The Merlin Conspiracy

Grandad must have done the trick. Though there was a coldness between England and Scotland after this – and there still is – both armies moved back from the border and nobody talked about the Scottish King much or even mentioned the poor old Merlin. Instead, the Court and the media began worrying about the Meeting of Kings that was due to happen on the Welsh border soon. Will Logres and the Pendragon meet in peace? That sort of thing. In between, they went back to being angry about Flemish trading practices, just as usual.

Nobody seemed to be suspecting Dad any more. Grandad only stayed with the Court until the King had spared a moment to have a friendly chat with Dad, and then he left, saying he had a book to finish. The new Merlin left too. Part of his duties at the start of his tenure was to visit every place of power in the country, and a few in Wales too, and attune himself to them. I think he was hoping that Grandad would go with him and advise him. He looked wistful when Grandad left. This Merlin was one of those who get what they want by looking wistful, but that never works with Grandad, so he was on his own. He climbed wistfully into the little brown car Grandad had helped him buy and chugged away.

We went back to normal. That is to say, we were rumbling along in buses most of the time, with rumours flying about where we were going next – although nobody ever knows that until a few hours before we get to wherever-it-is. The King likes to keep the Court and the country on its toes.

The unusual thing was the exceptionally fine weather. When I asked Dad about it, he said the King had asked him to keep it that way until the Meeting of Kings at the edge of Wales. So at least we were warm.

We spent three unexpected days in Leeds. I think the King wanted to inspect some factories there, but after the usual flustered greeting by the City Council it was blissful. We stayed in houses. Mam squeezed some money out of Sybil and took me and Grundo shopping. We got new clothes. There was time. We had civilised lessons in the mornings, sitting at tables in a room, and we could explore the city in the afternoons. I even enjoyed the riding lessons – which I don’t much usually – out on the moorlands in the hot sun, riding past the carefully repaired green places where there had been mines and quarries.

“I’m going to be Mayor of Leeds when I grow up,” Grundo announced, as we rode against the sky one morning. “I shall live in a house with a bathroom.” He meant this so much that his voice went right down deep on the word bathroom. We both hate the bath-tents, even though the arrangements are quite efficient and there is usually hot water from the boiler-lorry and towels from the laundry-bus. But you get out of your canvas bath to stand shivering on wet grass, and there is always wind getting into the tent from somewhere.

We were sad when we had to leave. Off we went, the whole procession of the Court. We spread for miles. The King is often half a day ahead in his official car, with his security and his wizards and advisors beside him. These are followed by all sorts of Court cars, everything from the big square limousine with tinted windows belonging to the Duke of Devonshire to the flashy blue model driven by Sir James - Sir James had turned up again when we were leaving Leeds. The media bus hurries along after the cars, trying to keep up with events, and a whole string of administrative buses follows the media – with Mam in one of them, too busy even to look out of a window – and then the various lorries lumber after the buses. Some lorries are steaming with food or hot water, in case these are needed when we stop, and some are carrying tents and soldiers and things. The buses for the unimportant people follow the lorries. We are always last.

It often takes a whole day to go twenty miles. Parliament is always proposing that fine new roads get built so that the King – and other people – could travel more easily, but the King is not in favour of this so they don’t get done. There are only two King’s Roads in the entire country, one between London and York and the other between London and Winchester. We spend most of our journeys groaning round corners or grinding along between hedges that clatter on both sides of our bus.

It was like that for the two days after we left Leeds. The roads seemed to get narrower and, on the second day, the countryside beyond the windows became greener and greener, until we were grinding among hills that were an almost incredible dense, emerald colour. By the evening, we were rumbling through small lanes, pushing our way past foamy banks of white cow-parsley. Our bus got stuck crossing a place where a small river ran across the lane and we arrived quite a while after the rest of the Court.

There was a castle there, on a hill. It belonged to Sir James and the King was staying in it. Although it looked quite big, we were told that most of it was rooms of state and there was no space in it for anyone except the King’s immediate circle. Everyone else was in a camp in fields just below the gardens. By the time we got there, it looked as if the camp had been there for days. In the office-tents, Mam and her colleagues were hard at work on their laptops, making the most of the daylight, and Dad was in the wizards’ tent being briefed about what magic would be needed. And the teachers were looking for us to give that day’s lessons.

“We must get a look inside that castle,” Grundo said to me as we were marched off to the teaching-bus.

“Let’s try after lessons,” I said.

But during lessons we discovered that the King had one of his ritual duties that night. Everyone with any magical abilities was required to attend. This meant Grundo and me, as well as Alicia and the old Merlin’s grandchildren and six of the other children.

“Bother!” I said. I was really frustrated.

Then at supper someone said that we were going to be here at Castle Belmont for days. The King liked the place, and it was near enough to the Welsh border that he could go to meet the Welsh King in a week’s time without needing to move on.

I said that was good news. Grundo said morosely, “Maybe. That’s the worst of arriving late. Nobody tells you things.”

Nobody had told us anything about the ritual duty, except that it began at sunset somewhere called the Inner Garden. After we’d changed into good clothes, we followed everyone else as they went there and hoped someone would tell us what to do when we got to the place. We straggled after the line of robed wizards and people in Court dress, past beds of flowers and a long yew hedge, and then on a path across a lawn towards a tall, crumbly stone wall with frondy creepers trailing along its top.

