“What use to lie to you? I have heard about you. Oh, I know better than to believe all they say in the songs and stories, but you are clever and cold and wise, and they say you love no woman and are committed to no man. So you can listen, and judge.” She looked down at her hands, where they lay on the coverlet, then up at me again. “But I do believe that you can see the future. I want you to tell me what the future is.”

“I don’t tell fortunes like an old woman. Is this why you sent for me?”

“You know why I sent for you. You are the one man with whom I can seek private speech without arousing my husband’s anger and suspicion—and you have the King’s ear.” Though she was but a woman, and young, lying in her bed with me standing over her, it was as if she were a queen giving audience. She looked at me very straight. “Has the King spoken to you yet?”

“He has no need to speak to me. Everyone knows what ails him.”

“And will you tell him what you have just learned from me?”

“That will depend.”

“On what?” she demanded.

I said slowly: “On you yourself. So far you have been wise. Had you been less guarded in your ways and your speech there would have been trouble, there might even have been war. I understand that you have never allowed one moment of your time here to be solitary or unguarded; you have taken care always to be where you could be seen.”

She looked at me for a moment in silence, her brows raised. “Of course.”

“Many women—especially desiring what you desire—would not have been able to do this, Lady Ygraine.”

“I am not ‘many women’.” The words were like a flash. She sat up suddenly, tossing back the dark hair, and threw back the covers. The old woman snatched up a long blue robe and hurried forward. Ygraine threw it round her, over her white night-robe, and sprang from the bed, walking restlessly over towards the window.

Standing, she was tall for a woman, with a form that might have moved a sterner man than Uther. Her neck was long and slender, the head poised gracefully. The dark hair streamed unbound down her back. Her eyes were blue, not the fierce blue of Uther’s, but the deep, dark blue of the Celt. Her mouth was proud. She was very lovely, and no man’s toy. If Uther wanted her, I thought, he would have to make her Queen.

She had stopped just short of the window. If she had gone to it, she might have been seen from the courtyard. No, not a lady to lose her head.