Hawk Of May Part 9

Knew what better? I thought of the fierce being I had been only an hour before and wondered. I remembered what I had seen in myself when I first drew Caeldvwlch, that darkness, and afterwards the power and certainty as I held the sword; and I remembered Lugh's warning. How, in that mingling of human pa.s.sion and divine madness, to distinguish between light and darkness? The disturbing idea that I was something other than human returned to me. I knew now, though, that whatever had happened I remained as human as any, even if I could ride Ceincaled. The horse had shown me that. I had not mastered him, but he had consented to obey me, out of love. It would take an immortal to break that stallion, and I was only human; I could only persuade him. This was comforting to me. It is human to be in ignorance, to be uncertain, and a.s.suredly I was that. I was only a man who had seen things greater than those most men have seen, and the essence of those things had touched me, as a warrior is touched by his work, and a king by his. (Morgawse, Mother, I wondered, how deeply have you touched me?) But that was all, that was the whole of the explanation.

I laughed at my reflection. "You truly are a proper fool, do you know that?" I asked it. "The answer was directly in front of you, and you turned your back on it. You worry too much."

Ceincaled p.r.i.c.ked his ears forward, listening, then tossed his head. I laughed again, stood, and went and caught his bridle. He snorted, then pushed his nose into my hair and nibbled at it, as horses do.

"Hush, brave one, bright one," I told him. "That is not gra.s.s. It is not even the proper color."

Ceincaled nickered, and I ran my hand down his neck. It was a shock to recall where he had come from. Poor Ceincaled. Torn from the marvels of those islands beyond the sunset, subjected to Cerdic's speed and Aldwulf's spells, to whips and starvation, the bit and the spur, to Darkness and to death, when all that he should have known were the fields of golden flowers, the endless spring for all eternity. I picked another handful of gra.s.s and brushed him down again. He was beautiful, this horse, too beautiful for Earth. With him I had won my freedom. Now, I felt certain, the Saxons could never find me again (barring accidents), and I no longer needed Ceincaled. In fact, he could easily become a hindrance, since such a horse is noticed and remarked upon. Had there been a choice, I would have kept the horse and given him up to no one: I loved him, his beauty, and his splendid spirit. But I had no right to repay the gift of freedom he had brought with the death which would result from my keeping him.

Slowly, I took off the bridle. Ceincaled stood very still, and his image in the dark water trembled only slightly. "Go, friend," I told him. "You have won your freedom. Go home. Perhaps Lugh Master of All Arts will ride you, but you are suited to no lesser being. You fought well and bravely, and I give you my thanks."

Ceincaled hesitated, as though listening and understanding, then tossed his head, snorted at the bridle, and plunged into the river. When he had crossed it he galloped off westward. I watched him vanish among the trees, then sighed, crossed the river myself, and headed west.

The forest was not so thick as the one near which I had woken. Still, it was thick enough to confuse the Saxons if they were still following me. I doubted, though, that they were. Cerdic must have sent men after me, but I suspected that they would not notice where I left the road. And I had crossed the plain which the thralls had said lay between Dumnonia and the Saxon lands, so I was certainly in British domains by now. There could be a raiding party in the area...no, the last raid the king had ordered had been to the north, into Powys. I should be too far south to meet with it. I was probably safe; if I travelled a little further west I should certainly be secure.

I walked until nightfall-no long time-then stopped where I was and slept under a tree root, wrapped in my cloak. The following day I journeyed on, feeling worn and dirty.

I had not gone far when I reached a road. It was no Roman road but a plain dirt track which wound along the hilltops. It was easier to walk on the verge or through the surrounding wood than on the road itself, so deep and thick was the mud. Nonetheless, I followed the track, turning south on it. There was some risk, but not much, and I wished to find someone who could tell me where to find Arthur. The land was inhabited, I knew, for I had seen the smoke of hearth-fires the evening before, but I judged it safer to meet someone on the road, and preferably someone travelling alone.

