“As long as he doesn’t get in too deep.” This was the older man. “What is he? Sixteen? Seventeen? He’s my son’s age, maybe less.”

“He won’t do that. Oh, he can’t see past bedtime yet, but she knows better than try to use him for any party stuff. You mark my words.”

“I believe you. But we’ll watch, just the same.”

“Hush. I think she’s coming. Alone, too, would you believe it?”

“Well, he was played out. He could hardly stand when he got here, and they’ve been talking for three hours since dinner. We’ll see him here with her tomorrow, I’ve no doubt.”

This time they were not speaking of Alexander.

27

“The Queen of the Isles?” exclaimed Alexander.

“Well, she calls herself that.” In a less exalted personage than a queen, Morgan’s tone might have been called spiteful. “Some petty king she married, and lucky to get him, seeing that she’d been Merlin’s mistress for the gods know how many years, and he old enough to be her grandfather!”

They were sitting together in Queen Morgan’s chamber – the bower of bliss. Count Ferlas, having rested for two days at the castle, had gone back to his home, taking the sad news of his brother’s death to their mother, and since then the queen had been at some pains to soothe her young lover’s wounded feelings, and to show him that nothing was changed between them. It had crossed Alexander’s mind that, while Ferlas had remained in the castle, the interviews between the count and Queen Morgan were rather prolonged even for what they might have had to discuss. But (though he would not admit it even to himself) the respite from dancing attendance, and from ever more demanding love-making, had been rather welcome than otherwise.

For all that, when her summons came he answered it with alacrity, to find her alone in the royal apartments, sitting by the window that looked south over the river-valley. He was given her hand to kiss, no more, and rose from his knee to see a look of trouble shadowing the beautiful face.

No need to ask what irked her; she gestured him abruptly to a chair across from hers, and began to talk.

Count Ferlas and his brother, she told him, had been among the knights who had attended her even before she was banished to Caer Eidyn, and had stayed in her service through her confinement there and at Castell Aur. Though (this with a prettily rueful glance at Alexander) it could not truthfully be said that her imprisonment at her brother Arthur’s hands was unduly harsh, it was still imprisonment, and her loyal knights felt, had always felt, that it was unjust. So they had banded together to offer what help they could in persuading Arthur to release her. And they knew – everyone knew – that the biggest impediment in the way of this was the King’s adviser, Merlin’s successor, Nimuë, wife of King Pelleas of the Isles.