We took them nicely by surprise, and fought a bloody and very unpleasant little action. One roadside skirmish is very like another. This one differed only from the usual in being better generally and more eccentrically equipped, but we had the advantages both of numbers and of surprise, and did what we had set out to do, robbed Vortigern of twenty men for the loss of only three of our own and a few cuts. I came out of it more creditably than I would have believed possible, killing the man I had picked out before the fighting swept over and past me and another knocked me off my horse and would possibly have killed me if Cadal had not parried the stroke and killed the fellow himself. It was quickly over. We buried our own dead and left the rest for the kites, after we had stripped them of their arms. We had taken care not to harm the horses, and when next morning Gorlois said farewell and led his new troops south-east, every man had a horse, and a good weapon of some kind. Cadal and I turned south for Maridunum, and reached it by early evening.
The first person I saw as we rode down the street towards St. Peter's was my cousin Dinias. We came on him suddenly at a corner, and he jumped a foot and went white. I suppose rumors had been running like wildfire through the town ever since the escort had brought my mother back without me.
"Merlin. I thought — I thought —" "Well met, cousin, I was coming to look for you." He said quickly: "Look, I swear I had no idea who those men were —" "I know that. What happened wasn't your fault. That isn't why I was looking for you." " — and I was drunk, you know that. But even if I had guessed who they were, how was I to know they'd take you up on a thing like that? I'd heard rumors of what they were looking for, I admit, but I swear it never entered my head —"
"I said it wasn't your fault. And I'm back here again safely, aren't I? All's well that ends well. Leave it, Dinias. That wasn't what I wanted to talk to you about."
But he persisted. "I took the money, didn't I? You saw."
"And if you did? You didn't give information for money, you took it afterwards. It's different, to my mind. If Vortigern likes to throw his money away, then by all means rob him of it. Forget it, I tell you. Have you news of my mother?"
"I've just come from there. She's ill, did you know?"
"I got news on my way south," I said. "What's the matter with her? How bad?"
"A chill, they told me, but they say she's on the mend. I thought myself she still looked poor enough, but she was fatigued with the journey, and anxious about you. What did Vortigern want you for, in the end?"
"To kill me," I said briefly.
He stared, then began to stutter. "I — in God's name, Merlin, I know you and I have never been...that is, there've been times —
" He stopped, and I heard him swallow. "I don't sell my kinsmen, you know."
"I told you I believed you. Forget it. It was nothing to do with you, some nonsense of his soothsayers'. But as I said, here I am safe and sound."
"Your mother said nothing about it."
"She didn't know. Do you think she'd have let him send her tamely home if she had known what he meant to do? The men who brought her home, they knew, you can be sure of that. So they didn't let it out to her?"
"It seems not," said Dinias. "But —" "I'm glad of that. I'm hoping to get to see her soon, this time in daylight." "Then you're in no danger now from Vortigern?" "I would be, I suppose," I said, "if the place was still full of his men, but I was told at the gate that they've cleared out to join him?" "That's so. Some rode north, and some east to Caer-Guent. You've heard the news, then?" "What news?" Though there was nobody else in the street, he looked over his shoulder in the old, furtive way. I slid down out of the saddle, and threw the reins to Cadal. "What news?" I repeated. "Ambrosius," he said softly. "He's landed in the southwest, they say, and marching north. A ship brought the story yesterday, and Vortigern's men started moving out straight away. But — if you've just ridden in from the north, surely you'd meet them?" "Two companies, this morning. But we saw them in good time, and got off the road. We met my mother's escort the day before, at the crossways." " 'Met'?" He looked startled. "But if they knew Vortigern wanted you dead —" "They'd have known I had no business riding south, and cut me down? Exactly. So we cut them down instead. Oh, don't look at me like that — it wasn't magician's work, only soldiers'. We fell in with some Welsh who were on their way to join Ambrosius, and we ambushed Vortigern's troop and cut them up." "The Welsh knew already? The prophecy, was it?" I saw the whites of his eyes in the dusk. "I'd heard about that...the place is buzzing with it. The troops told us. They said you'd showed them some kind of great lake under the crag — it was that place we stopped at years ago, and I'll swear there was no sign of any lake then — but there was this lake of water with dragons lying in it under the foundations of the tower. Is it true?"
