Kitabı oku: «The Merlin Conspiracy», sayfa 2

2

It was just as Dad predicted. We turned out for the Meeting of Kings in wet, howling wind that flapped velvet skirts and wrapped robes around legs. Those with headdresses held them in their hands until the last possible moment and then got very uncomfortable because, like the rest of us, they were trying to eat prettybread or pasties in one hand as we all went to our places. Sybil looked more dishevelled than anyone. Her yellow hair was streaming from her head and her hat was streaming green ribbons in her hand while she rushed about wailing cantrips and shouting at bad-luck carriers to get away behind the buses. She was barefoot, being an earth wizard, and she had kilted her velvet skirts up to her knees because of the wet in the grass. She had extremely thick legs.

“Looks just like a sack of sweetcorn balanced on two logs,” Dad said unkindly as he passed me on the way to the King’s tent. He disliked Sybil as much as I did. He used to say that it didn’t surprise him that Sybil’s husband had run away. And then he usually added, “They wanted the poor fellow to be the next Merlin, too. If it had been me, I’d have run away long before. Sybil and the worst job in the kingdom! Imagine!”

Unfortunately, Dad’s remark threw Mam into one of her rare fits of laughter and she breathed in a crumb of pastry. I was still thumping her back for her when word came round that the Scots were on their way. I had to run to my place beside Grundo. We were lined up with all the other children who weren’t pages in a row in front of the Royal Guards.

By this time, most of the tents were down except for the Royal Pavilion, and all the buses, vans, lorries and limousines were drawn up on three sides of an enormous square with the north-facing side left empty. The air was loud with the clapping of the household flags hoisted over them. The Royal Guards were drawn up inside that – poor fellows, they had been polishing kit and whitening belts since dawn, but they looked magnificent, a living line of scarlet and white. We of the Court were inside that again, like a bed of flowers in our Court clothes, shivering in the wind. Grundo said he envied the Household servants. They were allowed to stay in the buses and keep warm, and they had a much better view. They must have been able to see the Scottish Court advancing long before we could.

It was all timed perfectly. Hard-worked officials had been talking to one another on far-speakers all morning to make sure it was. The Scots appeared first. They seemed to come over the horizon and get larger and brighter as they came. They had pipers walking on both sides, solemnly stepping and skirling. I love the sound of bagpipes. It is the most exciting noise I know. I was quite sorry when our band started up and trumpets drowned the pipes out.

This was the signal for our King to come out of his tent and walk towards the Scots. When we stop in towns long enough for me to get talking to people, they always say enviously, “I suppose you see the King every day!” No. Actually, I don’t. He is nearly always away in the front of the Progress and I often don’t set eyes on him for weeks. When I do see him, it is usually like this, at a distance, as a tall figure in dark clothes, and the main way I recognise him is by his neat brown beard – and a sort of shiver of majesty he brings with him.

On this occasion he had Prince Edmund, the Prince Heir, with him too, also in sober, dark clothes. The Prince is eighteen now and he was travelling with his father that year to learn his duties. With them came the Merlin on one side and the Archbishop of York on the other, both old and stately in stiffly flapping robes, and after that a mixture of bishops and high officials and the wizards who are priests and priestesses of older powers. I’m supposed to know the order of them, but I keep forgetting. All I really know is that Sybil walked behind the Archbishop – with her skirts let down and her hat on by then – and my father was near the back, not being a priest.

I was looking at the Scots mostly anyway. Their King was quite young and he wasn’t the one I’d seen before. They have dozens of people who have claims to the throne of Scotland. Every so often, the clans back a new claimant, or three, and have a war and the King gets changed. This one, though he was new, didn’t look as if he’d get changed easily. He had a strong, eager look, and he walked as if he owned the earth, not just Scotland. He was wearing plaids, which made him stand out from the crowd of courtiers with him. They were very dressy. I have never seen so many styles and colours and French fashions. Their King looked like a hawk among parrots.

He left them behind and strode to embrace our King. For a brief minute, it was the friendliest possible Meeting. Prince Edmund was beckoned forward and introduced, and then a young woman in glorious rose pink silk who may have been the Scottish Queen – anyway the Scottish King grinned at her as if he knew her very well – and then it was the turn of the Archbishop and the Merlin to step forward and bless everyone. This was when the awful thing happened.

