The Last Enchantment - Mary Stewart [16]
The chamberlain was hovering in a doorway. He caught my eye and looked a question. I nodded. He crossed to the Queen's side and murmured something. She assented with a kind of relief, and rose to her feet, the King with her. I noticed that the table was now laid for three, but when the chamberlain came to my elbow I shook my head. After supper their talk would be easier, and they could dismiss the servants. They would be better alone. So I took my leave, ignoring Arthur's glance almost of entreaty, and made my way back to the tavern to see if my fellow-guests there had left any of the supper for me.
***
Next day was bright and sunlit, with the clouds packed away low on the horizon, and a lark singing somewhere as if it were spring. Often a bright day at the end of September brings frost with it, and a searching wind -- and nowhere can the winds search more keenly than on the stretches of the Great Plain. But the day of Uther's burial was a day borrowed from spring; a warm wind and a bright sky, and the sun golden on the Dance of the Hanging Stones.
The ceremonial by the grave was long, and the colossal shadows of the Dance moved round with the sun until the light blazed down full in the center, and it was easier to look at the ground, at the grave itself, at the shadows of clouds massing and moving like armies across the distances, than at the Dance's center where the priests stood in their robes, and the nobles in mourning white, with jewels flashing against the eyes. A pavilion had been erected for the Queen. She stood in its shade, composed and pale among her ladies, showing no sign of fatigue or illness. Arthur, with me beside him, stood at the foot of the grave.
At last it was done. The priests moved off, and after them the King and the royal party. As we crossed the grass toward the horses and litters, already behind us could be heard the soft thudding of earth on wood. Then from above came another sound to mask it. I looked up. High in the September sky could be seen a stream of birds, swift and black and small, gossiping and calling as they went southward. The last flock of swallows, taking the summer with them.
"Let us hope," said Arthur softly, at my elbow, "that the Saxons are taking the hint. I could do with the winter's length, both for the men and for myself, before the fighting starts again. Besides, there's Caerleon. I wish I could go today."
But of course he had to stay, as had we all, as long as the Queen remained in Amesbury. She went straight back to the monastery after the ceremony, and did not appear publicly again, but spent her time resting, or with her son. He was with her as much as his affairs allowed, while her people prepared to make the journey to York as soon as she should feel able to travel.
Arthur hid his impatience, and busied himself with the troops at exercise, or in long hours of talk with his friends and captains. Each day I could see him more and more absorbed in what he was doing, and what he faced. I myself saw little of him or of Ygraine; much of my time was spent out at the Giants' Dance, directing the sinking of the king-stone once more into its bed above the royal grave.
At last, eight days after Uther's burial, the Queen's party set off for the north. Arthur watched them decently out of sight along the road to Cunetio, then gave a great breath of relief, and pulled the fighting men out of Amesbury as neatly and quickly as pulling a stopper from a flask. It was the fifth day of October, and it was raining, and we were bound, as I knew to my cost, for the Severn estuary, and the ferry across to Caerleon, City of Legions.
4
Where the ferry crosses, the Severn estuary is wide, with big tides that come up fast over thick red mud. Boys watch the cattle night and day, for a whole herd can sink in the tidal mud