Here Lies Arthur (20 page)

XLV

 

I reached my master’s house soon after sunrise. Tethered Dewi outside in the slanting, orange light. Quiet as a grave it felt, as I pushed in past the dangling talismans. Dead birds and knotted twine. An armour of hoar-frost on everything. When I spoke into the silence my breath made steam in the cold air.

“Master?”

The boy Cadwy was curled on the floor by the embers of the kitchen fire. I left him sleeping and went into Myrddin’s bed-space. A sickroom stink came out at me as I lifted the curtain at the doorway. My nose told me the story I’d heard at Din Branoc was true, even before my eyes got used to the curtained gloom and I made out Myrddin lying on the bed.

I couldn’t believe a man could have shrunk so, aged so, in the time I’d been away. I felt like the prince in the story, the one who sails away to see the Blessed Isles, and comes home after a month at sea to find a hundred
years have passed on land and everyone he knows is gone to bones and ashes.

Myrddin wasn’t quite a corpse yet. He looked like one, shrunk as he was, yellowish, with his mouth twisted sideways and his eyes sunk deep. But he was breathing, and when I leaned closer he grunted and his eyes came open.

I don’t think he knew me. I pulled off my cap, let my dead-bracken hair hang down. “It’s me, master.”

He frowned. His breath came harsh and rusty. It sounded like fate sawing at the thread of his life with a blunt knife. When he spoke, he didn’t make words, just grunts and growlings. It took me a while to understand that he was trying to say my name. One hand flapped on top of his blankets, trying to reach for me. The angry questions I’d been saving up for him all night drained out of me and I sat down on the edge of the bed and pressed his hand against my face.

“Gwyna?” he asked.

Cadwy appeared in the doorway, his hair flat on one side where he’d lain pressed against the warm tiles by the fire.

“It’s just me,” I said. “Gwyna. I’m back.”

I washed Myrddin’s blankets and changed the straw in his mattress. With Cadwy’s help I scrubbed down the walls of his chamber, trying to get rid of that stale sickroom smell. I fed him bread softened in goat’s milk. The day deepened round us, fat snowflakes dithering past the windows like goose-down. Myrddin talked, and
slowly I learned to fish words out of the badgery growls and owlish hoots he made.

He said, “That fool Arthur came here. Said I should go into Sulis, to the surgeons’ care. As if I’d trust those butchers, bleeding and poisoning me.”

He said, “Arthur wanted some trick that would defeat Medrawt. I told him I’m too old for tricks. No more tricks. When the time comes, he’ll have to fight Medrawt the old way.”

He said, “Ah, but you remember the sword, Gwyna? The sword from the water. That was a thing! What a tale!”

It was time to be a girl again. I itched to be gone, to ride back to Peredur. But Peredur would be safe at Din Branoc, and someone had to nurse the old man. Cadwy had done his best, but nursing is woman’s work.

I looked in the chest I’d found my man’s gear in, and there I found my old dress laid, pressed between sheets of linen and sprinkled with dried lavender.

“Master done that,” said Cadwy, watching me take it out and hold it up against myself. “That morning we woke up and you were gone, he went chasing off to Sulis to bring you home. When he came back, it was liked he’d aged ten years. He said you’d not been seen there. Said you’d ridden to join Cei’s war-band, and would be killed for sure. Said he had to go after you. Said it would be his fault if you died. He sent me outside to saddle his horse, and set about folding up your things neat. When I came back in I found him lying on the floor there by the chest. All he could say was Gwyna at first. Not even that very clear.”

I felt like I was dreaming. Had Myrddin really cared about me so much my running off could strike him dumb and cripple him? Or had he just been angry that I’d disobeyed him? It was easier to believe that. But when I sat by him he didn’t seem angry. He held my hand and said, “Gwyna.”

All that night and the next and the one after I sat by Myrddin’s bed. Sometimes he slept, but mostly he talked. He talked and I listened. By the end, his voice was almost the last thing left of him.

“You shouldn’t have gone with them, Gwyna. When I thought of you riding off with Cei’s band, and death waiting for you in the hills, something in me broke.”

I didn’t like that. What did he expect? Pity? I’d used up all my pity on Cei and Gwenhwyfar and Bedwyr. I pushed myself backwards, away from the stench of his breath. “And how did you know death was waiting for me? You’d had Arthur tell the Irishman to betray us, that’s how!”

