I was laughing at.
"Not at you. Here, let me taste the stuff...Well, there's nothing in it that there shouldn't be; but I must have been thinking of something else when they asked me about the mixing. No, I was laughing at myself.
All these months — these years, even — hammering at heaven's doors to get what? A baby and a wet-nurse. If you insist on staying with me, Ralf, the next few years will certainly bring new experiences for both of us."
He merely nodded; he was busy pursuing present anxieties.
"If we have to go to Brittany, you mean we might have to stay disguised like this? For years?" He flicked with a contemptuous finger at the coarse stuff of his cloak.
"That will depend. Not quite like this, I hope. Hold step till you reach your bridges, Ralf."
His face showed me that this was not how enchanters were expected to talk. They built their own bridges, or flew across without them. "Depend on the King, you mean? Must you seek him out? My grandmother says, if it's put about that the baby's stillborn, it could be handed to you secretly, and the King never know."
"You forget. Men must know if a prince is born. How else, when Uther dies, can they be brought to accept him?"
"Then what are you going to do, my lord?"
I shook my head, not answering. He took my silence for refusal to tell him, and accepted it with no more questions. For my part, I had perforce to take my own advice about crossing bridges; I was waiting to see a way over. With the Queen won, the harder half of the game was played; now I must plan how best to deal with the King — whether to seek his consent openly, or go first to Budec. But as we sat finishing our meal I was not thinking overmuch about Brittany, or the King, or even the child; I was content to rest in the sun and let the time go over. What had just happened at Tintagel had happened without my contriving. Something was moving; there was a kind of breathing brightness in the air, the wind of God brushing by, invisible in sunlight. Even for men who cannot see or hear them, the gods are still there, and I was not less than a man. I had not the arrogance — or the hardihood — to test my power again, but I put on hope, as a naked man welcomes rags in a winter storm.
8
The weather held, so we went easily, taking care not to tread too closely on the heels of Uther's force; if we were caught west of the Uxella marshes — or indeed south of the Severn at all — it would be only too obvious where we had been, Uther usually moved fast, and there was nothing to delay him here in settled country, so we followed cautiously, waiting until his army should be clear of the southern end of the Severn ferry. If we were lucky with the ferry and, once we were across the Severn, made good speed northwards, we should be able (having apparently just come innocently for the purpose from Maridunum) to fall in with the troops on their way up the Welsh border, and try to have speech with the King.
On the way south we had avoided the main road, but had used the pack tracks which run near the coast, winding in and out of the valleys. Now, since we dared not fall too far behind Uther, we kept as closely as we dared to the straight route along the ridges, but avoiding the paved road where the posting stations might be left guarded in the army's wake.
We were even more careful than we had been formerly. After we had left the shelter of Maeve's roof we sought out no more inns. Indeed, the ways we went boasted of no inns even had we looked for them; we lodged where we could — in wood-cutters' cabins, sheep shelters, even once or twice in the lee of a stack of bracken cut for bedding — and blessed the mild weather. It was wild country through which we went. There are high ridged stretches of moorland, where heather grows among the granite tors, and the land is good to feed nothing except the sheep and the wild deer; but just below the rocky spine of the land the forest begins. On the uplands the trees grow
"Not at you. Here, let me taste the stuff...Well, there's nothing in it that there shouldn't be; but I must have been thinking of something else when they asked me about the mixing. No, I was laughing at myself.
All these months — these years, even — hammering at heaven's doors to get what? A baby and a wet-nurse. If you insist on staying with me, Ralf, the next few years will certainly bring new experiences for both of us."
He merely nodded; he was busy pursuing present anxieties.
"If we have to go to Brittany, you mean we might have to stay disguised like this? For years?" He flicked with a contemptuous finger at the coarse stuff of his cloak.
"That will depend. Not quite like this, I hope. Hold step till you reach your bridges, Ralf."
His face showed me that this was not how enchanters were expected to talk. They built their own bridges, or flew across without them. "Depend on the King, you mean? Must you seek him out? My grandmother says, if it's put about that the baby's stillborn, it could be handed to you secretly, and the King never know."
"You forget. Men must know if a prince is born. How else, when Uther dies, can they be brought to accept him?"
"Then what are you going to do, my lord?"
I shook my head, not answering. He took my silence for refusal to tell him, and accepted it with no more questions. For my part, I had perforce to take my own advice about crossing bridges; I was waiting to see a way over. With the Queen won, the harder half of the game was played; now I must plan how best to deal with the King — whether to seek his consent openly, or go first to Budec. But as we sat finishing our meal I was not thinking overmuch about Brittany, or the King, or even the child; I was content to rest in the sun and let the time go over. What had just happened at Tintagel had happened without my contriving. Something was moving; there was a kind of breathing brightness in the air, the wind of God brushing by, invisible in sunlight. Even for men who cannot see or hear them, the gods are still there, and I was not less than a man. I had not the arrogance — or the hardihood — to test my power again, but I put on hope, as a naked man welcomes rags in a winter storm.
8
The weather held, so we went easily, taking care not to tread too closely on the heels of Uther's force; if we were caught west of the Uxella marshes — or indeed south of the Severn at all — it would be only too obvious where we had been, Uther usually moved fast, and there was nothing to delay him here in settled country, so we followed cautiously, waiting until his army should be clear of the southern end of the Severn ferry. If we were lucky with the ferry and, once we were across the Severn, made good speed northwards, we should be able (having apparently just come innocently for the purpose from Maridunum) to fall in with the troops on their way up the Welsh border, and try to have speech with the King.
On the way south we had avoided the main road, but had used the pack tracks which run near the coast, winding in and out of the valleys. Now, since we dared not fall too far behind Uther, we kept as closely as we dared to the straight route along the ridges, but avoiding the paved road where the posting stations might be left guarded in the army's wake.
We were even more careful than we had been formerly. After we had left the shelter of Maeve's roof we sought out no more inns. Indeed, the ways we went boasted of no inns even had we looked for them; we lodged where we could — in wood-cutters' cabins, sheep shelters, even once or twice in the lee of a stack of bracken cut for bedding — and blessed the mild weather. It was wild country through which we went. There are high ridged stretches of moorland, where heather grows among the granite tors, and the land is good to feed nothing except the sheep and the wild deer; but just below the rocky spine of the land the forest begins. On the uplands the trees grow
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