And I am young and healthy, if I were his queen I could give him a son ... . And when she came again to this point she would weep with a sudden, trapped despair. I am married to an old man, and my life is over at nineteen. I might as well be an old, old woman, past caring whether I live or die, fit only to sit by the fire and think of Heaven! She took to her bed and told Gorlois she was ill.
Once during this week the Merlin came to her lodging while Gorlois was at the Council. She felt like flinging her rage and misery at him-he had begun this, she had been content and resigned to her fate until he had sent to waken her out of it! But it was unthinkable to speak rudely to the Merlin of Britain, father or no.
"Gorlois tells me you are ill, Igraine; can I do anything to help you with my healing arts?"
She looked at him in despair. "Only if you can make me young. I feel so old, Father, so old!"
He stroked her shining copper curls and said, "I see no grey in your hair nor wrinkles in your face, my child."
"But my life is over, I am an old woman, the wife of an old man ... ."
"Hush, hush," he soothed, "you are weary and ill, you will feel better when the moon changes again, surely. It is best like this, Igraine," he said, looking sharply at her, and she suddenly knew that he read her thoughts; it was as if he spoke directly to her mind, repeating what he had said to her at Tintageclass="underline" You will bear Gorlois no son.
"I feel-trapped," she said, and put her head down and wept and would not speak again.
He stroked her uncombed hair. "Sleep is the best medicine for your illness now, Igraine. And dreams are the true remedy for what ails you. I, who am master of dreams, will send one to cure you." He stretched his hand over her in blessing and went away.
She wondered if something he had done, or some spell set by Viviane, was responsible-perhaps after all she had conceived Gorlois's child and cast it from her; such things had happened. She could not imagine the Merlin sending to dose her beer with herbs or simples, but perhaps with his power he could ensure it with magic or spells. And then she thought perhaps it was for the best. Gorlois was old, she had seen the shadow of his death; did she want to rear a son of his to manhood alone? When Gorlois came back to their lodging that night, it seemed that once again she could see, hovering behind him, the shadow of the dreaded fetch, his death waiting, the sword cut over his eye, his face haggard with grief and despair; and she turned her face away from him, feeling, when he touched her, that she was embraced by a dead man, a corpse.
"Come, my dear one, you must not be so dismal," Gorlois soothed, sitting on the bed beside her. "I know you are sick and wretched, you must be longing for your home and your child, but it will not be long now. I have news for you, listen and I'll tell you."
"Is the Council any nearer to their kingmaking?"
"It may be," Gorlois said. "Did you hear a stir in the streets this afternoon? Well, Lot of Orkney and the kings of the North have departed; they have quite accepted it now, that we will not choose Lot to be High King until the sun and the moon rise together in the west, and so they have gone forth, leaving the rest of us to do what we know Ambrosius would have willed. If I were Uther-and I told him so much-I would not walk alone after sunset; Lot went away looking like a cur who's had his tail cut off, and I wouldn't think him incapable of curing his wronged pride by sending someone with a dirk on Other's heels."
She whispered, "Do you truly think Lot will try and kill Uther?"
"Well, he's no match for Uther in a fight. A knife in the back, that would be Lot's way. I'm as well pleased he's not one of us, though it would ease my mind if Lot were sworn to keep the peace. An oath on some holy relic he dare not flout-and even then I'd watch him," Gorlois said.
When they were in bed he turned to her, but she shook her head and pushed him away. "Yet another day," she said, and, sighing, he turned away and fell almost instantly asleep. She could not, she thought, put him off much longer; yet a horror had come upon her, now that she saw again the doom-fetch hanging over him. She told herself that, whatever came, she should remain a dutiful wife to this honorable man who had been kind to her. And that brought back memory of the room where Viviane and the Merlin had shattered her security and all her peace. She felt tears surging up inside her, but tried to quiet her sobs, not wanting to wake Gorlois.
The Merlin had said that he would send her a dream to cure her misery, and yet all this had begun with a dream. She was afraid to sleep, fearing another dream would come to shatter such little peace as she had found. For she knew that this thing would shatter her life, if she allowed it; lay her promised word in shreds. And, although she was not herself a Christian, she had listened enough to their preaching to know that this was, by their standards, grave sin.
If Gorlois were dead ... Igraine caught her breath in a spasm of terror; for the first time, now, she had allowed herself to form that thought. How could she wish him dead-her husband, the father of her daughter? How could she know that, even if Gorlois were no longer standing between them, Uther would want her? How could she lie at one man's side and long for another?
Viviane spoke as if this kind of thing happens often ... am I simply childish and naive, not to know?
I will not sleep lest I dream ... .
If she went on tossing about like this, Igraine thought, Gorlois would wake. If she wept, he would wish to know why. And what could she tell him? Silently Igraine slid from the bed, wrapped her long cloak about her naked body, and went to sit by the remnants of the dying fire. Why, she wondered, staring into the flames, should the Merlin of Britain, Druid priest, adviser of kings, Messenger of the Gods, meddle this way in the affairs of a young woman's life? For that matter, what was a Druid priest doing as king's councillor at a court supposedly Christian?
If I think the Merlin so wise, why am I not willing to do his will?
After a long time she felt her eyes tiring as she stared at the dying fire, and wondered if she should go back and lie down at Gorlois's side, or if she should get up and walk about, lest she sleep and risk the Merlin's promised dream.
She rose and walked silently across the room to the house door. In her present mood she was not altogether surprised to look back and see that her body still sat, cloak-wrapped, before the fire; she did not trouble to unbolt the door of the room, nor, later, the great front door of the house, but slipped through them both like a wraith.
And yet, outside, the courtyard of the house of Gorlois's friend was gone. She stood on a great plain, where a ring of stones stood in a great circle, just touched by the rising light of dawn ... no; that light was not the sun, it was a great fire to the west, so that the sky stood all on fire.
To the west, where stood the lost lands of Lyonnesse and Ys and the great isle of Atlas-Alamesios, or Atlantis, the forgotten kingdom of the sea. There, indeed, had been the great fire, where the mountain had blown apart, and in a single night, a hundred thousand men and women and little children had perished.
"But the priests knew," said a voice at her side. "For the past hundred years, they have been building the star temple here on the plains, so that they might not lose count of the tracking of the seasons, or of the coming of eclipses of the moon and sun. These people here, they know nothing of such things, but they know we are wise, priests and priestesses from over the sea, and they will build for us, as they did before ... ."