Hollow Hills (48 page)

I could not walk through the house, asking where Arthur was. If he was happily bedded with a girl, this was something he would never forgive me. I would have to find him by other means, and since I was Merlin, the means were here. Standing rigid there in the dim chamber, with my hands held stiff-fisted at my sides, I stared at the lamp...

I know that I never moved from the place or left my chamber, but in my memory now it seems as if I went out, silent and invisible as a ghost, across the antechamber, past the guard, and along the dim corridor towards Morgause's door. The other sentry was there; he was full awake, and watching, but he never saw me.

There was no sound from within. I went in.

In the outer room the air was heavy and warm, and smelled of scents and lotions such as women use.

There were two beds there, and sleepers in them. On the threshold of the inner chamber Morgause's page was curled on the floor, sleeping.

Two beds, each with its sleeper. One was an old woman, grey-haired, mouth open, snoring slightly. The other slept silently, and over her pillow the long black hair lay heavy, braided for the night. The little dark girl slept alone.

I knew it now, the horror that oppressed me; the one thing that, looking for larger issues of death and treachery and loss, I had never thought of. I have said men with god's sight are often human-blind: when I exchanged my manhood for power it seemed I had made myself blind to the ways of women. If I had been simple man instead of wizard I would have seen the way eye answered eye back there at the hospital, have recognized Arthur's silence later, and known the woman's long assessing look for what it was.

Some magic she must have had, to blind me so. It may be that now, knowing I could do nothing, she let the magic lapse and thin; or let it waver as she sank towards sleep. Or it may be only that my power outstripped hers, and she had no shield against me. God knows I did not want to look, but I was nailed there by my own power, and because there is no power without knowledge, and no knowledge without suffering, the walls and door of Morgause's sleeping chamber dissolved in front of me, and I could see.

Time enough, the guard had said. They had indeed had time enough. The woman lay, naked and wide-legged, across the covers of the bed. The boy, brown against her whiteness, lay sprawled over her in the heavy abandonment of pleasure. His head was between her breasts, half turned from me; he was not asleep, but the next thing to it, his face close and quiet, his blind mouth searching her flesh as a puppy nuzzles for its mother's nipple. Her face I saw clearly. She held his head cradled, and about her body was the same heavy languor, but her face showed none of the tenderness that the gesture seemed to express.

And none of the pleasure. It held a secret exultation as fierce as I have ever seen on a warrior's face in battle; the gilt-green eyes were wide and fixed on something invisible beyond the dark; and the small mouth smiled, a smile somewhere between triumph and contempt.

He came back to his room just before daylight. The first bird had whistled, and a few moments later the sudden jar-goning of the early chorus almost drowned the clink of arms at the outer door, and his soft word to the guard. He came in, his eyes full of sleep, and stopped short just inside the door when he saw me sitting in the high-backed chair beside the window.

"Merlin! Up at this hour? Couldn't you sleep?"

"I haven't yet been to bed."

He came suddenly wide awake, sharpened and alert. "What is it? What's wrong? Is it the King?"

At least, I thought, he doesn't jump to the conclusion that I stayed awake to question his night's doings.

And one thing he must never know; that I followed him through that door.

I said: "No, not the King. But you and I must talk before the day comes."

"Oh, the gods, not now, if you love me," he said, half laughing, and yawned. "Merlin, I've got to sleep.

Did you guess where I'd gone, or did the guard tell you?"

As he came forward into the room I could smell her scent on him. I felt sickened, and I suppose I was shaken. I said curtly: "Yes, now. Wash yourself, and wake up. I have to talk to you."

I had put out all the lamps but one, and this was burning low, only half competing with the leaden light of dawn. I saw his face go rigid. "By what right — ?" He checked himself, and I saw the quick control come down over his anger. "Very well. I suppose you do have the right to question me, but I don't like the time you choose."

