Part 19 (1/2)

My lord Drustan, your back!”

Before the words were done Drustan had wheeled his horse. He met the two of them together. Agravain struck first. The older knight smashed the blow to one side and cut him across the head. The sword's edge sliced deep into metal and leather, and bit into the neck between shoulder and throat. Agravain fell, blood spurting. Gaheris yelled and drove his horse in, his sword hacking down as Drustan stooped from the saddle to withdraw his blade. But Drustan's horse reared back. Its armed hoofs caught Gaheris's mount on the chest. It squealed and swerved, and the blow missed. Drustan drove his own horse in, striking straight at Gaheris's s.h.i.+eld, and sent him, off-balance as he was, cras.h.i.+ng to the ground, where he lay still.

Gareth was there at the gallop. Drustan, swinging to face him, saw that his sword was still in its sheath, and put his own weapon up.

Here the men-at-arms, having left their burden, came hastening back. At their master's orders, they roughly bound Agravain's wound, helped Gaheris, giddy but unharmed, to his feet, then caught the brothers' horses for them. Drustan, coldly formal, offered the hospitality of the castle ”until your brother shall be healed of his hurt,” but Gaheris, as ungracious as he had been treacherous, merely cursed and turned away. Drustan signed to the troopers, who closed in. Gaheris, shouting again about ”my kinsman the High King,” tried to resist, but was overpowered. The invitation had become an arrest. At length the troopers rode off at walking pace, with Gaheris between them, his brother's unconscious body propped against him.

Gareth watched them go, making no move to follow. He had not stirred a hand to help Gaheris.

”Gareth?” said Drustan. His sword was clean and sheathed. ”Gareth, what choice have I?”

”None,” said Gareth. He shook the reins and brought his horse round alongside Drustan's. They rode together towards Caer Mord.

The roadway was empty in the growing dusk. A thin moon rose over the sea. Mordred, emerging at last from the shadow, rode south.

That night he slept in the woods. It was chilly, but wrapped in his cloak he was warm enough, and for supper there was something left of the bread and meat the girl had given him. His horse, tethered on a long rein, grazed in the glade. Next day, early, he rode on, this time to the south-west. Arthur would be on his way to Caerleon, and he would meet him there. There was no haste. Drustan would already have sent a courier with the news of Lamorak's murder. Since Mordred had not appeared on the scene the King would no doubt a.s.sume the truth, that the brothers by some trick had managed to evade him. His a.s.signment had not been Lamorak's safety; that was Lamorak's own concern, and he had paid for the risk he had taken; Mordred's task had been to find Gaheris and take him south. Now, once the twins'

hurts were healed, Drustan would see to that. Mordred could still stay out of the affair, and this he was sure the King would approve. Even if the brothers did not survive the King's anger, the other troublemakers among the Young Celts, a.s.suming Mordred to be ambitious for whatever power he could grasp for himself, might turn to him and invite him to join their counsels. This, he suspected, the King would soon ask him to do. And if you do, murmured that other, ice-cold voice in his brain, and the campaign goes on that is to unseat Bedwyr and destroy him, who better to take his place in the King's confidence, and the Queen's love, than you, the King's own son?

It was a golden October, with chill nights and bright, crisp days. The mornings glittered with a dusting of bright frost, and in the evenings the sky was full of the sound of rooks going home. He took his time, sparing his horse, and, where he could, lodging in small, simple places and avoiding the towns. The loneliness, the falling melancholy of autumn, suited his mood. He went by smooth hills and gra.s.sy valleys, through golden woods and by steep rocky pa.s.ses where, on the heights, the trees were already bare. His good bay horse was all the company he needed. Though the nights were cold, and grew colder, he always found shelter of a sort-a sheep-cote, a cave, even a wooded bank-and there was no rain. He would tether the bay to graze, eat the rations he carried, and roll himself in his cloak for the night, to wake in the grey, frost-glittering morning, wash in an icy stream, and ride on again.

Gradually the simplicity, the silence, the very hards.h.i.+ps of the ride soothed him; he was Medraut the fisher-boy again, and life was simple and clean.

So he came at last to the Welsh hills, and Viroconium where the four roads meet. And there, at the crossways, like another welcome from home, was a standing stone with its altar at its foot.

He slept that night in a thicket of hazel and holly by the crossroads, in the lee of a fallen trunk. The night was warmer, with stars out. He slept, and dreamed that he was in the boat with Brude, netting mackerel for Sula to split and dry for winter. The nets came in laden with leaping silver, and across the hush of the waves he could hear Sula singing.

He woke to thick mist. The air was warmer; the sudden change in temperature overnight had brought the fog. He shook the crowded droplets from his cloak, ate his breakfast, then on a sudden impulse took the remains of the food and laid it on the altar at the foot of the standing stone.

Then, moved by another impulse which he would not begin to recognize, he took a silver piece from his wallet and laid it beside the food. Only then did he realize that, as in his dream, someone was singing.

