The crystal cave - Mary Stewart [83]
And here again the Sight had not helped me. Men that have god's-sight, I have found, are often human-blind.
I said to Cadal: "Everybody knows?"
He nodded. He didn't ask what I meant. "It's rumoured. You're very like him sometimes."
"I think Uther may have guessed. He didn't know before?"
"No. He left before the talk started to go round. That wasn't why he took against you."
"I'm glad to hear it," I said. "What was it, then? Just because I got across him over that business of the standing stone?"
"Oh, that, and other things."
"Such as?"
Cadal said, bluntly: "He thought you were the Count's catamite. Ambrosius doesn't go for women much. He doesn't go for boys either, come to that, but one thing Uther can't understand is a man who isn't in and out of bed with someone seven nights a week. When his brother bothered such a lot with you, had you in his house and set me to look after you and all that, Uther thought that's what must be going on, and he didn't half like it."
"I see. He did say something like that tonight, but I thought it was only because he'd lost his temper."
"If he'd bothered to look at you, or listen to what folks were saying, he'd have known fast enough."
"He knows now." I spoke with sudden, complete certainty. "He saw it, back there on the road, when he saw the dragon brooch the Count gave me. I'd never thought about it, but of course he would realize the Count would hardly put the royal cipher on his catamite. He had the torch brought up, and took a good look at me. I think he saw it then." A thought struck me. "And I think Belasius knows."
"Oh, yes," said Cadal, "he knows. Why?"
"The way he talked...As if he knew he daren't touch me. That would be why he tried to scare me with the threat of a curse. He's a pretty cool hand, isn't he? He must have been thinking very hard on the way up to the grove. He daren't put me quietly out of the way for sacrilege, but he had to stop me talking somehow. Hence the curse. And also -- " I stopped.
"And also what?"
"Don't sound so startled. It was only another guarantee I'd hold my tongue."
"For the gods' sake, what?"
I shrugged, realized I was still naked, and reached for the bedgown again. "He said he would take me with him to the sanctuary. I think he would like to make a druid of me."
"He said that?" I was getting familiar with Cadal's sign to avert the evil eye. "What will you do?"
"I'll go with him...once, at least. Don't look like that, Cadal. There isn't a cat's chance in a fire that I'll want to go more than once." I looked at him soberly. "But there's nothing in this world that I'm not ready to see and learn, and no god that I'm not ready to approach in his own fashion. I told you that truth was the shadow of God. If I am to use it, I must know who He is. Do you understand me?"
"How could I? What god are you talking about?"
"I think there is only one. Oh, there are gods everywhere, in the hollow hills, in the wind and the sea, in the very grass we walk on and the air we breathe, and in the bloodstained shadows where men like Belasius wait for them. But I believe there must be one who is God Himself, like the great sea, and all the rest of us, small gods and men and all, like rivers, we all come to Him in the end. -- Is the bath ready?"
Twenty minutes later, in a dark blue tunic clipped at the shoulder by the dragon brooch, I went to see my father.
12
The secretary was in the anteroom, rather elaborately doing nothing. Beyond the curtain I heard Ambrosius' voice speaking quietly. The two guards at the door looked wooden.
Then the curtain was pulled aside and Uther came out. When he saw me he checked, hung on his heel as if to speak, then seemed to catch the secretary's interested look, and went by with a swish of the red cloak and a smell of horses. You could always tell where Uther had been; he seemed to soak up scents like a wash-cloth. He must have gone straight to his brother before he had even cleaned up after the ride home.
The secretary, whose name was Sollius, said to me: "You may as well go straight in, sir. He'll