Legacy: Arthurian Saga (192 page)

Then she saw Mordred. She straightened
in her tall chair, and the long lids came down to conceal the
sudden flash of interest in her eyes. Someone prodded the boy from
behind, whispering: "Go on. Go up and then kneel."

Mordred obeyed. He approached the
queen, but when he would have knelt, a movement of one of her hands
bade him stand still. He waited, very straight, and apparently
self-contained, but making no attempt to conceal the wonder and
admiration he felt at this, his first sight of royalty enthroned.
He simply stood and stared. If the onlookers expected him to be
abashed, or the queen to rebuke him for impertinence, they were
disappointed. The silence that held the hall was one of avid
interest, coupled with amusement. Queen and fisherman's boy,
islanded by that silence, measured one another eye to
eye.

If Mordred had been half-a-dozen years
older, men might more readily have understood the indulgence, even
the apparent pleasure with which she regarded him. Morgause had
made no secret of her predilection for handsome youths, a fancy
which had been allowed a relatively free reign since the death of
her husband. And indeed Mordred was personable enough, with his
slender, straight body, fine bones, and the look of eager yet
contained intelligence in the eyes under their wing-tipped brows.
She studied him, stiff but far from awkward in his "best" tunic,
the only one he had, apart from the rags of every day. She
remembered the stuff she had sent for it, years ago, a length of
homespun patchily dyed, that not even the palace slaves would have
worn. Anything better, missed from the coffers, might have caused
curiosity. Round his neck hung a string of shells, unevenly
threaded, with some sort of wooden charm obviously carved by the
boy himself from a piece of sea-wrack. His feet, though dusty from
the moorland road, were finely shaped.

Morgause saw all this with
satisfaction, but she saw more besides: the dark eyes, an
inheritance from the Spanish blood of the Ambrosii, were Arthur's;
the fine bones, the folded subtle mouth, came from Morgause
herself.

At length she spoke. "Your name is
Mordred, they tell me?"

"Yes." The boy's voice was hoarse with
nervousness. He cleared his throat. "Yes, madam."

"Mordred," she said, consideringly.
Her accent, even after her years in the north, was still that of
the southern mainland kingdoms, but she spoke clearly and slowly in
her pretty voice, and he understood her very well. She gave his
name the island pronunciation. "Medraut, the sea-boy. So you are a
fisherman like your father?"

"Yes, madam."

"Is that why they gave you your
name?"

He hesitated. He could not see where
this was leading. "I suppose so, madam."

"You suppose so." She spoke lightly,
her attention apparently on smoothing a fold of her gown. Only her
chief counselor, and Gabran her current lover, knowing her well,
guessed that the next question mattered. "You never asked
them?"

"No, madam. But I can do other things
besides fish. I dig the peats, and I can turf a roof, and build a
wall, and mend the boat, and -- and milk the goat, even--" He
paused uncertainly. A faint ripple of amusement had gone round the
hall, and the queen herself was smiling.

"And climb cliffs as if you were a
goat yourself. For which," she added, "we should all be
grateful."

"That was nothing," said Mordred. His
confidence returned. There was really no need to be afraid. The
queen was a lovely lady, as Sula had told him, not at all as he had
imagined a witch to be, and surprisingly easy to talk to. He smiled
up at her. "Is Gawain's ankle badly sprained?" he asked.

A new rustle went round the hall.
"Gawain," indeed! And a fisher-boy did not hold conversation with
the queen, standing as straight as one of the young princes, and
looking her in the eye. But Morgause apparently noticed nothing
unusual. She ignored the murmurs. She had not ceased to watch the
boy closely.

"Not very. Now that it has been bathed
and bound up he can walk well enough. He will be back."...at the
exercise of arms tomorrow. And for this he has you to thank,
Mordred, and so have I. I repeat, we are grateful."

"The men would have found him very
soon, and I could have lent them the rope."

