Wicked Day by Mary Stewart

lived.
    Gawain was laughing. "Well, the palace ram has made a mistake this time! To escort a couple of tale-bearers up to the queen and not even wait to hear that there was a king's courier on board! I wonder—"
    He did not finish the sentence. Some shouts and a fuss on deck indicated the approach of someone important. Presently a man came up from below, well dressed and smoothly bartered, but still pallid with sea-sickness. At his belt was a messenger's pouch, with its lock and seal. He trod importantly down the gangplank. Distracted from the physician, some of the crowd moved towards him, the boys with them, but they were disappointed. The courier, ignoring everyone, and refusing to answer any questions, climbed the steps and headed at a fast pace for the palace. As he cleared the last huts of the township he was met by Gabran, hurrying, this time with a royal escort of men-at-arms.
    "Well, she knows now," said Gawain. "Come on, hurry," and the boys trotted uphill in the messenger's wake.
    The letter that the courier bore came from the queen's sister Morgan, Queen of Rheged.
    There was little love lost between the two ladies, but a stronger bond than love united them: hatred of their brother Arthur the King. Morgause hated him because she knew that Arthur loathed and feared the memory of the sin she had led him to commit with her; Morgan because, though married to a great and warlike king, Urbgen, she wanted at the same time a younger man and a greater kingdom. It is human to hate those whom, blameless, we hope to destroy, and Morgan was prepared to betray both brother and husband to achieve her desires.
    It was of the first of these desires that she wrote to her sister. "You remember Accolon? I have him now.
    He would die for me. And needs must, perchance, should Arthur or that devil Merlin come to hear of my plans. But rest easy, sister; I have it on authority that the enchanter is sick. You will know that he has taken a pupil into his house, a girl, daughter of Dyonas of the River Islands, who was one of the Ladies of the Lake convent at Ynys Witrin. Now they say she is his mistress, and that in his weakness she strives to learn his power from him, and is in a fair way to steal it all, and suck him dry and leave him bound for ever. I know that men say the enchanter cannot die, but if this tale be true, then once Merlin is helpless, and only the girl Nimuë stands in his place, who is to say what power we true witches cannot grasp for ourselves?"
    Morgause, reading by her window, made a mouth of impatience and contempt. "We true witches." If Morgan thought that she could even touch the edges of Morgause's art, she was an over-ambitious fool.
    Morgause, who had guided her half-sister's first steps in magic, could never be brought to admit, even to herself, that Morgan's aptitude for sorcery had already led her to surpass the witch of Orkney, with her sex potions and poisonous spells, by almost as much as Merlin in his day had surpassed them both.
    There was not much more to the letter. "For the rest," Morgan had written, "the country is quiet, and this means, I fear, that my lord King Urbgen will soon be home for the winter. There is talk of Arthur's going to Brittany, in peace, to visit with Hoel. For the present he stays at Camelot in wedded bliss, though there is still no sign of an heir."
    This time Morgause, reading, smiled. So the Goddess had heard her invocations, and savoured her sacrifices. The rumours were true. Queen Guinevere was barren, and the High King, who would not put her away, must remain without an heir of his body. She glanced out of the window. There he was, the one who was supposed, all those years ago, to have been drowned. He was standing with the other boys on the flat turf outside the walls, where the goldsmith's servant had set up his master's sleeping tent and stove, and the old man chatted with the boys as he laid out his implements.
    Morgause turned abruptly from the window, and at her call a