Crystal Cave (47 page)

A round moon stood low in the sky, pale still, and smudged with shadow, and thin at one edge like a worn coin. There was a scatter of small stars, with here and there the shepherd stars herding them, and across from the moon one great star alone, burning white. The shadows were long and soft on the seeding grasses.

A tall stone stood alone, leaning a little towards the east. A little further was a pit, and beyond that again a round boulder that looked black in the moonlight. There was something here. I paused. Nothing I could put a name to, but the old, black stone itself might have been some dark creature hunched there over the pit's edge. I felt the shiver run over my skin, and turned away. This, I would not disturb.

The moon climbed with me, and as I entered the circle she lifted her white disc over the cap-stones and shone clear into the center of the ring. My footsteps crunched, dry and brittle, over a patch of ground where fires had recently been lit. I saw the white shapes of bones, and a flat stone shaped like an altar.

The moonlight showed carving on one side, crude shapes twisted, of ropes or serpents. I stooped to run a finger over them. Nearby a mouse rustled and squeaked in the grass. No other sound. The thing was clean, dead, godless. I left it, moving on slowly through the moon-thrown shadows. There was another stone, domed like a beehive, or a navel-stone. And here an upright fallen, with the long grass almost hiding it. As I passed it, searching still, a ripple of breeze ran through the grasses, blurring the shadows and dimming the light like mist. I caught my foot on something, staggered, and came down to my knees at the end of a long flat stone which lay almost hidden in the grass. My hands moved over it. It was massive, oblong, uncarved, simply a great natural stone on to which now the moonlight poured. It hardly needed the cold at my hands, the hiss of the bleached grasses under the sudden run of wind, the scent of daisies, to tell me that this was the stone. All round me, like dancers drawing back from a center, the silent stones stood black. On one side the white moon, on the other the king-star, burning white. I got slowly to my feet and stood there at the foot of the long stone, as one might stand at the foot of a bed, waiting for the man in it to die.

It was warmth that woke me, warmth and the voices of men near me. I lifted my head. I was half-kneeling, half-lying with my arms and the upper part of my body laid along the stone. The morning sun was high, and pouring straight down into the center of the Dance. Mist smoked up from the damp grass, and its white wreaths hid the lower slopes of the hill. A group of men had come in through the stones of the Dance, and were standing there muttering among themselves, watching me. As I blinked, moving my stiff limbs, the group parted and Uther came through, followed by half a dozen of his officers, among whom was Tremorinus. Two soldiers pushed between them what was obviously an Irish prisoner; his hands were tied and there was a cut on one cheek where blood had dried, but he held himself well and I thought the men who guarded him looked more afraid than he.

Uther checked when he saw me, then came across as I got stiffly to my feet. The night must have shown still in my face, for in the group of officers behind him I saw the look I had grown used to, of men both wary and amazed, and even Uther spoke a fraction too loudly.

"So your magic is as strong as theirs."

The light was too strong for my eyes. He looked vivid and unreal, like an image seen in moving water. I tried to speak, cleared my throat, and tried again. "I'm still alive, if that's what you mean."

Tremorinus said gruffly: "There's not another man in the army would have spent the night here."

"Afraid of the black stone?"

I saw Uther's hand move in an involuntary gesture as if it sprang of itself to make the sign. He saw I had noticed, and looked angry. "Who told you about the black stone?"

Before I could answer, the Irishman said suddenly: "You saw it? Who are you?"

"My name is Merlin."

He nodded slowly. He still showed no sign of fear or awe. He read my thought, and smiled, as if to say,

"You and I, we can look after ourselves."

"Why do they bring you here like this?" I asked him.

"To tell them which is the king-stone."

Uther said: "He has told us. It's the carved altar over there."

"Let him go," I said. "You have no need of him. And leave the altar alone. This is the stone."

There was a pause. Then the Irishman laughed. "Faith, if you bring the King's enchanter himself, what hope has a poor poet? It was written in the stars that you would take it, and indeed, it is nothing but justice. It's not the heart of Ireland that that stone has been but the curse of it, and maybe Ireland will be all the better to see it go."

