| |
15 November 537 AD
––––––––
“CAN YOU HEAR ME, MYRDDIN?” Nell leaned over Myrddin’s inert form.
Although Myrddin didn’t reply, he did open his eyes to look into her face. The room was dark, except for a candle on the table at the foot of the pallet on which he lay. Nell smiled, even though it cost her. Myrddin didn’t smile back, just stared, unseeing, and then let his eyes close. Nell stroked his cheek with one finger. And then she did smile, albeit mockingly, at what he’d think when he discovered that she’d shaved his mustache in order to tend to the gash above his lip.
It had been a long, grim ride from Rhuddlan Castle. Myrddin had been so much weaker than usual, and the last few miles had almost been his undoing. It had been all she could do to hold him on the horse. Modred’s men had wounded him inside and out, though she wouldn’t know how bad the damage was inside him until the rest of him began to heal.
“Would you like to hear a story?” she said.
Again, Myrddin didn’t answer. He’d squeezed the hand she was holding earlier, but now his grip softened. She gazed down at his closed eyes, thinking of what story to tell, and whether it was time to tell him a true one. “Once upon a time, there was a little girl ...
––––––––
SHE WAS JUST LIKE ANY other little girl—shocking red hair, green eyes, pointed chin—doted upon by her father, especially as he’d lost his wife at her birth.
One day, as she was wandering in the trees along the river near her home, looking for any winter herbs that had survived the snow, she heard voices—men’s voices—very close. They shouted at one another. Hooves pounded on the soft earth, and then, not ten feet from her, a company of five men wearing King Arthur’s crest rode out of the woods, swords and shields raised high. They splashed through the water and up the bank on the other side.
The girl was frightened. She ran the opposite way, but instead of running into her father’s field as she expected, she found herself in a clearing, next to a church. All around her men called, and horses neighed. She ran for the entrance to the church, but, just as she reached it, the door opened. A man appeared, older than her father, his dark hair shot with grey. She’d never seen him before, but somehow she knew he was their king. He pulled his sword from his sheath, shouted at the men behind him, and retreated back inside.
Oddly, the man didn’t see her. A moment later, the men who’d ridden through the water returned, racing their horses towards a line of Saxon soldiers that had burst from the woods on the other side of the clearing. All around her men fought and died.
Then, one man in particular caught her attention. He’d lost his helmet, and his black hair had come loose from its tie. His shield was gone too, and, between forcing his sword through a Saxon’s belly and turning to race for the front of the church, he thrust his hair out of his face with his free hand.
In that space of time, she caught his eye. They stared at each other. They couldn’t have been more different: Nell—a small, scrawny child, not yet blooming into womanhood; and Myrddin—a tall, dark-haired soldier, older, with lines around his eyes.
Then he broke away, racing to defend his king. She watched him barrel into a Saxon soldier; she watched him fall. She watched the Saxon soldiers celebrate their victory. And it was she who pulled the man to the side, off of the body of his king whose head the Saxons soldiers had taken while they left the rest of him to rot. And it was she who wept over his grave ...
* * * * *
“SO NOW YOU’VE SAVED me,” Myrddin said. From the way the light reflected from the hallway through the open door, it was late afternoon. He’d slept a long time.
“Does that make us even?” Nell said.
“Do you want it to?”
She smiled and didn’t answer, looking down at her hands. She’d tucked her hair into her cloak, but the end of her thick braid peeked out from underneath the hood. Then she looked up. “It hurts me to see you this way.”
“It hurts me too,” he said, trying to make light of it.
“I wish we could have reached you sooner.”
“I’ll heal,” he said.
“Hidden away in my convent, I forgot the horror one man could do to another. I’ve been reminded almost daily since then.”
“Believe me, Modred is capable of much worse.”
Nell nodded. “I stitched the back of your head while you were asleep. I kept waiting for you to wake in the middle of it and argue with me about the proper method.” She smiled. “I would have had Ifan cosh you on the head to put you back to sleep.”
Myrddin laughed and then tried to suppress it, moving his hand to his chest. “Don’t!” He swallowed the mirth and the pain the laughter had caused. “Where’s Ifan now?”
“He stayed up with you most of the night,” she said. “Did you know he’s in pain nearly all the time?”
“It’s his back,” Myrddin said. “He injured it ten years ago—doing less than nothing, mind you—and it’s never been the same since. But a soldier who can’t ride and fight isn’t a soldier anymore.”
“I told him I’d make a rubbing salve for him when we returned to Garth Celyn.” She turned her head to look through the doorway. The scent of greenery and outside air wafted through it, indicating that the temperature had risen. “It’s peaceful here, isn’t it? I didn’t notice the first time we came through.”
“We’re at Caerhun?” Myrddin said.
Nell nodded. “That was the longest twenty miles I’ve ever ridden.”
Footsteps sounded along the corridor. “You’re awake.” Rhodri poked his head through the doorway.
