Legacy: Arthurian Saga (207 page)

"Perhaps between us -- between you and
Lot, and even between you and myself, my brother, there have been
things that were better not recalled. But Lot was slain in your
service, and since then I have lived alone, quietly, in exile, but
uncomplaining, devoting myself to the care and rearing of my
sons...." The faintest emphasis here, and another quick glance
upward. "Now, my lord Arthur, I have come at your command, and pray
you for your clemency towards us all."

Still no reply from the King, nor any
movement of welcome. The light, pretty voice went on, the words
like pebbles striking against the silence. Mordred, his eyes still
downcast, felt something as strong as a touch, and looked up
suddenly, to find the King's eyes fixed on him. He met them for the
first time, eyes which were at the same time curiously familiar,
and yet strange, charged with a look that sent a thrill through
him, not of fear, but as if something had struck him below the
heart and left him gasping. With the touch his fear was gone.
Suddenly, and for the first time since Morgause had veiled logic
with threats and sorcery, he saw clearly how foolish his fears had
been. Why should this man, this king, trouble to pursue the bastard
of an enemy dead these many years? It was beneath him. It was
absurd. For Mordred the air cleared at last, as if a foul mist,
magic-crammed, had blown aside.

He was here in the fabled city, the
center of the mainland kingdoms. Long ago he had planned for this,
dreamed of it, schemed for it. He had tried, in the fear and
distrust engendered by Morgause, to escape from it, but here he had
been brought, like something destined for sacrifice to her Goddess
of the black altar. Now no thought of flight remained. All his old
ambitions, his boyhood dreams, flew back, lodged, crystalized. He
wanted this, to be part of this. Whatever it took to win a place in
this king's kingdoms, he would do it, be it....

Morgause was still speaking, with an
unaccustomed note of humility. Mordred, with the new cold light
illumining his brain, listened and thought: Every word she says is
a lie. No, not a lie, the facts are true enough, but everything she
is, everything she is trying to do... all is false. How does he
bear it? Surely he cannot be deceived? Not this king. Not
Arthur.

"So I pray you do not hold me to
blame, brother, for coming now, instead of waiting for the morrow.
How could I wait, with the lights of Camelot so near across the
Lake? I had to come, and to make sure that in your heart you still
bore me no malice. And see, I have obeyed you. I am here with all
the boys. This on my left is Gawain, eldest of Orkney, my son and
your servant. His brothers, too. And this on my right...this is
Mordred." She looked up. "Brother, he knows nothing. Nothing. He
will be--"

Arthur moved at last. He stopped her
with a gesture, then stepped forward and held out a hand. Morgause,
on a sudden intake of breath, fell silent and laid hers in it. The
King raised her. Among the boys, and the servants watching from the
gate, there was a movement of relief. They had been received. All
would be well. Mordred, rising to his feet, felt something of the
same lightening of tension. Even Gawain was smiling, and Mordred
found himself responding. But instead of the ritual kiss of
welcome, the embrace and the words of greeting, the King said
merely: "I have something to say to you that cannot be said before
these children." He turned to the boys. "Be welcome here. Now go
back to the gatehouse, and wait."

They obeyed. "The gifts," said the
chamberlain, "the gifts, quickly. All is not well yet, it seems."
He seized the box from a servant, and hurried forward to lay it at
the King's feet, then retreated hastily, disconcerted. Arthur did
not even glance at the treasure. He was speaking to Morgause, and,
though the people at the gate could neither hear what was said nor
see her face, they watched how her pose stiffened to defiance, then
passed again to supplication and even to fear, and how through it
all the King stood like stone, and with a face of stone. Only
Mordred, with his new clear sight, saw grief there, and
weariness.

There was an interruption. From beyond
the gates came a sound, growing rapidly louder. Hoofbeats, a horse
approaching at a stumbling gallop up the chariotway. A man's voice
called out hoarsely. One of the gate guards said, under his breath:
"The courier from Glevum! By the thunder, he's made good time! He
must bring hot news!"

