For these young rebels the court that Morgan held, here and at Castell Aur, was a handy and pleasant centre for hatching plots for Arthur’s discomfiture or their own advancement. They were not aware that Arthur knew all about it, and chose to allow it. In killing his sister’s lover and holding his sister a captive (however silken her chains) he knew that her household could become a centre of disaffection, and herself even a focus for rebellion. But his adviser, since Merlin’s latest disappearance into his tower of crystal, was a woman, wiser in the ways of women than ever Merlin could have been. “Leave Morgan her state and her lovers,” Nimuë had said, “and let her plot in peace, where you can watch her doing it.” Arthur had followed her advice, so Morgan kept her little train of dissidents, and occupied her time with busy – and so far harmless – plotting against her brother.

Now, balked by Alexander’s stubborn loyalty, she abandoned the attempt to add him to her court. She came very near to relinquishing her plan to lead him to her bed, but she had another scheme afoot, where someone like Alexander, so patently honest, might succeed where others of her train had failed. Besides, it was time she had a new lover, and he was handsome, and young, and more than ready for it, so –

So she changed her tactics, admitted some fault with a pretty show of remorse, spoke with affectionate respect of Arthur, and begged Alexander to forget what she had said in a moment of despair, and to tell her, instead, of himself and his hopes for the future. To which end she made him help her dismount, and they sat together in a sunlit hollow sheltered by flowering gorse-bushes, while the King’s men, stolidly patient, and laying quiet bets on the result of the day’s outing, waited within sight but out of hearing.

They saw a charming picture: the queen, sitting on Alexander’s outspread cloak with her green-and-tawny silk and velvet spread gracefully round her, and the young man lying at her feet, his gaze on her face. He talked; it is to be supposed (since he could hardly tell her the truth about himself and his journey to Drustan’s castle and thence to Camelot) that his talk dealt mainly with his present hopes of love. So he talked, while she smiled and listened with a pretty air of attention, but the watchers saw, when Alexander looked away, that she yawned. Soon after that her hand went out to him, and he snatched it eagerly to his lips. She leaned forward then, smiling still, and said something that brought him swiftly to his feet with both hands held out to help her rise. She let him pull her up into his arms and kiss her, long and passionately, before he lifted her to the saddle.

There was really no need for the watchers to hear what was said. They knew. They had seen or heard it all before. The lady had whistled yet another young fool to her bed, and the fool would go, and be fooled still further, and in time, perhaps, would learn the price he would have to pay for his folly.