“In a manner of speaking,” Myrddin said. “Thank you for your hospitality, as before.”
“I thought you’d like to know that the Saxons patrol the eastern bank of the river. Three separate companies have ridden to the ford, to turn around at the water’s edge. I would not have said you were that valuable.” A grin split Rhodri’s face.
“Nor I,” Myrddin said.
Rhodri shrugged. “Let me know if you need anything, miss,” he said to Nell.
“Thank you.”
Rhodri left.
Myrddin gazed up at the ceiling, thinking about the past and the future and all that lay between them. He didn’t fear death. He hadn’t for many years, not with living it every night in his dreams. But despair was as close a companion for him over the years as for Nell, and it had overwhelmed him after Modred had left the dungeon. To have come so close to making a difference in whether Arthur lived or died, only to die at Modred’s hand, had left him bereft. Now that they’d fled the castle and were safe in Arthur’s lands again, the emotions he’d been holding in check came flooding back.
“I should have guessed that you were up to something,” Myrddin said. “When I turned to look back at the castle and saw you and Ifan on the battlements, I should have been suspicious. Had you already decided what you were going to do?”
“I’d already decided to come after you, but Ifan wouldn’t let me come alone.”
“I should hope not,” Myrddin said. “Were you afraid?”
“Not during the journey; not even when we reached the crossroads at St. Asaph. Ifan is a strong swordsman, or you wouldn’t trust him. I was afraid for you and afraid that Modred would have already murdered you before we could reach Rhuddlan.”
“I was afraid of that too,” Myrddin said.
“The only comfort,” Nell said, “was the assumption that you knew what you were doing.”
Myrddin started to laugh and then swallowed it, trying not to move. “I’m not so sure you should have relied on that notion.”
Nell smiled. “Once Cedric said he’d assist us, however, things moved quickly, and I hardly had time to think. He had it all in hand.”
“Thank you,” Myrddin said. “I don’t know that Cedric would have freed me unless you encouraged him.”
“I’m not so sure. It would depend on how much he thought he could gain from sticking his neck out.”
“He stuck it pretty far,” Myrddin said.
“He did,” Nell said. “What did you say to him to make the two of you so friendly?”
“I told him that Arthur wanted to negotiate—to talk to him—even to work out an alliance.”
Myrddin had closed his eyes again, as keeping them open was just too much work, but at Nell’s silence, turned his head to look at her. A range of emotions crossed her face: shock, disbelief, puzzlement, and then understanding.
“Given that the king has never said any such thing, you took a risk,” she said. “Suppose King Arthur doesn’t want to talk to him?”
“Why wouldn’t he? The king is willing to talk to Edgar, and he’s far less likely a turncoat than Cedric. Cedric, at least, has a history of rebellion. Edgar is the son of the only Saxon lord with interests in Wales never to waver in Modred’s cause, for all Modred has angered him now.”
“What are you going to tell King Arthur?”
“The truth. Even your part of it—provided you do not object?” He studied her face. She had a smudge on her nose and a second along one cheek.
Nell lifted her hands and dropped them in an expression of resignation and helplessness. “Ifan and I made our choice. I don’t regret it. Given that we rescued you, I’d hope King Arthur wouldn’t either.”
Myrddin nodded. “I’m glad you’ve told me everything now. I’m glad you know that you can trust me.”
Nell sat silent for a long count of ten. “You weren’t asleep.”
“No.”
Nell stayed frozen, her legs in front of her and her back against the wall.
“You have visions,” Myrddin said, not as a question. “You’ve had them of me.”
Nell swallowed hard. “Since I was a girl.”
“Back at Garth Celyn, you cried my name in the night. You’ve done so often in the nights that followed.”
“You’ve haunted me all my life,” she said. “The story I told you was a waking dream—my first and only. It’s why I’ve always known that you were real, even when all I had were dreams.”
Myrddin nodded.
“You’re not upset by this.” Nell canted her head to one side, looking at him curiously. “Why aren’t you afraid of me? Or at the very least, suspicious?”
“On December 11th, a month from now, if we do not stop it, King Arthur will die at the hands of a Saxon soldier, near a church by the Cam River,” Myrddin said.
“That’s what I see in my dreams,” Nell said. “I just told you that story last night. That’s what I dream nearly every night now. It’s changed a bit in the last few days. But—”
Myrddin interrupted. “That’s my dream, ever since I was twelve years old.”
The relief he felt in admitting it to Nell—and that she would understand everything he felt—filled him. His was a true seeing, and they’d been given this vision for a reason. It appeared to be their job—his and Nell’s—by what means he didn’t know and couldn’t imagine from where he lay—to ensure that his king did not meet Edgar by the Cam. He met Nell’s eyes as understanding entered them: their vision; their task; their destiny.
Nell stared at him. “It isn’t just me, then!”
Myrddin shook his head. “It isn’t just you.”
