The Last Enchantment - Mary Stewart [167]
"And when I have it all?" she asked, subdued.
"Then we shall see." Amused, I caressed her hair again. "Don't look like that, child, take it lightly. It's a wedding journey, not a funeral procession. Our travels may have a purpose, but we'll take them for pleasure, be sure of that. I've had this in mind sometime; it wasn't just suggested by this last sick turn of mine. We've been happy here in Applegarth, and no doubt we shall be happy here again, but you are too young to fold your wings here year after year. So we'll go travelling. I have a suspicion that my real object is just to show you the places I've known and loved, for no more serious reason than that I have known and loved them."
She sat up, looking easier. Her eyes began to sparkle. She was young. "A kind of pilgrimage?"
"You could call it that."
"Tintagel, you mean, and Rheged, and the place where you found the sword, and the lake where you laid it to wait for the King?"
"More than that. God help us both, we must sail to Brittany. My story and the High King's has been bound up -- as yours will be, too -- in that great sword of his. I have to show you where the god himself first came to me, with the first sign of the sword. Which is why we should go soon. The seas are calm, but in another month or so the gales will start."
She shuddered. "Then by all means let us go now." Then, suddenly, all uncomplicated pleasure, a young woman setting out on an exciting journey, with no other thought in her head: "And you'll have to take me to Camelot. I really haven't got anything fit to wear..."
So next day I spoke with Arthur's courier, and not very long after that Arthur himself came to tell me that escort and ship were ready, and that we could go.
We set sail from the Island at the end of July, and Arthur and the Queen rode down to the harbour to see us on our way. Bedwyr was with us, his face a mixture of relief and misery: he had been sent to escort us across the sea, and he was like a man released from the torment of a drug which he knows will kill him, but for which, night and day, he craves. He was charged with dispatches from Arthur to his cousin King Hoel of Brittany, and would escort us as far as Hoel's court at Kerrec.
When we came to the quay the ship was still loading, but soon all was ready, and Arthur bade us farewell, with an admonition to Nimuë to "take care of him" which brought forcibly back to me memories of the voyage I had made with Arthur himself a squalling baby in his wet-nurse's arms, and King Hoel's escort scowling at the noise, and trying to give me due greeting through it all. Then he kissed Bedwyr, with nothing apparent in his look save warm affection, and Bedwyr muttered something, holding him, before turning to take his leave of the Queen. Smiling by the King's side, she had command of herself; her light touch of Bedwyr's hand, and the serene "Godspeed" she wished him showed barely more warmth than that given to Nimuë, and rather less than to me. (Since the Melwas affair, she had shown a pretty gratitude and liking, such as a girl might have for her elderly father.) I said my goodbyes, cast a wary eye at the smooth summer sea, and went on board. Nimuë, already pale, came with me. It needed no prophetic vision to foretell that we would see nothing of one another until the ship docked in the Small Sea.
It is no part of this tale to follow our travels league by league. Indeed, as I have explained, I cannot do so. We went to Brittany, that I know, and were welcomed there by King Hoel, and spent the autumn and winter in Kerrec, and I showed Nimuë the roads through the Perilous Forest, and the humble inn where Ralf, my page, guarded the child Arthur through the dangerous hidden years. But here already the memories are confused; as I write I can see them all, crossing each other like ghosts that crowd, century by century, into an old dwelling house. Each is as clear as the others. Arthur as a baby, asleep in the manger straw. My father watching me in the lamplight, asking, "What will come to Britain?" The druids at their murderous work in