It was all timed perfectly. Hard-worked officials had been talking to one another on far-speakers all morning to make sure it was. The Scots appeared first. They seemed to come over the horizon and get larger and brighter as they came. They had pipers walking on both sides, solemnly stepping and skirling. I love the sound of bagpipes. It is the most exciting noise I know. I was quite sorry when our band started up and trumpets drowned the pipes out.
This was the signal for our King to come out of his tent and walk towards the Scots. When we stop in towns long enough for me to get talking to people, they always say enviously, I suppose you see the King every day! No. Actually, I dont. He is nearly always away in the front of the Progress and I often dont set eyes on him for weeks. When I do see him, it is usually like this, at a distance, as a tall figure in dark clothes, and the main way I recognise him is by his neat brown beard and a sort of shiver of majesty he brings with him.
On this occasion he had Prince Edmund, the Prince Heir, with him too, also in sober, dark clothes. The Prince is eighteen now and he was travelling with his father that year to learn his duties. With them came the Merlin on one side and the Archbishop of York on the other, both old and stately in stiffly flapping robes, and after that a mixture of bishops and high officials and the wizards who are priests and priestesses of older powers. Im supposed to know the order of them, but I keep forgetting. All I really know is that Sybil walked behind the Archbishop with her skirts let down and her hat on by then and my father was near the back, not being a priest.
I was looking at the Scots mostly anyway. Their King was quite young and he wasnt the one Id seen before. They have dozens of people who have claims to the throne of Scotland. Every so often, the clans back a new claimant, or three, and have a war and the King gets changed. This one, though he was new, didnt look as if hed get changed easily. He had a strong, eager look, and he walked as if he owned the earth, not just Scotland. He was wearing plaids, which made him stand out from the crowd of courtiers with
him. They were very dressy. I have never seen so many styles and colours and French fashions. Their King looked like a hawk among parrots.
He left them behind and strode to embrace our King. For a brief minute, it was the friendliest possible Meeting. Prince Edmund was beckoned forward and introduced, and then a young woman in glorious rose pink silk who may have been the Scottish Queen anyway the Scottish King grinned at her as if he knew her very well and then it was the turn of the Archbishop and the Merlin to step forward and bless everyone. This was when the awful thing happened.
The Merlin spread his arms to call down benign magics. Dad says you dont really need to spread your arms or do anything else physical to work magic. This is why he found Sybil so irritating, because she always acted about so, doing magic. But he says the Merlin had to show people what he was doing. So the poor old man held his arms up wide. His face, which was always rather pale, turned a strange colour. Even from where I was, I could see that the Merlins lips were sort of lilac-coloured where they showed through his white beard. He took his arms in hurriedly and hugged at himself. Then he slowly folded up and flopped down on the wet grass.
Everybody simply stared for an instant. And this was the instant that Dads fine weather arrived at last. The sun blazed out. It was suddenly damply, suffocatingly warm.
Dad got to the Merlin first. Dad had been spread out to the side when the two groups met and it only took him two strides to get there and kneel down. He swore to me afterwards that the Merlin was alive at that point, even though he had clearly had a bad heart attack. But Dad had to give way to Prince Edmund, who got there next. Prince Edmund put his hand out towards the Merlins chest and then snatched it back, looking aghast. He turned to the King and started to say something. Then he stopped, because Sybil swooped in almost at once and pulled the poor old man over on to his back. By that time he was definitely dead. I got a glimpse of his staring face among everybodys legs and, as Grundo said, you couldnt mistake it.
Dead! Sybil screamed. My mentor and my master! She put her head back so that her hat fell off and screamed again, towards the Scottish King. Dead!
She didnt say any more. She just stood up with wet black patches on her velvet gown where she had knelt in the grass and stared at the Scottish King with her hands clasped to her chest.
Our King said icily to the Scottish King, I believe Your Majesty was trained as a wizard?
The Scottish King looked at him. After a moment he said, I think this is the end of any friendship between us. I bid you good afternoon.
He swung round in a swirl of tartan and walked away with all his people. He didnt have to walk far. Vehicles came roaring over the brow of the hill almost at once, most of them military transports, and the royal party was scooped up into some of them, leaving the rest sitting in a threatening row on the Scottish border.