The Hollow Hills - Mary Stewart [48]
I said: "Lothian is a key to the defense that Uther's planning, even more than Rheged or Strathclyde. I'd heard tell -- I don't know if it's true? -- that there are Angles settled on the Alaunus, and that the strength of the Anglian Federates south of York along the Abus has doubled since my father's death?"
"It's true." He spoke heavily. "And south of Lothian there's only Urien on the coast, and he's another carrion crow, picking at Lot's leavings. Nay, that may be another one I'm doing an injustice to. He's married to Lot's sister, when all's done, so he'd be bound to cry the same way. Talking of which -- "
"Talking of what?" I asked, as he paused.
"Marriage." He scowled, then began to grin. "If it wasn't so plaguy dangerous, it would be funny. You knew Uther had a bastard girl, I forget her name, she must be seven or eight years old?"
"Morgause. Yes, I remember her. She was born in Brittany."
Morgause was a sideslip of Uther's by a girl in Brittany who had followed him to Britain hoping, I suppose, for marriage, since she was of good family, and the only woman, so far as anyone knew then for certain, who had borne him a child. (It had always been a matter of amazement, and a good deal of private and public conjecture among Uther's troops, how he managed to avoid leaving a train of bastards in his wake like seedlings following the sower down a furrow. But this girl was, to public knowledge, the only one. And I believe to Uther's knowledge, too. He was a fair man and a generous one, and no girl had suffered any loss worse than maidenhead through him.) He had acknowledged the child, kept both child and mother at one of his houses, and after the mother's marriage to a lord of his household, had taken the girl into his own. I had seen her once or twice in Brittany, a thin pale-haired girl with big eyes and a mouth folded small.
"What about Morgause?" I asked.
"Uther was casting out feelers for marrying her to Lot, come the time she'll be ready for bedding."
I cocked an eyebrow at him. "And what did Lot think about that?"
"Eh, you'd have laughed to watch him. Black as a wolverine at the suggestion that Uther's byblow was good enough, but careful to keep his talk sweet in case there's no other daughter born in the right bed now the King's wedded. Bastards -- and their mates -- have inherited kingdoms before now. Saving your presence, of course."
"Of course. Lot casts his eyes as high as that, then?"
He gave a short nod. "High as the High Kingdom itself, you can take my word for it."
I digested that, frowning. I had never met Lot; he was at this time scarcely older than myself -- somewhere in his early twenties -- and though he had fought under my father, his path and mine had not crossed. "So Uther wants to tie Lothian to him, and Lot wants to be tied? Whether it's for his own ambition or not, it means surely that Lot will fight for the High King when the time comes? And Lothian is our main bulwark against the Angles and the other invaders from the north."
"Oh, aye, he'll fight," said Ector. "Unless the Angles offer him a better bribe than Uther does."
"Do you mean that?" I was alarmed. Ector, for all his bluff ways, was a shrewd observer, and few men knew more about the changing shifts of power along our shores.
"Maybe I was putting it a trifle high. But for my money Lot's unscrupled and ambitious, and that's a combination that spells danger to any overlord who can't placate him."
"How is he with Rheged?" I was thinking of the child to be lodged here perhaps at Galava, with Lot east by north across the Pennines.
"Oh, friends, friends. As good friends as two big hounds each with his own full platter of meat; No, it's not yet a matter for concern, and may never be. So forget it, and drink up." He drank deeply himself, set down his cup and wiped his mouth. Then he fixed me with a sharp and curious eye. "Well? You'd better get to it, boy. You didn't come all this way for a good supper and a brattle with