Legacy: Arthurian Saga (209 page)

The King was laughing, but when his
guards brought Mordred in, the laughter went out of his face as if
a light had been quenched. He looked startled, then recovered
himself.

"What is this? Arrian?"

The man addressed said stolidly:
"Murder, sir. A stabbing. One of the Orkney men. This young man did
it. I didn't get the rights of it, sir. There's others outside that
saw it. Do you want them brought in as well, sir?"

"Later, perhaps. I'll talk to the boy
first. I'll send when I want them. Let them go now."

The man saluted and withdrew. The
hound-boy began to gather up the pups. One of them, a white one,
eluded him, and, squeaking like an angry mouse, charged back to the
King's feet. It seized a dangling lace in its teeth and, growling,
worried it furiously. Arthur glanced down as the hound-boy pulled
the pup away. "Yes. That's the one. To be named Cabal again. Thank
you." The boy scuttled out with the basket, the bitch at his
heels.

Mordred stayed where the men had left
him, just inside the door. He could hear the guard outside being
mounted again. The King left his chair by the leaping fire, and
crossed to where a big table stood, littered with papers and
tablets. He seated himself behind this, and pointed to the floor
across the table from him. Mordred advanced and stood. He was
shaking, and it took all his will-power to control this, the
reaction from his first kill, from the hideous memory of the burned
cottage and the feel of that weather-washed bone in his hand, and
now the dreaded confrontation with the man he had been taught was a
ferocious enemy. Gone, now, was the cool conviction that the High
King would not trouble with such as he; Mordred had himself
provided a just excuse. That he would be killed now, he had no
doubt at all. He had brawled in a king's house, and, though the man
he had killed was one of the Orkney household, and was justly
punished for a foul murder, Mordred, even as a prince of Orkney,
could hardly hope to escape punishment himself. And though Gawain
had supported him, he would hardly go on doing so now that Gabran's
confession had branded Morgause, too, with the murder.

None of this showed in the boy's face.
He stood, pale-faced and still, with his hands gripped together
behind his back where the King could not see their trembling. His
eyes were lowered, his mouth compressed. His face looked sullen and
obstinate, but Arthur knew men, and he saw the telltale quiver
under the eyes, and the quick rise and fall of the boy's
breathing.

The King's first words were hardly
alarming.

"Supposing you tell me what
happened."

Mordred's eyes came up to find the
King watching him steadily, but not with the look that had brought
Morgause to her knees in the roadway at Camelot. He had, indeed, a
fleeting but powerful impression that the King's main attention was
on something quite other than Mordred's recent crime. This gave him
courage, and soon he found himself talking, freely for him, without
noticing how Arthur's apparently half-absent questioning led him
through all the details, not just of the killing of Gabran, but of
his own story from the beginning. Too highly wrought to wonder why
the King should want to hear it, the boy told it all: the life with
Brude and Sula, the meeting with Gawain, the queen's summons and
subsequent kindness, the ride to Seals' Bay with Gabran, the final
hideous discovery of the burned-out cottage. It was the first time
since Sula's death, and the end of his own childhood, that he had
found himself talking -- confiding, even -- in someone with whom
communication was easy. Easy? With the High King? Mordred did not
even notice the absurdity. He went on. He was talking now about the
killing of Gabran. At some point in the tale he took a step forward
to the table's edge, and laid the wooden charm in front of the
King. Arthur picked it up and studied it, his face expressionless.
On his hand a great carved ruby glimmered, making the pathetic
thing the crude toy that it was. He laid it down again.

Mordred came to an end at last. In the
silence that followed, the flames in the big fireplace flapped like
flags in the wind. Again the King's words were unexpected. He spoke
as if the question came straight from some long-held thought, that
seemed, to the matter in hand, quite irrelevant.

"Why did she call you Mordred?" With
all the familiar talk behind him, the boy hardly paused to think as
he replied, with a directness that only an hour ago would have been
unthinkable: "It means the boy from the sea. That's where they got
me from, after I was saved from the boat that you had the children
put in to drown."

