Legacy: Arthurian Saga (193 page)

She paused. The boy's eyes were fixed,
enormous, his lips slightly parted. She smoothed her gown again,
and her voice took on a deeper, graver note.

"Soon after King Arthur had assumed
the throne of Britain, he was told, by the evil man Merlin, that a
child had been born somewhere in Dunpeldyr, a son of its king, who
would prove to be Arthur's bane. The High King never hesitated. He
sent men north to Dunpeldyr to seek out and kill the king's sons.
"Oh, no" -- a smile of great sweetness -- "not mine. Mine were not
yet born. But to make sure that any bastard, perhaps unknown, of
King Lot's should die, he ordered that all the children in the
town, under a certain age, should die." Sorrow throbbed in her
voice. "So, Mordred, on that dreadful night some score of children
were taken by the soldiers. They were put out to sea in a small
boat, which was driven by wind and waves until at last it drove
onto rock and foundered, and the children were all drowned. All but
one."

He was as still as if held by a spell.
"Me?"

It was a whisper, barely
audible.

"Yes, you. The boy from the sea. Now
do you understand why you were given that name? It was
true."

She seemed to be waiting for an
answer. He said, huskily: "I thought it was because of being a
fisherman, like my father. A lot of the boys that help with the
nets are called Mordred, or Medraut. I thought it was a sort of
charm to keep me safe from the sea-goddess. She used to sing a song
about it. My mother, I mean."

The green-gilt eyes opened a little
wider. "So? A song? What sort of song?"

Mordred, meeting that look,
recollected himself. He had forgotten Sula's warning. Now it came
back to him, but there was no harm, surely, in the truth? "A
sleeping song. When I was small. I don't really remember it, except
the tune."

Morgause, with a flick of her fingers,
dismissed the tune. "But you never heard this tale before? Did your
parents ever speak of Dunpeldyr?"

"No, never. That is" -- he spoke with
patent honesty -- "only as all the folk speak of it. I knew that it
was part of your kingdom once, and that you had dwelt there with
the king, and that the three oldest princes were born there. My --
my father gets news from the ships that come in, of all the
kingdoms beyond the sea, the wonderful lands. He has told me so
much that I--" He bit his lip, then burst out irresistibly with the
question that burned him. "Madam, how did my father and mother save
me from that boat and bring me here?"

"They did not save you from the boat.
You were saved by the King of Lothian. When he knew what had
happened to the children he sent a ship to save them, but it came
too late for all but you. The captain saw some wreckage floating
still, the boat's ribs, with what looked like a bundle of cloth
still there. It was you. An end of your shawl had caught on a
splintered spar, and held you safe. The captain took you up. By the
garment you wore, and the shawl that saved your life, he knew which
of the children you were. So he sailed with you to Orkney, where
you might be reared in safety." She paused. "Have you guessed why,
Mordred?"

She could see, from the boy's eyes,
that he had guessed why long since. But he lowered his lids and
answered, as meekly as a girl: "No, madam."

The voice, the folded mouth, the
maiden-like demureness, was so much Morgause's own that she laughed
aloud, and Gabran, who had been her lover now for more than a year,
looked up from his harp and allowed himself to smile with her.
"Then I will tell you. Two of the bastards of the King of Lothian
were killed in that massacre. But there were known to be three in
the boat. The third was saved by the mercy of the sea-goddess, who
kept him afloat in the wreckage. You are a king's bastard, Mordred,
my boy from the sea."

He had seen it coming, of course. She
looked to see some spark of joy, or pride, or even speculation.
There was none. He was biting his lip, fighting with some trouble
that he wanted to, but dared not, express.

"Well?" she asked at
length.

"Madam--" Another pause.

"Well?" A touch of impatience. Having
laid a royal gift in the boy's hand, albeit a false one, the lady
looked for worship, not for doubts which she could not understand.
Never having herself been moved by love, it did not occur to her
that her son's feelings for his foster parents needed to be weighed
against pleasure and ambition.

