The Merlin Conspiracy (10 page)

We did find the chapel. It was downhill to the left of the house, very tiny and gray, with a little arch of stone on its roof with a bell hanging in it. It was surrounded in green, and there was a hump of green turf beside it, like a big beehive, that had water trickling inside it. The whole place gave us an awed, uncertain feeling, so we went uphill again and round to the back of the house, where we came upon a stone shed with the car inside it. Beyond that, things were normal.

We found a kitchen garden there, fringed with those orange flowers that grow in sprays, and a yard behind the house with a well in it. The water had to be pumped from the well by a handle in the kitchen. Olwen, the fat housekeeper, showed us how to do that. It was hard work. Then we went out beyond the yard to a couple of hidden meadows. One meadow had a pair of cows and a calf in it, and the other had a placid, chunky gray horse.

By this time our feelings of strangeness had worn off. We were used to being in new, unknown places, and we began to feel almost at home. We leaned on the gate and looked at the placid mare, who raised her chalky white face to look back at us and then went calmly on with grazing.

I think her lack of interest irritated Grundo. He went into one of his impish moods. “I'm going to try riding her,” he said, grinning at me.

“Your funeral,” I said. To confess the truth, I almost looked forward to seeing Grundo in trouble with my grandfather. I was feeling mean and depressed about my personality.

Grundo looks soft, but he is surprisingly wiry, and this makes him a much better rider than I am. I have never got much beyond the basics. In a softhearted way that is annoyingly like Mam's, I am sorry for the horse for having me sit on its back making it do things. Grundo says this is silly. It's what horses are bred for. He can make most horses do what he wants.

He nipped over the gate and went across to the mare. She took a quick glance at him and lost interest again. She took no notice at all when Grundo put his hands on her. She was not very tall. Grundo had no difficulty hoisting himself onto her back, where he sat and clicked his tongue at her to make her go. She swung her head round then and looked at him in astonishment. Then … I have no idea what she did then, and Grundo says he doesn't know either. She sort of walked out from underneath him. I swear that for one moment Grundo was sitting on her back, and for another moment Grundo was sitting up in the air, on nothing, looking absolutely stunned, and the next moment the mare was ten feet away and going back to grazing. Grundo came down on the grass on his back with a thump.

He picked himself up and came hobbling over to the gate, saying seriously, “I don't think I'll try again. You can see by all the white on her that she's very old.”

That made me scream with laughter. Grundo was very offended and explained that the mare was old enough to have learned lots of tricks, which only made me laugh more. And after a bit Grundo began to see the funny side of it, too. He said it felt very odd, being left sitting on nothing, and he kept wondering how the mare did it. We went scrambling up to the top of the hill behind the manse, laughing about it.

There were mountains all round as far as we could see up there. The peaks we had thought might be a dragon were lost among all the others.

“Do you think they really
are
part of a dragon?” I asked, while we went sliding and crouching down the other side of the summit. “It
was
rather mad, the way he said it.” The thought that my grandfather might be mad really worried me. But it would certainly explain why my mother was so terrified of him.

“He's not mad,” Grundo said decidedly. “
Everyone's
heard of the Welsh dragon.”

“Are you sure?” I said. “He doesn't behave at all the way people usually do.”

“No, but he behaves like
I
would behave if I hadn't been brought up at Court,” Grundo said. “I sort of recognized him. He's like me underneath.”

This made me feel much better. There was a huge, heathery moor beyond the manse hill, and we rushed out into it with the wind clapping our hair about and cloud shadows racing across us. There was the soft smell of water everywhere. And no roads, no buses, no people, and only the occasional large, high bird. We found a place where water bubbled out of the ground in a tiny fountain that spread into a pool covered with lurid green weeds. Neither of us had seen a natural spring before, and we were delighted with it. We tried blocking it with our hands, but it just spouted up between our fingers, cold as ice.

“I suppose,” Grundo said, “that the well in Sir James's Inner Garden must fill from a spring like this. Only I don't think this one's magic.”

“Oh, don't!” I cried out. “I don't want to remember all that! It's not as if we can do a thing about it, whatever they're plotting to do.” I spread my arms into the watery-smelling wind. “I feel free for the first time in a hundred years!” I said. “Don't spoil it.”

Grundo stood with his feet sinking into squashy marsh plants and considered me. “I wish you wouldn't exaggerate,” he said. “It annoys me. But you do look better. When we're with the Progress, you always remind me of an ice puddle someone's stamped in. All icy white edges. I'm afraid of getting cut on you sometimes.”

I was astonished. “What
should
I be like, then?”

Grundo shrugged. “I can't explain. More like—like a good sort of tree.”

“A
tree
!” I exclaimed.

“Something that grew naturally, I mean,” Grundo grunted. “A warm thing.” He moved his feet with such appalling sucking noises that I had to laugh.

“
You're
the one who's rooted to the spot!” I said, and we wandered on, making for a topple of rock in the distance. When we got there, we sat on the side that was in the sun and away from the wind. After a long time I said, “I didn't mean that about not wanting to remember Sir James's garden. It's just I feel so helpless.”

Grundo said, “Me, too. I keep wondering if the old Merlin might have been killed so that the new one could take over in time to go to the garden.”

“That's an awful thing to think!” I said. But now Grundo had said it, I found I was thinking it, too. “But the Merlin's supposed to be incorruptible,” I said. “Grandad found him.”

“He could have been deceived,” Grundo said. “Your grandfather Hyde's only human, even if he is a Magid. Why don't you try telling
this
grandfather?”

“Grandfather Gwyn?” I said. “What could he
do
? Besides, he's
Welsh
.”

