Hollow Hills (14 page)

I travelled alone, and quietly. Though the hated beard had gone, and with it the heavy disguise, I managed the journey unnoticed and unrecognized, and came to Galava towards late afternoon on a bright, crisp October day.

The great gates were wide open, giving on a paved yard where men and boys were unloading a wagon of straw. The oxen stood patiently, chewing their cud; near them a lad was watering a pair of sweating horses. Dogs barked and skirmished, and hens pecked busily among the fallen straw. There were trees in the yard, and to either side of the steps up to the main door someone had planted beds of marigolds, which blazed orange and yellow in the late sunshine. It looked like a prosperous farm rather than a fortress, but through an open door I could see the rows of freshly burnished weapons, and from behind one of the high walls came shouted orders and the clash of men drilling.

I had barely paused between the posts of the archway when the porter was barring my way and asking my business. I handed him my Dragon brooch, wrapped in a small pouch, and bade him take it to his master. He came hurrying back to the gate within minutes, and the chamberlain, puffing in his wake, showed me straight in to Count Ector.

Ector was not much changed. He was a man of medium height, growing now into middle age; if my father had lived they would have been of an age now, I reckoned, which made him something over forty.

He had a brown beard going grey, and brown skin with the blood springing healthily beneath it. His wife was more than ten years younger; she was tall, a statuesque woman still in her twenties, reserved and a little shy, but with smoky-blue eyes that belied her cool manner and distant speech. Ector had the air of a contented man.

He received me alone, in a small chamber where spears and bows stood stacked against the walls, and the hearth was four deep in deer-hounds. The fire was heaped as high as a funeral pyre with pine logs blazing, and small wonder, for the narrow windows were unglazed and open to the brisk October air, and the wind whined like another hound in the bowstrings that were stacked there.

He gripped my arms with a bearlike welcome, beaming. "Merlinus Ambrosius! Here's a pleasure indeed!

What is it, two years? Three? There's been water under the bridge, aye, and stars fallen, since we last met, eh? Well, you're welcome, welcome. I can't think of any man I'd rather see under my roof! You've been making a name for yourself, haven't you? The tales I've heard tell...Well, well, but you can tell me the truth of it yourself. God's sweet death, boy, you get more like him by the day! Thinner, though, thinner. You look as if you've seen no red meat for a year. Come, sit down by the fire now, and let me send for supper before we talk."

The supper was enormous and excellent, and would have served me ten times over. Ector ate enough for three, and pressed me to finish the rest. While we ate we exchanged news. He had heard of the Queen's pregnancy, and spoke of it, but for the moment I let it go, and asked him instead what had happened at Viroconium. Ector had attended the King's council there, and was but newly returned home.

"Success?" he asked, in reply to my question. "It's hard to say. It was well attended. Coel of Rheged, of course, and all from these lands" — he named half a dozen neighbours — "except Riocatus of Verterae, who sent to say he was sick."

"I gather you didn't believe it?"

"When I believe anything that jackal says," said Ector forcibly, "I'm a spit-licker too. But the wolves were there, all of them, so the scavengers hardly matter."

"Strathclyde?"

"Oh, aye, Caw was there. You know the Picts in the western half of his land have been giving trouble —

when haven't they given trouble, come to that? But for all Caw's Pictish himself, he'll co-operate with any plan that'll help him keep control of that wild territory of his, so he was well disposed to the idea of the council. He'll help, I'm sure of it. Whether he can control that pack of sons he's sired is another matter.

Did you know that one of them, Heuil, a wild young blackguard scarcely old enough (you'd have thought) to lift a spear, took one of Morien's girls by force last spring when she was on her way to the monastery her father had promised her to since birth? He lifted his spear to her easily enough; by the time her father got the news she was over the border with him, and in no condition for any monastery, however broad-minded." He chuckled. "Morien cried rape, of course, but everyone was laughing, so he made the best of it. Strathclyde had to pay, naturally, and he and Morien sat on opposite benches at Viroconium, and Heuil wasn't there at all. Ah, well, but they agreed to sink their differences. King Uther managed it well enough, so what between Rheged and Strathclyde, there's half the northern frontier solid for the King."