"How so?" I asked him. Then, to Uther: "Tell them to loose him."

Uther nodded, and the men loosed the prisoner's hands. He rubbed his wrists, smiling at me. You would have thought we two were alone in the Dance. "They say that in times past that stone came out ofBritain , out of the mountains of the west, in sight of the Irish Sea, and that the great King of allIreland , Fionn Mac Cumhaill was his name, carried it in his arms one night and walked through the sea with it toIreland , and set it here."

"And now," I said, "we carry it a little more painfully back toBritain ."

He laughed. "I would have thought the great magician that's yourself would have picked it up in one hand."

"I'm no Fionn," I said. "And now if you are wise, poet, you will go back to your home and your harp, and make no more wars, but make a song about the stone, and how Merlin the enchanter took the stone from the Dance of Killare and carried it lightly to the Dance of the Hanging Stones at Amesbury."

He saluted me, laughing still, and went. And indeed he did walk safely down through the camp and away, for in later years I heard the song he made.

But now his going was hardly noticed. There was a pause while Uther frowned down at the great stone, seeming to weigh it in his mind. "You told the King that you could do this thing. Is that true?"

"I said to the King that what men had brought here, men could take away."

He looked at me frowningly, uncertainly, still a little angry. "He told me what you said. I agree. It doesn't need magic and fine words, only a team of competent men with the right engines. Tremorinus!"

"Sir?"

"If we take this one, the king-stone, there will be no need to trouble overmuch with the rest. Throw them down where you can and leave them."

"Yes, sir. If I could have Merlin —"

"Merlin's team will be working on the fortifications. Merlin, get started, will you? I give you twenty-four hours."

This was something the men were practiced at; they threw down the walls and filled in the ditches with them. The palisades and houses, quite simply, we put to the flame. The men worked well, and were in good heart. Uther was always generous to his troops, and there had been goods in plenty to be looted, arm-rings of copper and bronze and gold, brooches, and weapons well made and inlaid with copper and enamel, in a way the Irish have. The work was finished by dusk, and we withdrew from the hill to the temporary camp which had been thrown up on the plain at the foot of the slope.

It was after supper when Tremorinus came to me. I could see the torches and the fires still lit at the top of the hill, throwing what was left of the Dance into relief. His face was grimy, and he looked tired.

"All day," he said bitterly, "and we've raised it a couple of feet, and half an hour ago the props cracked, and it's gone back again into its bed. Why the hell did you have to suggest that stone? The Irishman's altar would have been easier."

"The Irishman's altar would not have done."

"Well, by the gods, it looks as if you aren't going to get this one either! Look, Merlin, I don't care what he says, I'm in charge of this job, and I'm asking you to come and take a look. Will you?"

The rest is what the legends have been made of. It would be tedious now to relate how we did it, but it was easy enough; I had had all day to think about it, having seen the stone and the hillside, and I had had the engines in my mind sinceBrittany . Wherever we could we took it by water — downriver from Killare to the sea, and thence toWales and still as far as possible by river, using the two great Avons, with little more than a score of dry miles to cross between them. I was not Fionn of the Strong Arm, but I was Merlin, and the great stone travelled home as smoothly as a barge on an untroubled water, with me beside it all the way. I suppose I must have slept on that journey, but I cannot remember doing so. I went wakeful, as one is at a death-bed, and on that one voyage of all those in my life, I never felt the movement of the sea, but sat (they tell me) calm and silent, as if in my chair at home. Uther came once to speak to me — angry, I suppose, that I had done so easily what his own engineers could not do — but he went away after a moment, and did not approach me again. I remember nothing about it. I suppose I was not there. I was watching still between day and night in the great bedchamber atWinchester .

The news met us at Caerleon. Pascentius had attacked out of the north with his force of German and Saxon allies, and the King had marched toCarlisle and defeated him there. But afterwards, safely back atWinchester , he had fallen ill. About this, rumours were rife. Some said that one of Pascentius' men had come in disguise toWinchester where Ambrosius lay abed of a chill, and had given him poison to drink.