The risk was worth while. I had walked for only half an hour when I found a cart stuck in the mud. The man who strained to push it out was stocky, red-haired, and swore in British.

"Ach! Yffern's hounds run you down, horse, can't you pull harder than that?" he shouted at his mare. She gave a few halfhearted jerks, without success. The man cursed some more and kicked one of the wheels of the cart. He did not notice me as I came up behind him.

"Greetings," I said, after watching his performance. "Can I help you?"

He stopped pushing and whirled about, afraid. His eyes widened when he saw me, and his right hand flashed through a peculiar motion.

"Who are you?" he demanded, and his hand had now dropped to his belt knife. "What do you want?"

"I do not want anything from you, certainly not your life, so you can take your hand off your knife. I was offering to help you with your cart."

The man gave me another long, uncomfortable stare, then shrugged, ran a heavy hand through his hair, and rolled his eyes in exasperation. "Ach! Well, you're no Saxon...Can you help me? No, indeed not. I drag my carts here for the sheer pleasure of pushing them out of the mud."

I decided that I liked this man. I smiled. "In that case, I am sorry that I have interfered with so enjoyable a pastime, and leave you to the pleasure of it."

He frowned, puzzled, then grinned. "There; but I was angry, and it is a most generous offer. If you can help me to get this demon-plagued thing out from this thrice-d.a.m.ned hole, I can give you a ride. I am going south and east, to Camlann."

Camlann!

"I wish to go there myself," I said. "Here, let me see this cart. How is it stuck?"

It was badly stuck, in a deep hole which had been disguised by a thin crust of drier mud. It took an hour of shoving and ma.s.sed wood from the forest under the wheels before the cart finally lurched from the hole. The carter gave a crow of delight when it slipped free at last.

"It is lucky that you came along," he said. "I'd never have got it free alone. I'd've had to go back to my holding and ask my clan to help, and it's no safe thing, leaving a loaded cart on the road these days, what with the bandits and the thieves, and the Saxons in Din Sarum" (another name for Sorviodunum/Searisbyrig, I remembered). "And there's more work at the holding than we've men to do it, and we could ill spare the hands to drag loose a cart." He climbed into his cart, untying the reins from the post he had fastened them to, and beckoned me to come up beside him. We started down the road, half on, half off the verge. "My name is Sion, by the way," the man said. "Sion ap Rhys, a farmer. My clan's holding is up north of here, near Mor Hafren."

Mor Hafren, mouth of the Saefern river? Had I come so far north?

"I am Gwalchmai," I said, without adding my father's name. I should give little information, I decided, until I knew how the sons of King Lot of Orcade would be received in Dumnonia.

"A fine name," said Sion, after a short, uneasy pause. "A warrior's name. And you wish to go to Camlann?"

"Indeed. How far away is it? I have never been to Dumnonia before."

He shrugged. "We should be in Ynys Witrin tonight. It's not far, but I won't push the horse, and we'll need to spend more time digging this accursed h.e.l.l-axled cart out of the mud before we reach the west road. There are times when I think that no amount of profit is worth travelling for in the spring."

"What profit do you expect, then?"

He grinned. "Considerable. That is wheat flour in the back there. My clan found we had more than we needed when the winter ended, so we decided to sell it. And what better man to sell to than the Emperor? With his warband he always needs supplies badly. If I find the right man to bargain with I should get twice the price I'd find at Baddon."

We rode together for the rest of the day, and I enjoyed it. Sion was a talkative man and a cheerful one, which last was fortunate, for the cart became stuck three times before we reached the "west road," the old Roman road. Sion must have consigned every inch of that track to Yffern a dozen times over, together with the cart and the horse, but he swore with great equanimity, and the horse merely flicked its ears back as though he were consoling it.

Long before we reached Ynys Witrin the forest vanished, and then the hills, until we were crossing a low marsh on a road that was elevated on an earthen bank. Narrow rivers of deeper water wound through the sodden marsh gra.s.ses. We saw the town of Ynys Witrin long before we reached it. The great hill on which it is built stands above the land like a fortress. Ynys Witrin is a holy city. It was sacred before the Romans came and it is still sacred, though now to a different G.o.d. They say the first church in Britain was built there, and the monastery has been there a long time.

