The Hollow Hills - Mary Stewart [125]
"Who doesn't? How does the old man up there, old Prosper? We've not seen him since before the snow."
"He died at Christmas."
He crossed himself. "You were with him?"
"Yes. I keep the chapel now." I gave no details. If he liked to assume I had been there for some time, helping the chapel's keeper, that was all to the good. "My name is Myrddin," I told him. I had decided to use my own name, rather than the "Emrys." Myrddin was a common enough name in the west, and would not necessarily be connected with the vanished Merlin; on the other hand, if Arthur was still known as "Emrys," it might provoke questions if a stranger of that name suddenly appeared in the district, and began to spend time in the boy's company.
"Myrddin, eh? Where are you from?"
"I kept a hill shrine for a time in Dyfed."
"I see." His eyes summed me, found me harmless, and he nodded. "Well, each to his task. No doubt your prayers serve us in their way as much as the Count's sword when it's needed. Does he know of the change up yonder?"
"I've seen no one since I came. The snow fell just after Prosper died. What sort of man is this Count Ector?"
"A good lord and a good man. And his lady as good as he. You'll not lack while they hold the forest."
"Has he sons?"
"Two, and likely boys both. You'll see them, I dare say, when the weather loosens. They ride in the forest most days. No doubt the Count will send for you when he comes home; he's away now, and the elder son with him. They expect him back at the turn of spring." He turned his head and called, and a woman appeared in the doorway of the house. "Catra, here's the new man from the chapel. Old Prosper died at midwinter: you were right he wouldn't last the new year in. Have you bread to spare from the baking, and a skin of wine? Good sir, you'll take a bite with us till the fresh batch comes from the oven?"
I accepted, and they made me welcome, and found me all I needed, bread and meal and a skin of wine, sheeps' tallow to make candles, oil for the lamps and chopped feed for the mare. I paid for them, and Fedor -- he told me his name -- helped me pack my saddle-bags. I asked no more questions, but listened to all he told me of local news, and then, well content, rode back to the shrine. The news would get to Ector, and the name; he would be the one person who would immediately connect the new hermit of the Wild Forest with the Myrddin who had vanished with the winter from his cold hilltop in Wales.
I rode down again at the beginning of February, this time to the village itself, where I found that the folk knew all about my coming and, as I had guessed, accepted me already as part of the place. Had I tried to find a niche in village or castle I would still, I knew, have been "the foreigner" and "the stranger" and a subject of ceaseless gossip, but holy men were a class apart, and often wanderers, and the good folk took them as they came. I had been relieved to find that they never came up to the chapel; there was too much of its ancient awesomeness still hanging about the place. They were most of them Christians, and turned for their comfort to the community of brothers nearby, but old beliefs die hard, and I was regarded with more respect, I believe, than the abbot himself.
The same image of ancient holiness clung, I had found, about the island in the lake. I had asked one of the hill men about it. It was known, he told me, as Caer Bannog, which means the Castle in the Mountains, and was said to be haunted by Bilis the dwarf king of the Otherworld. It was reputed to appear and disappear at will, sometimes floating invisible, as if made of glass. No one would go near it, and though people fished on the lake in summer and animals were grazed on the flat grassland at the western end where the river flowed into the valley, no one ventured near the island. Once a fisherman, caught in a sudden storm, had had his boat driven onto the island, and had passed a night there. When he came home next day he was mad, and talked of a year spent in a great