Legacy: Arthurian Saga (210 page)

Mordred, indeed, was already wholly
occupied in other considerations. "So that means I am -- I
am--"

"Yes," said Arthur, and watched the
wonder, and through it the excitement, kindle in the eyes so like
his own. No affection -- how could there be? -- but a shift of the
powerful and inborn ambition. And why not? thought the King.
Guinevere will have no child by me. This boy is twice Pendragon,
and from all reports as well-liking as any boy will ever be. Just
now he is feeling as I felt when Merlin told me the same thing, and
put the sword of Britain into my hand. Let him feel it. The rest,
as the gods will it, will come.

Of the prophecy of Merlin, that the
boy would cause his downfall and death, he never thought at all.
The moment was for him one of joy, unspoiled.

Unspoiled, too, miraculously, by
Mordred's indifference to the long-past sin. Because of this very
lack of reaction he found that he could speak of it
himself.

"It was after the battle at
Luguvallium. My first fight. Your mother, Morgause, came north to
tend her father. King Uther, who was sick, and though we did not
know it, dying. I did not know then that I, too, was a child of
Uther Pendragon's. I believed Merlin to be my father, and, indeed,
loved him as such. I had never seen Morgause before. You will be
able to guess how lovely she was, at twenty...I went to her bed
that night. It was not until afterwards that Merlin told me Uther
Pendragon was my father, and I myself heir to the High
Kingdom."

"But she knew?" Mordred, quick as
ever, had fastened on the thing unsaid.

"So I believe. But even my ignorance
cannot excuse my share of the sin. I know that. In doing what I
did, I wronged you, Mordred. So the wrong persists."

"How? You looked for me, and brought
me here. You need not have done so. Why did you?"

"When I ordered Morgause here," said
Arthur, "I thought her guilty of Merlin's death, that was -- is --
the best man in all this realm, and the one dearest to me. She is
still guilty. Merlin is old before his time, and carries in him the
germ of the poison she fed to him. He knew that she had poisoned
him, but for the sake of her sons he never told me. He judged that
she ought to live, so long as she stayed harmless in exile, to rear
them against the day when they could serve me. I only learned of
the poison when he lay, as we thought, dying, and in his delirium
spoke of it, and of Morgause's repeated attempts to kill him by
poison or by sorcery. So after his entombment I sent for her to
answer for her crime, judging, too, that it was time her sons left
her care and came into my charge."

"All five. That surprised everyone.
You said you had had reports, sir. Who told you about
me?"

Arthur smiled. "I had a spy in your
palace. The goldsmith's man, Casso. He wrote to me."

"The slave? He could write? He gave no
hint of it. He's dumb, and we thought there was no way he could
communicate."

The King nodded. "That's why he is
valuable. People talk freely in front of a slave, especially a dumb
one. It was Merlin who had him taught to write. Sometimes I think
that even his smallest acts were dictated by prevision. Well, Casso
saw and heard plenty while he was in Morgause's household. He wrote
to me that the "Mordred" now in the palace must be the
one."

Mordred was thinking back. "I think I
saw him send the message. There was a trading ship tied up at the
wharf; it had been unloading wood. I saw him go on board, and
someone gave him money. I thought he must be doing work on his own,
that the goldsmith didn't know about. That would be it?"

"Very possibly."

The memory brought back others:
Morgause and her private smiling when he spoke of his "mother." Her
test to see if she had passed on the Sight to her son. And Sula;
Sula must have known that one day he would be taken from her. She
had been afraid. Had she suspected, then, what might one day
happen?

He asked abruptly: "Did she really
have Gabran kill them?"

"If he said so, knowing he was dying,
you may be sure of it," said the King. "She would think no more of
it than of flying her hawk at a hare. She had your first nurse,
Macha, murdered in Dunpeldyr, and herself goaded Lot into killing
Macha's child, who had taken your place in the royal cradle. And,
though Lot gave the order, it was Morgause who instigated the
massacre of the children. This we know for truth. There was a
witness. There have been many killings, Mordred, and none of them
clean."

