Legacy: Arthurian Saga (213 page)

He stirred. "A night of love and a
birthing does not make a mother, madam. I owed Sula more,
and

Brude. I said I owed you nothing. It's
not true. I owe you their deaths. Their hideous deaths. You killed
them."

"I? What folly is this?"

"Would you deny it? I should have
suspected it long ago. But now I know. Gabran confessed before he
died."

That shook her. To his surprise, he
realized that she had not known. The color came to her cheeks and
faded again. She was very pale. "Gabran dead?"

"Yes."

"How?"

Mordred said, with satisfaction: "I
killed him."

"You? For that?"

"Why else? If it grieves you -- but I
see that it does not. If you had even asked for him, or looked for
him, someone would have told you, you would have known. Do you not
even care about his death?"

"You talk like a green fool. What use
was Gabran to me here? Oh, he was a good lover, but Arthur would
never have let him come to me here. Is that all he told
you?"

"That is all he was asked. Why, did he
do other murders for you? Was it he who served Merlin the
poison?"

"That was years ago. Tell me, has the
old wizard been talking to you? Is it he who has put you under his
spell as Arthur's man?"

"I have not spoken with him," said
Mordred. "I've barely seen him. He has gone back into
Wales."

"Then did your father the High King"
-- the words spat -- "who has been so open with you, did he tell
you what Merlin promised? For you?"

He answered, dry-mouthed: "You told
me. I remember it. But all that you told me then was lies. You said
he was my enemy. That was a lie. All of it, lies! Neither is Merlin
my enemy! All this talk of a promise--"

"Is the truth. Ask him. Or ask the
King. Better still, ask yourself, Mordred, why I should have kept
you alive. Yes, I see that you understand it now. I kept you alive
because by so doing I shall in the end have my revenge on Merlin,
and on Arthur who despised me. Listen. Merlin foresaw that you
would bring doom on Arthur. From dread of it he drove me from
court, and poisoned Arthur's mind against me. So since that day, my
son, I have done my utmost to bring that doom nearer. Not only by
bearing you, and keeping you safe from Lot's murdering sword, but
with a curse renewed at the dark of every moon since the day I was
banished from my father's court, to spend my young life in the far,
cold corners of the realm; I, the daughter of Uther Pendragon,
reared in the wealth and gaiety--"

He interrupted her. He had only heard
the one thing. "I, the doom of Arthur? How?"

At the note in his voice she began to
smile. "If I knew, I would hardly tell you. But I don't know. Nor
did Merlin."

"Why did he not have me destroyed, if
this is true?"

Her lip curled. "He had scruples. You
were the son of the High King Merlin used to say that the gods do
their own work in their own way."

Another silence, then Mordred said,
slowly: "But in this matter, it seems they will have to work
through men's hands. Mine. And I can tell you now. Queen Morgause,
that I shall bring no doom on the King!"

"How can you avoid it when not you,
nor I, nor even Merlin, know how it will strike?"

"Except that it will strike through
me! You think I shall wait passively for that? I shall find a
way!"

She was contemptuous. "Why pretend to
be so loyal? Are you telling me that you love him, all in a moment?
You have neither love nor loyalty in you. Look how you have turned
against me, and you were to serve me all your days."

"One cannot build on rotten rock!" he
said, furiously. She was smiling now. "If I am rotten, you are my
blood, Mordred. My blood."

"And his!"

"A son is his mother's stamp," she
said.

"Not always! The others are yours, and
their sire's, you have only to look at them. But I, no one would
know me for your son!"

"But you are like me. They are not.
They are bold, handsome fighters, with the minds of wild cattle.
You are a witch's son, Mordred, with a smooth and subtle tongue and
a serpent's tooth and a mind that works in silence. My tongue. My
bite. My mind." She smiled a slow, rich smile. "They may keep me
shut up till my life's end, but now my brother Arthur has taken to
himself another such: a son with his mother's mind."

The cold had crept into his very
bones. He said huskily: "This is not true. You cannot come at him
through me. I am my own man. I will not harm him."

