The Last Enchantment - Mary Stewart [55]
He knew me straight away, though it was many years since we had met. He lived alone, but for his two gardeners and a woman who, with her daughter, cared for the house and cooked for him. She was bidden to get beds ready, and bustled off to do some scolding over the kitchen braziers. Ulfin went to see our mules stabled, and Blaise and I were free to talk.
Light lingers late in the north, so after supper we went out to the terrace over the stream. The warmth of the day breathed still from the stones, and the evening air smelled of cypress and rosemary. Here and there in the tree-hung shadows the pale shape of a statue glimmered. A thrush sang somewhere, a richer echo of the nightingale. At my elbow the old man (magister artii, as he now liked to style himself) was talking of the past, in a pure Roman Latin with no trace of accent. It was an evening borrowed from Italy: I might have been a young man again, on my youthful travels.
I said as much, and he beamed with pleasure.
"I like to think so. One tries to hold to the civilized values of one's prime. You knew I studied there as a young man, before I was privileged to enter your father's service? Those years, ah, yes, those were the great years, but as one grows older, perhaps one tends to look back too much, too much."
I said something civil about this being of advantage to an historian, and asked if he would honour me with a reading from his work. I had noticed the lighted lamp standing on a stone table by the cypresses, and the rolls lying handily beside it.
"Would you really care to hear it?" He moved that way readily. "Some parts of it, I am sure, would interest you enormously. And it is a part that you can help me to add to, I believe. As it chances, I have it here with me, this roll, yes, this is the one...Shall we sit? The stone is dry, and the evening tolerably mild. I think we shall come to no harm out here by the roses -- "
The section he chose to read was his account of the events after Ambrosius returned to Greater Britain; he had been close to my father for most of that time, while I had been involved elsewhere. After he had finished reading he put his questions, and I was able to supply details of the final battle with Hengist at Kaerconan and the subsequent siege of York, and the work of settlement and rebuilding that came after. I filled in for him, too, the campaign that Uther had waged against Gilloman in Ireland. I had gone with Uther while Ambrosius stayed in Winchester; Blaise had been with him there, and it was to Blaise that I had owed the account of my father's death while I was overseas.
He told me about it again. "I can still see it, that great bedchamber at Winchester, with the doctors, and the nobles standing there, and your father lying against the pillows, near to death, but sensible, and talking to you as if you were there in the room. I was beside him, ready to write down anything that was needed, and more than once I glanced down to the foot of the King's bed, half thinking to see you there. And all the while you were voyaging back from the Irish wars, bringing the great stone to lay on his grave."
He fell to nodding then, as old men do, as if he would go back for ever to the stories of times gone by. I brought him back to the present. "And how far have you gone with your account of the times?"
"Oh, I try to set down all that passes. But now that I am out of the center of affairs, and have to depend on the talk from the town, or on anyone who calls to see me, it is hard to know how much I miss. I have correspondents, but sometimes they are lax, yes, the young men are not what they were...It's a great chance that brings you here, Merlin, a great day for me. You will stay? As long as you wish, dear boy; you'll have seen that