The challenge, another shout, the
creak and crash of the gates opening. A tired horse clattered
through. They smelled the reek of exhausted sweat. A breathless
word from the courier, and the horse held on its way without
pausing, straight up to where the King stood with
Morgause.

The rider half fell from the saddle,
and went down on one knee. The King looked angry at the
interruption, but the courier spoke urgently, and after a pause
Arthur beckoned to the guards. Two of them went forward, halting
one on either side of Morgause. Then the King turned, with a sign
to the courier, and walked back up the roadway with the man
following him. At the foot of the palace steps he stopped. For a
few minutes the two, King and courier, stood talking, but from the
gatehouse the boys could see and hear nothing. Then, suddenly, the
King swung round, and shouted.

In a moment, it seemed, the frozen
tensions of the night were shattered; from uneasy peace the place
sprang to something very like battle orders. A huge grey
war-stallion was brought by two grooms, who clung to the bit as it
plunged and screamed. Servants came running with the King's cloak
and sword. The gates swung open. Arthur was in the saddle. The grey
stallion screamed again and climbed the torchlit air, then leaped
forward under the spur, and was past the boys and out of the gates
with the speed of a thrown spear. The grooms led the courier's
exhausted horse away, and the courier himself, walking like a lame
man, followed.

In the gatehouse all was bustle and
snapped orders. Melwas's men-at-arms withdrew, and the boys, with
the chamberlain and the queen's servants, found themselves being
hurried up the road towards the palace, past the place where
Morgause still stood stiffly between her guards. Just as they
reached the palace gate, a troop of armed riders burst out of it
and went streaming past at a gallop to vanish downhill in the
King's wake.

The gallop died. The outer gates
crashed shut once more. The echoes faded into quiet. The place
seemed to edge back, quivering, towards a kind of peace. The boys,
waiting at the palace gates with the servants and guards, crowded
together, wondering, confused and beginning to be scared. Gareth
was crying. The twins muttered together, with glances at Mordred
that were far from friendly. Avoiding them, and Gawain's puzzled
scowl, Mordred felt, more than ever before, isolated from them. His
thoughts darted like trapped birds. They all had time, now, to feel
the cold.

At length someone -- a big man with a
red face and a high manner -- came to them. He spoke straight to
Mordred.

"I am Cei, the King's seneschal. You
are to come with me."

"I?"

"All of you."

Gawain elbowed Mordred aside, stepped
forward and spoke. He was curt to the point of arrogance. "I am
Gawain of Orkney. Where are you taking us, and what has happened to
my mother?"

"King's orders," said Cei, briefly,
but hardly reassuringly. "She's to wait till he gets back." He
spoke more gently, to Gareth. "Don't be afraid. No harm will come
to you. You heard him say you would be made welcome."

"Where's he gone?" demanded
Gawain.

"Didn't you hear?" asked Cei. "It
seems that Merlin's still alive, after all. The courier saw him on
the road. The King's gone to meet him. Now, will you come with
me?"

The boys had only a brief stay at
Camelot before orders came that the court would remove to Caerleon
for Christmas. Meanwhile they were lodged apart from the other boys
and young men, under the special care of Cei, who was Arthur's
foster brother, and privy to all his counsels. He saw to it that
none of the rumors that went flying about among the people of
Camelot came to the boys' ears. Until Arthur himself had spoken
with Mordred, Mordred was to learn nothing. Cei guessed, and
rightly, that the King would want to consult with Merlin before he
decided what was to be done with the boy, or with Morgause herself.
The boys did not see Morgause; she was lodged somewhere apart, not
as a prisoner, they were told, but allowed to communicate with no
one, until the King returned.

In fact he did not return. The story
of his wild ride to greet his old friend was brought back to a city
agog for news.

It was true that Merlin the enchanter
was alive. An attack of his old sickness, a trance-like death, had
been taken for death itself, but he had recovered, and at length
escaped from the sealed tomb where he had been left for dead. Now
he had ridden with the King for Caerleon, and Arthur's Companions
-- the picked group of knights who were his friends -- had gone
with them. The court would follow.

