The Hollow Hills - Mary Stewart [167]
A moment later, as I nodded to the guard outside my antechamber, and went quietly through into the room itself, I saw the edge of the shadow. Beyond the doorway connecting Arthur's room to my own I could see his bed. It was empty.
I went quickly back to the antechamber, and had stooped to shake the sleeping servant awake, when my nostrils caught a familiar smell, the drug that had been in the King's wine. I dropped the man's shoulder and left him snoring, and in three swift strides was back in the corridor. Before I had said a word, the guard flattened himself back against the wall, as if afraid of what he saw in my face.
But I spoke softly: "Where is he?"
"My lord, he's safe. There's no reason for alarm...We had our orders, there was no harm could come to him. The other guard saw him right to the door, and stayed there -- "
"Where is he?"
"In the women's rooms, my lord. When the girl came to him -- "
"Girl?" I asked sharply.
"Indeed, my lord. She came here. We stopped her, of course, wouldn't let her in, but then he came out to the door himself..." Reassured now by my silence, the man was relaxing. "Indeed, my lord, all's well. It was one of the Lady Morgause's women, the black-haired one, you may have noticed her, plump as a robin, and the prettiest, as was proper for my young lord this night -- "
I had noticed her; small and rounded, with a high colour and black eyes bright as a bird's. A pretty creature, very young, and healthy as a summer's day. But I bit my lip. "How long ago?"
"Two hours, as near as might be." A grin touched his mouth. "Time enough. My lord, where's the harm? Even if we'd tried, how could we have stopped him? We didn't let her in; we'd had our orders, and he knew it; but when he said he'd go with her, what could we do? After all, it's a fair end to a man's first battle day."
I said something to him, and went back into my room. The fellow was right enough, the guards had done their duty as they saw it, and this was one situation in which no guard would have interfered. And where indeed was the harm? The boy had seized one half of his manhood today out under the sun; it was inevitable that the rest should come to him tonight. As his sword had quenched its lust for blood, so the boy would burn alive till he quenched his own excitement in a girl's body. Anybody, I thought bitterly, but a god-bound prophet would have foreseen this. Any normal guardian would let this night take its normal course. But I was Merlin, and the room was full of shadows, and I was afraid.
I stood there alone, with the shadows pressing round me, controlling myself to coldness, facing the fear. The blackness came from my mind; very well, was it human merely, was it black jealousy, that Arthur at fourteen should take so easily a pleasure that at twenty I had burned for even as he, and had fumbled, failing? Or was it a fear worse than jealousy, the fear of losing or even sharing a love so dear and lately found; or was I fearful only for him, knowing what a girl could do to rob a man of power? And as this thought struck me I knew I was acquitted; the shadows were not from this. I had known, that day at twenty, when I fled from the girl's angry and derisive laughter, that for me there had been a cold choice between manhood and power, and I had chosen power. But Arthur's power would be different, that of full and fierce manhood, that of a king. He had shown me often enough that however much he might love and learn from me, he was Uther's son in the flesh; he wanted all that manhood could give. It was right that he should lie with his first girl tonight. I ought to smile, like the sentry, and go to bed myself and sleep, leaving him to his pleasure.
But the cold in my entrails and the sweat on my face were not there for nothing. I stood still, while the lamp flared and dimmed and flared again, and thought.