The Last Enchantment - Mary Stewart [73]
Piecing it together, I thought I knew what had happened. Macha had been chosen to foster Mordred because she had borne Lot a bastard boy; it might even have pleased Morgause to watch the baby killed; she had laughed, Lind had told us. So, with Mordred safe, and the changeling ready for the slaughter, Morgause had waited for Lot's return. As soon as she had news of it, her men-at-arms had been sent with orders to dispatch Mordred to yet another safe foster-home, and to kill Macha, who, if her own baby were to suffer, might be tempted to betray the queen. And now Lot was pacified, the town was quiet, and somewhere, I was sure, the child who was Morgause's weapon of power grew in safety.
After Lot had ridden to rejoin Arthur, I sent Ulfin south again, but myself stayed on in Lothian, watching and waiting. With Lot out of the way, I moved back into Dunpeldyr, and tried, in every way I could, to find some clue to where Mordred could now be hidden. What I would have done if I had found him, I do not know, but the god did not lay that burden on me. So I waited for fully four months in that squalid little town, and though I walked on the shore by starlight and sunlight and spoke to my god in every tongue and with every way I knew, I saw nothing, either by daylight or in dream, to guide me to Arthur's son.
In time I came to believe that I might have been wrong; that even Morgause could not be so evil, and that Mordred had perished with the other innocents in that midnight sea.
So at length, as autumn slid into the first chills of winter, and news came that the fighting in Linnuis was done, and Lot would soon be on his way home once more, I thankfully left Dunpeldyr. Arthur would be at Caerleon for Christmas, and would look for me there. I paused only once on my journey, to spend a few nights with Blaise in Northumbria and give him the news, then I travelled south, to be there when the King came home.
***
He came back in the second week of December, with frost on the ground, and the children out gathering the holly and ivy for decking the Christmas feast. He barely waited to bathe and change from the ride before he sent for me. He received me in the room where we had talked before we parted. This time the door to the bedroom was shut, and he was alone.
He had changed a good deal in the months since Pentecost. Taller, yes, by half a head -- it is an age when youths shoot up like barley-stalks -- and with breadth to go with it, and the hard lean brownness got from the soldier's life he was leading. But this was not the real change. That was in authority. His manner showed now that he knew what he was doing and where he was going.
But for that, the interview might have been an echo of the one I had had with the younger Arthur, on the night of Mordred's begetting.
"They say that I ordered this abominable thing!" He had hardly troubled to greet me. He strode about the room, the same strong, light lion's prowl of a walk, but the strides were a hand-span longer. The room was a cage restraining him. "When you know yourself how, in this very room, I said no, leave it to the god. And now this!"
"It's what you wanted, isn't it?"
"All those deaths? Don't be a fool, would I have done it like that? Or would you?"
The question needed no reply, and got none. I said merely: "Lot was never remarkable for his wisdom and restraint, and besides, he was in a rage. You might say the action was suggested to him, or at least encouraged, from without."
He threw me a quick, smouldering look. "By Morgause? So I understand."
"I gather Ulfin has told you all the story? Did he also tell you of his own services in the matter?"
"That he tried to mislead you, and let