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By Root 1342 0

weaving. She took some of the cloth she had bought and began to make some towels by hemming them and edging them with colored threads. In the second week her moon flux came on her, and she felt dismal and betrayed; Gorlois had not, after all, gotten on her the son he wanted. She was not yet twenty, she could hardly be barren already! She thought of an old tale she had heard, about a wife married to an elderly husband, who bore him no son until she slipped out one night and lay with a shepherd in his field, and her old husband was mighty pleased with the fine healthy boy. If she was barren, Igraine thought resentfully, it was more like than not to be Gorlois’s fault! He was the one who was old and his blood thinned with years of war and campaigns. And then she thought of her dream, between guilt and dismay. Merlin and Viviane had said it: she should bear a son to the High King, one who would heal the land of all this strife. Gorlois himself had said that if Ambrosius had left a son, there would not be all this wrangling. If Uther were chosen High King, it would indeed be needful for him to get a son at once.

And I am young and healthy, if I were his queen I could give him a son. . . . And when she came again to this point she would weep with a sudden, trapped despair. I am married to an old man, and my life is over at nineteen. I might as well be an old, old woman, past caring whether I live or die, fit only to sit by the fire and think of Heaven! She took to her bed and told Gorlois she was ill.

Once during this week the Merlin came to her lodging while Gorlois was at the Council. She felt like flinging her rage and misery at him—he had begun this, she had been content and resigned to her fate until he had sent to waken her out of it! But it was unthinkable to speak rudely to the Merlin of Britain, father or no.

“Gorlois tells me you are ill, Igraine; can I do anything to help you with my healing arts?”

She looked at him in despair. “Only if you can make me young. I feel so old, Father, so old!”

He stroked her shining copper curls and said, “I see no grey in your hair nor wrinkles in your face, my child.”

“But my life is over, I am an old woman, the wife of an old man. . . .”

“Hush, hush,” he soothed, “you are weary and ill, you will feel better when the moon changes again, surely. It is best like this, Igraine,” he said, looking sharply at her, and she suddenly knew that he read her thoughts; it was as if he spoke directly to her mind, repeating what he had said to her at Tintagel: You will bear Gorlois no son.

“I feel—trapped,” she said, and put her head down and wept and would not speak again.

He stroked her uncombed hair. “Sleep is the best medicine for your illness now, Igraine. And dreams are the true remedy for what ails you. I, who am master of dreams, will send one to cure you.” He stretched his hand over her in blessing and went away.

She wondered if something he had done, or some spell set by Viviane, was responsible—perhaps after all she had conceived Gorlois’s child and cast it from her; such things had happened. She could not imagine the Merlin sending to dose her beer with herbs or simples, but perhaps with his power he could ensure it with magic or spells. And then she thought perhaps it was for the best. Gorlois was old, she had seen the shadow of his death; did she want to rear a son of his to manhood alone? When Gorlois came back to their lodging that night, it seemed that once again she could see, hovering behind him, the shadow of the dreaded fetch, his death waiting, the sword cut over his eye, his face haggard with grief and despair; and she turned her face away from him, feeling, when he touched her, that she was embraced by a dead man, a corpse.

“Come, my dear one, you must not be so dismal,” Gorlois soothed, sitting on the bed beside her. “I know you are sick and wretched, you must be longing for your home and your child, but it will not be long now. I have news for you, listen and I’ll tell you.”

“Is the Council any nearer to their kingmaking?”

“It may be,” Gorlois said. “Did you hear