Legacy: Arthurian Saga (144 page)

They clattered off. I brought my
mule's head up hard. "Ulfin?"

"They took the east road, my
lord."

So by the east road we went.
Indifferently mounted as we were, we would not normally have
expected to catch up with hard-riding troops. But our mounts were
rested, while Lot's men must needs, I thought, still be using the
poor beasts that had borne them from the battlefields in the
south.

So when, after half an hour's riding,
we caught no glimpse, nor heard any sound of them, I drew rein, and
turned in the saddle.

"Ulfin. A word with you."

He nudged his mule alongside. In that
windy darkness I could not see his face, but something came from
him that I could sense. He was afraid.

He had not been afraid before, even at
Macha's cottage. And here there could only be one source of fear:
myself.

I said to him: "Why did you lie to
me?"

"My lord --"

"The troopers did not come this way,
did they?"

I heard him swallow. "No, my
lord."

"Then which way?"

"To the sea. I think -- it was thought
they were going to put the children into a boat, and set it adrift.
The king had said he would put them into God's hands, so that the
innocent ones --"

"Pah!" I said. "Lot speak of God's
hands? He feared what the people might do if they saw the babies'
throats cut, that is all. No doubt he'll have it put about that
Arthur ordered the slaughter, but that he himself mitigated the
sentence, and gave the babies their chance. The shore.
Where?"

"I don't know."

"Is that true?"

"Indeed, indeed it is. There are
several ways. No one knew for sure. This is the truth, my
lord."

"Yes. If anyone had known, some of the
menfolk might have tried to follow. So we go back and take the
first road to the shore. We can ride along the beach to look for
them. Come."

But as I swung my mule's head round,
his hand came down on the rein. It was something he would hardly
have dared to do, except in desperation. "My lord -- forgive me.
What are you going to do? After all this...are you still trying to
find the child?"

"What do you think? Arthur's
son?"

"But Arthur himself wants him
dead!"

So that was it. I should have guessed
long since. My mule jibbed as the reins jerked in my hands. "So you
were listening at Caerleon. You heard what he said to me that
night."

"Yes." This time I could hardly hear
him. "To refuse to murder a child, lord, that is one thing. But
when the murder is done for you --"

"There is no need to struggle to
prevent it? Perhaps not. But since you were eavesdropping that
night, you may also have heard me tell the King that I take orders
from an authority beyond his own. And so far my gods have told or
shown me nothing. Do you imagine they want us to emulate Lot, and
his bitch of a queen? And you have heard the calumny they have
thrown upon Arthur. For his honor's sake, even just for his peace
of mind, he has to know the truth. I am here for him, to watch and
to report. Whatever is to be done, I shall do it. Now take your
hand off my rein."

He obeyed. I kicked the mule to a
gallop. We pounded back along the road.

This was the way we had originally
come to Dunpeldyr by daylight. I tried to remember what we had seen
then of the coastline. It is a coast of high cliffs, with wide
sandy bays between them. One great headland jutted out about a mile
from the town, and even at low tide it seemed unlikely that a man
could ride round it. But just beyond the headland was a track
leading toward the sea. From there -- and the tide, I reckoned, was
well out now -- we could ride the whole way back along the shore to
the mouth of the Tyne.

Faintly, but perceptibly, the night
was slackening toward dawn. It was possible to see our
way.

Now a cairn of stones loomed on our
right. On a flat slab at its base a bundle of feathers stirred in
the wind, and the mules showed the whites of their eyes; I supposed
they could smell the blood. And here was the track, leading off
across rough grassland toward the sea. We swung into it. Presently
the track sloped downhill, and there before us was the shore, and
the grey murmur of the sea.

The vast headland loomed on our right;
to the left the sand stretched level and grey. We turned that way,
and struck once more to a gallop.

