Hollow Hills (19 page)

"Well," I said, "why not let them?"

His mouth dropped open. "But — sing to them? You?"

"Don't you hear anything in Brittany?" I asked him. "I really am a singer. And it wouldn't be the first time I've earned my fee."

From her place near Branwen beside the fire, Moravik looked up quickly. "Here's a new start! Potions and such I knew about, learned from that old hermit above the mill, and even magic — " crossing herself.

"But music? Who taught you?"

"Queen Olwen taught me the notes," I said, adding, to Brand, "That was my grandfather's wife, a Welsh girl who sang like a laverock. Then later when I was here in Brittany with Ambrosius I learned from a master. You may have heard him, perhaps? An old blind singer, who had travelled and made music in every country in the world."

Brand nodded as if he knew the man I spoke of, but Moravik looked doubtfully at me, tut-tutting, and shaking her head. I suppose no one who has reared a boy from babyhood, and not seen him since his twelfth year, ever thinks he can be a master at anything. I grinned at them. "Why, I played in front of King Hoel, back there in Kerrec. Not that he's anything of a judge, but Ralf has heard me, too. Ask him, if you think I can't earn my supper."

Brand said doubtfully; "But you'll not want to be singing to the likes of them, my lord?"

"Why not? A travelling minstrel sings where he's hired to sing. And that's what I am, while I'm in Less Britain." I got to my feet. "Ralf, bring me the harp. Finish the wine yourself, and then get to bed. Don't wait for me."

I went out into the tavern's public room. This had filled up now; there were about twenty men there, crowded in the smoky warmth. When I went in there were shouts of "The singer, the singer!" and "A tale, a tale!"

"Make room for me then, good people," I said. A stool was vacated for me near the fire, and someone poured me a cup of wine. I sat down and began to tune the harp. They fell still, watching me.

They were simple folk, and such folk like tales of marvels. When I asked them what they would have, they asked for this tale and that of gods and battles and enchantments, so in the end — my mind, I think, on the child sleeping in the next room — I gave them the story of Macsen's Dream. This is as much a tale of magic as any of the rest, though its hero is the Roman commander Magnus Maximus, who was real enough. The Celts call him Macsen Wledig, and the legend of Macsen's Dream was born in the singing valleys of Dyfed and Powys, where every man claims Prince Macsen as his own, and the stories have gone from mouth to mouth until, if Maximus himself appeared to tell them the truth, no one would believe him. It's a long story, the Dream, and every singer has his own version of it. This is the one I sang that night:

Macsen, Emperor of Rome, went hunting, and being tired in the heat of the day lay down to sleep on the banks of the great river that flows towards Rome, and he dreamed a dream.

He dreamed that he journeyed along the river towards its source, and came to the highest mountain in the world; and from there followed another fair flowing river through the rich fields and broad woodlands till he reached the mouth of the river, and there at its mouth was a city of turrets and castles crowded round a fair harbour. And in that harbour lay a ship of gold and silver with no man on board, but with all sails set and shivering to the wind out of the east. He crossed a gangplank made of the white bone of a whale, and the ship sailed.

And soon, after a sunset and a sunset, he came to the fairest island of all the world, and leaving the ship, he traversed the island from sea to sea. And there on the western shore he saw an island at hand across a narrow strait. And on the near shore where he stood was a fair castle, with an open gate. Then Macsen entered the castle and found himself in a great hall with golden pillars, and walls dazzling with gold and silver and precious stones. In that hall two youths sat playing chess on a silver board, and near them an old man in an ivory chair carved chessmen for them out of crystal, But Macsen had no eyes for all this splendour. More beautiful than silver and ivory and precious stones was a maiden, who sat still as a queen in her golden chair. The moment the Emperor saw her he loved her, and, raising her, he embraced her and begged her to be his wife. But in the very moment of the embrace he woke, and found himself in the valley outside Rome, with his companions watching him.

