“Yes. Have you managed to get any message to her privately?”

“No. She guards herself. All day she is with her women, and her servants keep the doors. And he—” He paused. There was sweat on his face. “He is with her every night.”

He flung away again with a swish of the velvet robe, and paced, soft-footed, the length of the room, into the shadows beyond the firelight. Then he turned. He threw out his hands and spoke simply, like a boy.

“Merlin, what shall I do?”

I crossed to the fire-place, picked up the jug and poured two goblets of the spiced wine. I held one out to him. “To begin with, come and sit down. I cannot talk to a whirlwind. Here.”

He obeyed, sinking back in the big chair with the goblet between his hands. I drank my own, gratefully, and sat down on the other side of the hearth.

Uther did not drink. I think he hardly knew what he had between his hands. He stared at the fire through the thinning steam from the goblet. “As soon as he brought her in and presented her to me, I knew. God knows that at first I thought it was no more than another passing fever, the kind I’ve had a thousand times before, only this time a thousand times stronger—”

“And been cured of,” I said, “in a night, a week of nights, a month. I don’t know the longest time a woman has ever held you, Uther, but is a month, or even three, enough to wreck a kingdom for?”

The look he gave me, blue as a sword-flash, was a look from the old Uther I remembered. “By Hades, why do you think I sent for you? I could have wrecked my kingdom any time in these past weeks had I been so minded. Why do you think it has not yet gone beyond folly? Oh, yes, I admit there has been folly, but I tell you this is a fever, and not the kind I have had before, and slaked before. This burns me so that I cannot sleep. How can I rule and fight and deal with men if I cannot sleep?”

“Have you taken a girl to bed?”

He stared, then he drank. “Are you mad?”

“Forgive me, it was a stupid question. You don’t sleep even then?”

“No.” He set down the goblet beside him, and knitted his hands together. “It’s no use. Nothing is any use. You must bring her to me, Merlin. You have the arts. This is why I sent for you. You are to bring her to me so that no one knows. Make her love me. Bring her here to me, while he is asleep. You can do it.”

“Make her love you? By magic? No, Uther, this is something that magic cannot do. You must know that.”