The Merlin spread his arms to call down benign magics. Dad says you don’t really need to spread your arms or do anything else physical to work magic. This is why he found Sybil so irritating, because she always acted about so, doing magic. But he says the Merlin had to show people what he was doing. So the poor old man held his arms up wide. His face, which was always rather pale, turned a strange colour. Even from where I was, I could see that the Merlin’s lips were sort of lilac-coloured where they showed through his white beard. He took his arms in hurriedly and hugged at himself. Then he slowly folded up and flopped down on the wet grass.

Everybody simply stared for an instant. And this was the instant that Dad’s fine weather arrived at last. The sun blazed out. It was suddenly damply, suffocatingly warm.

Dad got to the Merlin first. Dad had been spread out to the side when the two groups met and it only took him two strides to get there and kneel down. He swore to me afterwards that the Merlin was alive at that point, even though he had clearly had a bad heart attack. But Dad had to give way to Prince Edmund, who got there next. Prince Edmund put his hand out towards the Merlin’s chest and then snatched it back, looking aghast. He turned to the King and started to say something. Then he stopped, because Sybil swooped in almost at once and pulled the poor old man over on to his back. By that time he was definitely dead. I got a glimpse of his staring face among everybody’s legs and, as Grundo said, you couldn’t mistake it.

“Dead!” Sybil screamed. “My mentor and my master!” She put her head back so that her hat fell off and screamed again, towards the Scottish King. “Dead!”

She didn’t say any more. She just stood up with wet black patches on her velvet gown where she had knelt in the grass and stared at the Scottish King with her hands clasped to her chest.

Our King said icily to the Scottish King, “I believe Your Majesty was trained as a wizard?”

The Scottish King looked at him. After a moment he said, “I think this is the end of any friendship between us. I bid you good afternoon.”

He swung round in a swirl of tartan and walked away with all his people. He didn’t have to walk far. Vehicles came roaring over the brow of the hill almost at once, most of them military transports, and the royal party was scooped up into some of them, leaving the rest sitting in a threatening row on the Scottish border.

“We’ll move back a few miles,” our King said.

The rest of that week was a hot, moist chaos. Grundo and I, along with most of the children, were bundled here and there and sent about with messages because the royal pages were run off their feet, and it took us several days to find out what was happening.

It seemed that the media people had been filming the whole Meeting from their bus and they broadcast it as they filmed it. The Merlin’s death caused an outcry all over the country. The King had to go to the bus and assure people in another broadcast that it was an unfortunate accident, and that no one was accusing the Scottish King of anything. It didn’t help the situation that he said this in a grim way that made everyone think the opposite. At the same time, the whole Progress packed up double quick and moved south to the borders of Northumberland. The media bus was actually on the road while the King was grimly broadcasting. The rest of the buses had to keep drawing up on to the verges to make way for the army units rushing to take up defensive positions along the Scottish border, so all we knew of things were tilted views of hedges while green lorries thundered by in the road.

It turned out that the Scottish King broadcast too. He talked about an insult to Scotland and he sent army units to the border as well.

“But he must know it was simply an accident,” my mam said worriedly, when I did manage to see her and ask what was going on.

This was when we were finally camped around a village where the King could stay in a manor house that was big enough for the wizards to perform an autopsy on the Merlin. There, Grundo and I were sent hurrying with messages to other wizards, to the army HQ bus, the media tent, to the Waymaster’s Office and the Chamberlain’s, and after a day or so, to the village hall where the judicial enquiry was being held. So much was going on. There was a nationwide hunt for a new Merlin, with most of the wizards involved, while the rest were busy with the enquiry. It seemed that the post mortem had shown that there were traces of a spell hanging round the Merlin, but no one could tell what kind. It could even have been one of the Merlin’s own spells.

Dad was called into the enquiry. For a whole day, it looked as if he might be accused of murder. My heart seemed to be filling my ears and drumming in my chest that entire time. Mam went around white as a sheet whispering, “Oh, they can’t blame him, they can’t!” The trouble was, as she pointed out to me, everybody else who was close to the Merlin when he died was either royal or very important, so poor Dad got the full blast of the suspicion.

