"Oh, I am, am I?"
For a moment, I was unsure which of my remarks she was referring to, but her next words, and the sudden, wicked mischief in her eye, made everything clear.
"I know it well enough, but I'd begun to think you'd grown immune to my enchantments. I've sensed none of that wicked, friendly lust in you for years."
In the space of a heartbeat, my throat was thick with tension, my heart hammering in my breast. The friendly lust she spoke of had been mutually recognized by us long since, ungratified only because of our shared loyalty to Donuil. We had discussed and dismissed it years before, agreeing amicably, she and I, to be aware of it without pursuing it. Through her two pregnancies and my quest for a celibate existence, we had grown ever more comfortable with each other and become fast friends. The attraction, though still there, had mellowed into a warm, sustained awareness. But now, suddenly, the lust was raging in me again. I swallowed the lump in my throat.
"Oh, it's been there, all along," I said, fighting to keep my tone light. "You're just getting old. Your perception of such things has dulled."
"Hah! Enchantresses do not lose their keen perceptions. Ever."
She began to hum a lovely, haunting melody and rose to her feet, stepping away from her log and holding her hands out to me. I straightened from the tree I had been leaning against, and she led me to the seat she had occupied.
"Now," she said, grinning again, "sit you there and listen to my spells, and I'll summon woman's magic to tell you how loutish, lumbering men may live in safety and rear healthy children in this mountain land. Are you ready?" I nodded, having mastered myself again, and her grin softened to a smile. "Good. Pay attention, now."
She stood for a few moments, facing me, humming again the same lilting, unearthly tune she had used before. Then she reached up and untied the filet that held her hair in place and shook her long tresses free about her shoulders. As I stared, wide-eyed and almost disbelieving, she began to turn very slowly, humming all the time, continuing to face me though her body turned impossibly, it seemed, then whipping her head around just when it seemed her neck must break. Her arms were outstretched at her sides, and very gradually she increased the tempo of her movements until she was spinning rapidly, like a child's top. As she progressed from a slow, deliberate and graceful motion to increasing, whirling speed, I sat truly entranced, watching her face and the way her long, chestnut tresses flew out about her spinning head, barely aware, for the longest time, of the gradual emergence of the long, clean length of her bare legs beneath her flaring gown. Aware of it eventually, alas, my eyes saw nothing afterward but their nakedness and strong, clean-muscled shape.
She had been watching me, I am sure, as closely as I had been watching her, and when she saw my gaze gone from her face she slopped, suddenly, hear voice falling abruptly silent on a high, clear note, her skirts cascading downward like a waving, draped curtain.
As I sat there, blinking, staring at her still-undulating skirts, awareness of how sudden had been her stop flooded me, and I leaped belatedly to my feet to catch her as she fell over from giddiness. But she stood motionless, unruffled, smiling at me, her eyes clear and even her hair tamed.
"Sit," she said. "Enchantresses do not fall down. Now hear."
As I seated myself again, she came and knelt in front of me. My heart was pounding, and I felt a sense of strange anticipation. She was lovely, and in spite of her exertions, her high breasts showed no sign of heaving.
"Close your eyes, and keep them closed." I did, enjoying the brief vision I had had of her bare, whirling legs.
"Think upon this, Merlyn of Camulod ... " .she said softly, and then she began to speak in a rhythmic, almost singing, cadenced voice that quickly lulled me, compelling me to listen to her words.
"Imagine that a party of strong men, and women, too, came to a sea-girt place called Ravenglass, then disappeared from ken, their whereabouts unknown to living men. Imagine that their enemies sought high and low to find them, and sent spies away throughout the land to hunt them down wherever they might be ... Imagine that these spies all knew a name, a strong man's name, a leader's name, and knew that in finding him, they would find what they really sought and thought to find. Imagine then, that throughout all this land, through Alba and through Eire, too, it was believed that this strong man was nowhere known where men and women throng ... "
Her voice died away, but I sat with my eyes closed for moments longer, hearing and examining the visions she had conjured in my mind. When I looked at her again, she was kneeling still, staring at me, her beautiful hawklike eyes betraying no hint of humour now.
"I saw it," she said. "It's what we've hoped to achieve. Shall I tell you where they vanished to?"
"Yes, if you know where my thoughts are leading now."
"They never left. Their ships left, in the dead of night, but they remained and lived in an abandoned fort. Their leader, Merlyn, changed his name to Cay, and while he led still, in truth, he gave the name of leader to another, not a warrior but a farmer, who would feed them all."
"Hector."
"Aye, Hector. Cay became a simple worker, so that when the spies returned at last, their search frustrated, there was no one called Merlyn known in Ravenglass."
I was staring at her in bemused wonder, amazed by the lucid simplicity of her suggestion and knowing she was absolutely right. Only a few people, to the best of my awareness, knew my real name here in Ravenglass, and for their benefit I could sail away ostentatiously with Connor and young Arthur, to be dropped ashore in some convenient spot a short way along the coast. From there I could make my way back to Mediobogdum, avoiding the town. I would be known simply as Cay. Merlyn would vanish.
"Shelagh! That could work!"
"Of course it will work! Enchantresses are never wrong, you blind man."
She was herself again, swaying lithely to her feet and reaching for her enormous satchel, from which she produced a small skin of wine, a whole cheese, a loaf of bread and a sharp knife. Seeing the knife, I became aware that this was the first time I had seen her without her throwing- knives for a long time, but the awareness was dulled by my amazement over the food.
"Good God! How did you—? Did you know we would be coming here today?"
She threw me a wry look. "Don't be foolish, how could I? But I did know I'd be keeping the boys away from the walls all day, first because of the fighting, and later, I sincerely hoped, because of the celebration. I didn't bring a cup. And I left the boys' food with Turga. Here, eat." She handed me half the cheese and half the loaf, and for the next while we ate in companionable silence-, sitting together on the ground with our backs against the fallen tree. When we were done, and the rich, red wine had left a satisfying feeling of repletion on my tongue, I turned to her.
"That was quite a dance you performed."
"Enchantment. It was an enchantment. It worked, didn't it?"
"It certainly did. Several ways." .
"Hmm. You were not supposed to be gawking beneath my skirts. Could you see my bare bottom?"
I shook my head, smiling, unaccountably comfortable again in this arena. "Unfortunately, no, I could not. But I would have made a greater effort had I known it was bare. Do you know, I was so fascinated by your, upper part, your face and head and hair, that I hardly noticed the other at all?"
"Liar. I saw your mouth fall open."
"How could you have? You were revolving far too quickly."
"Horse turds, my friend. A blink is all it takes to see that look. I stopped at once, for fear you'd have an apoplexy."
"That's unlikely. But my celibacy might have fared badly, had you continued."
She glanced down openly at my lap. "It still works, then? Despite all your single-minded self-denial?" There was no trace of prurience in her voice or her demeanour.