"And found out what?"
"Enough to know that he has been deceiving you from the beginning." Then, striking a fist to his knee, with a sudden violence of exasperation: "Merlin, Merlin, are you so blind? I would swear that no man could be so deceived, except that I know you...Even now, a few minutes ago, watching him down here by the stream, you saw nothing?"
"What should I see? I imagine he had been collecting alder bark. He knew we needed more, and you can see where that tree has been stripped. And he was carrying watercress."
"You see? Your eyes are good enough for that, but not to see what any other man in the world would have seen — if not straight away, then within days of meeting him! I suspected it in those first few minutes there in your courtyard, while you told me the’true dream,' and then when I made inquiries I found that it was true. We both watched the same person running uphill just now. You saw a boy carrying watercress, but what I saw was a girl."
I cannot recall at what point during his speech I knew what he was going to tell me; before he got halfway it came like a truth already known; the heat before the lightning strikes, the silence after the lightning that is filled with the coming thunder. What the wise enchanter with his god-sent visions had not perceived, the young man, versed in the ways of women, had seen straight away. It was true. I could only marvel, dumbly, that I had been so easy to deceive. Ninian. The dim-seen figure in the mist, so like the lost boy that I had greeted her and put the words "boy" and "Ninian" into her head before she could even speak. Told her I was Merlin; offered her the gift of my power and magic, gifts that another girl — the witch Morgause — had tried in vain to prise from me, but which I had hastened eagerly to lay at this stranger's feet.
Small wonder that she had taken time to think, to arrange her affairs, to cut her hair and change her dress and gather her courage, before coming to me at Applegarth. That she had refused to share the house, preferring the rooms off the colonnade with their separate stair; that she had taken no interest in Mora, but that the two of them were so easy together. Mora had guessed, then? I swept the thought aside as others crowded. The speed with which she had learned from me; the power, with all its suffering, already accepted with dread, with resignation, and finally with willing joy. The grave, gentle look, the gestures of a worship carefully offered, and as carefully constrained. The way she had gone from me when I spoke so lightly of women disturbing men's lives. Her swift condemnation of Guinevere, rather than of Bedwyr, for giving way to a hurtful love. Then, with quickening memory, the feel of her dark hair under my hand, the sweet bones of her face, and the grey eyes watching in the firelight, and the disturbing love that had so troubled me, and now need trouble me no more. It came to me, like the sunlight breaking through the birch trees on the forgotten bluebells of the copse where, long ago, a girl had offered me love, then mocked me for impotence, that this time no jealous god need come between us. At last I was free to give, along with all the rest of the power and effort and glory, the manhood that until now had been the god's alone. The abdication I had feared, and feared to grudge, would not be a loss, but rather a new joy gained.
I came back to the sunshine and a different birch-wood and the faded bluebells of June, to see Arthur staring.
"You don't even look surprised. Did you guess?"
"No. But I should have done; if not by any of the signs that were obvious to you, then by the way I felt...and feel now." I smiled at his look. "Oh, yes. An old fool if you like. But now I know for certain that my gods are merciful."
"Because you think you love this girl."
"Because I love her."
"I thought you were a wise man," he said.
"And because I am a wise man, I know too well that love cannot be gainsaid. It's too late, Arthur. Whatever comes of it, it is too late. It has happened. No, listen. It has all come clear now, like sunlight on water. All the prophecies I have made, things in the future that I have foreseen with dread...I see them approaching me now, and the dread has gone. I have said often enough that prophecy is a two-edged sword; the gods are delphic; their threats, like their promises of fortune, turn in men's hands." I lifted my head and looked up through the gently moving leaves. "I told you that I had seen my own end. There was a dream I had once, a vision in the flame. I saw the cave in the Welsh hillside, and the girl my mother, whose name was Niniane, and the young prince my father, lying together. Then through and over the vision I saw myself, grey-haired, and a young girl with a cloud of dark hair, and closed eyes, and I thought that she, too, was Niniane. And so she was. So she is. Do you see? If she has any part in my end, then it will be merciful."
