Legacy: Arthurian Saga (225 page)

Ulfin had been the King's chief
chamberlain for many years. He said briefly, "Yes, my lord," and
went.

Mordred and Bors, walking together
across the outer garden court, saw him hurrying towards the Queen's
rooms.

Bors said abruptly: "I don't like
it."

"But there was a letter?"

"I didn't see one. And I saw the man
ride in. If it's true he carried a letter for the Queen, why does
she need to talk with him now? It's near midnight. Surely it could
wait till morning? I tell you, I don't like it." Mordred shot him a
glance. Was it possible that the whispers had come even to the ears
of this faithful veteran? Then Bors added: "If anything has
happened to the King, then surely the tidings should have gone
straight to Bedwyr as well. What can they have to discuss that
needs privacy and midnight?"

"What indeed?" said Mordred. Bors gave
him a sharp glance, but all he said was, gruffly: "Well, well, we'd
best get to bed, and mind our business."

When they reached the hall where most
of the young bachelors slept, they found some of them still awake.
Gaheris was sober, but only just, Agravain was drunk as usual, and
talkative. Gareth sat at tables with Colles, and a couple of others
lounged over dice by the dying fire.

Bors said good night, and turned away,
and Mordred, who in the King's absence lived and slept within the
palace, started through the hall towards the stairway that led to
his rooms. Before he reached it one of the young knights, the man
from Wales called Cian, came swiftly in from the outer court,
pushing past Bors in the doorway. He stood there for a moment,
blinking, while his dark-puzzled eyes adjusted themselves to the
light. Gaheris, guessing where he had been, called out some
pleasantry, and Colles, with a coarse laugh, pointed out that his
clothes were still unbraced.

He took no notice. He came with his
swift stride into the middle of the hall and said, urgently:
"Bedwyr's gone to the Queen. I saw him. Straight in through the
private doorway, and there's a lamp lit in her chamber
window."

Agravain was on his feet. "Has he, by
God!"

Gaheris, lurching, got himself
upright. His hand was on his sword. "So, it was true. We all knew
it! Now let us see what the King will say when he hears that his
wife lies with a lover!"

"Why wait for that?" This was Mador.
"Let us make sure of them both now!"

Mordred, from the foot of the stairs,
raised his voice urgently above the hubbub: "She sent for him. A
letter came by the courier. It could be from the King. There was
something in it she had to discuss with Bedwyr. Bors brought the
message. Tell them, Bors!"

"It's true," said the old man, but
worry still sounded in his voice, and Mador said shrewdly: "You
don't like it either, do you? You've heard the stories, too? Well,
if they are having a council over the King's letter, let us join
it! What objection can there be to that?"

Mordred shouted: "Stop, you fools! I
tell you, I was there! This is true! Are you all mad? Think of the
King! Whatever we find."

"Aye, whatever we find," said Agravain
thickly. "If it is a council, then we join it as loyal King's
men--"

"And if it's a tryst for lusty
lovers," put in Gaheris, "then we can serve the King in other
ways."

"You'd not dare touch her!" Mordred,
sharp with fear, pushed his way through the crowd and gripped
Gaheris's arm.

"Her? Not this time." Gaheris, drunk,
but perfectly steady, laughed through ghost-haunted eyes. "But
Bedwyr, ah, if Bedwyr's where I think he is, what will the King do
but thank us for this night's work?"

Bors was shouting, and being shouted
down. Mordred, still holding Gaheris's arm, was talking swiftly,
reasonably, trying to contain the mood of the crowd. But they had
drunk too much, they were ripe for action, and they hated Bedwyr.
There was no stopping them now. Still clutching Gaheris's sleeve,
Mordred found himself being swept along with them -- there were a
dozen of them now, Bors hustled along with them, and even Gareth,
white-faced, bringing up the rear -- through the shadowed arcades
that edged the garden court, and in through the doorway that gave
on the Queen's private stair. The servant there, sleepy but alert
enough, came upright from the wall with his lips parting for a
challenge. Then he saw Mordred, and in the moment of hesitation
that this gave him, he was silenced with a blow from the butt of
Colles's dagger.

