The Last Enchantment - Mary Stewart [204]
"Indeed, yes." He looked away from me, leaning forward to adjust a log on the burning pile. "It was she who dealt with the theft of Caliburn."
I waited, but he left it there. I said at length: "I understood she was still in the north. She is well?"
"Very well." The log was burning to his satisfaction. He set his chin on a fist, and stared at the fire. "So. If Morgause had the treasure with her when she embarked, it will be somewhere on the Island. My people saw to it that she did not go ashore between Segontium and her landing there. She lodged with Melwas, so it should not be beyond me to have it traced. Morgause is being held under guard until I get back. If she refuses to speak, the children will hardly be proof against questioning. The younger ones are too innocent to see any harm in telling the truth. Children see everything; they will know where she left the treasure."
"I understand that you're going to keep them?"
"You saw that? Yes. You would also see that your courier came just in time to save Morgause."
I thought of my own effort to reach him with my dreaming will, when I thought she would use the stolen grail against him. "You were going to kill her?"
"Certainly, for killing you."
"Without proof?"
"I don't need proof to have a witch put to death."
I raised a brow at him, and quoted what had been said at the opening of the Round Hall: " 'No man nor woman shall be harmed unjustly, or punished without trial or manifest proof of their trespass.' "
He smiled. "Well, all right. I did have proof. I had your own word that she tried to kill you."
"So you said. I thought you said it to frighten her. I told you nothing."
"I know. And why not? Why did you keep it secret from me that it was her poison that sent you to your death in the Wild Forest, and then left you with the sickness that was almost your death again?"
"You've answered that yourself. You would have killed her, after the Wild Forest. But she was the mother of that young son, and heavy with another, and I knew that one day they would come to you, and become, in time, your faithful servants. So I did not tell you. Who did?"
"Nimuë."
"I see. And she knew -- how? By divination?"
"No. From you. Something you said in your delirium."
Everything, she had taken from me; every last secret. I said merely: "Ah, yes...And do I take it that she also found Mordred for you? Or did Morgause bring him into the open, once Lot and I were dead?"
"No. He was still hidden. I understand that he was lodged somewhere in the Orkney Islands. Nimuë had nothing to do with that. It was by the purest chance that I heard of him. I got a letter. A goldsmith from York, who had done work for Morgause before, travelled that way with some jewels he hoped to sell her. These fellows, as you know, get into every corner of the kingdom, and see everything."
"Not Beltane."
His head came up, surprised. "You know him?"
"Yes, He's as good as blind. He has to travel with a servant -- "
"Casso," said the King. Then, as I stared: "I told you I got a letter."
"From Casso?"
"Yes. It seems he was in Dunpeldyr when -- ah, I see, that was when you met them? Then you will know they were there on the night of the massacre. Casso, it appears, saw and heard a good deal of what went on; people talk in front of a slave, and he must have understood more than he was meant to. His master could never be brought to believe that Morgause had anything to do with events so dreadful, so went up to Orkney to try his luck again. Casso, being less credulous, watched and listened, and managed at length to locate the child who went missing on the night of the massacre. He sent a message straight to me. As it happened, I had just heard from Nimuë that it was