Mary Stewart - The Arthurian Saga 04 - The Wicked Day

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THE WICKED DAY By the same author mary

stewart's merlin trilogy THE LAST ENCHANTMENT

THE HOLLOW HILLS THE CRYSTAL CAVE

Mary Stewart

THE WICKED DAY

William Morrow and Company, I New

York

reproduced or utilized in any form or by any

means, electronic or mechanical, including

photocopying, recording or by any information storage

and retrieval system, without permission in writing from

the Publisher. Inquiries should be addressed

to William Morrow and Company, Inc., 105

Madison Avenue, New York, N.y.

10016.

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN 0-688-02507-

To Geordie Haddington with deep affection

CONTENTS

Prologue 11 book i: The Boy from the

Sea 21 book n: The Witch's Sons 137

book ill: The Wicked Day 231 Epilogue

305 The Legend 306 Author's Note 311

PROLOGUE

"Merlin is dead." It was no more than a whisper,

and the man who breathed it was barely at arm's length from

the woman, his wife, but the walls of the cottage's

single room seemed to catch and throw the sentence on like

a whispering gallery. And on the woman the effect was

as startling as if he had shouted. Her hand, which had

been rocking the big cradle beside the turf fire,

jerked sharply, so that the child curled under the blankets

woke, and whimpered. For once she ignored him.

Her blue eyes, incongruously pale and bright in

a face as brown and withered as dried seaweed, showed a

shifting mixture of hope, doubt and fear. There was

no need to ask her man where he had got the news.

Earlier that day she had seen the sail of the trading

ship standing in towards the bay where, above the

cluster of dwellings that formed the only township on the

island, the queen's new house stood, commanding the main

harbour. The fishermen at their nets beyond the headland were

wont to pull close in to an incomer's course and

shout for news. Her mouth opened as if a hundred

questions trembled there, but she asked only one. "Can it

really be true?" "Aye, this time it's true. They

swore it." One of the woman's hands went to her

breast, making the sign against enchantment. But she still

looked doubtful. "Well, but they said the same last

autumn, when--" she hesitated, then gave the

pronoun a weight that seemed to make a title of

it, "--when She was still down in Dunpeldyour with the little

prince, and expecting the twin babies. I mind it

well. You'd gone down to the harbour when the trader

put in from Lothian, and when you brought the pay home

you told me what the captain said. There'd been a

feast made at the palace there, even before the news

came in of Merlin's death. She must have 'seen" it

with her magic, he said. But in the end it wasn't

true. It was only a vanishing, like he'd done before,

many a time." "Aye, that's true. He did vanish

away, all through the winter, no one knows where. And a

bad winter it was, too, the same as here, but his

magic kept him alive, because they found him in

the end, in the Wild Forest, as crazy as a hare, and

they took him up to Galava to nurse him. Now they

say he took sick and died there, before ever the High

King got back from the wars. It's true enough this time,

wife, and we've got it first, direct. The 12

ship picked it up when they put in for water at

Glannaventa, with Merlin lying dead in his bed not

forty miles off. There was a lot else, news about

some more fighting down south of the Forest, and another

victory for the High King, but the wind was too strong

to catch all they said, and I couldn't get the boat in

any nearer. I'll go up to the town now and get the

rest." He dropped his voice still further, a thread

of hoarse sound. "It isn't everyone in the kingdom will

go into mourning for this news, not even those that were tied in

blood. You mark my words, Sula, there'll be

another feast at the palace tonight." As he spoke

he gave a half-glance over his shoulder towards the

cottage door, as if afraid that someone might be

listening there. He was a small, stocky man, with the

blue eyes and weather-beaten face of a sailor.

He was a fisherman, who all his life had plied his

trade from this lonely bay on the biggest island of the

Orkney group, the one they called Mainland. Though

rough-seeming and slow-witted, he was an

honest man, and good at his trade. His name was

Brude, and he was thirty- seven years old. His

wife, Sula, was four years younger, but so stiff with

rheumatism and so bent by heavy toil that she already

looked an old woman. It seemed impossible that

the child in the cradle could have been borne by her. And

indeed, there was no resemblance. The child, a boy some

two years old, was dark-eyed and dark-haired, with

none of the Nordic colouring that appeared so often

among the folk of the Orkney Islands. The hand that

clutched the blankets of the cradle was fine-boned and

narrow, the dark hair thick and silky, and there was a

slant tothe brows and the long-lashed eyes that might

even indicate some strain of foreign blood. Nor

was the child the only incongruous thing about the place. The

cottage itself was very small, little more than a hovel.

