The Merlin Conspiracy (9 page)

“Are you listening to me?” I panted when I'd told her what we'd overheard.

She was so upset and feeling so strongly for me getting into the clutches of her terrible old father that I don't think she did listen, even though she nodded. I just had to hope she would remember it later.

The car was drawn up in front of the main door of the castle, as if the driver, or Mam's father, imagined that I was staying in there with the King. It was black and uncomfortably like a hearse. The “same old driver,” who looked as if he had been carved out of a block of something white and heavy and then dressed in navy blue, got out when he saw us coming and held out his big stony hand for my bag.

“Good morning,” I panted. “I'm sorry to have kept you waiting.”

He didn't say a word, just took my bag and stowed it in the boot. Then he took Grundo's bag with the same carved stone look. After that he opened the rear door and stood there holding it. I saw a little what Mam meant.

“Nice morning,” I said defiantly. No answer. I turned to Mam and hugged her. “Don't
worry
,” I said. “I'm a very strong character myself, and so is Grundo. We'll see you soon.”

We climbed into the backseat of the hearse and were driven away, both of us feeling a little dizzy at the speed of events.

Then we drove and drove and drove, until we were dizzy with that, too. I still have not the least idea where we went. Grundo says he lost his sense of direction completely. All we knew were astonishingly green hills towering above gray, winding roads, gray stone walls like crosshatching on the hillsides, gray slides of rock, and woods hanging over us from time to time like dark, lacy tunnels. Dad's good weather was getting better and better, so there was blue, blue sky with a brisk wind sliding white clouds across it and sliding their shadows over the green hills in strange, shaggy shapes. Under the shadows we saw heather darken and turn purple again, gorse blaze and then look a mere modest yellow, and sun and shade pass swiftly across small, roaring rivers half hidden in ravines.

It was all very beautiful, but it went on so long, winding us further and further into the heart of the green mountains—until we finally began winding upward among them. Then it was all green and gray again, with cloud shadows, and we had no sense of getting anywhere. We both jumped with surprise when the car rolled to a stop on a flat green stretch near the top of a mountain.

The stone-faced driver got out and opened the door on my side.

This obviously meant
Get out now
, so we scrambled to the stony green ground and stood staring about. Below us, a cleft twisted among the emerald sides of mountains until it was blue-green with distance, and beyond those green slopes were blue and gray and black peaks, peak after peak. The air was the chilliest and clearest I have ever breathed. Everything was silent. It was so quiet I could almost hear the silence. And I realized that up to then I had lived my entire life close to people and their noise. It was strange to have it taken away.

The only house in sight was the manse. It was built backed against the nearest green peak, but below the top of the mountain, for shelter, though its dark chimneys stood almost as high as the green summit. It was dark and upright and squeezed into itself, all high, narrow arches. You looked at it and wondered if it was a house built like a chapel or a chapel built like a house and then squeezed narrower. There was no sign of any garden, just that house backed into the hillside and a drystone wall sticking out from one end of it.

The stone driver was trudging across the grass with our bags to the narrow, arched front door. We followed him, through the door and into a tall dark hallway. He had gone somewhere else by the time we got indoors. But we had only been standing a moment, wondering what to do now, when a door banged echoingly further down the hall and my mother's father came toward us.

He was tall and stiff and cold as a monument on a tomb. His black clothes—he was a priest, of course—made his white face look pale as death, but his hair was black, without a trace of gray. I noticed his hair particularly because he put a chilly hand on each of my shoulders and turned me to the light from the narrow front door. His eyes were deep and black, with dark skin round them, but I saw he was a very handsome man.

“So you are the young Arianrhod,” he said, deep and solemn. “At last.” His voice made echoes in the hall and brought me out in gooseflesh. I began to feel very sorry for Mam. “You have quite a look of my Annie,” he said. “Did she let you go willingly?”

“Yes,” I said, trying not to let my teeth chatter. “I said I'd come, provided my friend Gr—er … Ambrose Temple could come, too. I hope you can find room for him.”

He looked at Grundo then. Grundo gave him a serious freckled stare and said, “How do you do?” politely.

“I see he would be lonely without you,” my grandfather said.

He was welcome to think that, I thought, if only he would let Grundo stay. I was very relieved when he said, “Come with me, both of you, and I will show you to your rooms.”

We followed him up steep dark stairs, where his gown flowed over the wooden treads behind his straight back, and then along dark, wooden corridors. I had a queer feeling that we were walking right into the hill at the back of the house, but the two rooms he showed us to had windows looking out over the winding green hills, and they were both obviously prepared for visitors, the beds made up and water steaming in big bowls on the washstands. As if my grandfather had
known
I would be bringing Grundo. My bag was in one room, and Grundo's was in the other.

“Lunch will be ready any moment,” my grandfather said, “and you will wish to wash and tidy yourselves first. But if you want a bath …” He opened the next door along and showed us a huge bathroom, where a bath stood on clawed animal feet in the middle of bare floorboards. “I hope you will give warning when you do,” he said. “Olwen has to bring up buckets from the copper.” Then he went away downstairs again.

“No taps,” said Grundo. “As bad as the bath tent.”

We washed and got ready quickly. When we met in the corridor again, we discovered that we had both put on the warmest clothes we had with us. We would have laughed about it, but it was not the kind of house you liked to laugh in. Instead we went demurely downstairs, to where my grandfather was waiting in a tall, chilly dining room, standing at the head of a tall black table.