"So many killings, and all for me. But
why?" The one clue he had been given, all those years ago, he had,
like Arthur, forgotten in the excitement and heady promise of this
meeting. "Why did she keep me alive? Why trouble to have me kept in
secret all those years?"

"To use as a tool, a pawn, what you
will." If the King remembered the prophecy now, he did not burden
the boy with it. "Maybe as a hostage in case I found out she had
murdered Merlin. It was after she reckoned herself safe that she
took you out of hiding, and even then the disguise she chose for
you -- Lot's bastard son -- was sufficient to conceal you. But I
can't guess further than that about her motives. I have not got her
kind of subtlety." He added, in answer to some kind of appeal in
the boy's intense gaze: "It does not come from the blood we share
with her, Mordred. I have killed many men in my time, but not in
such ways, or for such motives. Morgause's mother was a Breton
girl, a wise-woman, so I have heard. These things go from mother to
daughter. You must not fear these dark powers in
yourself."

"I don't fear them," said Mordred
quickly. "I have nothing of the Sight, no magic, she told me so.
She did once try to find out about it. I think now that she was
afraid I might 'see' what had happened to my foster parents. So she
took me down with her to the underground chamber where there is a
magic pool, and told me to look there for visions."

"And what visions did you
see?"

"Nothing. I saw an eel in the pool.
But the queen said there were visions. She saw them."

Arthur smiled. "I told you that you
were of my blood rather than hers. To me, water is only water,
though I have seen the mage-fire that Merlin can call from the air,
and other marvels, but they were all marvels of the light. Did
Morgause show you any magic of her own?"

"No, sir. She took me to the chamber
where she made her spells and mixed her magic potions--"

"Go on. What's the matter?"

"Nothing. It was nothing, really. Just
something that happened there." He looked away, towards the fire,
reliving the moments in the stillroom, the clasp, the kiss, the
queen's words. He added, slowly, to himself, making the discovery:
"And all the time she knew I was her own son."

Arthur, watching him, made a guess
that was a certainty. The rush of anger that he felt shook him.
Over it he said, very gently: "You, too, Mordred?"

"It was nothing," said the boy again,
rapidly, as if to brush it aside. "Nothing, really. But now I know
why I felt the way I did." A quick glance across the table. "Oh, it
happens, everyone knows it does. But not like that. Brother and
sister, that's one thing... but mother and son? Not that, ever. At
least, I never heard of it. And she knew, didn't she? She knew. I
wonder why she would want--?"

He let it die and was silent, looking
down at the hands held fast now between his knees. He was not
asking for a reply. He and the King already knew the answer. There
was no emotion in his voice but puzzled distaste, such as one might
accord some perverted appetite. The flush had died from his cheeks,
and he looked pale and strained.

The King was thinking, with growing
relief and thankfulness, that here there would be no tie to break.
Violent emotions create their own ties, but what remained between
Morgause and Mordred could surely be broken here and
now.

He spoke at length in a carefully low
key, equal to equal, prince to prince.

"I shall not put her to death. Merlin
is alive, and her other killings are not my concern to punish here
and now. Moreover, you will see that I cannot keep you near me --
here in my court where so many people know the story, and suspect
that you are my son -- and forthwith put your mother to death. So
Morgause lives. But she will not be released."

He paused, leaning back in the great
chair, and regarding the boy kindly. "Well, Mordred, we are here,
at the start of a new road. We cannot see where it will lead us. I
promised to do right by you, and I meant it. You will stay here in
my court, with the other Orkney princes, and you, like them, will
have royal status as my nephew. Where men guess at your parentage,
you will find that you have more respect, not less. But you must
see that, because of what happened at Luguvallium, and because of
the presence of Queen Guinevere, I cannot openly call you
son."

