“Alone?”
“Alone in heart.”
“Where now?”
“My lord—I know not.”
“O God!—to see her face again.”
Merlin cast his leopard skin across his visage and stood like a statue, even his immense grandeur of reserve threatened for the moment with summary overthrow. In the taking of twenty breaths he had calmed himself again to stand with bare head and frank face before the King—a promise on his lips.
“My lord, give me a moon’s season to stare into this mystery. On the cross I swear it—I will bring you good news at Caerleon.”
“On the cross!”
“On the cross of your sword.”
"Merlin, if this thing should come to be, if life returns to one whose hopes were dead, you of all men in Britain shall be next my heart. Behold—on the cross—I swear it."