CHAPTER 18
HIDDEN PLANS
The footsteps grew louder, and Natalenya almost dropped the amphora. Either she had to enter now or she’d be caught listening in on her father and Vortigern.
Putting on her cheeriest face, she knocked on the door with the hand holding the crock of honey.
A pause. “Come in,” her father called.
She opened the door and found the two men staring at her.
“Well … Natalenya,” her father said. “I expected your mother.”
“She had to help Dyslan with his mishap.”
“I see you have brought the Mulsum. Here, let me get my celebratory goblets.”
Her father went to a cabinet at the back of the room, unlocked it with a small key, and opened the left door. Reaching to the back, he pulled out two very small goblets of cast gold, each with intricate scenes of Roman battles. Her father always brought out this pair when serving company. Only when drinking alone would he take one of the larger goblets from the other side of the cabinet.
He locked the doors again and made sure they were secure. Satisfied, he turned and walked back, carrying the goblets. He smiled at her. “Did you know we were just talking about you?”
“Really? Whatever about?” She feigned a smile.
“Oh, your harp playing. You’ve become skillful in the past few years. Your selection of ballads could be improved, however.”
Natalenya set down the honey and then bit her lip while she worked loose the stopper sealed with pine resin. Her hands trembled so much as she poured the wine that her father quickly steadied her.
“Let’s not spill what I have paid good coinage for.”
“I’m sorry, Father.”
She finished, replaced the stopper, and then stepped back.
Her father stirred some of the thick honey into each glass and then held up one of the goblets. “My friend, you won’t find anything even remotely like it casked here in Britain. One sip and you will feel ten years younger.”
“Will there be anything else, Father?” Natalenya asked.
“All is well. Just make sure you return my costly cargo to its place of safety.”
Natalenya nodded and left the room, closing the door behind her. She walked a few paces from the door, shuffling her feet a bit to create a ruse of steps; then, turning, she tiptoed back. For a while she heard nothing but silence. Then the two spoke again.
“Fantastic,” Vortigern said, then belched. “Haven’t tasted the like since campaigning on the continent seven years ago. Not so good as a Falernian, mind, but still excellent.”
“Very astute. I had it shipped from southern Gaul. No one else in the house is allowed any. Not even my wife.”
“You don’t think your daughter sipped it on the way?”
“Natalenya wouldn’t dare. She saw what I did to a servant who tasted it once. Caught him with the smell on his breath. He paid dearly for that drop.”
“Then why was she nervous? Do you think she overheard us?”
“Oh, no. She’s always like that when handling expensive things.”
“Are you sure that’s it?” Vortigern asked.
“It is just a sign that she knows the value of true luxuries and will manage her future household with care.”
Silence followed, then Vortigern said, “About that household. Vortipor is smitten with her. In no time they will be in love.”
Natalenya stiffened.
“I have thought long and hard about whom to promise her to, and when,” her father said. “Certainly none of the oafs around here are proper suitors. Not that they haven’t tried. I have to keep myself from laughing each time one makes an offer for her hand. They all smell like billy goats and have as much money to their names.”
A chair creaked. “Vortipor will hold great power one day.”
“You are sure he will succeed you?”
“He’s already one of the war chieftains, and I will arrange things. I’m near forty winters, and the road is hard. Soon I will … I will rest, yes. And if I rest, then my sister, Queen Igerna, will agree to Vortipor’s advancement.”
“Does Vortipor have an annulus pronubus?”
Vortigern coughed. “A troth ring? You want to do this Romanlike, eh? Why not a handfast? We could bind their hands — and lives — together tomorrow if we wished.”
“It is my way. If you don’t like Roman customs, we can call it off —”
“No, no. Your method just takes so long.”
Her father’s voice became demanding. “So … you are saying he does not have a ring?”
“Ahh, he could come up with one.”
“Do you require a dowry?”
Vortigern snorted. “From you? In exchange for your timely support, I require only the things to make a home proper for a woman. Of gold, nothing. Vortipor has won much spoil. He already owns a large house on the coast near Regnum.”
