Legacy: Arthurian Saga (88 page)

"You think not?" said the King again.
I saw his fingerbones whiten where he held the goblet, and wondered
that the thin silver did not crush. "When we last spoke together,
Merlin, I asked a service of you, and I have no doubt it has been
faithfully performed. I believe that service has almost reached its
end. No, listen to me!" This though I had not spoken, nor even
taken breath to speak. He talked like a man in a corner, attacking
before he is even in danger. "I don't have to remind you what I
said to you before, nor do I have to ask if you obeyed me. Wherever
you have kept the boy, however you have trained him, I take it he
is ignorant of his birth and standing, but that he is fit to come
to me and stand before all men as a prince and my heir."

The blood ran hot under my skin in a
flush I could feel. "Are you trying to tell me that you think the
time has come?"

I had forgotten to school my voice.
The silver goblet went back on the table with a rap. The angry blue
eyes came back to me. "A king does not 'try to tell' his servants
what they must do, Merlin."

I dropped my eyes with an effort and
slowly, deliberately unclenched the apprehension that gripped me,
the way one levers open the jaws of a fighting dog. I felt his
angry stare on me, and heard the breath whistle through his pinched
nostrils. Make Uther really angry, and it might take me years to
fight my way back to the boy's side. I was aware in the silence
that he shifted in his chair as if in sudden discomfort. In a
breath or two I was able to look up and say: "Then supposing you
tell me, King, whether you sent for me to discuss your health, or
your son. Either way, I am still your servant."

He stared at me in rigid silence, then
his brow slowly cleared, and his mouth relaxed into something like
amusement. "Whatever you are, Merlin, you are hardly that. And you
were right; I am trying to tell you something, something which
concerns both my health and my son. By the Scorpion, why can I not
find the words? I have sent for you not to demand my son of you,
but to tell you that, if your healing skill fails me now, he must
needs be King."

"You told me just now that you were
healed."

"I said the wound was healed. The
poison has gone, and the pain, but it has left a sickness behind it
of a kind that Gandar cannot cure. He told me to look to
you."

I remembered what Lucan had told me
about the King who walked with ghosts, and I thought of some of the
things I had seen at Pergamum. "You don't look to me like a man who
is mortally ill, Uther. Are you speaking of a sickness of the
mind?"

He didn't answer that, but when he
spoke, it was not in the voice of a man changing the subject.
"Since you were abroad, I have had two more children by the Queen.
Did you know that?"

"I heard about the girl Morgian, but I
didn't know about this last stillbirth until today. I'm
sorry."

"And did this famous Sight of yours
tell you that there would be no more?" Suddenly, he slammed the
goblet down again on the table beside his chair. I saw that the
silver had indeed dented under his fingers' pressure. He got to his
feet with the violence of a thrown spear. I could see then that
what I had taken for energy was a kind of drawn and dangerous
tightness, nerves and sinews twanging like bowstrings. The hollows
under his cheekbones showed sharp as if something had eaten him
empty from within. "How can anyone be a King who is less than a
man?" He flung this question at me, and then strode across the room
to the window, where he leaned his head against the stone, looking
out at the morning. Now at last I understood what he had been
trying to tell me. He had sent for me once before, to this very
room, to tell me how his love for Ygraine, Gorlois' wife, was
eating him alive. Then, as now, he had resented having to call upon
my skill; then, as now, he had shown this same feverish and tightly
drawn force, like a bowstring ready to snap. And the cause had been
the same. Ambrosius had once said to me, "If he would think with
his brains instead of his body sometimes he'd be the better for
it." Until this matter of Ygraine, Uther's violent sexual needs had
served his ends -- not only of pleasure and bodily ease, but
because his men, soldiers like himself, admired the prowess which,
if not boasted of, was at any rate unconcealed. To them it was a
matter for envy, amusement and admiration. And to Uther himself it
was more than bodily satisfaction; it was an affirmation of self, a
pride which was part of his own picture of himself as a
leader.

He still neither moved nor spoke. I
said: "If you find it hard to talk to me, would you rather I
consulted with your other doctors first?"

