Legacy: Arthurian Saga (145 page)

If she grieved for her lost son, she
gave no sign of it. It showed, the people said, that she had in
truth been seduced by Arthur, and could never have wanted the
bastard she had been made to bear. But to me, watching and waiting
in drab anonymity, it began to mean something quite different. I
did not believe that the child Mordred had been in that boatload of
slaughtered innocents at all. I remembered the three armed men,
sober and purposeful, who had gone back into the castle by the
postern entrance before Lot's return -- and after the coming of
Morgause's messenger from the south. The woman Macha, too, lying
dead in her cottage beside the empty cradle with her throat cut.
And Lind, running out into the dark without Morgause's knowledge or
sanction, to warn Macha and take the child Mordred to
safety.

Piecing it together, I thought I knew
what had happened. Macha had been chosen to foster Mordred because
she had borne Lot a bastard boy; it might even have pleased
Morgause to watch the baby killed; she had laughed, Lind had told
us. So, with Mordred safe, and the changeling ready for the
slaughter, Morgause had waited for Lot's return. As soon as she had
news of it, her men-at-arms had been sent with orders to dispatch
Mordred to yet another safe foster-home, and to kill Macha, who, if
her own baby were to suffer, might be tempted to betray the queen.
And now Lot was pacified, the town was quiet, and somewhere, I was
sure, the child who was Morgause's weapon of power grew in
safety.

After Lot had ridden to rejoin Arthur,
I sent Ulfin south again, but myself stayed on in Lothian, watching
and waiting. With Lot out of the way, I moved back into Dunpeldyr,
and tried, in every way I could, to find some clue to where Mordred
could now be hidden. What I would have done if I had found him, I
do not know, but the god did not lay that burden on me. So I waited
for fully four months in that squalid little town, and though I
walked on the shore by starlight and sunlight and spoke to my god
in every tongue and with every way I knew, I saw nothing, either by
daylight or in dream, to guide me to Arthur's son.

In time I came to believe that I might
have been wrong; that even Morgause could not be so evil, and that
Mordred had perished with the other innocents in that midnight
sea.

So at length, as autumn slid into the
first chills of winter, and news came that the fighting in Linnuis
was done, and Lot would soon be on his way home once more, I
thankfully left Dunpeldyr. Arthur would be at Caerleon for
Christmas, and would look for me there. I paused only once on my
journey, to spend a few nights with Blaise in Northumbria and give
him the news, then I traveled south, to be there when the King came
home.

He came back in the second week of
December, with frost on the ground, and the children out gathering
the holly and ivy for decking the Christmas feast. He barely waited
to bathe and change from the ride before he sent for me. He
received me in the room where we had talked before we parted. This
time the door to the bedroom was shut, and he was alone.

He had changed a good deal in the
months since Pentecost. Taller, yes, by half a head -- it is an age
when youths shoot up like barley-stalks -- and with breadth to go
with it, and the hard lean brownness got from the soldier's life he
was leading. But this was not the real change. That was in
authority. His manner showed now that he knew what he was doing and
where he was going.

But for that, the interview might have
been an echo of the one I had had with the younger Arthur, on the
night of Mordred's begetting.

"They say that I ordered this
abominable thing!" He had hardly troubled to greet me. He strode
about the room, the same strong, light lion's prowl of a walk, but
the strides were a hand-span longer. The room was a cage
restraining him. "When you know yourself how, in this very room, I
said no, leave it to the god. And now this!"

"It's what you wanted, isn't
it?"

"All those deaths? Don't be a fool,
would I have done it like that? Or would you?"

The question needed no reply, and got
none. I said merely: "Lot was never remarkable for his wisdom and
restraint, and besides, he was in a rage. You might say the action
was suggested to him, or at least encouraged, from
without."

He threw me a quick, smouldering look.
"By Morgause? So I understand."

"I gather Ulfin has told you all the
story? Did he also tell you of his own services in the
matter?"

"That he tried to mislead you, and let
fate overtake the children? Yes, he told me that." A brief pause.
"It was wrong, and I said so, but it's hard to be angry at
devotion. He thought -- he knew that I would have been easy at the
baby's death. But those other children...Within a month of vows I
made to protect the people, and my name a hissing in the
streets..."

"I think you can comfort yourself. I
doubt if many men believe that you had anything to do with
it."

"No matter." He almost snapped it over
his shoulder. "Some will, and that is enough. As for Lot, he had an
excuse of a kind; an excuse, that is, that common men can
understand. But I? Can I publish it abroad that Merlin the prophet
told me the child might be a danger to me, so I had it murdered,
and others along with it for fear it should escape the net? What
sort of king does this make of me? Lot's sort?"

"I can only repeat that I doubt if you
are held to blame. Morgause's women were there within hearing,
remember, and the guards knew where their orders came from. Lot's
escort, too -- they would know he was riding home bent on revenge,
and I cannot imagine that Lot remained silent as to his intentions.
I don't know what Ulfin has told you, but when I left Dunpeldyr
most people were quoting Lot's orders as responsible for the
massacre, and those who thought you ordered it think you did so on
my advice."

"So?" he said. He really was very
angry. "I am the kind of king who cannot even decide for myself? If
there is to be blame allotted for this between us, then I should
take it, and not you. You know that well enough. You remember as
well as I do exactly what was said."

There was no reply to that, either,
and I made none. He prowled up the room and back again before he
went on: "Whoever gave the order, you can say if you like that I
feel guilt in this. You would be right. But by all the gods in
heaven and hell, I would not have acted like that! This is the kind
of thing that lives with you, and after you! I shall not be
remembered as the king who beat the Saxons out of Britain, but as
the man who played Herod in Dunpeldyr and murdered the children!"
He stopped. "What is there in that to smile at?"

