The Last Enchantment by Mary Stewart

  But for that, the interview might have been an echo of the one I had had with the younger Arthur, on the night of Mordred's begetting.

  "They say that I ordered this abominable thing!" He had hardly troubled to greet me. He strode about the room, the same strong, light lion's prowl of a walk, but the strides were a hand-span longer. The room was a cage restraining him. "When you know yourself how, in this very room, I said no, leave it to the god. And now this!"

  "It's what you wanted, isn't it?"

  "All those deaths? Don't be a fool, would I have done it like that? Or would you?"

  The question needed no reply, and got none. I said merely: "Lot was never remarkable for his wisdom and restraint, and besides, he was in a rage. You might say the action was suggested to him, or at least encouraged, from without."

  He threw me a quick, smouldering look. "By Morgause? So I understand."

  "I gather Ulfin has told you all the story? Did he also tell you of his own services in the matter?"

  "That he tried to mislead you, and let fate overtake the children? Yes, he told me that." A brief pause. "It was wrong, and I said so, but it's hard to be angry at devotion. He thought — he knew that I would have been easy at the baby's death. But those other children... Within a month of vows I made to protect the people, and my name a hissing in the streets..."

  "I think you can comfort yourself. I doubt if many men believe that you had anything to do with it."

  "No matter." He almost snapped it over his shoulder. "Some will, and that is enough. As for Lot, he had an excuse of a kind; an excuse, that is, that common men can understand. But I? Can I publish it abroad that Merlin the prophet told me the child might be a danger to me, so I had it murdered, and others along with it for fear it should escape the net? What sort of king does this make of me? Lot's sort?"

  "I can only repeat that I doubt if you are held to blame. Morgause's women were there within hearing, remember, and the guards knew where their orders came from. Lot's escort, too — they would know he was riding home bent on revenge, and I cannot imagine that Lot remained silent as to his intentions. I don't know what Ulfin has told you, but when I left Dunpeldyr most people were quoting Lot's orders as responsible for the massacre, and those who thought you ordered it think you did so on my advice."

  "So?" he said. He really was very angry. "I am the kind of king who cannot even decide for myself? If there is to be blame allotted for this between us, then I should take it, and not you. You know that well enough. You remember as well as I do exactly what was said."

  There was no reply to that, either, and I made none. He prowled up the room and back again before he went on:

  "Whoever gave the order, you can say if you like that I feel guilt in this. You would be right. But by all the gods in heaven and hell, I would not have acted like that! This is the kind of thing that lives with you, and after you! I shall not be remembered as the king who beat the Saxons out of Britain, but as the man who played Herod in Dunpeldyr and murdered the children!" He stopped. "What is there in that to smile at?"

  "I doubt if you need trouble yourself about the name you will leave behind you."

  "So you say."

  "So I said." The change in tense, or something about my tone, arrested him. I met his look, and held it. "Yes, I, Merlin, said so. I said so when I had power, and it is true. You are right to be distressed at this abomination, and you are right, too, to take some of the blame to yourself. But if this thing goes down in story as your act, you will still be absolved of blame. You can believe me. What else is to come will absolve you of anything."

  The anger had died, and he was thinking. He spoke slowly. "Do you mean that some danger will come of the child's birth and death? Something so terrible that men will see the murder as justified?"

  "I did not mean that, no —"

  "You made another prophecy, remember. You hinted to me — no, you told me — that Morgause's child might be a danger to me. Well, now the child is dead. Could this have been the danger? This smear on my name?" He paused, struck. "Or perhaps some day one of the men whose sons were murdered will wait for me with a knife in the dark? Is that the kind of thing you had in mind?"

  "I told you, I had nothing specific in mind. I did not say that the child 'might' be a danger to you, Arthur. I said he would. And, if my word is to be trusted, directly so, and not by a knife in another man's hand."

  He was still now as he had been restless before. He scowled at me, intent. "You mean that the massacre failed of its purpose? That the child — Mordred, did you say? — is still alive?"

  "I have come to think so."

  He drew a quick breath. "Then he was saved, somehow, from that wreck?"