"They don't know, Only
Gandar."

"Then with Gandar?"

But in the end he told me himself,
pacing up and down the room with that quick, limping stride. I had
risen when he did, but he motioned me back impatiently, so I stayed
where I was, turned away from him, leaning back in my chair beside
the brazier, knowing that he walked up and down the room only
because he would not face me as he talked. He told me about the
raid at Vagniacae and the defending party he had led, and the sharp
bitter skirmish on the shingle. The spear thrust had taken him in
the groin, not a deep wound but a jagged one, and the blade had not
been clean. He had had the cut bound up, and, because it did not
trouble him overmuch, had disregarded it; on a new alarm about a
Saxon landing in the Medway, he had followed this up immediately,
taking no rest until the menace was over. Riding had been
uncomfortable, but not very painful, and there had been no warning
until it was too late that the wound had begun to fester. In the
end even Uther had to admit that he could no longer sit his horse,
and he had been carried in a litter back to London. Gandar, who had
not been with the troops, had been sent for, and under his care,
slowly, the poison had dried up, and the festering scars healed.
The King still limped slightly where the muscles had knitted awry,
but there was no pain, and everything had seemed to be set for full
recovery. The Queen had been all this time at Tintagel for her
lying in, and as soon as he was better himself, Uther made ready to
go to her. Apparently quite recovered, he had ridden to Winchester,
where he had halted his party to hold a council. Then, that night,
there had been a girl -- Uther stopped talking abruptly, and took
another turn of the room, which sent him back to the window. I
wondered if he imagined I had thought him faithful to the Queen,
but it had never occurred to me. Where Uther was, there had always
been a girl.

"Yes? "I said.

And then at last the truth came out.
There had been a girl and Uther had taken her to bed, as he had
taken so many others in passing but urgent lust. And he found
himself impotent.

"Oh, yes" -- as I began to speak --
"it has happened before, even to me. It happens to us all at times,
but this should not have been one of the times. I wanted her, and
she was skillful, but I tell you there was nothing -- nothing...I
thought that perhaps I was weary from the journey, or that the
discomfort of the saddle -- it was no more than discomfort -- had
fretted me overmuch, so I waited there in Winchester to rest. I lay
with the girl again, with her and with others. But it was no use,
not with any of them." He swung away from the window then and came
back to where I sat. "And then a messenger came from Tintagel to
say that the Queen had been brought to bed early, of a stillborn
prince." He was looking down at me, almost with hatred. "That
bastard you hold for me. You've always been sure, haven't you, that
he would be King after me? It seems you were right, you and your
damned Sight. I'll get no other children now."

There was no point in commiseration,
and he would not have wanted it from me. I said merely: "Gandar's
skill in surgery is as great as mine. You can have no reason to
doubt it. I will look at you if you wish, but I should like to talk
to Gandar first."

"He has not your way with drugs. There
is no man living who knows more about medicine. I want you to make
me some drug that will bring life back to my loins. You can do
this, surely? Every old woman swears she can concoct love potions
--"

"You've tried them?"

"How could I try them without telling
every man in my army -- yes, and every woman in London -- that
their King is impotent? And can you hear the songs and stories if
they knew this about me?"

"You are a good king, Uther. People
don't mock that. And soldiers don't mock the men who lead them to
victory."

"How long can I do that, the way I am?
I tell you I am sick in more than body. This thing eats at me...I
cannot live as half a man. And as for my soldiers -- how would you
like to ride a gelding into battle?"

"They'd follow you even if you rode in
a litter, like a woman. If you were yourself, you would know that.
Tell me, does the Queen know?"

"I went on from Winchester to
Tintagel. I thought that, with her...but..."

"I see." I was matter of fact. The
King had told me enough, and he was suffering. "Well, if there is a
drug that will help you, be sure I shall find it. I learned more of
these things in the East. It may be that this is only a matter of
time and treatment. We have seen this happen too often to think of
it as the end. You may yet get another son to supplant the
'bastard' I hold for you."

He said harshly: "You don't believe
that."

