Legacy: Arthurian Saga (72 page)

She faltered. I must have been staring
at her like a fool. She fell quiet, twisting her hands. There was a
long silence, filled with the scent of the salt wind and the crying
of the gulls. I had not been aware of rising, but I found myself
standing at the window with my back to the Queen, staring out at
the sky, Below the turret wall the gulls wheeled and mewed in the
wind, and far below, at the foot of the black cliff, the sea dashed
and whitened. But I saw and heard nothing. My hands were pressed
down hard on the stone of the sill, and when at length I lifted
them and straightened they showed a mottled bar of bloodless flesh
where the stone had bitten in. I began to chafe them, only now
feeling the small hurt as I turned back to meet the Queen's eyes.
She too had hold of herself again, but I saw strain in her face,
and a hand plucked at her gown.

I said flatly: "Do you think you can
persuade the King to give him to me?"

"No. I don't think so. I don't know."
She swallowed. "Of course I can talk to him, but --"

"Then why send for me to ask me this,
if you have no power to sway the King?"

She was white, and her lips worked
together, but she kept her head up and faced me. "I thought that if
you agreed, my lord, you could -- you would --"

"I can do nothing with Uther now. You
should know that." Then, in sudden, bitter comprehension: "Or did
you send for me as you did last time, hoping for magic to order, as
if I were an old spellwife, or a country druid? I would have
thought, madam -- " I stopped. I had seen the flinching in her
eyes, and the drawn pallor round her mouth, and I remembered what
she carried in her. My anger died. I turned up a hand, speaking
gently: "Very well. If it can be done, Ygraine, I will do it, even
if I have to talk to Uther myself to remind him of his
promise."

"His promise? What did he promise you,
and when?"

"When he first sent for me, and told
me of his love for you, he swore to obey me in anything, if only he
could have his way." I smiled at her. "It was meant as a bribe
rather than a promise, but no matter, we'll hold it to him as a
royal oath."

She began to thank me, but I stopped
her. "No, no, keep your thanks. I may not succeed with the King;
you know how little he loves me. You were wise to send secretly,
and you'll be wiser not to let him know we talked of this
together."

"He shan't know from me." I nodded.
"Now, for the child's sake and your own, you must put your fears
aside. Leave this to me. Even if we can't move the King, I promise
you that wherever the child is fostered, I shall make it my
business to watch over him. He will be kept safely, and reared as a
King's son should be reared. Will that content you?"

"If it has to, yes."

She drew a long breath then and moved
at last, rising from her chair and, still gracefully in spite of
her bulk, pacing down the long room to one of the far windows. I
made no move to follow her. She stood there for a while with her
back to me, in silence. When at length she turned, she was smiling.
She lifted a hand to beckon me and I went to her.

"Will you tell me one thing,
Merlin?"

"If I can."

"That night when we spoke in London,
before you brought the King to me here. You talked of a crown, and
a sword standing in an altar like a cross. I have wondered so much
about it, thinking...Tell me now, truly. Was it my crown you saw?
Or did you mean that this child -- this boy who has cost so much --
that he will be King?"

I should have said to her: "Ygraine, I
do not know. If my vision was true, if I was a true prophet, then
he will be King. But the Sight has left me, and nothing speaks to
me in the night or in the fire, and I am barren. I can only do as
you do, and take the time on trust. But there is no going back. God
will not waste all the deaths."

But she was watching me with the eyes
of a woman in pain, so I said to her: "He will be King." She bent
her head and stood silent for a few moments, watching the sunlight
on the floor, not as if thinking, but as if listening to what
stirred within her. Then she looked up at me again.

"And the sword in the
altar?"

I shook my head. "Madam, I don't know.
It has not come yet. If I am to know, I will be shown."

She put out a hand. "One more
thing..." From something in her voice, I knew that this mattered
most to her. Not knowing what was coming, I braced myself to lie.
She said: "If I must lose this child...Shall I have others,
Merlin?"

"That is three things you have asked
me, Ygraine."

"You won't answer?"

I had spoken only to gain time, but at
the flash of fear and doubt in her eyes I was glad to tell her the
truth. "I would answer you, madam, but I do not know."

"How is that?" she asked
sharply.

I lifted my shoulders. "That again I
cannot answer. Further than this boy you carry, I have not seen.
But it seems probable, since he is to be King, that you will have
no other sons. Girls, maybe, to bring you comfort."

"I shall pray for it," she said
simply, and led the way back to the embrasure. She gestured me to
sit. "Will you not take a cup of wine with me now, before you
leave? I've received you poorly, I'm afraid, after asking such a
journey of you, but I was in torment until I had talked with you.
Won't you sit down with me now for a little while, and tell me what
the news is with you?"

So I stayed a short while longer and,
after I had given her my meager news, I asked where Uther was bound
with his troops. She told me that he was heading, not for his
capital at Winchester as I had supposed, but northwards to
Viro-coninm, where he had called a council of leaders and petty
kings from the north and north-east. Viroconium is the old Roman
town which lies on the border of Wales, with the mountains of
Gwynedd between it and the threat of the Irish Shore. It was still
at this time a market center, and the roads were well maintained.
Once out of the Dumnonian Peninsula, Uther could make good speed
north by the Glevum Bridge. He might even, if the weather stayed
fair and the country quiet, be back for the Queen's lying in. For
the moment, Ygraine told me, the Saxon Shore was quiet; after
Uther's victory at Vindocladia the invaders had retired on the
hospitality of the federated tribes. There was no clear news from
the north, but the King (she told me) feared some kind of concerted
action there in the spring between the Picts of Strathclyde and the
invading Angles: the meeting of the Kings at Viroconium had been
called in an attempt to thrash out some kind of united plan of
defense.