I was very impressed by the road into the town, and tried to imagine the amount of work needed to build it. Sion noticed this, and asked if I were a foreigner, hesitating a little before the final word. I told him that I was from the Orcades. He was confused.

"The Orcades? Where is that?"

"The Orcades, the Innsi Erc, the islands north of Pictland," I said, surprised.

"Oh, the Ynysoedd Erch! Where Lot is king, with the Witch-queen. A frightful place, they say, and terribly far away."

"Very far away," I said. "But not at all frightful."

"We-ell...did you ever see King Lot ap Cormac, then? Or the Queen Morgawse, daughter of Uther? They tell stories of those two which make the blood run cold. I wouldn't care to meet either of them, not at all, at any time. My son, of course..."

I smiled. He had told me all about his twelve-year-old son, who was a fanatic admirer of Arthur and who wanted to be a hero, told it in the middle of telling about the difficulties of farming and about a blood feud his clan had been involved in twenty years before. He was, as I said, a talkative man.

"Not that I believe the stories," Sion added. "Men will tell tales about anything, and the more marvellous it is, the more interesting they find it. There are tales they tell now about the Pendragon in every market-place which would have been laughed at ten years ago, but because he is emperor now and has taxed the Church, the fools all pull their beards and believe them. But I am a Christian, a good churchman, and I don't hold with such tales..." he trailed off, gave me a sideways glance, fell silent a moment, then continued. "But I was wondering what the King and Queen of the Ynysoedd Erch looked like."

"I have seen them," I admitted reluctantly.

"Indeed? They tell me of the Witch-queen, the Pendra-gon's sister. She was born here in Dumnonia, but I have never seen her. Is she beautiful?"

I thought of Morgawse. Morgawse, with her black hair and her eyes like pools of night, Queen of Darkness, no longer human. I looked down at my hands, forgetting the road, the man beside me, Camlann and all Britain with the horror of the memory. The cart-rim creaked beneath my fingers as I gripped it. Light, can I never be free of her?

Sion muttered something under his breath and made the same hand gesture he had used when he first saw me.

"What?" I asked, waking from my reflections.

"Nothing," said Sion, but he reined in his mare and looked at me. "What do you..." He stopped again. "There is something strange about you, Gwalchmai."

"What do you mean?" I asked, meeting his eyes evenly.

Sion shook his head abruptly and shook the reins so that the mare started forward again. "It's just the light," he muttered. "This late afternoon sun makes things look...well, I am sorry."

I smiled, my fingers curling about Caledvwlch's hilt. It was something, at least, that he was sorry for thinking I was not human.

"Look there!" said Sion, cheerful again. "There is Ynys Witrin."

We had turned directly west again, since the road was built from the main road to the east of the town, and the long rays of the afternoon sun made the buildings of mud and wood look fragile, as though they floated above the marshes. The steep tor should have looked peaceful: instead, it made me catch my breath. It was certainly a place of power, and that power was of more than one kind.

Sion's little mare picked her way eagerly towards the promised shelter. It was for her sake that Sion wished to stop at Ynys Witrin, instead of travelling all the way to Camlann. The cart, loaded, was heavy for her to pull all day, and the farmer could not afford to wear her out. I considered with a pang that Ceincaled could have travelled the whole distance we had compa.s.sed that day in a few hours. But Ceincaled had the right to immortality. I could not have kept him.

We crossed a bridge-the river was called the Briw, Sion said-and entered the Island of Gla.s.s, Ynys Witrin. The great hill loomed over us, the fortress at its top keeping watch over the marshland. The fortress belonged to a minor lord, a subject of Constantius of Dumnonia. Sion did not intend to ask his hospitality, since the lord followed the usual custom of offering guest-rights to none but warriors and craftsmen. It was to the monastery that common travellers went. This lay on the flank of the hill, to the east of the fortress, at the center of an old, largely abandoned Roman town.

