The Hollow Hills - Mary Stewart [165]
He nodded. The strain of the day and night was beginning to show, but his look was friendly and his manner still crisp. "Well, we've cleared the past. The future is with him, and with you. But I'm not dead yet, and I'm still High King. The present is with me. I sent for you to tell you that I shall proclaim Arthur my heir tomorrow at the victory feast. There'll never be a better moment. After what happened today no one can argue his fitness; he has already proved himself in public, more, in the sight of the army. Even if I wished to, I doubt if I could keep his secret any longer; rumour has run through the camp like a fire through straw. He knows nothing yet?"
"It seems not. I would have thought he would begin to guess, but it seems not. You'll tell him yourself tomorrow?"
"Yes. I'll send for him in the morning. For the rest of the time, Merlin, stay by him and keep him close."
He spoke then about his plans for the morrow. He would talk with Arthur, and then in the evening, when everyone had recovered from the fighting, and erased the scars of battle, Arthur would be brought with glory and acclaim in front of the nobles at the victory feast. As for Lot -- he came to it flatly and without excuse -- there was doubt as to what Lot would do, but he had lost too much public credit over his delay in the battle, and even as the betrothed of the King's daughter he would hardly dare (Uther insisted) stand up in public against the High King's own choice. He said nothing about the darker possibility, that Lot might even have thrown his weight onto the Saxons' side of the balance; he saw the delay only as a bid for credit -- that Lot's intervention should seem to carry the British to victory! I listened, and said nothing. Whatever the truth of that, the trouble would soon be other men's, and not the King's.
He spoke then of Morgian, his daughter. The marriage, firmly contracted as it was, must go through; it could hardly be broken now without offering a mortal and dangerous insult to Lot and the northern kings who hunted with him. And as things had fallen out, it would be safer so; Lot would by the same token not dare to refuse the marriage, and by accepting it would bind himself publicly to Arthur; an Arthur already (months before the marriage) proclaimed, accepted, and established. Uther had almost said "and crowned," but let the sentence drift. He was looking tired now, and I made a move to leave him, but one of the thin hands lifted, and I waited. He did not speak for a few moments, but lay back with closed eyes. Somewhere a draught crept through the room, and the candles guttered. The shadows wavered, throwing dark across his face. Then the light steadied, and I could see his eyes, still bright in their deep sockets, watching me.
I heard his voice, thin with effort now, asking me something. Not asking, no. Uther the High King was begging me to stay beside Arthur, to finish the work I had begun, to watch him, advise him, guard him...
His voice faded, but the eyes watched me, intent, and I knew what they were saying. "Tell me the future, Merlin, prophet of kings. Prophesy for me"
"I shall be with him," I said, "and the rest of it I have said before. He will bear a king's sword, and with that sword he will do all and more than men hope for. Under him the countries will be one, and there shall be peace, and light before darkness. And when there is peace I myself will go back into my solitude, but I will be there, waiting, always, to be called up as quickly as a man might whistle for the wind."
I was not speaking with vision: this was something which has never come to me when asked for, and besides, visions did not live easily in the same room as Uther. But to comfort him I spoke from remembered prophecies,