00 - Of the Wild Man of the Forest

A fire lit the great hall at the foot of the great residential tower into which the servant led the gaunt old man dressed in dirty greens and grays.The man warmed himself at the flames and gratefully accepted a small bowl of warm broth as an older, darkly dressed woman approached him from the wooden ballustrade above the hall. "Do you bring news of my brother?" the man looked up."You are Vindodia, wife of Rudioargos?" "His widow.My husband passed away some time ago.Forgive the unseemly reception,rest,strengthen yourselves,but I am very eager to hear from my brother.Forgive me again,I don't even know your name..." "I am grateful for every bit of Christian charity I can find! Your apology is unnecessary, and yes, your brother lives.I met him in the Caledonian woods near Perthia, where I lived with him for some time.... Centigernus of Collrost is my name." The man finished his meager meal and Vindodia asked a servant to bring the hungry guest more and prepare quarters for him. "Have thanks.I have wandered long and yet seem little fatigued.Now let me report: I was in old Curia by the river Clota and had been searching for Merlinus for a long time.I wandered aimlessly through the wilderness and asked every farmer , hunter or shepherd I met if he knew anything about Merlinus the Wild , and everyone I met knew to tell me this or that but not the place where he could be found.I met animals and was always on the guard of wild boar , bears or wolves , but only the birds seemed to accompany me and many a time I saw a mighty stag in the distance. I was ready to abandon my search and return to the safety of human settlements when I saw Merlinus, and the sight of him horrified me, because at the edge of the path I was treading seemed to startle out of nowhere a large pile of wild birds that must have been resting on something that I could recognize only on closer inspection as a human. It was an old man, it seemed, almost naked, clad only by dirt and what may have been his wild body hair. At first I thought he was dead, but he began to stir and seemed to laugh at me or mock me. He behaved in every way like an animal, even imitating the sounds of the birds, and it took many patient words before I could coax human sounds from him. A little bit of bread and cheese from my provisions, and a small cup of wine that I put on the ground finally lured him to approach me a little more, but like a wild animal he growled and barked at me and unexpectedly darted into the thick of the forest, where I could not find him. I often returned to that place and waited with something I had brought from Perthia, and usually he appeared after a while and one day got used to my visits and alms.At first timidly, but then surprisingly soon we began to communicate with simple words, even if Merlinus often seemed to laugh at me, I think he soon found pleasure in my company.But I must now, in turn, ask you something!" "As glad as I am to hear that my brother is alive, I am concerned about his condition, how can I help you?" "Forgive me, but I am surprised that you seem to be a woman who is nigh thirty or more years younger than I am, certainly not more than about forty years, I think? For Merlin called you his twin sister, and he seemed even to me, who I am an old man, like an ancient one of indeterminable age, one of those rare supercentenarians of whom one hears but never sees." "Yes, it may seem strange to you, but it does not surprise me.My brother aged early, far faster than I, and even as a child he talked like one of the old, speaking of distant, long-ago things as if he remembered them.As a young man he seemed like a middle-aged man, as a middle-aged man mature, as a mature man already like an old man." "Then what he told me shocks me even more! For we often sat together and he began to tell me many things, he told me of times when my father Ivovenus, whom Merlin claimed to have known, was still a young man, and even of things before even his birth.He told me of the time of the Romans and of ancient kings whose names I knew only from songs or the gossip of the people, or whose names were even completely foreign to me." Vindodia was silent for a long time, but finally she spoke up, "Will you tell me what my brother had to say? I invite you to stay here in Ovania as my guest for as long as you like." Centigernus rose, "This I will do, but I will put what Merlin told me into a language more similar to that of men and more orderly than those little coherent sentences and his laughter of a madman by which he told me his story, for what I have to report shall be written down, since, if what he said is the truth, he was once a great man and shall be remembered as such, in memory but also as a warning, addressed to the people of our time and our descendants in future generations..."