Mordred looked down at his hands. "And
when you have others by the Queen?"

"I shall not. She is barren. Mordred,
leave this now. The future will come. Take what life offers you
here in my household. All the princes of Orkney will have the honor
due to royal orphans, and you -- I believe you will in the end have
more." He saw something leap again behind the boy's eyes. "I do not
speak of kingdoms, Mordred. But perhaps that, too, if you are
sufficiently my son."

All at once the boy's composure
shattered. He began to shake. His hands went up to cover his face.
He said, muffled: "It's nothing. I thought I would be punished for
Gabran. Killed, even. And now all this. What will happen? What will
happen, sir?"

"About Gabran, nothing," said the
King. "He was to be pitied, but his death, in its way, was just.
And about you, for the moment, very little, except that tonight you
will not go to your bedchamber with the other boys. You will need
time alone; to come to terms with all you have just learned. No one
will wonder at this; they will think merely that you are being held
apart because of Gabran's death."

"Gawain, the others? Are they to
know?"

"I shall talk to Gawain. The others
need know nothing more yet than that you are Morgause's son, and
eldest of the High King's nephews. That will be sufficient to
explain your standing here. But I shall tell Gawain the truth. He
needs to know that you are not a rival for Lothian or the Orkneys."
He turned his head. "Listen, there is the guard changing outside.
Tomorrow is the feast of Mithras, and the Christmas of the
Christians, and for you, I expect, some winter festival of your
outland Orkney gods. For us all, a new beginning. So be welcome
here, Mordred. Go now, and try to sleep."

BOOK II THE WITCH'S
SONS

Snow fell thickly soon after
Christmas, and the ways were blocked. It was almost a month before
the regular service of royal couriers could be resumed. Not that it
mattered; there was little of any moment to report. In the depths
of winter men -- even the most dedicated warriors -- stayed at home
hugging the fire and looking to their houses and the needs of their
families. Saxons and Celts alike kept close to their hearthstones,
and if they sat whetting their weapons by the light of the winter
fires, all knew that there would be no need of them until the
coming of spring.

For the Orkney boys' life at Caerleon,
though restricted by the weather, was still lively and full enough
to banish thoughts of their island home, which in any case had
been, in midwinter, a place of doubtful comfort. The exercise
grounds by the fortress were cleared, and work went on almost
daily, in spite of snow and ice. Already a difference could be
seen. Lot's four sons -- the twins especially -- were still wild to
the point of recklessness, but as their skills improved, so also
did their sense of discipline, which brought with it a certain
pride. The quartet still tended to divide naturally into two pairs,
the twins on the one hand and Gawain with young Gareth on the
other, but there were fewer quarrels. The main difference could be
discerned in their bearing towards Mordred.

Arthur had duly spoken with Gawain, a
long interview which must have held, with the truth about Mordred's
birth, some weighty kind of warning. Gawain's attitude to his
half-brother had perceptibly altered. It was a mixture of reserve
and relief. There was relief in the knowledge that his own status
as Lot's eldest son would never be challenged, and that his title
to the Orkney kingdom was to be upheld by the High King himself.
Behind this there could be seen something of his former reserve,
perhaps a resentment that Mordred's status as bastard of the High
King put him higher than Gawain; but with this went caution, bred
of the knowledge of what the future might hold. It was known that
Queen Guinevere was barren; hence there was, Gawain knew, every
possibility that Mordred might someday be presented as Arthur's
heir. Arthur himself had been begotten out of wedlock and
acknowledged only when grown; Mordred's turn might come. The High
King was, indeed, rumored to have other bastards -- two, at least,
were spoken of -- but they were not at court, or seen to have his
favor as Mordred had. And Queen Guinevere herself liked the boy and
kept him near her. So Gawain, the only one of Lot's sons who knew
the truth, bided his time, and edged his way back towards the
guarded friendship that he and the older boy had originally
shared.