The Last Enchantment - Mary Stewart [213]
So the year wore on, but so lightly that is seemed only like the evening of a quiet day. The days were golden, tranquil and sweet. There was no call of power, no great high clean wind, no pain in the heart or picking of the flesh. The great doings of the kingdom seemed no longer to trouble me. I did not hunger or ask after news, for when it came, it was brought by the King himself. Just as the boy Arthur, racing up to see me in the shrine of the Wild Forest, had poured out all the doings of every day at my feet, so did the High King of Britain bring me all his acts, his problems and his troubles, and spread them out there on the cave floor in the firelight, and talk to me. What I did for him I do not know; but always, after he had gone, I found myself sitting, drained and silent, in the stillness of complete content.
The god, who was God, had indeed dismissed his servant, and was letting him go in peace.
***
One day I drew the small harp to me, and set myself to make a new verse for a song sung many years ago.
Rest here, enchanter, while the fire dies.
In a breath, in an eyelid's fall,
You will see them, the dreams;
The sword and the young king,
The white horse and the running water,
The lit lamp and the boy smiling.
Dreams, dreams, enchanter! Gone
With the harp's echo when the strings
Fall mute; with the flame's shadow when the fire
Dies. Be still, and listen.
Far on the black air
Blows the great wind, rises
The running tide, flows the clear river.
Listen, enchanter, hear
Through the black air and the singing air
The music...
I had to leave the song there because a string broke. He had promised to bring me new ones, next time he came.
***
He came again yesterday. Something had called him down to Caerleon, he said, so he had ridden up, just for an hour. When I asked him what the business was in Caerleon, he put the question aside, till I wondered -- then dismissed it as absurd -- if the journey had been made merely to see me. He brought gifts with him -- he never came empty-handed -- wine, a basket of cooked meats from his own kitchen, the promised harp-strings and a blanket of soft new wool, woven, he told me, by the Queen's own women. He carried them in himself, like a servant, and put them away for me. He seemed in spirits. He told me of some young man who had recently come to court, a noble fighter, and a cousin of March of Cornwall. Then he spoke of a meeting he was planning with the Saxon "king," Eosa's successor, Cerdic. We talked till the dark drew in, and his escort came jingling up the valley track for him.
Then he rose, lightly, and, as always now when he left me, stooped to kiss me. Usually he made me stay there, by the fire, while he went out into the night, but this time I got up and followed him to the cave entrance, and waited there to watch him go. The light was behind me, and my shadow stretched, thin and long, like the tall shadow of old, across the little lawn and almost to the grove of thorn trees where the escort waited below the cliff.
It was almost night, but over beyond Maridunum in the west, a lingering bar of light hinted at the dying sun. It threw a glint on the river skirting the palace wall where I was born, and touched a jewel spark on the distant sea. Near at hand the trees were bare with winter, and the ground crisp with the first frost. Arthur trod away from me across the grass, leaving ghost-prints in the frost. He reached the place where the track led down to the grove, and half turned. I saw him raise a hand.
"Wait for me." It was the same farewell always. "Wait for me. I shall come back."
And, as ever, I made the same reply:
"What else have I to do but wait for you? I shall be here, when you come again."
The sound of horses dwindled, faded, was gone. The winter's silence came back to the valley. The dark drew down.
A breath of the night slid, like a sigh, through the frost-hung trees. In its wake, faintly, like no sound but the ghost of a sound, came a faint sweet ringing from the air. I lifted my head, remembering,