The Last Enchantment - Mary Stewart [210]
"So you were warned of that? My poor child, left to guard such a treasure...Did Bagdemagus warn you that Morgause had heard of it, and meant to steal it?"
"What?" She looked at me blankly. "What do you mean? What had Morgause to do with the grail? It would have soiled the god himself if she had even looked at it. How was she to know where to find it?"
"I don't know. But she took it. I was told so, by someone who watched her do it."
"Then you were told a lie," said Nimuë roundly. "I took it myself."
"It was you who took Macsen's treasure?"
"Indeed it was." She sat up, glowing. In her eyes two little braziers, reflected, shone and glittered. The candid grey eyes looked, with the red points of light, like cat's eyes, or witch's. "You told me yourself where it lay buried; do you remember that? Or were you already gone into your own mists, my dear?"
"I remember."
She said soberly: "You told me that power was a hard master. It was the hardest thing I have ever done, to go to Segontium, instead of travelling south again to Bryn Myrddin. But in the end I knew I had been bidden to do it, so I went. I took two of my servants, men I could trust, and found the place. It had changed. The shrine had gone, under a landslip, but I took the bearings you had given me, and we dug there. It might have taken a long time, but we had help."
"A dirty little shepherd boy, who could hold a hazel stick over the earth, and tell you where the treasure was hidden."
Her eyes danced. "So, why do I trouble to tell you my story? Yes. He came and showed us, and we dug down, and took the box away. I went up into the fortress then, and spoke with the Commandant, and slept there that night, with a guard on my room. And during the night as I lay in my bed, with that box beneath it, the visions came teeming. I knew that you were alive, and free, and that you would soon be with the King. So in the morning I asked for an escort to take the treasure south, and set off for Caerleon."
"And so missed me by two days," I said.
"Missed you? Where?"
"Did you think I 'saw' the shepherd boy in the fire? No, I was there." I told her then, briefly, about my stay in Segontium, and my visit to the vanished shrine. "So when the boy told me about you and your two servants, like a fool I assumed it was Morgause. He didn't describe the woman, except that she -- " I paused, and looked across at her with raised brows. "He said she was a queen, and the servants had royal badges. That was why I assumed -- "
I stopped. Her hand, holding mine, had clenched suddenly. The laughter in her eyes died; she looked at me fixedly, with a strange mixture of appeal and dread. It did not need the Sight to guess the part of the story that she had not told me, or why Arthur and the rest had avoided speaking of her to me. She had not usurped my power, or had a hand in trying to destroy me: all she had done, once the old enchanter had gone, was to take a young man to her bed.
I seemed to have been expecting this moment for a very long time. I smiled, and asked her, gently: "Who is he, this king of yours?"
The red rushed into her cheeks. I saw the tears sting her eyes again. "I should have told you straight away. They said they hadn't told you. Merlin, I didn't dare."
"Don't look like that, my dear. What we had, we had, and one cannot drink the same draught of elixir twice. If I had still been half a magician, I should have known long ago. Who is he?"
"Pelleas."
I knew him, a young prince, handsome and kind, with a sort of gaiety about