02 Camelot by Giles Kristian

Author:Giles Kristian [Kristian, Giles]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781473543034
Publisher: Transworld
Published: 2020-05-13T23:00:00+00:00

15

The Druid

‘THEY HAVE EXCHANGED BARELY a dozen words since you left.’ Iselle was sitting on a stool beneath the apple tree, plucking the carcass of a swan which she told me had somehow caught itself in one of her snares. She had already set aside the primary feathers from the bird’s wing, which she would split and cut for arrow fletchings. ‘I’ve tried to get them together by the hearth. To make them talk. And listen.’ She shook her head, quick, frustrated hands ripping from the flesh feathers which drifted away on the breeze like apple blossom falling in a fruitless year. ‘They are both stubborn. Both impossible.’

‘But now that Arthur knows what Lady Morgana and King Cerdic intend, he will yield.’ I paused. ‘He must.’

The previous dusk, when we had arrived back at Lord Arthur’s steading and I had seen the flint in Iselle’s eyes, I had thought that Merlin must have told her the truth of her birth. But it was soon apparent that she knew nothing of it still, and her anger towards Arthur and Merlin was, rather, due to their bullheadedness.

‘Arthur resents Merlin,’ Iselle said. ‘He says that Merlin abandoned him when he needed him most. Worse than that betrayal, Arthur says, is that Merlin left Britain. Or at least, he vanished from men’s sight.’

I looked towards the house. ‘But he is here now. Surely Arthur can put aside the past.’

‘Arthur believes that Merlin knew about Guinevere,’ Iselle said. ‘That she was lost. Caught between worlds.’ Iselle looked up at me and there was pain, not anger, in her clear eyes. ‘And if he knew, why did he not come back?’ She was asking on behalf of herself then, not Arthur. She shook her head. ‘Arthur cannot forgive him.’ She sighed and I knew that we who had ridden into Venta Belgarum to be insulted and threatened by the king of the Saxons had had the easier time of it.

I watched her savaging that swan and after a while she continued, ‘Merlin is not the man I thought he was. I have spoken with him. He claims that the gods have abandoned him, that they no longer speak to him, nor can he read the signs they send in the flight of birds or in the entrails.’ She shrugged.

‘And Guinevere? Did he know?’ I asked.

‘He says he would have come sooner had he known.’

‘Do you believe him, that he has lost his powers?’

Iselle’s dark brows came together. ‘Why would he say it otherwise?’

‘But he will try? To bring the lady back?’

‘Yes.’ She nodded. ‘He’ll try.’

I looked at the carcass on her knees. Most of the top coat feathers were out now, but the body was still white with downy fluff and I knew that by the time Iselle had finished, it would look as if there had been a spring snowfall around that apple tree.

‘What is it, Galahad?’ She was looking up at me as she ripped the feathers out. ‘This?’ She gestured at her work.

I

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