He got to his feet so abruptly that the hound, curled there, jumped aside, ridge-backed and looking round for danger. Arthur took three steps away from me, and three back to stand in front of me. He drove one fist into the other palm with such violence that the mare, a dozen paces away, startled and then stood, ears erect, trembling. "How do you expect me to sit here and listen to you talking of your death? You told me once that you would end in a tomb, alive, you thought it would be in Bryn Myrddin. Now, I suppose, you will ask me to let you go back there so that this — this witch can leave you there entombed!"
"Not quite. You have not understood —"
"I understand as well as you do, and I think that I remember more! Have you forgotten Morgause's curse? That women's magic would snare you at the end? And what was promised you once by the Queen Ygraine, my mother? You told me what she said. That if Gorlois of Cornwall died, then she would spend the rest of her life praying to any gods there are that you would die betrayed by a woman."
"Well?" I said. "And have I not been snared? And have I not been betrayed? And this is all it is."
"Are you so sure? Forgive me for reminding you yet again that you don't know women. Remember Morgause. She tried to persuade you to teach her your magic, and when you would not, she took power another way...the way we know about. Now this girl has succeeded where Morgause failed. Tell me one thing: if she had come to you as herself, as a woman, would you have taken her in and taught her your skills?"
"I can't tell you that. Probably not. But the point is, surely, that she did not? The deception was not hers in the first instance; it was forced on her by my error, and that error in its turn was forced on me by the chance that led me first to meet and love the boy Ninian who was drowned. If you cannot see the god at work there, I am sorry."
"Yes, yes — " impatiently, " — but you have just reminded me that this is a delphic god. What you see now as a joy may be the very death you have dreaded."
"No," I said. "You must take it the other way. That a fate long dreaded can prove, in the end, merciful, like this’betrayal.' My long nightmare of entombment in the dark, alive, may prove to be such another. But whatever it is, I cannot avoid it. What will come, will come. The god chooses the time and the form. After all these years, if I did not trust in him, I would be the fool you think me."
"So you'll go back to this girl, keep her by you, and go on teaching her your art?"
"Just that. I could hardly stop now. I have sown the seeds of power in her, and as surely as if it were a tree growing, or a child I had begotten, I cannot stop it. And the other seed has been sown, for good or ill. I love her dearly, and were she ten times an enchantress, I can only thank my god for it, and take her to me more nearly than before."
"I cannot bear to see you hurt."
"She will not hurt me."
"If she does," he said evenly, "witch or no witch, lover or no lover, I shall deal with her as she deserves. Well, it seems there is no more to be said. We had better go back. That basket looks heavy. Let me take it for you."
"No, a moment. There is one more thing."
"Yes?"
He was standing straight in front of me where I still sat on the birch log. Against the delicate boughs of the birches and the shifting of the leaves in the soft breeze he looked tall and powerful, the jewels at shoulder and belt and sword-hilt glittering as i
f with their own life. He looked, not young, but full of the richness of life, a man in the flower of his strength; a leader among kings. His face was contained. There was nothing to tell me what he would say, what he might do, after I had spoken.
I said slowly: "Since we have been talking of last things, there is one other thing I have to tell you. Another vision, which it is my duty to bring to you. It's something that I have seen, not once but several times. Bedwyr your friend, and Guinevere your Queen, love one another."
I had been looking away from him as I spoke, not wanting to see how the wounding stroke went home. I suppose I had expected anger, an outburst of violence, at the very least surprise and furious disbelief. Instead there was silence, a silence so drawn out that at length I looked up, to see in his face nothing of anger or even surprise, but a kind of sternly held calmness that tempered only compassion and regret.
I said, not believing it: "You knew?"
