Legacy: Arthurian Saga (191 page)

The message from the palace came next
day. It was brought by two men, queen's guards by their dress and
weapons, and it was not coin, or any sort of gift; it was a summons
to the royal presence. The queen, it seemed, wanted to thank her
son's rescuer in person.

Mordred, straightening from the peat
digging, stared at them, trying to control, or at least conceal,
the sudden spurt of excitement within him.

"Now? Go with you now, you
mean?"

"Those were the orders," said the
elder of the guards, cheerfully.

"That's what she said, bring you back
with us now."

The other man added, with rough
kindliness: "No need to be afraid, youngster. You did well, by all
accounts, and there should be something in it for you."

"I'm not afraid." The boy spoke with
the disconcerting self-possession that had surprised Gawain. "But
I'm too dirty. I can't go to the queen like this. I'll have to go
home first, and get myself decent."

The men glanced at one another, then
the elder nodded. "Well, that's fair enough. How far is home from
here?"

"It's only over there, you can see
where the path runs along the cliff top, and then down. Only a few
minutes." He stopped as he spoke, to pick up the rope of the sled.
This was already half loaded. He threw the mattock on top of the
load, and set off, dragging the sled. The grass of the track, worn
and dry, was slippery, easy for the whalebone runners. He went
quickly, the two men following. At the head of the slope the men
paused, waiting, while the boy, with the ease bred by the daily
task, swung the sled round to run downhill in front of him, himself
leaning back against the rope to act as brake. He let the load run
into the stacked peat on the grass behind the cottage, then dropped
the rope and ran indoors. Sula was pounding grain in the quern. Two
of the hens had come indoors and were clucking round her feet. She
looked up, surprised.

"You're early! What is it?"

"Mother, get me my good tunic, will
you? Quickly." He snatched up the cloth that did duty as a towel,
and made again for the door. "Oh, and do you know where my necklet
is, the thong with the purple shells?"

"Necklet? Washing, in the middle of
the day?" Bewildered, Sula got up to do as he asked. "What's this,
Mordred? What has happened?"

For some reason, probably one he did
not know himself, the boy had told her nothing about his encounter
with Gawain on the cliff. It is possible that his parents' intense
interest in everything he did set him instinctively to guard parts
of his life from them. In keeping his encounter with the prince a
secret, he had hugged to himself the thought of Sula's pleasure
when the queen, as he confidently expected, gave him some
reward.

His pleased sense of importance, even
glee, sounded in his voice. "It's messengers from Queen Morgause,
Mother. They've come to bid me to the court. They're waiting for me
out there. I have to go straight away. The queen wants to see me
herself."

The effect of his announcement
startled even him. His mother, on her way to the bedplace, stopped
as if struck, then turned slowly, one hand out to the table's top,
as if she would have fallen without its support. The pestle fell
from her fingers and rolled to the floor, where the hens ran to it,
clucking. She seemed not to notice. In the smoky light of the room
her face had gone sallow. "Queen Morgause? Sent for you?
Already?"

Mordred stared. " 'Already'?" What do
you mean, Mother? Did somebody tell you what happened
yesterday?"

Sula, her voice shaking, tried to
recover herself. "No, no, I meant nothing. What did happen
yesterday?"

"It was nothing much. I was out at the
peats and I heard a cry from the cliff over yonder, and it was the
young prince, Gawain. You know, the oldest of the queen's sons. He
was half down the cliff after young falcons. He'd hurt his leg, and
I had to take the rope down from the sled, and help him climb back.
That's all. I didn't know who he was till afterwards. He told me
his mother would reward me, but I didn't think it would happen like
this, not so quickly, anyway. I didn't tell you yesterday, because
I wanted it to be a surprise. I thought you'd be
pleased."

"Pleased, of course I'm pleased!" She
took a great breath, steadying herself by the table. Her fists,
clenched on the wood, were trembling. She saw the boy staring, and
tried to smile. "It's great news, son. Your father will be glad.
She -- she'll give you silver, I shouldn't wonder. She's a lovely
lady, Queen Morgause, and generous where it pleases
her."

