Hollow Hills (24 page)

He said coldly, disconcerted and covering it: "I did not ask. There has been no need before."

This told me something beyond what I already knew. The King had only felt the need to locate Arthur since the Queen's last miscarriage. I had been right in thinking that, if she had given him other sons, he would have preferred to forget the "bastard" in Brittany. It also told me something I did not like: if he felt a need for Arthur now, this summons might be to tell me that my guardianship was ended before it had really begun.

To give myself time, I ignored what he had just said. "Then depend upon it, Hoel's answer is on its way.

In any case it doesn't matter, since I am here to answer you instead."

His look was still stony, allowing no guesses. "They tell me you have been abroad all these years. Did you take him with you?"

"No. I thought it better to keep away from him till the time came when I could be of use to him. I made sure of his safety, then after I had left Brittany I kept close touch." I smiled slightly. "Oh, nothing that your spies could have seen...or any other man's. You know I have ways of my own. I took no risks. If you yourself have no inkling now of his whereabouts, you may be sure that no one else has."

I saw from the brief flicker in his eyes before the lids veiled them that I had guessed rightly: messages and constant reports of my movements had been sent back to him. No doubt, wherever he could, he had had me watched. It was no more than I expected. Kings live by information, Uther's enemies had probably watched me, too, and perhaps the King's own informants might have picked up some kind of lead to them. But when I asked him about this, he shook his head. He was silent for a while, following some private track of his own. He had not looked at me again. He reached for the goblet at his elbow, but not to drink; he fidgeted with it, turning it round and round where it stood. "He'll be seven years old now."

"Eight this coming Christmas, and strong for his age and well doing. You need have no fears for him, Uther."

"You think not?" Another flash, of bitterness stronger than any anger. In spite of my outward calmness I felt a violent moment of apprehension: if, contrary to appearances, the King's sickness was in fact mortal, what chance would the boy have at the head of this kingdom now, with half the petty kings (I saw Cador's face again) at his throat? And how was even I to know, through the light and the smoke, what the god's smile portended?

"You think not?" said the King again. I saw his finger-bones 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.