Hollow Hills (8 page)

"We've been expecting you. Your beds is bespoke." Then under her breath as she came close to my horse's shoulder: "You be very welcome, my lord, and Ralf, too. I declare he do look a handspan taller than when I seen him last. Will you be pleased to come in?"

I dismounted and handed the reins to Ralf. "Thank you. It's good to be here; we're both weary. Ralf will look after the horses himself. Now before we go in, Maeve, give me the news from Tintagel. Is all well with the Queen?"

"Yes, indeed, sir, praise be to all the saints and fairies. You need have no worries there, surely."

"And the King? He's still at Tintagel?"

"Aye, my lord, but the word goes that he'll ride out any day now. You'll not have long to bide. You're as safe here as anywhere in Cornwall. We'll have good enough warning of troops moving, and you can hear them on this road a mile off. And never worry about Caw — that's my husband; he's a Duke's man, sure enough, but he'll do nothing to harm my lady, and besides, he always does as I tell him. Leastways, not always. There's some things he don't do near often enough for my liking." This with a burst of cheery laughter. I saw Ralf grinning as he led the horses away, then Maeve, talking loudly about beds and supper-time, and the sore eyes of her youngest which could do with looking at, led me through the back door of the inn.

When I saw her husband later that evening I knew that I need have no fears for his discretion. He was a dry stick of a man, and silent as an oyster. He came in as we were sitting down to supper, stared at Ralf, nodded at me, then went about his business of serving wine without a word spoken. His wife treated him

— and all comers — with the same rough, frank kindliness, and saw to it without fuss that we were well served and comfortably housed. It was as good a house of its kind as I have ever been in, and the food was excellent.

Understandably, the inn was always busy, but there was little danger of our being recognized. My character as a travelling healer was not only my pass to people's incurious acceptance; it gave Ralf and me the excuse to be abroad in the countryside. Each day early we would take food and wine with us, and make our way up by one of the deep, densely wooded glens that fed the Camel valley, to the windy upland that lay between Camelford and the sea. Ralf knew all the ways. We would separate, more often than not, and each choose some hidden point of vantage from which he could watch the two roads which Uther and his men might take out of Tintagel. He might turn north-east along the coast for Dimilioc and the camp near Hercules Point, or — if he was making straight for Winchester or the trouble centers along the Saxon Shore — he would follow the valley tracks through Camelford and from there climb south-east to the military road which ran along the spine of Dumnonia. Here on the wind-swept heights the forest thins, and there ate great tracts of broken moorland treacherous with bog and watched over by strange stony hills. The old Roman road, crumbling fast in that wild country, but still service-runs straight through Isca, into the kinder lands behind Ambrosius' Wall. It was my guess that this latter was the way that Uther would take, and I wanted to see who rode with him. Ralf and I gave it out that I was searching for plants for my medicines, and indeed I came back each evening to my meeting-place with him with a pouch full of roots and berries which did not grow at home, and which I was glad to have. Luckily the weather continued fine, and no one wondered to see us ride abroad. They were too glad to have a doctor staying there who, each evening, would treat any who came to him, and ask no more than they could afford to pay.

So the days went by, serene and still, while we waited for the King to move, and the Queen to send word.

It was a week before he rode out. He went the way I had expected, and I was there watching.

There is a place where the track from Tintagel to Camel-ford runs straight for some quarter of a mile along the foot of a steeply wooded bank. For the most part the wood is too steep and thickly grown to penetrate, but there were places at the wood's edge open to the sun, stony banks deep in ferns and drifting thistledown, where brambles and bracken grew in thickets over the rocks. The blackthorn bushes were high, and glinting with fruit. Some of the little sloe-plums were still greenish, but most were ready; black bloomed over pale blue with ripeness. There is an extract one can make of the fruit which is sovereign for a flux of the bowels: one of Maeve's children had been suffering in this way, and I had promised a draught that night. It would need no more than a handful, but the fruit was ripe to perfection, and so tempting that I went on gathering. If the berries are crushed and added in a certain way to juniper-wine they make a good drink, rich, astringent and powerful. I had told Maeve of it, and she wanted to try it.