"You don't look pleased. You look
frightened." He came slowly back into the room. "You look ill,
Mother. Look, you've dropped your stick. Here it is. Sit down now.
Don't worry, I'll find the tunic. The necklet's in the cupboard
with it, isn't it? I'll get it. Come, sit down."

He took hold of her gently, and set
her back on the stool. Standing in front of her, he was taller than
she. She seemed to come to herself sharply. Her back straightened.
She gripped his arms above the elbows in her two hands and held him
tightly. Her eyes, red-rimmed with working near the smoke of the
peat fire, stared up at him with an intensity that made him want to
fidget and move away. She spoke in a low, urgent whisper: "Look, my
son. This is a great day for you, a great chance. Who knows what
may come of it? A queen's favor is a fine thing to come by...But it
can be a hard thing, forby. You're young yet, what would you know
of great folk and their ways? I don't know much myself, but I know
something about life, and there's one thing I can tell you,
Mordred. Always keep your own counsel. Never repeat what you hear."
In spite of herself, her hands tightened. "And never, never tell
anyone anything that's said here, in your home."

"Well, of course not! When do I ever
see anyone to talk to, anyway? And why should the queen or anyone
at the palace be interested in what goes on here?" He shifted
uncomfortably, and her grip loosened. "Don't worry, Mother. There's
nothing to be afraid of. I've done the queen a favor, and if she's
such a lovely lady, then I don't see what else can come of this
except good, do you? Look, I must go now. Tell Father I'll finish
the peats tomorrow. And keep some supper for me, won't you? I'll be
back as soon as I can."

To those who knew Camelot, the High
King's court, and even to people who remembered the state Queen
Morgause had kept in her castle of Dunpeldyour, the "palace" of
Orkney must have seemed a primitive place indeed. But to the boy
from the fisherman's hut it appeared splendid beyond
imagination.

The palace stood behind and above the
cluster of small houses that made up the principal township of the
islands. Below the town lay the harbor, its twin piers protecting a
good deep anchorage where the biggest of ships could tie up in
safety. Piers, houses, palace, all were built of the same flat
weathered slabs of sandstone. The roofs, too, were of great
flagstones hauled somehow into place and then hidden by a thick
thatching of turf or heather-stems, with deep eaves that helped to
throw the winter's rains away from walls and doors. Between the
houses ran narrow streets, steep guts also paved with the
flagstones so lavishly supplied by the local cliffs.

The main building of the palace was
the great central hall. This was the "public" hall, where the court
gathered, where feasts were held, petitions were heard, and where
many of the courtiers -- nobles, officers, royal functionaries --
slept at night.

It comprised a big oblong room, with
other, smaller chambers opening from it.

Outside was a walled courtyard where
the queen's soldiers and servants lived, sleeping in the
outbuildings, and eating round their cooking fires in the yard
itself. The only entrance was the main gateway, a massive affair
flanked to either side by a guardhouse.

At a short distance from the main
palace buildings, and connected with them by a long covered
passage, stood the comparatively new building that was known as
"the queen's house." This had been built by Morgause's orders when
she first came to settle in Orkney. It was a smaller yet no less
grandly built complex of buildings set very near the edge of the
cliff that here rimmed the shore. Its walls looked almost like an
extension of the layered cliffs below. Not many of the court --
only the queen's own women, her advisers, and her favorites -- had
seen the interior of the house, but its modem splendors were spoken
of with awe, and the townspeople gazed up in wonder at the big
windows -- an unheard-of innovation -- which had been built even
into the seaward walls.

Inland from palace and township
stretched an open piece of land, turf grazed close by sheep, and
used by the soldiers and young men for practice with horses and
arms. Some of the stabling, with the kennels, and the byres for
cattle and goats, was outside the palace walls, for in those
islands there was little need of more defense than that provided by
the sea, and to the south by the iron walls of Arthur's peace. But
some way along the coast, beyond the exercise ground, stood the
remains of a primitive round tower, built before men's memory by
the Old People, and splendidly adaptable as both watchtower and
embattled refuge. This Morgause, with the memory of Saxon
incursions on the mainland kingdom, had had repaired after a
fashion, and there a watch and ward was kept. This, with the guard
kept constantly on the palace gate, was part of the royal state
that fitted the queen's idea of her own dignity. If it did nothing
else, said Morgause, it would keep the men alert, and provide some
sort of military duty for the soldiers, as a change from exercises
that all too readily became sport, or from idling round the palace
courtyard.