It was something altogether different from the injured boyish anger he had shown before, how short a time ago, beside the lake. So far they had already taken him between them, the sword and the woman. I said: "I have no right to question you, and I've no intention of doing so. Calm yourself, and listen. It's true I want to talk to you — among other things — about what happened tonight, but not for the reasons you seem to impute to me. Who do you think I am, Abbot Martin? I don't dispute your right to take your pleasure as and where you wish." He was still hostile, between anger and pride. To relax him and pass the moment over, I added mildly: "Perhaps it wasn't wise to venture through this house at night where there are men who hate you for what you did yesterday. But how can I blame you for going? You showed yourself a man in battle, why not then in your bed?" I smiled. "Though I've never lain with a woman myself, I've known what it is to want one. For the pleasure you had, I'm glad."

I stopped. His face had been pale with anger; now even in that lack of light I could see the anger drain away, and with it the last vestiges of colour. It was as if blood and breath had stopped together. His eyes looked black. He narrowed them at me as if he could not see me properly, or as if he were seeing me for the first time, and could not get me in focus. It was a discomforting look, and I am not easily discomforted.

"You have never lain with a woman?"

Somehow, to the matters boiling in my mind, the question came as sheer irrelevancy. I said, surprised: "I said so. I believe it's a matter of common knowledge. I also believe it's a fact that some men hold in contempt. But those —"

"Are you a eunuch, then?"

The question was cruel; his manner, harsh and abrupt, made it seem meant so. I had to wait a moment before I answered.

"No. I was going to add, that those who hold chastity in contempt are not men whose contempt would disturb me. Have I yours, then?"

"What?" He had obviously not heard a word of what I had been saying. He jerked himself free of whatever strong emotion was riding him, and made for his room like a man who is choking, and in need of air. As he went he said, muffled: "I'll go and wash."

The door shut behind him. I stood up quickly and set my hands on the window sill, leaning out into the chill September dawn. A cock was crowing; from farther off others answered it. I found that I was shaking; I, Merlin, who had watched while kings and priests and princes plotted my death openly in front of my eyes; who had talked with the dead; who could make storm and fire and call the wind. Well, I had called this wind; I must face it. But I had counted on his love for me to get us both through what I had to tell him. I had not reckoned on losing his respect — and for such a reason — at this moment.

I told myself that he was young; that he was Uther's son, fresh from his first woman, and in the flush of his new sexual pride. I told myself that I had been a fool to see love given back where I gave it, when what the boy was rendering to me was no more than I had given my own tutor Galapas, affection tinged with awe. I told myself these and other things, and by the time he came back I was seated again, calm and waiting, with two goblets of wine poured ready on a table at my hand. He took one without a word, then sat across the room from me, on the edge of my bed. He had washed even his hair; it was still damp, and clung to his brow. He had changed his bedgown for day dress, and in the short tunic, without mantle or weapon, looked like a boy again, the Arthur of the summer and the Wild Forest.

I had been casting round carefully for what to say, but now could find nothing. It was Arthur who broke the silence, not looking at me, turning the goblet round and round in his hands, watching the swirl of wine as if his life depended on it.

He said, flatly, and as if it explained everything, as I suppose it did:

"I thought you were my father."

It was like facing an opponent's sword, only to find that the sword and the enemy are in fact illusions, but in the same moment to feel that the very ground on which one has made one's stand is a shaking bog. I fought to rearrange my thoughts.

Respect and love, yes, I had had these from him, but they could have been given to me for the man I was; in fact, only in such a way does a boy give them to his father. But other things became suddenly plain; above all the deference which he would have given to no other man but Ector, his obedience, his assumption of my ready welcome, and more than all — I saw it like the sudden rift of daffodil sky which opened in the grey beyond the window — the shining anticipation with which he had come with me to Luguvallium. I remembered my own ceaseless childhood search for my father, and how I had looked for and seen him everywhere, in every man who looked my mother's way. Arthur had had only his foster-parents' story of noble bastardy, and a vague promise of recognition "when you are grown enough to bear arms." As children do — as I had done — he had said little, but waited and wondered, ceaselessly. Then into this perpetual search and expectation I had come, with some mystery about me, and I suppose the air that Ralf had spoken of, of a man used to deference and moved by some strong purpose. The boy may have seen his own likeness to me; more likely others, Bedwyr even, had commented on it. So he had waked, reaching his own conclusions, prepared to give love, accept authority and trust me for the future. Then came the sword, a gift, it seemed, from me; father to son. And the discovery that had followed hard on it, that I was Ambrosius' son, and the Merlin of the thousand legends told at every fireside. Bastard or no, suddenly he had found himself, and he was royal.