"I?"

"I heard since that it wasn't you,
lord. I don't know the truth of it, but that is what I was told
first."

"Of course. That is what she would
tell you."

"She?"

"Your mother."

"Oh, no!" said Mordred quickly. "Sula
never told me anything, not about the boat, or about the killings.
It was Queen Morgause who told me, much later. As for my name, half
the boys in the islands are called Mordred, Medraut...The sea is
everywhere."

"So I understand. Which is why it has
taken so long for me to locate you, even knowing where your mother
was. No, I am not talking about Sula. I mean your real mother, the
woman who bore you."

Mordred's voice came strangled. "You
know that? You were -- you mean you were looking for me? You
actually know who my mother is -- who I really am?"

"I should." The words came heavily, as
if loaded with meaning, but Arthur seemed to change direction, and
added merely: "Your mother is my half-sister."

"Queen Morgause?"The boy gaped,
thunderstruck. "Herself." Arthur left it there for the moment. One
thing at a time. Mordred's eyes blinked rapidly, his brain taking
in this astounding new fact, thinking back, thinking
ahead.

He looked up at last. Fear was
forgotten now; the past, even the recent past, forgotten also.
There was a blaze behind his eyes that told of an almost
overmastering excitement. "I see it now! She did tell me a little.
Only hints -- hints that I couldn't understand, because the truth
never occurred to me. Her own son... Really her own son!" A deep
breath. "Then that is why she sought me out! Gawain was only the
excuse. I did think it strange that she should want to nurture one
of her husband's bastards by some girl from the town. And even to
show me favor! When all the time I was her own, and only a bastard
because I was born before time! Oh, yes, I know that now! They had
been wed barely eight months when I was born. And then King Lot
came back from Linnuis and--"

A sudden complete stop. The excited
comprehension vanished as if a shutter had dropped across his
eyes.

More things were, coming together. He
said, slowly: "It was King Lot who ordered the massacre of the
babies? Because his eldest son had a doubtful birth? And my mother
saved me, and sent me to Brude and Sula in the Orkneys?"

"It was King Lot who ordered the
massacre. Yes."

"To kill me?"

"Yes. And to blame me for
it."

"Why that?"

"For fear of the people. The other
parents whose children did die. Also because, even though in the
end he fought under my command, Lot was always my enemy. And for
other reasons."

The last sentence came slowly. Arthur,
still feeling his way towards the moment when the most important
truth might be told, lent it a weight that might have been expected
to set Mordred asking the question that had been fed to him. But
Mordred was not to be steered. He was busy with his own long
obsession. He took a step forward, to lean with both hands flat on
the table and say, with intensity: "Yes, other reasons! I know
them! I was his eldest born, but because I was begotten out of
wedlock he was afraid that in days to come men might doubt my
birth, and make trouble in the kingdom! It was better to be rid of
me, and get another prince in wedlock, who might in due time take
the kingdom without question!"

"Mordred, you are running too far
ahead. You must listen."

It is doubtful if Mordred noticed that
the High King was speaking with less than his usual assurance. Was
looking, indeed, if one could use such a word of the great duke of
battles, embarrassed. But Mordred was past listening. The full
implications of what he had learned in the past few minutes swept
over him in a bewildering cloud, but brought with them a new
confidence, a lifting of caution, the driving satisfaction of at
last being able to say it all, and to say it to the man who could
make it come true.

He swept on, stammering a little. "Am
I not, then, in sober fact, heir to Dunpeldyr? Or, if Tydwal is to
hold that stronghold for Gawain, then of the Orkneys? Sir, the two
kingdoms, so far apart, are hard for one man to hold, and this,
surely, could be the time to divide them? You have said you will
not let Queen Morgause go back. Let me go back instead!"

"You have not understood me," said the
King. "You have no right to either one of Lot's
kingdoms."

