Legacy: Arthurian Saga (163 page)

I heard that, unbelievably, Guinevere
was still on Ynys Witrin, where some of her ladies had joined her
as guests of the old queen. Bedwyr, too, was still lodged in
Melwas' palace; the knives had been rusty, and a couple of the
wounds they made had become inflamed; added to this, he had taken a
chill from wet and exposure, and was ill now with fever. Some of
his own men were there with him, guests in Melwas' hall. Queen
Guinevere herself, so said my informant, visited him daily, and had
insisted on helping his nurses.

Another fragment of information I
gathered for myself. The Queen's merlin had been found dead,
hanging from its jesses in a high tree, near the place where Bedwyr
had dragged the channel.

On the fifth day the summons came, a
letter bidding me to confer with the High King about the new
council hall, which had been finished while he was in Gwynedd. I
saddled up and left immediately for Camelot.

Arthur was waiting for me on the
western terrace of the palace. This was a wide paved walk, with
formal garden beds wherein some of the Queen's roses bloomed, and
pansies and the pretty summer flowers. Now, in the chilly spring
afternoon, the only color came from the daffodils, and the pale
dwindling heads of the fair-maids.

Arthur stood by the terrace wall,
looking out toward the distant, shining line that was the edge of
the open sea. He did not turn to greet me, but waited until I was
beside him. Then he glanced to make sure that the servant who had
brought me to him had gone, and said abruptly:

"You will have guessed that it's
nothing to do with the council hall. That was for the secretaries.
I want to talk with you privately."

"Melwas?"

"Of course." He swung round with his
back to the parapet, half leaning against it. He regarded me
frowningly. "You were with Bedwyr when he found the Queen, and when
he brought her back to Ynys Witrin. I saw you there, but when I
turned to find you, you had gone. I am told, moreover, that it was
you who told Bedwyr where to find her. If you knew anything about
this affair that I do not, then why did you not wait and speak with
me then?"

"There was nothing I could have told
you then that would not have stirred up trouble that you could well
do without. What was needed was time. Time for the Queen to rest;
for you to talk with her; time to allay men's fears, not inflame
them. Which you seem to have done. I am told that Bedwyr and the
Queen are still on Ynys Witrin."

"Yes. Bedwyr is ill. He took straight
to bed with a chill, and by morning was in a fever."

"So I heard. I blame myself. I should
have stayed to dress those cuts. Have you talked with
him?"

"No. He was not fit."

"And the Queen?"

"Is well."

"But not yet ready to make the journey
home?"

"No," he said shortly. He turned away
again, looking towards the distant gleam of the sea.

"I take it that Melwas must have
offered some sort of explanation?" I said at length.

I expected the question to strike some
kind of spark, but he merely looked tired, grey in a grey
afternoon.

"Oh, yes. I talked with Melwas. He
told me what had happened. He was fowling in the marshes, himself
with one servant, a man called Berin. They had taken their boat
into the edge of the forest, up the river that you saw. He heard
the commotion in the forest, and then saw the Queen's mare plunge
and slide in the mud of the bank. The Queen was thrown clear into
the water. Her own people were nowhere to be seen. The two men
rowed to her and pulled her out. She was unconscious as if she had
struck her head in the fall.

While they were doing this they heard
her people go by at some distance, without coming near the river."
A pause. "No doubt at this point Melwas should have sent his man
after them, but he was on foot and they were mounted, and besides,
the Queen was drenched and fainting, and very cold, and could
hardly have been carried home, except by boat. So Melwas had the
servant row to his lodge, and make a fire. He had food there, and
wine. He had expected to go there himself to pass the night, so the
place was ready."

"That was fortunate."

I kept the dryness from my voice, but
he gave me a flick of a glance, sharp as a dagger. "Indeed. After a
while she began to recover. He sent the servant with the boat to
Ynys Witrin to bring help, and women to tend her, with either
horses and a litter, or else a barge that could carry her in
comfort. But before he had gone far the man returned to say that my
sails were in sight, and that it looked as if I would land with the
tide. Melwas judged it best to set off at once himself for the
wharf to meet me, as his duty was, and to give me the news of her
safety."

"Leaving her behind," I said
neutrally.

"Leaving her behind. The only craft he
had was the light skin boat that he used for his fowling trips. It
was not fit for her -- certainly not in the state she was in. You
must have seen that for yourself. When Bedwyr brought her to me,
she could do nothing but weep and shiver. I had to let the women
take her straight away and put her to bed."

He pushed himself away from the
parapet, and, turning aside, took half a dozen rapid steps away and
back again. He broke off a sprig of rosemary, and pulled it to and
fro in his hands. I could smell its peppery, pungent scent from
where I stood. I said nothing. After a while he stopped pacing and
stood, feet apart, watching me, but still pulling the rosemary in
and out between his fingers.

"So that is the story."

"I see." I regarded him thoughtfully.
"And so you spent the night as Melwas' guest, and Bedwyr is still
there, and the Queen is lodged there as well...until
when?"

"I shall send for her
tomorrow."

"And today you sent for me. Why? It
seems that the affair is settled, and your decisions have been
made."

"You must know very well why I sent
for you." His voice had a sudden rough edge to it that belied his
previous calm. "What do you know that 'would have stirred up
trouble' if you had spoken to me that night? If you have something
to say to me, Merlin, say it."

"Very well. But tell me first, have
you spoken with the Queen at all?" A lift of the brows. "What do
you think? A man who has been away from his wife for the best part
of a month? And a wife who was in need of comfort."

