The Last Enchantment Read Online Free PDF Page A

wine-jar, caught within a yard of the door, checked, swerved, and stared, showing the whites of his eyes. Someone at the table dropped a wooden trencher, and the greyhounds pounced on the fallen cakes. The scrabbling of their claws and their munching were the only sounds in the room to be heard through the rustling of the fire.
    "Good evening," I said pleasantly. I answered the women's reverences, watched gravely while a boy picked up the fallen trencher and kicked the dogs out of the way, then allowed myself to be ushered by the chamberlain toward the hearthplace.
    "The Queen — " he was beginning, when the eyes turned from me to the inner door, and the greyhounds, arched and wagging, danced to meet the woman who came through it.
    But for the hounds and the curtsying women, a stranger might have thought that here was the Abbess of the place come to greet me. The woman who entered was as much a contrast to the rich room as that room had been to the squalid courtyard. She was dressed from head to foot in black, with a white veil covering her hair, its ends thrown back over her shoulders, and its soft folds pinned to frame her face like a wimple. The sleeves of her gown were lined with some grey silken stuff, and there was a cross of sapphires on her breast, but to the somber black and white of her mourning there was no other relief.
    It was a long time since I had seen Ygraine, and I expected to find her changed, but even so I was shocked at what I saw. Beauty was still there, in the lines of bone and the great dark-blue eyes and the queenly poise of her body; but grace had given way to dignity, and there was a thinness about the wrists and hands that I did not like, and shadows near her eyes almost as blue as the eyes themselves. This, not the ravages of time, was what shocked me. There were signs everywhere that a doctor could read all too clearly.
    But I was here as prince and emissary, not as physician. I returned her smile of greeting, bowed over her hand, and led her to the cushioned chair. At a sign from her the boys ran to collar the greyhounds and take them aside, and she settled herself, smoothing her skirt. One of the girls moved a footstool for her, and then, with lowered eyelids and folded hands, stayed beside her mistress's chair.
    The Queen bade me be seated, and I obeyed her. Someone brought wine, and across the cups we exchanged the commonplaces of the meeting. I asked her how she did, but with purely formal courtesy, and I knew she could read nothing of my knowledge in my face.
    "And the King?" she asked at length. The word came from her as if forced, with a kind of pain behind it.
    "Arthur promised to be here. I expect him tomorrow. There has been no news from the north, so we have no means of knowing if there has been more fighting. The lack of news need not alarm you; it only means that he will be here as soon as any courier he might have sent."
    She nodded, with no sign of anxiety. Either she could not think much beyond her own loss, or she took my tranquil tone as a prophet's reassurance. "Did he expect more fighting?"
    "He stayed as a cautionary measure, no more. The defeat of Colgrim's men was decisive, but Colgrim himself escaped, as I wrote to you. We had no report on where he had gone. Arthur thought it better to make sure that the scattered Saxon forces could not re-form, at least while he came south for his father's burial."
    "He is young," she said, "for such a charge."
    I smiled. "But ready for it, and more than able. Believe me, it was like seeing a young falcon take to the air, or a swan to the water. When I took leave of him, he had not slept for the better part of two nights, and was in high heart and excellent health."
    "I am glad of it."
    She spoke formally, without expression, but I thought it better to qualify. "The death of his father came as a shock and a grief, but as you will understand, Ygraine, it could not come very near his heart, and there was much to be done that crowded out