Legacy: Arthurian Saga (226 page)

5

Mordred, waking from the first deep
swoon, swam up into consciousness to find himself in his own house,
with his mistress beside the bed, and Gaheris bending over
him.

His head ached fiercely, and he was
very weak. His wound had been hurriedly cleaned and bandaged, but
blood still oozed, and the whole arm and side seemed to be one
throb of pain. He could remember nothing of how he had come here.
He did not know that, as he was carried from the Queen's
bedchamber, Bedwyr had shouted to the guards to see him safe and to
tend his hurts. Bedwyr, indeed, was thinking only of keeping the
King's son safely until the King himself should arrive, but the
guards, who had not seen the fight, assumed in the haste and chaos
that Mordred had been there to help the regent, so bore him
straight to his own house and the care of his mistress. Here
Gaheris (having contrived, by feigning to be worse hurt than he
was, to elude the guards) had fled under cover of that same chaos,
with only one thought in his mind, to get out of Camelot before
Arthur's arrival, and to use Mordred to that end.

For Arthur was on his way home, far
sooner than he had been looked for. The fateful letter, hurriedly
dispatched by a king already on the road, was to warn Guinevere of
his imminent arrival, and to ask her to tell Bedwyr immediately.
Word had gone round already among the guards; Gaheris had heard
them talking. The courier's delay would mean that the King must be
only a few short hours behind him.

So Gaheris leaned urgently over the
man in the bed.

"Come, brother, before they remember
you! The guards brought you here in error. They will soon know that
you were with us, and then they will come back. Quickly now! We've
got to go. Come with me, and I'll see you safe."

Mordred blinked up at him, vaguely.
His face was drained of blood, and his eyes looked unfocused.
Gaheris seized a flask of cordial and splashed some of it into a
cup. "Drink this. Hurry, man. My servant's here with me. We'll
manage you between us."

The cordial stung Mordred's lips. Some
of the painful fog lifted, and memory came back....

It was good of Gaheris, he thought
hazily. Good of Gaheris. He had hit Gaheris, and Gaheris had
fallen. Then Bedwyr had tried to kill him, Mordred, and the Queen
had said no word. Not then, and apparently not since, if the guards
were coming back to take him as one of the traitors...The Queen.
She wanted him to die, even though he had saved her life. And he
knew why. The reason came to him, through the swimming clouds, like
clear and cold logic. She knew of Merlin's prophecy, and so she
wanted him to die. Bedwyr, too. So they would lie, and no one would
know that he had tried to stop the traitors, had in fact saved her
from Gaheris, murderer of women. When the King came, he, Mordred,
Arthur's son, would be branded traitor in the sight of all
men....

"Hurry," said Gaheris, with
urgency.

No guards came. After all, it was
easy. With his half-brother's arm round him and his mistress at his
other side he walked, no, floated out into the dark street where,
tense and silent, Gaheris's servant waited with the horses. Somehow
they got Mordred to the saddle, somehow held him between them, then
they were out of the town and riding down the road to the King's
Gate.

Here they were challenged. Gaheris,
pulling back slightly, with his face muffled against the cold, said
nothing. The servant, forward with Mordred, spoke
impatiently.

"It's Prince Mordred. He's hurt, as
you know. We've to take him to Applegarth. Make haste."

The guards knew the story, which had
gone round with the dawn wind. The gates were opened, the riders
were through, and free. Gaheris said exultantly: "We did it! We're
out! Now let us lose this burden as soon as we may!"

Mordred remembered nothing of the
ride. He had a vague recollection of falling, of being caught and
pulled across onto the servant's horse, while the dreadful jolting
ride went on. He felt the warmth of blood breaking through the
bandages, then after what seemed an age the welcome stillness as
the horses were pulled up.

Rain drove down on his face. It was
cool and refreshing. The rest of his body, closely wrapped as it
was, was clothed in hot water. He was floating again. Sounds came
and went in beats, like the pulse of the blood that was seeping
from the wound. Someone--it was Gaheris--was saying: "This will do.
Don't be afraid, man. The brothers will care for him. Yes, the
horse, too. Tie it there. Now leave him."