The act of violence was like the twang
that loosens the taut bowstring. With shouts the young men surged
through the door and up the stairway to the Queen's private
chambers. Colles, leading, hammered on the wood with his sword
hilt, shouting: "Open! Open! In the King's name!"

Locked in the press on the stairway,
struggling to get through, Mordred heard from within the room a
woman's cry of alarm. Then other voices, shrill and urgent, drowned
by the renewed shouting from the stairway.

"Open this door! There's treachery!
Treachery to the King!"

Then suddenly, so quickly that it was
obvious it had not been locked, the door opened wide.

A girl was holding it. The room was
lighted only by the night-lamps. Three or four women were there,
their voluminous wraps indicating that they had been in their night
robes and had been roused hastily from their beds. One of them, an
elderly lady with grey hair loose about her face as if she had
recently been startled from sleep, ran to the door of the inner
room where the Queen slept, and turned to bar the way.

"What is this? What has happened?
Colles, this unseemly -- And you, Prince Agravain? If it's the lord
Bedwyr that you want to see--"

"Stand aside, Mother," said someone
breathlessly, and the woman was thrust to one side as Colles and
Agravain, shouting, "Treachery, treachery to the King!" hurled
themselves, with swords out and ready, at the Queen's
door.

Through the tumult, the hammering, the
women's now frightened screaming, Mordred heard Gareth's breathless
voice: "Linet? Don't be afraid. Bors has gone for the guard. Stand
over there, and keep back. Nothing will happen--"

Then, between one hammer-blow and the
next, the Queen's door opened suddenly, and Bedwyr was standing
there.

The Queen's bedchamber was well
lighted, by a swinging silver lamp shaped like a dragon. To the
attackers, taken by surprise, everything in the room was visible in
one swift impression.

The great bed stood against the far
wall. The covers were tumbled, but then the Queen had already been
abed when the letter -- if there had been a letter -- had come.
She, like her women, was wrapped from throat to feet in a warm
loose robe of white wool, girdled with blue. Her slippers were of
white ermine fur. The golden hair was braided with blue, and hung
forward over her shoulders. She looked like a girl. She also looked
very frightened. She had half risen from the cross-stool where she
had been sitting, and was holding the hands of the scared
waiting-woman who crouched on a tuffet at her feet.

Bedwyr, holding the door, was dressed
as Mordred had seen him a short time ago, but with neither sword
nor dagger. Fully dressed as he was, facing the swords at the
chamber door, he was, in the parlance of the fighting man, naked.
And, with the lightning action of a fighting man, he moved. As
Colles, still in the van, lunged towards him with his sword,
Bedwyr, sweeping the blade aside with a swirl of his heavy cloak,
struck his attacker in the throat. As the man staggered back,
Bedwyr wrenched the sword out of his grip, and ran him
through.

"Lecher! Murderer!" yelled Agravain.
His voice was still thick with drink, or passion, but his sword was
steady. Mordred, shouting something, caught at him, but Agravain
struck the hand aside and jumped, murderous blade shortened,
straight for Bedwyr. Colles's body blocked half the doorway, and
for a moment Agravain was alone, facing Bedwyr's sword. In that
moment, Bedwyr, veteran of a thousand combats, struck Agravain's
flashing blade almost idly aside and ran his attacker through the
heart.

Even this killing did not give the
attacking mob pause. Mador, hard on Agravain's heels, got half in
under Bedwyr's guard before he could withdraw his blade. Gareth,
his young voice cracking with distress, was shouting: "He was
drunk! For God's sake--" And then, shrilly, in agonized panic:
"Gaheris,no!"

For Gaheris, murderer of women, had
leaped straight over Agravain's fallen body, past the whirling
swords where Bedwyr fought, and was advancing, sword levelled, on
the Queen.

She had not moved. The whole melee had
lasted only seconds. She stood frozen, her terrified woman crouched
at her knees, her eyes on the deadly flash of metal round Bedwyr.
If she was aware of Gaheris and his threat she gave no sign. She
did not even raise a hand to ward off the blade.