Then Macsen leaped to his feet and told his dream; and messengers were sent the length and breadth of the world, to find the land he had traversed, and the castle with the beautiful maiden. And after many months, and a score of false journeys, one man found them, and came home to tell his master. The island, most beautiful in all the world, was Britain, and the castle by the western sea was Caer Seint, by Segontium, and the island across the shining strait was Mona, isle of druids. So Macsen journeyed to Britain, and found everything just as he had dreamed it, and requested the hand of the maiden from her father and her brothers, and made her his Empress. Her name was Elen, and she bore Macsen two sons and a daughter, and in her honour he built three castles, in Segontium, Caerleon and Maridunum, which was called Caer Myrddin in honour of the god of high places.

Then, because Macsen stayed in Britain and forgot Rome, they made a new emperor in Rome, who set his standard on the walls and defied Macsen. So Macsen raised an army of the Britons, and, with Elen and her brothers at his side, set out for Rome; and he conquered Rome. Thereafter he stayed in Rome, and Britain saw him no more, but Elen's two brothers took the British forces back to their homes, and to this day the seed of Macsen Wledig reigns in Britain.

When I had done, and the last note had hummed away to nothing in the smoky stillness, there was a roar of applause, cups thumping on the tables, and rough voices calling for more music, and more wine.

Another cupful was pressed on me, and while I drank and rested before singing again, the men went back to talking among themselves, but softly, lest they disturb the singer's thoughts.

It was as well they could not guess at them; I was wondering what they would do if they knew that the last and latest scion of Maximus lay sleeping on the other side of the wall. For this part of the legend, at least, was true, that my father's family was descended straight from Maximus' marriage with the Welsh princess Elen. The rest of the legend, like all such tales, was a kind of dreaming distortion of the truth, as if an artist, reassembling a broken mosaic from a few worn and random fragments, rebuilt the picture in his own shimmering new colours, with here and there the pieces of the old, true picture showing plain.

The facts were these. Maximus, a Spaniard by birth, had commanded the armies in Britain under his general Theo-dosius at a time when Saxons and Picts were raiding the coasts constantly, and the Roman province of Britain looked like crumbling to its fall. Between them the commanders repaired the Wall of Hadrian, and held it, and Maximus himself rebuilt and garrisoned the great fortress at Segontium in Wales, and made it his headquarters. This is the place that is called Caer Seint by the British; it is the "fair castle" of the Dream, and here it must have been that Maximus met his Welsh Elen, and married her.

Then in the year that Ector had called the Flood Year it was Maximus (though his enemies denied him the credit) who after months of bitter fighting drove the Saxons back and constructed the provinces of Strathclyde and Manau Guotodin, buffer states, in whose shelter the people of Britain — his people —

might live in peace. Already "Prince Mac-sen" to the folk of Wales, he was declared Emperor by his troops, and so might have remained, but for the events everyone knows of which took him abroad to avenge his old general's murder, and thereafter to march on Rome itself.

He never came back; here again the Dream is true; but not because he conquered Rome and stayed to rule it. He was defeated there, and later executed, and though some of the British forces who had gone with him came home and pledged themselves to his widow and his sons, the brief peace was over. With Maximus dead the Flood came again, and this time there was no sword to stop it.

Small wonder, in the dark years that followed, that the short stretch of Maximus' victorious peace should appear to men like a lost age as golden as any the poets sing. Small wonder that the legend of "Macsen the Protector" had grown and grown until his power compassed the earth, and in their dark times men spoke of him as of a god-sent saviour...

My thoughts went back to the baby sleeping in the straw. I lifted the harp again, and when they hushed for me, sang them another song:

There was a boy born,

A winter king.

Before the black month

He was born,

And fled in the dark month

To find shelter

With the poor.

He shall come

With the spring

In the green month

And the golden month

And bright

Shall be the burning

Of his star.

"And did you earn your supper?" asked Moravik.

"Plenty to drink, and three copper coins." I laid them on the table and put the leather bag containing the King's gold beside them. "That's for your care of the child. I'll send more when it's needed. You'll not regret this, you and Brand. You've nursed kings before, Moravik, but never such a king as this one will be."

