I stared at her for the space of several heartbeats, aware that we were both in grave danger, then began to turn away. "Good fortune for Donuil."
She caught me by the wrist, stopping me. "Don't think of it like that, Merlyn. It's not Donuil who has me swimming, here, and he won't benefit from it. I may not lie with you, but tonight, for you, I won't lie with my husband." She stared at me, eye to eye, but I could only shake my head.
"This is insane. We'd better go."
On the way back down we talked of other things, and by the time we came to the town she had taught me the first lines of the melody she had sung in her enchantment.
SIX
The walls of the main gateway tower reared up above my head to the height of four tall men, and the heavy double doors were made from massive, layered slabs of dense- grained oak, shrunken and dried and cracked with age but serviceable still. These were framed, around and between, by heavy, solid, mason-dressed blocks of red sandstone brought down, Derek had told me, from the quarries to the north, along the coast. I craned my neck to decipher the faded, weather-beaten words on the plaque that had been mounted there on the plinth above the double doors.
"What does it say, Merlyn?"
Young Arthur stood beside me, holding his pony's reins and gazing up at the densely packed lettering of the inscription. "You're the scholar, young man. You tell me."
His brow wrinkled in concentration. "I've been trying to read it, but there are too many words I don't know. They're all at the beginning, there. What do they mean?"
I smiled. "They're names, lad. Names you've never heard before, but in their day, when their owners were alive, the whole world knew and feared them. It says: 'For the Emperor Caesar Trajan Hadrian Augustus, son of the divine Trajan, conqueror of Parthia, grandson of the divine Nerva, Pontifex Maximus and three times Consul, the Fourth Cohort of Dalmatians set this here in the presence of the Emperor's propraetorian governor.'"
He turned to me, his eyes growing round. "Caesar Augustus?"
"Aye, but not the one you're thinking of. This one was a Caesar, but the 'Augustus' in this instance is simply a way of calling him the Great Caesar. His real name was Hadrian, just as mine is Merlyn. My full name is Caius Merlyn Britannicus, but Caius Britannicus was my grandfather."
"Hadrian's Wall? Was that his?"
"Aye. It was built during his reign."
"It says his father and his grandfather were divine. Were they truly gods?"
I grinned at him and tousled his hair. "No, but they were emperors. The Romans have always liked to turn their emperors into gods, to show that they were greater than ordinary men."
"Were they?"
"No, they were much like the rest of us, and many of them were lesser men. But as emperors they held so much more power than we could ever dream of that it appeared that they must be gods."
He thought about that for several moments then turned away, looking along the wall that stretched away to our right; its uneven top climbed upward with the rise of the land to a corner turret, some hundred paces from where we stood. Then he looked back, over his right shoulder to the huddle of low, arch-roofed buildings that housed the garrison baths.
"Are we really going to live here?"
"Perhaps. We have to find some place to live, and this might suit our needs. What do you think?"
Arthur Pendragon took some time to look about him more carefully before answering, I watched him, aware of his height, the breadth of his young shoulders and the way he held his head high as he examined the steep, rocky escarpments that reared above this site to the east and south. He then turned completely around, ignoring the watching, waiting group behind us, to gaze out over the tree-filled valley that fell steeply away, beginning some hundred paces from where we stood, to the west, back towards Ravenglass and the distant coast. Above us, on the southern cliff face, the shadow of a cloud swept along the broken, ragged stone.
"It will be cold up here in winter." I could hear from his tone that he had offered an opinion, not asked a question, so I waited as he completed his inspection, watching his eyes move deliberately along the left-hand section of the wall again and back to the central gateway.
"Can we go inside?"
"Of course, but I don't know what we'll find in there. This place has lain empty for a long time."
"Hundreds of years, Lucanus said."
"That's right. Shall we go in now?"
"In a moment. Is there another gate like this in the northern wall?"
I shrugged. "There must be. It's a Roman fort, so it should have four exits. They might not all be as big as this one."
"Why not?"
"Look about you. This is the main gate, facing the enemy. Up here, there's only one way for enemies to approach, and that's along the road, either from the pass, up there, or from the valley below. If they come from the west, below, they would have to leave the road and climb a steep hill over rough ground to attack the western gate—difficult and dangerous. The only alternative, the same open to anyone attacking from the east across the pass there, would be to come around by the road and attack the eastern gate, from above, where there's a parade-ground campus, much like the one below Camulod. I imagine die garrison, when it was here, would have kept the heights above that, on this side of the road, well occupied, posing a threat to the rear of anyone attempting that. On the far side from here, the northern wall runs along the edge of the escarpment. No army could climb that." I paused, gauging the attention with which he had been listening. "So, having heard that, what would you expect to find by way of gates in the walls?"
The boy hesitated, thinking deeply, and then turned to glance towards where the others in our party still sat their horses, waiting for us to finish.
"Never mind them, lad. They'll wait for us, just as I am waiting for you."
He looked back towards me and then down, focusing for a short while on a spot somewhere between him and the ground. Then he raised those startling, golden eyes again to mine.
"The east wall will have double gates, as big as these, because of the parade ground beyond. And they'll be well fortified against attack from that direction. The western wall will have double gates, too, but smaller, for sorties against minor attacks from beneath. The rear wall, to the north along the cliff, requires no gate, unless it be a small one to allow refuse to be tipped over the edge."
"Good lad," I said, feeling an absurd lump swelling in. my throat from pride. "That's the exact answer I had formed to my own question, for I've never been here either, you'll recall. Let's go and see if we're right."
"May I ask another question?"
"Of course."
He pointed to the tower ahead of us. "Why are the walls that surround the doors of a different stone from the tower?"
I grinned at him again. "I'm learning many things today, am I not? You teach well, young Arthur. Now look about you again and tell me why. Take your time, the answer's there in front of you."
Once again, the boy required little time to reach his answer. He looked about him, beginning with the dressed sandstone pillar between the heavy doors, then running his eyes around the gate's framework and from there to the turreted walls on either side of the central tower. I watched closely as his eyes, empty at first, grew suddenly acute, and I saw awareness grow in them as he turned to gaze up at the cliffs to the south and east. Then he stepped away and bent to wrestle something from the grass-grown ground: a long, flat slab of local stone, in thickness perhaps the width of his boy's palm. He hefted it, testing its weight, then dropped it flat on the cobbles of the causeway beneath our feet, where it shattered into four pieces.