The Last Enchantment - Mary Stewart [133]
He pushed himself away from the parapet, and, turning aside, took half a dozen rapid steps away and back again. He broke off a sprig of rosemary, and pulled it to and fro in his hands. I could smell its peppery, pungent scent from where I stood. I said nothing. After a while he stopped pacing and stood, feet apart, watching me, but still pulling the rosemary in and out between his fingers.
"So that is the story."
"I see." I regarded him thoughtfully. "And so you spent the night as Melwas' guest, and Bedwyr is still there, and the Queen is lodged there as well...until when?"
"I shall send for her tomorrow."
"And today you sent for me. Why? It seems that the affair is settled, and your decisions have been made."
"You must know very well why I sent for you." His voice had a sudden rough edge to it that belied his previous calm. "What do you know that 'would have stirred up trouble' if you had spoken to me that night? If you have something to say to me, Merlin, say it."
"Very well. But tell me first, have you spoken with the Queen at all?"
A lift of the brows. "What do you think? A man who has been away from his wife for the best part of a month? And a wife who was in need of comfort."
"But if she was ill, being nursed by the women -- "
"She was not ill. She was tired, and distressed, and she was very frightened."
I thought of Guinevere's composed, quiet voice, the careful poise, the shaking body.
"Not of my coming." He spoke sharply, answering what I had not said. "She feared Melwas, and she fears you. Are you surprised? Most people do. But she does not fear me. Why should she? I love her. But she was afraid that some evil tongue might poison me with lies...So until I went to her, and listened to her story, she could not rest."
"She was afraid of Melwas? Why? Was her story not the same as his?"
This time he did answer the implication. He sent the mangled sprig of rosemary spinning out over the terrace wall. "Merlin." It came quietly, but with a kind of hard-held finality. "Merlin, you do not have to tell me that Melwas lied to me, and that this was a rape. If Guinevere had been so badly hurt when she fell that she lay fainting for most of the day, then she could hardly have ridden home with you, or been as whole and sound as she was when I lay with her that night. She had sustained no hurt at all. Nothing but fear."
"She told you that his story was a lie?"
"Yes."
If Guinevere had told him a different tale, I thought I knew what she had not made clear. I said slowly: "When she spoke with Bedwyr and myself, her story was the same as Melwas'. Now you say that the Queen herself told you it was a rape?"
"Yes." His brows twitched together. "You don't believe either story, do you? Is that what you are trying to tell me? You think -- by God, Merlin, just what do you think?"
"I don't yet know the Queen's story. Tell me what she said."
He was so angry that I thought he would leave me then and there. But after a turn or two along the terrace he came back to where I waited. He had almost the air of a man approaching single combat.
"Very well. You are my counsellor, after all, and it seems I shall be in need of counsel." He drew in his breath. The story came in brief, expressionless sentences. "This is what she says. She did not take a fall at all. She saw her falcon stoop, and catch its jesses in a tree. She stopped her mare, and dismounted. Then she saw Melwas, in his boat by the bank. She called to him for help. He came up the bank to her, but did nothing about the merlin. He started to talk to her of love; how he had loved her since the time they had travelled up from Wales together. He would not listen when she tried to stop him, and when she made to mount again he took hold of her, and in the straggle the mare broke free and bolted. The Queen tried to call out for her people, but he put a hand over her mouth, and threw her down into the boat. The servant thrust it off from the bank, and rowed them away. The man was afraid, she says, and made some sort of protest, but he did as Melwas bade