"Yes," he said, quite simply, "I know." There was a pause, while I looked for words and found none. He smiled. There was something in the smile that did not speak of youth or power at all, but of a wisdom perhaps greater, because more purely human, than is ascribed to me. "I do not have vision, Merlin, but I see what is before my eyes. And do you not think that others, who guess and whisper, have not been at pains to tell me? It sometimes seems to me that the only ones who have given no hint by-word or look have been Bedwyr and the Queen themselves."
"How long have you known this?"
"Since the Melwas affair."
And I had never guessed. His kindness to the Queen, her relief and growing happiness, had told me nothing. "Then why did you leave Bedwyr with her when you went north?"
"To let them have something, however little." The sun was in his eyes, making him frown. He spoke slowly. "You have just been telling me that love cannot be ruled or stopped. If you are prepared to accept love, knowing that it may well bring you to your death, then how much more should I accept this, knowing that it cannot destroy friendship or faith?"
"You believe that?"
"Why not? Everything else you have ever told me has been true. Think back now over your prophecies about my marriage, the’white shadow' that you saw when Bedwyr and I were boys, the guenkwyvar that touched us both. You said then that it would not blur or destroy the faith we had in one another."
"I remember."
"Very well. When I married my first Guenever you warned me that the marriage might be unwholesome for me. That little girl’unwholesome'?" He laughed, without mirth. "Well, now we know the truth of the prophecy. Now we have seen the shadow. And now we see it falling across Bedwyr's life and mine. But if it is not to destroy our faith in one another, what would you have me do? I must give Bedwyr the trust and freedom to which he is entitled. Am I a cottager, with nothing in my life but a woman and a bed I am to be jealous of, like a cock on his dunghill? I am a king, and my life is a king's; she is a queen, and childless, so her life must be less than a woman's. Is she to wait year by year in an empty bed? To walk, to ride, to take her meals with an empty place beside her? She is young, and she has a girl's needs, of companionship and of love. By your god or any god, Merlin, if, during the years of days that my work takes me from court, she is ever to take a man to her bed, should I not be thankful it is Bedwyr? And what would you have me do, or say? Anything I say to Bedwyr would eat at the root of the very trust we have, and it would avail nothing against what has already happened. Love, you tell me, cannot be gainsaid. So I keep silent, and so will you, and by that token will faith and friendship stay unbroken. And we can count her barrenness a mercy." The smile again. "So the god works for us both in twisted ways, does he not?"
I got to my feet. The birches moved and the sun poured down. The stream glittered against my eyes, so that they watered.
I said quietly: "You see? This is the final mercy. You no longer need either my strength or my counsel. Whatever you may need after this of warning or prophecy, you can still find at Applegarth. As for me, let your servant go in peace, back to my own home and my own hills, and whatever waits for me there." I picked the basket up and handed it to him. "But in the meantime, will you come back with me to Applegarth, and see her?"
10
When we reached Applegarth it seemed deserted. It was still very early. Varro had not yet come to start work, and I had seen Mora from a distance, making her way toward the village market with her basket on her arm.
The mare knew the way to the stables, and trotted off, with a clap on the flank. We went into the house. The girl was there, sitting on her accustomed stool in the window embrasure, reading. Not far from her, on the stone sill, perched a redbreast, picking up the crumbs she had scattered.
She must have heard the horse, and assumed either that I had ridden that morning, instead of walking, or that a messenger had come very early from Camelot. She had obviously not expected the King himself. When I went into the room she looked up, with a smile and a "Good morning," and then, seeing Arthur's shadow fall across the doorway behind me, got to her feet and let the book roll together between her hands. "I'll leave you to talk, shall I?" she said, and turned, in no haste, to go.
I started to warn her. "Ninian — " I began, but then Arthur came quickly past me into the room, and stopped just inside the door, his eyes on her face.
Be sure that I was staring, too.
