“Last year, a senator of Gaul, Ecdicius, won a battle over the Goths …”

The emperor’s voice seemed to fade in my ears under the growing roar like tide against rocks or a thousand voices shouting as one. My eyes blurred. I heard Ambrosius as in a dream, a memory. He was the past, he was years dead and gone.

They say those men are blessed by God who fall down and foam and have visions. The Anchorites pray for such visitations, and I’ve heard that only persons in the highest grace attain them. How with me, then, to hear Merlin’s voice, to see that incredible host of men, to know that man riding beside my grown self, even his name?

Being leagues from holiness, I must be plain mad. And yet I knew his name, and he was still young. Why then did I feel about him the familiarity of age in all things, in love and triumph and a sadness with the gray cast of autumn?

“… Foot troops, of course, but a mounted force of only eighteen men. And these eighteen routed over a thousand Goths. Sidonius wrote me of it. They were led by a young man like yourself, a patrician. I forget his name.”

The voice echoed in the dream valley. See the men, how they ride.

My mouth opened of itself. “His name …”

“Yes, Artorius?”

Such men come when kings dream them,

“… is Ancellius.”

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“Yes, I remember now.” Ambrosius looked quizzically at me. “You know him?”

And he rides with a doom on his shoulders.

“No, sir,” I met him tomorrow. Merlin said.

The emperor shrugged in resignation. “Whoever; Sidonius said he developed this lance from watching Hunnish horsemen on the frontier. Short men, long stick. The man’s a genius with cavalry. Or was.”

The roaring had subsided now. “Was, my lord?”

“They say he’s gone into a monastery.” A short, dry laugh. “Three monks to every bushel of pears in Gaul, and he has to make one more, wouldn’t you know it. Pity.”

He unrolled a map in front of me. “Hadrian’s Wall and its environs, the whole area claimed by the Parisi. The Sixth is more home guard than legion, been so for sixty years. They’re loyal to Cador, but these squadrons will be led by young men like you who understand my thinking and must follow it.” Ambrosius’ head came up sharply. “Is that clear, Centurion?”

I tried to look positive. “Yes, sir.”

“Your general position: just south of the Wall and in support of it. Your mission is twofold: to patrol and contain the Picts for Cador and to train your men as I advise you. Now look at this.” His finger trailed southeast from the black line of the Wall past Eburacum to the coast and the wide mouth of the Humber. “Cador’s trouble has always come from the Picts, so his entire defense is pointed north. But men like Cerdic in shallow keels could sail by night up the Humber into these tributary streams and Cador could wake up surrounded with his force unassembled. Not vital now, but Saxons are not stupid. I’d attack Cador this way; how long before the Saxons try it?”

He was right. Cador’s back door swung wide, unguarded and inviting to sea raiders. “He must know he’s wide open.”

Ambrosius set the map aside. “Cador’s allegiance has always been nominal. He’s not one to heed imperial advice. As I said before, men are hard to change.” He thought a moment. “But remember this. You’re young, you’re a new generation and so is this Cerdic. We call him a foreigner, but he was probably born here just as you were. This is his home, not Frisia or Jute-land. He’s a young chief like yourself. He needs to grow and expand just as we need to contain him; he learns as you do. You could say he’s your counterpart, Artorius; he’s you with an ax in his belt.” Ambrosius grinned at me. “Odd thought, isn’t it?”

Merlin and a Sword

37

Ambrosius’ new idea was sired by genius on desperation. A full cohort of cavalry to be attached to every legion, five squadrons, each under young Britons, combrogi like myself. No more mercenaries, there was no money to pay them. Almost every rider under me would be a Geraint, a landowner or the son of one with a vested interest in the country. When trained, these cohorts would be detached again to form a separate cavalry legion under a new rank and title created by Ambrosius: Count of Britain.

We couldn’t know it all at once, but it was the end of one thing and the beginning of something else. That man called the Roman citizen hardly existed anymore, nor the elaborate system for protecting his rights or channeling his taxes to central government. More and more, Vortigem and Ambrosius after him had to rely on nobles like Kay, Caradoc and Cador to operate as separate powers, and the men levied for service rode for their own lord and spoke little or no Latin. Ambrosius picked men like myself to lead because we were connected by blood to power. The supply for my squadron would come from Kay or nowhere. These measures, out of hopelessness and isolation, had to be.