My bag was almost full when I heard, like a soft thunder in the distance, horses coming steadily along the track below me. I withdrew quickly into the edge of the wood, and watched from hiding. Soon the head of the column came in sight; then the long train of dust, filled with the beat of trotting hoofs, the clash of mail, the coloured glint of pennants, rolled past along the foot of the slope. A thousand, perhaps more I stood stone-still in the shadow of the trees, and watched them go by.

A horse's length to the front the King rode, and behind him, on his left hand, his standard-bearer carried the Red Dragon. Other colours showed through the dust, but there was no wind to move the banners, and though I strained my eyes the length of the column, I could not swear to most that I saw. Nor did I glimpse the one I was watching for, though it might well have been there. I waited till the last horseman disappeared at a smart trot round a bend in the road, then I made my way to the place where I had arranged to meet Ralf.

He met me halfway, panting. "Did you see them?"

"Yes. Where were you? I sent you to watch the other road."

"I was watching. There was nothing stirring there, nothing at all. I was on my way back here when I heard them, so I ran. I almost missed them — only saw the tail end. It was the King, wasn't it?"

"It was. Ralf, could you pick out the devices? Did you see any that you knew?"

"I saw Brychan, and Cynfelin, but no others from Dyfnaint that I recognized. The men from Garlot were there, and Cernyw, too, I think, and others I thought I knew, but there was too much dust to make sure.

They were round that bend before I could get a good sight of them."

"Was Cador there?"

"My lord, I'm sorry, I didn't see."

"No matter. If the others were there from Cornwall, you may be sure he would be. No doubt they'll know at the inn. And had you forgotten that you were not to call me 'my lord,' even when we were alone?"

"I'm sorry...Emrys." It was a measure of our new, easier relationship that he should add, with a suspicious meekness: "And had you forgotten that my name is Ban?" Then, laughing as he dodged my cuff at his head: "Do you have to call me after the half-wit?"

"It's the first name that came into my head. It's a king's name too, the King of Benoic, so you can take your choice which was your sponsor."

"Benoic? Where's that?"

"In the north. Come now, we'll get back to the inn. I doubt if the Queen will send before tomorrow, but I've a draught to make tonight, and it's a decoction that takes time. Here, carry these."

I was right; the messenger came next morning. Ralf had gone out down the road' to watch for him, and the two of them came back together, with the news that I was to ride to Tintagel immediately for my audience with the Queen.

I had not confessed it to Ralf, nor even hardly admitted it to myself, but I was apprehensive about the coming interview with Ygraine. On that night at Tintagel when the child was conceived I had been certain, in every way a seer can be certain, that the boy who was to be born would be given to me to foster, and that I should be the guardian of a great King. Uther himself, in his bitterness and anger over Gorlois'

death, had sworn to reject the "bastard" he had begotten, and from Marcia's letter I knew he was still of the same mind. But in the six long months since that March night I had had no direct message from Ygraine, and no means of knowing whether she would obey her husband, or whether as the time drew near she would find it impossible to face separation from her child. I had gone over in my mind a hundred times all the arguments I might bring to bear, remembering half incredulously the sureness with which I had spoken to her before, and to the King. Indeed my god had been with me then. And in truth, and how bitterly, was he gone from me now. There were even times when, lying wakeful in the night, I saw my sure visions in the past as chances, illusions, dreams fed by desire. I remembered the King's bitter words to me. "I see now what your magic is, this 'power' you talk of. It is nothing but human trickery, an attempt at statecraft which my brother taught you to like and to play for, and to believe was your mystery. You use even God to gain your ends. 'It is God who tells me to do these things, it is God who exacts the price, it is God who sees that others should pay...' For what, Merlin? For your ambition? And who is it pays this debt to God for carrying out your plans? Not you. The men who play your game for you, and pay the price. But you pay nothing." When I listened to such words as these, heard clearly in the nights when nothing else spoke to me, I wondered if I had read my vision of the future aright, or if everything I had done and dreamed of had been a mockery. Then, thinking of those who had paid with death for my dream, I would wonder if that death had not been kinder than this desert of self-doubt where I lay fixed, waiting in vain for even the smallest of my gods to speak to me. Oh, yes, I paid. Every night of those nine long months I paid.

