Legacy: Arthurian Saga (198 page)

He spoke lamely, and this was so
unlike him that Gawain stared still harder. Then both boys were
shoved aside as a man pushed roughly through the press. The boys
reacted angrily, then drew aside as they saw that the man was
Gabran. The queen's lover called peremptorily over the heads of the
crowd: "You, there! Yes, you, and you, too... Come with me! Bring
what tidings you have straight to the palace. The queen must hear
them first."

The crowd stood back a trifle
sullenly, and let the news-bringers through. They went willingly
with Gabran, important and obviously hopeful of reward. The people
watched them out of sight, then turned back to the wharf, fastening
on the next people to disembark.

These were traders, apparently; the
first, by the look of the traps his man carried, was a goldsmith,
then came a worker in leather, and last of all a travelling
physician, whose slave followed him, laden with his impedimenta of
boxes and bags and vials. To him the folk crowded eagerly. There
was no doctor in these northern islands, and one went for ailments
to the wise-women or -- in extreme cases -- to the holy man on Papa
Westray, so this was an opportunity not to be missed. The doctor,
in fact, lost no time in starting business. He stood on the sunny
wharfside and started his rattling spiel, while his slave began to
unpack the cures forever ill that might be expected to afflict the
Orcadians. His voice was loud and confident, and pitched to
overbear any rival attempt at business, but the goldsmith, who had
preceded him off the ship, made no attempt to set up his stall. He
was an old man, stooped and grey, whose own clothes boasted
examples of a refined and lovely work. He paused at the edge of the
crowd, peering about him, and addressed Mordred, who was standing
near.

"You, boy, can you tell me -- ah, now,
I beg your pardon, young sir. You must forgive an old man whose
sight is bad. Now I can see that you're quality, and so I'll beg
you again of your kindness to tell me which is the way to the
queen's house?"

Mordred pointed. "Straight up that
street, and turn west at the black altar stone. The track will
carry you right to the palace. It's the big building you can see --
but you said your sight was poor? Well, if you follow the crowd, I
think most people will be going there now, to get more
news."

Gawain took a step forward. "Perhaps
you know more yourself? Those fellows with their news from court --
where were they from? Camelot? Where are you from yourself,
goldsmith?"

"I am from Lindum, young sir, in the
south-east, but I travel, I travel."

"Then tell us the news yourself. You
must have heard, on the voyage, all that those men had to
tell."

"Why, as to that, I heard very little.
I'm a poor sailor, you see, so I spent my time below. But there's
something those fellows there didn't mention. I suppose they wanted
to be first with the news. There's a royal courier on board. He was
as sick as I, poor fellow, but even without that, I doubt if he'd
have shared his tidings with ordinary folk like us."

"A king's courier? When did he come
aboard?"

"At Glannaventa."

"That's in Rheged?"

"That is so, young sir. He hasn't
disembarked yet, has he, Casso?"

This to the tall slave who stood
behind him carrying his baggage. The man shook his head. "Well,
he'll be going straight up to the palace, too, you can be sure of
that. If you want hot news, young sirs, you'd best follow. As for
me, I'm an old man, and as long as I can follow my trade, the world
can pass me by. Come, Casso, you heard? Up that path yonder as far
as the black altar stone. Then turn east."

"It's west," said Mordred, quickly, to
the slave. The man nodded, smiling, then took his master's arm and
guided him up the rough steps towards the road. The pair trudged
off and were lost to sight behind the hut where the harbor master
lived.

Gawain was laughing. "Well, the palace
ram has made a mistake this time! To escort a couple of
tale-bearers up to the queen and not even wait to hear that there
was a king's courier on board! I wonder--"

He did not finish the sentence. Some
shouts and a fuss on deck indicated the approach of someone
important. Presently a man came up from below, well dressed and
smoothly bartered, but still pallid with sea-sickness. At his belt
was a messenger's pouch, with its lock and seal. He trod
importantly down the gangplank. Distracted from the physician, some
of the crowd moved towards him, the boys with them, but they were
disappointed. The courier, ignoring everyone, and refusing to
answer any questions, climbed the steps and headed at a fast pace
for the palace. As he cleared the last huts of the township he was
met by Gabran, hurrying, this time with a royal escort of
men-at-arms.

"Well, she knows now," said Gawain.
"Come on, hurry," and the boys trotted uphill in the messenger's
wake.

The letter that the courier bore came
from the queen's sister Morgan, Queen of Rheged.

There was little love lost between the
two ladies, but a stronger bond than love united them: hatred of
their brother Arthur the King. Morgause hated him because she knew
that Arthur loathed and feared the memory of the sin she had led
him to commit with her; Morgan because, though married to a great
and warlike king, Urbgen, she wanted at the same time a younger man
and a greater kingdom. It is human to hate those whom, blameless,
we hope to destroy, and Morgan was prepared to betray both brother
and husband to achieve her desires.

It was of the first of these desires
that she wrote to her sister. "You remember Accolon? I have him
now. He would die for me. And needs must, perchance, should Arthur
or that devil Merlin come to hear of my plans. But rest easy,
sister; I have it on authority that the enchanter is sick. You will
know that he has taken a pupil into his house, a girl, daughter of
Dyonas of the River Islands, who was one of the Ladies of the Lake
convent at Ynys Witrin. Now they say she is his mistress, and that
in his weakness she strives to learn his power from him, and is in
a fair way to steal it all, and suck him dry and leave him bound
forever. I know that men say the enchanter cannot die, but if this
tale be true, then once Merlin is helpless, and only the girl Nimue
stands in his place, who is to say what power we true witches
cannot grasp for ourselves?"

