Legacy: Arthurian Saga Read Free

in
their rough wargames whenever they could catch me.
    At the beginning, it is true, the
tunnels of the disused heating-system were a refuge, a secret place
where I could hide and be alone; but I soon found a curiously
strong pleasure in exploring the great system of dark,
earth-smelling chambers under the palace floors.
    My grandfather's palace had been, in
times past, a vast country-house belonging to some Roman notable
who had owned and farmed the land for several miles each way along
the river valley. The main part of the house still stood, though
badly scarred by time and war, and by at least one disastrous fire,
which had destroyed one end of the main block and part of a wing.
The old slaves' quarters were still intact round the courtyard
where the cooks and houseservants worked, and the bath-house
remained, though patched and plastered and with the roof
rough-thatched over the worst bits. I never remember the furnace
working; water was heated over the courtyard fires.
    The entrance to my secret labyrinth
was the stoke-hole in the boiler-house; this was a trap in the wall
under the cracked and rusting boiler, barely the height of a grown
man's knee, and hidden by docks and nettles and a huge curved metal
shard fallen from the boiler itself. Once inside, you could get
under the rooms of the bath-house, but this had been out of use for
so long that the space under the floors was too cluttered and foul
even for me. I went the other way, under the main block of the
palace. Here the old hot-air system had been so well built and
maintained that even now the knee-high space under the floors was
dry and airy, and plaster still clung to the brick pillars that
held up the floors. In places, of course, a pillar had collapsed,
or debris had fallen, but the traps which led from one room to
another were solidly arched and safe, and I was free to crawl,
unseen and unheard, even as far as the King's own
chamber.
    If they had ever discovered me I think
I might have received a worse punishment than whipping: I must have
listened, innocently enough, to dozens of secret councils, and
certainly to some very private goings-on, but that side of it never
occurred to me. And it was natural enough that nobody should give a
thought to the dangers of eavesdropping; in the old days the flues
had been cleaned by boy-slaves, and nobody much beyond the age of
ten could ever have got through some of the workings; there were
one or two places where even I was hard put to it to wriggle
through. I was only once in danger of discovery: one afternoon when
Moravik supposed I was playing with the boys and they in turn
thought I was safe under her skirts, the red-haired Dinias, my
chief tormentor, gave a younger boy such a shove from the roof-tree
where they were playing that the latter fell and broke a leg, and
set up such a howling that Moravik, running to the scene,
discovered me absent and set the palace by the ears. I heard the
noise, and emerged breathless and dirty from under the boiler, just
as she started a hunt through the bath-house wing. I lied my way
out of it, and got off with boxed ears and a scolding, but it was a
warning; I never went into the hypocaust again by daylight, only at
night before Moravik came to bed, or once or twice when I was
wakeful and she was already abed and snoring. Most of the palace
would be abed, too, but when there was a feast, or when my
grandfather had guests, I would listen to the noise of voices and
the singing; and sometimes I would creep as far as my mother's
chamber, to hear the sound of her voice as she talked with her
women. But one night I heard her praying, aloud, as one does
sometimes when alone, and in the prayer was my name, "Emrys," and
then her tears. After that I went another way, past the Queen's
rooms, where almost every evening Olwen, the young Queen, sang to
her harp among her ladies, until the King's tread came heavily down
the corridor, and the music stopped.
    But it was for none of these