The Last Enchantment - Mary Stewart [71]
"I should have trusted you to know what you were doing."
"When I have not known myself? For all I know, you have been wiser than I. At least, since the thing is done, and it seems Arthur will bear some part of the blame for it, we can be forgiven for hoping that Morgause's child is dead with the rest."
"How could any of them escape? Look, my lord."
I swung round to look where he pointed.
Away out to sea, beyond a low reef of rocks at the edge of the bay, a sail showed, a pale crescent, glimmering faintly grey in the sea-light. Then it cleared the reef, and the boat moved out to sea. The wind, steadily offshore, filled the sail, taking the boat out with the speed of a gliding gull. Herod's mercy for the innocents lay there, in the movement of wind and sea, as the drifting boat dipped and skimmed, carrying its hapless cargo fast away from the shore.
The sail melted into the grey and vanished. The sea sighed and murmured under the wind. The little waves lapped on the rock and dragged the sand and broken shells seaward past the mules' feet. On the ridge beside us the bent-grass whistled in the wind. Then, above these sounds, I heard it, very faintly, carried to us over the water in a lull of the wind; a thin, keening wail, as unhuman as the song of the grey seals at their meeting-haunts. It dwindled as we listened; then suddenly came again, piercingly loud, straight over us, as if some soul, leaving the doomed boat, had flown homing for the shore. Ulfin shied as if from a ghost, and made the sign against evil; but it was only a gull sweeping over us, high in the wind.
Ulfin did not speak again, and I sat my mule in silence. Something was there in the dark; something that weighed me down with grief. Not the children's fate only; certainly not the presumed death of Arthur's child. But the dim sight of that sail moving away over the grey water, and the sorrowful sounds that came out of the dark, found an echo somewhere in the very core of my soul.
I sat there without moving, while the wind dwindled to silence, and the water lapped on the rock, and on the sea the wailing died away.
BOOK II -- Camelot
1
Much as I would have liked to do so, I did not leave Dunpeldyr straight away. Arthur was still in Linnuis, and would want my report, not only on the massacre itself but on what happened afterwards. Ulfin, I think, expected to be dismissed, but, reckoning that to lodge in Dunpeldyr itself would hardly be safe, I stayed on at The Bush of Broom, and so kept Ulfin with me to act as messenger and connecting-file. Beltane, who had been understandably shaken by the night's events, went south straight away with Casso. I kept my promise to the latter: it had been a promise made on impulse, but I have found that such impulses commonly have a source which should not be denied. So I talked with the goldsmith, and easily persuaded him of the advantages of a servant who could read and write; I made it clear, besides, that I was letting Casso go to him for less than his cost to me on condition that my wish was met. I found I had not needed to insist; Beltane, that kindly man, promised with pleasure to teach Casso himself, and then they both took leave of me and went south, aiming once more for York. With them went Lind, who, it seemed, had met a man in York who might protect her; he was a small merchant, a respectable fellow who had spoken of marriage, but whom, for fear of the queen, she had rejected. I took leave of them, and settled down to see what the next few days would bring.
Some two or three days after the terrible night of Lot's return, the wreckage of the boat began to come ashore, and with it the bodies. It was apparent that the boat had driven on rock somewhere and had been broken up by the tide. The poor women who went down to the beach fell to a kind of dreadful squabbling as to which baby was which. The shore was haunted by these wretched women. They wept a great deal and said very little; it was apparent that they were accustomed, like beasts, to take what their lords handed out to them, whether alms