Crystal Cave (2 page)

The mildness of his tone encouraged me. "They call me Merlinus," I ventured. "It's a Roman name for a falcon, the corwalch."

My grandfather barked, "Falcon!" and made a sound of contempt, shooting his arm-rings till they jingled.

"A small one," I said defensively, then fell silent under my uncle's thoughtful look.

He stroked his chin, then looked at my mother with his brows up. "Strange choices, all of them, for a Christian household. A Roman demon, perhaps, Niniane?"

She put up her chin. "Perhaps. How do I know? It was dark."

I thought a flash of amusement came and went in his face, but the King swept a hand down in a violent gesture. "You see? That's all you'll get — lies, tales of sorcery, insolence! Get back to your work, girl, and keep your bastard out of my sight! Now that your brother's home, we'll find a man who'll take the pair of you from under my feet and his! Camlach, I hope you see the sense of getting yourself a wife now, and a son or two, since this is all I'm left with!"

"Oh, I'm for it," said Camlach easily. Their attention had lifted from me. They were going, and neither had touched me. I unclenched my hands and moved back softly, half a pace; another. "But you've got yourself a new queen meantime, sir, and they tell me she's pregnant?"

"No matter of that, you should be wed, and soon. I'm an old man, and these are troubled times. As for this boy" — I froze again — "forget him. Whoever sired him, if he hasn't come forward in six years, he'll not do so now. And if it had been Vortigern himself, the High King, he'd have made nothing of him. A sullen brat who skulks alone in corners. Doesn't even play with the other boys — afraid to, likely. Afraid of his own shadow."

He turned away. Camlach's eyes met my mother's, over my head. Some message passed. Then he looked down at me again, and smiled.

I still remember how the room seemed to light up, though the sun had gone now, and its warmth with it.

Soon they would be bringing the rushlights.

"Well," said Camlach, "it's but a fledgling falcon after all. Don't be too hard on him, sir; you've frightened better men than he is, in your time."

"Yourself, you mean? Hah!"

"I assure you."

The King, in the doorway, glared briefly at me under his jutting brows, then with a puff of impatient breath settled his mantle over his arm. "Well, well, let be. God's sweet death, but I'm hungry. It's well past supper-time — but I suppose you'll want to go and soak yourself first, in your damned Roman fashion? I warn you, we've never had the furnaces on since you left..."

He turned with a swirl of the blue cloak and went out, still talking. Behind me I heard my mother's breath go out, and the rustle of her gown as she sat. My uncle put out a hand to me.

"Come, Merlinus, and talk to me while I bathe in your cold Welsh water. We princes must get to know one another."

I stood rooted. I was conscious of my mother's silence, and how still she sat.

"Come," said my uncle, gently, and smiled at me again.

I ran to him.

I went through the hypocaust that night.

This was my own private way, my secret hiding-place where I could escape from the bigger boys and play my own solitary games. My grandfather had been right when he said I "skulked alone in corners,"

but this was not from fear, though the sons of his nobles followed his lead — as children do — and made me their butt in their rough wargames whenever they could catch me.

At the beginning, it is true, the tunnels of the disused heating-system were a refuge, a secret place where I could hide and be alone; but I soon found a curiously strong pleasure in exploring the great system of dark, earth-smelling chambers under the palace floors.

My grandfather's palace had been, in times past, a vast country-house belonging to some Roman notable who had owned and farmed the land for several miles each way along the river valley. The main part of the house still stood, though badly scarred by time and war, and by at least one disastrous fire, which had destroyed one end of the main block and part of a wing. The old slaves' quarters were still intact round the courtyard where the cooks and houseservants worked, and the bath-house remained, though patched and plastered, and with the roof rough-thatched over the worst bits. I never remember the furnace working; water was heated over the courtyard fires.

