The Hollow Hills - Mary Stewart [182]
The feast wore on. I watched Uther carefully, wondering if he could last until the proclamation was made and the thing done, or if he would lack the strength to see it through. In which case I would have to choose the moment to intervene, or the work would have to be done with fighting. But his strength held. At last he looked round and raised a hand, and the trumpets rang out for silence. The clamour hushed, and all eyes turned to the high table. This had been deliberately raised, for it was beyond the King's strength to stand. Even so, upright in his great chair, with the blaze of lights and banners behind him, he looked alert and splendid, commanding silence.
He laid his hands along the carved arms of his chair, and began to speak. He was smiling.
"My lords, you all know why we are met here tonight. Colgrim has been put to flight, and his brother Badulf, and already reports have been coming back that the enemy is fled in disorder back towards the coast, beyond the wild lands to the north." He went on to speak of the previous day's victory, as decisive, he said, as his brother's victory at Kaerconan had been, and as potent an augury for the future. "The power of our enemies, which has been massing and threatening for so many years, is broken and driven back for a time. We have a breathing space. But more important than this, my lords, we have seen how this breathing space was won; we have seen what unity can do, and what we might suffer from the lack of it. Singly, what could we do, the kings of the north, the kings of the south and west? But together, held and fighting together, with one leader and one plan, we can thrust the sword of Macsen again into the heart of the enemy."
He had spoken, of course, figuratively, but I caught Arthur's half-start of recollection, and the flash of a glance across at me, before he went back to his steady scrutiny of the hall.
The King had paused. Ulfin, behind him, moved forward with a goblet of wine, but the King motioned it aside, and began to speak again. His voice was stronger, with the ring almost of his old vigour. "For this is a lesson which the last years have taught us. There must be one leader, one strong High King to whom all the kingdoms pay undoubted homage. Without this, we are back where we were before the Romans came. We are divided and lost as Gaul and Germany have been divided and lost; we splinter into small peoples, fighting each other as wolves do for food and space, and never turning against the common enemy; we become a submerged province of Rome, sliding with her to her downfall, instead of a new kingdom emerging as a unit with its own laws, its own people, its own gods. With the right king, faithfully followed, I believe that this will come. Who knows, the Dragon of Britain may be lifted, if not as high as the Eagles of Rome, then with a pride and a vision that will be even farther seen."
The silence was absolute. It could have been Ambrosius speaking. Or Maximus himself, I thought. So do the gods speak when they are waited for.
This time the pause was longer. The King had contrived that it should seem like an orator's, a pause to gather eyes, but I saw how his hands whitened on the chair-arms, how carefully he used the pause to gather strength. I thought I was the only one who noticed; hardly an eye was on Uther, the) all watched the boy at his right. All, that is, except the King of Lothian; he was watching the High King, with a kind of eagerness in his face. Ulfin, as the King paused, was beside him again with the goblet; catching my eye, he touched it to his own lips, tasted, then gave it to the King, who drank. There was no way of disguising the tremor in the hand which raised the goblet to his mouth, but before he could betray his weakness further, Ulfin had gently taken the thing from his hand, and set it down. All this, I saw, Lot had