The Hollow Hills - Mary Stewart [79]
"Not that, no. Only that the times were dangerous, and I should get home. Uther ill? That's grave news. What's the sickness?"
"A wound gone bad. You knew he's been seeing to the rebuilding of the Saxon Shore defenses, and training the troops there himself? Well, an alarm was raised about longships up the Thames -- they'd been seen level with Vagniacae -- too near London for comfort. A small foray, nothing serious, but he was first into it as usual, and got a cut, and the wound didn't heal. This was two months since, and he's still in pain, and losing flesh."
"Two months? Hasn't his own physician been attending him?"
"Indeed yes. Gandar's been there from the beginning."
"And he could do nothing?"
"Well," said Lucan, "according to him the King was mend- ing, and he says -- along with the other doctors who've been consulted -- that there's nothing to fear. But I've watched them conferring in corners, and Gandar looks worried." He glanced at me sideways. "There's a kind of uneasiness -- you might even call it apprehenson -- infecting the whole court, and it's going to be hard to keep it contained there. I don't have to tell you, it's a bad time for the country to doubt if their leader's going to be fit to lead them. In fact, rumours have started already. You know the King can't have the bellyache without a scare of poison; and now they whisper about spells and hauntings. And not without reason; the King looks, sometimes, like a man who walks with ghosts. It was time you came home."
We were already moving along the road from the port. The horses had been there ready saddled at the quayside, and an escort waiting; this more for ceremony than for safety; the road to London is well-travelled and guarded. It occurred to me that perhaps the armed men who rode with us were there, not to see that I came to the King unharmed, but that I came there at all.
I said as much dryly, to Lucan. "It seems the King wants to make sure of me."
He looked amused, but only said with his courtier's smoothness: "Perhaps he was afraid that you might not care to attend him. Shall we say that a physician who fails to cure a king does not always add to his reputation."
"Does not always survive, you mean. I trust poor Gandar's still alive?"
"So far." He paused, then said neutrally: "Not that I'm much of a judge, but I'd have said it's not the King's body that lacks a cure, but his mind."
"So it's my magic that's wanted?" He was silent. I added: "Or his son?"
His eyelids drooped. "There are rumours about him, too."
"I'm sure there are." My voice was as bland as his. "One piece of news I did hear on my travels, that the Queen was pregnant again. I reckon she should have been brought to bed a month ago. What is the child?"
"It was a son, stillborn. They say that it was this sent the King out of his mind, and fevered his wound again. And now there are rumours that the eldest son is dead, too. In fact some say he died in infancy, that there is no son." He paused. His gaze fixed on his horse's ears, but there was the faintest of queries in his voice.
"Not true, Lucan," I said. "He's alive, a fine boy, and growing fast. Don't be afraid, he'll be there when he's needed."
"Ah." It was a long exhalation of relief. "Then it's true he's with you! This is the news that will heal the kingdom, if not the King. You'll bring the boy to London now?"
"First I must see the King. After that, who knows?"
A courtier knows when a subject has been turned, and Lucan asked no more questions, but began to talk of more general news. He told me in more detail what I had already learned from Ector's letters; Ector had certainly not exaggerated the situation. I took care not to ask too many questions about the possible danger in the north, but Lucan spoke of it himself, of the manning of strongpoints north of Rheged along the old line of Hadrian's Wall, and then of Lot's contribution to the defense of the north-east. "He's making hard going of it. Not because the raids are bad -- the place has been quiet lately -- but perhaps because of that very fact. The small kings