The entrance to my secret labyrinth was the stoke-hole in the boiler-house; this was a trap in the wall under the cracked and rusting boiler, barely the height of a grown man's knee, and hidden by docks and nettles and a huge curved metal shard fallen from the boiler itself. Once inside, you could get under the rooms of the bath-house, but this had been out of use for so long that the space under the floors was too cluttered and foul even for me. I went the other way, under the main block of the palace. Here the old hot-air system had been so well built and maintained that even now the knee-high space under the floors was dry and airy, and plaster still clung to the brick pillars that held up the floors. In places, of course, a pillar had collapsed, or debris had fallen, but the traps which led from one room to another were solidly arched and safe, and I was free to crawl, unseen and unheard, even as far as the King's own chamber.

If they had ever discovered me I think I might have received a worse punishment than whipping: I must have listened, innocently enough, to dozens of secret councils, and certainly to some very private goings-on, but that side of it never occurred to me. And it was natural enough that nobody should give a thought to the dangers of eavesdropping; in the old days the flues had been cleaned by boy-slaves, and nobody much beyond the age of ten could ever have got through some of the workings; there were one or two places where even I was hard put to it to wriggle through. I was only once in danger of discovery: one afternoon when Moravik supposed I was playing with the boys and they in turn thought I was safe under her skirts, the red-haired Dinias, my chief tormentor, gave a younger boy such a shove from the roof-tree where they were playing that the latter fell and broke a leg, and set up such a howling that Moravik, running to the scene, discovered me absent and set the palace by the ears. I heard the noise, and emerged breathless and dirty from under the boiler, just as she started a hunt through the bath-house wing. I lied my way out of it, and got off with boxed ears and a scolding, but it was a warning; I never went into the hypocaust again by daylight, only at night before Moravik came to bed, or once or twice when I was wakeful and she was already abed and snoring. Most of the palace would be abed, too, but when there was a feast, or when my grandfather had guests, I would listen to the noise of voices and the singing; and sometimes I would creep as far as my mother's chamber, to hear the sound of her voice as she talked with her women. But one night I heard her praying, aloud, as one does sometimes when alone, and in the prayer was my name, "Emrys," and then her tears. After that I went another way, past the Queen's rooms, where almost every evening Olwen, the young Queen, sang to her harp among her ladies, until the King's tread came heavily down the corridor, and the music stopped.

But it was for none of these things that I went. What mattered to me — I see it clearly now — was to be alone in the secret dark, where a man is his own master, except for death.

Mostly I went to what I called my "cave." This had been part of some main chimney-shaft, and the top of it had crumbled, so that one could see the sky. It had held magic for me since the day I had looked up at midday and had seen, faint but unmistakable, a star. Now when I went in at night I would curl up on my bed of stolen stable-straw and watch the stars wheeling slowly across, and make my own bet with heaven, which was, if the moon should show over the shaft while I was there, the next day would bring me my heart's desire.

The moon was there that night. Full and shining, she stood clear in the center of the shaft, her light pouring down on my upturned face so white and pure that it seemed I drank it in like water. I did not move till she had gone, and the little star that dogs her.

On the way back I passed under a room that had been empty before, but which now held voices.

Camlach's room, of course. He and another man whose name I did not know, but who, from his accent, was one of those who had ridden in that day; I had found that they came fromCornwall . He had one of those thick, rumbling voices of which I caught only a word here and there as I crawled quickly through, worming my way between the pillars, concerned only not to be heard.

I was right at the end wall, and feeling along it for the arched gap to the next chamber, when my shoulder struck a broken section of flue pipe, and a loose piece of fireclay fell with a rattle.

The Cornishman's voice stopped abruptly. "What's that?"

Then my uncle's voice, so clear down the broken flue that you would have thought he spoke in my ear.

"Nothing. A rat. It came from under the floor. I tell you, the place is falling to pieces." There was the sound of a chair scraping back, and footsteps going across the room, away from me. His voice receded.

I thought I heard the chink and gurgle of a drink being poured. I began slowly, slowly, to edge along the wall towards the trap.

He was coming back.

"...And even if she does refuse him, it will hardly matter. She won't stay here — at any rate, no longer than my father can fight the bishop off and keep her by him. I tell you, with her mind set on what she calls a higher court, I've nothing to fear, even if he came himself."

