The Hollow Hills - Mary Stewart [44]
"Not in the least. You'd be a fool if you didn't know by now that I have no ambitions towards your crown."
"Then don't teach my bastard any, will you?" He turned his head, shouting for a servant, then back to me. "And none of your damned magic, either."
"If he's your son," I said dryly, "he won't take very kindly to magic. I shall teach him nothing except what he has the need and the right to know. You have my word on it."
On that we parted. Uther would never like me, nor I him, but there was a kind of cold mutual respect between us, born of our shared blood and the different love and service we had given to Ambrosius. I should have known that he and I were linked in this as closely as the two sides of the same counter, and that we would move together whether we willed it or not. The gods sit over the board, but it is men who move under their hands for the mating and the kill.
I should have known; but I had been so used to God's voice in the fire and stars that I had forgotten to listen for it in the counsels of men.
***
Ralf was waiting, alone in the guarded tent. When I told him the result of my talk with the King, he was silent a long time. Then he said: "So it will all happen, just as you said it would. Did you expect it to come like this? When they brought us here last night, I thought you were afraid."
"I was, but not in the way you mean."
I expected him to ask how, but oddly, he seemed to understand. His cheek flushed and he busied himself over some detail of packing. "My lord, I have to tell you..." His voice was stifled. "I have been very wrong about you. At first I -- because you are not a man of war, I thought -- "
"You thought I was a coward? I know."
He looked up sharply. "You knew? You didn't mind?" This, obviously, was almost as bad as cowardice.
I smiled. "When I was a child among budding warriors, I grew used to it. Besides, I have never been sure myself how much courage I have."
He stared at that, then burst out: "But you are afraid of nothing! All the things that have happened -- this journey -- you'd have thought we were riding out on a summer morning, instead of going by paths filled with wild beasts and outlaws. And when the King's men took us -- even if he is your uncle, that's not to say you'd never be in danger from him. Everyone knows the King's unchancy to cross. But you just looked cold as ice, as if you expected him to do what you wanted, just as everyone does! You, afraid? You're not afraid of anything that's real."
"That's what I mean," I said. "I'm not sure how much courage is needed to face human enemies -- what you'd call 'real' -- knowing they won't kill you. But foreknowledge has its own terrors, Ralf. Death may not lie just at the next corner, but when one knows exactly when it will come, and how...It's not a comfortable thought."
"You mean you do know?"
"Yes. At least, I think it's my death that I see. At any rate it is darkness, and a shut tomb."
He shivered. "Yes, I see. I'd rather fight in daylight, even thinking I might die perhaps tomorrow. At least it's always 'perhaps tomorrow,' never 'now.' Will you wear the doeskin boots for riding, my lord, or change them now?"
"Change them. Thank you." I sat down on a stool and stretched out a foot for him. He knelt to pull off my boots. "Ralf, there is something else I must tell you. I told the King you were with me, and that you would go to Brittany to guard the child."
He looked up at that, struck still. "You told him that? What did he say?"
"That you were a true man. He agreed, and approved you."
He sat back on his heels, my boots in his hands, gaping at me.
"He has had time to think, Ralf, as a king should think. He has also had time -- as kings do -- to still his conscience. He sees Gorlois now as a rebel, and the past as