"But if she was ill, being nursed by
the women --"

"She was not ill. She was tired, and
distressed, and she was very frightened." I thought of Guinevere's
composed, quiet voice, the careful poise, the shaking body. "Not of
my coming." He spoke sharply, answering what I had not said. "She
feared Melwas, and she fears you. Are you surprised? Most people
do. But she does not fear me. Why should she? I love her. But she
was afraid that some evil tongue might poison me with lies...So
until I went to her, and listened to her story, she could not
rest."

"She was afraid of Melwas? Why? Was
her story not the same as his?" This time he did answer the
implication. He sent the mangled sprig of rosemary spinning out
over the terrace wall.

"Merlin." It came quietly, but with a
kind of hard-held finality. "

Merlin, you do not have to tell me
that Melwas lied to me, and that this was a rape. If Guinevere had
been so badly hurt when she fell that she lay fainting for most of
the day, then she could hardly have ridden home with you, or been
as whole and sound as she was when I lay with her that night. She
had sustained no hurt at all. Nothing but fear."

"She told you that his story was a
lie?"

"Yes." If Guinevere had told him a
different tale, I thought I knew what she had not made clear. I
said slowly: "When she spoke with Bedwyr and myself, her story was
the same as Melwas'. Now you say that the Queen herself told you it
was a rape?"

"Yes." His brows twitched together.
"You don't believe either story, do you? Is that what you are
trying to tell me? You think -- by God, Merlin, just what do you
think?"

"I don't yet know the Queen's story.
Tell me what she said."

He was so angry that I thought he
would leave me then and there. But after a turn or two along the
terrace he came back to where I waited. He had almost the air of a
man approaching single combat. "Very well. You are my counselor,
after all, and it seems I shall be in need of counsel." He drew in
his breath. The story came in brief, expressionless sentences.
"This is what she says. She did not take a fall at all. She saw her
falcon stoop, and catch its jesses in a tree. She stopped her mare,
and dismounted. Then she saw Melwas, in his boat by the bank. She
called to him for help. He came up the bank to her, but did nothing
about the merlin. He started to talk to her of love; how he had
loved her since the time they had traveled up from Wales together.
He would not listen when she tried to stop him, and when she made
to mount again he took hold of her, and in the straggle the mare
broke free and bolted. The Queen tried to call out for her people,
but he put a hand over her mouth, and threw her down into the boat.
The servant thrust it off from the bank, and rowed them away. The
man was afraid, she says, and made some sort of protest, but he did
as Melwas bade him. He took her to the lodge. It was all ready, as
if he expected her...or some other woman. You saw it. Was it not
so?"

I thought of the fire, the bed, the
rich hangings, the robe Guinevere had worn. "I saw a little. Yes,
it was prepared."

"He had had her in his mind so
long...He had only been waiting his chance. He had followed her
before -- it was well known that she had a habit of outriding her
people." There was a film of sweat on his face. He put the heel of
his hand up to his brow and wiped it away.

"Did he lie with her,
Arthur?"

"No. He held her there all day,
pleading with her, she says, begging for her love...He began with
sweet speeches and promises, but when they got him nowhere, he grew
crazed, she says, and violent, and began to see his own danger.
After he sent his man away, she thinks he might have forced her,
but the servant came quickly back to tell his master that my sails
had been sighted, and Melwas left her in panic, and hurried to me
to tell his lies. He threatened her that if she spoke the truth to
me, he, Melwas, would say he had lain with her, so that I would
kill her as well as him. She was to tell the same story as he would
tell. Which you say she did, to you."

"Yes."

"And you knew it was not
true?"

"Yes."

"I see." He was still watching me with
that fierce but wary look. I was beginning to realize, but without
much surprise, that even I could not keep secrets from him now.
"And you thought she might have lied to me. That was the 'trouble'
you foresaw?"

"Partly, yes."

"You thought she would lie to me? To
me?" He repeated it as if it were unthinkable.

"If she were afraid, who could blame
her for lying? Yes, I know you say she is not afraid of you. But
she is only a woman, after all, and she might well be afraid of
your anger. Any woman would lie to save herself. It would have been
your right to kill her, and him, too."

"It is still my right to do that,
whether there was a rape or not."

"Well, then --? Could she have known
that you would even listen to her, that you would be King and
statesman before you allowed yourself to be the vengeful husband?
Even I stand amazed, and I thought I knew you."

A flicker of grim amusement. "With
Bedwyr and the Queen on the Island as hostages, you might say my
hands were tied...I shall kill him, of course. You know that, don't
you? But in my own time, and on some other cause, when all this is
forgotten, and the Queen's honor cannot suffer from it." He swung
away, and put his two hands on the parapet, looking out again
across the darkening stretch of land toward the sea. Somewhere a
beam broke through the clouds, and a shaft of dusky light poured
down, lighting a distant stretch of water to a piercing
gleam.

He spoke slowly, into the distance.
"I've been thinking over the story I shall put about. I shall take
a tale midway between Melwas' lie and what the Queen told me. She
was there all day with him, after all, from dawn till dusking...I
shall let it be given out that she fell from her horse, as Melwas
said, and was carried unconscious to the hunting lodge, and there
lay, shaken and fainting for most of the day. Bedwyr and you must
bear this out. If it were known that she was not hurt at all, there
are those who would blame her for not trying to escape. This,
though the servant had the boat under his eyes all day, and even if
she could have swum, there were the knives...She could, of course,
have threatened them with my vengeance, but she saw that as the
road only to her own end. He could have kept her there, and had his
pleasure and then killed her. You know that her people had already
accepted the fact of her death. Except you. That was what saved
her."

I said nothing. He turned.

"Yes. Except you. You told them she
was alive, and you took Bedwyr to her. Now, tell me how you knew.
Was it a 'seeing'?"