Legacy: Arthurian Saga Read Free Page B

men
through the harvest fields and the valleys where the apples already
dropped ripe from the trees.
    South Wales is a lovely country, with
green hills and deep valleys, flat water-meadows yellow with
flowers where cattle grow sleek, oak forests full of deer, and the
high blue uplands where the cuckoo shouts in springtime, but where,
come winter, the wolves run, and I have seen lightning even with
the snow.
    Maridunum lies where the estuary opens
to the sea, on the river which is marked Tobius on the military
maps, but which the Welsh call Tywy. Here the valley is flat and
wide, and the Tywy runs in a deep and placid meander through bog
and water-meadow between the gentle hills. The town stands on the
rising ground of the north bank, where the land is drained and dry;
it is served inland by the military road from Caerleon, and from
the south by a good stone bridge with three spans, from which a
paved street leads straight uphill past the King's house, and into
the square. Apart from my grandfather's house, and the barrack
buildings of the Roman-built fortress where he quartered his
soldiers and which he kept in good repair, the best building in
Maridunum was the Christian nunnery near the palace on the river's
bank. A few holy women lived there, calling themselves the
Community of St. Peter, though most of the townspeople called the
place Tyr Myrddin, from the old shrine of the god which had stood
time out of mind under an oak not far from St. Peter's gate. Even
when I was a child, I heard the town itself called Caer-Myrddin
"dd" is pronounced "th" as in thus. Myrddin is, roughly, Murthin.
Caer-Myrddin is the modern Carmarthen: it is not true (as they say
now) that men call it after me. The fact is that I, like the town
and the hill behind it with the sacred spring, was called after the
god who is worshipped in high places. Since the events which I
shall tell of, the name of the town has been publicly changed in my
honor, but the god was there first, and if I have his hill now, it
is because he shares it with me.
    My grandfather's house was set among
its orchards right beside the river. If you climbed -- by way of a
leaning apple-tree -- to the top of the wall, you could sit high
over the towpath and watch the river-bridge for people riding in
from the south, or for the ships that came up with the
tide.
    Though I was not allowed to climb the
trees for apples -- being forced to content myself with the
windfalls -- Moravik never stopped me from climbing to the top of
the wall. To have me posted there as sentry meant that she got wind
of new arrivals sooner than anyone else in the palace. There was a
little raised terrace at the orchard's end, with a curved brick
wall at the back and a stone seat protected from the wind, and she
would sit there by the hour, dozing over her spindle, while the sun
beat into the corner so hotly that lizards would steal out to lie
on the stones, and I called out my reports from the
wall.
    One hot afternoon, about eight days
after Camlach's coming to Maridunum, I was at my post as usual.
There was no coming and going on the bridge or the road up the
valley, only a local grain-barge loading at the wharf, watched by a
scatter of idlers, and an old man in a hooded cloak who loitered,
picking up windfalls along under the wall.
    I looked over my shoulder towards
Moravik's corner. She was asleep, her spindle drooping on her knee,
looking, with the white fluffy wool, like a burst bulrush. I threw
down the bitten windfall I had been eating, and tilted my head to
study the forbidden tree-top boughs where yellow globes hung
clustered against the sky. There was one I thought I could reach.
The fruit was round and glossy, ripening almost visibly in the hot
sun. My mouth watered. I reached for a foothold and began to
climb.
    I was two branches away from the fruit
when a shout from the direction of the bridge, followed by the
quick tramp of hoofs and the jingle of metal, brought me up short.
Clinging like a monkey,