He blurted it out then. "Madam, was my
mother ever in Dunpeldyr?"

Morgause, who liked to play with
people as if they were creatures caged for her whims, smiled at him
and told, for the first time in the interview, the simple truth.
"Of course. Where else? You were born there. Did I not say
so?"

"But she said she had lived in Orkney
all her life!" Mordred's voice rose, so that the chatter at the
room's other end hushed for a moment before a glance from the queen
sent the women back, heads bent, to their work. The boy added, more
softly, looking wretched: "And my father. He can't know, surely,
that she -- that I...?"

"Foolish boy, you have not understood
me." Her voice was indulgent. "Brude and Sula are your foster
parents, who took you at the king's behest, and kept the secret for
him. Sula had lost a son, and she took you to nurse. No doubt she
has given you the love and care she would have given her own child.
As for your real mother" -- quickly, she forestalled the question
that in fact he was too dazed to ask -- "I cannot tell you that.
For very fear she said nothing, nor made any claim, and for fear of
the High King, nothing has ever been said. She may have been only
too thankful to forget the matter herself. I asked no questions,
though I knew one of the boys had been saved from the boat. Then
when King Lot died, and I came to Orkney to bear my youngest son
and care for the other three in safety, I was content to let the
matter rest. As you must, Mordred."

Not knowing what to say, he was
silent.

"For all I know your own mother may be
dead. To dream of someday seeking her out would be folly -- and
what would be the profit? A girl of the town, the pleasure of a
night?" She studied his down-dropped lids, his expressionless face.
"Now Dunpeldyr is in the hands of a king who is Arthur's creature.
There would be no profit in such a search, Mordred, and there might
well be much danger. Do you understand me?"

"Yes, madam."

"What you do when you are a man grown
is your affair, but you will do well to remember that King Arthur
is your enemy."

"Then -- I am the one? I am to be --
his bane?"

"Who knows? That is with the gods. But
he is a hard man, and his adviser Merlin is both clever and cruel.
Do you think they would take any chances? But while you remain in
these islands--and while you keep silent--you are safe."

Another pause. He asked, almost
whispering it: "But why have you told me, then? I will be secret,
yes, I promise, but why did you want me to know?"

"Because of the debt I owe you for
Gawain. Had you not helped him, he might have tried to climb
himself, and fallen to his death. I was curious to see you, so I
sent for you on that excuse. It might have been better to leave you
there all your life, knowing nothing. Your foster parents would
never have dared to speak. But after what happened yesterday--" A
pretty, half-deprecating gesture. "Not every woman wishes to
nurture her husband's bastards, but I and my family owe you
something, and I pay my debts. And now that I have seen you, and
spoken with you, I have decided how to make that
payment."

The boy said nothing. He seemed to
have stopped breathing. From the far end of the room came the
murmur of music, and the soft voices of the women.

"You are ten years old," said
Morgause. "You are well grown and healthy, and I think that you
could do me some service. There are not so many in these islands
with the blood and the promise that might make a leader. In you I
think I see that promise. It is time you left your foster home, and
took your place here with the other princes. Well, what do you
say?"

"I -- I will do as you wish, madam,"
stammered the boy. It was all he could say, above the words that
went on and on in his brain, like the music of the harp. The other
princes. It is time you took your place here with the other
princes...Later, perhaps, he would think of his foster parents with
affection and with regret, but now all he had room for was the
vague but dazzling vision of such a future as he had barely dared
even to dream of. And this woman, this lovely royal lady, would in
her graciousness offer him, her husband's bastard, a place beside
her own true-born sons. Mordred, moved by an impulse he had never
felt before, slipped from the window-seat and knelt at Morgause's
feet. With a gesture at once graceful and touchingly unpracticed,
he lifted a fold of the copper-colored velvet and kissed it. He
sent a look of worship up at her and whispered: "I will serve you
with my life, madam. Only ask me. It is yours."