So he had followed me to the King at Luguvallium, seeing himself as Ambrosius' grandson and great-nephew to Uther Pendragon. From this knowledge had come that flashing confidence in battle. He must have thought this was why Uther had flung him the sword, because in default of the absent prince, he, bastard or not, was the next in blood. So he had led the charge, and afterwards accepted the duties and the favours due to a prince.

It also explained why he had never seemed to suspect that he might be the "lost" prince. The stares and whispers and the deference he received he had put down to recognition as my son. He accepted, as most men did, the fact that the High King's heir was abroad at a foreign court, and thought nothing more about it. And once he imagined he had found his place, why should he think again? He was mine, and he was royal, and through me he had a place at the center of the kingdom. Now all at once, cruelly enough, as he must see it, he found himself not only deprived of ambition and the place he had dreamed of, but even of a place as a man's acknowledged son. I, who had lived my youth as a bastard and a no-man's-child, knew how that canker can eat: Ector had tried to spare Arthur this by telling him that he would one day be acknowledged nobly; it had never struck me that he would count in love and confidence on the acknowledgment coming from me.

"Even my name, you see." The dull apology of his tone was worse than the cruelty that shock had brought from him before.

At least, if I could heal nothing else, I could heal his pride. The cost would be counted presently, but he had to know now. I had many times thought how, if it were left to me, I would tell him. Now I spoke straight, the simple truth. "We bear the same name because we are in fact kin to one another. You are not my son, but we are cousins. You, like me, are a grandson of Constantius and a descendant of Maxi-mus the Emperor. Your true name is Arthur, and you are the legitimate son of the High King and Ygraine his Queen."

I thought the silence this time would never break. At my first word his eyes had come up from watching the swirling wine, and fastened on me. His brows were knitted like those of a deaf man straining to hear.

The red washed through his face like blood staining a white cloth, and his lips parted. Then he set the goblet down very carefully, and standing up, came to the window near me, and, just as I had done earlier, set his hands on the sill and leaned out into the air.

A bird flew into the bough beside him and began to sing. The sky faded to heron's-egg green, then slowly cooled to hyacinth where thin flakes of cloud floated. Still he stood there, and I waited, without movement or speech.

At length, without turning, he spoke to the bough with its singing bird. "Why this way? Fourteen years.

Why not where I belonged?"

So at last I told him the whole story. I began with the vision Ambrosius had shared with me, of the kingdoms united under one king, Dumnonia to Lothian, Dyfed to Rutupiae; Romano-Briton and Celt and loyal foederatus fighting as one to keep Britain clear of the black flood that was drowning the rest of the Empire; a version, humbler and more workable, of Maximus' imperial dream, adapted and handed down by my grandfather to my father, and lodged in me by my master's teaching and by the god who had marked me for his service. I told him about Ambrosius' death without other issue, and the ravelled clue the god had thrust into my hand, bidding me follow it. About the sudden passion of the new King Uther for Ygraine, wife of Cornwall's Duke, and about my own connivance at their union, shown by the god that this was the union which would bring its next king to Britain. About Gorlois' death and Uther's remorse, mingled as it was with relief at a death he had more than half wished, but wanted publicly to disclaim and disown; then the consequent banishment of myself and Ralf, and Uther's own threats to disown the child so begotten. Then finally, how pride and common sense between them prevailed, and the child had been handed to me to look after through the dangerous first years of Uther's reign; and how since then the King's illness and the growing power of his enemies had forced him to leave his son in hiding. About some things I said nothing: I did not tell Arthur what I had seen waiting for him, of greatness or pain or glory; and I said no word about Uther's impotence. Nor did I speak of the King's desperate wish for another son to supplant the "bastard" of Tintagel; these were Uther's secrets, and he would not have long now to keep them.