The tide was out, the rippled sand
packed hard. To our right the sea threw a kind of grey light up to
the cloudy sky. Some way to the north, set back in the midst of
that luminous grey, was the mass of the great rock where the
lighthouse stands. The light was red and steady. Soon, I thought,
as our mules pounded along, we should be able to distinguish the
looming shape of Dunpeldyr's crag to landward, and the level
reaches of the bay where the river meets the sea.

Ahead of us a low headland jutted out,
its seaward end black and broken, with the water whitening at its
edge. We rounded it, the mules splashing fetlock-deep through the
creaming surf. Now we could see Dunpeldyr, a mile or two away
inland, still alive with lights. Ahead of us lay the last stretch
of sand. Shadowy trees marked the river's course, and the ashen
glimmer where its waters spread out to meet the sea. And along the
river's edge, where the sea-road ran, bobbed the torches of
horsemen heading back at a steady canter for the town. The work was
done.

My mule came willingly to a halt.
Ulfin's stopped, blowing, half a length to the rear. Under their
hoofs the ebbtide dragged at the grating sand.

After a while I spoke. "You have your
wish, it seems."

"My lord, forgive me. All I could
think of --"

"What do I forgive? Am I to bear you a
grudge for serving your master rather than me?"

"I should have trusted you to know
what you were doing."

"When I have not known myself? For all
I know, you have been wiser than I. At least, since the thing is
done, and it seems Arthur will bear some part of the blame for it,
we can be forgiven for hoping that Morgause's child is dead with
the rest."

"How could any of them escape? Look,
my lord."

I swung round to look where he
pointed.

Away out to sea, beyond a low reef of
rocks at the edge of the bay, a sail showed, a pale crescent,
glimmering faintly grey in the sea-light. Then it cleared the reef,
and the boat moved out to sea. The wind, steadily offshore, filled
the sail, taking the boat out with the speed of a gliding gull.
Herod's mercy for the innocents lay there, in the movement of wind
and sea, as the drifting boat dipped and skimmed, carrying its
hapless cargo fast away from the shore.

The sail melted into the grey and
vanished. The sea sighed and murmured under the wind. The little
waves lapped on the rock and dragged the sand and broken shells
seaward past the mules' feet. On the ridge beside us the bent-grass
whistled in the wind. Then, above these sounds, I heard it, very
faintly, carried to us over the water in a lull of the wind; a
thin, keening wail, as unhuman as the song of the grey seals at
their meeting-haunts. It dwindled as we listened; then suddenly
came again, piercingly loud, straight over us, as if some soul,
leaving the doomed boat, had flown homing for the shore. Ulfin
shied as if from a ghost, and made the sign against evil; but it
was only a gull sweeping over us, high in the wind.

Ulfin did not speak again, and I sat
my mule in silence. Something was there in the dark; something that
weighed me down with grief. Not the children's fate only; certainly
not the presumed death of Arthur's child. But the dim sight of that
sail moving away over the grey water, and the sorrowful sounds that
came out of the dark, found an echo somewhere in the very core of
my soul.

I sat there without moving, while the
wind dwindled to silence, and the water lapped on the rock, and on
the sea the wailing died away.

BOOK II Camelot 1

Much as I would have liked to do so, I
did not leave Dunpeldyr straight away. Arthur was still in Linnuis,
and would want my report, not only on the massacre itself but on
what happened afterwards. Ulfin, I think, expected to be dismissed,
but, reckoning that to lodge in Dunpeldyr itself would hardly be
safe, I stayed on at The Bush of Broom, and so kept Ulfin with me
to act as messenger and connecting-file. Beltane, who had been
understandably shaken by the night's events, went south straight
away with Casso.

