"So you were warned of that? My poor child, left to guard such a treasure...Did Bagdemagus warn you that Morgause had heard of it, and meant to steal it?"
"What?" She looked at me blankly. "What do you mean? What had Morgause to do with the grail? It would have soiled the god himself if she had even looked at it. How was she to know where to find it?"
"I don't know. But she took it. I was told so, by someone who watched her do it."
"Then you were told a lie," said Nimue roundly. "I took it myself."
"It was you who took Macsen's treasure?"
"Indeed it was." She sat up, glowing. In her eyes two little braziers, reflected, shone and glittered. The candid grey eyes looked, with the red points of light, like cat's eyes, or witch's. "You told me yourself where it lay buried; do you remember that? Or were you already gone into your own mists, my dear?"
"I remember."
She said soberly: "You told me that power was a hard master. It was the hardest thing I have ever done, to go to Segontium, instead of traveling south again to Bryn Myrddin. But in the end I knew I had been bidden to do it, so I went. I took two of my servants, men I could trust, and found the place. It had changed. The shrine had gone, under a landslip, but I took the bearings you had given me, and we dug there. It might have taken a long time, but we had help."
"A dirty little shepherd boy, who could hold a hazel stick over the earth, and tell you where the treasure was hidden."
Her eyes danced. "So, why do I trouble to tell you my story? Yes. He came and showed us, and we dug down, and took the box away. I went up into the fortress then, and spoke with the Commandant, and slept there that night, with a guard on my room. And during the night as I lay in my bed, with that box beneath it, the visions came teeming. I knew that you were alive, and free, and that you would soon be with the King. So in the morning I asked for an escort to take the treasure south, and set off for Caerleon."
"And so missed me by two days," I said.
"Missed you? Where?"
"Did you think I’saw' the shepherd boy in the fire? No, I was there." I told her then, briefly, about my stay in Segontium, and my visit to the vanished shrine. "So when the boy told me about you and your two servants, like a fool I assumed it was Morgause. He didn't describe the woman, except that she — " I paused, and looked across at her with raised brows. "He said she was a queen, and the servants had royal badges. That was why I assumed —"
I stopped. Her hand, holding mine, had clenched suddenly. The laughter in her eyes died; she looked at me fixedly, with a strange mixture of appeal and dread. It did not need the Sight to guess the part of the story that she had not told me, or why Arthur and the rest had avoided speaking of her to me. She had not usurped my power, or had a hand in trying to destroy me: all she had done, once the old enchanter had gone, was to take a young man to her bed.
I seemed to have been expecting this moment for a very long time. I smiled, and asked her, gently: "Who is he, this king of yours?"
The red rushed into her cheeks. I saw the tears sting her eyes again. "I should have told you straight away. They said they hadn't told you. Merlin, I didn't dare."
"Don't look like that, my dear. What we had, we had, and one cannot drink the same draught of elixir twice. If I had still been half a magician, I should have known long ago. Who is he?"
"Pelleas."
I knew him, a young prince, handsome and kind, with a sort of gaiety about him that would help to offset the haunted somberness that sometimes hung around her. I spoke of him, commending him, and in a while she grew calmer, and began, with growing ease, to tell me about her marriage. I listened, and watched, and had time, now, to mark the changes in her; changes, I thought, due to the power that she had had so drastically to assume. My gentle Ninian had gone, with me into the mists. There was an edge to this Nimue that had not been there before; something quietly formidable, a kind of honed brightness, like a weapon's edge. And in her voice, at times, sounded a subtle echo of the deeper tones that the god uses when, with authority and power, he descends to mortal speech. These attributes had once been mine. But I, accepting them, had taken no lover. I found myself hoping, for Pelleas' sake, that he was a strong-minded young man.
"Yes," said Nimue, "he is."
I started out of my thoughts. She was watching me, her head on one side, her eyes alight once more with laughter.
I laughed with her, then put out my arms. She came into them, and lifted her mouth. I kissed her, once with passion, and once with love, and then I let her go.
10
Christmas at Caerleon. Pictures came crowding back to me, sun and snow and torchlight, full of youth and laughter, of bravery and fulfillment and time won back from oblivion. I have only to shut my eyes; no, not even that; I need only glance into the fire and they are here with me, all of them.
Nimue, bringing Pelleas, who treated me with deference, and her with love, but who was a king and a man. "She belongs to the King," he said, "and then to me. And I — well, it's the same, isn't it? I am his before ever I can be hers. Which of us, in the sight of God and King, is ever his own man?"