"I doubt if you need trouble yourself
about the name you will leave behind you."

"So you say."

"So I said." The change in tense, or
something about my tone, arrested him. I met his look, and held it.
"Yes, I, Merlin, said so. I said so when I had power, and it is
true. You are right to be distressed at this abomination, and you
are right, too, to take some of the blame to yourself. But if this
thing goes down in story as your act, you will still be absolved of
blame. You can believe me. What else is to come will absolve you of
anything."

The anger had died, and he was
thinking. He spoke slowly. "Do you mean that some danger will come
of the child's birth and death? Something so terrible that men will
see the murder as justified?"

"I did not mean that, no
--"

"You made another prophecy, remember.
You hinted to me -- no, you told me -- that Morgause's child might
be a danger to me. Well, now the child is dead. Could this have
been the danger? This smear on my name?" He paused, struck. "Or
perhaps someday one of the men whose sons were murdered will wait
for me with a knife in the dark? Is that the kind of thing you had
in mind?"

"I told you, I had nothing specific in
mind. I did not say that the child 'might' be a danger to you,
Arthur. I said he would. And, if my word is to be trusted, directly
so, and not by a knife in another man's hand."

He was still now as he had been
restless before. He scowled at me, intent. "You mean that the
massacre failed of its purpose? That the child -- Mordred, did you
say? -- is still alive?"

"I have come to think so."

He drew a quick breath. "Then he was
saved, somehow, from that wreck?"

"It's possible. Either he was saved by
chance, and is living somewhere, unknowing and unknown, as you did
through your childhood -- in which case you may encounter him
someday, as Laius did Oedipus, and fall to him in all
ignorance."

"I'll risk that. Everyone falls to
someone, some time. Or?"

"Or he was never in the boat at
all."

He gave a slow nod. "Morgause, yes. It
would fit. What do you know?"

I told him the little I knew, and the
conclusions I had drawn. "She must have known," I finished, "that
Lot's reactions would be violent. We know she wanted to keep the
child, and why. She would hardly have put her own child at risk on
Lot's return. It's clear enough that she engineered the whole
thing. Lind gave us more details later on. We know that she goaded
Lot into the furious anger that dictated the massacre; we know,
too, that she started the rumor that you were to blame. So what has
she done? She has put Lot's fears to rest, and made her own
position secure. And I believe, from watching her, and from what I
know of her, that at the same time she has contrived --"

"To keep her hostage to fortune." The
flush had died from his skin. He looked cold, his eyes like slates
with cold rain on them. This was an Arthur that other men had seen,
but never I. How many Saxons had seen those eyes just before they
died? He said bitterly: "I have been well paid already for that
night of lust. I wish you had let me kill her then. That is one
lady who had better never come near me again, unless she comes on
her knees, and in sack-cloth." His tone made a vow of it. Then it
changed. "When did you get back from the north?"

"Yesterday."

"Yesterday? I thought...I understood
that this abomination took place months ago."

"Yes. I stayed to watch events. Then
after I began to make my guesses, I waited to see if Morgause might
make some move to show me where the child was hidden. If Lind had
been able to go back to her, and had dared to help me...but that
was impossible. So I stayed until the news came that you had left
Linnuis, and that Lot would soon be on his way home again. I knew
that once he came home I could do nothing, so I came
away."

"I see. All that way, and now I keep
you on your feet and rail at you as if you were a guard caught
sleeping on duty. Will you forgive me?"

"There's nothing to forgive. I have
rested. But I should be glad to sit now. Thank you."

This as he pulled a chair for me, and
then sat himself in the big chair beyond the massive table. "You've
said nothing in your reports about this idea that Mordred was still
alive. And Ulfin never mentioned it as a possibility."

"I don't think it crossed his mind. It
was mainly after he had gone, and I had time to think and watch,
myself, that I thought back and reached my own conclusion. There's
still no proof, of course, that I am right. And nothing but the
memory of an old foreboding to tell me whether or not it matters.
But I can tell you one thing: from the idle contentment that the
King's prophet feels in his bones these days, any threat from
Mordred, direct or otherwise, will not show itself for a long time
to come."

He gave me a look where no shadow of
anger remained. A smile sparked deep in his eyes. "So, I have
time."

"You have time. This was bad, and you
were right to be angry; but it is already barely remembered, and
soon will be forgotten in the blaze of your victories. Concerning
them, I hear talk of nothing else. So put this aside now, and think
about the next. Time spent looking back in anger is time
wasted."

The tension broke up at last in the
familiar smile. "I know. A maker, never a breaker. How often have
you told me? Well, I'm only mortal. I break first, to make
room...All right, I'll forget it. There is plenty to think about
and plan for, without wasting time on what is done. In fact" -- the
smile deepened -- "I heard that King Lot is planning a move
northward to his kingdom there. Perhaps, in spite of laying the
blame on me, he feels uncomfortable in Dunpeldyr...? The Orkneys
are fertile islands, they tell me, and fine in the summer months,
but tend to be cut off from the main all winter?"

"Unless the sea freezes."

"And that," he said, with most
unkingly satisfaction, "will surely be beyond even Morgause's
powers. So distance will help us to forget Lot and his
works..."

His hand moved among the papers and
tablets on the table. I was thinking that I should have looked
farther afield for Mordred: if Lot had told his queen his plans for
taking the court northward, she might have made some arrangement
for sending the child there. But Arthur was speaking
again.

"Do you know anything about
dreams?"

I was startled. "Dreams? Well, I have
had them."