When Mordred with his escort arrived
at the gate the courtyard was crowded. A chamberlain was waiting to
escort him to the queen.

Feeling awkward and strange in his
seldom-worn best tunic, stiff as it had come from the cupboard, and
smelling faintly musty, Mordred followed his guide. He was taut
with nerves, and looked at nobody, keeping his head high and his
eyes fixed on the chamberlain's shoulder-blades, but he felt the
stares, and heard mutterings. He took them to be natural curiosity,
probably mingled with contempt; he cannot have known that the
figure he cut was curiously courtier-like, his stiffness very like
the dignified formality of the great hall.

"A fisherman's brat?" the whispers
went. "Oh, aye? We've heard that one before. Just look at him...So
who's his mother? Sula? I remember her. Pretty. She used to work at
the palace here. In King Lot's time, that was. How long ago now
since he visited the islands? Twelve years? Eleven? How the time
does go by, to be sure...And he must be just about that age,
wouldn't you say?"

So the whispers went. They would have
pleased Morgause, had she heard them, and Mordred, whom they would
have enraged, did not hear them. But he heard the muttering, and
felt the eyes. He stiffened his spine further, and wished the
ordeal safely over, and himself home again.

Then they had reached the door of the
hall, and as the servants pushed it open, Mordred forgot the
whispers, his own strangeness, everything except the splendid scene
in front of him.

When Morgause, suffering under
Arthur's displeasure, had finally left Dunpeldyr for her other
kingdom of Orkney, some stray glimmer in her magic glass must have
warned her that her stay in the north would be a long one. She had
managed to bring many of the treasures from Lot's southern capital.
The king who reigned there now at Arthur's behest, Tydwal, must
have found his stronghold stripped of most of its comforts. He was
a stark lord, so cannot have cared overmuch. But Morgause, that
lady of luxury, would have thought herself ill-used had she been
denied any of the appurtenances of royalty, and she had managed,
with her spoils, to make herself a bower of comfort and color to
cushion her exile and enhance her once famous beauty. On all sides
the stone walls of the hall were hung with brilliantly dyed cloths.
The smooth flagstones of the floor were not, as might have been
expected, strewn with rushes and heather, but had been made
luxurious with islands of deerskin, brown and fawn and dappled. The
heavy benches along the side walls were made of stone, but the
chairs and stools standing on the platform at the hall's end were
of fine wood carefully carved and painted, and bright with colored
cushions, while the doors were of strong oak, handsomely
ornamented, and smelling of oil and wax.

The fisherman's boy had no eyes for
any of this. His gaze was fixed on the woman who sat in the great
chair at the center of the platform.

Morgause of Lothian and Orkney was
still a very beautiful woman. Light from a slit window caught the
glimmer of her hair, darkened from its young rose-gold to a rich
copper. Her eyes, long-lidded, showed green as emerald, and her
skin had the same smooth, creamy pallor as of old. The lovely hair
was dressed with gold, and there were emeralds at her ears and at
her throat. She wore a copper-colored gown, and in her lap her
slender white hands glinted with jeweled rings.

Behind her her five women -- the
queen's ladies -- looked, for all their elegant clothing, plain and
elderly. Those who knew Morgause had no doubt that this was an
appearance as carefully contrived as her own. Some score of people
stood below the dais, about the hall. To the boy Mordred it seemed
crowded, and fuller of eyes even than the outer courtyard. He
looked for Gawain, or for the other princes, but could not see
them. When he entered, pausing rather nervously just inside the
doorway, the queen was sitting half turned away, talking with one
of her counselors, a smallish, stout greybeard who bent humbly to
listen as she spoke.