Named of the Dragon Read online

  "What?"

  "Well, you don't look very trusting."

  The frown became, briefly, a withering glare, but he gave me the point. At the door, he remembered one final instruction. "There's a heater in the corner, you should plug it in. I don't want Swift accusing me of giving you pneumonia."

  I found the small electric fire and turned it on, gratefully, resting my feet as close as I dared to the reddening element. From the kitchen came the sounds of crackling paper, metal scraping brick and rattling coals, telling me that Gareth had resumed his battle with the Aga. Chance, torn between us, turned round several times and then settled himself in the doorway, his head on his paws, trying his best to watch both rooms at once.

  Free from distractions, I started to read.

  I'd never known much about Merlin, beyond his most obvious role in Arthurian myth. I always pictured him as old, white-bearded, dressed in wizards' clothes. So it was something of a shock to find him here, in Geoffrey of Mon-mouth's belaboured chronicle, running through the pages as a small boy, strangely fatherless, with local rumours naming him the offspring of the devil.

  I read how Vortigern, a widely hated British king, had tried without success to build a tower on a hill, and had been told by his advisers that the walls would continue collapsing until the mortar had been mixed with the blood of a child who had no father. A seemingly impossible task, since even illegitimate children had fathers. By chance the king's men had found Merlin, whose mother swore no mortal man had fathered him. But when they brought the boy to Vortigern, young Merlin took control.

  His sacrifice, he said, would be no help. The tower would still crumble. The problem lay much deeper—underneath a pool of water, deep within the hill, two dragons slept, and woke, and warred with one another; and their fighting shook the ground and made the tower fall.

  And so, just as Joseph in the Bible had been freed for reading Pharaoh's dreams, Merlin's mystic powers saved his life. King Vortigern gave orders that the pool be drained, releasing the dragons, one white and one red. As the dragons proceeded to battle each other, the king asked the boy to explain what this meant.

  His answer seemed clear enough, even to me: the white dragon stood for the Saxons, the red for the Britons. The Saxons, at first, would prevail, but the Britons would someday arise and defeat them.

  To the Welsh, that would mean that one day they—the heirs of the Britons—would challenge the English and win. But Merlin didn't stop with that. Encouraged by the king, he drew breath and launched into the prophecies proper... and that's where he lost me.

  For all he used plain language, his words made little sense. And the visions he described were murky, thick with allegory, the sort of things old men in dusty universities might spend their lives deciphering. "A man shall embrace a lion in wine, and the dazzling brightness of gold shall blind the eyes of the beholders," Merlin told the king. "Silver shall whiten in the circumference, and torment several wine presses."

  It seemed to me that Merlin had been embracing a few things in wine, himself. He sounded like my brother after several pints of lager.

  "Merlin, by delivering these and many other prophecies," the book informed me, solemnly, "caused in all that were present an admiration at the ambiguity of his expressions."

  That didn't surprise me. What was it the woman had said in my dream? And men in these dark times do fear the prophecies of Merlin. No bloody wonder. Interpreting the man's predictions would have driven anyone to drink or raving madness.

  I sighed and read the pages through again, more slowly. I was searching for a reference, any reference, to the only symbol from my dream I hadn't yet resolved—the dragon kings of whom the blue-robed woman spoke. Dragons I found in abundance—red dragons, white dragons, dragons of gold. But no dragon kings.

  From the kitchen came the grating squeak and clang of a door being shut on the Aga. Gareth's footsteps crossed the hard floor, and I heard him running water through the taps. The water stopped. He paused. And then his measured tread came back again, towards the open doorway of the room where I sat reading.

  "I'm making tea," his voice announced.

  I chose to accept that, in spite of the phrasing, as some sort of offer. "I'd love a cup. Thank you."

  His hospitality didn't extend, though, to delivery. He merely called me when the kettle boiled. The Aga had reluctantly begun to warm the kitchen. As I stood by the table and sugared my tea, I felt the spreading heat against my legs.

  "I see you won your battle," I remarked.

  "I always do." He raised his own chipped mug of tea and leaned against the worktop. "You're making sense of Merlin, then?" he asked me, in a voice that knew full well I wouldn't be.