"As long as you believe her."

"Oh, I believe her. I've been asking here and there, and everyone says the same." He laughed. "Who knows, we may be thankful yet to have a voice at that heavenly court of hers before this game's played out. And she's devout enough to save the lot of us, they tell me, if she'll only put her mind to it."

"You may need it yet," said the Cornishman.

"I may."

"And the boy?"

"The boy?" repeated my uncle. He paused, then the soft footsteps resumed their pacing. I strained to hear. I had to hear. Why it should have mattered I hardly knew. It did not worry me overmuch to be called bastard, or coward, or devil's whelp. But tonight there had been that full moon.

He had turned. His voice carried clearly, careless, indulgent even.

"Ah, yes, the boy. A clever child, at a guess, with more there than they give him credit for...and nice enough, if one speaks him fair. I shall keep him close to me. Remember that, Alun; I like the boy..."

He called a servant in then to replenish the wine-jug, and under cover of this, I crept away.

That was the beginning of it. For days I followed him everywhere, and he tolerated, even encouraged me, and it never occurred to me that a man of twenty-one would not always welcome a puppy of six for ever trotting at his heels. Moravik scolded, when she could get hold of me, but my mother seemed pleased and relieved, and bade her let me be.

It had been a hot summer, and there was peace that year, so for the first few days of his homecoming Camlach idled, resting or riding out with his father or the men through the harvest fields and the valleys where the apples already dropped ripe from the trees.

South Wales is a lovely country, with green hills and deep valleys, flat water-meadows yellow with flowers where cattle grow sleek, oak forests full of deer, and the high blue uplands where the cuckoo shouts in springtime, but where, come winter, the wolves run, and I have seen lightning even with the snow.

Maridunum lies where the estuary opens to the sea, on the river which is marked Tobius on the military maps, but which the Welsh call Tywy. Here the valley is flat and wide, and the Tywy runs in a deep and placid meander through bog and water-meadow between the gentle hills. The town stands on the rising ground of the north bank, where the land is drained and dry; it is served inland by the military road from Caerleon, and from the south by a good stone bridge with three spans, from which a paved street leads straight uphill past the King's house, and into the square. Apart from my grandfather's house, and the barrack buildings of the Roman-built fortress where he quartered his soldiers and which he kept in good repair, the best building in Maridunum was the Christian nunnery near the palace on the river's bank. A few holy women lived there, calling themselves the Community of St. Peter, though most of the townspeople called the place Tyr Myrddin, from the old shrine of the god which had stood time out of mind under an oak not far from St. Peter's gate. Even when I was a child, I heard the town itself called Caer-Myrddin ["dd" is pronounced "th" as in thus. Myrddin is, roughly, Murthin. Caer-Myrddin is the modern Carmarthen.]: it is not true (as they say now) that men call it after me. The fact is that I, like the town and the hill behind it with the sacred spring, was called after the god who is worshipped in high places. Since the events which I shall tell of, the name of the town has been publicly changed in my honour, but the god was there first, and if I have his hill now, it is because he shares it with me.

My grandfather's house was set among its orchards right beside the river. If you climbed — by way of a leaning apple-tree — to the top of the wall, you could sit high over the towpath and watch the river-bridge for people riding in from the south, or for the ships that came up with the tide.

Though I was not allowed to climb the trees for apples — being forced to content myself with the windfalls — Moravik never stopped me from climbing to the top of the wall. To have me posted there as sentry meant that she got wind of new arrivals sooner than anyone else in the palace. There was a little raised terrace at the orchard's end, with a curved brick wall at the back and a stone seat protected from the wind, and she would sit there by the hour, dozing over her spindle, while the sun beat into the corner so hotly that lizards would steal out to lie on the stones, and I called out my reports from the wall.

One hot afternoon, about eight days after Camlach's coming to Maridunum, I was at my post as usual.

There was no coming and going on the bridge or the road up the valley, only a local grain-barge loading at the wharf, watched by a scatter of idlers, and an old man in a hooded cloak who loitered, picking up windfalls along under the wall.