"But they did not, and you climbed
down twice yourself. Gawain tells me that it is a dangerous place.
He should be whipped for climbing there, even though he did bring
me two such splendid birds. But you..." The pretty teeth nibbled at
the red underlip as she considered him. "You must have some proof
of my gratitude. What would you like?"

Really taken aback now, he stared,
swallowed, and began to stammer something about his parents, their
poverty, the coming winter and the nets that had been patched twice
too often, but she interrupted him. "No, no. That is for your
parents, not for you. I have already found gifts for them. Show
him, Gabran."

A young man, blond and handsome, who
stood near her, stooped and lifted a box from behind her chair. He
opened it. In it Mordred glimpsed colored wools, woven cloth, a net
purse glinting with silver, a stoppered wine flask. He went
scarlet, then pale. Suddenly, the scene had become somehow unreal,
like a dream. The chance encounter at the cliff, Gawain's talk of
reward, the summons to the queen's house -- all this had been
exciting, with its promise of some change in the monotonous
drudgery of his life. He had come here expecting at most a silver
coin, a word from the queen, some delicacy, perhaps, that could be
begged from the palace kitchens before he ran home.

But this -- Morgause's beauty and
kindness, the unaccustomed splendors of the hall, the magnificence
of the gifts for his parents, and the promise, apparently, of more
for himself... Dimly, through the heart-beating confusion, he felt
that it was all too much. There was something more here. Something
in the looks the courtiers were exchanging, in the speculative
amusement in Gabran's eyes. Something he did not understand, but
that made him uneasy.

Gabran shut the lid of the box with a
snap, but when Mordred reached to lift it Morgause stopped
him.

"No, Mordred. Not now. We shall see
that they have it before today's dusk. But you and I still have
something to talk about, have we not? What is fitting for the young
man to whom the future king of these islands owes a dear debt? Come
with me now. We will talk of this in private."

She stood up. Gabran moved quickly to
her side, his arm ready for her hand, but ignoring him, she stepped
down from the dais and reached a hand towards the boy. He took it
awkwardly, but somehow she made a graceful gesture of it, her
jeweled fingers touching his wrist as if he were a courtier handing
her from the hall. When she stood beside him she was very little
taller than he. She smelled of honeysuckle, and the rich days of
summer. Mordred's head swam.

"Come," she said again,
softly.

The courtiers stood back, bowing, to
make a way for them. Her slave drew back a curtain to show a door
in the side wall. Guards stood there to either side, their spears
held stiffly. Mordred was no longer conscious of the stares and the
whispering. His heart was thudding. What was to come now he could
not guess, but it could only, surely, be more wonder. Something was
hanging in the clouds for him; fortune was in the queen's smile and
in her touch.

Without knowing it, he tossed the dark
hair back from his brow in a gesture that was Arthur's own, and
with head high he escorted Morgause royally out of her
hall.

3

The corridor between the palace and
the queen's house was a long one, without windows, but lit by
torches hung on the walls. There were two doors in its length, both
on the left. One must be the guardroom; the door stood ajar, and
beyond it Mordred could hear men's voices and the click of
gaming-stones. The other gave on the courtyard; he remembered
seeing guards there. It was shut now, but at the end of the
corridor a third door stood open, held wide by a servant for the
passage of the queen and her attendants.

Beyond was a square chamber, which
acted apparently as an anteroom to the queen's private apartments.
It was unfurnished. To the right a slit window showed a narrow
strip of sky, and let in the noise of the sea. Opposite, on the
landward side, was another door, at which Mordred looked with
interest, and then with awe.

