by Mary Stewart
"Find some way to see the lady. No, not the bedgown; not yet, alas. Get me a clean robe out — something dark." "Surely you can't go to her tonight? It's well past midnight." "I shall not go anywhere. Whoever is coming, will come to me." "But Gorlois will be with her —" "No more now, Cadal. I want to think. Leave me. Good night." When the door had shut on him I went across to the chair beside the fire. It was not true that I wanted time to think. All I needed was silence, and the fire. Bit by bit, slowly, I emptied my mind, feeling thought spill out of me like sand from a glass, to leave me hollow and light. I waited, my hands slack on the grey robe, open, empty. It was very quiet. Somewhere, from a dark corner of the room, came the dry tick of old wood settling in the night. The fire flickered. I watched it, but absently, as any man might watch the flames for comfort on a cold night. I did not need to dream. I lay, light as a dead leaf, on the flood that ran that night to meet the sea.
Outside the door there were sounds suddenly, voices. A quick tap at the panel, and Cadal came in, shutting the door behind him. He looked guarded and a little apprehensive. "Gorlois?" I asked. He swallowed, then nodded.
"Well, show him in." "He asked if you had been to see the King. I said you'd been here barely a couple of hours, and you had had time to see nobody. Was that right?"
I smiled. "You were guided. Let him come in now." Gorlois came in quickly, and I rose to greet him. There was, I thought, as big a change in him as I had seen in Uther; his big frame was bent, and for the first time one saw straight away that he was old. He brushed aside the ceremony of my greeting. "You're not abed yet? They told me you'd ridden in." "Barely in time for the crowning, but I shall see it after all. Will you sit, my lord?"
"Thanks, but no. I came for your help, Merlin, for my wife." The quick eyes peered under the grey brows. "Aye, no one could ever tell what you were thinking, but you've heard, haven't you?"
"There was talk," I said carefully, "but then there always was talk about Uther. I have not heard anyone venture a word against your wife." "By God, they'd better not! However, it's not that I've come about tonight. There's nothing you could do about that — though it's possible you're the only person who could talk some sense into the King. You'll not get near him now till after the crowning, but if you could get him to let us go back to Cornwall without waiting for the end of the feast...Would you do that for me?" "If I can." "I knew I could count on you. With things the way they are in the town just now, it's hard to know who's a friend. Uther's not an easy man to gainsay. But you could do it — and what's more, you'd dare. You're your father's son, and for my old friend's sake —" "I said I'd do it."
"What's the matter? Are you ill?" "It's nothing. I'm weary. We had a hard ride. I'll see the King in the morning early, before he leaves for the crowning."
He gave a brief nod of thanks. "That's not the only thing I came to ask you. Would you come and see my wife tonight?"
There was a pause of utter stillness, so prolonged that I thought he must notice. Then I said: "If you wish it, yes. But why?"
"She's sick, that's why, and I'd have you come and see her, if you will. When her women told her you were here in London, she begged me to send for you. I can tell you, I was thankful when I heard you'd come. There's not many men I'd trust just now, and that's God's truth. But I'd trust you."
Beside me a log crumbled and fell into the heart of the fire. The flames shot up, splashing his face with red, like blood.
"You'll come?" asked the old man.
"Of course." I looked away from him. "I'll come immediately."
5
Uther had not exaggerated when he said that the Lady Ygraine was well guarded. She and her lord were lodged in a court some way west of the King's quarters, and the court was crowded with Cornwall men at arms. There were armed men in the antechamber too, and in the bedchamber itself some half dozen women. As we went in the oldest of these, a gray-haired woman with an anxious look, hurried forward with relief in her face.
"Prince Merlin." She bent her knees to me, eyeing me with awe, and led me towards the bed.
The room was warm and scented. The lamps burned sweet oil, and the fire was of applewood. The bed stood at the center of the wall opposite the fire. The pillows were of grey silk with gilt tassels, and the coverlet richly worked with flowers and strange beasts and winged creatures. The only other woman's room that I had seen was my mother's, with the plain wooden bed and the carved oak chest and the loom, and the cracked mosaics of the floor.
