PIP AND I WERE UNABLE TO KEEP UP WITH THE CLOUDS. Opening their fingers and closing them, stretching them again, like huge sky-women kneading dough.
There were pockets of blue. Little muzzy promises.
Around us, rabbits scurried and sprinted—they never touched the ground. Arrogant cock pheasants prinked and stalked, allowing us to come close, but never closer.
Each silly, tender leaf. Each petal of hawthorn blossom.
But as soon as we came over the ridge, we ducked right under the wind.
And there it was.
Catmole.
The manor house ensconced on its shapely mound, almost growing out of it; its walls, mossy and oaten, buttermilk in the sunlight; the little flag, scarlet and white, thrilling to the wind.
First you cross a sloping field thick with sandy, sloppy cattle. Pip splashed straight through a pool of first-day dung.
You come down to a curling river, and that’s where England ends and Wales begins.
Someone was standing on the wooden bridge. He was wearing a dark hood, but as I rode up to him, he swept it back.
At once I dismounted.
“Is it really you?” I exclaimed. “Where have you been?”
Merlin inspected me and smiled. “I am where I’m needed,” he replied.
“Here and now!” I said firmly. “I need you.”
“Young kings often do.”
“I’m no king.”
“But you’ve discovered the king in yourself,” Merlin said. “Haven’t you? And isn’t this Catmole your…Camelot?”
“I know! It is!”
Merlin smiled an inward smile. “You have grown into your name,” he said, “as each of us must. You’ve understood the stone’s meaning.”
“Wonderful. Terrible.”
Merlin sighed. “Just like life,” he said. “Well! You know its story now.”
“But there’s so much I don’t know.”
Merlin looked at me with his mysterious silver-grey eyes. “There always will be,” he told me. “But it’s time to give the stone back.”
“Give it back!”
My seeing stone has been my day-and-night companion for the last four years.
“The king has gone into the hill,” Merlin said gently. “The stone has nothing more to show or say to you.”
“I thought it was mine,” I said.
I delved into my saddlebag and pulled out the obsidian in its dusty saffron cloth. I cradled it between my hands and squeezed it as hard as I could. Then I handed it to Merlin.
“It is yours,” said Merlin. “Its story will never end in you, will it? But there’s always someone else just ready for this stone.”
“You will stay here?”
Merlin nodded. “For a while,” he said. “Provided you treat me just as well as Sir John did! And you, Arthur, you’ll keep asking? Asking the right questions?”
First you cross a sloping field.
You come down to a curling river.
You pass over the wooden bridge and step into a little watermeadow so impossibly bright green, everything seems possible.…
And there she was, my mother, as she said she would be, standing by her croft, wearing a white cloth cap, holding a hoe.
I strode, then I half-ran towards her.
I held her to me, and in a low voice I said-and-sang:
“That lark! It was singing its heart out.
And we were clinging, winging, half-wild.
Ring-giving mother unending you are.
King of the Middle March I will be.”
All around us the people of Catmole—forty-three souls, Lady Alice says—were leaving their strips and crofts and cottages, and walking towards us. They came from the stables, the sty and the sheepfold, the fishnets stretched from bank to bank; they came from the hives and the herb garden, the orchard, the headlands and open fields.
I greeted them. Each one of them.
Across a sloping field and down to a river, silver, sizzling in the sunlight…over the wooden bridge and into a water-meadow…you come to three huge oaks sinking their claws into the ground. You follow a track along the foot of the mound, and now it doubles back, rising to the courtyard and the manor house.
My mother and I led the way, and everyone fell in behind us.
The ribbed oak door was wide open.
“Welcome-wide,” my mother whispered. That ghost of a smile again.
I took a deep breath and walked in.
Around me, spacious whitewashed walls; above my head, the cruck-roof, soaring; beneath my feet, rushes strewn with cowslops, primroses, rosemary, violets.
There was a long table. Something lay on it, shining.
Obsidian and gold. Ivory…
I caught my breath.
King Arthur’s own reading-pointer!
“Merlin!” I called out. “Where are you?”
Merlin appeared in the doorway. A dark icon framed in sunlight.
“Well!” he said in his deep voice. “Do you see?”
I picked up the shining pointer. The little triangle of ice and fire grew warm in my left palm.
I planted it between my thumb and king-finger, and drew a loop around my people.
I waved it like a wand. I made words out of air.