“It is agreed, then,” her father said, sending a shiver down Natalenya’s spine. “A sponsio before you leave. How long will you stay?”
“A day, maybe two. But why have a formal betrothal ceremony? Just let him ride away with her!” He laughed.
Natalenya fumed at this. What a swine!
“That is not our way,” Tregeagle said. “An agreement now and a proper ceremony later. The most propitious would be after Vestalia. Maybe the second half of Junius?”
“Come, Tregeagle … it would save you the cost of a wedding.”
“Her mother would not agree —”
“Who says she has to agree?”
Both men laughed.
Natalenya chose that moment to leave, her heart racing three times faster than her quiet feet could take her. Back down the hall she flew, past the bend, and to the culina, where she put the wine back and slid the stone slab over the enclosure.
Turning around, she nearly collided with Vortipor, who towered over her, his face in deep shadow. He raised his arm threateningly above her.
She flinched and tripped back, knocking over a basket of grain.
Dybris sighed as he placed his last rock on Abbot Prontwon’s cairn, which stood on the very top of the mountain. If he’d thought that losing Garth’s allegiance to the druidow had been hard, this was worse. How could Prontwon have died like this?
This worship of the Stone had to be stopped — changed. Somehow.
The sun set as Brother Crogen’s soft voice chanted over the new mound, calling out for God to guard the dead abbot’s body, soul, and spirit. The other monks echoed his words. At the base of the cairn, Brothers Nivet and Migal placed a stone marker carved with the cross of Christ.
Dybris gazed at the cross a long time, remembering how he’d met Prontwon when the old man had visited their abbey on the coast. Brushing a tear from his cheek, Dybris recalled the abbot’s firm hand grasp and friendly smile. His call for Dybris to join them at the mission up on the woodland moor. His counsel. Laughter. Sternness. Teachings. Hard work. Care. Someone coughed, and his memories fled. The cairn stone with the carved cross came into focus again.
In that moment an idea sprouted: a way to defeat the druidow and bring the villagers back to Jesu. It was dangerous, and Dybris knew it might fail. He looked out to the bleeding sun sinking in the west — and smiled for the first time that day.
Yes … he would dare it.
Merlin and his father smithed together for the first time since Merlin’s flogging. While they worked, his father described to him how the blade’s bevels became smooth and straight. How the tip formed a more graceful arc and the tang was lengthened.
During each heating, Merlin worked the bellows while his father tended the coals. The bellows were positioned near the window so they could suck in the extra fresh air and feed the fire. More than once Merlin reached out and touched the new iron bars his father had fit in the window. No more wolves will get through there, he thought contentedly.
The oversized forge required constant attention to spread the heat around the blade: cooler for the tip, hotter near the guard, and the tang out of the coals. His father had an expert eye to know when the blade’s color meant it was ready for the hammer. And as this was best judged in the dark, his father preferred swordsmithing after sundown. Too hot and the metal would spark and ruin its strength. Too cold and his father would tire from excess hammering.
Merlin found peace in the rhythm of heating and hammering, heating and hammering. Some of his happiest times were working with his tas after dinner. No farmers impatient for a tool to be fixed. No horses to shoe. Just him, his father, and a blade.
Once the color was true, his father would clamp onto the handle a special pair of tongs he’d made that would allow Merlin to hold the sword without getting burned, as well as maneuver it without losing his grip. Timing was critical, and his father’s forearm burns testified he didn’t want the blade slipping in the tongs.
During each hammering on the anvil, Merlin held these tongs with both hands. Despite his blindness, he had learned from his father over the past five years to lift the sword slightly off the anvil between hammer blows. This was important to keep the heat from escaping into the anvil. By doing this the visits to the forge were reduced and each blow strengthened.
Now and then during the hammering, his father would call “Trelya,” which meant that Merlin should flip the sword. This was tricky because Merlin had to lift the sword, flip it, and set it on the anvil at the correct angle in time for the next hammer blow.