So for the time remaining at Camelot
before the court's removal to Wales, the boys were kept busy with
pursuits that exhausted them, but that were much to their
taste.

They were taken in hand straight away
by the master-at-arms, and what training they had had in the
islands was commented on with a sarcasm that even Gawain did not
care in this place to resent, and augmented with a rigorous course
of work. There were long hours spent, too, on horseback, and here
none of them pretended that the Orkney training had been adequate.
The High King's horses were as far removed from the rough ponies of
the islands as Morgause's men-at-arms were from Arthur's chosen
Companions.

It was not all work. Play, too, there
was in plenty, but consisting entirely of war games, hours spent
over maps drawn in sand, or modeled -- this to the boys' wide-eyed
wonder -- in clay relief. Hours, too, at mock fights or competing
at archery. In this last they excelled, and of all of them Mordred
had the steadiest draw and the best eye. And there was hunting. In
winter the wild-fowling in the marshes was varied and exciting, but
there was hunting to be had as well, deer and boar, in the rolling
country to the eastward, or among the wooded slopes that rose
towards the downlands in the south.

The court removed itself to Caerleon
in the first week of December, and the Orkney boys with it. But not
their mother. Morgause was taken on Arthur's orders to Amesbury,
where she was lodged in the convent. It was a nominal imprisonment
only, and a gentle one, but imprisonment nonetheless. Her rooms
were guarded by King's troops, and the holy women replaced her own
waiting-women. Amesbury, birthplace of Ambrosius, belonged to the
High King, and would see his orders carried out to the letter. When
the spring weather came, and the roads opened, she would be taken
north to Caer Eidyn, where her half-sister Queen Morgan was already
immured.

"But what has she done?" demanded
Gaheris furiously. "We know what Queen Morgan did, and she is
rightly punished. But our mother? Why, she came to Orkney soon
after our father was killed. The King must know that -- it would be
the spring after Queen Morgan's wedding in Rheged. Years ago! She's
never been out of the islands since. Why should he imprison her
now?"

"Because at that same wedding she
tried to murder Merlin." The answer, uncompromising, came from Cei,
who, alone among the nobles, spent time with the boys during their
hours of leisure.

They stared at him. "But that was
years ago!" cried Gawain. "I was there -- I know, because she's
told me -- but I don't remember it at all. I was only a baby. Why
send for her now to account for something that happened
then?"

"And what did happen?" This from
Gaheris, red-faced and with jaw out thrust.

"He says she tried to murder Merlin,"
said Agravain. "Well, she didn't succeed, did she? So
why--?"

"How?" asked Mordred
quietly.

"Woman's way. Witch's way, if you
like." Cei was unmoved by the younger boys' angry questions. "It
happened at that very wedding feast. Merlin was there, representing
the King. She drugged his wine, and saw to it that he would drink a
deadlier poison later, when she was not there to be blamed. And so
it fell. He did recover, but it left him with the sickness that
recently struck him down and caused him to be left for dead--and
will kill him in the end. When Arthur sent for her, and for you,
Merlin was believed dead, and in his tomb. So he sent for her to
answer for the murder."

"It's not true!" shouted
Gaheris.

"And if it were," said Gawain, cold
now, and with that aggressive arrogance he had adopted since they
came to Camelot, "what of it? Where is the law that says a queen
may not destroy her enemy in her own way?"

"That's so," said Agravain quickly.
"She always said he was her enemy. And what other way had she?
Women cannot fight."

"He must have been too strong for her
spells," said Gareth. "They didn't work." The only emotion in his
voice was regret.

Cei surveyed them. "There was a spell,
certainly, and one tried many times, but in the end it was cold
poisoning. This is known to be true." He added, kindly: "There's
nothing to be gained in talking further about this until you see
the King. What can you know of these matters? In your outland
kingdom you were reared to think of Merlin, and maybe even the King
himself, as your enemies."