The Last Enchantment - Mary Stewart [86]
"I have said you shall have it."
"And when yon builder" -- this was myself -- "has got Caer Camel spoiled, what land will you give me then?"
Arthur had perhaps not meant to be taken so quickly at his word, but he hesitated only for a moment. "I saw good green stretches down by the river yonder, beyond the village. If I can -- "
"That's no manner of good for beasts. Goats, maybe, and geese, but not cattle. That's sour grass, that is, and full of buttercups. That's poison to grazing."
"Indeed? I didn't know that. Where would be good land, then?"
"Over to the badgers' hill. That's yonder." He pointed. "Buttercups!" he cackled. "King or not, young master, however much folks know, there's always someone as knows more."
Arthur said gravely: "That is something else I shall remember. Very well. If I can come by the badgers' hill, it shall be yours."
Then he reined back to let the old man by, and with a salute to me, rode away downhill, with his knights behind him.
Derwen was waiting for me by the foundations of the southwest tower. I walked that way. A plover -- the same, perhaps -- tilted and side-slipped, calling, in the breezy air. Memory came back, halting me...
...The Green Chapel above Galava. The same two young faces, Arthur's and Bedwyr's, watching me as I told them stories of battles and far-off places. And across the room, thrown by the lamplight, the shadow of a bird floating -- the white owl that lived in the roof -- guenhwyvar, the white shadow, at whose name I had felt a creeping of the flesh, a moment of troubled prevision which now I could scarcely recall, except for the fear that the name Guenever was somehow a doom for him.
I had felt no such warning today. I did not expect it. I knew just what was left of the power I had once had to warn and to protect. Today I was no more than the old herdsman had called me, a builder.
"No more?" I recalled the pride and awe in the King's eyes as he surveyed the groundwork of the "miracle" I was working for him now. I looked down at the plans in my hand, and felt the familiar, purely human excitement of the maker stir in me. The shadow fled and vanished into sunshine, and I hurried to meet Derwen. At least I still possessed skill enough to build my boy a safe stronghold.
4
Three months later Arthur married Guenever at Caerleon. He had had no chance to see the bride again; indeed, I believe he had had no more speech with her than what slight formalities had passed between them at the crowning. He himself had to go north again early in July, so could spare no time to travel into Cornwall to escort her to Guent. In any case, since he was High King, it was proper that his bride should be brought to him. So he spared Bedwyr for one precious month to ride down to Tintagel and bring the bride to Caerleon.
All through that summer there was sporadic fighting in the north, mostly a business (in that forested hill country) of ambush and running skirmish, but late in July Arthur forced a battle by a crossing on the River Bassas. This he won so decisively as to create a welcome lull that prolonged itself into a truce through harvest-time, and allowed him at length to travel to Caerleon with a quiet mind. For all that, his was a garrison wedding; he could afford to sacrifice no sort of readiness, so the bridal was fitted in, so to speak, among his other preoccupations. The bride seemed to expect it, taking everything as happily as if it had been some great festive occasion in London, and there was as much gaiety and gorgeousness about the ceremony as I have ever seen on such occasions, even though men kept their spears stacked outside the hall of feasting, and their swords laid ready to lift, and the King himself spent every available moment in counsel with his officers, or out in the exercise grounds, or -- late into the night sometimes -- poring over his maps, with his spies' reports on the table beside him.