Legacy: Arthurian Saga (164 page)

I bent my head. "When Cei came for me,
I called on the old powers, and they responded. I saw her in the
flame, and Melwas, too."

A moment of suddenly sharpening
concentration. It was not often that the High King searched me for
truth as he was wont to search lesser men. I could feel something
of the quality that had made him what he was. He had gone very
still. "Yes. Now we come to it, don't we? Tell me exactly what you
saw."

"I saw a man and a woman in a rich
room, and beyond the door a bedchamber, with a bed that had been
laid in. They were laughing together, and playing chess. She was
clad in a loose robe, as if for night, and her hair was unbraided.
When he took her in his arms the chessboard spilled, and the man
trod on the pieces." I held out a hand to him, with the broken
chessman. "When the Queen came out to us, this was caught in the
fold of her cloak."

He took it, and bent his head over it,
as if studying it. Then he sent it spinning after the sprig of
rosemary. "So. It was a true dream. She said there was a table, and
chessmen of ivory and ebony wood." To my surprise, he was smiling.
"Is this all?"

"All? It is more than I would ever
have told you, had I not owed it to you as your
counselor."

He nodded, still smiling. All the
anger seemed to have gone. He looked out again over the dimming
plain with its gleams of brightness and the shaft of wheeling
light. "Merlin, a little while ago you said, 'She is only a woman.'
You have told me many times that you know nothing of women. Does it
never occur to you that they lead lives of dependence so complete
as to breed uncertainly and fear? That their lives are like those
of slaves, or of animals that are used by creatures stronger than
themselves, and sometimes cruel? Why, even royal ladies are bought
and sold, and are bred to lead their lives far from their homes and
their people, as the property of men unknown to them."

I waited, to see his drift. It was a
thought I had had before, when I had seen women suffer from the
whims of men; even those women who, like Morgause, were stronger
and cleverer than most men. They were made, it seemed, for men's
use, and suffered by it. The lucky ones found men they could rule,
or who loved them. Like the Queen.

"This happened to Guinevere," he went
on. "You yourself said just now that I must still be a stranger to
her in some respects. She is not afraid of me, no, but sometimes I
think that she is afraid of life itself, and of living. And most
certainly she was afraid of Melwas. Don't you see? Your dream was
true. She smiled, and spoke him fair, and hid her fear. What would
you have had her do? Appeal to the servant? Threaten the two of
them with my vengeance? She knew that was the road only to her own
end. When he showed her the bedchamber, to let her change her wet
clothing (he takes women to that house sometimes, it seems, out of
sight of the old queen his mother, and clothes are kept there, with
things such as ladies like), she thanked him merely, then locked
the door on him. Later, when he came to bid her to meat, she
pretended faintness, but after a while he grew suspicious, then
importunate, and she was afraid he would break the door, so she ate
with him, and spoke him fair. And so, through the long day, till
dusk. She let him think that, with nightfall, he would have his
pleasure, while all the time she hoped for rescue
still."

"And then it came."

"Against all hope, and thanks to you,
it came. Well, that is her story, and I believe it." That quick
turn of the head again. "Do you?"

I did not answer straight away. He
waited, showing neither anger nor impatience -- nor any shadow of
doubt.

When at length I spoke, it was with
certainty. "Yes. She told the truth. Reason, instinct, 'Sight' or
blind faith, you can be sure of it. I am sorry I doubted her. You
were right to remind me that I don't understand women. I should
have known she was afraid, and knowing that, I might have guessed
that what poor weapons she had against Melwas, she would use...And
for the rest -- her silence until she could speak with you, her
care for your honor and the safety of your kingdom -- she has my
admiration. And so, King, have you."

I saw him notice the form of address.
Through his relief came a glint of laughter. "Why? Because I did
not fly out in a high royal rage, and demand heads? If the Queen,
in fear, could play-act for a day, surely I could do it for a few
short hours, with her honor and my own at stake? But not for
longer. By Hades, not for longer!" The force with which he brought
his clenched fist down on the parapet showed just what he had held
in check. He added, with an abrupt change of tone: "Merlin, you
must be aware that the people do not -- do not love the
Queen."