This doorway was curiously low and
squat -- the same primitive shape as the door of his parents'
cottage. It was set deep under a massive stone lintel, and flanked
by jambs almost as thick. He had seen such entrance-ways before;
they led down to the ancient underground chambers that could be
found here and there through the islands. Some said they had been
built, like the tall brochs, by the Old People, who had housed
their dead there in stone chambers beneath the ground. But the
simpler folk regarded them as magical places, the sidhe or hollow
hills that guarded the gates of the Otherworld; and the skeletons
that were found there, of men and beasts, were the remains of
unwary creatures who had ventured too far within those dark
precincts. When mist shrouded the islands -- which was rare in
those windy seas -- it was said that gods and spirits could be seen
riding out on their gold-decked horses, with the sad ghosts of the
dead drifting round them. Whatever the truth, the islanders avoided
the mounds that hid these underground chambers, but it seemed that
the queen's house had been built beside one of them, perhaps only
discovering it when the foundations were dug. Now the entrance was
sealed off by a heavy door of oak, with big iron hasps, and a
massive lock to keep it fast against whatever lurked behind it in
the dark.

Then Mordred forgot it, as the tall
door ahead of them opened between its two armed guards, and beyond
was a blaze of sunlight, and the warmth and scent and color of the
queen's house.

The room they entered was a copy of
Morgause's chamber at Dunpeldyr; a smaller copy, but still, to
Mordred's eyes, magnificent. The sun streamed in through a big
square window, under which a bench made a window-seat, gay with
blue cushions. Near it, full in the sunlight, stood a gilded chair
with its footstool and a cross-legged table nearby. Morgause sat
down, and pointed to the window-seat. Mordred took his place
obediently, and sat waiting in silence, with thumping heart, while
the women, at a word from the queen, betook themselves with their
stitchery to the far end of the room, in the light from another
window. A servant came hurrying to the queen's side with wine in a
silver goblet, and then, at her command, brought a cup of the sweet
honey drink for Mordred. He took a sip of it, then set the cup down
on the window sill. Though his mouth and throat were dry, he could
not drink.

The queen finished her wine, then
handed the goblet to Gabran, who must already have had his orders.
He took it straight to the servant at the door, shut the door
behind the man, then went to join the women at the other end of the
room. He lifted a small knee harp from its shroud in the corner,
and, settling himself on a stool, began to play.

Only then did the queen speak again,
and she spoke softly, so that only Mordred, close beside her, would
be able to hear.

"Well, Mordred, so now let us talk.
How old are you? No, don't answer, let me see...You will soon pass
your eleventh birthday. Am I not right?"

"Y--yes," stammered the boy, amazed.
"How did -- oh, of course, Gawain told you."

She smiled. "I would have known
without being told. I know more about your birth than you do
yourself, Mordred. Can you guess how?"

"Why, no, madam. About my birth?
That's before you came to live here, isn't it?"

"Yes. I and the king my husband still
held Dunpeldyr in Lothian. Have you never heard what happened in
Dunpeldyr, the year before Prince Gawain was born?"

He shook his head. He could not have
spoken. He still had no inkling of why the queen had brought him
here and was speaking to him like this, secretly, in her private
chamber, but every instinct pricked him to the alert. It was coming
now, surely, the future he had dreaded, and yet longed for, with
the strange, restless and sometimes violent feelings of rebellion
he had had against the life to which he had been born, and to which
he had believed himself sentenced till death, like all his parents'
kin.

Morgause, still watching him closely,
smiled again. "Then listen now. It is time you knew. You will soon
see why...."

She settled a fold of her gown, and
spoke lightly, as if talking of some trifling matter far back in
the past, some story to tell a child at lamp-lighting.

"You know that the High King Arthur is
my half-brother by the same father, King Uther Pendragon. Long ago
King Uther planned my marriage to King Lot, and though he died
before it could take place, and though my brother Arthur was never
Lot's friend, we were married. We hoped that through the marriage a
friendship, or at least an alliance, might be formed. But, whether
through jealousy of Lot's prowess as a soldier, or (as I am
persuaded) because of lies told to him by Merlin, the enchanter,
who hates all women, and who fancies himself wronged by me. King
Arthur has always acted more as an enemy than as a brother and a
just lord."