Lance expected Garbonian to sit back down. If Art had turned so icy a gaze upon him, he wouldn’t have known how to bear it. But Garbonian seemed unruffled. He took a moment or two, as if readjusting his ideas. Then he looked up at Arthur without fear. “Will you permit me to say, Your Majesty, that your views on these newcomers have been coloured by the death of your good stepfather, whose fate I learned with the greatest sadness?”
A faint gasp went through the crowd. Guy’s hand flew to the hilt of his sword. Old Coel surged to his feet and actually caught his son a clip across the shoulder with his staff. “Garb!” he thundered. “You wretched, unfeeling boy.”
Then he turned to Arthur, and stiffly dropped down on one knee before him. “Artorius,” he growled. “Forgive this insult to your grief. Forgive my child. I was much away on campaign during his youth, and left his upbringing to fools and women.”
Art leaned down to him. Something in the movement caused him to pale more deeply than Garbonian’s words had done, but still he hoisted the old man back to his feet. “It’s forgiven,” he said, loudly enough for everyone assembled to hear. Then he turned to Garbonian with a calm, pleasant smile. “It’s forgiven. But if your tongue ever forms my father’s name again, sir, I’ll cut it from your head. Finish what you have to say, and be quick about it.”
Garbonian looked less startled by the threat than by the chance to carry on. Lance could read him easily: felt, despite his instinctive loathing, a kind of kinship. Lance too had been raised amongst hotheaded tribal aristocrats for whom everything was personal. He had never before seen a leader who refused to let his own feelings sway an argument. Garbonian, Lance, Guy, the gathered soldiers—everyone here was witnessing, would be forced to acknowledge, a new kind of kingship.
But Garbonian had learned something else too. Lance could see it in the very blandness of his expression: he was stowing away the discovery that Arthur could be hurt. Quickly he resumed the floor. “Yes, Your Majesty. The shame is mine, that I didn’t know of the Elmet uprising. But things are different with us here in the north. For one, there aren’t so many incomers, and never will be. Further, apart from a handful of pirates, they are most of them settlers anyway. We couldn’t stop it when they arrived, and now they have lands of their own to take care of. We should use that to our advantage.”
“So you… seek an alliance?”
“I don’t know if I’d dignify it with that word. They’re not our equals. But a treaty, an arrangement…”
For the first time, Arthur looked uncertain. He shot a searching glance into a patch of shadows behind the row of thrones. “Excuse me,” he said. “I must consult with my Merlin.”
Lance wasn’t sure if he’d heard him aright. Then the shadows stirred, and a kind of human scarecrow emerged into the light, which was just beginning to redden as the short winter day drew on. The frail, bowed figure was nothing but bones draped in a cobweb of cloak and robes, face invisible behind a cloud-grey hood.
It was Viviana, surely! Lance lurched halfway to his feet before Guy grabbed his elbow and pulled him back down. Lance turned to him, joy and hope boiling up fiercely. If anyone could counsel the king, guide him wisely in the paths of treaties, arrangements, alliances… After all, hadn’t she told Lance that the blending of the streams was inevitable, as natural in the long term as the confluence of waters at River’s Meet? “Guy,” he whispered. “It’s the old woman I told you about, the one who looked after me and showed me the sword from the lake. Viviana!”
Chapter Six
Guy made frantic gestures of hushing. “What are you talking about?” he whispered, staring down the haughty knight in the row in front who’d twisted round to frown at them. “That’s our Merlin.”
“Your Merlin? I thought he was a legend, something out of Arthur’s visions.”
“Well, sometimes he is. He’s real at the moment, though, and we’re very fortunate to have him.”
“I don’t understand. This is the old man who brought Art to live with you? How can he still be alive?”
“They’re said to be immortal.”
“They? There’s more than one?”
“So legend says. There must be, or how could they appear as they do, in a man’s youth and again in his old age, always the same?”
The haughty knight turned again. This time Lance raised a reproving eyebrow at him, and he blinked and looked away. “How can you be certain, then, that this one is real? Arthur’s Merlin?”
Guy’s expression became grim. “He is. He came to us during our useless battle for Vortigern’s land, just after my father was wounded. Ector recognised him, or… Well, he was dying. But he said he was one and the same. And everybody listens when he speaks, so for heaven’s sake shut up.”
Lance obeyed, bewildered. He’d have bet his own horse that Viviana’s gaunt face lay beneath the folds of the hood, but now the thin figure was straightening up, pushing the ragged fabric back. A harsh profile appeared, thrusting up towards Arthur’s like a hungry bird of prey. His words were for Art only, even though a pindrop silence had fallen throughout the hall. Taut sibilants only reached Lance across the space between them, which suddenly seemed vast, a desert he could never cross. Then, abruptly as the old man had started, he was done, drawing his hood back into place. His retreat into the shadows was so subtle and quick that Lance rubbed his eyes, suddenly uncertain that he’d been there at all.
Arthur swayed. Lance had half forgotten that he’d hauled himself off what should have been his deathbed to come to the debating hall today. Now, suddenly, it was all too apparent. Old Coel, who’d never resumed his seat after rising to deal with Garbonian, took gentle hold of his elbow and held out a hand to his vacant throne. After a moment’s resistance, Arthur gratefully sat down. “Thank you,” he said, and looked around him as if unsure of where he was. Then he collected himself, using one elbow to push himself up straight. “Garbonian says the invaders aren’t our equals. I don’t know the rights and wrongs of that, but… Coel, why not seek alliance with men you do know are worthy to stand with you in defence of your realm?” He held out a hand toward Mor of Ebrauc, Ceneu of Rheged, Srath Chluaidh, Coel himself. “Right here in this hall with you are sovereign lords whose kingdoms, once united, could form a wall against any invasion.”
Coel sighed. He seemed to have forgotten about any sovereignty of Arthur’s: was patting his shoulder as if Art had been a tired, injured son of his own, and a much nicer one than Garbonian. “Yes, once united,” he said wryly. “But you’d have better luck making three tom cats see one another’s point of view. You’re a southerner, Artorius. You don’t understand how we’ve all fought each other, or for how long. They’d rather slit each other’s throats than cooperate.”