His mother smiled down at him, well
satisfied with the conquest she had made. She touched his hair, a
gesture that brought the blood up under his skin, then sat back
against the cushions, a pretty, fragile queen looking for strong
arms and ready swords to protect her. "It may be a hard service,
Mordred. A lonely queen needs all the love and protection that her
fighting men can give her. For that you will be trained alongside
your brothers, and live with them here in my palace. Now you will
go down to Seals' Bay to take leave of your parents, then bring
your things back here."

"Today? Now?"

"Why not? When decisions are taken
they should be acted upon. Gabran will go with you, and a slave to
carry your goods. Go now."

Mordred, still too awed and confused
to point out that he could carry all his worldly goods himself, and
in one hand, got to his feet, then stooped to kiss the hand she
held out to him. It was noticeable that this time the courtly move
came almost naturally. Then the queen turned away, dismissing him,
and Gabran was at his elbow, hurrying him from the room, along the
corridor, and out into the courtyard where the colored sky of
sunset was already fading into dusk, and the air smelled of the
smoke of fires where suppers were being cooked.

A man, a groom by his dress, came up
with a horse ready bridled. It was one of the sturdy island ponies,
cream-colored and as shaggy as a sheep.

"Come," said Gabran, "we'll be late
for supper as it is. You don't ride, I suppose? No? Well, get up
behind me. The man can follow."

Mordred hung back. "There's no need,
I've nothing to carry, really. And you don't need to come either,
sir. If you stay and get your supper now, I can run home
and--"

"You'll soon learn that when the queen
says I have to go with you, then I have to go." Gabran did not
trouble to explain that his orders had been even more explicit. "He
is not to have speech alone with Sula," Morgause had said.
"Whatever she has guessed, she has told him nothing yet, it seems.
But now that she is going to lose him, who knows what she may come
out with? The man does not matter: He is too stupid to guess at the
truth, but even he may give the boy the true tale of how he was
brought, by arrangement, from Dunpeldyr. So take him, and stay with
them, and bring him back quickly. I shall see to it that he does
not go back there again."

So Gabran said, crisply: "Come, your
hand," and with Mordred behind him on the cob, and clinging to him
like a young peregrine to its ball of fleece, he cantered off along
the track that led to Seals' Bay.

Sula had been sitting outside the
cottage door in the last of the daylight, gutting and splitting a
catch of fish ready for drying. When the horse appeared at the head
of the cliff path she had just carried the bucket of offal down to
throw it onto the shingle, where the hens wrangled with the
seabirds for their share of the stinking pile. The noise was
deafening as the big gulls swooped and fought and chased one
another, and the smell rose sickeningly on the wind.

Mordred slipped off the cob's rump as
Gabran drew rein. "If you wait here, sir, I'll run down with this,
and get my things. I'll be back in just a moment. It -- it won't
take long. I think my mother was expecting this, or something like
it. I'll be as quick as I can. Maybe I can come back tomorrow, if
they want me to? Just for a talk?"

Gabran, without even troubling to
reply, slid off the horse's back and looped the rein over his
wrist. When Mordred, holding the box carefully, started down the
slope, the man followed.

Sula, turning back towards the
cottage, saw them. She had been watching the cliff top for
Mordred's return, and now, seeing how he was accompanied, she stood
for a few moments very still, unconsciously clutching the slimy
bucket close to her body. Then, coming to herself, she threw the
bucket down by the doorway, and went quickly into the cottage. A
dim yellow glow showed round the curtain's edge as she lighted the
lamp.

The boy pushed the curtain aside and
went in eagerly, carrying the box.

For once the room was free of smoke.
On good summer days Sula cooked their food in the clay oven
outside, over a fire built up of dried kelp and dung. But the stink
of fish pervaded the whole cove, and inside the cottage the smell
of the fish-oil in the lamp caught at the throat. Though he had
been used to it all his life, Mordred -- with the scents and colors
of the queen's room bright in his memory -- noticed it now, with a
mixture of pity, shame and what he was too young to recognize as
self-dislike; shame because Gabran so obviously intended to come in
with him, and guilt because he was ashamed for him to do
so.