The crystal cave - Mary Stewart [62]
"If I take Britain, I can afford to be. I should perhaps have made some reservations." He smiled. "It might be difficult if you wanted an amnesty for your uncle Camlach?"
"It won't arise," I said. "When you take Britain, he'll be dead."
A silence. His lips parted to say something, but I think he changed his mind. "I said I might use those eyes of yours some day. Now, you have my promise, so let us talk. Never mind if things don't seem important enough to tell. Let me be the judge of that."
So I talked to him. It did not strike me as strange then that he should talk to me as if I were his equal, nor that he should spend half the night with me asking questions which in part his spies could have answered. I believe that twice, while we talked, a slave came in silently and replenished the brazier, and once I heard the clash and command of the guard changing outside the door. Ambrosius questioned, prompted, listened, sometimes writing on a tablet in front of him, sometimes staring, chin on fist, at the table-top, but more usually watching me with that steady, shadowed stare. When I hesitated, or strayed into some irrelevancy, or faltered through sheer fatigue, he would prod me back with his questions towards some unseen goal, as a muleteer goads his mule.
"This fortress on the River Seint, where your grandfather met Vortigern. How far north of Caerleon? By which road? Tell me about the road...How is the fortress reached from the sea?"
And: "The tower where the High King lodged, Maximus' Tower -- Macsen's, you call it...Tell me about this. How many men were housed there. What road there is to the harbour"
Or: "You say the King's party halted in a valley pass, south of the Snow Hill, and the kings went aside together. Your man Cerdic said they were looking at an old stronghold on the crag. Describe the place...the height of the crag. How far one should see from the top, to the north, the south...the east."
Or: "Now think of your grandfather's nobles. How many will be loyal to Camlach? Their names? How many men? And of his allies, who? Their numbers...their fighting power..."
And then, suddenly: "Now tell me this. How did you know Camlach was going to Vortimer?"
"He said so to my mother," I told him, "by my grandfather's bier. I heard him. There had been rumours that this would happen, and I knew he had quarrelled with my grandfather, but nobody knew anything for certain. Even my mother only suspected what he meant to do. But as soon as the King was dead, he told her."
"He announced this straight away? Then how was it that Marric and Hanno heard nothing, apart from the rumours of the quarrel?"
Fatigue, and the long relentless questioning had made me incautious. I said, before I thought: "He didn't announce it. He told only her. He was alone with her."
"Except for you?" His voice changed, so that I jumped on my stool. He watched me under his brows. "I thought you told me the hypocaust had been filled in?"
I merely sat and looked at him. I could think of nothing to say.
"It seems strange, does it not," he said levelly, "that he should tell your mother this in front of you, when he must have known you were his enemy? When his men had just killed your servant? And then, after he had told you of his secret plans, how did you get out of the palace and into the hands of my men, to 'make' them bring you with them to me?"
"I -- " I stammered. "My lord, you cannot think that I -- my lord, I told you I was no spy. I -- all I have told you is true. He did say it, I swear it."
"Be careful. It matters whether this is true. Your mother told you?"
"No."
"Slaves' talk, then? That's all?"
I said desperately: "I heard him myself."
"Then where were you?"
I met his eyes. Without quite realizing why, I told the simple truth. "My lord, I was asleep in the hills, six miles off."
There was a silence, the longest yet. I could hear the embers settling in the brazier, and some distance off, outside, a dog barking. I sat waiting for his anger.
"Merlin."
I looked up.
"Where do you get the Sight from? Your mother?"
Against