by Mary Stewart
"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.
It was about three days before I found a formula which promised some help for the king, and sent a message to Gandar. He, gasping before he had fairly got through the curtains, came himself, but instead of the assistant I expected he brought a girl with him, a young maiden whom I recognized after a moment as Morgause, the King's bastard daughter. She could be no more than thirteen or fourteen, but she was tall for her age, and it was true that she was beautiful. At that age many girls only slow promise of beauty; Morgause had the thing itself, and even I, who am no judge of women, could see that this might be a beauty to send men mad. Her body was slight with a child's slenderness, but her breasts were full and pointed and her throat round as a lily stem. Her hair was rosy gold, streaming long and unbound over the golden-green robe. The large eyes that I remembered were gold-green too, liquid and clear as a stream running over mosses, and the small mouth lifted into a smile over kitten's teeth as she dropped a deep reverence to me.
"Prince Merlin." It was a demure child's voice, little more than a whisper. I saw Stilicho glance round from his work, then stand staring.
I gave her my hand. "They told me you had grown into a beauty, Morgause. Some man will be fortunate. You're not contracted yet? Then all the men in Condon have been slow."
The smile deepened, folding itself into dimples at the corner of her mouth. She did not speak. Stilicho, catching my glance, bent over his work again, but not, I thought, with quite the concentration it required.
"Phew," said Gandar, fanning himself. I could see the sweat already beading his broad face. "Do you have to work in a tepidarium?"
"My servant comes from a more blessed corner of the earth than this. They breed salamanders in Sicily."
"More blessed, you call it? I'd die in an hour."
"I'll have him bring the things out into my chamber," I offered.
"No need, for me. I'll not stay. I only came to present you my assistant, who will care for the King. Aye, you may well look surprised. You'll hardly believe me, but this child here is skilled already with drugs. Seems she had a nurse in Brittany, one of their wise women, who taught her the gathering and drying and preparing, and since she came over here she's been eager to learn more. But an army medical unit didn't seem quite the place for her."
"You surprise me," I said dryly. The girl Morgause had moved near the table where Stilicho was working, and bent her graceful little head towards him. A tress of t
he rosegold hair brushed his hand. He labelled two jars at random, both wrongly, before he recovered himself and reached for a knife to melt the seals again.
"So," said Gandar, "when she heard the King needed drugs, she asked to look after them. She's practiced enough, no fear of that, and the King has consented. For all she's young, she knows how to keep her counsel and who better to care for him and keep his secrets than his own daughter?"
It was a good idea, and I said so. Gandar himself, though nominally the King's chief physician, had charge of the army medical teams. Until this recent wounding the King had hardly needed his personal care, and in any action or threat of it Gandar's place would be with the army. In Uther's present predicament his own daughter, so fortunately skilled, would answer very well.
"She's more than welcome to learn all she can here." I turned to the girl. "Morgause, I've distilled a drug which I think will help the King. I've copied out the formula for you here — can you make it out? Good. Stilicho has the ingredients, if he'll take time to label them correctly...Now, I'll leave him to show you how to compound the medicine. If you give him half an hour to get his apparatus out of this steam bath —"
"No need, for me," she said in a demure echo of Gandar. "I like the heat."
"Then I'll leave you," said Gandar with relief. "Merlin, will you come and sup with me tonight, or are you with the King?"
I followed him out into the cool airiness of my own room. From beyond the curtain came the murmur, hesitant with shyness, of the servant's voice, and an occasional soft question from the girl.
"It'll be all right, you'll see," said Gandar. "No need to look so doubtful."
"Was I? Not about the medicine, at any rate, and I'll take your word for the girl's skill."
"In any case, you'll surely stay a little while, and see how she does?"
"Certainly. I don't want to be too long in London, but I can give it a few days. You'll be here yourself?"
"Yes. But there's been such a marked change in him even in these last three days since you came, that I can't see he'll need me in attendance much longer."
"Let's hope it continues," I said. "To tell you the truth, I'm not much troubled...Certainly not for his general health. And for the impotence — if he gets ease and sleep, his mind may stop tormenting his body, and the condition may right itself. This seems to be happening already. You know how these things go."
"Oh, aye, he'll mend" — he glanced towards the curtained door and dropped his voice — "as far as need be. As to whether we can get the stallion back to the stand again, I can't see that it matters, now that we know there's a prince safe, and growing, and likely for the crown. We'll get him out of his distemper, and if by God's grace and the drugs you brought he lives to fight...and stays king of the pack —"
"He'll do that."
"Well..." he said, and let it go. I may say here that the King did in fact mend rapidly. The limp disappeared, he slept well and put on flesh, and I learned some time later from one of his chamberers that, although the King was never again the Bull of Mithras that his soldiers had laughed over and admired, and though he fathered no more children, he took certain satisfactions in his bed, and the unpredictable violences of his temper declined. As a soldier he was soon, again, the single-minded warrior who had inspired his troops and led them to victory.
When Gandar had gone, I went back into the boy's room to find Morgause slowly conning over the paper I had given her, while Stilicho showed her, one by one, the simples for distillation, the powders for sleeping draughts, the oils for massage of the pulled muscles. Neither of them saw me come in, so I watched for a few minutes in silence. I could see that Morgause missed nothing, and that, though the boy still watched her sideways and tended to shy from her beauty like a colt from fire, she seemed as oblivious of his sex as a princess should be of a slave. The heat of the room was making my head ache. I crossed quickly to the table. Stilicho's monologue stopped short, and the girl looked up and smiled.