  "It's possible. Either he was saved by chance, and is living somewhere, unknowing and unknown, as you did through your childhood — in which case you may encounter him some day, as Laius did Oedipus, and fall to him in all ignorance."

  "I'll risk that. Everyone falls to someone, some time. Or?"

  "Or he was never in the boat at all."

  He gave a slow nod. "Morgause, yes. It would fit. What do you know?"

  I told him the little I knew, and the conclusions I had drawn. "She must have known," I finished, "that Lot's reactions would be violent. We know she wanted to keep the child, and why. She would hardly have put her own child at risk on Lot's return. It's clear enough that she engineered the whole thing. Lind gave us more details later on. We know that she goaded Lot into the furious anger that dictated the massacre; we know, too, that she started the rumour that you were to blame. So what has she done? She has put Lot's fears to rest, and made her own position secure. And I believe, from watching her, and from what I know of her, that at the same time she has contrived —"

  "To keep her hostage to fortune." The flush had died from his skin. He looked cold, his eyes like slates with cold rain on them. This was an Arthur that other men had seen, but never I. How many Saxons had seen those eyes just before they died? He said bitterly: "I have been well paid already for that night of lust. I wish you had let me kill her then. That is one lady who had better never come near me again, unless she comes on her knees, and in sack-cloth." His tone made a vow of it. Then it changed. "When did you get back from the north?"

  "Yesterday."

  "Yesterday? I thought... I understood that this abomination took place months ago."

  "Yes. I stayed to watch events. Then after I began to make my guesses, I waited to see if Morgause might make some move to show me where the child was hidden. If Lind had been able to go back to her, and had dared to help me... but that was impossible. So I stayed until the news came that you had left Linnuis, and that Lot would soon be on his way home again. I knew that once he came home I could do nothing, so I came away."

  "I see. All that way, and now I keep you on your feet and rail at you as if you were a guard caught sleeping on duty. Will you forgive me?"

  "There's nothing to forgive. I have rested. But I should be glad to sit now. Thank you."

  This as he pulled a chair for me, and then sat himself in the big chair beyond the massive table. "You've said nothing in your reports about this idea that Mordred was still alive. And Ulfin never mentioned it as a possibility."

  "I don't think it crossed his mind. It was mainly after he had gone, and I had time to think and watch, myself, that I thought back and reached my own conclusion. There's still no proof, of course, that I am right. And nothing but the memory of an old foreboding to tell me whether or not it matters. But I can tell you one thing: from the idle contentment that the King's prophet feels in his bones these days, any threat from Mordred, direct or otherwise, will not show itself for a long time to come."

  He gave me a look where no shadow of anger remained. A smile sparked deep in his eyes. "So, I have time."

  "You have time. This was bad, and you were right to be angry; but it is already barely remembered, and soon will be forgotten in the blaze of your victories. Concerning them, I hear talk of nothin
g else. So put this aside now, and think about the next. Time spent looking back in anger is time wasted."

  The tension broke up at last in the familiar smile. "I know. A maker, never a breaker. How often have you told me? Well, I'm only mortal. I break first, to make room... All right, I'll forget it. There is plenty to think about and plan for, without wasting time on what is done. In fact" — the smile deepened — "I heard that King Lot is planning a move northward to his kingdom there. Perhaps, in spite of laying the blame on me, he feels uncomfortable in Dunpeldyr...? The Orkneys are fertile islands, they tell me, and fine in the summer months, but tend to be cut off from the main all winter?"

  "Unless the sea freezes."

  "And that," he said, with most unkingly satisfaction, "will surely be beyond even Morgause's powers. So distance will help us to forget Lot and his works..."

  His hand moved among the papers and tablets on the table. I was thinking that I should have looked farther afield for Mordred: if Lot had told his queen his plans for taking the court northward, she might have made some arrangement for sending the child there. But Arthur was speaking again.

  "Do you know anything about dreams?"

  I was startled. "Dreams? Well, I have had them."

  A glint of amusement. "Yes, that was a foolish question, wasn't it? I meant, can you tell me what they mean, other men's dreams?"

