Uther and Igraine/Book 4/9

IX

WITHOUT the gate of Tintagel stood Uther the King, looking out towards the eastern hills clear against the calm of the sky. He stood bare-headed, like one in prayer; his face was strong, yet wistful and patient as a sick child's. At his elbow waited Merlin, silent and inscrutable. Much had passed between them in that upper room, that room more hallowed to Uther than the rock tomb of the Christ.

"Ever, ever night," he said, stretching out his hands as to an eternal void.

Merlin's eyes seemed to look leagues away over moor, hill, and valley. A strange tenderness played upon his lips, and there was a radiance upon his face impossible to describe. It was like the face of a lover, a dreamer of dreams.

"A man is a mystery to himself," he said.

"But to God? "

"I know no God, save the god my own soul. Let me live and die, nothing more. Why curse one's life with a 'to be'? "

Uther sighed heavily.

"It is a kind of fate to me," he said, "inevitable as the setting of the sun, natural as sleep. Not for myself do I fear it."

"Let Jehovah follow Jupiter into the chaos of fable. Sire, look yonder."

Merlin's eyes had caught life on the distant hillsides, life surging from the valleys, life, and the glory of it. Harness, helm, and shield shone in the sun. Gold, azure, silver, scarlet, were creeping from the bronzed green of the wilds. Silent and solemn the host rolled gradual into the full splendour of the day.

Uther's eyes beheld them through a mist of tears.

"King Nentres, King Urience, and the host," he said.

"Even so, sire."

"They were bidden to follow."

"Loyal to their king."

Uther watched them with a great pride stealing into his eyes; he smiled and held his head high.

"All these are mine," he said.

Merlin's face had kindled.

"Grapple the days to come," he said; "let Scripture and old ethics rot. You have a thousand knights; let them ride by stream and forest, moor and mere. Let them ride out and sunder like the wind."

"The quest of a King's heart!"

"Sire, like a golden dawn shall she rise out of the past. Blow thy horn. Let us not tarry."