Named of the Dragon (10 page)

XII

Sometimes he angers me

With telling me of the moldwarp and the ant,

Of the dreamer Merlin and his prophecies,

And of a dragon ...

William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part One

The plastered stone walls of the cottage breathed cold down the back of my neck as I came through the door.

"You'll want to leave your jacket on," was Gareth's curt advice. "I'm not as civilized as your friend Swift, I don't have central heating. And the Aga's decided to be a right bastard this morning."

I tended to think of an Aga as something one found in a Home Counties kitchen, expensive and gleaming, its colour selected to match one's collection of Le Creuset pots, but here in Gareth's square and spartan kitchen, the cooker had no such pretensions. It looked ancient, for one thing— its solid, cream-enamelled bulk wedged in the nook where the old hearth had been, black stovepipe disappearing up the chimney. The rectangular stove lid had been levered upright on its hinges to expose an iron hob that years of use had reddened round the edge, and at the front, to the right of the ovens, the fire box stood open, with its cover removed and a few wads of paper stuffed into the smouldering coals. From the piles of cold ash and spent matches that littered the brick hearth, it appeared that he'd been battling with the Aga for some time.

"And you, my lad," he told the little dog, who'd bent to sniff the ashes, "can keep your big nose out of that. I've no desire to spend my morning cleaning up your mess."

After my own experience with the dustbins, I couldn't help smiling. ' 'What kind of a dog is he, anyway?''

"The bloody-minded kind," he said. "A long-haired Jack."

"A Jack Russell terrier? Really? I didn't know they could have long hair."

As if to prove the point, Chance gave his body an all-over shake so his wiry white hair stood out in all directions, making him look more like a mad scientist than ever, before he padded past us on his stubby legs to peer with hopeful eyes into his food dish.

"The walking stomach," Gareth said. "You've had your breakfast, Chance, there's nothing for you there. Why don't you show the lady where we keep the books?"

At that last word, the dog perked his ears up and cocked his head sideways, then gave an acquiescing woof and trotted back across the kitchen, past the narrow bare oak table to a partly open door. The room beyond had, I imagined, been intended as a dining-room, but Gareth Morgan didn't look the type to entertain. Instead, the dark walls had been hidden behind an assortment of bookcases, most of them old, some with glass doors, some painted, all crammed with a varied collection of volumes. Underneath the only window, facing out on the back garden, an impressive roll-top desk and chair provided what appeared to be the only place to sit, and I didn't need to see the scribbled paper, open books, and scattered pens to know that this was where the playwright worked.

Gareth walked over to switch on the desk lamp, dispersing the studious shadows.

For a moment it occurred to me I really didn't need to read the book of Merlin's prophecies—I already knew how they'd worked their way into my dream. It was all Lewis's fault, for giving me so many lectures on bloody Welsh history, I thought. Small wonder my subconscious had picked up the phrase. But still, there remained one small part of the dream that I couldn't explain, and I'd become something of a fanatic when it came to interpreting dreams. I liked to know where every symbol came from, what it meant.

Gareth flipped his papers upside-down and turned the chair towards me. "Have a seat."

I sat, exhaling an experimental breath to see if it made mist. My nose felt numb with cold. Thrusting my hands deeper into my pockets, I pressed them to my knees and watched while Gareth, looking quite comfortably warm in a thick Irish jumper and black denim jeans, bent to scan a bookshelf.

He was not, I admitted, a bad-looking man. Not a handsome one, in the traditional sense—he would need to be taller for that, and less angry, his features more even. But as he looked now, leaning forward in profile, the crisp black hair flopped on his eyebrow to soften his frown, I could understand why Bridget thought him "prime."

"Here it is," he said. "Geoffrey of Monmouth." He pulled a small volume from one of the bottom shelves. It had been through the wars, that book. The spine was torn, and the pages had started to shift and come loose from their binding. Gareth turned them with care, as he straightened. "It's not the most trustworthy history of Britain, but good for its time. He's the one who goes on about Troy."

"Troy?"

"Mm. Brutus the Trojan," he said, more specifically. "Great-grandson of Aeneas, the great Trojan war hero."

"As in Virgil's
AeneidV'

"Exactly."

I looked at him, curious. "What does that have to do with British history?"

"Everything, if one believes Geoffrey of Monmouth.

The tale goes that Brutus got tired of fighting the Greeks, and on the advice of the goddess Diana set sail with a small group of Trojans and ended up settling here. Built a new Troy where London is now, spread his seed, and became the first ruler of Britain."

"You're joking."

He shrugged, and turned another page. "It's no less strange than any other legend. I assume it's just the prophecies you're after, not the bit about Vortigern's tower."

"Whose tower?"

"Vortigern." I must have looked a blank, because he sighed. "The British king who dug up Merlin in the first place."

"Ah. I'd better start with him, then."

"Right." He set the book in front of me and pointed to the place. "That's where it starts."

He didn't move away, as I'd expected, but stood firm by my shoulder, his frown pricking warmth down the back of my neck. I read the first sentence, and read it again... and a third time, but it wasn't any use. I couldn't concentrate. Not when I felt like a mouse being watched by a hawk. I set the book down; glanced up sweetly. "If I promise not to bend the pages back or mark the margins, will that set your mind at ease?"

"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."