I can’t tell you how frantic everything was that day.

Then everything calmed down.

As far as I could tell, it was Grandad’s doing. He turned up that evening, shortly after Dad had come out of the village hall looking as if he had spent several sleepless weeks on a bare mountain. Grandad brought the new Merlin with him and they went straight to the King together. We didn’t see Grandad until quite late that night, when they all came out on to the village green: Grandad, the King, the Merlin, the judges, Prince Edmund, and a whole string of the wizards who had been tearing about and fussing over finding the new Merlin. The new Merlin was a skinny young man with a little pointed chin and a big Adam’s apple, who looked a bit stunned about his sudden jump to fame. Or maybe he was in a trance. Prince Edmund kept looking at him in an astonished, wondering way.

Meanwhile, the Waymaster’s Office had acted with its usual efficiency and cordoned off a big space on the green, while the Royal Guard jumped to it and built a bonfire in the centre of it. We were standing watching, waiting, wondering what was going to happen, when Grandad came up to us. Mam flung herself on him, more or less crying.

“Oh, Maxwell! It’s been so awful! Can you help?”

“Steady,” Grandad said. “All’s well. Dan’s in the clear now. Had to tackle it from the top, you see, on account of the family relationship.” He slapped Dad on the shoulder and gave me one of his quick, bony hugs. “Roddy. Hallo, Grundo,” he said. “I think I’ve got the whole mess sorted. Have to wait and see, of course, but I think they’ll end up deciding it was nobody’s fault. Lord! Poor old Merlin Landor must have been in his eighties at least! Bound to drop dead at some point. Just chose a bad moment to do it. No need for national hysteria about that.”

You know that marvellous moment when your mind goes quiet with relief. Everything was suddenly tranquil and acute with me. I could smell the trampled grass and motor fuel that I had not noticed before this, and the sweet, dusty scent of hay from beyond the village. I could hear the crackle of the bonfire as it caught and the twittering of birds in the trees around the green. The small, yellow flames climbing among the brushwood seemed unbelievably clear and meaningful, all of a sudden, and my mind went so peaceful and limpid that I found myself thinking that, yes, Grandad could be right. But Sir James had known the old Merlin was going to die. I looked round for Sir James, but he was not there. When I thought, I realised I had not seen him for some days, though Sybil was there, in among the other wizards.

As soon as the bonfire was blazing properly, the senior wizard stepped forward and announced that we were here to present the new Merlin to Court and country. Everyone cheered and the young Merlin looked more dazed than ever. Then one of the judges said that the question of the late Merlin’s death was now to be settled. He bowed to the King and stepped back.

The King said to the Merlin, “Are you prepared to prophesy for us?”

“I – I think so,” the Merlin said. He had rather a weak, high voice.

“Then,” said the King, “tell us who, or what, caused the death of the last Merlin.”

The young man clasped his hands together with his arms pointing straight down, rather as if he were pulling on a rope, and he began to sway, round and round. The bonfire seemed to imitate him. It broke into long pennants of orange flame that roared and crackled and sent a great spiral of smoke and burning blobs high into the evening sky. The extra light caught and glistened on tears pouring down the Merlin’s small, pointed face. He started to give out big gulping sobs.

“Oh, Lord! He’s a weeper!” Grandad said disgustedly. “I wish I’d known. I’d have stayed away.”

“A lot of the Merlins have cried when they prophesied,” Dad pointed out.

“I know. But I don’t have to like it, do I?” Grandad retorted.

The Merlin started to speak then, in high gasps, but what with the roaring and snapping from the bonfire and the way he was sobbing, it was hard to hear what he was saying. I think it was, “Blame is – where blame lies – blame rests – where dragon flies.”

“And what’s that supposed to mean?” my grandfather muttered irritably. “Is he accusing Wales now or what?”

While Grandad was mumbling, the King said in a polite, puzzled way, “And – er – then have you any words that might guide us for the future?”