I walked forward and stood at the foot of the bed, looking down at Gorlois' wife.
If I had been asked then what she looked like I could not have said. Cadal had told me she was fair, and I had seen the hunger in the King's face, so I knew she was desirable; but as I stood in the airy scented room looking at the woman who lay with closed eyes against the grey silk pillows, it was no woman that I saw. Nor did I see the room or the people in it. I saw only the flashing and beating of the light as in a globed crystal.
I spoke without taking my eyes from the woman in the bed.
"One of her women stay here. The rest go. You too, please, my lord." He went without demur, herding the women in front of him like a flock of sheep. The woman who had greeted me remained by her mistress's bed. As the door shut behind the last of them, the woman in the bed opened her eyes. For a few moments of silence we met each other eye to eye. Then I said:
"What do you want of me, Ygraine?"
She answered crisply, with no pretense: "I have sent for you, Prince, because I want your help."
I nodded. "In the matter of the King."
She said straightly: "So you know already? When my husband brought you here, did you guess I was not ill?"
"I guessed."
"Then you can also guess what I want from you?"
"Not quite. Tell me, could you not somehow have spoken with the King himself before now? It might have saved him something. And your husband as well."
Her eyes widened. "How could I talk to the King? You came through the courtyard?" "Yes." "Then you saw my husband's troops and men at arms. What do you suppose would have happened had I talked to Uther? I could not answer him openly, and if I had met him in secret — even if I could — half London would have known it within the hour. Of course I could not speak to him or send him a message. The only protection was silence."
I said slowly: "If the message was simply that you were a true and faithful wife and that he must turn his eyes elsewhere, then the message could have been given to him at any time and by any messenger."
She smiled. Then she bent her head.
I took in my breath. "Ah. That's what I wished to know. You are honest, Ygraine."
"What use to lie to you? I have heard about you. Oh, I know better than to believe all they say in the songs and stories, but you are clever and cold and wise, and they say you love no woman and are committed to no man. So you can listen, and judge." She looked down at her hands, where they lay on the coverlet, then up at me again. "But I do believe that you can see the future. I want you to tell me what the future is."
"I don't tell fortunes like an old woman. Is this why you sent for me?"
"You know why I sent for you. You are the one man with whom I can seek private speech without arousing my husband's anger and suspicion — and you have the King's ear." Though she was but a woman, and young, lying in her bed with me standing over her, it was as if she were a queen giving audience. She looked at me very straight. "Has the King spoken to you yet?"
"He has no need to speak to me. Everyone knows what ails him." "And will you tell him what you have just learned from me?" "That will depend." "On what?" she demanded. I said slowly: "On you yourself. So far you have been wise. Had you been less guarded in your ways and your speech there would have been trouble, there might even have been war. I understand that you have never allowed one moment of your time here to be solitary or unguarded; you have taken care always to be where you could be seen."
She looked at me for a mome
nt in silence, her brows raised. "Of course."
"Many women — especially desiring what you desire — would not have been able to do this, Lady Ygraine."
"I am not’many women.' " The words were like a flash. She sat up suddenly, tossing back the dark hair, and threw back the covers. The old woman snatched up a long blue robe and hurried forward. Ygraine threw it round her, over her white nightrobe, and sprang from the bed, walking restlessly over towards the window.
Standing, she was tall for a woman, with a form that might have moved a sterner man than Uther. Her neck was long and slender, the head poised gracefully. The dark hair streamed unbound down her back. Her eyes were blue, not the fierce blue of Uther's, but the deep, dark blue of the Celt. Her mouth was proud. She was very lovely, and no man's toy. If Uther wanted her, I thought, he would have to make her Queen.
She had stopped just short of the window. If she had gone to it, she might have been seen from the courtyard. No, not a lady to lose her head.
She turned. "I am the daughter of a king, and I come from a line of kings. Cannot you see how I must have been driven, even to think the way I am thinking now?" She repeated it passionately.
