Page 56 of The Dragon Ring
He loved her.
All the stories I’d read about Merlin and Morgana came flooding back to me. She’d been his pupil. She learned his magic. She used it to help destroy her brother, King Arthur, and against her old teacher, Merlin. Or was that Nimuë? I needed to warn him.
However, most of that could be a load of bollocks. Yet some of it might be grounded in fact. If you traced old legends back to their roots, you almost always found some grain of truth in their origin. And here were Merlin and Morgana in the same room, two people connected inexorably by their timelines. Two people of legend made flesh before me.
The question was, didshelove him?
After an awkward pause, he seemed to remember himself and tore his eyes away from Morgana. He made a small, stilted bow to Cadwy and Arthur, and a bigger one to the sleeping figure on the bed.
“He lives,” Arthur said. “For now.”
Merlin’s eyes slid down to the rope that joined our hands and his eyebrows rose. Did I detect a look of triumph?
Arthur nodded. “It was my father’s wish.”
Merlin glanced at Cadwy, who was still scowling. Hadn’t his mother ever warned him that if the wind changed, he’d stick like that? On second thought, maybe the wind had already changed, and hewasstuck like that.
“Take Gwen away and find her some food and somewhere to sleep,” Arthur said, sliding the knotted rope off our hands. “I’m staying with my father. The end is near.”
*
My bedroom openedoff the wide garden courtyard on the side opposite the King’s bedchamber, so any comings and goings in the night passed me by. I certainly didn’t get a visitation from Arthur to demand his conjugal rights, which had been worrying me a bit, so as a wedding night, I suppose it was a bit of a flop. Not that I minded. I was more than happy to be left to myself.
I woke to the timid touch of a young servant girl.
“My Lady.” The girl had a sweet, soft voice.
I opened my eyes and looked up at her. She was only in her early teens, fourteen at the most.
She stepped back from me and bobbed a little bow. “I was asked to waken you. The King commands your presence in the audience chamber.”
In the audience chamber? Surely not. Didn’t she mean in his bedchamber? I was confused, which stopped me putting two and two together and realizing the obvious– that the old king must be dead, and she meant the new king.
I sat up and pushed back the covers. The room was pleasantly warm, the tiled floor beneath my feet even warmer. Of course, there must be a hypocaust, that under-floor heating system the Romans invented. I was very glad they were so clever. Who’d have thought there’d be central heating in the Dark Ages? Good old Romans.
“I’ve brought you food and wine.” She indicated the table in the center of my bed chamber, where a chair with a basket work seat and back had been drawn up. A tray stood on it with a carafe of wine, a loaf of dark bread, a small bowl of yellow butter and a basket of dried figs. I went over to the table and sat down in just my long undershirt.
Breaking off a steaming hunk of the still warm bread, I spread it liberally with butter and ate it.
“What’s your name?” I asked as I ate, washing the bread down with a draught of the wine. It still seemed odd to drink wine for breakfast, but I was getting used to it. Everybody here must be operating in a permanent state of inebriation, bolstered by the intake of alcohol every few hours.
She blushed and looked at her feet. “Kinna, my Lady.”
I smiled at her and took a sip of wine. What I would have really liked was a cup of strong coffee. Unfortunately, the advent of the coffee bean in Britain was still some thousand years off.
When I’d finished eating, Kinna helped me into my blue gown, lacing it down the back so it clung to me as alluringly as Morgana’s had. I wished I had a full-length mirror; I really wanted to see what I looked like in it.
Having undone my plait, she brushed out my hair until it hung in a shining chestnut mane down to my waist, thick and wavy and luxuriant. More than a match for Morgana’s dark locks. Was I trying to show her that I could look as feminine as she did, to prove I didn’t always look like the bedraggled waif she’d seen the night before? Had she made me feel so inadequate? Well, quite frankly, yes.
As an afterthought, I took the dagger Merlin had given me and slipped it, in its sheath, down the side of one of my boots. Doing so was actually more uncomfortable than I’d expected. They made it look so easy in films. You never knew when a weapon might come in handy in a place like this.
A knock on the door signaled the arrival of an escort. To my surprise, it was Gwalchmei, the flute player, which made me wonder what Cei and Arthur and Merlin were doing that they had to send someone else to fetch me. Kinna draped a long, fur-lined cloak around my shoulders and pulled the hood up over my head against the cold.
Gwalchmei led me along the colonnaded walkway surrounding the square garden, my booted feet clacking on the paving slabs, his soft leather boots almost silent. On the side opposite the atrium we came to a halt. Behind us, a wide, paved pathway lined with box hedges and statues led from the steps where we were standing, back through the center of the gardens to the atrium. In front of us, a pair of ornately carved doors stood open, two armed soldiers standing guard outside. Was this the audience chamber?
Gwalchmei propelled me through the open doors and into a crowded chamber twice as wide as it was long. Opposite the doors, on a raised dais, stood a stark, wooden throne. And on that throne sat Cadwy, a golden crown resting on his grizzled head.
I hesitated on the threshold, staring at him. His bulk filled the throne to capacity. The dais being several feet above the level of the floor, the height accentuated the impression of menacing power. Instinct warned me to caution. I was learning fast.