"That I showed them a lake, yes." "But the dragons. What were they?" I said, slowly: "Dragons. Something conjured out of nothing for them to see, since without seeing they would not listen, let alone believe." There was a little silence. Then he said, with fear in his voice: "And was it magic that showed you Ambrosius was coming?"
"Yes and no." I smiled. "I knew he was coming, but not when. It was the magic that told me he was actually on his way."
He was staring again. "You knew he was coming? Then you had tidings in Cornwall? You might have told me." "Why?"
"I'd have joined him." I looked at him for a moment, measuring. "You can still join him. You and your other friends who fought with Vortimer. What about Vortimer's brother, Pascentius? Do you know where he is? Is he still hot against Vortigern?"
"Yes, but they say he's gone to make his peace with Hengist. He'll never join Ambrosius, he wants Britain for himself."
"And you?" I asked. "What do you want?" He answered quite simply, for once without any bluster or bravado. "Only a place I can call my own. This, if I can. It's mine now, after all. He killed the children, did you know?"
"I didn't, but you hardly surprise me. It's a habit of his, after all." I paused. "Look, Dinias, there's a lot to say, and I've a lot to tell you. But first I've a favor to ask of you."
"What's that?" "Hospitality. There's nowhere else I know of that I care to go until I've got my own place ready, and I've a fancy to stay in my grandfather's house again."
He said, without pretense or evasion: "It's not what it was." I laughed. "Is anything? As long as there's a roof against this hellish rain, and a fire to dry our clothes, and something to eat, no matter what. What do you say we send Cadal for provisions, and eat at home? I'll tell you the whole thing over a pie and a flask of wine. But I warn you, if you so much as show me a pair of dice I'll yell for Vortigern's men myself." He grinned, relaxing suddenly. "No fear of that. Come along, then. There's a couple of rooms still habitable, and we'll find you a bed."
I was given Camlach's room. It was draughty, and full of dust, and Cadal refused to let me use the bedding until it had lain in front of a roaring fire for a full hour. Dinias had no servant, except one slut of a girl who looked after him apparently in return for the privilege of sharing his bed. Cadal set her to carrying fuel and heating water while he took a message to the nunnery for my mother, and then went to the tavern for wine and provisions.
We ate before the fire, with Cadal serving us. We talked late, but here it is sufficient to record that I told Dinias my story — or such parts of it as he would understand. There might have been some personal satisfaction in telling him the facts of my parentage, but until I was sure of him, and the countryside was known to be clear of Vortigern's men, I thought it better to say nothing. So I told him merely how I had gone to Brittany, and that I had become Ambrosius' man. Dinias had heard enough already of my "prophecy" in the cavern at King's Fort to believe implicitly in Ambrosius' coming victory, so our talk ended with his promise to ride westwards in the morning with the news, and summon what support he could for Ambrosius from the fringes of Wales. He would, I knew, have been afraid in any case to do other than keep that promise; whatever the soldiers had said
about the occasion there in King's Fort, it was enough to strike my simple cousin Dinias with the most profound awe of my powers. But even without that, I knew I could trust him in this. We talked till almost dawn, then I gave him money and said good night.
(He was gone before I woke next morning. He kept his word, and joined Ambrosius later, at York, with a few hundred men. He was honorably received and acquitted himself well, but soon afterwards, in some minor engagement, received wounds of which he later died. As for me, I never saw him again.)
Cadal shut the door behind him. "At least there's a good lock and a stout bar."
"Are you afraid of Dinias?" I asked.
"I'm afraid of everybody in this cursed town. I'll not be happy till we're quit of it and back with Ambrosius."
"I doubt if you need worry now. Vortigern's men have gone. You heard what Dinias said."
"Aye, and I heard what you said, too." He had stooped to pick up the blankets from beside the fire, and paused with his arms full of bedding, looking at me. "What did you mean, you're getting your own place here ready? You're never thinking of setting up house here?"