"Can you not see? I was married at sixteen to the Lord of Cornwall; he is a good man; I honor and respect him. Until I came to London I was half content to starve and die there in Cornwall, but he brought me here, and now it has happened. Now I know what I must have, but it is beyond me to have it, beyond the wife of Gorlois of Cornwall. So what else would you have me do? There is nothing to do but wait here and be silent, because on my silence hangs not only the honor of myself and my husband and my house, but the safety of the kingdom that Ambrosius died for, and that Uther himself has just sealed with blood and fire."
She swung away to take two quick paces and back again. "I am no trashy Helen for men to fight over, die over, burn down kingdoms for. I don't wait on the walls as a prize for some brawny victor. I cannot so dishonor both Gorlois and the King in the eyes of men. And I cannot go to him secretly and dishonor myself in my own eyes. I am a lovesick woman, yes. But I am also Ygraine of Cornwall."
I said coldly: "So you intend to wait until you can go to him in honor, as his Queen?"
"What else can I do?"
"Was this the message I had to give him?"
She was silent.
I said: "Or did you get me here to read you the future? To tell you the length of your husband's life?"
Still she said nothing.
"Ygraine," I said, "the two are the same. If I give Uther the message that you love and desire him, but that you will not come to him while your husband is alive, what length of life would you prophesy for Gorlois?"
Still she did not speak. The gift of silence, too, I thought. I was standing between her and the fire. I watched the light beating round her, flowing up the white robe and the blue robe, light and shadow rippling upwards in waves like moving water or the wind over grass. A flame leapt, and my shadow sprang over her and grew, climbing with the beating light to meet her own climbing shadow and join with it, so that there across the wall behind her reared — no dragon of gold or scarlet, no firedrake with burning tail, but a great cloudy shape of air and darkness, thrown there by the flame, and sinking as the flame sank, to shrink and steady until it was only her shadow, the shadow of a woman, slender and straight, like a sword. And where I stood, there was nothing.
She moved, and the lamplight built the room again round us, warm and real and smelling of applewood. She was watching me with something in her face that had not been there before. At last she said, in a still voice: "I told you there was nothing hidden from you. You do well to put it into words. I had thought all this. But I hoped that by sending for you I could absolve myself, and the King."
"Once a dark thought is dragged into words it is in the light. You could have had your desire long since on the terms of 'any woman,' as the King could on the terms of any man." I paused. The room was steady now. The words came clearly to me, from nowhere, without thought. "I will tell you, if you like, how you may meet the King's love on your terms and on his, with no dishonor to yourself or him, or to your husband. If I could tell you this, would you go to him?"
Her eyes had widened, with a flash behind them, as I spoke. But even so she took time to think. "Yes." Her voice told me nothing.
"If you will obey me, I can do this for you," I said.
"Tell me what I must do."
"Have I your promise, then?"
"You go too fast," she said dryly. "Do you yourself seal bargains before you see what you are committed to?"
I smiled. "No. Very well then, listen to me. When you feigned illness to have me brought to you, what did you tell your husband and your women?"
"Only that I felt faint and sick, and was no more inclined for company. That if I was to appear beside my husband at the crowning, I must see a physician tonight, and take a healing draught." She smiled a little wryly. "I was preparing the way, too, not to sit beside the King at the feast."
"So far, good. You will tell Gorlois that you are pregnant."
"That I am pregnant?" For the first time she sounded shaken. She stared. "This is possible? He is an old man, but I would have thought —" "It is possible. But I — " She bit her lip. After a while she said calmly: "Go on. I asked for your counsel, so I must let you give it."
I had never before met a woman with whom I did not have to choose my words, to whom I could speak as I would speak to another man. I said: "Your husband can have no reason to suspect you are pregnant by any man but himself. So you will tell him this, and tell him also that you fear for the child's health if you stay longer in London, under the strain of the gossip and the King's attentions. Tell him that you wish to leave as soon as the crowning is over. That you do not wish to go to the feast, to be distinguished by the King, and to be the center of all the eyes and the gossip. You will go with Gorlois and the Cornish troops tomorrow, before the gates shut at sunset. The news will not come to Uther until the feast."
