The crystal cave - Mary Stewart [58]
"Do you think I'd touch it after him, even if he were the Prince of Darkness in person?" asked Uther.
Ambrosius laughed. "If you ride that poor beast of yours in your usual fashion you'll be warm enough without. And if your cloak is dabbled with the blood of the Bull, then it's not for you, tonight, is it?"
"Are you blaspheming?"
"I?" said Ambrosius, with a sort of cold blankness.
His brother opened his mouth, thought better of it, shrugged, and vaulted into his grey's saddle. Someone flung the cloak to me, and -- as I struggled with shaking hands to wrap it round me again -- seized me, bundled me up in it anyhow, and threw me up like a parcel to some rider on a wheeling horse. Ambrosius swung to the saddle of a big black.
"Come, gentlemen."
The black stallion jumped forward, and Ambrosius' cloak flew out. The grey pounded after him. The rest of the cavalcade strung out at a hand-gallop along the track back to the town.
5
Ambrosius' headquarters was in the town. I learned later that the town had, in fact, grown up round the camp where Ambrosius and his brother had, during the last couple of years, begun to gather and train the army that had for so long been a mythical threat to Vortigern, and now, with the help of King Budec, and troops from half the countries of Gaul, was growing into a fact. Budec was King of Less Britain, and cousin of Ambrosius and Uther. He it was who had taken the brothers in twenty years ago when they -- Ambrosius then ten years old, and Uther still at his nurse's breast -- were carried overseas into safety after Vortigern had murdered their elder brother the King. Budec's own castle was barely a stone's throw from the camp that Ambrosius had built, and round the two strongpoints the town had grown up, a mixed collection of houses, shops and huts, with the wall and ditch thrown round for protection. Budec was an old man now, and had made Ambrosius his heir, as well as Comes or Count of his forces. It had been supposed in the past that the brothers would be content to stay in Less Britain and rule it after Budec's death; but now that Vortigern's grip on Greater Britain was slackening, the money and the men were pouring in, and it was an open secret that Ambrosius had his eye on South and West Britain for himself, while Uther -- even at twenty a brilliant soldier -- would, it was hoped, hold Less Britain, and so for another generation at least provide between the two kingdoms a Romano-Celtic rampart against the barbarians from the north.
I soon found that in one respect Ambrosius was pure Roman. The first thing that happened to me after I was dumped, cloak and all, between the door-posts of his outer hall, was that I was seized, unwrapped, and -- exhausted by now beyond protest or question -- deposited in a bath. The heating system certainly worked here; the water was steaming hot, and thawed my frozen body in three painful and ecstatic minutes. The man who had carried me home -- it was Cadal, who turned out to be one of the Count's personal servants -- bathed me himself. Under Ambrosius' own orders, he told me curtly, as he scrubbed and oiled and dried me, and then stood over me as I put on a clean tunic of white wool only two sizes too big.
"Just to make sure you don't bolt again. He wants to talk to you, don't ask me why. You can't wear those sandals in this house, Dia knows where you've been with them. Leastways, it's obvious where you've been with them; cows, was it? You can go barefoot, the floors are warm. Well, at least you're clean now. Hungry?"
"Are you joking?"
"Come along, then. Kitchen's this way. Unless, being a king's grand-bastard, or whatever it was you told him, you're too proud to eat in the kitchen?"
"Just this once," I said, "I'll put up with it."
He shot me a look, scowled, and then grinned. "You've got guts, I'll give you that. You stood up to them a fair treat. Beats me how you thought of all that stuff quick enough. Rocked 'em proper. I wouldn't have given two pins for your chances once Uther laid hands on you. You got yourself a hearing,