Sion drove up to the gateway and, getting down from the cart, rang an iron bell that hung beside it. After a few minutes, a monk came and viewed us through a slit in the door.

"Who are you and what do you want?" he asked in an irritated tone.

"Sion ap Rhys, a farmer. Hospitality for the night."

"A farmer?" The monk opened the door. "You are welcome then. The hospitality of Ynys Witrin will cost you...what is in the cart?"

"Cost me!" exclaimed Sion. "What kind of hospitality is that?"

"The hospitality of monks taxed beyond their means by a tyrant!" snapped the monk. "What's in the cart?"

"Wheat flour," replied Sion sullenly.

"It will cost you a sack of wheat flour."

"A sack. A whole sack. Man, I could buy two chickens for a whole sack of flour, this time of year!" said Sion.

"Are you seeking to plunder the Church, the holy Church, your mother? Do you not think that it pleases G.o.d to be generous to his servants?"

"I think it pleases G.o.d when his servants are generous. Ten pounds of flour is more than I can afford, but I'll offer that."

"Three-quarters of a sack..." began the monk.

After a time, it was agreed that for half a sack of flour Sion could have a place for himself and his mare for the night.

"Now, who is that in the cart?" demanded the monk. "You can't say that he is your son; he's nothing like you."

"No," I answered. "I am merely a fellow traveller."

"You pay separately, then," said the monk, with satisfaction. "Is some of the flour yours?"

"No..."

"Then what do you travel for?"

"I seek service with the Pendragon."

The monk gaped at me, then snarled. "The Pendragon! Arthur the b.a.s.t.a.r.d has too many men serving him already. Far too many. And who supports them?"

"The Saxons have recently, by being plundered," I said. "All Britain, when there is no war. But have you ever met the Saxons?"

"Why would I have met the Saxons?" asked the monk, forgetting, in his surprise, to be angry.

"Never mind. What will you charge me? I have no goods."

"None?" He looked at me carefully, decided that I must be telling the truth. "Your sword then."

"No."

"Your cloak."

Sion was outraged. "What sort of hospitality is this, even for Ynys Witrin? To take the very cloak of a man who comes to you without a penny, and knows no more of bargaining than a three-year-old child? I will pay for him."

"A sack of flour," said the monk quickly.

"Half a sack, as for myself," answered Sion firmly, "And no more, you thief from a thieves' den."

The monk complained further, saying that he was being asked to support the plunder of the Church by giving hospitality "to a G.o.dless lover of tyrants," but he wanted the flour and eventually let us in.

"I am sorry," I said to Sion, as the cart rolled through the gate. "It is true that I know nothing of bargaining. You should have let him take my cloak; I am sure to get a new one at Camlann. As it is, I have nothing else with which to repay your generosity."

Sion shrugged, but he was pleased. "Keep it. You'd've been a fool to give a new cloak for a night's lodging; it's worth at least a week's. And that man was a fool to even mention the sword, for I, who know nothing of weapons, can see that that sword could buy a holding, herds and all." He gave me a shrewd look, and I felt foolish indeed, for I'd not thought of this at all. "It is only one sack of flour," he added, "and," he lowered his voice, "the sacks aren't whole-measure sacks. They're smaller. That fool didn't even notice, and gave us a generous rate without knowing. Well and good, for monks ought to be poor in the world's goods, and, with G.o.d's help, I'll do what I can to make them so."

We settled Sion's mare in the abbey stables and saw that the cart was safe in the barn, then gave the gatekeeper his sack of flour. We then went to the chapel, since it seemed that the monastery was crowded and the monks had set their guests to sleeping in the chapel porch. Sion threw down a pack in the porch, whistling, then marched on into the chapel itself. After a moment's hesitation, I followed him. I had never before seen a church, and I found it confusing. I stopped just inside the door, staring at the columned basilica and the carvings along the lintel. Sion, however, went immediately to the far end and knelt before the altar there. He made the same hand gesture I had seen him use twice before, and now I recognized it as the sign of the cross. I walked up to the altar, silently, and stood looking at it.

