There could be no mistake. The lovely hair had lost its rose-gold glimmer, and had darkened to rose-brown, and her body had thickened with child-bearing, but the voice was the same, and the long slant of the eyes, and the pretty, folded mouth. So the four sturdy boys, ruddy and clamorous with the outlandish accent of the north, were her children by Lot of Lothian, Arthur's enemy.
I had no eyes for them now. I was watching the doorway. I wondered if, at last, I was going to see her eldest son, her child by Arthur himself.
He came swiftly out of the doorway. He was taller than his mother, a slim youth who, though I had never seen him before, I would have known anywhere. Dark hair, dark eyes, and the body of a dancer. Someone had once said that of me, and he was like me, was Arthur's son Mordred. He paused beside Morgause, saying something to her. His voice was light and pleasant, an echo of his mother's. I caught the words "ship" and "reckoning," and saw her nod. She laid her pretty hand on his, and the party started to move off. Mordred glanced at the sky, and spoke again, with what looked like a hint of anxiety. They went by within feet of where I was standing.
I drew back. The movement must have caught her attention, for she glanced up, and for the merest fraction of a moment her eyes met mine. There was no recognition in them. But as she turned to hurry for the ship I saw her shiver, and draw the furred cloak about her as if she felt the wind suddenly cold.
The train of servants followed and Lot’s children: Gawain, Agravaine, Gaheris, Gareth. They trod over the gangplank of the waiting ship.
They were going south, all of them. What Morgause purposed there I could not guess at, but it could be nothing but evil. And I was powerless to stop them, or even to send a message ahead of them, for who would believe a message from the dead?
Then the innkeeper and his wife were beside me, wanting to know my pleasure.
I did not, after all, ask to sleep in the rooms that the Queen of Orkney and her train had just vacated.
The wind still blew from the north next day, cold, strong, and steady. There was no question of my own ship's continuing north. I thought again of sending some message of warning to Camelot, but Morgause's ship would easily outpace a horseman, and to whom, in any case, could I send? To Nimue? To Bedwyr or the Queen? I could do nothing until the High King was back inBritain. And by the same token, while Arthur was still abroad, Morgause could do him no evil. I thought about it as I made my way out of the town, and set off along the track that led below the fortress walls toward Macsen's Tower. It would be an ill wind indeed if I could get no good of it at all. Yesterday's rest had refreshed me, and I had the day in hand. So I would use it.
When I had last been in Segontium, that great military city built and fortified by Maximus whom the Welsh call Macsen, it had been all but a ruin. Since then, Cador of Cornwall had repaired and re-fortified it against attackers from Ireland. That had been many years ago, but more recently Arthur had seen to it that Maelgon, his commander in the west, kept it in repair. I was interested to see what had been done, and how; and this, as much as anything else, took me along the valley track. Soon I was well above the town. It was a day of sunshine and chilly wind, and the city lay bright and washed with colour below me in the arm of the dark-blue sea. Beside the track the fortress walls rose stout and well kept, and within them I could hear the clash and bustle of an alert and well-maintained garrison. As if I had still been Arthur's engineer, proposing to report to him, I marked all that I saw. Then I came to the south side of the fortress, where ruin and the four winds had been allowed their way, and paused to look up the valley slope toward Macsen's Tower.
There was the track, once trodden by the faithful legionnaires, but probably now used only by sheep or goats and their herds. It led up the steep hillside to the swell of stony turf that hid the ancient, underground shrine of Mithras. For more than a hundred years the place had been ruinous, but when I had been there before, the steps that led down to the entrance had still been passable, and the temple itself, though patently unsafe, still recognizable. I started slowly up the track, wondering why, after all, I had come to see it again.
I need not have wondered. It was not there. There was no sign either of the mound that had hidden the roof or of the steps that had led downward. I did not need to look far to find the cause. At the head of the slope where the temple had lain, the restorers of Segontium, levering away the great stones of the fortress wall for their rebuilding, and quarrying here and there for smaller metal, had set half the hillside rolling in a long slope of scree. In this had seeded and grown half a hundred small trees — thorn and ash and blackberry — so that even the track of the fallen scree was hard to trace. And everywhere, like the weft of a loom, the narrow sheep-trods, white with summer dust, criss-crossed the hillside.