This brought on a new bout of weeping from the Merlin. He bent this way and that, choking and sobbing, still with his hands clasped in that odd way. The bonfire gusted and swirled and golden sparks rained upwards. Eventually, the Merlin began gasping out words again and I found these even harder to catch. They sounded like, “Power flows – when Merlin goes – world sways – in dark ways – a lord is bound – power found – land falls – when alien calls – nothing right – till dragon’s flight.”

“I suppose this means something to him,” Grandad grumbled.

Several of the wizards were writing the words down. I believe they all wrote different versions. I can only put down what I thought I heard – and the creepy thing is that the prophecy was quite right, now that I understand what it was about.

After that, it seemed to be finished. The Merlin unclasped his hands, fetched out a handkerchief and dried his eyes on it in a most matter-of-fact way. The King said, “We thank you, Merlin,” looking as mystified as the rest of us. The bonfire fell back to burning in a more normal way.

The Household staff came round with glasses of warm spiced wine. I do take my hat off to these people. They have an awful job obeying all the instructions for camping that come from the Waymaster and the Chamberlain, or setting up house if the King decides to stay under a roof somewhere, and then providing meals fit for a King at all times and in all weathers, and they nearly always get it exactly right. That wine was exactly what everyone there needed. The fine weather that Dad had provided was still with us, but it came with a chilly wind and heavy dews at night.

We took our glasses and went to one of the benches at the edge of the green. From there, I could see the Merlin pacing awkwardly about near the bonfire while Prince Edmund talked earnestly to him. The Prince seemed fascinated by the Merlin. I suppose they were the same age, more or less, and this Merlin was likely to be the one the Prince would have to deal with all through his reign when he got to be King. I also noticed Alicia hanging about near them, looking very trim in her page’s uniform. She was making sure that the Merlin got twice as much of the wine and the snacks that were going round. Doing her duty. But, well, she was sixteen and quite near the Merlin’s age too – not that he seemed to notice her much. He was listening to the Prince mostly.

My parents were asking Grandad how he had managed to find the new Merlin when nobody else could, and he was making modest noises and grunting, “Magid methods. Not difficult. Had my eye on the chap for years.” I don’t quite understand what it means that Grandad is a Magid, not really. I think it means that he operates in other worlds besides ours and it also seems to mean that he has the power to settle things in a way that ordinary kings and wizards can’t. He went on to say, “I had to have a serious talk with the King – told him the same as I told the Scottish King. It’s vitally important that the Islands of Blest stay peaceful. Blest – and these islands in particular – keeps the balance of the magics in half the multiverse, you see.”

“How old is the Merlin?” I interrupted.

“Twenty-five. Older than he looks,” Grandad told me. “A powerful magic gift does that to some people. Roddy, do you mind taking Grundo and going off somewhere? We’ve got things to talk about here that aren’t for children.”

Grandad is like that. He never likes to talk about the interesting things in front of me. Grundo and I drifted off.

“He’s too old for Alicia, the Merlin,” I said to Grundo.

He was surprised. “Why should that stop her?” he asked.

2 Nick

1

I thought it was a dream at first. It was really peculiar.

It happened when my dad took me with him to a writers’ conference in London. Dad is Ted Mallory and he is a writer. He does horror stories with demons in them, but this conference was for people who write detective stories. This is the strange thing about Dad. He reads detective stories all the time when he isn’t writing himself, and he really admires the people who write them, far more than the people who write his kind of thing. He was all excited because his favourite author was going to be speaking at the conference.

I didn’t want to go.

“Oh, yes you do,” Dad said. “I’m still shuddering at what happened when I left you alone here last Easter.”

“It was my friends who drank all your whisky,” I said.

“With you as a helpless onlooker while they broke the furniture and draped the kitchen in pasta, I know,” says Dad. “So here’s what I’m going to do, Nick. I’m going to book you in with me, and I’m going to go, and when I go, I’m going to lock up this house with you outside it. If you don’t choose to come with me, you can spend the weekend sitting in the street. Or the garden shed. I’ll leave that unlocked for you, if you like.”

He really meant this. He can be a real swine when he puts his mind to it. I thought about overpowering him and locking him in the garden shed. I’m bigger than he is, even though I won’t be fifteen until just before Christmas. But then I thought how he isn’t really my dad and how we’d both sort of adopted one another after Mum was killed because – usually – we like one another, and where would either of us be if that fell through?

