The Last Enchantment - Mary Stewart [38]
"Arthur, you talk of her 'shame.' You don't think you were the first she took to her bed, do you?"
He said, a little too quickly: "I never did think so."
"Then how do you know she had not lain with Lot before you? That she was not already pregnant to him, and took you in the hope of snaring some kind of power and favour to herself? She knew Uther was dying; she feared that Lot, by his action at Luguvallium, had forfeited the King's favour. If she could father Lot's child on you..."
"This is guesswork. This is not what you said that night."
"No. But think back. It would fit the facts of my foreboding equally well."
"But not the force of them," he said sharply. "If the danger from this child is real, then what does it matter who fathered it? Guesswork won't help us."
"I'm not guessing when I tell you that she and Lot were lovers before ever you went to her bed. I told you I had had a dream that night at Nodens' shrine. I saw them meet at a house some way off an ill-frequented road. It must have been by prearrangement. They met like people who have been lovers for a long time. This child may in fact be Lot's, and not yours."
"And we've got it the wrong way round? I was the one she whistled up to save her shame?"
"It's possible. You had come from nowhere, eclipsing Lot as you would soon eclipse Uther. She made her bid to father Lot's child on you, but then had to abandon the attempt, for fear of me."
He was silent, thinking. "Well," he said at length, "time will tell us. But are we to wait for it? No matter whose child this is, it is a danger; and it doesn't take a prophet to see how that could be...or a god to act on it. If Lot ever knows -- or believes -- that his eldest child is fathered by me, how long do you think this chary loyalty of his will last? Lothian is a key point, you know that. I need that loyalty; I have to have it. Even if he had wedded my own sister Morgan, I could hardly have trusted him, whereas now..." He threw out a hand, palm up. "Merlin, it's done every day, in every village in the kingdom. Why not in a king's house? Go north for me, and talk to Morgause."
"You think she would listen? If she had not wanted the child, she would not have scrupled to get rid of it long since. She didn't take you for love, Arthur, and she bears you no friendship for letting her be driven from court. And to me" -- I smiled sourly -- "she bears a most emphatic and justified ill-will. She would laugh in my face. More than that: she would listen, and laugh at the power her action had given her over us, and then she would do whatever she thought would hurt us most."
"But -- "
"You thought she might have persuaded Lot into marriage merely for her own sake, or to score from her sister. No. She took him because I foiled her plans to corrupt and own you, and because at heart, whatever the time may force him to do now, Lot is your enemy and mine, and through him she may one day do you harm."
A sharpening silence. "Do you believe this?"
"Yes."
He stirred. "Then I am still right. She must not bear the child."
"What are you going to do? Pay someone to bake her bread with ergot?"
"You will find some way. You will go -- "
"I will do nothing in the matter."
He came to his feet, like a bow snapping upright when the string breaks. His eyes glittered in the candlelight. "You told me you were my servant. You made me King, you said by the god's wish. Now I am King, and you will obey me."
I was taller than he, by two fingers'