She leaned forward. She spoke softly,
still smiling. "Mordred, listen to me. You are young, and you do
not know the world. I hated Merlin, but he was never wrong. If
Merlin saw it written in the stars that you would be Arthur's doom,
then how can you escape it? There will come a day, the wicked day
of destiny, when all will come to pass as he foretold. And I, too,
have seen something, not in the heavens, but in the pool below the
earth."

"What?" he asked, hoarsely.

She still spoke softly. There was
color in her face now, and her eyes shone. She looked beautiful. "I
have seen a queen for you, Mordred, and a throne if you have the
strength to take it. A fair queen and a high throne. And I see a
snake striking at the kingdom's heel."

The words seemed to echo round the
room, deep in note like a bell. Mordred spoke quickly, trying to
kill the magic. "If I turned on him, then indeed I would be a
snake."

"If you are," rejoined Morgause
smoothly, "it is a role you share with the brightest of the angels,
and the one who was closest to his lord."

"What are you talking
about?"

"Oh, stories the nuns
tell."

He said, very angrily: "You are
talking nonsense to frighten me! I am not Lot or Gabran, a besotted
tool to do your murders for you. You said I was like you. Very
well. Now that I am warned, I shall know what to do. If I have to
leave court and stay away from him, I shall do it. No power on
earth can make me lift a hand to kill unless I wish it, and this
death I swear to you I shall never undertake. I swear it by the
Goddess herself."

No echo. The magic was gone. The
shouted words fell into dead air. He stood panting, a hand clenched
on his sword hilt.

"Brave words," said Morgause, very
lightly, and laughed aloud.

He turned and ran from the room,
slamming the door to shut off the laughter which followed him like
a curse.

Once backing Camelot the memory of
Amesbury and its imprisoned queen began to fade as the boys were
plunged again into the life and excitement of the
capital.

At first Gaheris complained loudly to
whoever would listen about the hardships his mother was obviously
suffering. Mordred, who might have enlightened him, said nothing.
Nor did he mention his own interview with the queen. The younger
boys probed now and then, but were met with silence, so soon
stopped asking, and lost interest. Gawain, who must have guessed
what the tenor of that interview might be, was perhaps unwilling to
risk a snub, so showed no curiosity, and was told nothing. Arthur
did ask Mordred how he had fared, then, accepting his son's "Well
enough, sir, but not well enough to crave another meeting," merely
nodded and turned the subject. It was observed that the King was
angry, bored or impatient if his sisters were spoken of, so mention
of them was avoided, and in time they were almost
forgotten.

Queen Morgause was not after all sent
north to join her sister Morgan. The latter, in fact, came
south.

When King Urbgen, after a grim and
lengthy interview with the High King, had finally put Queen Morgan
aside, and given her back into Arthur's jurisdiction, she was held
for some time at Caer Eidyn, but eventually won her brother's
grudging permission to travel south to her own castle -- one that
Arthur himself had granted her in happier days -- among the hills
to the north of Caerleon. Once settled there, with a guard of
Arthur's soldiers and such of her women as were willing to remain
in captivity with her, she settled down to a small approximation of
a royal court, and proceeded (so rumor said, and for once rumor was
right) to hatch little plots of hatred against her brother and her
husband, as busily and almost as cozily as a hen hatches her
eggs.

She also besieged the King from time
to time, through the royal couriers, for various favors. One
repeated request was for her "dear sister" to be allowed to join
her at Castell Aur. It was well known that the two royal ladies had
little fondness for one another, and Arthur, when he brought
himself to think about it all, suspected that Morgan's desire to
join forces with Morgause was literally that: a wish to double the
baneful power of such magic as she had. Here rumor spoke again, in
whispers: It was being said that Queen Morgan far surpassed
Morgause in power, and that none of it was used for good. So
Morgan's requests were shrugged off, the High King tending, like
any lesser man beset by a nagging woman, to shut his ears and turn
the other way. He simply referred the matter to his chief adviser,
and had the sense to let a woman deal with the women.

