The Last Enchantment - Mary Stewart [136]
"I have heard whispers, yes. But this is not for anything she is, or has done. It is only because they look daily for an heir, and she has been Queen for four years, without bearing. It's natural that there should be disappointed hopes, and some whispering."
"There will be no heir. She is barren. I am sure of it now, and so is she."
"I feared it. I am sorry."
"If I had not planted other seed here and there," he said with a wry smile, "I might share some of the blame with her; but there was the child I begot on my first Queen, not to speak of Morgause's bastard by me. So the fault -- if it is that -- is known to be the Queen's, and because she is a Queen, her grief at it cannot be kept private. And there will always be those who start whispers, in the hope that I will put her away. Which," he added with a snap, "I shall not."
"It wouldn't occur to me to advise it," I said mildly. "What does occur to me is to wonder if this is the shadow that I saw once lie across your marriage bed...But enough of that. What we must do now is bring her back into the people's love."
"You make it sound easy. If you know how -- "
"I think I do. You swore just now by Hades, and it broke a dream I had. Will you let me go to Ynys Witrin, and bring her back to you myself?"
He started to ask why, then half laughed and shrugged. "Why not? Maybe to you it is as easy as it sounds...Go, then. I'll send word for them to prepare a royal escort. I'll receive her here. At least it saves me having to see Melwas again. Will you, with all your wise counsels, try to stop me from killing him?"
"As effectively as a mother hen calling the young swan out of the water. You will do as you think fit." I looked out across the water-logged plain, toward the Tor and the low-lying shape of its neighbour island, where the harbour lay. I added, thoughtfully: "It's a pity that he sees fit to charge harbour dues -- and exorbitant ones at that -- to the war-leader who protects him."
His eyes widened speculatively. A smile tugged at his mouth. He said slowly: "Yes, isn't it? And then there's the matter of the toll on the road along the ridge. If my captains should by any chance refuse to pay, then no doubt Melwas will bring the complaint here himself, and who knows, it may even be the first that comes to the new council chamber? Now, since that is what I told the scribe you were coming for, shall we go and see it? And tomorrow, at the third hour, I'll send the royal escort, to bring her home."
6
With Bedwyr still on Ynys Witrin, the royal escort was led by Nentres, one of the western rulers who had fought under Uther, and who now brought his allegiance and that of his sons to Arthur. He was a grizzled veteran, spare of body, and as supple in the saddle as a youth. He left the escort fidgeting under its Dragon banners on the road below my house, and came riding himself up the curving track by the stream, followed by a groom leading a chestnut horse trapped with silver. Horse and trappings alike were burnished to a glitter as bright as Nentres' shield, and jewels winked on the breast-band. The saddle-cloth was of murrey, worked with silver thread.
"The King sent this for you," he said with a grin. "He reckons your own would look like a dealer's throw-out among the rest. Don't look at him like that, he's much quieter than he appears."
The groom gave me a hand to mount. The chestnut tossed his head and mouthed the bit, but his stride was smooth and easy. After my stolid old black gelding he was like a sailing-boat after a poled barge.
The morning was cold, in the wake of the north wind that had frozen the fields since mid-March. At dawn that day I had climbed