"Not a house, no."
"That cave?"
I smiled at his expression. "When Ambrosius has done with me, and the country is quiet, that is where I shall go. I told you, didn't I, that if you stayed with me you'd live far from home?"
"We were talking about dying, as far as I remember. You mean, live there?"
"I don't know," I said. "Perhaps not. But I think I shall need a place where I can be alone, away, aside from things happening. Thinking and planning is one side of life; doing is another. A man cannot be doing all the time."
"Tell that to Uther."
"I am not Uther."
"Well, it takes both sorts, as they say." He dumped the blankets on the bed. "What are you smiling at?"
"Was I? Never mind. Let's get to bed, we'll have to be early at the nunnery. Did you have to bribe the old woman again?"
"Old woman nothing." He straightened. "It was a girl this time. A looker, too, what I could see of her with that sack of a gown and a hood over her head. Whoever puts a girl like that in a nunnery deserves — " He began to explain what they deserved, but I cut him short.
"Did you find out how my mother was?"
"They said she was better. The fever's gone, but she'll not rest quiet till she's seen you. You'll tell her everything now?"
"Yes."
"And then?"
"We join Ambrosius."
"Ah," he said, and when he had dragged his mattress to lie across the door, he blew out the lamp and lay down without another word to sleep.
My bed was comfortable enough, and the room, derelict or no, was luxury itself after the journey. But I slept badly. In imagination I was out on the road with Ambrosius, heading for Doward. From what I had heard of Doward, reducing it would not be an easy job. I began to wonder if after all I had done my father a disservice in driving the High King out of his Snowdon fastness. I should have left him there, I thought, with his rotten tower, and Ambrosius would have driven him back to the sea.
It was with an effort almost of surprise that I recalled my own prophecy. What I had done at Dinas Brenin, I had not done of myself. It was not I who had decided to send Vortigern fleeing out of Wales. Out of the dark, out of the wild and whirling stars, I had been told. The Red Dragon would triumph, the White would fall. The voice that had said so, that said so now in the musty dark of Camlach's room, was not my own; it was the god's. One did not lie awake looking for reasons; one obeyed, and then slept.
3
It was the girl Cadal had spoken of who opened the nunnery gate to us. She must have been waiting to receive us, for almost as soon as Cadal's hand was lifted to the bell-pull the gate opened and she motioned us to come in. I got a swift impression of wide eyes under the brown hood, and a supple young body shrouded in the rough gown, as she latched the heavy gate and, drawing her hood closer over her face and hair, led us quickly across the courtyard. Her feet, bare in canvas sandals, looked cold, and were splashed with mud from the puddled yard, but they were slim and well-shaped, and her hands were pretty. She did not speak, but led us across the yard and through a narrow passage between two buildings, into a larger square beyond. Here against the walls stood fruit trees, and a few flowers grew, but these were mostly weeds and wild-flowers, and the doors of the cells that opened off the courtyard were unpainted and, where they stood open, gave on bare little rooms where simplicity had become ugliness and, too often, squalor.
Not so in my mother's cell. She was housed with adequate — if not royal — comfort. They had let her bring her own furniture, the room was limewashed and spotlessly clean, and with the change in the April weather the sun had come out and was shining straight in through the narrow window and across her bed. I remembered the furniture; it was her own bed from home, and the curtain at the window was one she had woven herself, the red cloth with the green pattern that she had been making the day my uncle Camlach came home. I remembered, too, the wolfskin on the floor; my grandfather had killed the beast with his bare hands and the haft of his broken dagger; its beady eyes and snarl had terrified me when I was small. The cross that hung on the bare wall at the foot of her bed was of dull silver, with a lovely pattern of locked but flowing lines, and studs of amethyst that caught the light.
The girl showed me the door in silence, and withdrew. Cadal sat down on a bench outside to wait.
My mother lay propped on pillows, in the shaft of sunshine. She looked pale and tired, and spoke not much above a whisper, but was, she told me, on the mend. When I questioned her about the illness, and laid a hand on her temples, she put me aside, smiling and saying she was well enough looked after. I did not insist: half of healing is in the patient's trust, and no woman ever thinks her own son is much more than a child. Besides, I could see that the fever had gone, and now that she was no longer anxious over me, she would sleep.
