The Last Enchantment - Mary Stewart [97]
That night we were still well away from the roads, or any hope of a lodging, so when the dusk came down early and dim with mist, we made our camp under tall pines at the forest's edge, and the men cooked supper. I had been drinking water on the journey, as I like to do in mountain country where it is pure and good, but in celebration of the shepherd's news I broke open a new flask of the wine I had been supplied with from Urbgen's cellars. I planned to share this with my companions, but they refused, preferring their own thin ration-wine, which tasted of the skins they carried it in. So I ate and drank alone, and lay down to sleep.
***
I cannot write of what happened next. The Old Ones know the story, and it is possible that somewhere else some other man has set it down, but I remember it only dimly, as if I were watching a vision in a dark and smoking glass.
But it was no vision; they stay with me more vividly, even, than memory. This was a kind of madness that took me, brought on, as I now know, by some drug in the wine I had taken. Twice before, when Morgause and I had come face to face, she had tried her witch's tricks on me, but her novice's magic had glanced off me like a child's pebble off a rock. But this last time...I was to recall how, at the wedding feast, the light thickened and beat around me, while the smell of honeysuckle loaded memory with treachery, and the taste of apricots brought back murder. And how I, who am frugal with food and wine, was carried drunken to bed. I remembered, too, the voice saying, "Drink, my lord," and the green, watching eyes. She must have tried her wiles again, and found that now her magic was strong enough to trap me in its sticky threads. It may be that the seeds of the madness were sown then, at the wedding feast, and left to develop later, when I was far enough away for there to be no blame cast on her. Her servant had been there at the river bridge to see me safely out of the city. Later, the witch had implemented the drug with some other poison, slipped into one of the flasks I carried. There she had been lucky. If I had not heard the news of Guenever's pregnancy, I might never have broached the poisoned flask. As it was, we were well away from Luguvallium when I drank the poison. If the men with me had shared it, so much the worse for them. Morgause would have swept a hundred such aside, to harm Merlin her enemy. There was no need to look further for her motive in coming to her sister's marriage.
Whatever the poison, my frugal ways cheated her of my death. What happened after I had drunk and lain down I can only piece together from what I have since been told, and from the whirling fragments of memory.
It seems that the troopers, alarmed in the night by my groans, hurried to my bed-place, where they were horrified to find me obviously sick and in great pain, twisting on the ground, and moaning, apparently too far gone to be sensible. They did what they could, which was not much, but their rough help saved me as nothing could have done had I been alone. They made me vomit, then brought their own blankets to augment mine, and wrapped me up warmly and made up the fire. Then one of them stayed beside me while the other set off down the valley to find help or lodging. He was to send help back to us, and a guide, then ride on himself down to Galava with the news.
When he had gone the other fellow did what he could, and after an hour or two I sank into a sort of sleep. He hardly liked the look of it, but when at last he dared leave me, and took a step or two away among the trees to relieve himself, I neither moved nor made a sound, so he decided to take the chance to fetch water from the brook. This was a scant twenty paces off, downhill over silent mosses. Once there, he bethought himself of the fire, which had burned low again, so he crossed the brook and went a bit farther -- thirty paces, no more, he swore it -- to gather more wood. There was plenty lying about, and he was gone