Morgause, reading by her window, made
a mouth of impatience and contempt. "We true witches." If Morgan
thought that she could even touch the edges of Morgause's art, she
was an over-ambitious fool. Morgause, who had guided her
half-sister's first steps in magic, could never be brought to
admit, even to herself, that Morgan's aptitude for sorcery had
already led her to surpass the witch of Orkney, with her sex
potions and poisonous spells, by almost as much as Merlin in his
day had surpassed them both.

There was not much more to the letter.
"For the rest," Morgan had written, "the country is quiet, and this
means, I fear, that my lord King Urbgen will soon be home for the
winter. There is talk of Arthur's going to Brittany, in peace, to
visit with Hoel. For the present he stays at Camelot in wedded
bliss, though there is still no sign of an heir."

This time Morgause, reading, smiled.
So the Goddess had heard her invocations, and savored her
sacrifices. The rumors were true. Queen Guinevere was barren, and
the High King, who would not put her away, must remain without an
heir of his body. She glanced out of the window. There he was, the
one who was supposed, all those years ago, to have been drowned. He
was standing with the other boys on the flat turf outside the
walls, where the goldsmith's servant had set up his master's
sleeping tent and stove, and the old man chatted with the boys as
he laid out his implements.

Morgause turned abruptly from the
window, and at her call a page came running.

"That man outside the walls, he's a
goldsmith? Just come with the ship? I see. Then bid him bring some
work to show me. If he is skilled, then there will be work for him
here, and he will lodge within the palace. But the work must be
good, fit for a queen's court. Tell him that, or he need not
trouble me."

The boy ran. The queen, the letter
lying in her lap, looked out beyond the moorland, beyond the green
horizon where the sky reflected the endless shining of the sea, and
smiled, seeing again the vision she had had, shrined in the
crystal, of Camelot's high towers, and herself, with her sons
beside her, carrying to Arthur the rich gifts that would be her
pass to power and favor. And the richest gift of all stood there
below her window: Mordred, the High King's son.

Though as yet only the queen knew it,
it was to be the boys' last summer together in the islands, and it
was a lovely one. The sun shone, the winds were warm and moderate,
the fishing and hunting good. The boys spent their days out in the
air. For some time now, under Mordred's tuition, they had even
taken to the sea, something that the islanders did not readily do
for sport, since the currents, at that meeting-place of two great
seas, were fickle and dangerous. To begin with, Gaheris was
seasick, but was ashamed to let the "fisher-brat" get the better of
him, so persisted, and in time became a passable sailor. The other
three took to sailing like gulls to the wave-tops, and a new
respect grew up between the "real princes" and the elder boy, when
they saw how well and with what authority he handled a boat in
those difficult waters.

His seamanship, it is true, was never
tried in rough weather; the queen's indulgence would have come to a
speedy end if there had been any evidence of real risk; so the five
of them held their tongues about the moments of excitement, and did
their exploring of the coastlines unrebuked. If Morgause's
counselors knew better than she what risks were run even in summer
weather, they said nothing to Morgause; Gawain would be king one of
these days, and his favor was already courted. Morgause, in fact,
took little interest in anything beyond her palace walls, and
"Witches don't like sailing," said Gareth, in all innocence of what
his words implied. Indeed, the princes were proud, if anything, of
their mother's reputation as a witch.

This showed itself in certain ways
through that summer. Beltane the goldsmith and his slave Casso were
housed in one of the palace outbuildings, and were seen daily
working at their trade in the courtyard. This by the queen's
commission; she gave them silver, and some small store of precious
stones salvaged years ago from Dunpeldyr, and set them to
fashioning torques and arm-rings and other jewels "fit for a king."
She told no one why, but word got about that the queen had had a
magical vision concerning things of such beauty and price, and that
the goldsmith had come -- by chance, magic, what you would -- to
make reality catch up with the dream.

Beautiful the things certainly were.
The old man was a superb craftsman, and more than that, an artist
of rare taste, who had been taught -- as he never tired of telling
-- by the best of masters. He could work both in the Celtic mode,
those lovely patterns of strongly angled but fluid lines, and also
in ways learned, so he said, from the Saxons in the south, with
enamel and niello and metals finely worked as filigree. The finer
work he did himself; he was so shortsighted as to be, for normal
purposes, almost blind, but he could do close work with a marvelous
precision. The larger work, and all the routine, was done by the
man Casso, who was also permitted to take in repairs and other
local commissions from time to time. Casso was as silent as Beltane
was garrulous, and it was some time before the boys -- who spent
long hours hanging around the stove when anything interesting was
being done -- discovered that Casso was in fact dumb. So all their
questions were fired at Beltane, who talked and worked happily and
without ceasing; but Mordred, watching almost as silently as the
slave, saw that the latter missed very little, and gave, when those
downcast eyes lifted now and again, an impression of intelligence
far quicker than his master's. The impression was momentary, and
soon forgotten; a prince had little thought to spare for a dumb
slave, and Mordred, these days, was completely the prince, accepted
by his half-brothers and -- still to his puzzlement -- high in the
queen's favor.

So the summer wore through, and at the
end of it the queen's magical prevision was justified. On a fine
day of September another ship docked. And the news came that
changed life for all of them.

5

It was a royal ship. The boys saw it
first. They had their boat out that day, and were fishing some way
out in the firth. The ship came scudding with a fair wind, her
sails set full, and the gilded mast flying a pennant that, though
none of them had seen it before, they recognized immediately, with
excitement. A red dragon on a background of yellow gold.

"The High King's standard!" Mordred,
at the steering-oar, saw it first.

Gaheris, never one to control himself,
gave a yell of exultation, as savage as a war-cry. "He's sent for
us! We are to go to Camelot! Our uncle the High King has
remembered, and sent for us!"

Gawain said, slowly: "So she saw it
truly. The silver gifts are for King Arthur. But if she is his
sister, why should she need such gifts as those?"