“I know I’m going to hate this,” Grundo said. Rituals don’t agree with him. I think this is because his magic is back-to-front. Magical ceremonies often make him dizzy, and once or twice he has disgracefully thrown up in holy places of power.

“Keep swallowing,” I warned him as we went in under the old stone gateway.

Inside, it was all new and fresh and different. There was a garden inside the old walls – a garden inside a garden – cupped inside its own small valley and as old and green as the hills. There was ancient stonework everywhere, worn flagstones overhung with flowering bushes or isolated arches beside stately old trees. There were lawns that seemed even greener than the lawns outside. Above all, it was alive with water. Strange, fresh-smelling water that ran in conduits of old stone and gushed from stone pipes into strange, lopsided stone pools, or cascaded in hidden places behind old walls.

“This is lovely!” I said.

“I think I agree,” Grundo said. He sounded quite surprised.

“Fancy someone like Sir James owning a place like this!” I said.

It was hard to tell how big this Inner Garden was. You hardly noticed all the finely dressed people crowding into it. It seemed to absorb them, so that they vanished away among the watery lawns and got shadowy under the trees. You felt that twice as many people would hardly be noticed in here.

But that was before Sybil took charge and began passing out candles to the pages. “Everyone take a candle – you too, Your Majesty – and everyone who can must conjure flame to them. Pages will light the others for those who can’t,” she instructed, bustling about barefoot, with her green velvet skirts hitched up. She bustled up to the King and personally called fire to his candle. The Merlin lit Prince Edmund’s for him. I was interested to see that the Merlin was back. He looked much less stunned and wistful than he had before. But, as light after light flared up, sending the surrounding garden dark and blue, I found I was not liking this at all. It seemed to me that this place was intended to be dusky and secret, and only to be lit by the sunset light coming softly off the waters. The candles made it all glittery.

Grundo and I looked at one another. We didn’t either of us say anything, but we both pretended we were finding it hard to call light. Because we knew Sybil knew we never had any problems with fire, we backed away into some bushes and behind a broken wall and hoped she would forget we were there.

Luckily, she was busy after that, far too busy to notice us. She was always very active doing any working, but I had never known her as active as she was then. She spread her arms wide, she raised her hands high and bent herself backwards, she bent herself forwards and made great beckonings, she made huge galloping leaps, and she raised loud cries to the spirit of the garden to come and vitalise us all. Then she twirled off, with her arms swooping this way and that, to the place where the nearest water came gushing out of a stone animal’s head, where she snatched up a silver goblet and held it under the water until it overflowed in all directions. She held it up to the sky; she held it to her lips.

“Ah!” she cried out. “The virtue in this water! The power of it!” With her hair swirling and wrapping itself across her sweating face, she brought the goblet to the King. “Drink, Sire!” she proclaimed. “Soak up the energy, immerse yourself, revel in the bounty of these healing waters! And everyone will do the same after you!”

The King took the goblet and sipped politely. As soon as he had, the Merlin filled another goblet and presented it to Prince Edmund.

“Drink, everyone!” Sybil carolled. “Take what is so freely given!” She began filling goblets and passing them around as if she was in a frenzy. Everyone caught the frenzy and seized the goblets and downed them as if they were dying of thirst.

This is all wrong! I thought. Some magics do require a frenzy, I know, but I was fairly sure this garden was not one of them. It was a quiet place. You were supposed to – supposed to – I remember searching in my head for what the garden was really like, and having a hard job to think, because Sybil’s workings had set up such a loud shout of enchantment that it drowned out most other thoughts – you were supposed to dwell with the garden, that was it. You were supposed to let the garden come to you, not suck it up in a greedy riot like this. It was a small island of otherwhere and full of strength. But it was quiet strength, enclosed in a great bend of the River Severn, which meant that it certainly belonged to the Lady of Severn who also ruled the great crescent of forest to the south. It seemed to me that this garden might even be her most secret place. It ought to have been hushed and holy. Sir James – I could see him in the distance half-lit by candles, tipping up his goblet and smacking his lips – Sir James must be supposed to guard the secret place, not open it to frantic magic-making, not even for the King.

I don’t know how I knew all this, but I was sure of it. I murmured to Grundo, “I’m not doing any of this drinking.”

“She’s doctored the waters somehow,” he answered unhappily.

Grundo usually knew what his mother had been up to. I believed him. “Why?” I whispered.

“No idea,” he said, “but I’m going to have to drink some of it. She’ll know if I don’t.”

“Then let’s go and see if there’s a place higher up where she hasn’t got at it,” I said.

We moved off quietly sideways, in the direction the water was coming from, clutching our unlit candles and trying to keep out of sight. Nobody noticed us. They were all waving candles and passing goblets about, laughing. People were shouting out, “Oh! It’s so refreshing! I can feel it doing me good!” almost as if they were all drunk. It was easy to keep in the shadows and follow the waters. The waters flowed down in several stone channels – I had a feeling that each channel was supposed to give you some different goodness – that spread from one of the lopsided pools near the top of the slope.

“How about this?” I asked Grundo beside this pool. It was very calm there and twilit, with just a few birds twittering and a tree nearby breathing out some strong, quiet scent. I could see Grundo’s head as a lightness, gloomily shaking.

“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.