The Last Enchantment - Mary Stewart [37]
It was well after midnight. The sounds of revelry from the town were fainter now, muted with the chill of the hour before dawn. In the King's room the candles had burned low into a welter of honeyed wax. Their scent mingled with the sharp smoke from a lamp that needed trimming.
Arthur turned sharply on his heel and came back to stand in front of me. He had taken off the crown and jewelled chain, and laid his sword aside, but he still wore the splendid coronation robe. The furred cloak lay across the table like a stream of blood in the lamplight. Through the open door of his bedchamber I could see the covers turned back ready on the great bed, but, late though the hour was, Arthur showed no sign of fatigue. His every movement was infused with a kind of nervous fury.
He controlled it, speaking quietly. "Merlin, when we spoke that night of what had happened -- " A breathing pause, then he changed course with ferocious directness: "When I lay incestuously with Morgause, I asked you what would happen if she should conceive. I remember what you said. I remember it well. Do you?"
"Yes," I said unwillingly, "I remember it."
"You said to me, 'The gods are jealous, and they insure against too much glory. Every man carries the seed of his own death, and there must come a term to every life. All that has happened tonight is that you yourself have set that term.' "
I said nothing. He faced me with the straight, uncompromising look that I was to come to know so well.
"When you spoke to me like that, were you telling me the truth? Was the prophecy a sure one, or were you finding words of comfort for me, so that I could face what was to come next day?"
"It was the truth."
"You meant that if she bore a child to me, you could foresee that he -- she? -- would be my death?"
"Arthur," I said, "prophecy does not work like that. I neither knew, in the way most men think of 'knowing,' that Morgause would conceive, nor that the child would be a mortal danger for you. I only knew, all the time you were with the woman, that the birds of death were on my shoulders, weighing me down and stinking of carrion. My heart was heavy with dread, and I could see death, as I thought, linking the two of you together. Death and treachery. But how, I did not know. By the time I understood it, the thing was done, and all that was left was to await what the gods chose to send."
He paced away from me again, over toward the bedchamber door. He leaned there in silence, his shoulder to the jamb, his face away from me, then thrust himself off and turned. He crossed to the chair behind the big table, sat down, and regarded me, chin on fist. His movements were controlled and smooth, as always, but I, who knew him, could hear the curb-chain ring. He still spoke quietly. "And now we know the carrion-birds were right. She did conceive. You told me something else that night, when I admitted my fault. You said I had sinned unknowingly and was innocent. Is innocence, then, to be punished?"
"It's not uncommon."
" 'The sins of the fathers'?"
I recognized the phrase as a quotation from the Christian scriptures. "Uther's sin," I said, "visited on you."
"And mine, now, on the child?"
I said nothing. I did not like the way the interview was going. For the first time, talking with Arthur, I did not seem able to take control. I told myself I was weary, that I was still in the ebbtide of power, that my time would come again; but the truth is I was feeling a little like the fisherman in the Eastern tale who unstopped a bottle and let out a genie many times more powerful than himself.
"Very well," said the King. "My sin and hers must be visited on the child. It must not be allowed to live. You will go north and tell Morgause so. Or if you prefer, I shall give you a letter telling her so myself."
I took breath, but he swept on without giving me time to speak.
"Quite apart from your forebodings -- which God