While I was thinking this, Dad said, “Come on. You may even enjoy it. And you’ll be able to tell people later that you were present at one of the very rare appearances of Maxwell Hyde. This is only the third time he’s spoken in public – and my sense is that he’s a very interesting speaker.”

Maxwell Hyde is this favourite author of Dad’s. I could see I would be spoiling his fun if I didn’t let him take me along, so I gave in. He was ever so pleased and gave me one of this Maxwell Hyde’s books to read.

I don’t like detective stories. They’re dead boring. But Maxwell Hyde was worse than boring because his books were set in an alternate world. This is what Dad likes about them. He goes on about the self-consistency and wealth of otherworld detail in Maxwell Hyde’s Other-England – as far as I could see, this meant lots of boring description of the way things were different: how the King never stayed in one place and the parliament sat in Winchester and never did anything, and so forth – but what got to me was reading about another world that I couldn’t get to. By the time I’d read two pages, I was so longing to get to this other world that it was like sheets of flame flaring through me.

There are lots of worlds. I know, because I’ve been to some. My real parents come from one. But I can’t seem to get to any of them on my own. I always seem to have to have someone to take me. I’ve tried, and I keep trying, but it just doesn’t seem to work for me, even though I want to do it so much that I dream I’m doing it. There must be something I’m doing wrong. And I’d decided that I’d spend the whole first week of the summer holidays trying until I’d cracked it. Now here was Dad hauling me away to this conference instead. That was why I didn’t want to go. But I’d said I would, so I went.

It was even worse than I’d expected.

It was in a big, gloomy hotel full of soberly-dressed people who all thought they were important – apart from the one or two who thought they were God or Shakespeare or something, and went around with a crowd of power-dressed hangers-on to keep them from being talked to by ordinary people. There was a lecture every hour. Some of them were by police chiefs and lawyers, and I sat there trying so hard not to yawn that my eyes watered and my ears popped. But there was going to be one on the Sunday by a private detective. That was the only one I thought might be interesting.

None of the people had any time for a teenager like me. They kept giving my jeans disapproving looks and then glancing at my face as if they thought I must have got in there by mistake. But the thing that really got to me was how eager Dad was about it all. He had a big pile of various books he was trying to get signed, just as if he was a humble fan and not a world famous writer himself. It really hurt my feelings when one of the God-or-Shakespeare ones flourished a pen over the book Dad eagerly spread out for her and said, “Who?”

Dad said in a modest voice, “Ted Mallory. I write a bit myself.”

Mrs God-Shakespeare scrawled in the book, saying, “Do you write under another name? What have you written?”

“Horror stories mostly,” Dad admitted.

And she said, “Oh,” and pushed the book back to him as if it was contaminated.

Dad didn’t seem to notice. He was enjoying himself. Maxwell Hyde was giving the big talk on the Saturday evening and Dad kept saying he couldn’t wait. Then he got really excited because one of the nicer writers – who wore jeans like me – said he knew Maxwell Hyde slightly and he’d introduce Dad to him if we hung around with him.

Dad was blissed out. By that time I was yawning every time Dad’s back was turned and forcing my mouth shut when he looked at me. We went hurrying up and down corridors looking for Maxwell Hyde, pushing against crowds of people pushing the other way, and I kept thinking, If only I could just wheel round sideways and walk off into a different world! I was in a hotel when I did that the first time, which gave me the idea that hotels were probably a good place to step off from.

So I was daydreaming about that when we did at last catch up with Maxwell Hyde. By then it was just before his lecture, so he was in a hurry and people were streaming past us to get into the big hall, but he stopped quite politely when the nice writer said, “Oh, Maxwell, can you spare a moment for someone who’s dying to meet you?”

I didn’t really notice him much, except that he was one of those upright, silvery gentlemen, quite old-fashioned, with leather patches on his old tweed jacket. As he swung round to Dad, I could smell whisky. I remember thinking, Hey! He gets as nervous as Dad does before he has to give a talk! And I could tell he had had a drink to give himself some courage.

I was being bumped about by all the other people in the corridor and I had to keep shifting while Dad and Mr Hyde were shaking hands. I was right off at one side of them when Mr Hyde said, “Ted Mallory? Demons, isn’t it?”