“Well, he made a fair old fuss to the Chamberlain's office just to get you here,” Grundo replied. “He knows how to raise a stink. Think about it.”

I did think about it as we wandered on, but not all that much because, after what seemed a very short while, we saw that the sun was going down and looked at our watches and realized it was after five o'clock. We turned back and got lost. The moor was surrounded by green knobs that were the tops of mountains, and they all looked the same. When we finally found the right knob and slid down the side of it to the manse, there was only just time to get cleaned up before tea was ready.

“I love this food!” Grundo grunted.

The table was crowded with four different kinds of bread, two cakes, six kinds of jam in matching dishes, cheese, butter, and cream. Olwen followed us into the dining room with a vast teapot, and as soon as my grandfather had thundered out his grace, she came back with plates of sausage and fried potatoes. Grundo beamed and prepared to be very greedy. I had to stop before the cakes, but Grundo kept right on packing food in for nearly an hour and drinking cup after cup of tea. While he ate, he talked cheerfully, just as if my grandfather was a normal person.

My grandfather watched Grundo eat with a slightly astonished look, but he did not seem to mind being talked to. He even answered Grundo with a few deep words every so often. I was fairly sure Grundo was being this chatty so that I could join in and tell Grandfather Gwyn what we had overheard in Sir James's Inner Garden. But I couldn't. I knew he would give me that look with his eyebrows up and not believe a word. I seemed to curl up inside just
thinking
of speaking.

I was wondering how often my mam had sat silent like this at meals when Grundo helped himself to a third slice of cake, seriously measuring off the exact amount. “I have room for twenty-five degrees more cake,” he explained, “and then I shall go back to soda bread and jam. Does Olwen do your cooking for you because you're a widower?”

At this my grandfather turned to me. I could tell he was not pleased. It breathed off him like cold from a frozen pond. “Did Annie tell you I was a widower?” he asked me.

“She said she had never known her mother,” I said.

“I am glad to hear her so truthful,” my grandfather replied. I thought that was all he was going to say, but he seemed to think again and make an extra effort. “There has been,” he said, and paused, and made another effort, “a separation.”

I could feel him hurting, making the effort to say this. I was suddenly furious. “Oh!” I cried out. “I
hate
all this divorcing and separating! My grandfather Hyde is separated from
his
wife, and I've never even
seen
her
or
the aunt who lives with her. And that aunt's divorced, and so's the aunt who lives with Grandad, which is awfully hard on my cousin Toby. Half the
Court
is divorced! The King is separated from the Queen most of the time! Why do people
do
it?”

Grandfather Gwyn was giving me an attentive look. It was the sort of look you can feel. I felt as if his deep dark eyes were opening me up, prizing apart pieces of my brain. He said thoughtfully, “Often the very nature of people, the matter that brought them together, causes the separation later.”

“Oh, probably,” I said angrily. “But it doesn't stop them hurting. Ask Grundo. His parents are separated.”

“Divorced,” Grundo growled. “My father left.”

“Now that's one person I
don't
blame!” I said. “Leaving Sybil was probably the most sensible thing he ever did. But he ought to have taken you with him.”

“Well now,” said Grandfather Gwyn. He sounded nearly amused. “The ice of Arianrhod has melted at last, it seems.”

I could feel my face bursting into a red flush, right to the top of my hair and down my neck, because my grandfather had so obviously seen me the same way as Grundo did. So I was a puddle of ice, was I? I was so wrought up by then that I snapped at him, just as if he had been Alicia. “
You
can talk! If ever I saw a marble iceberg, it's
you
!”

Now he looked really amused. His face relaxed, and he very nearly smiled.

“It's not
funny
!” I snarled at him. “I can see you made my mother terrified of you by behaving like this! Most of the time you'd make her think she wasn't worth
noticing
, and then you'd make
fun
of her!”

Then I gave a gasp and tried to hold my breath—but I couldn't because I was panting with rage—knowing that a strict person like my grandfather was bound to jump to his feet and order me thunderously out of the room.

In fact, he just said musingly, “Something of that, but Annie brought her own difficulties to the situation, you know.” The mild way he said it surprised me. I was even more surprised when he said, “Come now, Arianrhod. Tell me what is really upsetting you so.”

I almost burst into tears. But I didn't, because I suspected that Mam would have done and Grandfather Gwyn would have hated it. “If you must know,” I blurted out, “there's a plot—in England—and most of the Court have been given bespelled water, even the King. The
Merlin's
in it!”

“I know,” he said. “This is why I asked for you to come here, before the balance of magic is disturbed even further.”

For a second I was thoroughly astonished. Then I thought, Oh! He's a wizard! And that made me feel much better. I could tell by the way Grundo's face snapped round to look at Grandfather Gwyn, and then went much pinker, that Grundo had had the same thought.

“Tell me in detail,” my grandfather said to us, “every word and sign and act that you remember.”

So we told him. It took awhile, and Grundo absentmindedly ate two more pieces of cake while we talked. He probably needed to. It couldn't have been pleasant for Grundo, having to describe what his mother did. Otherwise I'd have called him a pig. Grandfather Gwyn leaned forward with one forearm stiffly among the tea things and seemed to drink in everything we said.

“Can you help at all?” Grundo said at last.

To our dismay, my grandfather slowly shook his head. “Unfortunately not,” he said. “I am about to become vulnerable, in a way I very much resent, and will be able to do nothing directly for a while. You have just shown me the way of it. But there is something
you
can do, Arianrhod, if you think you have the courage. You will have to work out most of it for yourself, I am afraid. It is magic that is not mine to deal in, and it is something your mother never could have brought herself to do. But if you think you are able, I can put you in the way of it tomorrow.”