"Whore!" shouted Gaheris. and thrust
at her.

His blade was struck up. Mordred was
hard behind him. Gaheris turned, cursing. Mordred's sword ran up
Gaheris's blade and the hilts locked. Body to body the two men
swayed, fighting. Gaheris, pressed back, lurched against the
Queen's stool, and sent it flying. The waiting-woman screamed, and
the Queen, with a cry, moved at last, backing away towards the
wall. Gaheris, swearing, lashed out with his dagger. Mordred
snatched out his with his left hand and brought the hilt down as
hard as he could on his half-brother's temple. Gaheris dropped like
a stone. Mordred turned, gasping, to the Queen, and found himself
facing Bedwyr's blade, and Bedwyr's murderous eyes.

Bedwyr, hotly engaged, had seen,
through the haze of blood dripping from a shallow cut on his
forehead, the sudden thrust towards the Queen, and the struggle
near her chair. He started to cut his way towards her with a fury
and desperation that gave him barely time for thought. Gareth,
exposed by Agravain's fall, and still reiterating wildly, "He was
drunk!" was cut down and died in his blood almost at the Queen's
feet. Then the deadly sword, red to the hilt, engaged Mordred's,
and Mordred, with no time for words or for retreat, was fighting
for his life.

Dimly he was aware of fresh hubbub.
One of the women, regardless of danger, had run into the room, and
was on her knees by Gareth's body, wailing his name over and over
again. A screaming was audible along the corridor where others had
run for help. Bedwyr, as he cut and thrust, shouted out some sort
of command, and Mordred knew then that the guard had been called,
and was there. Gaheris heaved on the floor, trying to rise. His
hand slipped in Gareth's blood. Mador had been seized by the guard
and dragged away, shouting. The others, some still resisting, were
one by one overpowered, and hustled away. The Queen was calling
something, but through the uproar she could not be
heard.

Mordred was conscious mainly of two
things, Bedwyr's eyes of cold fury, and the knowledge that, even
through that fury, the King's marshal was deliberately refraining
from killing or maiming the King's son. A chance came, was ignored;
another came and was turned; Bedwyr's sword ran in over Mordred's
blade, and he took the younger man neatly through the upper part of
his sword arm. As Mordred staggered back, Bedwyr, following him,
struck him with his dagger's hilt, a heavy blow on the
temple.

Mordred fell. He fell across Gareth's
outstretched arm, and the girl's tears, as she wept for her lover,
fell on his face.

There was no pain yet, only dimness,
and the sense of the turmoil coming and going like the waves of the
sea. The fighting was over. His head was within a foot of
Guinevere's hem. He was dimly conscious of Bedwyr stepping over his
body to take the Queen's hands. He heard him speak, low and
urgently: "They did not come to you? Is all well?" And her shaken
reply, in that soft voice filled with distress and fear: "You're
hurt? Oh, my dear--" And his swift: "No. A cut only. It's over. I
must leave you with your ladies. Calm yourself, madam, it is
over."

Gaheris, back on his feet, but
bleeding from a deep cut on the arm, was being dragged away, dazed
and unresisting, by the guards. Bors was there, with a face of
tragedy, speaking urgently, but the words came and went, like the
surge of the sea waves, with the beat of Mordred's pulse. The pain
was beginning now. One of the guards said, "Lady--" and tried to
lift Linet from Gareth's body. Then the Queen was there, near,
kneeling beside Mordred. He could smell her scent, feel the soft
wool of the white robe. His blood smeared the wool, but she took no
notice. He tried to say, "Lady," but no sound came.

In any case she was not concerned with
him. Her arms were round Linet, her voice speaking comfort shot
with grief. At length the girl let herself be raised and led aside,
and the guards took up Gareth's body to carry it away. Just before
he lost consciousness Mordred saw, beside him on the floor, a
crumpled paper that had fallen from the Queen's robe as she knelt
beside him.

He saw the writing, elegant and
regular, the hand of an expert scribe. And at the foot of the
message, a seal. He knew that seal. It was Arthur's.

The story of the letter had, after
all, been the truth.