  I should have lied. I should have said I found the reading easy. But the hot tea and the Aga's warmth had made me sluggish, and it seemed a great deal simpler to admit that I hadn't the faintest idea what Merlin was on about. "Mind you, that hardly matters, since he hasn't said a word about the dragon kings."

  "The what?"

  "That's the prophecy I'm after," I explained. "Something to do with a child born under the dragon kings' banner, whatever that—"

  "Why?" His tone cut like a knife blade, and I hesitated.

  "Sorry?"

  "It's a straightforward question. Why do you want to know?"

  Some instinct warned me that my answer was important, but he didn't look the sort of man to be impressed by dreams. "It's for one of my authors," I lied.

  "Not for Bridget?"

  "God, no. She'd have asked you herself." That, at least, was the truth, and I saw him acknowledge it, the small muscle twitching again at the side of his mouth. He raised his mug and drank, his dark eyes quietly assessing me.

  At length, he said, "I should think it's the poems of Merlin you want, not the prophecies."

  "Merlin wrote poems?"

  "Well, that rather depends on how much you believe. Like the Gospels." He shifted his shoulders to rest with more comfort against the hard worktop. '"There's a little green book on my desk, in the back left-hand corner. You bring that in here, and I'll find you your poem."

  I grappled with that order for a moment, but in the end my curiosity proved stronger than my pride. I fetched the book.

  He searched the pages quickly and methodically, as one who knew exactly what he wanted. It didn't take him long to find the place. "Read that," he said, and handed me the poem.

  "Afallenau?" I twisted my tongue round the title.

  He corrected my pronunciation, softening the "f" into a "v" and turning the double-l into an unfamiliar sound, as though he'd put his tongue against his teeth to say an "l," then blown hard instead. "It's Welsh for 'Apple-trees.' "

  "Ah." I read the first few lines and frowned. "It's definitely Merlin."

  "What?"

  "He likes to be obscure. Oh, wait a minute, here's something ... 'I prophesy the unvarnished truth—the rising of a child in the secluded South.' No mention of kings, though."

  "Try reading further on, towards the end."

  I found it in the eighth verse.

  "A tale that will come to pass," I slowly read the lines aloud. "A staff of gold, signifying bravery, will be given by the glorious Dragon Kings. The graceful one will vanquish the profaner. Before the child, bright and bold, the Saesons shall fall, and bards will flourish."

  He nodded. "That's the one."

  "So the Dragon Kings would be ... ?"

  "The ancient line of British kings, who claimed descent from Brutus."

  "Brutus the Trojan again."

  "That's right."

  "But he's mythical, surely."

  "Most legends," said Gareth, "are rooted in myth. And legends live longer than truth."

  I considered this, reading the verse through a second time and frowning as I realized that this couldn't possibly have influenced my dream—I'd never read the poems of Merlin, never knew that they existed. Even Lewis hadn't mentioned them, in all his talk of Wales. But the words had come from
somewhere. "And the Saesons are ... who? The Saxons?"

  He nodded. "The English, in general."

  So this really was just the red dragon again, rising up to defeat the white dragon of England. Except that this poem predicted the Welsh would be led by a child.

  Gareth watched me. "Who is he?"

  "I'm sorry?"

  "This author of yours. The one who's too lazy to do his own research."

  "Oh." I shrugged. "You wouldn't know him."

  "Try me. What's his name?"

  My racing mind hit on a name that I knew wouldn't register—that of my assistant.

  Gareth arched a brow. "But that's a Welsh name."

  "Well, yes, I believe he was born in Caernarvon ..."

  "He should be ashamed of himself, then. Every Welshman should know Merlin's prophecies. They're a part of the brut, the old underground poems that fueled Welsh resistance."

  I'd been smiling to hear him echoing Lewis's own sentiments, but at the word "resistance" something clicked in my brain, and I suddenly remembered where else I'd heard of Merlin's prophecies. "Of course, you did use them in Red Dragon Rising, didn't you? That scene in the church, before Owain Glyn Dwr begins his rebellion—he mentions the prophecies then."

  "You have a good memory," said Gareth.

