Page 45 of The Quest for Excalibur
“You need to ask that?”
He smiled. “Then you must trust him. Sometimes, you behave as though you don’t.”
I stared at him. “But I do. With my life. With my children. With everything.”
“Not enough to tell him your secrets. Secrets you seem happy to tell me.”
I swung away from him, anger coursing through me, my fingers entwining themselves. Unfair of him to say this– to accuse me. And not true. I longed to tell Arthur my secrets, yearned to have nothing hidden from him. To finally be honest.
“It’s different with you.” I bit my lip. “You understand. I don’t think he will.” I paused. “I don’t think he can.”
“Try him. I’m not saying tell him about Camlann. Tell him of your dream, at least. Somehow, I don’t think it was your imagination, nor caused by your fall. I have a feeling it’s important.”
I narrowed my eyes. Suspicion that he’d used his Sight to spy on what lay ahead arose. “Have you been looking?”
He grimaced. “I might have been.”
“But he already has a sword. Why would he need another?”
“I think this sword, that you call Excalibur, is something special. Something different. Twelve years ago, you told me about a legend from your time. To bring it about, I took an ordinary sword, any sword, and thrust it into that stone in the forum at Viroconium. Arthur was the only one who could draw it, and by doing so he proved his right to the High Kingship, which was what I intended. But that was all it was. A means to an end. People are easy to manipulate.”
He paused and rubbed his hand across his chin. His bristles rasped. “You’re right. I have looked. But when I use the Sight to look for this sword you’ve told me about, it’s not Arthur’s hand I see on it.” The air had gone very still. No sound echoed from the hilltop houses. Even the children had fallen silent. “I see the hand of someone long dead.”
Now I was interested. “Whose hand?”
“An emperor’s hand.”
My eyes widened. “His great-grandfather’s? Constantine’s?” The man who’d led the final British legions into Gaul at the end of the Roman occupation and never returned. Could Excalibur have been his sword?
Merlin shook his head, brows furrowed. “Somehow, I think not. My vision isn’t clear enough. When I look, I see purple, the color of rank within the Roman Empire, and I see a crown of golden laurel leaves on someone’s head. The wearer’s not young, but he’s a warrior emperor, of that Iamcertain. His hand rests on the hilt of a sword. A splendid sword.” He let the hint of a smile creep across his face. “Perhaps it’s your Excalibur?”
“Who else could that be, then, but Constantine?”
That small smile played about Merlin’s lips. A knowing smile. Was there something he wasn’t telling me?
I reached out and took hold of his hand, my fingers tight and demanding. “Tell me who you think it was.”
“Macsen. Macsen Wledig.”
Of course. I’d heard the fairytale of Prince Macsen told around the hearth fire many times.The Dream of Macsen Wledig.“He was arealperson?” Memories tickled my brain, elusive and out of reach. The story had seemed too far-fetched to be true.
Merlin nodded.
I struggled to remember if my father had ever mentioned that name, and failed. If he had, then I’d forgotten. Its familiarity was from hearing the story told by the hearth, of a winter’s evening.
“Who was he then? Are you saying the sword in my dream is his? That Nimuë showed me his actual sword? That it’s in a lake somewhere? And I have to give it to Arthur?”
Merlin gripped my hand back, the breeze blowing his long hair across his face. He swiped it away. “Before Constantine, there was Macsen. Unlike Constantine, he wasn’t British born, but he served here with the legions. As an officer of rank, and nephew of the famous general Count Theodosius, he married a princess of Gwynedd, Elen.”
This sounded as though it had an element of truth about it, unlike the fanciful story as told by bards.
“He declared himself Emperor here in Britain, and, like Constantine, went overseas, leaving his wife and some of his children here in Britain. For a few years, he succeeded, until he attacked Rome and was defeated and executed.”
“Do you mean he’sMagnus Maximus?” I’d heard of him, for sure.
Merlin nodded. “The name the legions gave him. To us he was Prince Macsen.”
Of course. Why I hadn’t spotted the similarity before, I didn’t know. Too long spent here in the Dark Ages.
