The Prince and the Pilgrim (20 page)

“But if he tells them it’s the Grail –”

“Listen, Alice. If men believe – if they need a focus for their worship, then, grail or not, this cup
will
be as true for them as a cross you or I could fashion out of wood from our own orchards at Rheged. Don’t you see, child?”

“Ye – es. Yes, I suppose so. But –”

“So we say nothing, and Abbot Theodore will make his own decisions. What happens will be his concern. Look, we’re almost in. We’ll be making fast very soon. Where’s your maid, my dear?”

Alice laughed. “At a guess, getting Jeshua to help her with my baggage. You know what’s happening there, I suppose? Once he’s seen the pr – Chlodovald safely into St Martin’s, we’ll have to find a place for him at Castle Rose.”

“If his duty doesn’t take him back to the queen’s service he’ll be most welcome in mine,” said the duke. “I already had it in mind to speak to him about it. Beltrane, like me, is ageing, and I think he will be glad of experienced help. When we get to St Martin’s I plan to stay there for a few days to see the boy settled in, and to talk things over with Abbot Theodore, so it might be a good idea to send Jeshua straight home from Glannaventa with our heavy baggage. Don’t you think so? He can give Beltrane warning that we’ll be home sooner than expected, and help him if it’s needed.”

“I’m sure it will be! They won’t be looking for us for at least another month, and every room will be turned out for cleaning! May I tell Mariamne?”

“Of course.” He smiled. “She may help persuade him to stay, at least until you are safely wed. When I’m no longer there, it will be good to
know
that you have a servant as brave and as faithful as he has shown himself to be.”

They drew in then to the wharfside, and Alice, in the bustle of leave-taking and disembarkation, was able, though with some difficulty, to turn her mind away from what awaited her at home.

It would be tedious to detail the all-too-swift and inevitable process by which Alexander came to be Queen Morgan’s lover. She nursed him, and if the low fever took rather a long time to leave him, why, then, the lovely queen spent all the more time in the sickroom, and all the more often brewed for him her subtle concoctions of herbs and fruits and other, secret, ingredients. The Lady Luned kept aloof; the other young men of Morgan’s party might smile or sulk and talk among themselves, but the queen herself seemed to have eyes – and time – for Alexander alone.

At length the fever left him. There were some who noticed that it only left him when he was securely in the queen’s toils, and then, when he was seen to think only of her, and pine for her touch, her look, her presence – why, then she withdrew herself from the sickroom, and let old Brigit do the nursing. From which time the young prince gained strength rapidly, and was soon able to leave his bed, to stand and walk about the chamber and bathe and dress himself without aid. Which he did, one evening when Brigit had left him, taking out his best clothes – which had been
washed
and laid carefully away in one of the chests – and set out to look for the queen.

The royal rooms where Alexander had been housed were in the central part of the castle, with doors opening on a corridor running to right and left towards the twin towers. He hesitated outside his door, wondering where the main stairway lay that would take him down to the castle’s public rooms. He had no doubt that now, favoured as he apparently was by the queen, he would be received by the Lady Luned and made free of the castle’s hospitality. Eager though he was to see Morgan again, he realised that courtesy required him first to seek out his hostess, tender her his respects and thanks, and wait for her invitation to join the company that evening.

A boy in Morgan’s livery came running along the corridor, bent on some errand. Alexander put out a hand.

“A moment, if you please! What’s your name?”

“Gregory, sir.” The boy regarded him with a curiosity that Alexander found flattering. The queen’s servants had no doubt been whispering about him, and he thought – hoped – that he knew what was being said.

“Well, Gregory, can you tell me where I can find the Lady Luned? Will she be free at this hour to receive me?”

“I’m not sure about that, sir. But I do know where you’ll probably find her. At this time she’s usually in one of the rooms where the ladies sit. Down that way.” He pointed back the way he had come. “Down the staircase there, sir, and one of the servants will show you.”

“The ladies? Then Queen Morgan will be there?”

“Oh, no!” The boy’s amused surprise was wasted on Alexander. “She doesn’t sit with the ladies! I’m on my way to find her now. They came in from riding an hour ago, and I think they’ll be in the east tower.”

“‘They’?”

“My mistress the queen and her knights.”

“Indeed,” said Alexander, conscious of an urgent wish to detach the lovely queen from such company, but still held back by courtesy, and also by another sudden thought. “No, wait a moment, please. Can you tell me – am I right in thinking – I must have heard someone say it – that there are men from Cornwall among the queen’s knights?”

