The Merlin Conspiracy Read online

  “She’s been here, too.”

  The pond was filling from another animal head in the bank above, and there were stone steps up the bank, leading under black, black trees. It became very secret. This is where it’s all coming from! I thought, and I led the way up the steps into a little flagstoned space under the black trees. It was so dark that we had to stand for a moment to let our eyes adjust. Then we were able to see that there was a well there, with a wooden cover over it, almost beside our feet. The gentlest of trickling sounded from under the cover, and there was a feeling of strength coming from it, such as I had never met before.

  “Is this all right?” I whispered.

  “I’m not sure. I’ll have to take the cover off in order to know,” Grundo replied.

  We knelt down and tried to pull the cover up, but it was so dark we couldn’t see how. We stuffed our candles into our pockets and tried again with both hands. As we did, we heard a burst of chatter and laughter from below, which faded quickly off into the distance as everyone left the garden. That gave us the courage to heave much more heartily. We discovered that the wooden lid had hinges at one side, so we put our fingers under the opposite edge and we heaved. The cover came up an inch or so and gave me a gust of the strongest magic I’d ever known, cool and still, and so deep that it seemed to come from the roots of the world.

  There were voices, and footsteps, on the steps beyond the trees.

  “Stop!” whispered Grundo.

  We dropped the lid back down as quietly as we could, then sprang up and bundled one another on tiptoe in among the trees beyond the well. The earth was cloggy there. There were roots, and we stumbled, but luckily the trees were bushy as well as very black, and we had managed to back ourselves thoroughly inside them by the time Sybil came storming merrily into the flagged space, waving her flaring candle.

  “No, no, it went very well!” she was calling out. “Now, as long as we can keep the Scottish King at odds with England, we’ll be fine!” There was a rustic wooden seat at the other end of the space, and she threw herself down on it with a thump. “Ooh, I’m tired!”

  “I wish we could do the same with the Welsh King,” Sir James said, ducking down to sit beside her, “but I can’t see any way to contrive that. So you’ve got everyone drinking out of your hand. Will it work?”

  “Oh, it has to,” Sybil said. “I ran myself into the ground to make it work. What do you think?” she asked the Merlin, who came very slowly in under the trees and held up his candle to look around.

  “Very well, as far as it goes,” he said in his weak, high voice. “You’ve got the King and his Court …”

  “And all the other wizards. Don’t forget them,” Sybil put in pridefully.

  Sir James chuckled. “None of them suspecting a thing!” he said. “They should be dancing to her tune now, shouldn’t they?”

  “Yes. For a while,” the Merlin agreed, still looking around. “Is this where you put the spell on?”

  “Well, no. It’s a bit strong here,” Sybil admitted. “I didn’t have time for the working it would take to do it here. I worked from the pool below the steps. That’s the first cistern the well flows out to, you see, and it feeds all the other channels from there.”

  The Merlin went, “Hmm.” He squatted down like a grasshopper beside the well and put his candle down by one of his gawky, bent legs. “Hmm,” he went again. “I see.” Then he pulled open the lid over the well.

  Grundo and I felt the power from where we stood. We found it hard not to sway. The Merlin got up and staggered backward. Behind him, Sir James said, “Ouch!” and covered his face.

  “You see?” said Sybil.

  “I do,” said Sir James. “Put the lid back, man!”

  The Merlin dropped the lid back with a bang. “I hadn’t realized,” he said. “That’s strong. If we’re going to use it, we’ll have to conjure some other Power to help us. Are there any available?”

  “Plenty,” said Sir James. “Over in Wales particularly.” He turned to Sybil. The candlelight made his profile into a fleshy beak with pouty lips. “How about it? Can you do a working now? We ought to have this Power in and consolidate our advantage now we’ve got it.”

  Sybil had pouty lips, too. They put her chin in shadow as she said, “James, I’m exhausted! I’ve worked myself to the bone this evening, and I can’t do any more! Even going barefoot all the time, it’ll be three days before I’ve recouped my powers.”

  “How long before you can do a strong working?” the Merlin asked, picking his candle up. “My friend James is right. We do need to keep up our momentum.”

  “If we both help you?” Sir James asked coaxingly.

  Sybil hung her head and her hair down and thought, with her big arms planted along her large thighs. “I need three days,” she said at last, rather sulkily. “Whoever helps me, I’m not going to be able to tackle something as strong as this well before that. It won’t take just a minor Power to bespell the thing. We’ll have to summon something big.”

  “But will the effect of the drink last until we do?” Sir James asked, rather tensely.

  Sybil looked up at the Merlin. He said, “It struck me as firm enough for the moment. I don’t see it wearing off for at least a week, and we’ll be able to reinforce it before that.”

  “Good enough.” Sir James sprang up, relieved and jolly. “Let’s get this place locked up again, then, and go and have a proper drink. Who fancies champagne?” He pulled keys out of his pocket and strode away down the steps, jingling the keys and lighting the trees to a glinting black with his candle.

  “Champagne. Lovely!” said Sybil. She heaved to her feet and shoved the Merlin playfully down the steps in front of her. “Off you go, stranger boy!”

  Grundo and I realized we were likely to get locked inside the garden. We nearly panicked. The moment Sybil was out of sight we surged out onto the flagstones and then realized that the only way out was down those same stone steps to the lopsided pool. That was almost the worst part of the whole thing. We had to wait for Sir James, Sybil, and then the Merlin to get ahead, then follow them, and then try to get ahead of them before they got to the gate in the wall.

  We were helped a lot by the queer way the space in the garden seemed to spread and by all the stone walls and conduits and bushes. We could see Sir James and the other two easily by the light of their flickering candles—and hear them, too, most of the time, talking and laughing. Sybil obviously was tired. She went quite slowly, and the others waited for her. We were able to scud along behind lavender and tall, toppling flowers, or crouch down and scurry past pieces of old wall—though we couldn’t go really fast because it was quite dark by then—and finally we got in front of them and raced out through the gate just before they came merrily along under a rose arch.