In this way father and son worked together as one man: lifting, dropping, hammering, lifting, turning, dropping, and hammering. But the part Merlin liked best — when his father wasn’t sullen or angry — was heating the blade, because there was time to talk while Merlin worked the bellows. Maybe tonight he could get more answers from his father than he had been privy to these many long years.
“Tas, how’d you decide to become a blacksmith?” Merlin asked.
“It’s a long story.”
“I’d like to hear it. We have time.”
His father paused, and when he spoke again, it was so quiet Merlin barely caught his words. “The truth is that I stumbled into the craft. When your mother and I traveled to Kernow, I needed work, and a monk at Isca Difnonia told us this village’s blacksmith needed a helper. So we came to Bosventor.”
“Was that Elowek, who owned the smithy before us? I hardly remember him.”
“That was he. I learned the trade without planning on it, swordsmithing and all. When he died I bought the shop and house from his widow, and we’ve been here ever since.”
Merlin’s father used a poker to shift the coals around the blade. “A little more air … That’s it. Funny how life changes you. Now I’m the one known as An Gof, ‘the Smith.’ I can still hear the old man whistling.”
“Hadn’t you ever thought about being a smith?”
“Oh, like most boys, I was fascinated by the heat, sparks, and ringing of the anvil. But no, I hadn’t thought about it. You see I … You don’t know this, but I was the youngest son of a chieftain.”
“Really? My grandfather was a chieftain? Where?”
“Rheged, north of Kembry. The fortress of Dinas Crag. I hear my oldest brother, Ector, rules there now. My father wanted me, as the youngest, to be a leader in the church and had me trained for it.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” All the years his father was unwilling to visit the chapel surfaced in a fresh light. Fear sank like a rock into Merlin’s stomach as he waited for the typical lash from his father. But this time it was different.
Owain stepped away from the forge and walked over to Merlin, who kept working the bellows, but slower now.
“Part of my life has been locked up, for I don’t know how long.” He placed a hand on Merlin’s shoulder.
Merlin’s fear ebbed away.
“But now I’m free, and my soul can move. For the first time my father’s faith, and my son’s faith, is now mine.”
“When did Grandfather leave the old ways?”
“I don’t know, but he was the first in our family. I prepared for the church because it was expected. Ah, but I failed him in that! I wanted to be a warrior like my brothers and spurned his desire for me to be a monk and serve the church. I told the abbot and left.”
“Was he angry?” Merlin asked.
“As a churchman, he understood. I’d —”
“No, Grandfather, was he —”
“Ahh … very angry, yes,” Owain said. “But he didn’t disinherit me at that time.”
The light from the forge dimmed, and Merlin pressed the bellows faster to keep it going. “In leaving the abbey, did you reject God?”
“Not really. Just being a monk.” His father returned to the forge and scooped fresh char-wood around the edges. “As the son of a chieftain in Kembry, I had certain privileges, among which was meeting others of my rank. And higher. One became a fast friend. He was a lad three years younger than I, named Uthrelius, the son of High King Aurelianus.”
Merlin dropped the bellows handles. “You and Uther are friends?”
The smithy was deathly silent, until his father said, “Not anymore. But I served in his war band before we parted. And a bitter parting it was. He was just a prince then. Now a score of years have gone by.” Owain turned away from the forge, and his voice became wistful. “Many years … and he is High King and I am nothing. Nothing but a blacksmith.”
“But you’re more than that, Tas,” Merlin said. “And you can be more. It doesn’t matter what you do with your hands. It’s your character and faithfulness. Your honesty.”
“Sometimes I doubt it. Uther certainly won’t think so.”
Merlin hadn’t considered what Uther would think. “Will he even remember you? Does he know you’re in —”
“Bosventor? No. He doesn’t expect to see my face tomorrow. Nevertheless, he won’t have forgotten. But I hope time will have lessened his rage at me for deserting the war band.”
“And that’s why we’re here. In the smithy.”
His father pulled the blade out to check its color.
“Yes. And I hope I’ll have my most excellent sword for him. Normally I’m angry when a man says he’ll pay for an elaborate weapon like this and then disappears. But now I’m glad. We’ll give it to Uther … and may he forgive me.”