Just then, one of the people bumping me – I didn’t see who, except that it was a man – said quietly, “Off you go then.” I stepped sideways again out of his way.

This was when I thought it was a dream.

I was outside, on an airfield of some kind. It must have been early morning, because it was chilly and dark, but getting lighter all the time, and there was pink mist across the stretch of grass I could see. But I couldn’t see much, because there were things I thought were helicopters blocking my view one way – tall, dark brown things – and the other way was a crowd of men who all seemed pretty impatient about something. I was sort of squashed between the men and the helicopters. The man nearest me, who was wearing a dirty, pale suede jacket and trousers and smoking a cigarette in long, impatient drags, turned round to throw his cigarette down on the grass and saw me.

“Oh, there you are!” he said. “Why didn’t you say you’d got here?” He turned back to the rest of them and called out, “It’s all right, messieurs! The novice finally got here. We can go.”

They all sort of groaned with relief and one of them began talking into a cellphone. “This is Perimeter Security, monsieur,” I heard him say, “reporting that our numbers are now complete. You can tell the Prince that it’s safe to embark now.” And after the phone had done some angry quacking, he said, “Very good, monsieur. I’ll pass that on to the culprit,” and then he waved at the rest of us.

Everyone began crowding up the ladder into the nearest helicopter-thing. The man who had spoken to me pushed me up ahead of him and swung on to the ladder after me. This must have put his face up against my legs, because he said angrily, “Didn’t the academy tell you to wear your leathers for this?”

I thought I knew then. I was sure this was one of my dreams about getting into another world and that it had got mixed up with the sort of dream where you’re on a bus with no clothes on, or talking to a girl you fancy with the front of your trousers missing. So I wasn’t particularly bothered. I just said, “No, they didn’t tell me anything.”

He made an irritated noise. “You’re supposed to be skyclad for official workings. They should know that!” he said. “You didn’t eat before you came, did you?” He sounded quite scandalised about it.

“No,” I said. Dad and I had been going to have supper after we’d listened to Maxwell Hyde. I was quite hungry, now I thought of it.

“Well, that’s a relief!” he said, pushing me forward into the inside of the flyer. “You have to be fasting for a major working like this. Yours is the pull-down seat at the back there.”

It would be! I thought. There were nice padded seats all round under the windows, but the one at the back was just a kind of slab. Everyone else was settling into the good seats and snapping seat belts around them, so I found the belts that went with the slab and did them up. I’d just got the buckles sussed when I looked up to find the man with the cellphone leaning over me.

“You,” he said, “were late. Top brass is not pleased. You kept the Prince waiting for nearly twenty minutes and HRH is not a patient man.”

“Sorry,” I said. But he went on and on, leaning over me and bawling me out. I didn’t need to listen to it much because the engines started then, roaring and clattering, and everything shook. Some of the noise was from the other fliers. I could see them sideways beyond his angry face, rising up into the air one after another, about six of them, and I wondered what made them fly. They didn’t have wings or rotors.

Eventually, a warning ping sounded. The bawling man gave me a menacing look and went to strap himself in beside his mates. They were all wearing some kind of uniform, sort of like soldiers, and the one who had bawled at me had coloured stripes round his sleeves. I supposed he was the officer. The men nearest me, four of them, were all dressed in dirty pale suede. Skyclad, I thought. Whatever that meant.

Then we were rising up into the air and roaring after the other fliers. I leaned over to the window and looked down, trying to see where this was. I saw the Thames winding underneath among crowds of houses, so I knew we were over London, but in a dreamlike way there was no London Eye, though I spotted the Tower and Tower Bridge, and where I thought St Paul’s ought to be there was a huge white church with three square towers and a steeple. After that we went tilting away southwards and I was looking down on misty green fields. Not long after that we were over the sea.

About then, the noise seemed to get less – or maybe I got used to it – and I could hear what the men in suede were saying. Mostly it was just grumbles about having to get up so early and how they were hungry already, along with jokes I didn’t understand, but I gathered that the one who had talked to me was Dave and the big one with the foreign accent was Arnold. The other two were Chick and Pierre. None of them took any notice of me.