  "Well, I did see the play a few times." I remembered now, clearly, the power of that one brief scene, when the rebel Welsh leader confronted his destiny—I even felt sure that he'd used the words "dragon kings." "Do you have a copy of it here?"

  He shook his head. "I never read things once they're finished. The urge to revise never ends."

  "Oh."

  "But you're right about Owain mentioning the prophecies. In real life, he used them quite freely to fuel his rebellion. A very clever man," was Gareth's personal assessment of the legendary rebel, "and in many ways the greatest hero Wales has yet produced. There's a local tradition that claims he was bom here in Pembrokeshire, not far from Wolfscastle, where I grew up."

  "Is that why you wrote about him?"

  "Partly. But it would be hard to be Welsh and not feel a connection to Owain, no matter where he was born. He was to Wales what William Wallace was to Scotland, only more than that. To the people who followed him, Owain Glyn Dwr was Arthur returned, as the prophecy promised. He was never betrayed," Gareth said, leaning back. "That's a bloody rare thing, in our history. In anyone's history. Even Wallace was sold by the Scots, in the end."

  I nodded and glanced at the book in my hand. "So the child Merlin mentions in this poem, then ... is that Arthur, or Owain, or... ?"

  "Both, in a way." He shrugged. "The birth of the divine child—the mab y darogan, or son of prophecy—is a cornerstone of Celtic myth. Take Arthur, for example— he's conceived by magic, raised by strangers, that's the classic archetype. And Arthur, you'll remember, didn't die. Neither did Owain. The bards sang no eulogies over him, gave him no grave." He paused, and turned his gaze towards the window to the gently rising fields, and his accented voice became something like music, like one of the speeches he wrote for the stage. "We don't let any of them die, in Wales—Merlin and Arthur and Owain—we keep them close by and asleep in the hills, to be wakened if ever we need them."

  I felt the magic of his words, and something more—a sense of solid permanence and peace, deep peace, that flowed between the land and Gareth, drew me in its circle. But the mood only lasted a moment. Turning back, he said, ' 'Now if you' ve finished, I' ve got work I should be doing.'' And all poetry forgotten, he crossed over to the Aga to refill his mug of tea.

  XIII

  For so must all things excellent begin.

  Thomas Heywood, The Life of Merlin

  I never trust a man who doesn't drink." James flipped a frying egg and turned his head to light a cigarette. He wasn't drinking tea, himself—he'd poured a generous measure of liqueur into his coffee.

  Bridget, at the table, asked: "Why doesn’t Gareth drink? I've always wondered."

  It was Christopher who answered her. Rocking his chair on its two back legs, he clasped his hands behind his head and slanted her a knowing look. "Because, my dear, the man's an alcoholic."

  "Never."

  "Mm. Though I suppose, to be perfectly truthful, he's really a ... what do they call it? Oh yes, a recovering alcoholic. Condemned to drink squash for the rest of his life."

  James glanced up from his eggs again, clearly intrigued. "Is he really? I wasn't aware."

  "Well, it's not common knowledge."

  "And you heard it from ... ?"

  "Elen."

  "Ah. I really should tell the girl..."

  "Tell her what?" Christopher asked.

  James smiled faintly. "That you can't keep a secret, of course."

  Christopher said something rude about secrets and let his chair drop again, yawning. "I hardly think any of us will run off to the News of the World. And besides, Bridget asked me."

  Bridget, who'd been lost in thought, surfaced at the sound of her name. "What? Oh yes, well, I wondered. There's usually a reason, isn't there, why someone doesn't drink, and Garcth didn't strike me as the health-mad type." Buttering a slice of toast, she topped it with one of her own eggs and reached for the pepper mill. "Anyway, Lyn, I'm very angry with you for not waking me this morning. I'd have loved to see the inside of that cottage."

  "He's done a lot to it," said James. He tipped his eggs out of the frying pan on to a plate and sat down at the table to join us. "The upstairs, I'm told, is quite unrecognizable. Auntie Frances would be pleased."

  Bridget looked up, curious. "And who is Auntie Frances, now? That's not your uncle Ralph's wife's name."

  "Quite right," he said. "That's Auntie Pam. No, Auntie Frances would be ... what, Chris? Uncle Ralph's aunt?"

