“Were you going to keep it a secret? What would be the point? You must let me clean it. I have some healing salve that will help it. And after you have had your bath-if that is possible-you must let me dress it with a bandage.”
“Don’t fuss, Merlin.”
“It is my duty, remember? We can hardly have King Arthur die because his wound went untended. We read that several Roman generals-”
“Spare me the history lecture.” The king sighed. “Very well, if you must. But go see to the others first, all right?”
And Merlin sighed in return. “If you insist. But do not think I will forget about it.”
“Your relentlessness is part of what makes you so valuable to me. Go, now.”
There were three more men whose needs could be better tended in the makeshift infirmary Merlin planned to set up in Lulua’s mill. He arranged for them to be transported there in the two carriages. The Stone of Bran was to remain with Arthur at Paintonbury for safekeeping. When Merlin had seen to all the necessary arrangements, he went back to Arthur to tend his wound. “You have put me off long enough, Your Majesty.” He leaned on the title with irony. Arthur grumbled but let him do what he needed to.
“When we are ready to move on, Arthur, I would suggest that you ride in a carriage for a few days, just to be certain there are no complications from this. It is not terribly serious, but it is close to your heart. If something should happen to tear it open…” He made a gesture as if to say, There would be very little I could do.
Arthur scowled. “If I listened to you, I’d be wearing an apron and hiding in Camelot’s kitchen all the time.”
“Hiding among the women did Achilles no harm.” He grinned. “Perhaps you should take a lesson from that noble hero.”
“I have a country to run. Achilles had nothing to do but tend to his concubines and fight. When you get to Lulua’s mill, if any of her people are still there, I want you to interrogate them. If Lulua was in league with my sister to make trouble, they will know about it. See what you can learn. I will stop there tomorrow to see how things are progressing.”
The road out of Paintonbury went northwest, paralleling the creek. About a mile out of town it joined with a much larger stream to make a small river. Merlin and Peter rode on horseback, side by side. The carriages followed.
“I do not recall this river on any of the maps, Peter. I am beginning to fear we may be more lost than Arthur realizes.”
“We don’t have good maps? I had the impression-”
“The ones we are using date from the civil wars, nearly two decades ago. Arthur has never seen a need to have the whole country surveyed and accurate maps made. I will have to have a word with him.”
“It does seem like a great deal of effort. Perhaps-”
“If we are ever to make England a truly unified nation, good charts are essential. How can we hope to unify it when we do not really know what is here? No, I think Arthur will have to make it a priority.”
The new creek was much larger and much clearer than Paintonbury’s one. When the two met, the muddy water from Paintonbury made what looked like a huge brown smudge in the new, larger stream. But after a few yards it was lost in the clearer water. Merlin’s eyes took it all in. “This is good. We will have fresh water. I was quite concerned we-and our wounded-would have to continue drinking that foul stuff.”
After another mile, the mill came into view. The first thing in sight was its thatched roof, then more and more of it appeared. It was much larger than Merlin had expected, and in surprisingly good condition. The roof was thatched with what appeared to be fresh straw. Either the place was new or Lulua had kept it in excellent repair. The one sign of ill repair was a loud, low moaning sound made by the waterwheel. It carried clearly to Peter and Merlin three fourths of a mile up the road. The ground sloped gently downward; the wheel turned briskly.
Peter made a show of covering his ears. “Horrible sound.”
“It will be worse when we actually reach the mill.”
“Whatever can be causing it?”
“I have heard its like once before, on my travels through Egypt. There are ancient waterwheels at a place called Me dinet El-Fayyum. After long millennia they are still turning, still providing power and still making a deafening wail. The residents call their moaning the crying of the gods.”
“Splendid. I don’t suppose there’s any chance these ‘gods’ might be silent for a while?”
“I am afraid not. But you will find that you get used to it rather quickly.”
Peter wrinkled his features. “Horrible sound. It sounds as if the earth itself is in pain.”
“It is a fit place for a hospital, then.”
“Seriously, Merlin, can’t we simply make a camp somewhere nearby and keep our patients warm with fires?”
“We are here, Peter. Let us make the best of it.”
The patients had slept more or less soundly on the entire journey. All of them but Accolon, that was. He kept waking from his slumber, ranting incoherently about fantastic beasts devouring him. At one point, just as they reached the mill, he cried, “The dead! The dead are leaving their tombs and attacking me! They are living skeletons, and they claw at me with their sharp, bony fingers!” At times his rant was a shout; at others it was not much more than a whisper, barely audible above the moaning of the waterwheel.
Merlin tried to comfort him, but for the longest time it was no use. Then finally he fell back into sleep.
When they reached the mill, Robert and the other servants carried the patients inside. Merlin followed and was pleasantly surprised to see that the place was clean and well kept. Of Lulua’s servants there was no sign. Presumably they had received word of the way the battle had gone, and they had fled.