It was set on a flat patch of salty turf a

little way back from the shore, protected to either side

by the rise of the land towards the dins that enclosed the

bay, and from the tides by the rocky ridge that bordered

the shore and held back the piled boulders of the storm

beach. Inland lay the moors, from which a tiny stream

came trickling, to splash in a miniature

waterfall down past the cottage to the beach. Some

way in from the tide-line it had been dammed

to form a makeshift reservoir. The cottage

walls were built of stones gathered from the storm beach.

These were flat slabs of sandstone, broken from the

cliffs by wind and sea, and weathered naturally, making

a simple kind of dry-stone walling, easy to do, and

reasonably close against the weather. No mortar was

used, but the cracks were caulked with mud. Each

storm that came washed some of the mud away, and then more

had to be added, so that from a distance the cottage looked

like nothing more than a crude box of smoothed mud, with

a thatch of rough heather-stems capping it. The

thatch was held down by old, patched fishing nets, the

ends of which were weighted with stones. There were no windows.

The doorway was low and squat, so that a man had

to bend double to enter. It was covered only with a curtain

of deersk- sin, roughly tanned and as stiff as

wood. The smoke from the fire within came seeping in

sullen wisps round the edges of the skin.

But inside, this poorest of poor dwellings showed

some glimpses of simple comfort. Though the child's

cradle was of old, warped wood, the blankets were

soft and brightly dyed, and the pillow was stuffed with

feathers. On the stone shelf that served the couple for a

bed was a thick, almost luxurious coverlet

of sealskin, spotted and deep-piled, a quality of

skin which would normally go by right to the house of one of the

warriors, or even the queen herself. And on the table

--a worm-ridden slab of sea- wrack propped

on stones, for wood was scarce in the Orkneys--

stood the remains of a good meal: not red meat, indeed,

but a couple of gnawed wings of chicken and a pot of

goosegrease to go with the black bread.

The cottagers themselves were poorly enough dressed.

Brude had on a short, much-mended tunic, with

over it the sleeveless coat of sheepskin which, in

summer and winter, protected him from the weather at

sea. His legs and feet were thickly wrapped in

rags. Sula's gown was a shapeless affair of

moss-dyed homespun, girdled with a length of rope

such as she wove for her husband's nets. Her

feet, too, were bound up in rags. But outside the

cottage, beached above the tidemark of black weed

and smashed shells, lay a good boat, as good as any

in the islands, and the nets spread to dry over the

boulders were far better than Brude could have made.

They were a foreign import, made of materials

unobtainable in the northern isles, and would normally

be beyond the means of such a household. Brude's own

lines, hand-twisted from reeds and dried

wrack, stretched from the cottage's thatch to heavy

anchorstones on the turf. On the lines hung the

split carcasses of drying fish, and a couple of

big sea- birds, gannets, Sula's namesake.

These, dried and stored, and eked out with shellfish and

seaweeds, would be winter food. The promise of

better fare, however, was there with the half-dozen hens

foraging along the tide- mark, and the heavy-uddered

she-goat tethered on the salt grass. It was a

bright day of early summer. May, in the islands, can

be as cruel as any other month, but this was a day of

sunshine and mild breezes. The stones of the beach

looked grey and turquoise and rosy-red, the sea

creamed against them peacefully, and the turf of the ridge

behind was thick with sea-pink and primrose and red

campion. Every ledge of the cliffs that bounded the bay was

crowded with seabirds claiming and disputing their nesting

territory, and nearer, on shingle or turf, the pied

oystercatchers brooded their eggs or flew,

screaming, to and fro along the

tide. The air was loud with their cries. Even had

there been a listener outside the cottage doorway,

he could have heard nothing for the noise of the sea and the

birds, but inside the room the furtive

hush persisted. The woman said nothing, but

apprehension still showed in her face, and she put up a

sleeve to dab at her eyes. Her husband spoke

impatiently.