He laid his cheek on wet stone. His
whole body burned and throbbed. It was strange how, when the horses
had stopped, the hoofbeats still thudded through his
veins.

The servant reached across him and
tugged at a rope. Somewhere in the distance a bell jangled. Before
the sound had died away the horses were gone. There was no sound in
the world but the rain driving steadily down on the stone step
where they had left him.

Arthur, arriving almost on the heels
of the courier, rode next morning into a city still buzzing like a
stirred hive. His regent was sent for before the King had even
taken off the dirt of the journey.

When Bedwyr was announced, Arthur was
sitting behind the table in his business room, his man at his feet
pulling off the scuffed and muddy riding boots. The servant,
without a glance at either man, took the boots and withdrew. Ulfin
had been Arthur's man throughout his whole reign. He had heard
rather more gossip than the next man, and had said a good deal less
about it than anyone. But even he, the silent and the trusted, went
out with relief. Some things were better not said, or even
known.

The same thought was in both men's
minds. In Arthur's eyes might even be read the plea to his friend:
Do not force me into asking questions. Let us in some way, in any
way, get past this ambush and back into the open rides of trust.
More than friendship, more than love, depends on this silence. My
kingdom would even now seem to hang on it.

It would doubtless have surprised the
Orkney princes, and some of their faction, if they could have heard
his first words. But both King and regent knew that, if the first
and greatest trouble could not be spoken of, the second would have
to be dealt with soon: Gawain of Orkney.

The King shoved his feet into his
furred slippers, swung round in the great chair, and said with
furious exasperation: "By all the gods below, did you have to kill
them?"

Bedwyr's gesture had the quality of
despair.

"What was I to do? Colles I could not
avoid killing. I was naked, and he was on me with his sword. I had
to take it. I had neither time nor choice, if he was not to kill
me. For Gareth I am sincerely sorry. I am to blame. I cannot think
that he was there in treachery, but only because he was among the
pack when the cry went up, and he may have been anxious for Linet.
I confess I hardly saw him in the press. I did cross swords with
Gaheris, but only for a moment. I think he took a cut--no more than
a scratch--from me, but then he vanished. And after Agravain fell,
all my thought was for the Queen. Gaheris had been loudest of all
throughout, and he was still shouting insults at her. I remembered
how he had dealt with his own mother." He hesitated. "That part was
nightmare-like. The swords, the yelled insults, the pack near the
Queen, and she, poor lady, struck dumb and shocked all in the few
seconds it had taken from peace to bloody war. Have you seen her
yet, Arthur? How does she do?"

"I am told she is well, but still
shaken. She was with Linet when I sent to inquire. I shall go to
her as soon as I've cleaned up. Now tell me the rest of it. What of
Mordred? They tell me he was hurt, and that he has gone -- fled --
with Gaheris. This is something that I fail to understand. He was
only with the Young Celts at my request -- in fact, he came to me
shortly before I left Camelot, to give me some word of warning
about what they might be planning to do...You could not have known
that. It was my fault; perhaps I should have told you, but there
were aspects of it..." He left it at that, and Bedwyr merely
nodded: This was the debatable ground that each man could tread
without a word spoken. Arthur frowned down, then raised troubled
eyes to the other man's. "You cannot be blamed for turning your
sword on him; how could you guess? But the Queen? He is devoted to
her -- we used to call it boy's love, and smile at it, and so did
she -- so why on earth should he have tried to harm the
Queen?"

"It is not certain that he did. I'm
not sure what happened there. When I crossed swords with Mordred,
the affair was almost over. I had the Queen safe at my back, and by
that time the guards were there. I would have disarmed him and then
spoken with him, or else waited for your coming, but he is too good
a fighter. I had to wound him, to get the sword from his
hand."