  "I doubt it. When my own mean something, they are clear beyond doubt. Why, has your sleep been troubled?"

  "For many nights now." He hesitated, shifting the things on the table. "It seems a trivial thing to trouble over, but the dream is so vivid, and it's always the same..."

  "Tell me."

  "I am alone, and out hunting. No hounds, just myself and my horse, hard on the track of a stag. This part varies a bit, but I always know that the chase has been going on for many hours. Then, just as we seem to be catching up with the stag, it leaps into a brake of trees and vanishes. At the same moment my horse falls dead beneath me. I am thrown to the turf. Sometimes I wake there, but when I go back to sleep again, I am still lying on the turf, by the bank of a stream, with the dead horse beside me. Then suddenly I hear sounds coming, a whole pack of them, and I sit up and look about me. Now, I have had the dream so many times that even while dreaming, I know what to expect, and I am afraid... It is not a pack of hounds that comes, but one beast — a strange beast, which, though I have seen it so many times, I can't describe. It comes crashing through the bracken and underbrush, and the noise it makes is like thirty couple of hounds questing. It takes no heed of me or my horse, but stops at the stream and drinks, and then goes on and is lost in the forest."

  "Is that the end?" I asked, as he paused.

  "No. The end varies, too, but always, after the questing beast, comes a knight, alone and on foot, who tells me that he also has killed a horse under him in the quest. Each time — each night it happens — I try to ask him what the beast is, and what is the quest, but just as he is about to tell me, my groom comes up with a fresh horse for me, and the knight, seizing it without courtesy, mounts and prepares to ride away. And I find myself laying hands on his rein to stop him, and begging him to let me undertake the quest, 'for,' I say, 'I am the High King, and it is for me to undertake any quest of danger.' But he strikes my hand aside, saying, 'Later. Later, when you need to, you may find me here, and I shall answer for what I have done.' And he rides away, leaving me alone in the forest. Then I wake, still with this sense of fear. Merlin, what does it mean?"

  I shook my head. "That I can't tell you. I might be glib with you, and say that this was a lesson in humility: that even the High King does not need to take all responsibility —"

  "You mean stand back and let you take the blame for the massacre? No, that's too clever by half, Merlin!"

  "I said I was being glib, didn't I? I have no idea what your dream meant. Probably nothing more than a mixture of worry and indigestion. But one thing I can tell you, and it's the same one that I keep repeating: what dangers lie in front of you, you will surmount, and reach glory; and whatever has happened, whatever you have done, or will do, you will die a worshipful death. I shall fade and vanish like music when the harp is dead, and men will call my end shameful. But you will live on, in men's imagination and hearts. Meanwhile, you have years, and time enough. So tell me what happened in Linnuis."

  We talked for a long time. Eventually he came back to the immediate future.

  "Until the ways open with spring, we can get on with the work here at Caerleon. You'll stay here for that. But in the spring I want you to start work on my new headquarters." I looked a query, and he nodded. "Yes, we spoke of this before. What was right in Vortigern's time, or even in Ambrosius', will not serve in a year or so from this. The picture is changing, over to the east. Come to the map and let me show you... That man of yours now, Gereint, there's a find. I've sent for him. He's the kind of man I need by me. The information he sent to Linnuis was beyond price. He told you about Eosa and Cerdic? We're gathering what information we can, but I'm sure he is right. The latest news is that Eosa is back in Germany, and he's promising the sun, moon, and stars, as well as a settled Saxon kingdom, to any who will join him..."

  For a while we discussed Gereint's information, and Arthur told me what had newly come from those sources. Then he went on: "He's right about the Gap, too, of course. We started work up there as soon as I got your reports. I sent Torre up... I believe the next push will come from the north. I'm expecting word from Caw and from Urbgen. But in the long run it will be here, in the southwest, that we have to make the stand for good and all. With Rutupiae as their base, and the Shore behind them, call it 'kingdom' or not, the big threat must come this way, here and here..." His finger was moving on the relief map of clay. "We came back this way from Linnuis. I got an idea of the lie of the land. But no more now, Merlin. They're making new maps for me, and we can sit over them later. Do you know the country thereabouts?"

