The Hollow Hills - Mary Stewart [32]
"And Duke Cador?" I asked her. "Does he stay here in Cornwall, or go on to Vindocladia to watch the Saxon Shore?"
Her answer surprised me. "He is going north with the King, to the council."
"Is he indeed? Then I'd better guard myself." At her quick look I nodded. "Yes, I shall go straight to the King. Time grows short, and it's luck for me that he's travelling north. He's bound to take his troops by the Glevum Bridge, so Ralf and I can cross by the ferry and get there before him. If I intercept him north of the Severn, there's nothing to show him that I ever left Wales."
Soon after that I took my leave. When I left her she was standing by the window again. Her head was held high, and the breeze was ruffling her dark hair. I knew then that when the time came the child would not be taken from a weeping and regretful woman, but from a Queen, who was content to let him go to his destiny.
***
Not so with Marcia. She was waiting for me in the anteroom, bursting with questions, regrets, and anger against the King which she barely smothered into discretion. I reassured her as best I could, swore several times on every god in every shrine and hollow hill in Britain that I would do my utmost to get possession of the child and keep him safe, but when she started to ask me for spells for protection in childbed, and to talk of wet-nurses, I left her talking, and made for the door.
Forgetting herself in her agitation, she followed me and grabbed my sleeve. "And did I tell you? The King says she must have his own physician, a man he can trust to put the right stories about afterwards, and say nothing about where the poor mite goes for fostering. As if it wasn't more important that my lady should be properly looked after! Give any doctor enough gold, and he'd swear his own mother's life away, everybody knows that."
"Certainly," I said gravely. "But I know Gandar well, and there's no one better. The Queen will be in good hands."
"But an army doctor! What can he know about childbirth?"
I laughed. "He served with my father's army in Brittany for a long time. Where there are fighting men, there are also their women. My father had a standing army in Brittany of fifteen thousand men, encamped. Believe me, Gandar has had plenty of experience."
With that she had to be content. She was talking again about wet-nurses when I left her.
She came to the inn that night, cloaked and hooded, and riding straight as a man. Maeve led her to the room her family shared, drove out everyone -- including Caw -- who was still awake, then took Ralf in to talk to his grandmother. I was in bed before she left.
Next morning Ralf and I set out for Bryn Myrddin, with a flask or two of sloe wine to cheer us on our way. To my surprise, Ralf seemed every bit as cheerful as he had been on the way south. I wondered if, after the brief spell back in the scene of his childhood, service with me had begun to look like freedom. He had heard all the news from his grandmother; he told it me as we rode; most of it was what I had learned already from the Queen, with some court gossip added which was entertaining but hardly informative, except for the talk which was inevitably going round about Uther's rejection of the child.
Ralf, to my secret amusement, seemed as anxious now as Marcia for me to get custody of the baby.
"If the King refuses, what