Myrddin turned his head a little, looking at me. “You were always sharp, Gwyn.”

“Not sharp enough, or I’d have guessed your plan and warned Cei what he was riding to!” My shadow was huge on the wall behind his bed. It raised its fists, like it was getting ready to smash his eggshell skull.

He said, “It had to be done. Men were talking of Cei as a rival to Arthur. He had to be removed. At least if the Irishman did it Arthur wouldn’t be left with the blood of another kinsman on his hands. Arthur’s our hope, Gwyna. He’s the hope of Britain.”

I spat on him. I turned my back and flung myself to the far side of the room and hit the wall hard with both my hands. “Some hope!” I shouted. “Arthur? You’ve wasted your life building him high and wrapping him up in stories, but Arthur hasn’t cleaned the Saxons away. They’re still sitting on their stolen lands, growing stronger and stronger, and laughing at us while we fight among ourselves. Arthur doesn’t care about anything but making his own self fat and rich, and he hasn’t even managed to do that very well. And all you can do is make up stories, make up lies, try and turn him into something that he isn’t. And your stories won’t last any longer than Arthur does. When he dies, the stories will die with him, and he’ll be forgotten. And so will you. And so will all of it.”

Long silence after that. Wind lifting the roof-tiles. I wouldn’t look at Myrddin for a time. When I did I saw a silvery line, like the trail of a snail, shining on his face. I looked closer. His eyes were tight shut, the yellowish eyelids wrinkly like the skin of an old apple. Tears seeped out from under them. He was weeping.

“Master?” I asked, softer. “Why did you keep me? After the waterfall, I mean.”

He didn’t answer. I thought he’d fallen asleep. His eyes stayed shut and the tears kept coming. But after a minute he spoke again. Still not an answer, exactly. Just another story. But at least it was one I hadn’t heard before.

XLVI

 

Out east somewhere. Out in the round green downs behind Noviomagus. So many years back the Saxons hadn’t quite settled there yet. But this summer night one of their war-keels has slid out of its shelter in the coves of Vectis and come to drop its crew of fighters in the riverside woods. They come fast up the white roads in the moonlight. Flames leap from kindled villas.

And suddenly a boy is running and running, with the smoke of his home going up into the sky behind him. And behind him, running faster, comes a Saxon raider, reaching for him, catching him, flinging him at the chalk ground.

“I grew up a slave,” said Myrddin. “I grew up like a beast, shoving a plough for my Saxon master through some piece of Britain that he’d stolen. But I listened to my fellow slaves telling stories, about how the Saxons had come, and how it had been before, back in the days of Rome-in-Britain. Civilization. Peace.”

And as soon as he was old and strong enough, he
started planning his escape. He watched the men and women around him, Saxon and slave alike, and learned the ways their eyes and minds and hearts worked, till he knew how to deceive them. He watched the seasons and the skies, making himself weather-wise. One night, when he knew a fog would rise, he ran off, leaving behind him a litter of clues that set his Saxon owners searching for him in every direction but the one he’d really gone. They hunted for him for a night and day, and then decided that he’d been a magician, and had turned himself into a vapour and blown away on the wind.

Safe in the ancient forests, he fled west, always west, keeping the sunset ahead of him till he reached country where there were no Saxons. He’d picked up a few handy conjuring tricks from travelling men he met upon the road, and he remembered stories he’d heard, and spun better ones of his own. Tall tales and hedge-magic paid his way from town to town, until at last he came to Urbs Legionis, where Ambrosius had his headquarters that year. He wasn’t a fighter, but he hung around the fringes of the army, sure that Ambrosius was the man who’d smash the Saxons and bring back the light of better days. And when Ambrosius died and the war-bands of Britain took to fighting each other instead of Saxons, he chose the one he thought the strongest, the armoured cavalry of Arthur, Uthr’s son. Oh, he wasn’t stupid; he could see that Arthur only wanted what the others wanted: power and land. But maybe, if Arthur could be made strong enough, that wouldn’t matter. The Romans only wanted power and land, and
they ended up uniting half the world. So he tried to use his wits and stories to make Arthur great, in the hope he’d finish what Ambrosius began.