But now it was day, and I would soon find out what the Queen wanted with me. I remember how restlessly I fidgeted around while Ralf saddled my horse and made ready. Maeve was with the maids in the kitchen, washing the sloes for the wine-making. A pan of them was on the stove, coming to the simmer. It seemed a strange memory to take with me on my visit to the Queen, the smell of sloe wine.

Suddenly I found the pungent sweetness intolerable, and made, choking, for the air outside. But then one of the girls came running to ask something about the mixing, and in answering her I forgot my sickness, and then all at once Ralf was at my elbow to summon me, and the three of us — Ralf, the messenger and I — were heading for Tintagel at a hand-gallop through the soft, blowing September noon.

It was only a few months since I had last seen Ygraine, but she seemed very much changed. At first I thought this was only the pregnancy; her once-slim body was greatly swollen and, though her face was full of the bloom of health, she had that pinched and shadowy look that women get around the eyes and mouth. But the change was deeper than this; it was in the expression of her eyes, in her gestures, the way she sat. Where before she had seemed young and burning, a wild bird beating her wings against the wires of the cage, now she seemed to brood, wings clipped, gravid, a creature of the ground.

She received me in her own chamber, a long room above the curtain wall, with a deep circular recess where the turret stood at the north-west corner. There were windows in the long wall facing south-west, and through these the sunlight fell freely, but the Queen was sitting by one of the narrow turret windows, through which came the breeze of the soft September afternoon, and the eternal noise of the sea on the rocks below. So much was still here, then, of the Ygraine I remembered. It was like her, I thought, to choose the wind and the sea sounds, rather than the sunlight. But even here, in spite of the light and air, one got the feeling of a cage: this was the room in which the young wife of Gorlois the old Duke had passed those pent years before the fateful trip to London where she had met the King. Now, after that brief flight, she was penned again, by her love for the King, and by the weight of his child. I never loved a woman, except one, but I have pitied them. Now, looking at the Queen, young, beautiful, and with her heart's desire, I pitied her even as I feared her for what she might say to me.

She was alone. I had been led by a chamberlain through the outer room where the women span and weaved and gossiped. Bright eyes looked at me in momentary curiosity, and the chattering was stilled, only to begin again as soon as I had passed. There was no recognition in their faces, only perhaps here and there some disappointment at the sight of so ordinary and humble a fellow. No diversion here. To them I was a messenger, to be received by the Queen in the King's absence; that was all.

The chamberlain rapped on the door of the inner chamber and then withdrew. Marcia, Ralf's grandmother, opened the door. She was a grey-haired woman with Ralf's eyes in a lined and anxious face, but in spite of her age she bore herself as straight as a girl. Though she was expecting me, I saw her eyes rest on me for a moment without recognition, then with a flicker of surprise. Even Ygraine looked startled for a moment, then she smiled and held out her hand.

"Prince Merlin. Welcome." Marcia curtsied to the air somewhere between me and the Queen, and withdrew. I went forward to kneel and kiss the Queen's hand.

"Madam."

She raised me kindly. "It was good of you to come so quickly for such a strange summons. I hope the journey was easy?"

"Very easy. We are well lodged with Maeve and Caw, and so far no one has recognized me, or even Ralf. Your secret is safe."

"I must thank you for taking so much care of it. I promise you I'd not have known you until you spoke."

I fingered my chin, smiling. "As you see, I've been preparing for some time."

"No magic this time?"

"As much as there was before," I said.

She looked at me straightly then, the beautiful dark-blue eyes meeting mine in the way I remembered, and I saw that this was still the old Ygraine, direct as a man, and with the same high pride. The heavy stillness was just an overlay, the milky calm that seems to come on women in pregnancy. Beneath the stillness, the placidity, was the old fire. She spread her hands out. "Looking at me now, do you still tell me that when you spoke to me that night in London, and promised me the King's love, there was no magic there?"