It was a plain altar, with a cross of carved wood standing against the white-washed inner wall. The cloth over the altar, however, was richly embroidered, covered with interlocked and interlacing designs, frozen and moving at the same time, like the designs I had seen on bowls and mirrors and jewelry all my life. This had also animal designs, though, strange winged beasts prancing through the interlace, seeming to dance in the light of the two candles on the table. Something about the place reminded me of the room where I had drawn Caledvwlch. There was something of the same feeling of banked power, rigid and vibrant as the designs on the altar cloth. There was a feeling of centrality, of being near the heart of something, and an intense stillness.

I drew a deep breath, shuddering with excitement like a nervous horse, and forced myself to calm down. On an impulse I knelt behind Sion, who was muttering some prayer in Latin. I drew Caledvwlch and held it before me with its tip resting on the ground, so that the cross of the hilt echoed the cross on the wall. Light stirred within the ruby, rose to a steady flame, and I willed it to quiet, knowing that I would be unable to explain the sword to Sion or to the monks. It stilled, and I tried to follow Sion's example, and pray. Pieces of various songs floated through my mind, and the old druidical invocations of the sun and the wind, the earth and the sea. Then I brushed these aside, deciding that I wished, after all, to speak to my lord the Light, not to any mysterious and unknown G.o.d who was new to me; and I spoke to him silently.

"Ard Righ Mor, my King...I would keep my oath to you. I have killed since I pledged you fealty. Let that...oh, I am lost and cannot understand it. Let there be forgiveness of it. My lord..." I wanted to sing, suddenly, but did not know what to sing. "My lord, I am your warrior. Command me. Aid me. Let me find Arthur and find service with him. Let me..." What? I thought of Morgawse, of Lugh, of Ceincaled. "Let me know your will in this, since it is yours to rule. G.o.d of this place, if you are my lord the Light, hear me."

There was a moment of stillness, a silent, deep listening quite different from the exaltation I had known before. It was as though the troubled water of a deep pool had stilled, and one could look down into it through limitless depths, as if into a lake of gla.s.s. At the heart of that stillness was a light, quiet as the candle flames, and a sense like the first notes of a song. I felt only this, and only for an instant. But I knew that my prayer had been heard, and I could go to Camlann with a quiet mind. I stood and sheathed the sword.

Sion turned, looked at me, frowned, then grinned. "Consecrating the sword?"

"In a fashion."

"A good thing to have done, a very good thing. Come, let us see if they have anything to eat in this thieves' den."

In the porch of the chapel there were three other farmers and a trader, all bound for Camlann, who greeted us cheerfully and began to complain of the monks. Sion joined them in this pastime with great enthusiasm, and outdid them all in eloquence. None of the men did more than glance at me, for which I was grateful.

Presently a young monk brought us our evening meal in a basket, together with some fine yellow mead that did much to mollify the anger of the guests. After the meal we unrolled the straw pallets which were kept there for travellers, and we spread out cloaks on these, wished each other a good night, and curled up to sleep.

I woke up in the darkness, some time near midnight, and lay very still. There was something in the chapel porch, something which had no right to be there.

It was very dark, too dark. Beside me Sion's breathing had taken on a labored, drugged sound, and seemed to come from a distance. It had become cold with a soul-chilling empty cold, and the air tasted thin and flat.

Stealthily I put my hand to the hilt of the sword I had placed by my head. Caledvwlch was warm, and as welcome to my hand as a hearth fire after a winter drizzle. I rolled over, got my knees beneath me, ready to move.

Whatever had entered the chapel was definitely there. I could see nothing, but I sensed its presence. It was prowling, creeping along the line of sleeping men, searching...it was at the opposite end of the porch from me, a pulsating core of darkness, cold, and desolation. And it was strong, frighteningly strong.

I waited for it, my pulse thudding dully in my ears and shaking me with the force of my life. I felt divided: I wished to run from the horror of it; I wished to leap up and destroy it.