So I merely pulled up the room's single chair, sat down and began to tell her all she wanted to know, without waiting for her questions: about my escape from Maridunum and the flight like the arrow from the god's bow straight from Britain to Ambrosius' feet, and all that had happened since. She lay back against her pillows and watched me with astonishment and some slowly growing emotion which I identified as the emotion a cage-bird might feel if you set it to hatch a merlin's egg.
When I had finished she was tired, and grey stood under her eyes so sharply drawn that I got up to go. But she looked contented, and said, as if it was the sum and finish of the story, as I suppose it was, for her:
"He has acknowledged you."
"Yes. They call me Merlin Ambrosius."
She was silent a little, smiling to herself. I crossed to the window and leaned my elbows on the sill, looking out. The sun was warm. Cadal nodded on his bench, half asleep. From across the yard a movement caught my eye; in a shadowed doorway the girl was standing, watching my mother's door as if waiting for me to come out. She had put back her hood, and even in the shadows I could see the gold of her hair and a young face lovely as a flower. Then she saw me watching her. For perhaps two seconds our eyes met and held. I knew then why the ancients armed the cruelest god with arrows; I felt the shock of it right through my body. Then she had gone, shrinking close-hooded back into the shadow, and behind me my mother was saying:
"And now? What now?"
I turned my back on the sunlight. "I go to join him. But not until you are better. When I go I want to take news of you."
She looked anxious. "You must not stay here. Maridunum is not safe for you."
"I think it is. Since the news came in of the landing, the place has emptied itself of Vortigern's men. We had to take to the hill-tracks on our way south; the road was alive with men riding to join him."
"That's true, but —"
"And I shan't go about, I promise you. I was lucky last night, I ran into Dinias as soon as I set foot in town. He gave me a room at home."
"Dinias?"
I laughed at her astonishment. "Dinias feels he owes me something, never mind what, but we agreed well enough last night." I told her what mission I had sent him on, and she nodded.
"He" — and I knew she did not mean Dinias — "will need every man who can hold a sword." She knitted her brows. "They say Hengist has three hundred thousand men. Will he" — and again she was not referring to Hengist — "be able to withstand Vortigern, and after him Hengist and the Saxons?"
I suppose I was still thinking of last night's vigil. I said, without pausing to consider how it would sound: "I have said so, so it must be true."
A movement from the bed brought my eyes down to her. She was crossing herself, her eyes at once startled and severe, and through it all afraid. "Merlin — " but on the word a cough shook her, so that when she managed to speak again it was only a harsh whisper: "Beware of arrogance. Even if God has given you power —"
I laid a hand on her wrist, stopping her. "You mistake me, madam. I put it badly. I only meant that the god had said it through me, and because he had said it, it must be true. Ambrosius must win, it is in the stars."
She nodded, and I saw the relief wash through her and slacken her, body and mind, like an exhausted child.
I said gently: "Don't be afraid for me, Mother. Whatever god uses me, I am content to be his voice and instrument. I go where he sends me. And when he has finished with me, he will take me back."
"There is only one God," she whispered.
I smiled at her. "That is what I am beginning to think. Now, go to sleep. I will come back in the morning."
I went to see my mother again next morning. This time I went alone. I had sent Cadal to find provisions in the market, Dinias' slut having vanished when he did, leaving us to fend for ourselves in the deserted palace. I was rewarded, for the girl was again on duty at the gate, and again led me to my mother's room. But when I said something to her she merely pulled the hood closer without speaking, so that again I saw no more of her than the slender hands and feet. The cobbles were dry today, and the puddles gone. She had washed her feet, and in the grip of the coarse sandals they looked as fragile as blue-veined flowers in a peasant's basket. Or so I told myself, my mind working like a singer's, where it had no right to be working at all. The arrow still thrummed where it had struck me, and my whole body seemed to thrill and tighten at the sight of her.