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By Root 581 0

window and across her bed. I remembered the furniture; it was her own bed from home, and the curtain at the window was one she had woven herself, the red cloth with the green pattern that she had been making the day my uncle Camlach came home. I remembered, too, the wolfskin on the floor; my grandfather had killed the beast with his bare hands and the haft of his broken dagger; its beady eyes and snarl had terrified me when I was small. The cross that hung on the bare wall at the foot of her bed was of dull silver, with a lovely pattern of locked but flowing lines, and studs of amethyst that caught the light.

The girl showed me the door in silence, and withdrew. Cadal sat down on a bench outside to wait.

My mother lay propped on pillows, in the shaft of sunshine. She looked pale and tired, and spoke not much above a whisper, but was, she told me, on the mend. When I questioned her about the illness, and laid a hand on her temples, she put me aside, smiling and saying she was well enough looked after. I did not insist: half of healing is in the patient's trust, and no woman ever thinks her own son is much more than a child. Besides, I could see that the fever had gone, and now that she was no longer anxious over me, she would sleep.

So I merely pulled up the room's single chair, sat down and began to tell her all she wanted to know, without waiting for her questions: about my escape from Maridunum and the flight like the arrow from the god's bow straight from Britain to Ambrosius' feet, and all that had happened since. She lay back against her pillows and watched me with astonishment and some slowly growing emotion which I identified as the emotion a cage-bird might feel if you set it to hatch a merlin's egg.

When I had finished she was tired, and grey stood under her eyes so sharply drawn that I got up to go. But she looked contented, and said, as if it was the sum and finish of the story, as I suppose it was, for her:

"He has acknowledged you."

"Yes. They call me Merlin Ambrosius."

She was silent a little, smiling to herself. I crossed to the window and leaned my elbows on the sill, looking out. The sun was warm. Cadal nodded on his bench, half asleep. From across the yard a movement caught my eye; in a shadowed doorway the girl was standing, watching my mother's door as if waiting for me to come out. She had put back her hood, and even in the shadows I could see the gold of her hair and a young face lovely as a flower. Then she saw me watching her. For perhaps two seconds our eyes met and held. I knew then why the ancients armed the cruellest god with arrows; I felt the shock of it right through my body. Then she had gone, shrinking close-hooded back into the shadow, and behind me my mother was saying:

"And now? What now?"

I turned my back on the sunlight. "I go to join him. But not until you are better. When I go I want to take news of you."

She looked anxious. "You must not stay here. Maridunum is not safe for you."

"I think it is. Since the news came in of the landing, the place has emptied itself of Vortigern's men. We had to take to the hill-tracks on our way south; the road was alive with men riding to join him."

"That's true, but -- "

"And I shan't go about, I promise you. I was lucky last night, I ran into Dinias as soon as I set foot in town. He gave me a room at home."

"Dinias?"

I laughed at her astonishment. "Dinias feels he owes me something, never mind what, but we agreed well enough last night." I told her what mission I had sent him on, and she nodded.

"He" -- and I knew she did not mean Dinias -- "will need every man who can hold a sword." She knitted her brows. "They say Hengist has three hundred thousand men. Will he" -- and again she was not referring to Hengist -- "be able to withstand Vortigern, and after him Hengist and the Saxons?"

I suppose I was still thinking of last night's vigil. I said, without pausing to consider how it would sound: "I have said so, so it must be true."

A movement from the bed brought my eyes down to her. She was crossing herself, her eyes at once startled