He looked at us, pointed to two chairs, and said grace in Welsh. It was all rolling, thundering language. I was suddenly very ashamed not to understand a word of it. Grundo looked on calmly, almost as if he did understand, and sat quietly down when it was finished, still looking intently at my grandfather.

I was looking at the door, where a fat, stone-faced woman was coming in with a tureen. I was famished by then, and it smelled wonderful.

It was a very good lunch, though almost silent at first. There was the leek soup, enough for two helpings each, followed by pancakes rolled round meat in sauce. After that, there were heaps of little hot griddle cakes covered in sugar. Grundo ate so many of those that the woman had to keep making more. She seemed to like that. She almost had a smile when she brought in the third lot.

“Pancakes,” my grandfather said, deep and hollow, “are a traditional part of our diet in this country.”

I was thinking, Well, at least he didn't
starve
my mother! But why is he so
stiff
and
stern
? Why doesn't he
smile
at all? I'm sure my mother used to ask herself the same things several times a day. I was sorrier for her than ever.

“I know this is an awkward question,” I said, “but what should we call you?”

He looked at me in stern surprise. “My name is Gwyn,” he said.

“Should I call you Grandfather Gwyn then?” I asked.

“If you wish,” he said, not seeming to care.

“Might I call you that, too, please?” Grundo asked.

He looked at Grundo long and thoughtfully, almost as if he was asking himself what Grundo's heredity was. “I suppose you have a right to,” he said at last. “Now tell me, what do either of you know of Wales?”

The truthful answer, as far as I was concerned, was, Not a lot. But I could hardly say that. Grundo came to my rescue—I was
extremely
glad he was there. Because Grundo has such trouble reading, he
listens
in lessons far more than I ever do. So he
knows
things. “It's divided into cantrevs,” he said, “each with its lesser kings, and the Pendragon is High King over them all. The Pendragon rules the Laws. I know you have a different system of laws here, but I don't know how they work.”

My grandfather looked almost approving. “And the meaning of the High King's title?” he asked.

It felt just like having a test during lessons, but I thought I knew the answer to that. “Son of the dragon,” I said. “Because there is said to be a dragon roosting in the heart of Wales.”

This didn't seem to be right. My grandfather said frigidly, “After a fashion. Pendragon is a title given to him by the English. By rights, it should be the title of the English King, but the English have forgotten about their dragons.”

“There aren't any dragons in England!” I said.

He turned a face full of stern disapproval on me. “That is not true. Have you never heard of the red dragon and the white? There were times in the past when there were great battles between the two, in the days before the Islands of Blest were at peace.”

I couldn't seem to stop saying the wrong thing somehow. I protested, “But that's just a way of saying the Welsh and the English fought one another.”

His black eyebrows rose slightly in his marble face. I had never known so much scorn expressed with so little effort. He turned away from me and back to Grundo. “There are several dragons in England,” he said to him. “The white is only the greatest. There are said to be more in Scotland, both in the waters and in the mountains, but I have no personal knowledge of these.”

Grundo looked utterly fascinated. “What about Ireland?” he asked.

“Ireland,” said my grandfather, “is in most places low and green and unsuitable for dragons. If there were any, Saint Patrick expelled them. But to go back to the Laws of Wales. We do not have Judges, as you do. Courts are called when necessary....”

He went into a long explanation. Grundo was still fascinated. I sat and watched their two profiles as they talked, Grundo's all pale, long nose and freckles, and my grandfather's like a statue from classical antiquity. My grandfather had quite a long nose, too, but his face was so perfectly proportioned that you hardly noticed. They both had great, deep voices, though where Grundo's grated and grunted, my grandfather's voice rolled and boomed.

Soul mates! I thought. I was glad I'd brought Grundo.

At the same time, I began to see some more of my mother's problem. If my grandfather had been simply cold and strict and distant, it would have been easy to hate him and stop there. But the trouble was that he was also one of those people you
wanted
to please. There was a sort of grandness to him that made you ache to have him think well of you. Before long I was quite desperate for him to stop talking just to Grundo and notice me—or at least not disapprove of me so much. Mam must have felt exactly the same. But I could see that, no matter how hard she tried, Mam was too softhearted and emotional for her father, and so he treated her with utter scorn. He scorned me for different reasons. I sat at the tall table almost in pain, because I knew I was a courtier born and bred, and that I was smart and good-mannered and used to summing people up so that I could take advantage of their faults, and I could see that my grandfather had nothing but contempt for people like me. It really hurt. Grundo may have been peculiar, but he was not like that, and my grandfather liked him.

It was an enormous relief to me when we were allowed to get up from the table and leave the tall, cold room. My grandfather took us outside, through the front door, into a blast of sunlight and cold, clean air. While I stood blinking, he said to us, “Now, where would you say the red dragon lies?”

Grundo and I looked at one another. Then we pointed, hesitating a bit, to the most distant brown mountains, lying against the horizon in a misty, jagged row.

“Correct,” said my grandfather. “That is a part of his back. He is asleep for now. He will only arouse in extreme need, to those who know how to call him, and he does not like to be roused. The consequences are usually grave. The same is true of the white dragon of England. You call him, too, at your peril.” The way he said this made us shiver. Then he said, in a much more normal way, “You will want to explore now. Go anywhere you like, but don't try to ride the mare, and be back at six. We have tea then, not the dinner you are used to. I'll see you at tea. I have work to do before then.”

He went back into the house. He had a study at the back of the hall, as we learned later, though we never saw inside it. It was a bit puzzling, really. We never saw him do any religious duties or see parishioners—there were no other houses for miles anyway—but as Grundo said, dubiously, we were not there on a Sunday or any other holy day, so how could we know?