"What is it, woman? You're never grieving for the

old enchanter? Whatever Merlin was to King Arthur and

to the mainland folks with his magic, he's been nought

to us here. He was old, besides, and even though men said

he'd never die, it seems he was mortal after

all. What's there to weep for in that?"

"I'm not weeping for him, why should I? But I'm

afeared, Brude, I'm afeared."

"For what?"

"Not for us. For him." She gave a half-glance

towards the cradle where the boy, awake but still drowsy

from his afternoon's sleep, lay quietly, curled

small under the blankets. "For him?" asked her

husband, surprised. "Why? Surely all's

well for us now, and for him, too. With Merlin gone, that

was enemy to our King Lot, and by all accounts to this boy

of his as well, who's to harm him now, or us for

keeping him? Maybe we can stop watching now in

case other folks see him and start asking questions.

Maybe he can run out now and play like other children, not

hang on your skirts all day, and be

babied like you've had him. You'd not keep him in much

longer, anyway. He's long since grown beyond that

cradle."

"I know, I know. That's what I'm feared of,

don't you see? Losing him. When the time comes for

Her to take him back from us--" "Why should it? If

she didn't take him away when the news came of

King Lot's death, why should she do it now? Look,

wife. When the king her husband went, you'd have thought that

was when she'd see to it that his bastard went, too,

quietly-like. That was when I was afeared, myself. When

all's said, it's the little prince, Gawain, that's king

of the Orkneys now, by right, but with this boy, bastard or

not, nearly--what?--nearly a year older, there's

some might say--" "Some might say too much."

Sula spoke sharply, and with such patent fear that

Brude, startled, took a stride to the doorway,

jerked the curtain aside, and peered out.

"What ails you? There's no one there. And if there

were, they'd hear nothing. The wind's getting up,

and the tide's well in. Listen." She shook her

head. She was staring at the child. Her tears had dried.

When she spoke, it was barely above a whisper. "Not

outside. There's no folk could get near enough without

we heard 15

the sea-pies screaming. It's here in the house we

need to watch. Look at him. He's not a baby

now. He listens, and sometimes you'd swear he

understood every word."

The man trod to the cradle's side and looked

down. His face softened. "Well, if he

doesn't, he soon will. The gods know he's forward

enough. We've done what we've been paid for--and more,

seeing what a sickly wean he was when we took him

first. Now look at him. Any man might be proud

of a son like him." He turned away, reaching for the

staff that stood propped beside the doorway. "Look

you, Sula, if any ill had been coming, it would have

come before this. If harm was meant to him, the payments would

have stopped, wouldn't they? So stop your fretting.

You've no call now to be fearful."

She nodded, but without looking at him. "Yes. It

was simple of me. You're right, I dare say."

"It's a few years yet before young Gawain will be

troubling his head about kingdoms, and king's bastards, and

by that time this one might well be forgotten. And if that

means they stop the payments, who cares for that? A

man needs a son to help him, in my trade."

She looked up at him then, and smiled. "You're

a good man, Brude." "Well," he said

gruffly, pushing aside the curtain, "let's have an

end to this. I'm going up to the town now, to hear what

other news the sailors brought."

Left alone with the child, the woman sat for a while

without moving, the fear still in her face. Then the boy's

hand reached towards her, and she smiled suddenly, a

smile that brought youth back, bright and pretty, to her

cheeks and eyes. She leaned to lift him from the

cradle, and set him on her knee. She picked

up a crust of the black bread from the table, sopped it

in a beaker of goat's milk, and held it to his

lips. The boy took the bread and began to eat it,

his dark head cuddled into her shoulder. She laid her

cheek against his hair, and put a hand up to stroke it.

"Men are fools, so they are," she said softly.

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摘要：

THEWICKEDDAYBythesameauthormarystewart'smerlintrilogyTHELASTENCHANTMENTTHEHOLLOWHILLSTHECRYSTALCAVEMaryStewartTHEWICKEDDAYWilliamMorrowandCompany,INewYorkCopyright[*curren]1983byMaryStewartAllrightsreserved.Nopartofthisbookmaybereproducedorutilizedinanyformorbyanymeans,electronicormechanical,includi...

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