Page 27 of The Road to Avalon
He sat on the stone next to me and watched for a while until I ran out of bread and the gulls gave up. They’d have a long wait before they’d be able to dive-bomb tourists to steal their chips in my old world.
“Did you know?” he asked.
Taken by surprise, my eyes widened. “Did I know what?”
“About Drustans?”
“Ah.” I bit my bottom lip. “I understand.”
“Well?” he persisted. “Did you?”
I heaved a sigh. “I had an inkling.”
The westerly wind blowing in off the sea tugged at his loose hair. I’d never known him to have it cut short as other warriors did from time to time. He brushed it out of his eyes. “What doesthatmean?”
“That I didn’t think he’d ever become king.”
He frowned. “Can you explain?”
I told him about the memorial stone in Fowey, and what it said.
His eyes narrowed as he nodded. “Those words you chose. You seem to have a habit of creating history.”
I bristled. “Isn’t that what you brought me here for?”
“You’re right. I suppose I shouldn’t complain when you do.”
We sat in silence for a while, not looking at one another and listening to the pounding of the waves.
“Do you think it was inevitable?” I asked, at last. “That we couldn’t have done anything to prevent it?”
He turned to look at me. “I don’t know. Perhaps. Maybe even if you’d known how and why he wouldn’t become king, none of us could have prevented his death. Nor Essylt’s.” He shook his head. “Maybe no matter how we rail against fate, there’s nothing we can do to change the path it has mapped out for us.”
That wasn’t like him.
I swallowed. “Do you think I can do nothing, then, to prevent Camlann from happening?”
Was that compassion in his eyes? Had he seen it galloping up on us as well? He shrugged. “I don’t know. But maybe if we can’t avert it, we can change things by how we treat it.” He paused. “How we react– how we let it affect us.” He waved a hand around expansively, encompassing the view. “How it changes our world.”
“That’s not enough for me.” I shook my head in determination. “I want to stop it happening.” I paused. “But the trouble is, I don’t know if it even will. Or, if itisgoing to, how it will happen, or even where Camlann is. I thought it might have been at a fort on the Wall– Camboglanna– but it wasn’t. Or it might still be if we have to go back up there.”
I paused again, marshalling my thoughts. “For me, it’s just a story I’ve known all my life, but it’s from a book, and for all I know, it might not be what fate has in store for any of us. All my fears might come to nothing. Or they might not. And even if I’m right, how can I stop something when I don’t even know what the signs are that it’s approaching? Might I evenmakeit happen by my actions? Am I an integral part of what the future will unroll? Am I damned if I actanddamned if I don’t?”
He sighed. “I think you might be.”
*
The next day,Cei and his mother settled down to spend a few hours going over the trading accounts she kept. While Arthur and Merlin rode out to visit one of Cei’s tin mines, Archfedd and I scrambled down the narrow path to the shingle beach below the headland so she could paddle in the sea.
From the valley above, a little stream cascaded over the towering cliffs in a waterfall. And under the headland, where the low tide had exposed some patchy sand, and the smell of the seaweed was strong, the dark maw of a large cave gaped in open invitation.
I’d stood on this beach in a past life, with my father, and now I stood on it with the granddaughter he’d never see. He’d taken me into the cave, and I’d stared around with childish wonder, believing him when he’d said it was “Merlin’s Cave.” Later on, I’d found out local legend called it that, not just my father. Now, though, I knew it had nothing to do with my friend.
“Look,” Archfedd cried, scrambling, in feet bare from paddling, over the tumbled rocks and round pebbles thrown up by the sea. “Look, you can walk right through it. Come on, Mami.”
I followed her through a long tunnel, carved out by thousands of years of tides, that passed right through the headland. The walls shone and dripped with running water, and from the far end came the thunderous crash of waves. We emerged onto a far rockier, but a little more sheltered, beach than the first, beneath cliffs too steep to climb.
I sat on a boulder made smooth by wave action. “The tide’s still going out. We’ll be safe here a while.”
