“His promise? What did he promise you, and when?”
“When he first sent for me, and told me of his love for you, he swore to obey me in anything, if only he could have his way.” I smiled at her. “It was meant as a bribe rather than a promise, but no matter, we'll hold it to him as a royal oath.”
She began to thank me, but I stopped her. “No, no, keep your thanks. I may not succeed with the King; you know how little he loves me. You were wise to send secretly, and you'll be wiser not to let him know we talked of this together.”
“He shan't know from me.”
I nodded. “Now, for the child's sake and your own, you must put your fears aside. Leave this to me. Even if we can't move the King, I promise you that wherever the child is fostered, I shall make it my business to watch over him. He will be kept safely, and reared as a King's son should be reared. Will that content you?”
“If it has to, yes.”
She drew a long breath then and moved at last, rising from her chair and, still gracefully in spite of her bulk, pacing down the long room to one of the far windows. I made no move to follow her. She stood there for a while with her back to me, in silence. When at length she turned, she was smiling. She lifted a hand to beckon me and I went to her.
“Will you tell me one thing, Merlin?”
“If I can.”
“That night when we spoke in London, before you brought the King to me here. You talked of a crown, and a sword standing in an altar like a cross. I have wondered so much about it, thinking...Tell me now, truly. Was it my crown you saw? Or did you mean that this child — this boy who has cost so much — that he will be King?”
I should have said to her: “Ygraine, I do not know. If my vision was true, if I was a true prophet, then he will be King. But the Sight has left me, and nothing speaks to me in the night or in the fire, and I am barren. I can only do as you do, and take the time on trust. But there is no going back. God will not waste all the deaths.”
But she was watching me with the eyes of a woman in pain, so I said to her: “He will be King.”
She bent her head and stood silent for a few moments, watching the sunlight on the floor, not as if thinking, but as if listening to what stirred within her. Then she looked up at me again.
“And the sword in the altar?”
I shook my head. “Madam, I don't know. It has not come yet. If I am to know, I will be shown.”
She put out a hand. “One more thing...” From something in her voice, I knew that this mattered most to her. Not knowing what was coming, I braced myself to lie. She said: “If I must lose this child...Shall I have others, Merlin?”
“That is three things you have asked me, Ygraine.”
“You won't answer?”
I had spoken only to gain time, but at the flash of fear and doubt in her eyes I was glad to tell her the truth. “I would answer you, madam, but I do not know.”
“How is that?” she asked sharply.
I lifted my shoulders. “That again I cannot answer. Further than this boy you carry, I have not seen. But it seems probable, since he is to be King, that you will have no other sons. Girls, maybe, to bring you comfort.”
“I shall pray for it,” she said simply, and led the way back to the embrasure. She gestured me to sit. “Will you not take a cup of wine with me now, before you leave? I've received you poorly, I'm afraid, after asking such a journey of you, but I was in torment until I had talked with you. Won't you sit down with me now for a little while, and tell me what the news is with you?”
So I stayed a short while longer and, after I had given her my meager news, I asked where Uther was bound with his troops. She told me that he was heading, not for his capital at Winchester as I had supposed, but northwards to Viroconinm, where he had called a council of leaders and petty kings from the north and north-east. Viroconium is the old Roman town which lies on the border of Wales, with the mountains of Gwynedd between it and the threat of the Irish Shore. It was still at this time a market center, and the roads were well maintained. Once out of the Dumnonian Peninsula, Uther could make good speed north by the Glevum Bridge. He might even, if the weather stayed fair and the country quiet, be back for the Queen's lying-in. For the moment, Ygraine told me, the Saxon Shore was quiet; after Uther's victory at Vindocladia the invaders had retired on the hospitality of the federated tribes. There was no clear news from the north, but the King (she told me) feared some kind of concerted action there in the spring between the Picts of Strathclyde and the invading Angles: the meeting of the Kings at Viroconium had been called in an attempt to thrash out some kind of united plan of defense.
“And Duke Cador?” I asked her. “Does he stay here in Cornwall, or go on to Vindocladia to watch the Saxon Shore?”
Her answer surprised me. “He is going north with the King, to the council.”
“Is he indeed? Then I'd better guard myself.” At her quick look I nodded. “Yes, I shall go straight to the King. Time grows short, and it's luck for me that he's travelling north. He's bound to take his troops by the Glevum Bridge, so Ralf and I can cross by the ferry and get there before him. If I intercept him north of the Severn, there's nothing to show him that I ever left Wales.”
Soon after that I took my leave. When I left her she was standing by the window again. Her head was held high, and the breeze was ruffling her dark hair. I knew then that when the time came the child would not be taken from a weeping and regretful woman, but from a Queen, who was content to let him go to his destiny.
Not so with Marcia. She was waiting for me in the anteroom, bursting with questions, regrets, and anger against the King which she barely smothered into discretion. I reassured her as best I could, swore several times on every god in every shrine and hollow hill in Britain that I would do my utmost to get possession of the child and keep him safe, but when she started to ask me for spells for protection in childbed, and to talk of wet-nurses, I left her talking, and made for the door.
Forgetting herself in her agitation, she followed me and grabbed my sleeve. “And did I tell you? The King says she must have his own physician, a man he can trust to put the right stories about afterwards, and say nothing about where the poor mite goes for fostering. As if it wasn't more important that my lady should be properly looked after! Give any doctor enough gold, and he'd swear his own mother's life away, everybody knows that.”
“Certainly,” I said gravely. “But I know Gandar well, and there's no one better. The Queen will be in good hands.”
“But an army doctor! What can he know about childbirth?”
I laughed. “He served with my father's army in Brittany for a long time. Where there are fighting men, there are also their women. My father had a standing army in Brittany of fifteen thousand men, encamped. Believe me, Gandar has had plenty of experience.”
With that she had to be content. She was talking again about wet-nurses when I left her.
She came to the inn that night, cloaked and hooded, and riding straight as a man. Maeve led her to the room her family shared, drove out everyone — including Caw — who was still awake, then took Ralf in to talk to his grandmother. I was in bed before she left.
Next morning Ralf and I set out for Bryn Myrddin, with a flask or two of sloe wine to cheer us on our way. To my surprise, Ralf seemed every bit as cheerful as he had been on the way south. I wondered if, after the brief spell back in the scene of his childhood, service with me had begun to look like freedom. He had heard all the news from his grandmother; he told it me as we rode; most of it was what I had learned already from the Queen, with some court gossip added which was entertaining but hardly informative, except for the talk which was inevitably going round about Uther's rejection of the child.