"I have heard whispers, yes. But this
is not for anything she is, or has done. It is only because they
look daily for an heir, and she has been Queen for four years,
without bearing. It's natural that there should be disappointed
hopes, and some whispering."

"There will be no heir. She is barren.
I am sure of it now, and so is she."

"I feared it. I am sorry."

"If I had not planted other seed here
and there," he said with a wry smile, "I might share some of the
blame with her; but there was the child I begot on my first Queen,
not to speak of Morgause's bastard by me. So the fault -- if it is
that -- is known to be the Queen's, and because she is a Queen, her
grief at it cannot be kept private. And there will always be those
who start whispers, in the hope that I will put her away. Which,"
he added with a snap, "I shall not."

"It wouldn't occur to me to advise
it," I said mildly. "What does occur to me is to wonder if this is
the shadow that I saw once lie across your marriage bed...But
enough of that. What we must do now is bring her back into the
people's love."

"You make it sound easy. If you know
how --"

"I think I do. You swore just now by
Hades, and it broke a dream I had. Will you let me go to Ynys
Witrin, and bring her back to you myself?"

He started to ask why, then half
laughed and shrugged. "Why not? Maybe to you it is as easy as it
sounds...Go, then. I'll send word for them to prepare a royal
escort. I'll receive her here. At least it saves me having to see
Melwas again. Will you, with all your wise counsels, try to stop me
from killing him?"

"As effectively as a mother hen
calling the young swan out of the water. You will do as you think
fit." I looked out across the water-logged plain, toward the Tor
and the low-lying shape of its neighbor island, where the harbor
lay. I added, thoughtfully: "It's a pity that he sees fit to charge
harbor dues -- and exorbitant ones at that -- to the war-leader who
protects him."

His eyes widened speculatively. A
smile tugged at his mouth. He said slowly: "Yes, isn't it? And then
there's the matter of the toll on the road along the ridge. If my
captains should by any chance refuse to pay, then no doubt Melwas
will bring the complaint here himself, and who knows, it may even
be the first that comes to the new council chamber? Now, since that
is what I told the scribe you were coming for, shall we go and see
it? And tomorrow, at the third hour, I'll send the royal escort, to
bring her home."

6

With Bedwyr still on Ynys Witrin, the
royal escort was led by Nentres, one of the western rulers who had
fought under Uther, and who now brought his allegiance and that of
his sons to Arthur. He was a grizzled veteran, spare of body, and
as supple in the saddle as a youth. He left the escort fidgeting
under its Dragon banners on the road below my house, and came
riding himself up the curving track by the stream, followed by a
groom leading a chestnut horse trapped with silver. Horse and
trappings alike were burnished to a glitter as bright as Nentres'
shield, and jewels winked on the breast-band. The saddle-cloth was
of murrey, worked with silver thread.

"The King sent this for you," he said
with a grin. "He reckons your own would look like a dealer's
throw-out among the rest. Don't look at him like that, he's much
quieter than he appears."

The groom gave me a hand to mount. The
chestnut tossed his head and mouthed the bit, but his stride was
smooth and easy. After my stolid old black gelding he was like a
sailing-boat after a poled barge.

The morning was cold, in the wake of
the north wind that had frozen the fields since mid-March. At dawn
that day I had climbed to the hilltop beyond Applegarth, and had
felt against my skin that indefinable difference that heralds a
change of wind. The hilltop thorns were no more than breaking into
bud, but down in the valley one could see the green haze on the
distant woods, and the sheltered banks nearby were thick with
primroses and wild garlic. Rooks cawed and tumbled about the ivied
trees. Spring was here, waiting, but held back by the cold winds,
as the blackthorn flowers were locked in the bud. But still the sky
was overcast and heavy, almost as if threatening snow, and I was
glad of my cloak with all its regal splendors of fur and
scarlet.

