The Hollow Hills - Mary Stewart [88]
When Gandar had gone, I went back into the boy's room to find Morgause slowly conning over the paper I had given her, while Stilicho showed her, one by one, the simples for distillation, the powders for sleeping draughts, the oils for massage of the pulled muscles. Neither of them saw me come in, so I watched for a few minutes in silence. I could see that Morgause missed nothing, and that, though the boy still watched her sideways and tended to shy from her beauty like a colt from fire, she seemed as oblivious of his sex as a princess should be of a slave.
The heat of the room was making my head ache. I crossed quickly to the table. Stilicho's monologue stopped short, and the girl looked up and smiled.
I said: "You understand it all? Good. I'll leave you now with Stilicho. If there's anything you want to know that he can't tell you, send for me."
I turned then to give instructions to the boy, but to my surprise Morgause made a quick movement towards me, laying a hand on my sleeve.
"Prince -- "
"Morgause?"
"Must you really go? I -- I thought you would teach me, you yourself. I want so much to learn from you."
"Stilicho can teach you all you need to know about the drugs the King will want. If you wish, I will show you how to help him over the pain of the tightened muscles, but I should have thought his bath-slave would do that better."
"Oh, yes, I know. I wasn't thinking of things like that: it's easy enough to learn what is needed for the King's care. It was -- I had hoped for more. When I asked Gandar to bring me to you, I had thought -- I had hoped -- "
The sentence died and she drooped her head. The rose-gold hair fell in a gleaming curtain to hide her face. Through it, as through rain, I saw her eyes watching me, thoughtful, meek, childlike.
"You had hoped -- ?"
I doubt if even Stilicho, four paces away, heard the whisper. " -- that you might teach me a little of your art, my lord Prince." Her eyes appealed to me, half hopeful and half afraid, like a bitch expecting to be whipped.
I smiled at her, but I knew my manner was stiff and my voice over-formal. I can face an armed enemy more easily than a young girl pleading like this, with a pretty hand on my sleeve, and her scent sweet on the hot air like fruit in a sunny orchard. Strawberries, was it, or apricots...? I said quickly: "Morgause, I've no art to teach you that you cannot learn as easily from books. You read, don't you? Yes, of course you do, you read the formula. Then learn from Hippocrates and Galen. Let them be your masters; they were mine."
"Prince Merlin, in the arts I speak of you have no master."
The heat of the room was overpowering. My head hurt me. I must have been frowning, because she came close with a gentle dipping movement, like a bird nestling, and said rapidly, pleadingly: "Don't be angry with me. I've waited so long, and I was so sure that the chance had come. My lord, all my life I have heard people speak of you. My nurse in Brittany -- she told me how she used to see you walking through the woods and by the seashore, gathering the cresses and roots and the white berries of the thunder-bough, and how sometimes you went with no more sound than a ghost, and no shadow even on a sunny day."
"She was telling stories to frighten you. I am a man like other men."
"Do other men talk to the stars as if they were friends in a familiar room? Or move the standing stones? Or follow the druids into Nemet and not die under the knife?"
"I did not die under the druids' knife because the arch-druid was afraid of my father," I said bluntly. "And when I was in Brittany I was hardly a man, and certainly not a magician. I was a boy then, learning my trades as you are learning yours. I was barely seventeen when I left there."