Legacy: Arthurian Saga (199 page)

His brothers paid no heed. "Camelot!"
said Gareth, wide-eyed.

"He won't want you." That was
Agravain, sharply. "You're far too young. She wouldn't let you go,
anyway. But if our uncle the High King sends forus, how can she
stop us?"

"You'd go?" That was Mordred,
dryly.

"What do you mean? I'd have to. If the
High King--"

"Yes, I know. I meant, would you want
to go?"

Agravain stared. "Are you mad? Not
want to go? Why on earth not?"

"Because the High King was never a
friend to our father, that's what he means," put in Gaheris. He
added, nastily: "Well, we can see why Mordred might not dare go,
but the High King's our mother's brother, after all, and why should
he be our enemy, even if he was our father's?" He glanced at
Gawain. "And that's what you meant, too? That she's taking all that
treasure to buy herself back in?"

Gawain, busy with a rope, did not
reply. Gareth, understanding only half of what was said, put in
eagerly: "If she goes, too, then she will take me, I know she
will!"

"Buy herself back in!" Agravain
repeated it explosively. "Why, that's folly! It's easy to see
what's happened. It was that wicked old man Merlin who poisoned the
High King's mind against us, and now he's dead at last, because you
can bet anything you like, that's the news the ship brings, and now
we can go to court at Camelot, and lead the High King's
Companions!"

"Better and better." Mordred spoke
more dryly than ever. "When I asked if you would want to go, I was
remembering that you didn't approve of his policies."

"Oh, his policies," said Agravain,
impatiently. "This is different. This may be a chance to get away
from here, and into the middle of things. Just let me get there, to
Camelot, I mean, and get half a chance to see some life and some
fighting, and to hell with his policies!"

"But what fighting will there be?
That's the whole point, isn't it? That's what you were so angry
about. If he is really set on making a lasting peace with Cerdic
the Saxon, you won't see any fighting."

"He's right," said Gaheris, but
Agravain laughed.

"We'll see. For one thing, I don't
think even Arthur will get a Saxon king to agree to terms and keep
them, and for another, once I get there, and within reach of any
Saxon, treaty or not, there'll be fighting!"

"Fine talking," said Gaheris, with
scorn.

"But if there's a treaty--" began
Gareth indignantly.

Gawain interrupted. His voice was
tense and even, overlying excitement. "Hold your tongues, the lot
of you. Let's get back home and find out. At the very least it's
news. Mordred, may we put about now?" For Mordred, by consent, was
always captain of their sea-going expeditions, as Gawain was of
their forays by land.

Mordred nodded, and gave the orders
for trimming the sail. That he allotted the hardest tasks to
Agravain may not have been coincidence, but the latter said
nothing, hung on to the bucking rope, and helped to bring the
lively boat about and send it skimming landwards, rocking in the
spreading wake of the King's ship.

Whether or not the ship carried any
message concerning the boys, a royal envoy had certainly been on
board, and had gone ashore before the ship was barely trimmed to
the quay. Though he spoke to no one save for a brief acknowledgment
of the courtesy meeting accorded him by the queen's chief men, part
of his news was already known to the crew, and by the time the boys
beached their craft and scrambled ashore, the words were passing
from mouth to mouth with a knell of awe and dread, mingled with the
poor folks' furtive excitement at the thought of such a momentous
change in high places.

The boys crowded in, listening where
they could, questioning those of the crew who were on the
wharfside.

It was as they had guessed. The old
magician was dead at last. He had been entombed, with splendid
mourning, in his own cave of Bryn Myrddin, near Maridunum, where he
had been born. One of the soldiers accompanying the King's
messenger had been there on duty, and told vivid tales of the
ceremony, the King's grief, of fires the length and breadth of the
land, and finally of the court's return to Camelot and the dispatch
of the royal ship to the Orkneys. About its business there the
sailors were vague, but the rumor went, they told the boys, that
Queen Morgause's family were to be taken back forthwith to the
mainland.