"And the other half?" I asked. "What about Lot?"

"Lot?" Ector snorted. "That braggart! He'd swear allegiance to the Devil and Hecate combined if it would get him a few more acres for himself. He cares no more for Britain than that hound by the hearthstone. Less, He and his wild brood of brothers sitting on that cold rock of theirs. They'll fight when it pays them, and that's all." He fell silent, scowling at the fire, poking with a foot at the hound nearest him; it yawned with pleasure, and flattened its ears. "But he talks well, and maybe I'm blackguarding him.

Times are changing, and even barbarians like Lot ought to be able to see that unless we band together with a strong oath, and keep it, it'll be the Flood Year all over again."

He was not referring to an actual flood, but to the year of the great invasion a century ago, when the Picts and Saxons, joined with the Scots from Ireland, poured across Hadrian's Wall with axe and fire.

Maximus commanded then, in Segontium. He drove them back and broke them, and won for Britain a time of peace, and for himself an empire and a legend.

I said: "Lothian is a key to the defense that Uther's planning, even more than Rheged or Strathclyde. I'd heard tell — I don't know if it's true? — that there are Angles settled on the Alaunus, and that the strength of the Anglian Federates south of York along the Abus has doubled since my father's death?"

"It's true." He spoke heavily. "And south of Lothian there's only Urien on the coast, and he's another carrion crow, picking at Lot's leavings. Nay, that may be another one I'm doing an injustice to. He's married to Lot's sister, when all's done, so he'd be bound to cry the same way. Talking of which —"

"Talking of what?" I asked, as he paused.

"Marriage." He scowled, then began to grin. "If it wasn't so plaguy dangerous, it would be funny. You knew Uther had a bastard girl, I forget her name, she must be seven or eight years old?"

"Morgause. Yes, I remember her. She was born in Brittany."

Morgause was a sideslip of Uther's by a girl in Brittany who had followed him to Britain hoping, I suppose, for marriage, since she was of good family, and the only woman, so far as anyone knew then for certain, who had borne him a child. (It had always been a matter of amazement, and a good deal of private and public conjecture among Uther's troops, how he managed to avoid leaving a train of bastards in his wake like seedlings following the sower down a furrow. But this girl was, to public knowledge, the only one. And I believe to Uther's knowledge, too. He was a fair man and a generous one, and no girl had suffered any loss worse than maidenhead through him.) He had acknowledged the child, kept both child and mother at one of his houses, and after the mother's marriage to a lord of his household, had taken the girl into his own. I had seen her once or twice in Brittany, a thin pale-haired girl with big eyes and a mouth folded small.

"What about Morgause?" I asked.

"Uther was casting out feelers for marrying her to Lot, come the time she'll be ready for bedding."

I cocked an eyebrow at him. "And what did Lot think about that?"

"Eh, you'd have laughed to watch him. Black as a wolverine at the suggestion that Uther's byblow was good enough, but careful to keep his talk sweet in case there's no other daughter born in the right bed now the King's wedded. Bastards — and their mates — have inherited kingdoms before now. Saving your presence, of course."

"Of course. Lot casts his eyes as high as that, then?"

He gave a short nod. "High as the High Kingdom itself, you can take my word for it."

I digested that, frowning. I had never met Lot; he was at this time scarcely older than myself —

somewhere in his early twenties — and though he had fought under my father, his path and mine had not crossed. "So Uther wants to tie Lothian to him, and Lot wants to be tied? Whether it's for his own ambition or not, it means surely that Lot will fight for the High King when the time comes? And Lothian is our main bulwark against the Angles and the other invaders from the north."

"Oh, aye, he'll fight," said Ector. "Unless the Angles offer him a better bribe than Uther does."

"Do you mean that?" I was alarmed. Ector, for all his bluff ways, was a shrewd observer, and few men knew more about the changing shifts of power along our shores.

"Maybe I was putting it a trifle high. But for my money Lot's unscrupled and ambitious, and that's a combination that spells danger to any overlord who can't placate him."

"How is he with Rheged?" I was thinking of the child to be lodged here perhaps at Galava, with Lot east by north across the Pennines.

