Wicked Day Read Free

And even now that King Lot was dead, she paid still, and still the child was safe. This, to Sula, was all the proof that was needed. Queen Morgause, a lady not renowned for gentleness, would hardly so have nurtured her husband's bastard; a bastard, moreover, older than the eldest legitimate prince, and as such, arguably, with a prior claim to the kingdom.
    Queen's bastard, then. By whom? To Sula's mind there was no doubt there, either. She had never laid eyes on Queen Morgause's half-brother, Arthur the High King of Britain, but like everyone else she had heard many tales of that wonder-working young man. And the first of those tales was that of the great battle of Luguvallium, where the boy Arthur, appearing suddenly at King Uther's side, had led his troops to victory. Afterwards — so the tale went, told with pride and indulgence — he had gone, still ignorant of his true parentage, to lie with Morgause, who was Uther's bastard daughter, and so Arthur's own half-sister.
    The timing was right. The child's age, and looks, and ways were right. And those rumours about the massacre at Dunpeldyour, whether ordered by Lot or by Merlin, were accounted for, and even — such were the ways of the great — justified.
    Now Lot was dead, and Merlin, too. King Arthur had other and greater matters on his mind, and besides — if all the tales that reached the taverns were true — by th time he had other bastards by the score, and had shut this shameful begetting from his mind, or else forgotten it. As for Morgause, she would not kill her own son. Never that. But with King Lot gone, and Merlin gone, and the High King far away, why should she leave him here any longer? Why any more need to keep him secret in this lonely place?
    She clutched the child closer, her fear cold and heavy in her. "The Goddess keep you safe, make her forget you. Make her forget you. Leave you here. My bonny, my Mordred, my boy from the sea." The child, roused by the sudden movement, tightened his arms round her and said something. It was inaudible, muffled against her neck, but she caught her breath and fell silent, rocking, staring over the child's head at the cottage wall.
    After a while the small, ordinary sounds of the room, and the long hush of the sea outside, seemed to calm her. The child drowsed in her arms. Softly, she began to sing him back to sleep.
    From the sea you came, my prince, my Mordred.
    You escaped the fay with the long hair that tosses on the waves.
    You came from her sister, the sea-queen
    Who eats drowned sailors, who draws the boats
    Down into deep waters.
    You came to the land, to be prince of the land,
    And you will grow, grow, grow…
    Queen Morgause did not make a feast that night.
    When the fresh news was brought of the hated enchanter's death she sat for a long time very still, then, taking a lamp in her hand, she left the bright hall where the talk was still going noisily round, and made her way to the sealed chambers underground where she worked her dark magic, and waited for such glimmers of Sight as came to her.
    In the first chamber, her stillroom, a half-empty flask stood on the table. In it was the remains of the poison she had mixed for Merlin. Smiling, she passed through another door, and knelt by the pool of seeing.
    Nothing came clearly. A bedchamber, with a curved wall; a tower room, then? The bed with a man in it, still as death. And he looked like death: a very old man, gaunt as a skeleton, with grey hair straggling on the pillow, and a matted grey beard. She did not recognize him.
    He opened his eyes, and it was Merlin. The dark, terrifying eyes, set in that grey skull, looked straight across the miles, across the seas, into hers where she knelt by the secret pool.
    Morgause, crouching there with her hands to her belly, as if she would guard Lot's last, unborn child, knew then that once more the reports were false. Merlin lived still, and, prematurely aged as he was, with his health wrecked by the poison, he still