"I told you so!" said Gaheris to his
brothers, in triumph. They began to run along the road that led to
the palace. Mordred, after a second's hesitation, followed.
Suddenly, it seemed, things had changed. He was on the outside
again, and Lot's four sons, united in the golden prospect opening
before them, seemed hardly to notice him. They were talking busily
as they ran.

"--And it was Merlin who advised the
High King to make the Saxon peace," panted Agravain.

"So perhaps now we'll see our uncle
taking the sword again," said Gaheris happily. "And he'll want
us--"

"And break his own sworn oath?" asked
Gawain, sharply.

"Perhaps it isn't only us he wants,"
said Gareth. "Perhaps he's sent for our mother, too, now that
Merlin's gone. He was a wicked man, I've heard her say so, and he
hated her because he was jealous of her magic. She told me that.
Perhaps, now he's dead, our mother will work magic for the King
instead."

"The King's enchantress? He's got one
already," said Gawain, dryly. "Didn't you hear? The lady Nimue has
Merlin's power, and the King turns to her for everything. So they
were saying."

They were near the gate now. They
dropped to a walk. Gareth turned to his half-brother.

"Mordred, when we go to Camelot,
you'll be the only one left here. What will you do?"

The only one left here....The
firstborn of the King of Orkney, left, alone of the princes, in
Orkney? Mordred saw the same thought strike Gawain at the same
moment. He said, shortly: "I haven't thought about it. Come on,
let's get in and find out what the man has to say."

He ran in through the gate. Gawain
hung on his heel for a moment, then followed, and the rest with
him.

The palace was buzzing, but no one
knew anything except the larger rumors that the boys had already
heard. The envoy was still closeted with the queen. People crowded
in the corridors and in the hall, but made way for the princes when
in a short time, clean and changed, they pushed their way through
to the doors that led to the queen's private chambers.

Time went by. The light began to fade,
and servants went about kindling the torches. It was time to eat.
Cooking smells crept through the rooms, making the boys remember
their hunger. In their excitement they had not eaten the barley
cakes they had had in the boat. But still the queen's door did not
open. Once they heard her voice, raised sharply, but whether in
anger or excitement it was impossible to tell. The boys shifted
uneasily, looking at one another.

"It must be true that we are to go,"
said Agravain. "What other message would our uncle the High King
send with one of the royal ships?"

"Even if it isn't," said Gawain, "we
can surely send a message back by the ship to our uncle the High
King, at least to remind him that we exist." (And if any of them
says "our uncle the High King" again, thought Mordred, with savage
irritation, I shall start shouting about "my father the King of
Lothian and Orkney," and see what they say to that!)

"Hush!" he said aloud. "He's coming
out. Now we shall know."

But they were to learn nothing yet.
The queen's door opened, and the envoy came out between the guards,
his face set and uninformative, as such men are trained to be. He
walked forward without a look to right or left, and the people made
way for him. No one spoke to him, the princes themselves moving
aside without asking any of the eager questions that burned on
their lips. Even here, in the islands at the back of the north
wind, they knew that one did not question a King's envoy any more
than one questioned the King. He brushed past them as if they did
not exist -- as if a mere messenger of the High King were of more
account than all the princes of the islands.

A chamberlain came forward to take him
in charge, and he was escorted to the quarters set aside for him in
the palace. The queen's door stayed all the while firmly
closed.

"I want my supper," said Gareth
earnestly.

"It looks as if we'll get it," said
Agravain, "long before she's decided to tell us what's going
on."

This proved to be the case. It was
late that night, verging indeed on the hour when normally the boys
were sent to bed, when the queen sent for them at last.

"All five?" repeated Gawain, when the
message came.

"All five," said Gabran. He could not
help looking curiously at Mordred, and the other four pairs of eyes
followed his. Mordred, tensing himself against the sudden upsurge
of excitement, hope and apprehension, looked, as was his habit,
detached and expressionless.

"And hurry," said Gabran, holding the
door.

They hurried.

