The Last Enchantment - Mary Stewart [134]
I thought of the fire, the bed, the rich hangings, the robe Guinevere had worn. "I saw a little. Yes, it was prepared."
"He had had her in his mind so long...He had only been waiting his chance. He had followed her before -- it was well known that she had a habit of outriding her people." There was a film of sweat on his face. He put the heel of his hand up to his brow and wiped it away.
"Did he lie with her, Arthur?"
"No. He held her there all day, pleading with her, she says, begging for her love...He began with sweet speeches and promises, but when they got him nowhere, he grew crazed, she says, and violent, and began to see his own danger. After he sent his man away, she thinks he might have forced her, but the servant came quickly back to tell his master that my sails had been sighted, and Melwas left her in panic, and hurried to me to tell his lies. He threatened her that if she spoke the truth to me, he, Melwas, would say he had lain with her, so that I would kill her as well as him. She was to tell the same story as he would tell. Which you say she did, to you."
"Yes."
"And you knew it was not true?"
"Yes."
"I see." He was still watching me with that fierce but wary look. I was beginning to realize, but without much surprise, that even I could not keep secrets from him now. "And you thought she might have lied to me. That was the 'trouble' you foresaw?"
"Partly, yes."
"You thought she would lie to me? To me?" He repeated it as if it were unthinkable.
"If she were afraid, who could blame her for lying? Yes, I know you say she is not afraid of you. But she is only a woman, after all, and she might well be afraid of your anger. Any woman would lie to save herself. It would have been your right to kill her, and him, too."
"It is still my right to do that, whether there was a rape or not."
"Well, then -- ? Could she have known that you would even listen to her, that you would be King and statesman before you allowed yourself to be the vengeful husband? Even I stand amazed, and I thought I knew you."
A flicker of grim amusement. "With Bedwyr and the Queen on the Island as hostages, you might say my hands were tied...I shall kill him, of course. You know that, don't you? But in my own time, and on some other cause, when all this is forgotten, and the Queen's honour cannot suffer from it." He swung away, and put his two hands on the parapet, looking out again across the darkening stretch of land toward the sea. Somewhere a beam broke through the clouds, and a shaft of dusky light poured down, lighting a distant stretch of water to a piercing gleam.
He spoke slowly, into the distance. "I've been thinking over the story I shall put about. I shall take a tale midway between Melwas' lie and what the Queen told me. She was there all day with him, after all, from dawn till dusking...I shall let it be given out that she fell from her horse, as Melwas said, and was carried unconscious to the hunting lodge, and there lay, shaken and fainting for most of the day. Bedwyr and you must bear this out. If it were known that she was not hurt at all, there are those who would blame her for not trying to escape. This, though the servant had the boat under his eyes all day, and even if she could have swum, there were the knives...She could, of course, have threatened them with my vengeance, but she saw that as the road only to her own end. He could have kept her there, and had his pleasure and then killed her. You know that her people had already accepted the fact of her death. Except you. That was what saved her."
I said nothing. He turned.
"Yes. Except you. You told them she was alive, and you took Bedwyr to her. Now, tell me how you knew. Was it a 'seeing'?"
I bent my head. "When Cei came for me, I called on the old powers, and they responded. I saw her in the flame, and Melwas, too."
A moment of suddenly sharpening concentration. It was not often that the High King searched me for truth as he was