All was ready for us at Melwas' hall.
The king himself was dressed in rich dark blue, and was, I noticed,
fully armed. His handsome face wore a smile, easy and welcoming,
but his eyes had a wary look, and there were altogether too many
men-at-arms crowded into the hall, besides the full company
outside, brought down at readiness from his hilltop fortress, to
throng into the orchard-fields that served the palace for garden.
Banners and bright trappings gave the welcome a festive air, but it
was to be seen that every man wore both sword and
dagger.

He had, of course, expected Arthur.
When he saw me his look at first lightened with relief, then I saw
the wariness deepen, and tight lines draw themselves around his
mouth. He greeted me fairly, but very formally, like a man making
the first move of a gambit at chess. I replied, with the long,
studied speech of Arthur's deputy, then turned to the old queen,
his mother, who stood beside him at the end of the long hall. She
showed no such caution as her son's. She greeted me with easy
authority, and made a sign toward a door on the right of the hall.
There was a stir as the crowd parted, and Queen Guinevere came in
among her ladies.

She, too, had expected Arthur. She
hesitated, looking for him in the glitter of the packed hall. Her
gazed passed me, unseeing. I wondered what god had moved her to
wear green, spring green, with flowers embroidered on the breast of
her gown. Her mantle was green, too, with a collar of white marten,
which framed her face and gave her a fragile look. She was very
pale, but bore herself with rigid composure.

I remembered how, that night, I had
found her shaking in my grasp; and on the thought, as if I had been
dipped in cold water, I saw that Arthur had been right about her.
She might be a queen in bearing and in courage, but under it all
there was a timid girl, and one looking, all the time, for love.
The gaiety, the ready laughter and high spirits of youth, had
masked an exile's eager search for friendship among the strangers
of a court vastly different from the homely hearthstone of her
father's kingdom. I would never, wrapped in Arthur as I had been
for twenty years, even have troubled to think about her, except as
his people thought: a vessel for his seed, a partner for his
pleasure, a glowing pillar of beauty to shine, silver beside his
gold, on the hilltop of his glory. Now I saw her as if I had never
seen her before. I saw a girl, tender of flesh and simple enough of
spirit, who had had the fortune to marry the greatest man of the
age.

To be Arthur's Queen was no mean
burden, with all that it entailed of loneliness, and a life of
banishment in an alien country, with, as often as not, no husband
near to come between her and the flatterers, the power-hungry
schemers, those envious of her rank or beauty, or -- perhaps most
dangerous of all -- the young men ready to worship her. Then there
would be those (and you could trust them to be many) who would tell
her, over and over again, about the "other Guinevere," the pretty
Queen who had conceived from the King's first bedding of her, and
for whom he had grieved so bitterly. It would lose nothing in the
telling. But all this would have been nothing, would have passed
and been forgotten in the King's love, and her new, exciting power,
if only she had been able to conceive a child. That Arthur had not
used the Melwas affair to have her put aside, to take a fertile
woman to his bed, was proof indeed of his love; but I doubted if
she had yet had time to see it so. He had been right when he told
me that she was afraid of life, afraid of the people round her,
afraid of Melwas; and -- I could see it now -- more than any of
them she was afraid of me.

She had seen me. The blue eyes
widened, and her hands moved up to clasp the fur at her throat. Her
step checked momentarily, then, once more held in that pale
composure, she took her place beside the queen, on the side away
from Melwas. Neither she nor the king had glanced at one
another.

There was a resounding silence.
Someone's robe rustled, and it sounded like a tree in the
wind.

I walked forward. As if Guinevere had
been the only person there, I bowed low, then
straightened.

"Greetings, madam. It's good to see
you recovered. I have come, with others of your friends and
servants, to escort you home. The High King is waiting to receive
you in your Palace of Camelot."