The Last Enchantment - Mary Stewart [88]
"I knew at Amesbury that she was ailing, but she would not talk about it, then or later, and she never consulted me. Why, Bedwyr, what's the news of her now?"
"I'm no judge," said Bedwyr, "but she looked gravely ill to me. Even since the crowning I could see a change in her, thin as a ghost, and spending most of her time in bed. She sent a letter to Arthur, and she would have written to you, she said, but it was beyond her strength. I was to give you her greetings, and to thank you for your letters, and your thought of her. She watches for them."
Arthur looked at me. "Did you suspect anything like this when you saw her? Is this a mortal sickness?"
"I would guess so. When I saw her at Amesbury, the seeds of the sickness were already sown. And when I spoke to her again at the crowning, I think she knew herself to be failing. But to guess at how long...even had I been her own physician, I doubt if I could have judged of that."
He might have been expected to ask why I had kept my suspicions from him, but the reasons were obvious enough so he wasted no breath on them. He merely nodded, looking troubled. "I cannot...You know that I must go north again as soon as this business is done." He spoke as if the wedding were a council, or a battle. "I cannot go down into Cornwall. Ought I to send you?"
"It would be useless. Besides, her own physician is as good a man as you could wish for. I knew him when he was a young student in Pergamum."
"Well," he said, accepting it, and then again, "Well..."
But he moved restlessly, fidgeting with the pins that were stuck here and there in the clay map. "The trouble is, one always feels there is something one should be doing. I like to load the dice, not sit waiting for someone else to throw them. Oh, yes, I know what you will say -- that the essence of wisdom is to know when to be doing, and when it is useless even to try. But I sometimes think I shall never be old enough to be wise."
"Perhaps the best thing you can do, both for Queen Ygraine and for yourself, is to get this marriage consummated, and see your sister Morgan crowned Queen of Rheged," I said, and Bedwyr nodded.
"I agree. From the way she spoke about it, I got the impression that she lives only to see both marriage-bonds safely tied."
"That is what she says in her letter to me," said the King. He turned his head. Faintly, from the corridor, came the sound of challenge and answer. "Well, Merlin, I could ill have spared you for a journey into Cornwall. I want to send you north again. Can Derwen be left in charge at Caer Camel?"
"If you wish it, of course. He will do very well, though I should like to be back myself in good time for the spring weather."
"There's no reason why you shouldn't be."
"Is it Morgan's wedding? Or -- perhaps I should have been more cautious? Is it Morgause again?...I warn you, if it's a trip to Orkney, I shall refuse."
He laughed. He certainly neither looked nor spoke as if Morgause or her bastard had been on his mind. "I wouldn't put you at such risk, either from Morgause or the northern seas. No, it is Morgan. I want you to take her to Rheged."
"That will be a pleasure." It would, indeed. The years I had spent in Rheged, in the Wild Forest which is part of the great tract of land they call the Caledonian Forest, had been the crest of my life; they had been the years when I had guided and taught Arthur as a boy. "I trust I'll be able to see Ector?"
"Why not, once you've seen Morgan safely wedded? I must admit it will ease my mind, as well as the Queen's, to see her settled there in Rheged. It's possible that by spring-time there will be war in the north again."
Put like that, it sounded strange, but in the context of those times it made sense. Those were years of winter weddings; men left home in spring to fight,