Some said the man had come from Eosa. But the truth was the same; the King was very sick atWinchester .

The king-star rose again that night, looking, men said, like a fiery dragon, and trailing a cloud of lesser stars like smoke. But it did not need the omen to tell me what I had known since that night on the crest of Killare, when I had vowed to carry the great stone fromIreland , and lay it upon his grave.

So it was that we brought the stone again to Amesbury, and I raised the fallen circles of the Giants'

Dance into their places for his monument. And at the next Easter-time, in the city ofLondon , Uther Pendragon was crowned King.

Men said afterwards that the great dragon star which blazed at Ambrosius' death, and from which Uther took the royal name of Pendragon, was a baleful herald for the new reign. And indeed, at the start, everything seemed to be against Uther. It was as if the falling of Ambrosius' star was the signal for his old enemies to rise again and crowd in from the darkened edges of the land to destroy his successor. Octa, Hengist's son, and Eosa his kinsman, counting themselves freed by Ambrosius' death from their promise to stay north of his borders, called together what force they could still muster for attack, and as soon as the call went out, every disaffected element rose to it. Warriors greedy for land and plunder crowded over afresh fromGermany , the remnants of Pascentius' Saxons joined with Gilloman's fleeing Irish, and with whatever British thought themselves passed over by the new King. Within a few weeks of Ambrosius' death Octa, with a large army, was scouring the north like a wolf, and before the new King could come up with him had destroyed cities and fortresses clear down from the Wall of Hadrian to York. AtYork , Ambrosius' strong city, he found the walls in good repair, the gates shut, and men ready to defend themselves. He dragged up what siege engines he had, and settled down to wait.

He must have known that Uther would catch up with him there, but his numbers were such that he showed no fear of the British. Afterwards they reckoned he had thirty thousand men. Be that as it may, when Uther came up to raise the siege with every man he could muster, the Saxons outnumbered the British by more than two to one. It was a bloody engagement, and a disastrous one. I think myself that Ambrosius' death had shaken the kingdom; for all Uther's brilliant reputation as a soldier, he was untried as supreme commander, and it was already known that he had not his brother's calmness and judgement in the face of odds. What he lacked in wisdom, he made up in bravery, but even that would not defeat the odds that came against him that day atYork . The British broke and ran, and were saved only by the coming of dusk, which at that time of year fell early. Uther — with Gorlois of Cornwall, his second in command — managed to rally his remaining force near the top of the small hill called Damen. This was steep, and offered cover of a kind, cliffs and caves and thick hazelwoods, but this could only be a temporary refuge from the Saxon host which triumphantly circled the base of the hill, waiting for morning.

It was a desperate position for the British, and called for desperate measures. Uther, grimly encamped in a cave, called his weary captains together while the men snatched what rest they could, and with them thrashed out a plan for outwitting the huge host waiting for them at the foot of the hill. At first nobody had much idea beyond the need to escape, but someone — I heard later that it was Gorlois — pointed out that to retreat further was merely to postpone defeat and the destruction of the new kingdom: if escape was possible, then so was attack, and this seemed feasible if the British did not wait until daylight, but used what element of surprise there was in attacking downhill out of the dark and long before the enemy expected it. Simple tactics, indeed, that the Saxons might have expected from men so desperately trapped, but Saxons are stupid fighters, and as I have said before, lacking in discipline. It was almost certain that they would expect no move till dawn, and that they slept soundly where they had lain down that night, confident of victory, and with any luck three parts drunken on the stores they had taken.

To do the Saxons justice, Octa had posted scouts, and these were wide enough awake. But Gorlois'

plan worked, helped by a little mist which crept before dawn up from the low ground and surrounded the base of the hill like a veil. Through this, twice as large as life, and in numbers altogether deceiving, the British came in a silent, stabbing rush at the first moment when there was light enough to see one's way across the rocks. Those Saxon outposts who were not cut down in silence, gave the alarm, but too late.