I said: "You understand it all? Good. I'll leave you now with Stilicho. If there's anything you want to know that he can't tell you, send for me."
I turned then to give instructions to the boy, but to my surprise Morgause made a quick movement towards me, laying a hand on my sleeve.
"Prince —"
"Morgause?"
"Must you really go? I — I thought you would teach me, you yourself. I want so much to learn from you."
"Stilicho can teach you all you need to know about the drugs the King will want. If you wish, I will show you how to help him over the pain of the tightened muscles, but I should have thought his bathslave would do that better."
"Oh, yes, I know. I wasn't thinking of things like that: it's easy enough to learn what is needed for the King's care. It was — I had hoped for more. When I asked Gandar to bring me to you, I had thought — I had hoped —"
The sentence died and she drooped her head. The rosegold hair fell in a gleaming curtain to hide her face. Through it, as through rain, I saw her eyes watching me, thoughtful, meek, childlike.
"You had hoped — ?"
I doubt if even Stilicho, four paces away, heard the whisper. " — that you might teach me a little of your art, my lord Prince." Her eyes appealed to me, half hopeful and half afraid, like a bitch expecting to be whipped.
I smiled at her, but I knew my manner was stiff and my voice over-formal. I can face an armed enemy more easily than a young girl pleading like this, with a pretty hand on my sleeve, and her scent sweet on the hot air like fruit in a sunny orchard. Strawberries, was it, or apricots...? I said quickly: "Morgause, I've no art to teach you that you cannot learn as easily from books. You read, don't you? Yes, of course you do, you read the formula. Then learn from Hippocrates and Galen. Let them be your masters; they were mine."
"Prince Merlin, in the arts I speak of you have no master."
The heat of the room was overpowering. My head hurt me. I must have been frowning, because she came close with a gentle dipping movement, like a bird nestling, and said rapidly, pleadingly: "Don't be angry with me. I've waited so long, and I was so sure that the chance had come. My lord, all my life I have heard people speak of you. My nurse in Brittany — she told me how she used to see you walking through the woods and by the seashore, gathering the cresses and roots and the white berries of the thunder-bough, and how sometimes you went with no more sound than a ghost, and no shadow even on a sunny day."
"She was telling stories to frighten you. I am a man like other men."
"Do other men talk to the stars as if they were friends in a familiar room? Or move the standing stones? Or follow the druids into Nemet and not die under the knife?"
"I did not die under the druids' knife because the archdruid was afraid of my father," I said bluntly. "And when I was in Brittany I was hardly a man, and certainly not a magician. I was a boy then, learning my trades as you are learning yours. I was barely seventeen when I left there."
She seemed hardly to have heard. I noticed how still she was, the long eyes shadowed under the curtaining hair, the narrow white hands folded below her breast against the green gown. She said: "But you are a man now, my lord, and can you deny that you have worked magic here in Britain? Since I have been here with my father the King, I have heard you spoken of as the greatest enchanter in the world. I have seen the Hanging Stones, which you lifted and set in their place, and I have heard how you foretold Pendragon's victories and brought the star to Tintagel, and made the King's son vanish away to the isle of HyBrasil —"
"So you heard that here, too, did you?" I tried for a lighter tone. "You'd better stop, Morgause, you're scaring my servant, and I don't want him running off, he's too useful."
"Don't laugh at me, my lord. Do you deny that you have the arts?"
"No, I don't deny it. But I couldn't teach you the things you want to know. Certain kinds of magic you can learn from any adept, but the arts which are mine are not mine to give away. I could not teach them to you, even if you were o
ld enough to understand them."
"I could understand them now. I already have magic — such magic as young maids can learn, no more. I want to follow you and learn from you. My lord Merlin, teach me how to find power like yours."
"I've told you it isn't possible. You will have to take my word for that. You are too young. I'm sorry, child. I think that for power like mine you will always be too young. I doubt if any woman could go where I go and see what I see. It is not an easy art. The god I serve is a hard master."
"What god? I only know men."
"Then learn from men. What I have of power I cannot teach you. I have told you it is not my gift."
She watched me without comprehension. She was too young to understand. The light from the stove glimmered on the lovely hair, the wide, clever brows, the full breasts, the small, childish hands. I remembered that Uther had offered her to Lot, and that Lot had rejected her in favor of the young half-sister. I wondered if Morgause knew; and, compassionately, what would become of her.
I said gently: "It's true, Morgause. He only lends his power for his own ends. When they are achieved, who knows? If he wants you, he will take you, but don't walk into the flames, child. Content yourself with such magic as young maids can use."
She began to speak, but we were interrupted. Stilicho had been heating something in a bowl over the burner, and was no doubt so busy straining to hear what was being said that he let the bowl tilt, and some of the liquid spilled onto the flames. There was a hiss and a spitting, and a cloud of herb-smelling steam billowed thick between me and the girl, obscuring her. Through it I saw her hands, those still hands, moving quickly to fan the pungent mist away from her eyes. My own were watering. Vision blurred and glittered. The pain in my head blinded me. The movement of the small white hands through the steam was weaving a pattern like a spell. The bats went past me in a cloud. Somewhere near me the strings of my harp whimpered. The room shrank round me, chilled to a globe of crystal, a tomb...