Legacy: Arthurian Saga (133 page)

Then, after the ceremony, the feast.
One feast is much like another, and this one was remarkable only
for the fact that Arthur, who loved his food, ate very little, but
glanced about him from time to time as if he could hardly wait for
the feasting to stop, and the time of affairs to come
back.

He had told me that he would want to
talk with me that night, but he was kept till late, with the press
of people around him, so I saw Ygraine first. She retired early
from the feasting, and when her page came to me with a whispered
message, I caught a nod from Arthur, and followed him.

Her rooms were in the King's house.
Here the sounds of the revelry could be heard only faintly, against
the more distant noise of the town's rejoicing. The door was opened
to me by the same girl who had been with her at Amesbury; she was
slender in green, with pearls in the light-brown hair, and eyes
showing green as her gown: not the gleaming witch-color of
Morgause, but a clear grey-green, making one think of sunlight on a
forest stream reflecting the young leaves of spring. Her skin was
flushed with excitement and the feasting, and she smiled at me,
showing a dimple and excellent teeth, as she curtsied me toward the
Queen.

Ygraine gave me a hand. She looked
tired, and the magnificent gown of purple, with its shimmer of
pearls and silver, showed up her pallor, and the shadows at mouth
and eyes. But her manner, composed and cool as always, betrayed no
trace of fatigue.

She came straight to the point. "So,
he got her pregnant."

Even as the knife-twist of fear went
through me, I saw that she had no suspicion of the truth; she was
referring to Lot, and to what she took to be the reason for his
rejection of her daughter Morgan in favor of Morgause.

"It seems so." I was equally blunt.
"At least it saves Morgan's face, which is all that need concern
us."

"It's the best thing that could have
happened," said Ygraine flatly. She smiled faintly at my look. "I
never liked that marriage. I favored Uther's first idea, when he
offered Morgause to Lot years ago. That would have been enough for
him, and honor for her. But Lot was ambitious, one way or another,
even then, and nothing would please him but Morgan herself. So
Uther agreed. At that time he would have agreed to anything that
sealed the northern kingdoms against the Saxons; but while for
policy's sake I saw that it had to be done, I am too fond of my
daughter to want her shackled to that wayward and greedy
traitor."

I put up my brows at her. "Strong
words, madam."

"Do you deny the facts?"

"Far from it. I was there at
Luguvallium."

"Then you will know how much, in
loyalty, Lot's betrothal to Morgan bound him to Arthur, and how
much marriage would have bound him, if profit pointed another
way."

"Yes. I agree. I'm only glad that you
yourself see it like that. I was afraid that the slight to Morgan
would anger you and distress her."

"She was angry at first, rather than
distressed. Lot is among the foremost of the petty kings, and, like
him or not, she would have been queen of a wide realm, and her
children would have had a great heritage. She could not like being
displaced by a bastard, and one, besides, who has not shown her
kindness."

"And when the betrothal was first
mooted, Urbgen of Rheged still had a wife."

The long lids lifted, and her eyes
studied my impassive face. "Just so," was all she said, without
surprise. It was said as if at the end of a discussion, rather than
the beginning.

It was no surprise that Ygraine had
been thinking along the same lines as Arthur and myself. Like his
father Coel, Urbgen had shown himself staunch to the High King.
"Rheged's" deeds in the past, and more recently at Luguvallium,
were chronicled along with those of Ambrosius and Arthur, as the
sky accepts the light of the setting and the rising sun.

Ygraine was saying, thoughtfully: "It
might answer, at that. There's no need to ensure Urbgen's loyalty,
of course, but for Morgan it would be power of the kind that I
think she can manage, and for her sons..." She paused. "Well,
Urbgen has two already, both young men grown, and fighters like
their sire. Who is to say that they will ever reach his crown? And
the king of a realm as wide as Rheged cannot breed too many
sons."

"He is past his best years, and she is
still very young." I made it a statement, but she answered calmly:
"And so? I was not much older than Morgan when Gorlois of Cornwall
married me."

For the moment, I believe, she had
forgotten what that marriage had meant: the caging of a young
creature avid to spread her wings and fly; the fatal passion of
King Uther for Gorlois' lovely duchess; the death of the old duke,
and then the new life, with all its love and pain.

"She will do her duty," said Ygraine,
and now I saw that she had remembered, but her eyes did not falter.
"If she was willing to accept Lot, whom she feared, she will take
Urbgen willingly, should Arthur suggest it. It's a pity that Cador
is too nearly related for her to have him. I would have liked to
see her settled near to me in Cornwall."

"They are not blood kin." Cador was
the son, by his first wife, of Ygraine's husband
Gorlois.

"Too close," said Ygraine. "Men forget
things too quickly, and there would be whispers of incest. It would
not do, even to hint at a crime so shocking."

"No. I see that." My voice sounded
level and cool.

"And besides, Cador is to wed, come
summer, when he gets back to Cornwall. The King approves." She
turned a hand over in her lap, admiring, apparently, the glint of
the rings on it. "So perhaps it would be as well to speak of Urbgen
to the King, just as soon as some portion of his mind is free to
think of his sister?"

"He has already thought of her. He
discussed it with me. I believe he will send to Urbgen very
soon."

"Ah! And then -- " For the first time
a purely human and female satisfaction warmed her voice with
something uncommonly like spite. "And then we shall see Morgan take
what is due to her in wealth and precedence over that red-haired
witch, and may Lot of Lothian deserve the snares she set for
him!"

"You think she trapped him
deliberately?"

"How else? You know her. She wove her
spells for this."

"A very common kind of spell," I said
dryly.

"Oh, yes. But Lot has never lacked
women, and no one can deny that Morgan is the better match, and as
pretty a lass besides. And for all the arts Morgause boasts, Morgan
is better able to be queen of a great kingdom. She was bred for it,
as the bastard was not."