"What do I care for kings? That's nought but a bonny bairn, that should never have been set to such a journey in this weather. He should be home in his own nursery, and you can tell your King Uther that from me! Gold, indeed!" But the leather bag had vanished into some fastness of her skirt, and the coins with it.

"He's come to no harm on the journey?" I asked quickly.

"None that I can see. That's a good, strong boy, and like to flourish as well as any of my children. He's abed now, and those two young things with him, poor children, so keep your voice down and let them sleep."

Branwen and the child' lay on a pallet in the far corner of the room, away from the fire. Their bed was underneath the flight of rough wooden steps which led up to a platform, like a small loft such as they use for hay in kings' stables. Indeed there was hay stacked there, and our beasts had been led in from the yard at the back, and were tethered now under the loft. A donkey, which I suppose was Brand's own, stood near them in the straw.

"Brand brought yours in," said Moravik. "There isn't much room, but he daren't leave them outside in the byre. That sorrel of yours with the white blaze, someone might know it for King Hoel's own, and there'd be questions asked that weren't too easy to answer. I've put you up above, and the boy. It's maybe not what you're used to, but it's soft, and it's clean."

"It'll be fine. But don't send me to bed yet, please, Moravik. May I stay up and talk to you?"

"Hm. Send you to bed, indeed! Aye, you always did look meek and talk soft, and you doing exactly as you wanted all the time..." She sat down by the fire, spreading her skirts, and nodded to a stool. "Well, now, sit down and let me look at you. Mercy me, and here's a change! Who'd ever have thought it, back there in Maridunum, with hardly a decent rag to your name, that you'd turn out a son of the High King himself, and a doctor and a singer...and the sweet saints only know what else besides!"

"A magician, you mean?"

"Well, that never surprised me, the way I heard you'd been running off to the old man at Bryn Myrddin."

She crossed herself, and her hand closed on an amulet at her neck. I had seen it glinting in the firelight; it was hardly a Christian symbol. So Moravik still hedged herself around with every talisman she could find.

In this she was like most of the folk bred in the Perilous Forest, with its tales of old haunt-ings, and things seen in the twilight and heard in the wind. She nodded at me. "Aye, you always were a queer lad, with your solitary ways, and the things you'd say. Always knew too much, you did. I thought it was with listening at doors, but it seems I was wrong. 'The King's prophet,' they tell me you're called now. And the doings I've heard about, if the half of them's to be believed, which I doubt they're not...Well, now, tell me. Tell me everything."

The fire had burned low, almost to ash. There was silence from the next room now; the drinkers had either gone home, or settled to sleep. Brand had climbed the ladder an hour since, and snored softly beside Ralf. In the corner beside the dozing beasts, Branwen and the child slept, unmoving.

"And now here's this new start," said Moravik softly. "This baby here, you tell me he's the son of the High King, Uther himself, that won't own to him. Why do you have to take it on yourself to look after him? I'd have thought there's others he might ask, that could do it easier."

"I can't answer for King Uther," I said, "but for myself, you might say the child was a trust left to me by my father, and by the gods."

"The gods?" she asked sharply. "What talk is this for a good Christian man?"

"You forget, I was never baptized."

"Not even yet? Aye, I remember the old King would have none of it. Well, that's no concern of mine now, only of your own. But this child here, is he christened?"

"No. There's been no time. If you want to, then have him christened."

" 'If you want to'? What way is that to talk? What 'gods' were you talking of just now?".

"I hardly know. They — he — will make himself known in his own good time. Meanwhile have the boy christened, Moravik. When he leaves Brittany he's to be reared in a Christian household."

She was satisfied. "As soon as may be. I'll see him right with the dear Lord and his saints, trust me for that. And I've hung the vervain charm over his crib, and seen the nine prayers said. The girl says his name's Arthur. What sort of a name is that?"

"You would say Artos," I told her. This is a name meaning "Bear" in Celtic. "But don't call him by that name here. Give him some other name that you can use, and forget the other."

"Emrys, then? Ah, I thought that would make you smile. I'd always hoped that one day there'd be a child I could call after you."