The Last Enchantment - Mary Stewart [8]
We brought his body without incident to Amesbury and left it in the monastery there, wrapped in spices and coffined in hollowed oak, under its purple pall before the chapel altar. The King's guard (who had ridden south with his body) stood vigil, and the monks and nuns of Amesbury prayed beside the bier. Queen Ygraine being a Christian, the dead king was to be buried with all the rites and ceremonies of the Christian church, though in life he had barely troubled even to pay lip-service to the Christians' God. Even now he lay with gold coins glinting on his eyelids, to pay the fee of a ferryman who had exacted such toll for centuries longer than Saint Peter of the Gate. The chapel itself had apparently been erected on the site of a Roman shrine; it was little more than an oblong erection of daub and wattle, with wooden shafts holding up a roof of thatch, but it had a floor of fine mosaic work, scrubbed clean and hardly damaged. This, showing scrolls of vine and acanthus, could offend no Christian souls, and a woven rug lay centrally, probably to cover whatever pagan god or goddess floated naked among the grapes.
The monastery reflected something of Amesbury's new prosperity. It was a miscellaneous collection of buildings huddled anyhow around a cobbled yard, but these were in good repair and the Abbot's house, which had been vacated for the Queen and her train, was well built of stone, with wooden flooring, and a big fireplace at one end with a chimney.
The headman of the village, too, had a good house, which he made haste to offer me for lodging, but explaining that the King would follow me soon, I left him in an uproar of extra preparation, and betook myself with my servants to the tavern. This was small, with little pretension to comfort, but it was clean, and fires were kept burning high against the autumn chills. The innkeeper remembered me from the time I had lodged there during the rebuilding of the Dance; he still showed the awe that the exploit had raised in him, and made haste to give me the best room, and to promise me fresh poultry and a mutton pie for supper. He showed relief when I told him that I had brought two servants with me, who would serve me in my own chamber, and banished his own staring pot-boys to their posts at the kitchen burners.
The servants I had brought were two of Arthur's. In recent years, living alone in the Wild Forest, I had cared for myself, and now had none of my own. One was a small, lively man from the hills of Gwynedd; the other was Ulfin, who had been Uther's own servant. The late King had taken him from a rough servitude, and had shown him kindness, which Ulfin repaid with devotion. This would now belong to Arthur, but it would have been cruel to deny Ulfin the chance of following his master's body on its last journey, so I had asked for him by name. By my orders he had gone to the chapel with the bier, and I doubted if I would see him before the funeral was over. Meantime, the Welshman, Lleu, unpacked my boxes and bespoke hot water, and sent the more intelligent of the landlord's boys across to the monastery with a message from me to be delivered to the Queen on her arrival. In it I bade her welcome, and offered to wait on her as soon as she should be rested enough to send for me. News of the happenings in Luguvallium she had had already; now I added merely that Arthur was not yet in Amesbury, but was expected in time for the burial.
I was not in Amesbury when her party arrived. I rode out to the Giants' Dance to see that all was ready for the ceremony, to be told on my return that the Queen and her escort had arrived shortly after noon, and that Ygraine with her ladies was settled into the Abbot's house. Her summons to me came just as afternoon dimmed into evening.
The sun had gone down in a clouded sky, and when, refusing the offer of an escort, I walked the short distance to the monastery, it was already almost dark. The night was heavy as a pall, a mourning sky, where no stars