The Crimson Chalice (25 page)

Merlin nodded, smiling, and said, “It is a good name. A name for all men and all time.”

And so she lived now, cared for and protected by Merlin, waiting for the time when Arturo should be grown enough to make the crossing to the mainland. She would go to the people of the Enduring Crow and claim her place among them and rest with them until Baradoc returned. So, while she waited for Merlin to name the day of the crossing, she lived with him as she had once lived with her brother, in openness and companionship. He knew her mind and learned of her past and the story of her meeting with Baradoc. But the one thing she kept locked in her mind, hidden even from Merlin, was their meeting with Asimus and his gift to them, because the true ending of that story belonged only to her and to Baradoc.

She used from the first bathing of Arturo the silver chalice to hold the warm water with which she sponged his body and cleaned his apple-bloom cheeks. When the child was a month old, sitting cradled by her arm on her knee, his naked body shining in the sunlight through the sea entrance, the cry of the seabirds and the slow booming of the swell against the rocks echoing around the cavern, it happened that Arturo, crowing in baby delight, reached out his small fat-wristed hands and put them on the sides of the chalice. Through the water, seen only by her, the ice-bright silver of the bowl was misted and clouded with a crimson flush as pure and unflawed as the rosy gorge of the swallow which had made it nest above the cavern's sea opening.

ANCIENT MODERN

Hercules'Promontory Hartland Point

Yyns-witrin Glastonbury

First published in 1976 by Heinemann

This edition published 2012 by Bello an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR Basingstoke and Oxford Associated companies throughout the world

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ISBN 978-1-4472-3464-7 EPUB
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Copyright © Victor Canning, 1976

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