The Hollow Hills - Mary Stewart [90]
She curtsied to me again as I went out, the small lovely face hidden once more behind the curtaining hair.
6
I think this was the only time in my life that I saw Bryn Myrddin not as the home I was eager to reach, but as a mere halting place on a journey. And once I had arrived in Maridunum, instead of welcoming the familiar quiet of the valley, the company of my books, the time to think and to work with my music and my medicines, I found myself fretting to be away, all my being straining northwards to where the boy lived who was to be my life from this time on.
All I knew of him, apart from the cryptic reassurances which had come to me through Hoel and Ector, was that he was healthy and strong, though smaller for his age than Cei, Ector's own son, had been. Cei was eleven years old now, to Arthur's eight, and as familiar to my visions as the young prince. I had watched Arthur scuffling with the older boy, riding a horse that to my coward's eye looked far too big for him, playing at swordsmanship with staves, and then with swords: I suppose these must have been blunted, but all I saw was the dangerous flash of the metal, and here, though Cei had the strength and the longer reach, I could see that Arthur was quick as a sword himself. I watched the pair of them fishing, climbing, racing through the edge of the Wild Forest in a vain bid to escape Ralf who (with the help of Ector's two most trusted men) rode guard on Arthur at all times, day or night. All this I watched in the fire, in the smoke or the stars, and once where there were none of these and the message was straining to be through, in the side of a precious crystal goblet which Ahdjan was displaying to me in his palace by the Golden Horn. He must have wondered at my sudden inattention, but probably put it down to indigestion after one of his lavish meals, which to an Eastern host is rather a compliment than otherwise.
I could not even be sure that I should recognize Arthur when I saw him, nor could I tell what kind of boy he had grown to be. Daring I could see, and gaiety, and stubborn strength, but of his real nature I could be no judge; visions may fill the mind's eye, but it takes blood to engage the heart. I had not even heard him speak. Nor had I as yet any clear idea how to enter his life when I did reach the north country, but every night of my journey from London to Bryn Myrddin I walked outside under the stars, searching for what they had to tell me, and always the Bear hung there straight ahead of me, glittering, speaking of the dark north and cool skies and the smell of pines and mountain water.
Stilicho's reaction when he saw the cave where I lived was not what I expected. When I had left home to go on my travels, since I was to be away for so long, I had hired help to look after the place for me. I had left money with the miller on the Tywy, asking him to send one of his servants up from time to time; it was apparent that this had been done, for the place was clean, dry and well provisioned. There was even fresh bedding for the horses, and we had barely dismounted before the girl from the mill came panting after us up the track with goats' milk and fresh bread and five or six newly caught trout. I thanked her, and then, because I would not let Stilicho clean the fish at the holy well, asked her to show him where the runaway water trickled down below the cliff. While I checked over my sealed jars and bottles, making sure that the lock on my chest was untouched and that the books and instruments within were undamaged, I could hear the two young voices outside still clacking busily as the mill wheel, with a good deal of laughter as each tried to make the other understand the foreign tongue.
When at length the girl went and the boy came in with the fish neatly gutted and split ready for roasting, he seemed happily prepared to find the place as convenient and comfortable as any of the houses we had stayed in on my travels. At first I put this down in some amusement to the compensation he had just discovered, but I found later