Hollow Hills (39 page)

"So they say that, do they? It's the King's place he's after, not just a place at the King's side?"

"Whatever he's after, they're handfast now, he and Morgian: they'll be married as soon as the girl is twelve years old. There's no way out of that union now, even if Uther wanted to end it."

"And you don't like it?"

"No one does, up in this part of the country. They say that Lot's stretching his borders all the time, and not always with the sword. There's talk of meetings. If he gets too much power by the time the High King fails, we might well find ourselves back in the time of the Wolf. The Saxons coming every spring and burning and raping as far as the Pennine Way, aye, and the Irish coming down to join them, and more of our men taking to the high hills and what cold comfort they can find there."

"How recently did you see the King?"

"Three weeks past. When he lay at York he sent for me, and asked privately about the boy."

"How did he look?"

"Well enough, but the cutting edge was gone. You understand me?"

"Very well. Was Cador of Cornwall with him?"

"No. He was still at Caerleon then. I have heard since —"

"At Caerleon?" I asked sharply. "Cador himself was there?"

"Yes," said Ector, surprised. "He'd be there just before you left home. Did you not know?"

"I should have known," I said. "He sent a party of armed men to search my home on Bryn Myrddin, and to watch my movements. I gave them the slip, I think, but what I didn't reckon on was being watched by two parties at the same time. Urien of Gore had men there in Maridunum, too, and they traced me north into Gwynedd." I told him about Crinas, and Urien's party, and he listened, frowning. I asked him: "You haven't heard reports of any such up here? They'd ask no questions openly, but wait and watch, and listen."

"No. If there were strangers, it would have been reported. You must have shaken them off. Be easy, Cador's men will never come this way. He's in Segontium now, did you know?"

"When I was there I heard he was expected. Do you know if he plans to make his headquarters at Segontium, now Uther's put him in charge of the Irish Shore defenses? Has there been talk of re-investing it?"

"There was talk, yes, but I doubt if it will ever come to anything. That's a task that'll take more time and money than Uther is likely to spare, or to have, just yet. If I can make a guess, Cador will garrison Segontium and the frontier fortresses, and base himself inland where he can keep his forces moving to the points of attack. Perhaps at Deva. Rheged himself is in Luguvallium. We do what we can."

"And Urien? I trust he's fixed on the east, where he belongs?"

"Well dug in on his rock," said Ector, with grim satisfaction. "And one thing's for sure. Until Lot marries Morgian with every bishop in the realm in attendance, and proof positive of consummation, he won't stir a hand to bring Uther down, or let Urien do so, either. Nor will he find Arthur. If they haven't had a sniff of the boy in nine years, they'll never pick the scent up now. So be easy. By the time Morgian is twelve, and ready for bedding, Arthur will be fourteen, and coming to the time when the King has promised to bring him before the kingdom. It will be time then to deal with Lot and Urien, and if the time comes before then, why, it is with God."

On that we parted, and I rode back alone to the shrine.

After this Arthur, sometimes with the other two boys, but usually just with Bedwyr, rode up to the chapel to see me two or three times a week. Cei was a big fair-haired boy, with a look of his father, and his manner to Arthur was a compound of patronage and hectoring affection which must have been galling at times to the younger boy. But Arthur seemed fond of his foster-brother, and eager to share with him the pleasure (for so he seemed to find it) of his visits to me. Cei enjoyed the tales I had to tell of foreign lands and the histories of fighting and conquests and battle, but he grew quickly tired of discussing the way the people lived and governed their countries, and the talk of their legends and beliefs, which Arthur loved. As time went by Cei stayed more often at home, going (the other two told me) on sport or business with his father; hunting sometimes, or on patrol, or accompanying Count Ector on his occasional visits to his neighbours. After the first year, I rarely saw Cei at all.