They filed into Morgause's chamber,
silent, expectant, and nervously awed by what they saw there. The
queen had used the long interval since the messenger's dismissal to
sup, talk with her counselors, and have a stormy but satisfactory
little interlude with Gabran. then she had had her women bathe and
dress her in a robe of state, and arrange, for the interview with
her sons, a royal setting.

Her tall gilded chair had been carried
in from the hall, and she sat there beside a glowing fire of peats
with her feet on a crimson footstool. On a table at her elbow stood
a golden goblet, still holding wine, and beside this lay the scroll
that the King's messenger had given her, the royal seal of the
Dragon splashed across it like a bloodstain.

Gabran, leading the boys into the
room, crossed the floor to stand behind the queen's chair. No one
else was there; the women had long since been dismissed. Beyond the
window the midnight moon, at the full, had cooled from marigold to
silver, and a sharp-edged blade of light cut across Morgause's
chair, sparking on gold and drowning in the folds of her gown. She
had had herself dressed in one of her finest robes, a sweeping
shimmer of bronze-colored velvet. Her girdle was set with gold and
emeralds, her hair was braided with gold, and on it she had set one
of her royal coronets, a thin circlet of red Celtic gold that had
been King Lot's, and that the boys had seen before only when they
had been allowed to sit in on the formal royal councils.

The torches had been put out, and no
lamps were lit. She sat between firelight and moonlight, looking
queenly and very beautiful. Mordred, possibly alone of the five,
noticed how pale she was beneath the unwonted flush in her cheeks.
She had been weeping, he thought, then, more accurately, and with
that touch of ice that was all Arthur's: She has been drinking.
Gawain is right. They are going away. Then what of me? Why send for
me? Because they are afraid to leave me here alone, King Lot's
firstborn? Here alone, and royal, what of me? His face gave no sign
of his racing thoughts; he held himself still, beside Gawain, and
half a head taller, and waited, to all appearances the least
concerned person in the room. Then he saw that, of them all, the
queen was looking only at him, Mordred, and his heart gave a jump,
then settled to a fast, hard beat.

Morgause looked away from him at last,
and surveyed them all for a while in silence. Then she
spoke.

"You all know that the ship which lies
in the harbor comes from my brother the High King Arthur, and that
it has brought his ambassador with messages for me."

No reply. She expected none. She
looked along the row of boys, at the lifted faces, the eyes that
were beginning to sparkle with joyful expectation. "I see that you
have been making guesses, and I imagine they are the right ones.
Yes, it has come at last, the summons that I know you have longed
for. I, too, though it has come in a way I cannot welcome....You
are to go to Camelot, to the court of the High King your
uncle."

She paused. Gawain, the privileged,
said quickly: "Madam, Mother, if this distresses you I am truly
sorry. But we've always known this would happen, haven't we? Just
as we know that training and fortune, for those of our blood, must
be found one day on the mainland, and in the press of affairs,
rather than here in these islands?"

"Certainly." One hand was tapping on
the table where the King's letter lay half unrolled. What, Mordred
wondered, could the terms of that letter have been, to send
Morgause to the wine flask, and to string her up until every nerve
was, visibly, vibrating like an overtuned lute string?

Gawain, encouraged by her brief
answer, asked impulsively: "Then why don't you welcome the summons?
It isn't as if you would be losing--"

"Not the summons itself. The way it
has come. We all knew it would happen one day, when -- when my
chief enemy was gone from the King's side. I have foretold it, and
I had my own plans. I would have had you, Gawain, stay here; you
are to be king, and your place is here, in my presence or without
it. But he has asked for you, so you must go. And this man he has
sent, this "ambassador," as he styles himself" -- her voice was
full of scorn -- "is to stay here in your stead as "regent." And
who knows where that will lead? I will tell you frankly what I
fear. I fear that once you and your brothers are out of the
Orkneys, Arthur will cause this creature of his to take from you
the only land that still remains yours, as he took Lothian, and
leave this man here in your stead."