He knew now that Queen Morgan had not found out his name by any sort of magic art; all she had heard was some muttering in a brief bout of delirium, when some instinct had kept him discreet. To her and Brigit – and so presumably to all the castle – he was “Alexander the Fatherless”, noble, apparently, but probably base-born. The thought had at first irked him, but then he saw it as another romantic touch in this adventure he had stumbled into: no doubt at some later stage there would be the discovery scene beloved of the poets when he would be revealed as a prince in his own right, and a fitting lover for a queen. Farther than this his imagination had not taken him. But he knew that now he must not risk confronting men from March’s court, who might see the resemblance to his dead father, and so place his family in danger, along with Sadok and Erbin,
who
had shielded their escape all those years ago. So he waited anxiously for the boy’s answer.

It was reassuring. “There were, sir. Two of King March’s men, and two from some duchy in Dumnonia, in the south, but I forget the name. They’re not here now. They weren’t the queen’s knights, they just came with messages, and they left last week.”

“I see. Well … The east tower, you said?”

“Yes, sir, but –” The boy stopped, biting his lip.

“But?”

“Forgive me, but I serve the queen, and I know what the orders are. It’s no use your going now to the east tower. We all, her servants, that is, have orders to let no one in while she and her knights are in council. But later, at dinner-time, I am sure you’ll be welcome.”

“‘In council’? What do you mean, in council?”

He spoke sharply, and the boy, confused, began to stammer. “I only meant – they have meetings … I don’t know what about, how should I? But she is a queen, and even if her state is small, and she is called a prisoner, she keeps her court. I’m sorry, my lord –”

“I see. It’s all right. Anyway, it’s the Lady Luned I’m looking for, not the queen. Thank you, you’d better go now. I’ll find my own way.”

The boy ran off. Alexander, watching him go, wondered briefly how long it would be before he, too, was made a member of that select and fortunate court assembled in the east tower. Not long, he thought with satisfaction; not long.

Meanwhile there was a duty to be done. He found his way easily enough to the women’s
rooms
, where the Lady Luned and her women were busy with their needlework. Luned received him with apparent pleasure, and the ladies exclaimed kindly over his happy restoration to looks and health. He made, and then repeated, his apologies for making so prolonged a visit at such a time, apologies she disclaimed charmingly, repeating her welcome. It was to be noticed, through all the apologies, that neither the lady nor Alexander made any attempt to bring that visit to a close; Luned because Morgan, whom she feared, had made it very clear that he must stay, and Alexander because he was fiercely determined, with all the arrogance of youth and the consuming desire that Morgan’s drugs and spider-wiles had lit in him, to plunge headlong – and publicly – into this, his first real love affair. And what a love affair! Like any young man of his age, he had looked here and there, but this was not like the passing fancies of youth. This was different! The loveliest woman he had ever seen, and she a queen, and sister to the High King! And he, chosen (as he was sure) by her, and madly in love, longed only now to be taken to her bed and thereafter declared her lover in the sight of the world – or at any rate in the sight of the other young knights of her “council”.

It was made satisfactorily clear that same evening, and in the sight of everybody in the castle. At dinner in the hall Alexander was led to the queen’s right. To his other side was one of the queen’s ladies, an elderly woman (Morgan’s waiting-women were without exception elderly or plain) who gave most of her attention to her
food
. Luned was on the queen’s left; she spoke little, and in fact was largely ignored by Morgan. The latter, in creamy white sparkling with diamonds, was robed as if for a victory feast. The dark hair was dressed high with jewels and some filmy veiling, and her face, expertly painted, looked, in the candle-light, like that of a girl of twenty.

Alexander could have wished for no more dazzling declaration of what was to come. The hall, not a large one, was crowded with the men of her party, and a scattering of Luned’s and Morgan’s ladies. With the High King’s guards discreetly out of sight, it could have been taken for a pleasant gathering in any lord’s hall. There was talk and laughter as the food and wine went round, but it was to be seen that few people had eyes for anyone but Morgan and the handsome young man beside her.

She gave them what they were looking for. She spoke little to anyone but Alexander, leaning towards him and letting her sleeve, and sometimes her hand, brush against his. Finally she lifted her wine-cup and pledged him in sight of them all, kissing the rim of the goblet and then handing it to him to drink from. Alexander, dazzled and slightly the worse for the rich food and wine after the long abstinence enforced by his sickness, never saw the looks – one or two sullen, but mostly smiling – that went between the knights of Morgan’s household, looks which could be translated, very easily, by those who knew her:

“Your turn now?” the smiles said. “Then make the most of it, young cockerel! Crow while you can!”

She did not come to his chamber that night. The boy Peter came as usual to help him to bed, bearing the familiar flagon of cordial sent by the queen. Still weaker than he had supposed, and with his senses half swimming with the wine and the excitements of the feast, Alexander drained the goblet obediently, and got into bed. Peter snuffed the candle and left him.

Alexander lay for a little while, watching the door and listening – though the queen moved as lightly as the fay they called her, and he would only know of her presence in the dark by her touch and the fragrance that went with her. But the drug overtook him before even the smell of the snuffed candle had died away, and he slept.