I seemed to hear again, faintly, the receding voice of the god.
"Throw down my altar. It is time to throw it down."
Altar, shrine and all, had vanished into the locked depths of the hill.
There is something not quite believable about any change of this kind. I stood there for some time, casting about for the bearings I knew. There was no question of the accuracy of my memory; a line straight from Macsen's Tower on the hill above to the southwest corner of the old fortress, and another, from the Commandant's house to the distant peak of Y Wyddfa, would intersect one another right over the site of the shrine. Now, they intersected one another right in the middle of the scree. I could see where, almost at that very point, the bushes were sparse, and the boulders showed gaps between, as of a space below.
"Lost something?" asked a voice.
I looked round. A boy was sitting perched above me, on a fallen block of stone. He was very young, perhaps ten years old, and very dirty. He was tousled and half-naked, and was chewing a hunk of barley bread. A hazel stick lay near him, and his sheep grazed placidly a little way up the hill.
"A treasure, it seems," I said.
"What kind of treasure? Gold?"
"It might be. Why?"
He swallowed the last bit of bread. "What's it worth to you?"
"Oh, half my kingdom. Were you going to help me find it?"
"I've found gold here before." "You have?" "Aye. And once a silver penny. And once a belt buckle. Bronze, that was." "It seems your pasture is richer than it looks," I said, smiling. This had once been a busy road between fortress and temple. The place must be full of such trove. I looked at the boy. His eyes were clear and lively in the dirty face. "Well," I added, "I don't actually want to dig for gold, but if you can help me with some information, there's a copper penny in this for you. Tell me, have you lived here all your life?"
"Aye." "Kept sheep in this valley?" "Aye. Used to come with my brother. Then he got sold to a trader and went on a ship. I keep the sheep now. They're not mine. Master's a big man over to the hill." "Do you remember — " I asked it without hope; some of the saplings were surely ten years grown. "Do you remember when this landslide came? When they were rebuilding the fort, perhaps?" A shake of the tousled head. "It's always been like this." "No. It wasn't always like this. When I was here before, many years ago, there was a good track along the hillside here, and deep in the side of the hill, just over yonder, was an underground building. It had once been a temple. In old times the soldiers used to worship Mithras there. Have you never heard tell of it?"
Another sh
ake. "From your father, perhaps?" He grinned. "Tell me who that is, I'll tell you what he said." "Your master, then?" "No. But if it's under there" — a jerk of the head toward the scree — "I know where. There's water under. Where the water is, that'll be the place, surely?" "There was no water when I — " I stopped. A prickling ran over my flesh, like a cold draught.
"Water under where?"
"Under the stones. There. Way under. Twice a man's height, by the feel of it." I took in the small dirty figure, the bright grey eyes, the hazel stick at his feet. "You can find water under the ground? With the hazel?" "It's easiest wi' that. But I get the feeling sometimes, just the same, on my own." "And metal? Is that the way you found gold here before?"
"Once. It was a nice bit of a statue or something. A dog, sort of. The master took it off me. If I found some more now I wouldn't tell him. But mostly it's copper, copper coins. Up there in the old buildings."
"I see." I was thinking that when I found the shrine it had already been a deserted ruin for a century or more. But when it was built, no doubt it would have been beside a spring. "If you will show me where the water lies below the stones, there will be silver in it for you."
He did not move. I thought he looked wary. "That's where it is, this treasure you're looking for?"
"I hope so." I smiled at him. "But it's nothing that you could find for yourself, child. It would take men with crowbars to shift those stones, and even if you led them to the place, you would get nothing of what they found. If you show me now, I promise that you will be paid."
He sat still for a moment or two, scuffling his bare feet in the dirt. Then, groping inside the skin kilt that was his only garment, he produced, flat on a dirty palm, a silver coin. "I was paid, master. There's others knew about the treasure. How was I to know it was yours? I showed them where to dig, and they lifted the stones and took the box away."
Silence. Here in the lee of the hill the wind had no way. The bright world seemed to spin far away, then steady, and come back. I sat down on a boulder.