"And Duke Cador?" I asked her. "Does
he stay here in Cornwall, or go on to Vindocladia to watch the
Saxon Shore?"

Her answer surprised me. "He is going
north with the King, to the council."

"Is he indeed? Then I'd better guard
myself." At her quick look I nodded. "Yes, I shall go straight to
the King. Time grows short, and it's luck for me that he's
traveling north. He's bound to take his troops by the Glevum
Bridge, so Ralf and I can cross by the ferry and get there before
him. If I intercept him north of the Severn, there's nothing to
show him that I ever left Wales."

Soon after that I took my leave. When
I left her she was standing by the window again. Her head was held
high, and the breeze was ruffling her dark hair. I knew then that
when the time came the child would not be taken from a weeping and
regretful woman, but from a Queen, who was content to let him go to
his destiny.

Not so with Marcia. She was waiting
for me in the anteroom, bursting with questions, regrets, and anger
against the King which she barely smothered into discretion. I
reassured her as best I could, swore several times on every god in
every shrine and hollow hill in Britain that I would do my utmost
to get possession of the child and keep him safe, but when she
started to ask me for spells for protection in childbed, and to
talk of wet-nurses, I left her talking, and made for the
door.

Forgetting herself in her agitation,
she followed me and grabbed my sleeve. "And did I tell you? The
King says she must have his own physician, a man he can trust to
put the right stories about afterwards, and say nothing about where
the poor mite goes for fostering. As if it wasn't more important
that my lady should be properly looked after! Give any doctor
enough gold, and he'd swear his own mother's life away, everybody
knows that."

"Certainly," I said gravely. "But I
know Gandar well, and there's no one better. The Queen will be in
good hands."

"But an army doctor! What can he know
about childbirth?"

I laughed. "He served with my father's
army in Brittany for a long time. Where there are fighting men,
there are also their women. My father had a standing army in
Brittany of fifteen thousand men, encamped. Believe me, Gandar has
had plenty of experience."

With that she had to be content. She
was talking again about wet-nurses when I left her.

She came to the inn that night,
cloaked and hooded, and riding straight as a man. Maeve led her to
the room her family shared, drove out everyone -- including Caw --
who was still awake, then took Ralf in to talk to his grandmother.
I was in bed before she left.

Next morning Ralf and I set out for
Bryn Myrddin, with a flask or two of sloe wine to cheer us on our
way. To my surprise, Ralf seemed every bit as cheerful as he had
been on the way south. I wondered if, after the brief spell back in
the scene of his childhood, service with me had begun to look like
freedom. He had heard all the news from his grandmother; he told it
me as we rode; most of it was what I had learned already from the
Queen, with some court gossip added which was entertaining but
hardly informative, except for the talk which was inevitably going
round about Uther's rejection of the child.

Ralf, to my secret amusement, seemed
as anxious now as Marcia for me to get custody of the
baby.

"If the King refuses, what will you
do?"

"Go to Brittany to talk to King
Budec,"

"Do you think he'll let you stay with
the prince?"

"Budec is my kinsman too,
remember."

"Well, but would he risk offending
King Uther? Would he keep it secret from him?"

"That I can't tell you," I said, "If
it had been Hoel, now -- Budec's son -- that would be different. He
and Uther always fought like dogs after the same bitch."

I did not add that the description was
in fact more accurate than was decent. Ralf merely nodded, chewing
(we had stopped on a sunny hillside to eat), and reached for a
flask. "Have some of this?" He was offering me the sloe
wine.

"God of green grapes, boy, no! It
won't be ready to drink for a year. Wait till next harvest's ripe,
and open it then."

But he insisted, and unstoppered the
flask. It certainly smelled odd and, he admitted, tasted worse.
When I suggested, not unkindly, that Maeve had probably made a
mistake and given him the medicine for the flux, he spat the
mouthful out on the grass, then asked me a little stiffly what I
was laughing at.

"Not at you. Here, let me taste the
stuff...Well, there's nothing in it that there shouldn't be; but I
must have been thinking of something else when they asked me about
the mixing. No, I was laughing at myself. All these months -- these
years, even -- hammering at heaven's doors to get what? A baby and
a wet-nurse. If you insist on staying with me, Ralf, the next few
years will certainly bring new experiences for both of
us."

He merely nodded; he was busy pursuing
present anxieties.

"If we have to go to Brittany, you
mean we might have to stay disguised like this? For years?" He
flicked with a contemptuous finger at the coarse stuff of his
cloak.

"That will depend. Not quite like
this, I hope. Hold step till you reach your bridges,
Ralf."

His face showed me that this was not
how enchanters were expected to talk. They built their own bridges,
or flew across without them. "Depend on the King, you mean? Must
you seek him out? My grandmother says, if it's put about that the
baby's stillborn, it could be handed to you secretly, and the King
never know."

"You forget. Men must know if a prince
is born. How else, when Uther dies, can they be brought to accept
him?"

"Then what are you going to do, my
lord?"

I shook my head, not answering. He
took my silence for refusal to tell him, and accepted it with no
more questions. For my part, I had perforce to take my own advice
about crossing bridges; I was waiting to see a way over. With the
Queen won, the harder half of the game was played; now I must plan
how best to deal with the King -- whether to seek his consent
openly, or go first to Budec. But as we sat finishing our meal I
was not thinking overmuch about Brittany, or the King, or even the
child; I was content to rest in the sun and let the time go over.
What had just happened at Tintagel had happened without my
contriving. Something was moving; there was a kind of breathing
brightness in the air, the wind of God brushing by, invisible in
sunlight. Even for men who cannot see or hear them, the gods are
still there, and I was not less than a man. I had not the arrogance
-- or the hardihood -- to test my power again, but I put on hope,
as a naked man welcomes rags in a winter storm.