  "No. I have travelled that road, but my mind was on other things."

  "There's little haste yet. If we can start in April, or May, and you work your usual miracle, that should be soon enough. Think about it for me, and then go and look when the time comes. Will you do that?"

  "Willingly. I have already looked... no, I meant in my mind. I've remembered something. There's a hill that commands this whole tract of country here... As far as I remember, it's flat-topped, and big enough to house an army, or a city, or whatever you want of it. And high enough. You can see Ynys Witrin from it — the Isle of Glass — and all the signal chain, and again clear for many miles both to south and west."

  "Show me," he said sharply.

  "Somewhere here." I placed a finger. "I can't be exact, and I don't think the map is, either. But I think this must be the stream it lies on."

  "Its name?"

  "I don't know its name. It's a hill with the stream curling round it, and the stream is called, I think, the Camel. The hill was a fortress before the Romans ever came to Britain, so even the early Britons must have seen it as a strategic point. They held it against the Romans."

  "Who took it?"

  "Eventually. Then they fortified it in their turn and held it."

  "Ah. Then there is a road."

  "Surely. This one, perhaps, that runs past the Lake from the Glass Isle."

  So I showed him on the map, and he looked, and talked, and went on the prowl again, and then the servants brought supper and lights and he straightened, pushing the hair back out of his eyes, and came up out of his planning as a diver comes up out of water.

  "Well, it will have to wait till Christmas is past. But go as soon as you can, Merlin, and tell me what you think. You shall have what help you need, you know that. And now sup with me, and I'll tell you about the fight at the Blackwater. I've told it already so many times that it's grown till I hardly recognize it myself. But once more, to you, is not unseemly."

  "Obligatory. And I promise you that I shall believe every word."

  He laug
hed. "I always knew I could rely on you."

  2

  IT WAS ON A SWEET, STILL DAY of spring when I turned aside from the road and saw the hill called Camelot.

  That was its name later; now it was known as Caer Camel, after the small stream that wound through the level lands surrounding it, and curved around near its base. It was, as I had told Arthur, a flat-topped hill, not high, but high enough over the surrounding flatlands to give a clear view on every hand, and steep-sided enough to allow for formidable defenses. It was easy to see why the Celts, and after them the Romans, had chosen it as a stronghold. From its highest point the view in almost every direction is tremendous. To the east a few rolling hills block the vision, but to south and west the eye can travel for miles, and northward also, as far as the coast. On the northwest side the sea comes within eight miles or so, the tides spreading and filtering through the marshy flatlands that feed the great Lake where stands the Isle of Glass. This island, or group of islands, lies on its glassy water like a recumbent goddess; indeed it has from time immemorial been dedicated to the Goddess herself, and her shrine stands close beside the king's palace. Above it the great beacon top of the Tor is plainly visible, and, many miles beyond that, right on the coast of the Severn Channel, may be seen the next beacon point of Brent Knoll.

  The hills of the Glass Isle, with the low and waterlogged levels surrounding them, are known as the Summer Country. The king was a man called Melwas, young, and a staunch supporter of Arthur; he gave me lodging during my first surveys of Caer Camel, and seemed pleased that the High King should plan to form his main stronghold at the edge of his territory. He was deeply interested in the maps I showed him, and promised help of every kind, from the loan of local workmen to a pledge of defense, should that be needed, while the work was in progress.

  King Melwas had offered to show me the place himself, but for my first survey I preferred to be alone, so managed to put him off with civilities of some kind. He and his young men rode with me for the first part of the way, then turned aside into a track that was little more than a causeway through the marshlands, and went cheerfully off to their day's sport. That is a great country for hunting; it teems with wildfowl of every land. I saw a lucky omen in the fact that almost as soon as they left me, King Melwas flew his falcon at a flock of immigrant birds coming in from the southeast, and within seconds the hawk had killed cleanly and come straight back to the master's fist. Then, with shouting and laughter, the band of young men rode off among the willows, and I went on my way alone.