THE WIND HAS DROPPED. SO MY WRITING-ROOM isn’t too cold and I can smell the thatch again. It hangs round my shoulders like an old cloak, out of shape and stinking, but comfortable all the same.
Our sparrows have been pecking at the mortar. This morning my seat in the alcove was covered with grit and my apple tree stump smeared with white paste, still slimy. But now Slim has given me a shaggy towel and I’ll hang it from the spike above the wind-eye when I am not there. That should keep the birds out.
Almost as soon as I stared into my stone, its darkness cleared. The hooded man! I saw him again. And I heard his deep voice. But the king was not the same king I saw before. Vortigern…And the people were not the same people who dug the ground and drained the pool.
Dukes and earls and lords! In a high hall, each man stands next to his own squire, and many of the squires look the same age as I am. Some of the noblemen have brought their wives, their children with them, and each of them waits on the king.
The king is tall and well-built. He has a ruddy complexion and a sandy beard, but he’s bald as an egg.
“Nine daughters!” he says to the earl kneeling in front of him.
“Nine daughters, is it? Talk to my wise man! He has a powder made from the hairs of caterpillars.”
Now the earl stands up, rather stiffly, and the herald blows his trumpet.
“Gorlois, Duke of Cornwall!” announces a chamberlain with a neck like a plucked chicken and a very loud voice. “King Uther will greet the Duke of Cornwall and his wife, Ygerna.”
A handsome man with a mane of dark hair steps out of the crowd, and the most beautiful woman in the hall follows three steps behind him. She has violet eyes and her lower lip is slightly puffy, as if it has been stung by a bee. Her shoulders are gentle slopes. First Ygerna and Duke Gorlois look at each other, then very slowly get down on to their knees.
King Uther leans forward. “Gorlois,” he says in a cold, hard voice.
Gorlois stares at the king.
“Greetings at Easter!” says the king.
“Greetings!” says Gorlois, and he inclines his head.
Now the king leans forward again, and lightly brushes the woman’s wrist with his sandy fingertips. “And you, Ygerna,” he says quietly. “I am very glad to see you.” But Ygerna’s head is bowed. She kneels beside her husband, and her eyes do not meet the eyes of the king.
Now the herald gives seven short blasts on his trumpet, and at once stewards and panters and kitchen boys wade in with dishes and platters. One steward bears a roast peacock in his arms, with all its feathers stuck back into its body. One carries a strange-looking beast with a front half like a capon but a back half like a suckingpig. And here’s another with a front half like a sucking-pig but a back half like a capon!
At the feast, Gorlois, Duke of Cornwall, sits on the king’s left and Ygerna, his wife, sits on the king’s right.
Eel pasties! And now a dish of meat surrounded by crayfish tails! Blancmange with minced chicken and chopped almonds! The longer the feast goes on, the more King Uther talks to Ygerna and the less to her husband Gorlois.
“Pears in cinnamon and honey!” exclaims the king. “Sweetness and spice!” And with that, he almost completely turns his back on Gorlois, and starts to pat Ygerna with his sandy paws, and offers her wine from his own gold goblet.
But Ygerna shakes her head.
“Wood is unworthy of you,” Uther says, and he hiccups. “You can’t drink from wood. Silver’s not good enough for your lips.”
Ygerna sits very still. She does not look at the king.
“I desire you, Ygerna,” says the king…
Mist in my stone! It rose like October mist that often dips and lifts over Nine Elms and Great Oak and Pikeside. Its white silence spread across the stone’s shining face. But I looked. I still looked. And after a long time the mist thinned, and cleared again.
The king has gone. All the feasters have gone. I can see no one but Duke Gorlois and his wife Ygerna.
“Outrageous!” shouts Gorlois.
“He insulted me,” says Ygerna, “with all his honeyed words, his bumbling and fumbling. He insulted me by thinking I would not be true to you.”
“He insulted us both,” says Gorlois coldly.
“If you care for me and our marriage,” Ygerna says, “take me away from this place. Away from London! Away from this Easter feast!”
“I will take you home,” Gorlois says. “But when Uther hears we have gone, you can be sure he’ll be angry. He’ll send messengers and order us to return.”
“What will we do then?”
“Ignore them! You’ll be safe at Tintagel. No one and nothing can touch you there.”
“And you, Gorlois?”
“I’ll go to Castle Terrible and prepare for a siege. King Uther will sit outside the walls and try to starve me out.”
“My husband,” says Ygerna. “I will wait for you…”
Waves in my stone! Washing and swelling! I have never seen the sea but I have seen the lake under Gibbet Hill, the nine waves and their daughters, rolling, then slowly folding into themselves, creaming and sparkling, and that’s what I saw in my obsidian.
White waves! They rolled and rose and broke, and when my stone began to grow calm again, I could see King Uther and the man in the dove-grey hood, sitting in the hall, with a large bowl of apples and nuts between them.
“I helped Vortigern, your father,” the hooded man says, “and I will help you too.”
“How dare he leave court without my permission?” the king demands.
The hooded man sighs. He takes a nut from the bowl and rolls it between his right thumb and forefinger. “Fear,” he says, “fear and anger sometimes make a man very bold.”
“I am wild for that woman,” says the king.
“We will follow them to Cornwall,” says the hooded man.
“Gorlois will take her to Tintagel,” the king says.
“No one and nothing can stand in the way of great passion,” replies the hooded man. “And great passion can cause amazing things to happen.”
The king stands up. “I am on fire!” he shouts.
“I will help you,” says the man in the dove-grey hood.
“Gorlois!” says the king in a dark voice. “He’s a pest! A Cornish pustule! I will swaddle him in his bright coat of arms and paint a black cross on his forehead.”
“And I,” says the hooded man, “will bury him in the earth, a mile deep.”