  Christopher confessed that he'd lost track of the connection. "She's likely related to everyone, here in the village. No matter how long Gareth lives in that place, or how many improvements he makes, it will always be called Auntie Frances's cottage."

  Bridget smiled. "I do miss living in a village."

  "I'm afraid I can't quite picture you in one," said James. "You must have caused a scandal."

  ' 'Heaps of scandals. But that's half the fun, and anyway, a writer is expected to be odd."

  I couldn't help but smile myself, remembering the two years she'd spent living in her little house in Hampshire.

  Her neighbors, I thought, were probably still undergoing therapy.

  "So Lyn," she said, "do tell. What does it look like?"

  "Gareth's cottage?" I shrugged. "It looks like you'd expect an old cottage to look. You know."

  She sighed. "You'd never make a spy."

  "Well, Bridget, have a heart. I only saw two rooms."

  "I am amazed," said James, "that you saw anything at all. My own eyes would never be open that early."

  They were barely open now. I watched him narrow them against the upwards drift of smoke from his freshly lit cigarette. A man like James, I thought, who concerned himself with interior lives, with a grittier world of clubs and pubs and city streets at midnight—he just wouldn't understand the pleasure in my morning walks, the joy of breathing air that felt alive, of seeing everything laid out before me, clean and new, the way it must have been the day the world began.

  Unable to explain, I simply said: "I've always been a morning person."

  "Six o'clock, my dear girl, isn't morning. It's the middle of the night."

  Christopher smiled and tipped his chair back again, looking at me. "It's good luck that Gareth was already up."

  "I didn't go round there to see him," I said, not wanting anyone to get the wrong idea. "I was just walking by, and I stopped for a minute to play with his dog, and he came to the back door, and asked me inside."

  I could see Bridget's wheels working. "I wonder," she mused, "whether Gareth is up early every day?"

  "Oh, I should think so," said Christopher. "That's when he writes. At least, Elen says—"

  "Elen," Jame
s said, "says a lot to you, doesn't she?"

  "Yes, I suppose that she does." Christopher lifted his chin, and a look passed between the two brothers—an odd sort of challenge. James backed away first, turning smoothly to me.

  "So, did you manage a peek at the masterpiece? Gar-eth's new play," he explained, when I looked at him blankly.

  "I didn't even know that he was writing one."

  "Good lord, I'd have thought that an agent could smell work in progress," he said. "Like a bloodhound. It must have been there on his desk."

  "Unless he had it hidden." Bridget rose to rinse her plate. "He's a very private person, darling."

  He hadn't hidden it, though. I remembered the neat stack of handwritten pages I'd seen on his desk—the ones he'd turned over before I sat down. "What's the new play about?"

  "I don't know," James said. "That's why I asked."

  Once again, Christopher showed off his insider's knowledge. "It's another historical, apparently."

  "Ah." James stubbed out his cigarette. "There you are, then."

  Christopher's mouth curved. "I shouldn't dismiss it so lightly. He did rather well with his last one."

  I might have pressed him for details, only just then we were interrupted by the sound of a cheerful bass-baritone voice singing "White Christmas." James, feigning shock, peered out into the garden. "God help us, it's Englebert Humperdinck."

  The singing was switched to a spirited whistle as Owen came in through the back door, his boots caked with muck from the cowshed. "What the devil are all of you doing indoors on a glorious morning like this?" was his greeting.

  "Finishing breakfast," said James.

  "At a quarter past ten? Bloody scandal." He shook his head, turning to me. "You've been out though, I hear, lovely."

  Bridget nudged me. "See? That's village life for you. Everyone peeking through windows."

  Owen grinned. "I aren't peeking through nothing. Gareth told me. I met him just now, coming back from his ride."

  "Gareth rides?" I felt a little twinge, and heard the wistful note that crept into my voice. The last time I'd been on a horse I'd been carrying Justin, a few months before he'd been born. I'd competed in dressage in those days, and loved it. I'd owned my own horse. But I'd sold her a month after Justin had died. After what Ivor had said, I hadn't been able to look at her without wondering, and even though my doctor had done his best to assure me that being on horseback hadn't been a factor in Justin's death, I'd felt enough lingering guilt to take most of the joy out of riding.