It was a woman's voice, high and sweet, and the song was one that Sula had sung. His flesh crept. He thought of magic, and waking dreams. Then out of the mist, no more than twelve paces away, came a man leading a mule with a girl mounted sideways on its back. He took them at first for a peasant with his wife going out to work, and then saw that the man was dressed in a priest's robe, and the girl as simply, sackcloth and wimple, and the pretty feet dangling against the mule's ribs were bare. They were Christians, it appeared; a wooden cross hung from the man's waist, and a smaller one lay on the girl's bosom. There was a silver bell on the mule's collar, which rang as it moved.

The priest checked in his stride when he saw the armed man with the big horse, then, as Mordred gave him a greeting, smiled and came forward.

”Maridunum?” he repeated, in response to Mordred's query. He pointed to the road that led due west.

”That way is best. It is rough, but pa.s.sable everywhere, and it is shorter than the main road south by Caerleon. Have you come far, sir?”

Mordred answered him civilly, giving him what news he could. The man did not speak with a peasant's accent. He might have been someone gently bred, a courtier, even. The girl, Mordred saw now, was beautiful. Even the bare feet, dangling by the mule's ribs, were clean and white, fine-boned and veined with blue. She sat silently watching him, and listening, in no way discomposed by his look. Mordred caught the priest's glance at the altar stone where the silver coin gleamed beside the food. ”Do you know whose altar this is? Or whose stone at the crossways?”

The man smiled. ”Not mine, sir. That is all I know. That is your offering?”

”Yes.”

”Then G.o.d knows who will receive it,” said the man, gently, ”but if you have need of blessing, sir, then my G.o.d can, through me, give it to you. Unless,” he added, on a troubled afterthought, ”there is blood on your hands?”

”No,” said Mordred. ”But there is a curse that says I shall have. How do I lift that?”

”A curse? Who laid it?”

”A witch,” said Mordred, shortly, ”but she is dead.”

”Then the curse may well have died with her.”

”But before her, a fate was spoken of, and by Merlin.”

”What fate?”

”That I cannot tell you.”

”Then ask him.”

”Ah,” said Mordred. ”Then it is true he is still there?”

”They say so. He is there in his cave on the hill, for those who have the need or the fortune to find him.

Well then, sir, I cannot help you, other than give you my Christian blessing, and send you on your way.”

He raised a hand, and Mordred bowed his head, then thanked him, hesitated over a coin, decided against it, and rode on. He took the west road to Maridunum. Soon the mule's bell died out in the distance, and he was alone again.

He came to the hill called Bryn Myrddin at dusk, and slept again by a wood. When he woke there was mist again, with the sun rising behind it. The haze was tinged with rose, and a faint glimmer showed on the grey trunks of the beech trees.

He waited patiently, eating the hard biscuit and raisins that were his breakfast ration. The world was silent, no movement but the slow eddying of the mist between the trees, and the steady cropping of the horse. There was no haste. He had ceased to feel any curiosity about the old man whom he sought, the King's enchanter of a thousand legends who had been his enemy (and since Morgause had said so, he took it without question as a lie) since the day of his conception. Nor was there any apprehension. If the curse could be lifted, then no doubt Merlin would lift it. If not, then no doubt he would explain it.

Quite suddenly, the mist was gone. A slight breeze, warm for the time of year, rustled through the wood, swept the eddies aside and dispersed them down the hillside like smoke from a bonfire. The sun, climbing the hilltop across the valley, blazed scarlet and gold into his eyes. The landscape dazzled.

He mounted, turning towards the sun. Now he saw where he was. The travelling priest's directions had been accurate and vivid enough to guide anyone even through this rolling and featureless landscape.

”By the time you reach the wood, you will have gone past the upper slopes of Bryn Myrddin. Go down to the stream, cross it, and you will find a track. Turn uphill again and ride as far as a grove of thorn trees.

There is a little cliff, with a path curling up beside it. At the head of the cliff is the holy well, and by it the enchanter's cave.”

He came to the thicket of whitethorn. There, beside the cliff, he dismounted and tied the horse. He trod quickly up the path and came out on level ground and into mist again, thick and still and stained red gold by the sun, standing as still as lake water over the turf. He could see nothing. He felt his way forward.

The turf was level and fine. At his feet, peering, he could just discern small late daisies, frost-nipped, and shut against the damp. Somewhere to his left was the trickle of water. The holy well? He groped forward, but could not find it. He trod on a stone, which rolled away, almost bringing him to his knees.

The silence, broken only by the trickle of the spring, was eerie. In spite of himself, he felt the chill p.r.i.c.kles of sweat creep down his spine.

He stopped. He stood squarely, and shouted aloud.

”Ho, there! Is anyone there?”

An echo, ringing from the wall of mist, rebounded again and again from the invisible depths of the valley, and died into silence.

”Is anyone there? This is Mordred, Prince of Britain, to speak with Merlin his kinsman. I come in peace.