Gwenhwyfar_ The White Spirit - Mercedes Lackey [44]
“How should I know?” she hissed back, making sure her head was ducked down over her work so Peder couldn’t see her mouth moving.
“You’re the king’s daughter! Don’t you hear everything?” Madoc might well have said more, except that Peder had picked out him as the chatterer.
“Madoc!” the older warrior snapped.
Madoc leaped to his feet. Gwen kept her head down. “Yes, lord!” he said, faintly.
“It’s rare for you to have any thought in your mind at all, much less one so burning a hole in it that you can’t leave it until later. Have you something you wish to share with us, Madoc?” Gwen kept her eyes on her work, furiously polishing, but she could hear the mockery in Peder’s voice. She also heard his footsteps coming up beside her. He was just behind her, out of her peripheral vision, but she could feel his presence, looming.
“I only wanted to know if the Merlin is coming to the Midsummer feast, my lord!” Madoc replied, his voice breaking a little on the last word.
“Did you now?” There was a long pause. “Well, as it happens, the Merlin is going to be one of the king’s honored guests. So don’t you think you should pay a little more attention to what you are supposed to be doing so you don’t shame yourself before him?”
“Yes, my lord!” Madoc squeaked.
“Then get back to it, boy!”
Madoc dropped back down to his work and began polishing the brass of his horse’s harness as furiously as Gwen was polishing hers. She heard Peder’s footsteps again and saw his two hairy feet in their old sandals stop beside her. His left big toenail was black, where his horse had stepped on it. She held her breath and continued to polish.
“Acceptable job, squire,” was all Peder said. Then he moved on.
Gwen breathed again.
But she could feel how the lot of them had come alive with the news of such an important visitor. Some of it was excitement, but more of it was fear. There had been fantastic tales told about the Merlin. That he had narrowly escaped being sacrificed by King Vortigern as a young boy, because he’d Seen the dragon coiled hidden beneath the base of Vortigern’s tower—a dragon that subsequently was released to battle another high in the sky above that tower. Some said that he was responsible for the great Stone Circle out on the plain—though that was unlikely for it had been there long before the Romans had come. But certainly, a Merlin had built it, which only showed the power that the Merlins held.
It was more likely true that when Arthur’s father Uther lusted for Queen Ygraine, he cast illusions over Uther to make Ygraine and her entire household believe that it was King Gorlois returned from war. That, so they said, was how Arthur was conceived in the first place.
Now Ygraine was—or had been—one of the Ladies. And the Blessing was strong in her line, since both Anna Morgause and Morgana were her daughters, and both were noted for their skill at magic. Some even said Ygraine was a generation or two out of Fae blood, which would not have been completely unlikely. There were Sea Fae of great Power who often chose to wed mortal men, and Tintagel was on a coastal cliff, high above the sea. So to deceive her would have taken a great deal of Power—and a great deal of courage as well. The Ladies were not prone to appreciate men, even Druids, even the chief Druid, meddling in the affairs of one of their own.
Of course, Gorlois had been killed that very night. And Uther did not personally have the Orkney king’s blood on his hands, since he’d been rather busy with Ygraine. And Ygraine had turned about and wedded him, so no one said much about the wrong or the right of it. Or at least not around Eleri’s hearth fire, where, although Anna Morgause was the subject of much headshaking, Queen Ygraine came in for no such censure. Gwen knew better than to ask; she would have been told that the affairs of the very great were of no concern to a mere squire.
But since the Merlin