Bedwyr, coming on me one evening down beside the river, which slipped along, swollen and slate-grey, between its winter banks. A fleet of swans were proving the mud at the water's edge among the reeds. Snow had begun to fall, small and light, floating like swansdown through the still air. "They told me you had come this way," said Bedwyr. "I came to take you back. The King stays for you. Will you come now? It's cold, and will get colder." Then, as we walked back together: "There's news of Morgause," he said. "She has been sent north into Lothian, to the nunnery at Caer Eidyn. Tydwal will see to it that she's kept fast there. And there's talk of Queen Morgan's being sent to join her. They say that King Urbgen finds it hard to forgive her attempt to embroil him in treachery, and he's afraid that if he keeps her by him the taint will cling, to him and to his sons. Besides, Accolon was her lover. So the talk goes that Urbgen will put her away. He has sent to Arthur for permission. He'll get it, too. I think Arthur will feel more comfortable with both his loving sisters safely shut up, and a good long way away. It was Nimue's suggestion." He laughed, looking at me sideways. "Forgive me, Merlin, but now that the King's enemies are women, perhaps it is better that he has a woman to deal with them. And if you ask me, you'll be well out of it..."
Guinevere, sitting at her loom one bright morning, with sun on the snow outside, and a caged bird singing on the sill beside her. Her hands lay idle among the coloured threads, and the lovely head turned to watch, down beside the moat, the boys at play. "They might be my own sons," she said. But I saw that her eyes did not follow the bright heads of Lot's children, but only the dark boy Mordred, who stood a little way apart from the others, watching them, not as an outcast might watch his more favoured brothers, but as a prince might watch his subjects.
Mordred himself. I never spoke with him. Mostly the boys were on the children's side of the palace, or in the care of the master-at-arms or those set to train them. But one afternoon, on a dark day drawing to dusk, I came on him, standing beside the arch of a garden gateway, as if waiting for someone. I paused, wondering how to greet him, and how he might receive his mother's enemy, when I saw his head turn, and he started forward. Arthur and Guinevere came together through the dead roses of the garden, and out through the archway. It was too far away for me to hear what was said, but I saw the Queen smile and reach out a hand, and the King spoke, with a kind look. Mordred answered him; then, in obedience to a gesture from Arthur, went with them as they moved off, walking between them.
And, finally, Arthur, one evening in the King's private chamber, when Nimue brought the box to show him the treasure from Segontium.
The box lay on top of the big marble table that had been my father's. It was of metal, and heavy, its lid scored and dented with the weight of the stuff that had fallen on it when the shrine crumbled to ruin. The King laid hands to it. For a few moments it resisted him, then suddenly, ligh
t as a leaf, it lifted.
Inside were the things just as I remembered them. Rotten canvas wrappings, and, gleaming through them, the head of a lance. He drew it out, trying the edge with a thumb, a gesture as natural as breathing.
"For ornament, I think," he said, rubbing the jewels of the binding with his hand, and laying it aside. Then came a flattish dish, gold, with the rim crusted with gems. And finally, out of a tumble of greyed linen fallen to dust, the bowl.
It was the type of bowl they call sometimes a cauldron, or a grail of the Greek fashion, wide and deep. It was of gold, and from the way he handled it, very heavy. There was chasing of some sort round the outside of the bowl, and on the foot. The two handles were shaped like birds' wings. On a band round it, out of the way of the drinker's lips, were emeralds and sapphires. He turned and held it out to me with both hands.
"Take it and see. It is the most precious thing I have ever seen."
I shook my head, "It is not for me to touch."
"Nor for me," said Nimue.
He looked at it for a moment longer, then he put it back in the box with the lance-head and the dish, gently wrapping the things away in the linen, which was worn thin, like a veil. "And you won't even tell me where to keep such splendour, or what I am to do with it?"
Nimue looked across at me, and was silent. When I spoke, it was only a gentle echo of what I had said before, long ago. "It is not for you, either, Arthur. You do not need it. You yourself will be the grail for your people, and they will drink from you and be satisfied. You will never fail them, nor ever leave them quite. You do not need the grail. Leave it for those who come after."
"Then since it is neither mine nor yours," said Arthur, "Nimue must take it, and with her enchantments hide it so that no one can find it except that he is fitted."
"No one shall," she said, and shut the lid on the treasure.
After that, another year dawned cold, and drew slowly into spring. I went home at April's end, with the wind turning warm, and the young lambs crying on the hill, and catkins shivering yellow in the copses.
The cave was swept and warm again, a place for living, and there was food there, with fresh bread and a crock of milk and a jar of honey. Outside, by the spring, were offerings left by the folk I knew; and all my belongings, with my books and medicines, my instruments and the great standing harp, had been brought from Applegarth.
My return to life had been easier than I had anticipated. It seems that to the simple folk, as indeed to the people in distant parts of Britain, the tale of my return from death was accepted, not as plain truth, but as a legend. The Merlin they had known and feared was dead; a Merlin lived on in the "holy cave," working his minor magics, but only a ghost, as it were, of the enchanter they had known. It may be they thought that I, like so many pretenders of the past, was some small magician merely claiming Merlin's reputation and his place. In the court, and in the cities and the great places of the earth, people looked now to Nimue for power and help. To me the local folk came to have their sores or their aches healed; to me Ban the shepherd brought the sickly lambs, and the children from the village their pet puppies.
