I said slowly, holding him with my eyes: “Listen now, and I will tell you who the horsemen were. Last night, in the dark, King Uther Pendragon rode this way, with myself and two others. He rode to Tintagel, but he did not go by the gate-house and the bridge. He rode down the valley, to the shore, and then climbed the secret path up the rock and entered the castle by the postern gate. Why do you shake your head? Don't you believe me?”
“Lord, everyone knows the King had quarrelled with the Duke. No one could get in, least of all the King. Even if he did find the postern door, there's none would dare open it to him.”
“They opened last night. It was the Duchess Ygraine herself who received the King into Tintagel.”
“But — ”
“Wait,” I said. “I will tell you how it happened. The King had been changed by magic arts into a likeness of the Duke, and his companions into likenesses of the Duke's friends. The people who let them into the castle thought they were admitting Duke Gorlois himself, with Brithael and Jordan.”
Under its dirt the boy's face was pale. I knew that for him, as for most of the people of this wild and haunted country, my talk of magic and enchantment would come as easily as stories of the loves of kings and violence in high places. He said, stammering: “The King — the King was in the castle last night with the Duchess?”
“Yes. And the child that will be born will be the King's child.”
A long pause. He licked his lips. “But — but — when the Duke finds out...”
“He won't find out,” I said. “He's dead.”
One filthy hand went to his mouth, the fist rammed against his teeth. Above it his eyes, showing white, went from my injured hand to the bloodstains on my clothing, then to my empty scabbard. He looked as if he would have liked to run away, but did not dare even do that. He said breathlessly: “You killed him? You killed our Duke?”
“Indeed no. Neither I nor the King wished him dead. He was killed in battle. Last night, not knowing that the King had already ridden secretly for Tintagel, your Duke sallied out from his fortress of Dimilioc to attack the King's army, and was killed.”
He hardly seemed to be listening. He was stammering: “But the two I saw this morning...It was the Duke himself, riding up from Tintagel. I saw him. Do you think I don't know him? It was the Duke himself, with Jordan, his man.”
“No. It was the King with his servant Ulfin. I told you the King took the Duke's likeness. The magic deceived you, too.”
He began to back away from me. “How do you know these things? You — you said you were with them. This magic — who are you?”
“I am Merlin, the King's nephew. They call me Merlin the enchanter.”
Still backing, he had come up against a wall of furze. As he looked this way and that, trying which way to run, I put out a hand.
“Don't be afraid. I'll not hurt you. Here, take this. Come, take it, no sensible man should fear gold. Call it a reward for catching my horse. Now, if you'll help me onto his back, I'll be on my way.”
He made a half movement forward, ready to snatch and run, but then he checked, and his head went round, quick as a wild thing's. I saw the goats had already stopped grazing and were looking eastwards, ears pricked. Then I heard the sound of horses.
I gathered my own beast's reins in my good hand, then looked round for the boy to help me. But he was already running, whacking the bushes to chase the goats in front of him. I called to him and, as he glanced over his shoulder, flung the gold. He snatched it up and then was gone, racing up the slope with his goats scampering round him.
Pain struck at me again, grinding the bones of my hand together. The cracked ribs stabbed and burned my side. I felt the sweat start on my body, and round me the spring day wavered and broke again in mist. The noise of approaching hoofs seemed to hammer with the pain along my bones. I leaned against my horse's saddle, and waited.
It was the King riding again for Tintagel, this time for the main gate, and by daylight, with a company of his men. They came at a fast canter along the grassy track from Dimilioc, four abreast, riding at ease. Above Uther's head the Dragon standard showed red on gold in the sunlight. The King was himself again; the grey of his disguise had been washed from his hair and beard, and the royal circlet glinted on his helmet. His cloak of kingly scarlet was spread behind him over his bay's glossy flanks. His face looked still, calm and set; a bleak enough look, and weary, but with over all a kind of contentment. He was riding to Tintagel, and Tintagel was his at last, with all that lay within the walls. For him, it was an end.
I leaned against my horse's shoulder and watched them come level with me.
It was impossible for Uther not to see me, but he never glanced my way. I saw, from the troop behind him, the curious glances as I was recognized. No man was there but must have some inkling now of what had happened last night in Tintagel, and of the part I had played in bringing the King to his heart's desire. It was possible that the simpler souls among the King's companions might have expected the King to be grateful; to reward me; at the very least to recognize and acknowledge me. But I, who had dealt all my life with kings, knew that where there is blame as well as gratitude, blame must be allotted first, lest it should cling to the King himself. King Uther could only see that, by what he called the failure of my foreknowledge, the Duke of Cornwall had died even while he, the King, was lying with the Duchess. He did not see the Duke's death for what it was, the grim irony behind the smiling mask that gods show when they want men to do their will. Uther, who had small truck with gods, saw only that by waiting even one day he might have had his way with honour and in the sight of men. His anger with me was genuine enough, but even if it were not, I knew that he must find someone to blame: what ever he felt about the Duke's death — and he could hardly fail to see it as a miraculously open gate to his marriage with Ygraine — he must in public be seen to show remorse. And I was the public sacrifice to that remorse.
One of the officers — it was Caius Valerius, who rode at the King's shoulder — leaned forward and said something, but Uther might never have heard. I saw Valerius look doubtfully back at me, then with a half-shrug, and a half-salute to me, he rode on. Unsurprised, I watched them go.
The sound of hoofs dwindled sharply down the track towards the sea. Above my head, between one wing-beat and the next, the lark's song shut off, and he dropped from the bright silence to his rest in the grass.
Not far from me a boulder jutted from the turf. I led the horse that way and somehow, from the boulder's top, scrambled into the saddle. I turned the beast's head east by north for Dimilioc, where the King's army lay.
2
Gaps in memory can be merciful. I have no recollection of reaching the camp, but when, hours later, I swam up out of the mists of fatigue and pain I was within doors, and in bed.
I awoke to dusk, and some faint and swimming light that may have been firelight and candle flame; it was a light hazed with colour and drowned with shadows, threaded by the scent of wood-smoke and, it seemed distantly, the trickle and splash of water. But even this warm and gentle consciousness was too much for my struggling senses, and soon I shut my eyes and let myself drown again. I believe that for a while I thought I was back in the edges of the Otherworld, where vision stirs and voices speak out of the dark, and truth comes with the light and the fire. But then the aching of my bruised muscles and the fierce pain in my hand told me that the daylight world still held me, and the voices that murmured across me in the dusk were as human as I.
“Well, that's that, for the moment. The ribs are the worst of it, apart from the hand, and they'll mend soon enough; they're only cracked.”