Bedwyr was quite different, a quiet boy of Arthur's own age, gentle and dreamy as a poet, and a natural follower. He and Arthur were like two sides of the same apple. Bedwyr trailed, doglike in devotion, after the other boy; he made no attempt to hide his love for Arthur, but there was nothing soft about him, for all his gentle ways and poet's eyes. He was a plain boy, with his nose flattened in some fight, and badly set, and the scar of some nursery burn on his cheek. But he had character and kindness, and Arthur loved him. As the son of Ban, a petty king, Bedwyr was the superior even of Cei, and as far as any of the boys knew, right out of Arthur's star. But this never occurred to either Bedwyr or Arthur; the one offered devotion, the other accepted it.

One day I said to them: "Do you know the story of Bisclavaret, the man who became a wolf?" Bedwyr, without troubling to answer, brought the harp out from under its shroud, and put it gently by me. Arthur, prone on the bed with chin on fist and eyes brilliant in the firelight — it was a chill afternoon of late spring

— said impatiently: "Oh, let be. Never mind the music. The story." Then Bedwyr curled beside him on the blankets, and I tuned the strings and started.

It is an eerie tale, and Arthur took it with sparkling face, but Bedwyr grew quieter than ever, all eyes. It was growing dark when they went home, with a husky servant that day for escort. Arthur, alone with me next day, told me how Bedwyr had woken in the night with the nightmare. "But do you know, Myrddin, when we were on the way home yesterday, when he must have been full of the story, we saw something slink off beyond the trees and we thought it was a wolf, and Bedwyr made me ride between him and Leo. I know he was frightened, but he said it was his right to protect me, and I suppose it was, since he is a king's son, and I —"

He stopped. It was as near as he had ever got to the boggy ground. I said nothing, but waited.

" — and I was his friend."

I talked to him then about the nature of courage, and the moment passed. I remember what he said afterwards of Bedwyr. I was to remember it many times in later years, when, on even less certain ground, the trust between him and Bedwyr held true.

He said now, seriously, as if at nine years old he knew: "He is the bravest companion, and the truest friend in all the world."

Ector and Drusilla had, of course, taken care to see that Arthur knew all that was good to know about his father and the Queen. He knew, too, as much as everyone in the country knew about the young heir who waited — in Brittany, in the Isle of Glass, in Merlin's tower? — to succeed to the kingdom. He told me once, himself, the story that was current about the "rape at Tintagel." The legend had lost nothing in the telling. By now, it seemed, men believed that Merlin had spirited the King's party, horses and all, invisibly within the walls of the stronghold, and out again in the broad light of next morning.

"And they say," finished Arthur, "that a dragon curled on the turrets all night, and in the morning Merlin flew off on him, in a trail of fire."

"Do they? It's the first I heard of that."

"Don't you know the story?" asked Bedwyr.

"I know a song," I said, "which is closer to the truth than anything you've heard up here. I got it from a man who'd once been in Cornwall."

Ralf was there that day, listening silently, amused. I raised my brows at him and he shook his head slightly. I had not thought he would have let Arthur know he came from Tintagel, and indeed I doubt if anyone now would have guessed. He spoke as nearly as might be with the accent of the north.

So I told the boys the story, the truth as I knew it — and who knew better? — without the extra trimmings of fantasy that time and ignorance had added to it. And God knows it was magical enough without; God's will and human love driving forward together in the black night under the light of the great star, and the seed sown which would make a king.

"So God had his way, and the King through him, and men — as men always do — made mistakes and died for them. And in the morning the enchanter rode away alone, to nurse his broken hand."

"No dragon?" This from Bedwyr.

"No dragon," I said.

"I prefer the dragon," said Bedwyr firmly. "I shall go on believing the dragon. Riding away alone, that's a let-down. A real enchanter wouldn't do that, would he, Ralf?"

"Of course not," said Ralf, getting to his feet. "But we must. Look, it's dusk already."

He was ignored. "I'll tell you what I don't understand," said Bedwyr, "and that's a King who would risk setting the whole kingdom at blaze for a woman. Keeping faith with your peers is surely more important than having any woman. I'd never risk losing anything that really mattered, just for that."

"Nor would I," said Arthur slowly. He had been thinking hard about it, I could see. "But I think I understand it, all the same. You have to reckon with love."

"But not to risk friendship for it," said Bedwyr quickly.

