She said, very quietly: “What the King says may well be true. I don't know. But what's done is done, and it is the child who must concern me now. This is why I sent for you.” A pause. I waited. She faced me again. “Prince Merlin, I fear for the child.”
“At the King's hands?” I asked.
This was too straight, even for Ygraine. Her eyes were cold, and her voice. “This is insolence, and folly, too. You forget yourself, my lord.”
“I?” I spoke as coldly. “It is you who forget, madam. If my mother had been wed to Ambrosius when he begot me, Uther would not now be King, nor would I have helped him to your bed to beget the child you carry. There should be no talk of insolence or folly from you to me. I know, who better, what chance there is in Britain for a prince conceived out of wedlock and unacknowledged by his sire.”
She had flushed as red as she was pale before. Her eyes dropped from mine, their anger dying. She spoke simply, like a girl. “You are right, I had forgotten. I ask your pardon. I'd forgotten, too, what it was like to talk freely. There is no one here besides Marcia and my lord, and I cannot talk to Uther about the child.”
I had been standing all this while; now I turned aside to bring up a chair and set it near her in the turret embrasure. I sat down. Things had changed between us, suddenly, as when a wind changes. I knew then that the battle was not with me, but with herself, her own woman's weakness. She was watching me now as a woman in pain watches her doctor. I said gently: “Well, I am here. And I am listening. What did you send for me to tell me?”
She drew in her breath. When she spoke her voice was calm, but no more than a whisper. “That If this child is a boy, the King will not allow me to rear him. If it's a girl I may keep her, but a boy so begotten cannot be acknowledged as a prince and legitimate heir, so he must not remain here, even as a bastard.” Visibly, she steadied herself. “I told you, Uther does not doubt me. But because of what happened that night, my husband's death, and all the talk of magic, he swears that men may still believe that the Duke and not himself begot this child. There will be other sons, he says, whose begetting no man will question, and among them he will find the heir to the High Kingdom.”
“Ygraine,” I said, “I know what a heavy thing it is — however it happens — for a woman to lose her child. Perhaps there is no heavier grief. But I think the King is right. The boy should not remain here to be reared as a bastard in times so wild and uncertain. If there should be other heirs, declared and acknowledged by the King, they might count him a danger to themselves, and certainly they would be a danger for him. I know what I'm talking about; this is what happened in my own childhood. And I, as a royal bastard, found fortune as this prince may never find it; I had my father's protection.”
A pause. She nodded without speaking, her eyes once again on the hands that lay in her lap.
“And if the child is to be sent away,” I said, “it's better that he should be taken straight from the birth chamber, before you have had time even to hold him. Believe me” — I spoke quickly, though she had not moved — “this is true. I'm speaking now as a doctor.”
She moistened her lips. “Marcia says the same.”
I waited a moment, but she said no more. I started to speak, found my voice come hoarsely, and cleared my throat. In spite of myself, my hands tightened on the arms of my chair. But my voice was calm and steady as I came to the core of the interview. “Has the King told you where the child is to be fostered?”
“No. I told you it wasn't easy to talk to him about it. But when he last spoke of it he said he would take counsel; and he spoke of Brittany.”
“Brittany?” For all my care, the word came out with a cutting edge. I fought to recover my calm. My hands had clenched on the chair, and I relaxed them and held them still. So, my doubts were real. Oddly enough, the knowledge hardened me. If I must fight the King as well as Ygraine — yes, and my Delphic gods as well — then I would do so. As long as I could see the ground to fight from... “So Uther will send him to King Budec?”
“It seems so.” She seemed to have noticed nothing strange in my manner. “He sent a messenger a month ago. That was just before I sent to ask you to come. Budec is the obvious choice, after all.”
This was true. King Budec of Less Britain was a cousin of the King's. It was he who, some thirty years ago, had taken my father and the young Uther under his protection when the usurper Vortigern murdered their elder brother King Constans, and in his capital of Kerrec they had assembled and trained the army which had won the High Kingdom back from Vortigern. But I shook my head. “Too obvious. If anyone should look for the boy to harm him, they'll guess where to go. Budec can't protect him all the time. Besides — ”
“Budec cannot care for my child as he should be cared for!” The words came forcibly, stopping me short, but the interruption was not uncivil. It came almost like a cry. It was plain that she had not heard a word I had said. She was fighting herself, choosing words. “He is old, and besides, Brittany is a long way off, and less secure even than this Saxon-ridden land. Prince Merlin, I — Marcia and I — we think that you — ” The hands suddenly twisted together in her lap. Her voice changed. “There is no one else we can trust, And Uther — whatever Uther says, he knows that his kingdom, or any part of it, would be safe in your hands. You are Ambrosius' son, and the child's closest kinsman. Everyone knows your power, and fears it — the child would be safe with you to protect him. It's you who must take him, Merlin!” She was begging me now. “Take him safe, somewhere away from this cruel coast, and rear him for me. Teach him as you were taught, and rear him as a King's son should be reared, and then when he is grown, bring him back and let him take his place as you did, at the next King's side.”
She faltered. I must have been staring at her like a fool. She fell quiet, twisting her hands. There was a long silence, filled with the scent of the salt wind and the crying of the gulls. I had not been aware of rising, but I found myself standing at the window with my back to the Queen, staring out at the sky, Below the turret wall the gulls wheeled and mewed in the wind, and far below, at the foot of the black cliff, the sea dashed and whitened. But I saw and heard nothing. My hands were pressed down hard on the stone of the sill, and when at length I lifted them and straightened they showed a mottled bar of bloodless flesh where the stone had bitten in. I began to chafe them, only now feeling the small hurt as I turned back to meet the Queen's eyes. She too had hold of herself again, but I saw strain in her face, and a hand plucked at her gown.
I said flatly: “Do you think you can persuade the King to give him to me?”
“No. I don't think so. I don't know.” She swallowed. “Of course I can talk to him, but — ”
“Then why send for me to ask me this, if you have no power to sway the King?”
She was white, and her lips worked together, but she kept her head up and faced me. “I thought that if you agreed, my lord, you could — you would — ”
“I can do nothing with Uther now. You should know that.” Then, in sudden, bitter comprehension: “Or did you send for me as you did last time, hoping for magic to order, as if I were an old spell-wife, or a country druid? I would have thought, madam — ” I stopped. I had seen the flinching in her eyes, and the drawn pallor round her mouth, and I remembered what she carried in her. My anger died. I turned up a hand, speaking gently: “Very well. If it can be done, Ygraine, I will do it, even if I have to talk to Uther myself to remind him of his promise.”