And all those years he never had a wife. Never had children. Never wanted any. Said he was too busy. Said they’d have slowed him down when he was travelling. He’d already lost one family. He couldn’t live with the fear of losing another. He still remembered the night the raiders came, and how the screams of his mother and sisters had sounded among the dark downs, calling out to God, who took no more notice of them than of the cries of the owls in the woods.

And then, one wintry night, out in the wild western hills, below a place that Arthur’s men were burning, he stopped beside a river-pool to watch a girl claw her way out of the water. He’d learned not to let himself feel pity for the waifs that Arthur’s wars left homeless. He told himself, as he watched her dry out beside his campfire, that he had only rescued her because she would be useful. But something about her touched his heart. Afraid and all alone, she put him in mind of himself.

He meant to let her play her part, then leave her be. But afterwards, riding away from the river with Arthur’s band while they talked about the miracle of the sword from the water he found that he could not forget the girl. How bright she was. How brave. Just the same age as he’d been when the Saxons took him. Abandoning her was like leaving his own self behind. As soon as he could he crept away from Arthur’s victory feast and went back to the waterfall, and found her.

At first she’d been a worry to him. He’d dressed her as a boy and called her Gwyn, but there was always a fear she’d be discovered, that the truth would come out, and Arthur would smell some insult in what he’d done. But months went by, and the girl seemed well able to play the role he’d put her in.

He started to enjoy travelling with her. Liked waking to her tuneless singing as she made up his fire, or readied his breakfast. Liked answering her endless questions. Teaching her things. Watching her learn, and grow. Her high seriousness as she picked the yellow-white specks of flies’ eggs from her pony’s coat. He started to feel proud of her. The way she’d exposed that old fraudulent so-called saint down on the sea-coast that time! And kept quiet about it after, as if she’d thought Myrddin hadn’t the wit to go and ask among the monks and work out for himself what she had done…

He started to see why even hard, strong-headed men like Cei went soft when they spoke about their children.

And when she grew older, and he couldn’t keep up the pretence that she was a boy, he made a girl of her again. It had cost him dear, to go away that year and stay away while she learned women’s ways. If he’d been in Aquae Sulis to keep Arthur in check, things might have gone better afterwards. But at the time, the girl had seemed more important. He was starting to fear that Arthur was not the man he’d hoped. Arthur couldn’t unite the greedy, squabbling Britons, and maybe no one could. But if the girl could grow up happy maybe that would be enough. Enough reward for one life’s work.

He found her a place in the household of Arthur’s
wife. He was startled by how much it hurt him to let her go. When she stood weeping on that road in the west and said, “I don’t want to leave you,” he had had to hide his face from her in case she saw his tears. It would have been so easy to give in to her and let her stay. But she deserved better than a life used up in serving an old man. He wanted her to have the company of other girls, and the hope of a good marriage one day, and children of her own. So he made up a story to save her pride, and to give him a reason to see her sometimes. Told her she’d be his spy in Gwenhwyfar’s house.

He half hoped Bedwyr might take the girl, after Bedwyr was wounded. No man could have asked for a better wife, and he knew the girl’s upbringing had made her impatient with the settled, cow-ish ways of women. She would be happier with a husband who needed her help.

Then she told him of Gwenhwyfar’s betrayal. A double betrayal, it seemed to him, for not only was Gwenhwyfar deceiving Arthur, she was making the girl part of her deception. What would happen when Arthur learned of it? What would he do to a girl who had helped his wife insult him?

He’d had to tell Arthur, of course, before Arthur found out for himself. He’d thought he’d be able to control Arthur’s temper. Thought he’d snatch the girl safe out of the storm that followed. But she’d grown headstrong. He’d
taught
her to be headstrong, and he felt sorry for it, for it made her put herself in danger’s path. Made her go riding off to her death.

He had folded her dress with his own trembling
hands. Folded and smoothed it and pressed it in linen, and scattered lavender on it to keep the moths and mould away. And all the weeks since, in his sickness, he had prayed to the God he did not believe in to send her back to him. And now, at the very end, here she was, leaning over his bed, watching him talk, a little small frown between her eyebrows, and her hand holding his.

“Gwyna,” he said. “You’ve been a good daughter to me. And a good son, too.”