"Mary Stewart - The Arthurian Saga 03 - The Last Enchanment" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stewart Mary)

Uther, though too sick to ride at the head of the troops, took the
field in a litter, with Cador, Duke of Cornwall, in command of the
right, and on the left King Coel of Rheged, with Caw of Strathclyde and
other leaders from the north.

Only Lot, King of Lothian and Orkney, failed to take the field.
King Lot, a powerful king but a doubtful ally, held his men in reserve,
to throw them into the fight where and when they should be needed.
It was said that he held back deliberately in the hope that Uther's
army would be destroyed, and that in the event the kingdom might fall
to him.

It so, his hopes were defeated.

When, in the fierce fighting around the King's litter in the centre of
the field, young Arthur's sword broke in his hand.

King Uther threw to his hand his own royal sword, and with it (as men
understood it) the leadership of the kingdom.

After that he lay back in his litter and watched the boy, ablaze like
some comet of victory, lead an attack that put the Saxons to rout.

Afterwards, at the victory feast.

Lot headed a faction of rebel lords who opposed Uther's choice of
heir.

At the height of the brawling, contentious feast.

King Uther died, leaving the boy, with myself beside him, to face and
win them over.
What happened then has become the stuff of song and story.

Enough here to say that, by his own kingly bearing, and through the
sign sent from the god, Arthur showed himself undoubted King.
But the evil seed had already been sown.

On the previous day, while he was still ignorant of his true parentage,
Arthur had met Morgause, Uther's bastard daughter, and his own
half-sister.

She was very lovely; and he was young, in all the flush of his first
victory, so when she sent her maid for him that night he went eagerly,
with no more thought of what the night's pleasure might bring but the
cooling of his hot blood and the loss of his maidenhood.
Hers, you may be sure, had been lost long ago.

Nor was she innocent in other ways.