"No. I believe what the stars tell me,
if I have read them rightly. But you can trust me to help you as
best I can: whatever happens, it's with the gods. Sometimes their
ways seem cruel; who knows this better than you and I? But there is
something else I have seen in the stars, Uther; whoever succeeds
you, it will not be yet. You'll fight and win your own battles for
a few years to come."

From his face, I knew then that he had
feared worse things than his impotence. I saw, from the lightening
of his look, that the cure of mind and body might well have begun.
He came back to his chair, sat, and picking up the goblet, drained
it, and set it down.

"Well," he said, and smiled for the
first time, "now I shall be the first to believe the people who say
that the King's prophet never lies. I shall be glad to take your
word on this...Come, fill the cups again, Merlin, and we'll talk.
You have a lot to tell me; I can listen now."

So we talked for a while longer. When
I began to tell him what I knew of Arthur, he listened calmly and
with deep attention; I realized from the way he spoke that for some
time now he must, whether consciously or not, have been pinning his
hopes on his eldest born. I told him where the boy was now, and to
my relief he raised no objections; indeed, after a few questions
and a pause for thought he nodded approvingly.

"Ector is a good man. I might have
thought of him myself, but as you know I was telling over the
kings' courts, and never spared a thought for such as he. Yes, it
will do...Galava is a good place, and safe...And by the Light
Himself, if the treaties I have made in the north hold good, I
shall see that it remains so. And what you tell me about the boy's
status there, and training...It will do well. If blood and training
tell, he'll be a good fighter and a man whom men can trust and
follow. We must see that Ector gets the best master-at-arms in the
country."

I must have made a slight movement of
protest, because he smiled again. "Oh, never fear, I can be secret
too. After all, if he is to have the most illustrious teacher in
the land, then the King must try to match him. How do you propose
to get yourself up there to Galava, Merlin, without having half
Britain follow you looking for magic and medicines?"

I answered with something vague. My
public coming to London had served its purpose; already the buzz
would have gone out that Prince Arthur was alive and thriving. As
to my next disappearance, I did not yet know how or when it must be
done; I could hardly think beyond the fact that the King had
accepted all my plans, and that there was no question of Arthur's
being removed from my care. I suspected that, as before, it was a
decision taken with relief; once I had gone to my secret post at
Galava, the King would forget me more readily than ever would the
good folk at Maridunum.

He was speaking of it now. Unless the
need came sooner, he said, he would send for the boy when he was
grown -- fourteen or so, and ready to lead a troop -- and present
him publicly, ratifying the young prince as his heir.

"Providing still that I have no
other," he added, with a flash of the old hard look, and dismissed
me to go and talk with Gandar.

5

Gandar was waiting for me in the room
which had been allotted to me. While I had been talking with the
King my baggage had been brought from the ship, and unpacked by my
servant Stilicho. I showed Gandar the drugs I had brought with me,
and after we had talked the King's case over, suggested that he
send an assistant to study their use and preparation with me over
the next few days, before I left London. If he had no one whom he
could sufficiently trust to tend the King and be silent about it, I
would lend him Stilicho. At his look of surprise, I explained. As I
have said, Stilicho had discovered a fair talent for preparing the
dried plants and roots I had brought with me from Pergamum. He
could not read, of course, but I put signs on the jars and boxes,
and to begin with allowed him to handle only the harmless ones. But
he proved reliable, and oddly painstaking for so lively a boy. I
have learned since that men of his race have this facility with
plants and drugs, and that the little kings of that country dare
not eat even an unblemished apple without a taster. I was pleased
to have found a servant who could be of use to me in this way, and
had taught him a good deal. I would have been sorry to leave him
behind in London, so was relieved when Gandar replied that he had
an assistant he could trust, who should be sent to me as soon as I
was ready. I started work immediately. At my request Stilicho had
been given a small chamber to himself, with a charcoal stove, and a
table, and the various bows and implements he needed. The room
adjoined my own, with no door between, but I had had a double
thickness of curtain hung across the doorway. Stilicho had by no
means come to terms with the British summer, and kept his room at
eruption point with heat.