I watched her curiously. Beside her
chair the brown-haired girl sat on her stool half asleep. Ygraine
seemed careless of what she might overhear. "Ygraine, what harm did
Morgause ever do to you that makes you so bitter against
her?"

The red came up in her face like a
flag, and for a moment I thought she would try to set me down, but
we were neither of us young any more, or needing the armor of
self-love. She spoke simply: "If you are thinking that I hated
having a lovely young girl always near me, and near to Uther, with
a right to him that went back beyond my own, it is true. But it was
more than that. Even when she was a young girl -- twelve, thirteen,
no more -- I thought of her as corrupt. That is one reason why I
welcomed the match with Lot. I wanted her away from
court."

This was straighter than I had
expected. "Corrupt?" I asked.

The Queen's glance slid momentarily to
the girl on the stool beside her. The brown head was nodding, the
eyelids closed. Ygraine lowered her voice, but spoke clearly and
carefully. "I am not suggesting that there was anything evil in her
relationship with the King, though she never behaved to him like a
daughter; nor was she fond of him as a daughter should be; she
cajoled favors from him, no more than that. When I called her
corrupt, I spoke of her practice of witchcraft. She was drawn to it
always, and haunted the wise-women and the charlatans, and any talk
of magic brought her staring awake like an owl at night-time. And
she tried to teach Morgan, when the princess was only a child. That
is what I cannot forgive. I have no time for such things, and in
the hands of such as Morgause..."

She broke off. Vehemence had made her
raise her voice, and I saw that the girl, like the owl, was also
staring awake. Ygraine, recollecting herself, bent her head, a
touch of color in her face again.

"Prince Merlin, you must pardon me. I
meant no disrespect."

I laughed. I saw, to my amusement,
that the girl must have heard, she was laughing, too, but silently,
dimpling at me from beyond her mistress's shoulder. I said: "I am
too proud to think of myself in the same breath as girls dabbling
with spells. I am sorry about Morgan. It is true that Morgause has
power of a sort, and it is also true that such things can be
dangerous. Any power is hard to hold, and power misused recoils on
the user."

"Perhaps someday, if you get the
chance, you will tell Morgan so." She smiled, trying for a lighter
tone. "She will listen to you, where she would shrug her shoulders
at me."

"Willingly." I tried to sound willing,
like a grandfather called in to lecture the young.

"It may be that when she finds herself
a queen with real power, she will cease to hanker for another
sort." She turned the subject. "So now that Lot has a daughter of
Uther's, even if only a bastard, will he consider himself bound to
Arthur's banner?"

"That I cannot tell you. But unless
the Saxons make heavy enough gains to make it worth Lot's while to
try another betrayal, I think he will keep what power he has, and
fight for his own land, if not for the High King's sake. I see no
trouble there." I did not add: "Not of that kind." I finished
merely: "When you go back to Cornwall, madam, I will send letters
if you like."

"I should be grateful. Your letters
were a great comfort to me before, when my son was at
Galava."

We talked for a while longer, mainly
of the day's events. When I would have asked after her health, she
put the query aside with a smile that told me she knew as much as
I, so I let it be, asking instead about Duke Cador's projected
marriage. "Arthur hasn't mentioned it. Who is it to be?"

"The daughter of Dinas. Did you know
him? Her name is Mariona. The marriage was arranged, alas, when
they were both children. Now Mariona is of age, so when the duke is
home again, they will be wed."

"I knew her father, yes. Why did you
say'alas'?"

Ygraine looked with a fond smile at
the girl by her chair. "Because otherwise there would have been no
difficulty in finding a match for my little Guenever."

"I am sure," I said, "that that will
prove more than easy."

"But such a match," said the Queen,
and the girl made a smiling mouth and lowered her
lashes.

"If I dared use divination in your
presence, madam," I said, smiling, "I would predict that one as
splendid will present itself, and soon."

I spoke lightly, in formal courtesy,
and was startled to hear in my voice an echo, though faint and soon
lost, of the cadences of prophecy.

Neither of them heard it. The Queen
was holding a hand to me, bidding me good night, and the girl
Guenever held the door for me, sinking, as I passed, into a smiling
curtsy of humility and grace.

7

"It's mine!" said Arthur, violently.
"You only have to count! I heard the men talking about it in the
guardroom. They didn't know I was near enough to hear them. They
said she was big-bellied by Twelfth Night, and lucky to catch Lot
so early, they could pass it off as a seven-month child. Merlin,
you know as well as I do that he never came near her at
Luguvallium! He wasn't there until the very night of the battle,
and that night -- that was the night -- " He stopped, choking on
it, and turned with a swirl of robes to pace the floor
again.

It was well after midnight. The sounds
of revelry from the town were fainter now, muted with the chill of
the hour before dawn. In the King's room the candles had burned low
into a welter of honeyed wax. Their scent mingled with the sharp
smoke from a lamp that needed trimming.

Arthur turned sharply on his heel and
came back to stand in front of me. He had taken off the crown and
jeweled chain, and laid his sword aside, but he still wore the
splendid coronation robe. The furred cloak lay across the table
like a stream of blood in the lamplight. Through the open door of
his bedchamber I could see the covers turned back ready on the
great bed, but, late though the hour was, Arthur showed no sign of
fatigue. His every movement was infused with a kind of nervous
fury.

He controlled it, speaking quietly.
"Merlin, when we spoke that night of what had happened -- " A
breathing pause, then he changed course with ferocious directness:
"When I lay incestuously with Morgause, I asked you what would
happen if she should conceive. I remember what you said. I remember
it well. Do you?"

"Yes," I said unwillingly, "I remember
it."