Now that I knew, I wondered how I had not always known. For eighteen, it was hardly a man's face; an immature eighteen might have had that smooth cheek and sweet mouth, and her body under the shapeless clothing was as slim as a boy's but the hands were not a young man's hands, nor were the slender feet. I can only think that my own memory of the boy Ninian had kept me, blindly, to the image of him as he had been at sixteen: my desire to have him had been strong enough to let me re-create him, first in the dimly seen ghost of the Lake, then in this girl, so near to me, so closely watched, and yet not seen, through all the past long months. And then, perhaps (I thought), she had been able to use a little of my own magic against me, to keep me blind — and so to keep herself beside me, until her purposes were served.
She stood straight as a wand, facing us. I suppose it needed no magic for her to tell that we knew. The grey eyes met mine for the fraction of a moment, then she faced the King.
What happened then is difficult to describe. There was the quiet, everyday room, filled with the scents and sounds of the summer morning; sweet briar and early roses and the gilly-flowers she had planted outside the window; last night's burned logs (the nights could still have a chill in them, and she had insisted on making a fire for me to sit by); the sweet sub-song of the redbreast as he flew up into the apple boughs outside. A summer room, where, to anyone of normal perceptions, nothing passed at all. Just three people, in a pause of silence.
But to me the air tingled suddenly over the skin, like water when lightning strikes. I felt the flesh creep on my bones, and the small hairs on my arms fur up; my nape stirred like the ruff of a dog in a thunder-storm. I do not think I moved. Neither the King nor the girl seemed to notice anything. She watched him gravely, unalarmed, I might have thought unmoved and barely interested, if I had not been getting these fearsome currents washing over and through my flesh as the tide washes over a rock lying on the shore. Her grey eyes held his; his dark ones bored into her. I could feel the force as the two of them met. The air trembled.
Then he nodded, and put up a hand to loosen the cloak from his shoulder. I saw her mouth move with the shadow of a smile. The message had passed. For my sake, he would accept her. And for my sake, she would stand the trial. The room steadied, and I said: "Let me," and took his cloak from him to lay it down.
The girl said: "Shall I bring you some breakfast? Mora left it ready, but you were late, so she went to market. She says the best things are taken if she is not there early."
She went. The platters were laid ready on the table, and we took our places. She brought bread, and the crock of honey, and a pitcher of milk along w
ith one of mead. She set the latter down at the King's hand, then without a word took her usual place across from me. She had not looked at me again. When I poured a cup of milk for her she thanked me, but without lifting her eyes. Then she spread honey on her bread, and began to eat.
"Your name," said the King. "Is it Niniane?"
"Yes," she said, "but I was always called Nimue."
"Your parentage?"
"My father was called Dyonas."
"Yes. King of theRiverIslands?"
"The same. He is dead now."
"I know that. He fought beside me at Viroconium. Why did you leave your home?"
"I was sent to the Lady's service, in the Isle of Glass. It was my father's wish." The glimmer of a smile. "My mother was a Christian, and when she lay dying she made him promise he would send me to the Island; I know she intended me for the service of the church there. I was only six years old, but he promised her. He himself had never held with what he called the new God; he was an initiate of Mithras — his own father took him there in the time of Ambrosius. So when the time came for him to keep his promise to my mother, he did indeed take me to the Island, but to the service of the Good Goddess, in the shrine below the Tor."
"I see."
So did I. As one of the ancillae of the shrine she would have been there on the occasion of Arthur's thanksgiving after Caer Guinnion and Caerleon. Perhaps she had glimpsed me there, beside the King.
She must have known that, for her, there was small chance of coming any nearer to the prince-enchanter, and learning any of the greater arts. Then on that misty night I had put the key into her hand. It had taken courage to grasp it, but God knew she had plenty of that.
The King was still questioning her. "And you wanted to study magic. Why?"
"Sir, I cannot say why. Why does a singer first want to learn music? Or a bird want to try the air? When I first went to the Island, I found some traces of it, and learned all they had to teach, but still I was hungry. Then one day I saw..." She hesitated for the first time. "I saw Merlin in the shrine. You will remember the day. Later, I heard he had come to live here at Applegarth. I thought, If only I were a man I could go to him. He is wise, he would know that magic is in my blood, and he would teach me."