The Last Enchantment - Mary Stewart [29]
"Stilicho!" I called. As he set the sack down and turned, I added in his own tongue: "I should have let you know, but time was short, and I hardly expected to be here so soon. How are you?"
"My lord!" He stood amazed for a moment, then came running across the weedy yard to the road's edge, wiped his hands down his breeches, reached for my hand, and kissed it. I saw tears in his eyes, and was touched. He was a Sicilian who had been my slave on my travels abroad. In Constantinople I had freed him, but he had chosen to stay with me and return to Britain, and had been my servant while I had lived on Bryn Myrddin. When I went north he married the miller's daughter, Mai, and moved down the valley to live at the mill.
He was bidding me welcome, talking in the same excited, broken tongue as the child. What Welsh he had learned seemed to have deserted him for the moment. The child came up and stood, finger in mouth, staring.
"Yours?" I asked him. "He's a fine boy."
"My eldest," he said with pride. "They are all boys."
"All?" I asked, raising a brow at him.
"Only three," he said, with the limpid look I remembered, "and another soon."
I laughed and congratulated him, and hoped for another strong boy. These Sicilians breed like mice, and at least he would not, like his own father, be forced to sell children into slavery to buy food for the rest. Mai was the miller's only daughter, and would have a fat patrimony.
Had already, I found. The miller had died two years back; he had suffered from the stone, and would take neither care nor medicine. Now he was gone, and Stilicho was miller in his stead.
"But your home is cared for, my lord. Either I or the lad who works for me ride up every day to make sure all is well. There's no fear that anyone would dare go inside; you'll find your things just as you left them, and the place clean and aired...but of course there'll be no food there. So if you were wanting to go up there now..." He hesitated. I could see he was afraid of presuming. "Will you not honour us, lord, by sleeping here for tonight? It'll be cold up yonder, and damp with it, for all that we've had the brazier lit every week through the winter, like you told me, to keep the books sweet. Let you stay here, my lord, and the lad will ride up now to light the brazier, and in the morning Mai and I can go up -- "
"It's good of you," I said, "but I shan't feel the cold, and perhaps I can get the fires going myself...more quickly, even, than your lad, perhaps?" I smiled at his expression; he had not forgotten some of the things he had seen when he served the enchanter. "So thank you, but I'll not trouble Mai, except perhaps for some food? If I might rest here for a while, and talk to you, and see your family, then ride up into the hill before dark? I can carry all I shall need until tomorrow."
"Of course, of course...I'll tell Mai. She'll be honoured...delighted..." I had already caught a glimpse of a pale face and wide eyes at a window. She would be delighted, I knew, when the awesome Prince Merlin rode away again; but I was tired from the long ride, and had, besides, smelled the savoury stew cooking, which no doubt could easily be made to go one further. So much, indeed, Stilicho was naively explaining: "There's a fat fowl on the boil now, so all will be well. Come you in, and warm yourself, and rest till suppertime. Bran will see to your horse, while I get the last sacks off the barge, and it away back to town. So come your ways, lord, and welcome back to Bryn Myrddin."
***
Of all the many times I had ridden up the high valleyside toward my home on Bryn Myrddin, I