"Of course not," said Arthur. I could see that he was thinking in general terms, where Bedwyr meant one friendship, one love.

Ralf began to speak again, but at that moment something, a shadow, swept silently across the lamplight.

The boys hardly glanced up; it was only the white owl, sailing silently in through the open window to its perch in the beams. But its shadow went across my skin like a hand of ice, and I shivered.

Arthur looked up quickly. "What is it, Myrddin? It's only the owl. You look as if you'd seen a ghost."

"It was nothing," I said. "I don't know."

I did not know, either, then, but I know now. We had been speaking Latin, as we usually did, but the word he had used for the shadow across the light was the Celtic one, guenhwyvar.

Be sure I told them, too, about their own country, and about the times recently past, of Ambrosius and the war he had fought against Vortigern, and how he had knit the kingdoms together into one, and made himself High King, and brought to the length and breadth of the land justice, with a sword at its back, so that for a short span of years men could go peacefully about their affairs anywhere in the country, and not be molested; or if they were, could seek, and get, the King's justice equally for high or low. Others had given them the stories as history; but I had been there, and closer to affairs than most, being at the High King's side and, in some cases, the architect of what had happened. This, of course, they could not be allowed to guess: I told them merely that I had been with Ambrosius in Brittany, and thereafter at the battle of Kaerconan, and through the next years of the rebuilding. They never asked how or why I was there, and I think this was out of delicacy, in case I should be forced to confess how I had served in some humble capacity as assistant to the engineers, or even as a scribe. But I still remember the questions Arthur poured out about the way the Count of Britain — as Ambrosius then styled himself — had assembled, trained and equipped his army, how he had shipped it across the Narrow Sea to the land of the Dum-nonii where he had set up his standard as High King before he swept northwards to burn Vortigern out of Doward, and finally to smash the vast army of the Saxons at Kaerconan. Every detail of organization, training, and strategy I had to recall for him as best I could, and every skirmish of which I could tell them anything was fought over and over again by the two boys, poring over maps drawn in the dust.

"They say there will be war again soon," said Arthur, "and I am too young to go." He mourned over it, openly, like a dog which is bidden to stay at home on a hunting morning. It was three months before his tenth birthday.

It was not all talk of war and high matters, of course. There were days when the boys played like young puppies, running and wrestling, racing their horses along the riverside, swimming naked in the lake and scaring every fish within miles, or taking bows with Ralf up to the hills to look for hares or pigeons.

Sometimes I went with them, but hunting was not a sport I cared for. It was different when it occurred to me to rummage out the old hermit's fishing rod and take it to try the waters of the lake. We would pass the time happily there, Arthur fishing with more fury than success, myself watching him, and talking.

Bedwyr did not care for fishing, and on these occasions went with Ralf, but Arthur, even on the days when wind or weather made fishing useless, seemed to prefer to stay with me rather than go with Ralf or even Bedwyr to look for sport in the forest.

Looking back, I do not remember now that I ever paused to question this. The boy was my whole life, my love for him so much a part of every day that I was content to take the time as it came, accepting straight from the gods the fact that the boy seemed to like above all else to be with me. I told myself merely that he needed to escape from the crowded household, from the patronage of an elder brother preparing now for a position which he himself could never hope for, and also a chance to be with Bedwyr in a world of imagination and brave deeds where he felt himself to belong. I would not allow myself to ascribe it to love, and if I had guessed the nature of the love, could have offered no comfort then.

Bedwyr stayed at Galava for more than a year, leaving for home in the autumn before Arthur's eleventh birthday. He was to return the following summer. After he had gone Arthur moped visibly for a week, was unwontedly quiet for another, then recovered his spirits with a bound, and rode up to see me, in defiance of the weather, rather more often than before.

I have no idea what reasons Ector gave for letting him come so often. Probably he needed no reason: as a rule the boy rode out daily except in the foulest weather, and if nothing was volunteered as to where he went, nothing would be asked. It became known, as it was bound to, that he came often to the Green Chapel where the wise man lived, but if people thought about it at all, they commended the boy's sense in seeking out a man known for his learning, and let it be.