"Oh, friends, friends. As good friends as two big hounds each with his own full platter of meat; No, it's not yet a matter for concern, and may never be. So forget it, and drink up." He drank deeply himself, set down his cup and wiped his mouth. Then he fixed me with a sharp and curious eye. "Well? You'd better get to it, boy. You didn't come all this way for a good supper and a brattle with an old farmer. Tell me how I can serve Ambrosius' son?"

"It is Ambrosius' nephew you will be serving," I said, and told him the rest. He heard me out in silence.

For all his warmth and heartiness, there was nothing impulsive or over-quick about Ector. He had been a cold-brained and calculating officer; a valuable man in any circumstance, from a pitched fight to a long and careful siege. After- a sharp glance of surprise and a lift of the brows when I spoke of the King's decision and my guardianship of the child, he listened without moving and without taking his eyes off me.

When I had finished, he stirred. "Well...I'll say one thing to start with, Merlin; I'm glad and proud you should have come to me. You know how I felt about your father. And to tell you the truth, boy" — he cleared his throat, hesitated, then looked away into the fire as he spoke — "it always sorrowed my heart that you yourself were a bastard. And that's between these four walls, I don't have to tell you. Not that Uther's made a bad shot at being High King —"

"A far better shot than I'd ever have made," I said, smiling. "My father used to say that Uther and I, between us, shared out some of the qualities of a good king. It was a dear dream of his that some day, between us, we might fashion one. And this is the one." Then, as his head went up, "Oh, I know, a baby not yet born. But all the first part has happened as I knew it must happen: a child begotten by Uther and given to me to raise. I know this is the one. I believe he will be such a king as this poor country has never had before, and may never see again."

"Your stars tell you this?"

"It has been written there, certainly, and who writes among the stars but God?"

"Well, God grant it is so. There's coming a time, Merlin, maybe not next year, or for five years, or even for ten, but it is coming — when the Flood Year will come again, and pray God that this time there's a king here to raise the sword of Maximus against it." He turned his head sharply. "What's that? That sound?"

"Only the wind in the bowstrings."

"I thought it was a harp sounding. Strange. What is it, boy? Why do you look so?"

"Nothing."

He looked at me doubtfully for a moment longer, then grunted and fell silent, and behind us the long humming stretched out, a cold music, something from the air itself. I remembered how, as a child, I had lain watching the stars and listening for the music which (I had been told) they made as they moved. This must, I thought, be how it sounded.

A servant came in then with logs to replenish the fire, and the sound died. When he had gone, and the door had shut behind him, Ector spoke again in quite a different tone. "Well, I'll do it, of course, and proud to. You're right; in the next few years I can't see that Uther will have much time for him, and for that matter he'd be hard put to it to keep the child safe. Tintagel might have done, but as you say, there's Cador there...Does the King know that you've come to me?"

"No. Nor will I tell him, yet."

"Indeed?" He thought it over for a moment, frowning a little. "Do you think he'll be content with that?"

"Possibly. I don't know. He didn't press me too hard about Brittany. I think that just now he wants as little to do with it as need be. The other thing is" — I smiled a little wryly — "the King and I have a truce declared, but I wouldn't bank on its staying that way; and out of sight, out of mind. If I'm to have anything to do with the child's teaching, then it had better be at a fair distance from the High King."

"Aye, I've heard that, too. It's never a wise thing to help kings to their heart's desire. Will the boy be a Christian?"

"The Queen wants it, so he'll be baptized in Brittany if I can arrange it. He's to be called Arthur."

"You'll stand for him?"

I laughed. "I believe the fact that I was never baptized myself puts me out of the running."

His teeth showed. "I forgot you were a pagan. Well, I'm glad to hear about the boy. There'd have been a peck of trouble else."

"Your wife, you mean? She's so devout?"

"Poor lass," he said, "she has nothing else since our second died. There'll be no more, they say. In fact it will be God's mercy if we take this boy into our house; my son Cei's a headstrong little ruffian for all he's only three, and the women spoil him. It will be good to have the second child. What did you say his name was to be? Arthur? You'll leave this with me to talk over with Drusilla? Though there's no question, she'll be as glad as I am to have him. And I can tell you that she's close-mouthed enough, for all she's a woman. He'll be safe with us."