  I was a nervous wreck by then. It must have been even worse for Grundo, knowing his mother was part of a conspiracy. We went on running beside a dim path, and neither of us stopped until we were well out into the lawns in the main garden and could see our camp in the distance, twinkling beyond the fence.

  “What do we do now?” I panted at Grundo. “Tell my dad?”

  “Don’t be stupid!” he said. “He was there drinking with the other wizards. He’s not going to listen to you for at least a fortnight.”

  “The King, then,” I suggested wildly.

  “He was the first one to drink,” Grundo said. “You’re not tracking.” He was right. Everything was all about in my head. I tried to pull myself together, not very successfully, while Grundo stood with his head bent and thought. “Your grandfather,” he said after a bit. “He’s the one to tell. Do you have his speaker code?”

  “Oh. Right,” I said. “Mam will have his number. I can ask Dad to lend me his speaker at least, can’t I?”

  Unfortunately, when we got to the camp, we discovered that both Mam and Dad were up at the castle attending on the King. Though I could have asked all sorts of people to lend me a speaker, it was no good unle
ss I knew the code. Grandad’s number is not in the directory lists.

  “We’ll just have to wait till tomorrow,” I said miserably.

  I spent a lot of that night tossing in my bunk in the girls’ bus, wondering how the new Merlin came to join with Sybil and Sir James and how to explain to Grandad that he had chosen the wrong man for the post. It really worried me that Grandad had chosen this Merlin. Grandad doesn’t usually make mistakes. It worried me even more that I didn’t know what this conspiracy was up to. It had to be high treason. As far as I knew, bespelling the King was high treason anyway, and it was obvious that they meant to go on and do something worse.

  I tossed and turned and tossed and thought, until Alicia suddenly sprang up and shouted, “Roddy, if you don’t stop jigging about this moment, I’ll turn you into a statue, so help me Powers Above!”

  “Sorry,” I mumbled, and then, even lower, “Sneeze!” If Alicia hadn’t been there, I might have tried telling the other girls in the bus, but Alicia would go straight to Sybil. And Alicia had drunk that enchanted water along with the other pages. Heigh-ho, I thought. Wait till tomorrow.

  So I waited helplessly until it was too late.

  TWO

  I overslept. I dragged myself up and over to the food tent, yawning. I had just got myself some juice and a cold, waxy-looking fried egg, when Grundo appeared, looking worried.

  “There you are!” he said. “There’s a message for you from the Chamberlain.”

  The Chamberlain had never noticed my existence before. Before I got over my surprise enough to ask Grundo what the message was, Mam dashed up to me from the other side. “Oh, there you are, Roddy! We’ve been hunting for you all over! Your grandfather wants you. He’s sent a car for you. It’s waiting for you now outside the castle.”

  My first thought was that this was an answer to my prayers. Then I looked up at Mam’s face. She was so white that her eyes looked like big black holes. The hand she put on my shoulder was quivering. “Which grandfather?” I said.

  “My father, of course,” she said. “It’s just like him to send a demand for you to the Chamberlain. I’m surprised he didn’t send it straight to the King! Oh, Roddy, I’m sorry! He’s insisting that you go and stay with him in that dreadful manse of his, and I daren’t refuse! He’s already been dreadfully rude to the Chamberlain over the speaker. He’ll do worse than that if I don’t let you go. He’ll probably insult the King next. Forgive me.”

  Poor Mam. She looked absolutely desperate. My stomach plunged about just at the sight of her. “Why does he want me?”

  “Because he’s never met you, and you’re near enough to Wales here for him to send and fetch you,” Mam answered distractedly. “He’s told the entire Chamberlain’s office that I’ve no right to keep his only grandchild from him. You’ll have to go, my love—the Chamberlain’s insisting—but be polite to him. For my sake. It’ll only be for a few days, until the Progress moves on after the Meeting of Kings. He says the car will bring you back then.”

  “I see,” I said, the way you say things just to gain time. I looked at my fried egg. It looked back like a big dead yellow eye. Ugh. I thought of Grundo all on his own here and Sybil discovering that he hadn’t drunk her charmed water. “I’ll go if I can take Grundo,” I said.

  “Oh, really, my love, I don’t think—” Mam began.

  “Listen, Mam,” I said. “Your problem was that he’s a widower, and you were all on your own with him—”

  “Well, that wasn’t quite—” she began again.

  “—so you ought to allow me to take some moral support with me,” I said. As she wavered, I added, “Or I shall go to the Chamberlain’s office and use their speaker to tell him I won’t go.”

  This so horrified Mam that she gave in. “All right. But I don’t dare think what he’ll say. Grundo, do you mind being dragged along to see a fearsome old man?”

  “Not really,” Grundo said. “I can always use the speaker in his manse to ask for help, can’t I?”

  “Then go and pack,” Mam told him frantically. “Take old clothes. He’ll make you go for walks, or even ride. Hurry up, Roddy! He’s sent his same old driver, who hates to be kept waiting!”

  I didn’t see why Mam needed to be scared of her father’s driver as well as her father, but I drained my juice, snatched a piece of toast, and rushed off eating it. Mam rushed with me, distractedly reminding me to remember a sweater, a toothbrush, walking shoes, a comb, my address book, everything.... It wasn’t exactly the right moment to start telling her of plots and treason, but I did honestly try, after I had rammed things into a bag and we were rushing up the steep path to the castle, with stones spurting from under our feet and clattering down on Grundo, who was bent over under a huge bag behind us.

  “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 i
t 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.