"No right!" It could have been the
young Arthur himself who said it, springing upright like a bow when
the arrow flies. "When you yourself were begotten out of wedlock by
Uther Pendragon, on the lady who was still Duchess of Cornwall, and
who could not wed him before a month was out?"

No sooner was it said than he would,
if he could, have swallowed the words back. The King said nothing,
nor did his look change, but recollection struck Mordred silent,
and with it his fear returned. Twice in one evening he had lost his
temper, he, Mordred, who for years now had fought his nature down
to achieve, as armor against the displacement, the insecurity of
his life, that sea-cold shell of control.

Stumblingly, he tried to unsay it. "My
lord, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to insult you or... or your lady
mother. I only meant--I've thought about this for so long, thought
every way whether it could be legal for me to have a place, a place
to rule...I know I could. One does...And I thought about you, and
how you came to it. Of course I did. Everyone knows -- that is --
men do say--"

"That I am technically a
bastard?"

Amazingly, the King did not sound
angry. Mordred's courage crept back. His fists pressed into the
table, striving for steadiness. He said carefully: "Yes, sir. I
wondered about the law, you see. The mainland law. I was going to
find out, and then ask you. My lord, if Gawain goes to Dunpeldyr,
then, by the Goddess herself, I promise you that I am fitter than
Gaheris or Agravain to rule the Orkneys! And who knows what trouble
and moil there could be if twins were named successors?"

Arthur did not answer at once.
Mordred, his plea made, the words said, subsided into silence. The
King came out of his thoughts, and spoke.

"I have listened to you because I was
curious to know what kind of man you had grown to be, with your
strange upbringing, so like my own." A slight smile. "As "everyone
knows," I, too, was begotten out of wedlock, then hidden for many
years. With me it was fourteen years, but I was in a household
where from the start I was taught the skills of knighthood. You
have had less than four years of such teaching, but they tell me
you have made much of them. You will come into your own, believe
me, but not as you have planned or imagined. Now you will listen to
me. And sit down, please."

Wondering, the boy pulled up a stool
and sat. The King himself stood up, and paced the length of the
room and back before speaking.

"First of all, whatever the law,
whatever the precedent, there is no question of your taking the
kingdom of the Orkneys. That will be for Gawain. My intention is to
keep Gawain and his brothers here among my fighting knights, and
then, when the time is right, and if he wishes it, let him take
back his island kingdom from my hand. And in the meantime, Tydwal
will stay in Dunpeldyr."

He stopped his pacing, and sat down
again.

"This is not injustice, Mordred. You
can have no claim to either Lothian or the Orkneys. You are not
Lot's son." He gave it emphasis. "King Lot of Lothian was not your
father."

A pause. The flames roared in the
chimney. Outside in a corridor somewhere, someone called out and
was answered. The boy asked, in a flattened, neutral voice: "Do you
know who is?"

"I should," said the King, for the
second time.

Now comprehension was instant. The boy
went upright on the stool. It brought his eyes almost on a level
with the King's.

"You?"

"I," said Arthur, and
waited.

This time it took a moment or two, and
then, not the sick disgust he expected, but merely wonder and a
slow assessment of this new fact.

"With Queen Morgause? But that --
that--"

"Is incest. Yes." He left it there. No
excuse, no protestation of his own ignorance of the relationship
when Morgause seduced her young half-brother to her bed. In the end
the boy said merely: "I see."

It was Arthur's turn to be startled.
Held so in his own consciousness of sin, of disgust at the memory
of that night with Morgause, who had since become for him a symbol
of all that was evil and unclean, he had not taken into account the
peasant-reared boy's reaction to a sin far from uncommon in the
inbred islands of his homeland. In that homeland, indeed, it would
hardly be counted as a sin. Roman law had not stretched so far, and
it was not to be supposed that Mordred's Goddess -- who was also
Morgause's -- had implanted much sense of sin in her
followers.