So the year wore on, but so lightly that is seemed only like the evening of a quiet day. The days were golden, tranquil and sweet. There was no call of power, no great high clean wind, no pain in the heart or picking of the flesh. The great doings of the kingdom seemed no longer to trouble me. I did not hunger or ask after news, for when it came, it was brought by the King himself. Just as the boy Arthur, racing up to see me in the shrine of the Wild Forest, had poured out all the doings of every day at my feet, so did the High King of Britain bring me all his acts, his problems and his troubles, and spread them out there on the cave floor in the firelight, and talk to me. What I did for him I do not know; but always, after he had gone, I found myself sitting, drained and silent, in the stillness of complete content.
The god, who was God, had indeed dismissed his servant, and was letting him go in peace.
One day I drew the small harp to me, and set myself to make a new verse for a song sung many years ago.
Rest here, enchanter, while the fire dies. In a breath, in an eyelid's fall, You will see them, the dreams; The sword and the young king, The white horse and the running water, The lit lamp and the boy smiling.
Dreams, dreams, enchanter! Gone With the harp's echo when the strings Fall mute; with the flame's shadow when the fire Dies. Be still, and listen. Far on the black air Blows the great wind, rises The running tide, flows the clear river. Listen, enchanter, hear Through the black air and the singing air The music…
I had to leave the song there because a string broke. He had promised to bring me new ones, next time he came.
He came again yesterday. Something had called him down to Caerleon, he said, so he had ridden up, just for an hour. When I asked him what the business was in Caerleon, he put the question aside, till I wondered — then dismissed it as absurd — if the journey had been made merely to see me. He brought gifts with him — he never came empty-handed — wine, a basket of cooked meats from his own kitchen, the promised harp-strings and a blanket of soft new wool, woven, he told me, by the Queen's own women. He carried them in himself, like a servant, and put them away for me. He seemed in spirits. He told me of some young man who had recently come to court, a noble fighter, and a cousin of March of Cornwall. Then he spoke of a meeting he was planning with the Saxon "king," Eosa's successor, Cerdic. We talked till the dark drew in, and his escort came jingling up the valley track for him.
Then he rose, lightly, and, as always now when he left me, stooped to kiss me. Usually he made me stay there, by the fire, while he went out into the night, but this time I got up and followed him to the cave entrance, and waited there to watch him go. The light was behind me, and my shadow stretched, thin and long, like the tall shadow of old, across the little lawn and almost to the grove of thorn trees where the escort waited below the cliff.
It was almost night, but over beyond Maridunum in the west, a lingering bar of light hinted at the dying sun. It threw a glint on the river skirting the palace wall where I was born, and touched a jewel spark on the distant sea. Near at hand the trees were bare with winter, and the ground crisp with the first frost. Arthur trod away from me across the grass, leaving ghost-prints in the frost. He reached the place where the track led down to the grove, and half turned. I saw him raise a hand.
"Wait for me." It was the same farewell always. "Wait for me. I shall come back."
And, as ever, I made the same reply:
"What else have I to do but wait for you? I shall be here, when you come again."
The sound of horses dwindled, faded, was gone. The winter's silence came back to the valley. The dark drew down.
A breath of the night slid, like a sigh, through the frost-hung trees. In its wake, faintly, like no sound but the ghost of a sound, came a faint sweet ringing from the air. I lifted my head, remembering, once more, the child who had listened nightly for the music of the spheres, but had never heard it. Now here it was, all around me, a sweet, disembodied music, as if the hill itself was a harp to the high air.
Dark fell. Behind me the fire dimmed, and my shadow vanished. Still I stood listening, with the calmness over me of a great contentment. The sky, heavy with night, drew nearer the earth. The glimmer on the far sea moved, light and following shadow, like the slow arc of a sword sliding back to its sheath, or a barge dwindling under sail across the distant water.
It was quite dark. Quite still. A chill brushed my skin, like the cold touch of crystal.
I left the night, with its remote and singing stars, and came in, to the glow of the fire, and the chair where he had been sitting, and the unstrung harp.
The Wicked Day by Mary Stewart
The Wicked Day
Copyright 2009 Mary Stewart
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording,
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This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, places, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Book IV
The Wicked Day
"Merlin is dead."
It was no more than a whisper, and the man who breathed it was barely at arm's length from the woman, his wife, but the walls of the cottage's single room seemed to catch and throw the sentence on like a whispering gallery. And on the woman the effect was as startling as if he had shouted. Her hand, which had been rocking the big cradle beside the turf fire, jerked sharply, so that the child curled under the blankets woke, and whimpered.
For once she ignored him. Her blue eyes, incongruously pale and bright in a face as brown and withered as dried seaweed, showed a shifting mixture of hope, doubt and fear. There was no need to ask her man where he had got the news. Earlier that day she had seen the sail of the trading ship standing in towards the bay where, above the cluster of dwellings that formed the only township on the island, the queen's new house stood, commanding the main harbour. The fishermen at their nets beyond the headland were wont to pull close in to an incomer's course and shout for news.