Nimue's advice was clear and simple:
keep them guarded, and keep them apart. So the two queens remained
under guard, one in Wales, the other still in Amesbury, but --
again on Nimue's advice -- not too strictly prisoned.

"Leave them their state and their
titles, their fine clothing and their lovers," she said, and when
the King raised his brows, "Men soon forget what has happened, and
a fair woman under duress is a center for plotting and
disaffection. Don't make martyrs. In a few years' time the younger
men won't know or care that Morgause poisoned Merlin, or did murder
here and there. They have already forgotten that she and Lot
massacred the babies at Dunpeldyr. Give any evildoer a year or two
of punishment, and there will be some fool willing to wave a banner
and shout, "Cruelty, let them go." Let them have the things that
don't matter, but keep them close, and watch them
always."

So Queen Morgan held her small court
at Castell Aur, and sent her frequent letters along the couriers'
road to Camelot, and Queen Morgause remained in the convent at
Amesbury. She was permitted to increase the state in which she
lived, but even so her captivity was possibly not so easy as her
sister's, involving as it did a certain degree of lip-service to
the monastic rule. But Morgause had her methods. To the abbot she
presented herself as one who, long shut away from the true faith in
the pagan darkness of the Orkneys, was eager and willing to learn
all she could about the "new religion" of the Christians. The women
who served her attended the devotions of the good sisters, and
spent many long hours helping with the nuns' sewing and other, more
menial tasks. It might have been noted that the queen herself was
content to delegate this side of her devotions, but she was
civility itself to the abbess, and that elderly and innocent lady
was easily deceived by the attentions of one who was half-sister to
the High King himself, whatever the supposed crimes she had
committed.

"Supposed crimes." Nimue was right. As
time went by, the memory of Morgause's alleged crimes grew fainter,
and the impression, carefully fostered by the lady herself, of a
sweet sad captive, devoted to her royal brother, reft from her
beloved sons, and far from her own land, grew, spreading far beyond
the convent walls. And though it was common knowledge that the High
King's eldest "nephew" bore in fact a closer and somewhat
scandalous relationship to the throne -- well, it had happened a
long time ago, in dark and troubled times, when Arthur and Morgause
were very young, and even now you could see how lovely she must
have been... still was....

So the years passed, and the boys
became young men, and took their places at court, and Morgause's
dark deeds became a legend rather than a true memory, and Morgause
herself lived on comfortably at Amesbury; rather more comfortably,
in fact, than she had lived either in her chilly fortress of
Dunpeldyr or the windy fastness of the Orkneys. What she lacked,
and fretted for, was power, something more than she exercised over
her small and private court. As time went by and it became obvious
that she would never leave Amesbury, was, in fact, almost
forgotten, she turned back secretly to her magic arts, convincing
herself that here lay the seeds of influence and real power. One
skill certainly remained with her; whether it was the plants
carefully watched over in the nunnery gardens, or the spells with
which they were gathered and prepared, Morgause's unguents and
perfumes still worked their strong magic. Her beauty stayed with
her, and with it her power over men.

She had lovers. There was the young
gardener who tended the herbs and simples for her brewing, a
handsome youth who had once had hopes of joining the brotherhood.
It might be said that the queen did him a favor. Four months as her
lover taught him that the world outside the walls held delights
that at sixteen he could not bear to renounce; when she dismissed
him eventually with a gift of gold, he left the convent and went to
Aquae Sulis, where he met the daughter of a wealthy merchant, and
thereafter prospered exceedingly. After him came others, and it was
easier still when a garrison established itself on the Great Plain
for exercises, and the officers tended to ride into Amesbury after
work to sample what the local tavern had to offer in the way of
wine and entertainment. Simpler yet when Lamorak, who had brought
the boys on that long-ago visit to see their mother, was appointed
garrison commander, and took it upon himself to call at the convent
to ask after the health of the captive queen. She received him
herself, charmingly. He called again, with gifts. Within the month
they were lovers, Lamorak vowing that it had been love at first
sight, and lamenting that so many wasted years had passed since
their first meeting in the woodland ride.