"But" — she stared again — "this is folly. We could have gone any time this past three weeks if we had chosen to risk the King's anger. We are bound to stay until he gives us leave to go. If we go in that manner, for whatever reason —"
I stopped her. "Uther can do nothing on the day of the crowning. He must stay here for the days of feasting. Do you think he can give offense to Budec and Merrovius and the other kings gathered here? You will be in Cornwall before he can even move."
"And then he will move." She made an impatient gesture. "And there will be war, when he should be making and mending, not breaking and burning. And he cannot win: if he is the victor in the field, he loses the loyalty of the West. Win or lose, Britain is divided, and goes back into the dark."
Yes, she would be a queen. She was on fire for Uther as much as he for her, but she could still think. She was cleverer than Uther, clear-headed, and, I thought, stronger too.
"Oh, yes, he will move." I lifted a hand. "But listen to me. I will talk to the King before the crowning. He will know that the story you told Gorlois was a lie. He will know that I have told you to go to Cornwall. He will feign rage, and he will swear in public to be revenged for the insult put on him by Gorlois at the crowning...And he will make ready to follow you to Cornwall as soon as the feast is over —"
"But meanwhile our troops will be safely out of London without trouble. Yes, I see. I did not understand you. Go on." She drove her hands inside the sleeves of the blue robe, and clasped her elbows, cradling her breasts. She was not so ice-calm as she looked, the Lady Ygraine. "And then?"
"And you will be safely at home," I said, "with your honor and Cornwall 's unbroken."
"Safely, yes. I shall be in Tintagel, and even Uther cannot come at me there. Have you seen the stronghold, Merlin? The cliffs of that coast are high and cruel, and from them runs a thin bridge of rock, the only way to the island where the castle stands. This bridge is so narrow that men can only go one at a time, not even a horse.
Even the landward end of the bridge is guarded by a fortress on the main cliff, and within the castle there is water, and food for a year. It is the strongest place in Cornwall. It cannot be taken from the land, and it cannot be approached by sea. If you wish to shut me away for ever from Uther, this is the place to send me."
"So I have heard. This will be, then, where Gorlois will send you. If Uther follows, lady, would Gorlois be content to wait inside the stronghold with you for a year like a beast in a trap? And could his troops be taken in with him?"
She shook her head. "If it cannot be taken, neither can it be used as a base. All one can do is sit out the siege."
"Then you must persuade him that unless he is content to wait inside while the King's troops ravage Cornwall, he himself must be outside, where he can fight."
She struck her hands together. "He will do that. He could not wait and hide and let Cornwall suffer. Nor can I understand your plan, Merlin. If you are trying to save your King and your kingdom from me, then say so. I can feign sickness here, until Uther finds he has to let me go home. We could go home without insult, and without bloodshed."
I said sharply: "You said you would listen. Time runs short." She was still again. "I am listening." "Gorlois will lock you in Tintagel. Where will he go himself to face Uther?" "To Dimilioc. It is a few miles from Tintagel, up the coast. It is a good fortress, and good country to fight from. But then what? Do you think Gorlois will not fight?" She moved across to the fireside and sat down, and I saw her steady her hands deliberately, spreading the fingers on her knee. "And do you think the King can come to me in Tintagel, whether Gorlois is there or no?"
"If you do as I have bid you, you and the King may have speech and comfort one of the other. And you will do this in peace. No" — as her head came up sharply — "this part of it you leave with me. This is where we come to magic. Trust me for the rest. Get yourself only to Tintagel, and wait. I shall bring Uther to you there. And I promise you now, for the King, that he shall not give battle to Gorlois, and that after he and you have met in love, Cornwall shall have peace. As to how this will be, it is with God. I can only tell you what I know. What power is in me now, is from him, and we are in his hands to make or to destroy. But I can tell you this also, Ygraine, that I have seen a bright fire burning, and in it a crown, and a sword standing in an altar like a cross."