So when the minstrels sing of Arthur and his knights, when the Church praises our embodiment of their ideas, bear in mind that priests and bards have a common art. They know the soppy tune to lull the torpid mind. What we were was a patchwork shift stitched from the rag end of a shining mantle that once covered the whole of the civilized world, the Roman legion. Rag end, I say. Our whole eastern coast was Saxon now. Beyond them, in Gaul, the Goth was supreme and would be in Rome within a few years. There was no help for us but stitch and mend and make-do.

Bedivere was elated with our orders, bolting his supper and wanting to pack up at once, but Kay saw it from his own emotional view.

“It takes you even farther from home. We’ll never see you.”

“Of course you will, little goose. That’s the idea. One day we’ll be all over Britain, anywhere—”

“Everywhere!” Bedivere sang out.

My practical brother carefully finished dressing to meet Ambrosius, took the bronze coronet from Bedivere and set it on

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his head. “It’s cold up there. Mother’s women will make new clothes for both of you.”

But I placed in his hands the longsword from Geraint. “Before clothes or anything else, tell Ambrosius you will send me a hundred of these.”

The Earth Is a Woman

The physicians examine me with the eager gravity of ghouls, the priests remind me with delicate tact of final preparations—and Brother Coel wants to write about Guenevere. He adored her even in her exile. She was worthy of adoration, she inspired it though it was among the things she wanted least. Patience, Coel, there’s more than enough time.

There isn’t? How careful of you to remind me. Death will no doubt be as punctual; like an unpaid moneylender, I suspect.

Guenevere comes later. For now, write of her what everyone knows. The daughter of Cador, prince-magistrate of the Parisi, a Roman education to match my own, raised among princes and ministers, coming to her crown and my side with no uncertainty in her role, my queen, my wise regent, my lover. Not tall, but seeming so because of her bearing, her complexion very fair, the hair somewhere between red and brown. Those with short memories will recall us only in age and the troubles that drove us apart, but set this down: we were no mere alliance of tribes. We were a love match.

Surprised, Coel? Proportion is the key. The Greeks taught me that. We have ruled a long time, my queen and I, we’ve played the game for many years. You who gave yourself to God so young should have tasted the pungent world before renouncing it. People find different loves at different times for different reasons. We were meant for each other then, when it happened, Gwen and I.

But she was not the first or the deepest love.

Say the heart is a harp with music variable to the shaper’s

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hand. The first chords out of me—sweet, painful and dissonant— were plucked by Morgana.

Brother Coel writes Morgana because British letters are hard pressed to represent her ancient tongue. Her real name would sound hard and harsh as the heather and rock that bred her. Said loud and sharp it’s like lightning slashed across thunder. She was no Eteyne; we were not gentle. We came together like lance against shield, battered and ground against each other. Possessed, we tore from each other the elemental thing we fed on, and when the combat ended, she cried like a she-wolf about the edges of my soul for what I took away. No right or wrong or justice, only need answered or left begging. She was the dark Faerie girl of Merlin’s dream. In the fire of our locked loins the Fate took its life and grew, dark and angry and doomed as its mother, and she called it Modred.

From Caerieon to Cair Legis was our first leg, four days’ dull ride. Rest for ourselves and the horses, then four more days tagging after dispatch riders over bare hills and desolate moor. The round bowl of the horizon was treeless and windswept, the vastness muting the loudest shout to a bird’s chirp. We saw more wolves than men the whole time, but at dusk of the ninth day clattered down the last stretch of paved road to the massive portcullis and hailed the battlements of Eburacum. Our ranking escort from the Twentieth Legion at Cair Legis was a quicktempered little Spaniard who had to call three times before a head and shoulders leaned indolently from the guard tower with a monumental lack of curiosity.

“Well, who are you?”

“Nuncio, Cair Legis, God damn! What you t’ink, we Picti man come take ‘ee stinking fort, eh?”

The gate rumbled up after some delay. We walked our horses through the twilight into a silent and deserted marketplace, following the dispatch detail down a wide avenue where weeds grew tall between broken paving stones. Few men in sight, none in uniform. We glanced up at the sparsely manned walls.

“Slovenly lot on the watch,” Bedivere muttered. “Old Trajanus would have their skins for meeting officers like that.”