The Hollow Hills - Mary Stewart [166]
"That is all I wanted to know," he said. "That you will stay near him, and serve him at all times...Perhaps, if I had listened to my brother, and kept you near me...You have promised, Merlin. There is no man who has more power, not even the High King."
He said it without rancour, in the tone of one making a plain statement. His voice was tired suddenly, the voice of a sick man.
I got to my feet. "I'll leave you now, Uther. You had better sleep. What is the draught Morgause gives you?"
"I don't know. Some poppy-smelling thing; she puts it in warm wine."
"Does she sleep here, near you?"
"No. Along the corridor, in the first of the women's rooms. But don't disturb her now. There's some of the drug still in that jar yonder."
I crossed the room, picked up the jar, and sniffed it. The potion, whatever it was, was already mixed in wine; the smell was sweet and heavy; poppy there was and other things I recognized, but it was not quite familiar. I dipped a finger in and put it to my lips. "Has anyone touched it since she mixed it?"
"Eh?" He had been drifting away, not in sleep, but as sick men do. "Touched it? No one that I have seen, but there's no one will try to poison me. It's well known that all my food is tasted. Call the boy in, if you wish."
"No need," I said. "Let him sleep." I poured some into a cup, but when I lifted it to my mouth he said with sudden vigour: "Don't be a fool! Let be!"
"I thought you said it would not be poisoned."
"No matter of that, we'll not take the chance."
"Do you not trust Morgause?"
"Morgause?" He knitted his brows, as if at an irrelevancy. "Of course, why not? When she has cared for me all these years, refusing to wed, even when...But no matter of that. Her fate is 'in the smoke,' she says, and she is content to wait for it. She riddles like you, sometimes, and I've scant patience with riddles, as you may remember. No, how could I doubt my daughter? But tonight of all nights we must be wary, and of all men, except my son, I can least spare you." He smiled then, momentarily the Uther that I remembered, hard and gay, and slightly malicious. "At least, not until he is proclaimed, and then no doubt you and I will well spare one another."
I smiled. "Meantime I'll taste your wine. Calm yourself, I can smell nothing hurtful, and I assure you that my death is not yet."
I did not add, "So let me make sure that you live to pro-claim your son tomorrow." This strange shadow that brooded still behind my shoulder, it could not be my own death, nor (I knew) was it Arthur's, but it might, against all probability, be the King's. I took a sip, letting the wine rest for a moment on my tongue, then swallowed. The King lay back on his pillows and watched me, tranquil once more. I sipped again, then crossed the room to sit down by the great bed, and, more idly now, we talked: of the past seamed with memories; of the future, shadows still across glory. We understood one another tolerably well at the last, Uther and I. When it was patent that the wine was harmless I poured a draught for him, watched him drink it, then called his servant Ulfin, and left him to sleep.
4
All was so far well. Even if Uther died tonight -- and nothing in his look or in my bones told me that he would -- all was surely still set fair. I, with Cador's backing and Ector's support, could proclaim Arthur to the nobles as well as the King could, and prestige with power behind it had every chance of forcing the thing through. The King's gesture in flinging his sword to the boy in battle would be, to many of the soldiers, proof enough of Arthur's right to succeed him, and the warriors who had followed him so gladly today would follow him still. It was surely only the dissidents of the north-east who would not rejoice to see the days of uncertainty finished, and the succession pass clear and undoubted into Arthur's hands.
Then why, I thought, as I trod quietly along the corridors towards my own chamber,