"Well," said Arthur heavily, "he is
gone. But why? And especially, why with Gaheris, unless indeed
Mordred is still spying for me? You know where they will have gone,
of course."

"To Gawain?"

"Exactly. And what," said Arthur, his
voice warming into a kind of desperation, "are we going to do about
Gawain?"

Bedwyr said, grim-mouthed: "Let me
take what comes."

"And kill him? If you do not, he will
kill you. You must know that. And I will not have it either way.
Troublesome though he is, I need Gawain."

"I am in your hands. You'll send me
away, I suppose. You can hardly send Gawain, I see that. So, when,
and where?"

"As for when, not immediately." Arthur
hesitated, then looked straight at the other man. "I must first of
all give some public evidence of trust in you."

As if without thinking, his hand had
strayed across the surface of the table. This was of veined green
marble, edged with wrought gold. The King, on coming in, had flung
his gloves down there, and Ulfin, in his haste to be gone, had left
them. Now Arthur picked one of them up, and ran it through his
fingers. It was a glove of softest calf-skin, worked as supple as
velvet, its cuff embroidered with silken threads in rainbow colors,
and with small river-pearls. The Queen herself had done the work,
not letting her women set even one of the stitches. The pearls had
come from the rivers of her native land.

Bedwyr met the King's eyes. His own,
the dark poet's eyes, were profoundly unhappy. The King's were as
somber, but held kindness.

"As for where, will your cousin make
you welcome in your family's castle in Brittany? I should like you
to be there. Go first, if you will, to King Hoel at Kerrec. I think
he will be glad to know that you are so near. These are anxious
times for him, and he is old, and ailing a little lately. But we'll
talk about this before you go. Now I must see the
Queen."

From Guinevere, to his great relief,
Arthur learned the truth. Far from attacking her, Mordred had
prevented Gaheris from getting to her with his sword. He had,
indeed, struck Gaheris down, before himself being at tacked by
Bedwyr. His subsequent flight, then, must have been through fear of
being identified (as Bedwyr had apparently identified him) with the
disloyal faction of Young Celts. This was puzzling enough, since
Bors, as well as the Queen, could obviously swear to his loyalty,
but the greater puzzle lay behind: why should he have fled with, of
all men, Gaheris? To this Mordred's mistress, on being questioned,
provided the first clue. Gaheris, himself bleeding and obviously
distraught, had managed to convince her of her lover's danger; how
easy, then, it had been for him to persuade the half-conscious and
weakened prince that his only hope lay in flight. She had added her
own pleas to Gaheris's urging, had helped them to the horses, and
seen them go.

The gate guards finished the tale, and
the truth was plain. Gaheris had taken the wounded man as his own
shield and pass to freedom. Arthur, now seriously concerned for his
son's health and safety, sent the royal couriers out immediately to
find Mordred and bring him home. When it was reported that neither
Mordred nor Gaheris had been to Gawain, the King ordered a
country-wide search for his son. Gaheris they had orders to secure.
He would be held until the King had spoken with Gawain, who was
already on his way to Camelot.

Gareth, alone of the dead, lay in the
royal chapel. After his burial Linet would take her grief back to
her father's house. The affair was over, but about Camelot hung
still a murmur of disaster, as if the bright gold of its towers,
the vivid scarlet and green and blue of its flags, was smeared over
with the grey of a coming sadness. The Queen wore mourning; it was
for Gareth, and for the other deaths and spilled blood of what was
noised abroad as a mistaken loyalty; but there were those who said
that it was mourning for the departure of her lover into Brittany.
But they whispered it more softly than before, and as often as not
the rumor was hotly denied. There had been smoke, and fire, but now
the fire was out, and the smoke was gone.

It was to be seen that the Queen
kissed the departing marshal on both cheeks; then, after her, the
King did the same. And Bedwyr, apparently unmoved after the Queen's
embrace, had tears in his eyes as he turned from the
King.

The court saw him off, then turned
with anticipation to greet Gawain.