I kept my promise to the latter: it
had been a promise made on impulse, but I have found that such
impulses commonly have a source which should not be denied. So I
talked with the goldsmith, and easily persuaded him of the
advantages of a servant who could read and write; I made it clear,
besides, that I was letting Casso go to him for less than his cost
to me on condition that my wish was met. I found I had not needed
to insist; Beltane, that kindly man, promised with pleasure to
teach Casso himself, and then they both took leave of me and went
south, aiming once more for York. With them went Lind, who, it
seemed, had met a man in York who might protect her; he was a small
merchant, a respectable fellow who had spoken of marriage, but
whom, for fear of the queen, she had rejected. I took leave of
them, and settled down to see what the next few days would
bring.

Some two or three days after the
terrible night of Lot's return, the wreckage of the boat began to
come ashore, and with it the bodies. It was apparent that the boat
had driven on rock somewhere and had been broken up by the tide.
The poor women who went down to the beach fell to a kind of
dreadful squabbling as to which baby was which. The shore was
haunted by these wretched women. They wept a great deal and said
very little; it was apparent that they were accustomed, like
beasts, to take what their lords handed out to them, whether alms
or blows. It was also apparent to me, sitting in the alehouse
shadows and listening, that in spite of the tale about Arthur's
responsibility for the massacre, most folk laid the blame squarely
where it belonged, with Morgause, and with Lot, befooled and angry
about it. And because men are men everywhere, they were inclined
not to blame their king overmuch for his hasty reaction to that
anger. Any man, they were soon saying, would have done the
same.

Come home to find your wife delivered
of another man's boy, and small blame to you if you lost your
temper. And as for the wholesale slaughter, well, a king was a
king, and had a throne to consider as well as his bed. And speaking
of kings, had he not made kingly reparation? For this, wisely, Lot
had done; and however much the women might still weep and mourn,
the men on the whole accepted Lot's deed, along with the golden
recompense that followed it, as the natural action of a wronged and
angry king.

And Arthur? I put the question one
evening, casually, into one such conversation. If the rumors that
were being put about were true, of the High King's involvement in
the killing, was not Arthur himself similarly justified? If the
child Mordred was indeed his bastard by his half-sister, and a
hostage to fortune with King Lot (who had not always been his
keenest friend), surely it could be said that policy could justify
the deed? What more likely way could Arthur find of keeping the
great King of Lothian his friend than to ensure the death of the
cuckoo in the nest, and take the responsibility for its
killing?

At this there were murmurs and
head-shakings, which resolved at length into a sort of qualified
assent. So I threw in another thought. Everyone knew that in
matters like this of policy -- and high and secret policy, with a
great country like Lothian concerned -- everyone knew it was not
the young Arthur who made the civil decisions; it was his chief
adviser, Merlin. Depend upon it, this was the decision of a
ruthless and tortuous mind, not of a brave young soldier who spent
his every waking moment in the field against Britain's enemies, and
who had little time for bedroom politics -- except, naturally,
those that every man could find time for...

So, like a seed of grass, the idea was
sown, and as quickly as the grass it spread and grew; so that by
the time the news came of Arthur's next victorious engagement the
facts of the massacre had been accepted, and the guilt for it,
whether of Merlin, Arthur, or Lot, almost condoned. It was plain
that the High King -- may God preserve him against the enemy -- had
had little to do with it except see its necessity. Besides, the
babies, most of them, would have died in infancy of one thing or
another, and that without any gifts of gold such as Lot had handed
to the bereaved fathers. Moreover, most of the women were soon
bearing again, and had perforce to forget their tears.

The queen, also. King Lot was now seen
to have behaved in a truly kingly fashion. He had swept home in
anger, removed the bastard (whether by Arthur's orders or his own),
then got a true heir in the dead boy's place, and ridden off again,
his loyalty to the High King undiminished. Some of the bereaved
fathers, being offered places in the troop, rode with him,
confirmed in their own loyalty. Morgause herself, far from
appearing cowed by her lord's violence, or apprehensive of the
people's anger, looked (on the one or two occasions when I saw her
riding out) sleek and pleased with herself. Whatever the people may
have believed about her part in the massacre, she was safe from
their ill-will now that she was said to be carrying the kingdom's
true heir.