Merlin and Peter followed the servants. Once they were certain the patients had weathered the trip well, they went to explore the mill. There were a great many small rooms. They were tall, dark and shadowy, right up to the thatched roof. “This is not at all what I was hoping for. But I suppose it is what I should have expected, given that Lulua lived here.” Merlin noted that all the windows were glazed, though there were not enough of them to cut the darkness very much. But he was quite pleased to find stores of food and even wine.
The one exception to the mill’s general gloominess was the kitchen. There were a half dozen windows. And there were three ovens, two of which were still giving off heat. Peter found a small pantry with a great many bottles of wine. “At least the wine will keep us warm tonight. We can heat it up. And there are spices for it. Lulua has an herb garden outside. Nothing cuts the cold like good mulled wine.”
In the one large room the two huge millstones turned slowly, driven by the waterwheel outside. Their friction against each other made a low grinding noise; it was all but drowned out by the sound of the waterwheel. There was no sign of any grain for them to mill; there was no sign that there had been any for years. Peter observed it disapprovingly. “It seems such a waste. This place could feed the whole countryside.”
“Indeed.” Merlin inspected the mechanism that turned them, fascinated. “Look at this assemblage of gears. I was wondering how a relatively small stream could turn such large stones. But these gears must improve the mechanical advantage. I must make sketches of them. I would like to use something similar to improve my lift mechanism at Camelot.”
Everywhere, the loud groan of the waterwheel penetrated. When they went outside to inspect it, Merlin was quite startled to see that the axle on which the wheel turned was made of metal. “I have seen such wheels in Africa and in a few of the eastern stretches of Europe. Never in England.”
“How could Lulua have obtained this, then?”
“We do not know that she was actually responsible for the building of the mill. She may simply have… appropriated it. The question that vexes me is how she-or anyone else-could have afforded such a thing as a metal axle for the wheel.”
“Priests and priestesses grow wealthy. They find money wherever it is.” Peter smiled and squatted down to inspect the wheel more closely. “It is a law of nature, like swine hunting for truffles.”
Merlin chuckled. “Still, importing this-and importing an engineer to devise those gears inside-would have been quite a considerable extravagance. Lulua was more than wealthy enough to grow as fat as she is. She must be even wealthier still.”
“Or the sorority of witches is.” Peter stood again. “That groaning will drive me mad. How can you stand it, Merlin?”
He shrugged. “I have arthritis in my knees and hips. When you learn to withstand the pain, you are able to withstand most anything.”
Peter squinted and stared at him. “You take drugs to kill the pain.”
“Let us go back inside, Peter.”
As they were heading back indoors, Peter commented that he found the whole place ominous. “It is too dark, too gloomy. And there is that awful noise from the wheel. I would like to go back and rejoin Arthur.”
Merlin shook his head. “You are valuable. I need you.” “Something terrible is going to happen here, Merlin. I feel it.”
“Nonsense.”
Robert and the other servants had done everything they could to make the mill comfortable for the patients. As Merlin and Peter went back inside, there was a minor hubbub. Robert had found a young man hiding there. “He was hiding in one of the pantries, sir. What shall we do with him?”
Merlin peered at the man; he was not much more than a boy. “What is your name?”
“George, sir.” The boy had a thick shock of black hair and bright blue eyes. He was Robert’s age, or perhaps a year or two older. He was slender and quite pale. “George o’ the Mill.”
“They call you that?”
“Yes, sir. That, or George the Miller. And sometimes George Cook.”
“Well, George o’ the Mill, what are you doing here?” He smiled. “You were in the pantry. Was Lulua going to eat you?”
“I live here, sir. I always have. In service to the witch of Paintonbury.”
“The others seem to have run away. Why did you not go with them? Where are your parents?”
The boy looked from Merlin to Peter to Robert, then to Merlin again. A trace of fear showed in his face. “Please, sir. They said my mistress had been captured-taken prisoner. By whom, sir?”
“By Arthur, the rightful King of England. Your true lord and master.”
The boy’s face was a complete blank. “Who?”
“Never mind. You are now a prisoner, too.”
For the first time his face registered emotion. His fear was obvious. “Are you-are you going to kill me, sir?”
“I have not decided.” Peter noticed the twinkle in Merlin’s eye.
George clearly did not. “Please, sir, spare me. I will do anything.”
Merlin furrowed his brow and stroked his chin, to make a show of thinking. “I shall have to ponder that awhile. Meantime… can you cook?”
Timorously the boy nodded. “I always cooked for my mistress.”
“A large job, no doubt.”
“Yes, sir.” He beamed with pride.
“Well, you shall cook for us now. We have four men with us who are quite ill. They will need good soup for the time being. And there are a dozen more of us.”
