The Last Enchantment - Mary Stewart [205]
"On two counts. What should make a slave -- Casso was a quarryman's labourer when I first found him -- write 'straight to' the High King?"
"I forgot I had not told you: he served me once before. Do you remember when I went north into Lothian to attack Aguisel? And how hard it was to find some way of destroying that dirty jackal without bringing Tydwal and Urien down on my head, swearing vengeance? Some word of this must have got around, because I got a message from this same slave, evidence -- with facts that could be proved -- of something he had seen when he was in Aguisel's service. Aguisel had misused a page, one of Tydwal's young sons, and then murdered him. Casso told us where to find the body. We found it; and others besides. The child had been killed just as Casso had told us."
"And afterwards," I said dryly, "Aguisel cut out the tongues of the slaves who had witnessed it."
"You mean the man is dumb? Well, that might account for the free way men seem to talk in front of him. Aguisel paid dearly for failing to make sure he could not read or write."
"Neither he could. When I knew him in Dunpeldyr he was both dumb and helpless. It was I who, for a service he had done me -- or rather, for no reason that I remember, except perhaps the prompting of the god -- arranged to have him taught."
Arthur, smiling, raised his cup to me. "Did I call it 'pure chance'? I should have remembered who I was talking to. I rewarded Casso after the Aguisel affair, of course, and told him where to send any other information. I believe he has been useful once or twice. Then, over this last thing, he sent straight to me."
We spoke of it for a while longer, then I came back to present matters. "What will you do with Morgause now?"
"I shall have to settle that, with your help, when I get back. Meanwhile I shall send orders that she is to be kept under guard, at the nunnery at Amesbury. The boys will stay with me, and I'll have them brought down to Caerleon for Christmas. Lot's sons will be no problem; they're young enough to find life at court exciting, and old enough now to do without Morgause. As for Mordred, he shall have his chance. I will do the same for him."
I said nothing. In the pause, the cat purred, suddenly loud, and then stopped short on a sighing breath, and slept.
"Well," said Arthur, "what would you have me do? He is in my protection now, so -- even if I could ever have harmed him -- I cannot kill him. I haven't had time to think this thing through, and there'll be time enough later to discuss it with you. But it has always seemed to me that once the boy had survived Lot's murderous purge, I would sooner have him near me, and under my eye, than hidden somewhere in the kingdom, with the threat that that might entail. Say you agree with me."
"I do. Yes."
"So, if I keep him by me, and grant him the birthright that he must have thought he would never see -- "
"I doubt if that has crossed his mind," I said. "I don't think she has told him who he is."
"So? Then I shall tell him myself. Better still. He'll know that I needn't have accepted him. Merlin, it might be well. You and I both remember what it was like to live our youth out as unfathered bastards, and then to be told we were of Ambrosius' blood. And who am I to take on me yet again the wish for my son's death? Once was too much. God knows I paid for it." He looked away again into the flames. There was a bitter line to his mouth. After a while he lifted a shoulder. "You asked about Caliburn. It seems that my sister Morgan took herself a lover; he was one of my knights, a man called Accolon, a good fighter and a fine man -- but one who could never say no to a woman. When King Urbgen was here with Morgan, she cast her eyes on Accolon, and soon had him at her girdle, like a greyhound fawning. Before she came south she had got some northern smith to make a copy of Caliburn, and while she was here in Camelot she managed to get Accolon to