The Merlin Conspiracy

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.

“Very well, as far as it goes,” he said in his weak, high voice. “You’ve got the King and his Court…”

“And all the other wizards. Don’t forget them,” Sybil put in pridefully.

Sir James chuckled. “None of them suspecting a thing!” he said. “They should be dancing to her tune now, shouldn’t they?”

“Yes. For a while,” the Merlin agreed, still looking around. “Is this where you put the spell on?”

“Well, no. It’s a bit strong here,” Sybil admitted. “I didn’t have time for the working it would take to do it here. I worked from the pool below the steps. That’s the first cistern the well flows out to, you see, and it feeds all the other channels from there.”

The Merlin went, “Hm.” He squatted down like a grasshopper beside the well and put his candle down by one of his gawky, bent legs. “Hm,” he went again. “I see.” Then he pulled open the lid over the well.

Grundo and I felt the power from where we stood. We found it hard not to sway. The Merlin got up and staggered backwards. Behind him, Sir James said, “Ouch!” and covered his face.

“You see?” said Sybil.

“I do,” said Sir James. “Put the lid back, man!”

The Merlin dropped the lid back with a bang. “I hadn’t realised,” he said. “That’s strong. If we’re going to use it, we’ll have to conjure some other Power to help us. Are there any available?”

“Plenty,” said Sir James. “Over in Wales particularly.” He turned to Sybil. The candlelight made his profile into a fleshy beak with pouty lips. “How about it? Can you do a working now? We ought to have this Power in and consolidate our advantage now we’ve got it.”

Sybil had pouty lips too. They put her chin in shadow as she said, “James, I’m exhausted! I’ve worked myself to the bone this evening and I can’t do any more! Even going barefoot all the time, it’ll be three days before I’ve recouped my powers.”

“How long before you can do a strong working?” the Merlin asked, picking his candle up. “My friend James is right. We do need to keep up our momentum.”

“If we both help you?” Sir James asked coaxingly.

Sybil hung her head and her hair down and thought, with her big arms planted along her large thighs. “I need three days,” she said at last, rather sulkily. “Whoever helps me, I’m not going to be able to tackle something as strong as this well before that. It won’t take just a minor Power to bespell the thing. We’ll have to summon something big.”

“But will the effect of the drink last until we do?” Sir James asked, rather tensely.

Sybil looked up at the Merlin. He said, “It struck me as firm enough for the moment. I don’t see it wearing off for at least a week, and we’ll be able to reinforce it before that.”

“Good enough.” Sir James sprang up, relieved and jolly. “Let’s get this place locked up again then and go and have a proper drink. Who fancies champagne?” He pulled keys out of his pocket and strode away down the steps, jingling them and lighting the trees to a glinting black with his candle.

“Champagne. Lovely!” said Sybil. She heaved to her feet and shoved the Merlin playfully down the steps in front of her. “Off you go, stranger boy!”

Grundo and I realised we were likely to get locked inside the garden. We nearly panicked. The moment Sybil was out of sight we surged out on to the flagstones and then realised that the only way out was down those same stone steps to the lopsided pool. That was almost the worst part of the whole thing. We had to wait for Sir James, Sybil and then the Merlin to get ahead, then follow them, and then try to get ahead of them before they got to the gate in the wall.

We were helped a lot by the queer way the space in the garden seemed to spread, and by all the stone walls and conduits and bushes. We could see Sir James and the other two easily by the light of their flickering candles – and hear them too, most of the time, talking and laughing. Sybil obviously was tired. She went quite slowly and the others waited for her. We were able to scud along behind lavender and tall, toppling flowers, or crouch down and scurry past pieces of old wall – though we couldn’t go really fast because it was quite dark by then – and finally we got in front of them and raced out through the gate just before they came merrily along under a rose arch.

I was a nervous wreck by then. It must have been even worse for Grundo, knowing his mother was part of a conspiracy. We went on running beside a dim path and neither of us stopped until we were well out into the lawns in the main garden and could see our camp in the distance, twinkling beyond the fence.

“What do we do now?” I panted at Grundo. “Tell my Dad?”

“Don’t be stupid!” he said. “He was there drinking with the other wizards. He’s not going to listen to you for at least a fortnight.”