The crystal cave - Mary Stewart [28]
"No, more's the pity, though it may end up that way. There's a message come this afternoon, the High King's coming to Segontium, and he'll lie there for a week or two. Your grandfather's riding up tomorrow, so everything's to be got ready mighty sharp."
"I see." I followed him into the barn, and stood watching him unsaddle, while half-absently I pulled straw from the pile and twisted a wisp for him. I handed this across the pony's withers. "King Vortigern at Segontium? Why?"
"Counting heads, they say." He gave a snort of laughter as he began to work the pony over.
"Calling in his allies, do you mean? Then there is talk of war?"
"There'll always be talk of war, so long as yon Ambrosius sits there in Less Britain with King Budec at his back, and men remember things that's better not spoken of."
I nodded. I could not remember precisely when I had been told, since nobody said it aloud, but everyone knew the story of how the High King had claimed the throne. He had been regent for the young King Constantius who had died suddenly, and the King's younger brothers had not waited to prove whether the rumours of murder were true or false; they had fled to their cousin Budec in Less Britain, leaving the kingdom to the Wolf and his sons. Every year or so the rumours sprang up again; that King Budec was arming the two young princes; that Ambrosius had gone to Rome; that Uther was a mercenary in the service of the Emperor of the East, or that he had married the King of Persia's daughter; that the two brothers had an army four hundred thousand strong and were going to invade and burn Greater Britain from end to end; or that they would come in peace, like archangels, and drive the Saxons out of the eastern shores without a blow. But more than twenty years had gone by, and the thing had not happened. The coming of Ambrosius was spoken of now as if it were accomplished, and already a legend, as men spoke of the coming of Brut and the Trojans four generations after the fall of Troy, or Joseph's journey to Thorny Hill near Avalon. Or like the Second Coming of Christ -- though when I had once repeated this to my mother she had been so angry that I had never tried the joke again.
"Oh, yes," I said, "Ambrosius coming again, is he? Seriously, Cerdic, why is the High King coming to North Wales?"
"I told you. Doing the rounds, drumming up a bit of support before spring, him and that Saxon Queen of his." And he spat on the floor.
"Why do you do that? You're a Saxon yourself."
"That's a long time ago. I live here now. Wasn't it that flaxen bitch that made Vortigern sell out in the first place? Or at any rate you know as well as I do that since she's been in the High King's bed the Northmen have been loose over the land like a heath fire, till he can neither fight them nor buy them off. And if she's what men say she is, you can be sure none of the King's true-born sons'll live to wear the crown." He had been speaking softly, but at this he looked over his shoulder and spat again, making the sign. "Well, you know all this -- or you would, that is, if you listened to your betters more often, instead of spending your time with books and such like, or chasing round with the People from the hollow hills."
"Is that where you think I go?"
"It's what people say. I'm not asking questions. I don't want to know. Come up, you!" This to the pony as he moved over and started work, hissing, on the other flank. "There's talk that the Saxons have landed again north of Rutupiae, and they're asking too much this time even for Vortigern to stomach. He'll have to fight, come spring."
"And my grandfather with him?"
"That's what he's hoping, I'll be bound. Well, you'd best run along if you want your supper. No one'll notice you. There was all hell going on in the kitchens when I tried to get a bite an hour back."
"Where's my grandfather?"
"How do I know?" He cocked his head at me, over the pony's rump. "Now what's to do?"
"I want to go with them."
"Hah!" he said, and threw the chopped feed down for the pony. It was not an encouraging sound.
I said