Page 106 of The Road to Avalon
He frowned. “Did you doubt it? Could there be two like me? Of course I’m your Merlin.”
I threw my arms around him. “Oh Merlin. I couldn’t stop any of it without you. Arthur executed Amhar for a crime I was too blind to see Medraut had committed. Arthur and I fell out, and Camlann happened even though I thought I could stop it. Everything came out like the legends.” God, how wonderful to be able to tell someone the truth, to load on him the weight of responsibility that had been crushing me.
He hugged me close, one gentle hand soothing my hair. “I know. I know all the legends now. I haven’t spent the last five hundred years in idleness, you know.”
I couldn’t help a chuckle. “You look a bit weird in modern clothes.”
He extricated himself from my arms. “But you did what you were meant to do. You brought Arthur here to where he wouldn’t have to die. You brought him to Avalon.”
I stared. “You meanthisis Avalon? The present day, here? My world?”
He grinned. “I think it must be. I think you’ve made it into Avalon.”
The truth stared me in the face. “So, Avalon’sneverbeen some magical world of fairies at all? It’s today. It’s now. This is where Arthur was always meant to come to. In all the legends, when they said he didn’t die– they were right. Because he didn’t. He’s here, with us, in the present.” My brow furrowed with the enormity of the realization.
But now I paused to think about it, how cool was that? I’d been born and brought up in Avalon, just never known it.
Merlin nodded. “So you see, hedidneed you. All the way through, he needed you for everything. And I was right when I told you I saw you with him to the end, if there was one. Because there wasn’t one back then, was there? Whatever end there’s going to be will be here. For both of you.”
I frowned, then laughed, a bit of a mad laugh. “But how’s he going to take to living here? To not being a king? And where are we going to live? I don’t even have a house. Nor a job. Nathan’ll have the house I used to have a share in. I can hardly take Arthur there. And I’m certain he wouldn’t like our towns.”
Merlin’s mobile mouth widened in a grin worthy of the bloody Cheshire Cat, looking as though he had the answer to everything. “You remember I told you my skills came in handy for the National Lottery? Well, I’ve been planning for your return a long while now. For meeting Arthur again. And you. I’ve invested my somewhat substantial winnings in property. I think you’re going to like it.”
The door of the waiting room swung open, and a doctor wearing scrubs like mine came in. He smiled. “Mrs. King? Your husband’s just come out of theater. Thanks to your prompt action with those rather unorthodox splints, we’ve been able to save his leg. He’s somewhat the worse for wear, but he’s going to be fine. You can go and see him when he comes out of the recovery room.”
Chapter Forty-Two
My freshly madecoffee in my hand, I step out of the kitchen onto the flagstone patio where Cabal still lies in the sun, long tail twitching in some dream. He’s nearly five now, middle-aged for a Wolfhound, so he’s inclined to taking siestas. I set my coffee mug on the table and shade my eyes to peer down the slope towards the river. Twenty yards from the patio the garden ends and the hay meadow begins, the grass standing tall already, even though it’s only May. Beyond, drooping willows mark the twisting watercourse.
Even from here I can hear the music of the rushing water and the wind that makes the branches whisper together like naughty schoolgirls. And birdsong, sweet and melodious and joyful. The sound of springtime.
If I turn my head to the right, I’ll see our horses grazing in the meadow, tails swishing against the flies the warm weather has brought out. And beyond them, our sheep graze in the fields that climb toward the mountain’s foot. Then purple heather, rocky outcrops and golden gorse dot the moorland under a powder blue sky.
The smell of the casserole in the Aga curls out of the open kitchen door behind me, and Cabal lifts his shaggy head and sniffs. I bend and caress him, my fingers rubbing his silken ears. Cabal. A name to remind me of a long gone world. We named him for the dog my lost son Amhar once had.
Many memories abound here. We live our lives enmeshed in memories of the past. We surround ourselves with hope for the future. The future comes out of the kitchen onto the patio behind me. Four and a half years old, sturdily built with a head of darkly curling hair, a little clone of his lost brothers. He’s wearing dungarees over an Arran sweater and has his Wellington boots on the wrong feet.
“Con.” I sweep him off his feet and hold him close, our cheeks touching. I breathe him in. The child who will never be a warrior.
He giggles and plants a kiss on my nose. “Mami, put me down.”
He calls me mami just as Archfedd did, and every time he does my heartstrings pull. The daughter I left behind. Thanks to Merlin, I know what happened to her. He had it from Nimuë, who made it her business to keep a watch on the surviving members of her family from afar. I’ve never asked him how he persuaded her to part with the information. Perhaps I don’t want to know. But she was his daughter, so maybe she told him willingly.
Archfedd did marry Llawfrodedd, and they ruled Dumnonia together with great success. She wore my crown, just as she’d seen in her grandmother’s scrying glass. And Arthur’s peace, forged at Badon, survived for many years. They had sons, and grandsons, and greatgrandsons, but the Saxons came, of course, as I’d always known they would, and Dumnonia was lost at last. Perhaps out there in the wide outside world they have descendants,mydescendants too. I’ll probably never know.
I set Con back on his feet, and he runs to fetch his little fishing rod from where it leans against the wall. Arthur made it for him from a willow wand and thin string just last week. “Here, this is how I learned to fish with old Nial,” he said, as Con watched him work. “You’ll be able to fish just like I did. So long ago.” I didn’t miss the wistful look in his eye as he spoke.
Con jumps up and down. “Can we go fishin’ with Dadi? Both of us?”
I glance at the chickens where they’re edging toward the patio with a look of nonchalance about them, then back through the open kitchen door. “We’d better close the door, or those pesky buckbucks’ll be in there again.” I pull the door shut, and Cabal lumbers to his feet and gives Con’s cheek a friendly lick. Con squeals and wipes the slobber off on the sleeve of his handknitted jersey.
I take Con’s small, grubby hand in mine, and we negotiate the half dozen slate steps down onto the lawn. Where the lawn ends, we follow the narrow path Arthur’s mown through the hay meadow, Cabal trotting at our heels.
Our river, just a big stream really, meanders through our property, heading west toward the not-too-distant sea, sometimes quiet and moody, sometimes exuberant and wild. Full of fish, though, if you have the patience to sit and catch them.
Arthur is sitting on the log he’s put there as a seat, his back against the trunk of the shady tree and his fishing line trailing in the water. His favorite fishing spot. A quiet pool sits dark and inviting on a bend in the river. He gets up as we approach, warned by Con’s joyful shouts, and sets his rod in its support. It’s a fancy carbon fiber one, and he’s very proud of it.
Con runs to him and he sweeps the little boy off his feet just as I did, laughing with our son. He’s learning to be a proper father, his relationship with Con quite different to the one he had with our two lost boys. He has time to play with him, to read him bedtime stories, to sit him on his knee and tell him tales of magic and long-ago battles. Of a world our boy will never see.
