Legacy: Arthurian Saga (228 page)

Mordred's head went up. He spoke
incredulously. "You know what?"

"Well, even if you weren't for Bedwyr,
at least it's known you were against the attack. Which was sense, I
suppose. Even if they had been caught in bed together, twined
naked, the King would have punished the attackers even before he
dealt with Bedwyr and the Queen."

"I don't understand you. And this is
beside the point. There never was any question of adultery."
Mordred spoke with stiff anger, a royal rebuke that came
incongruously from the shabby workmanlike peasant to the splendidly
dressed king. "The King had sent a letter to the Queen, which she
wished to show Bedwyr. I suppose it was to tell them he was on his
way home. I saw it there, in her chamber. And when we broke in they
were both fully clad -- warmly wrapped, even -- and her women were
awake in the anteroom. One of them was in the bedchamber with
Bedwyr and the Queen. Not an easy setting for adultery."

"Yes, yes." Gawain spoke impatiently.
I know all this. I spoke with my uncle the High King." Some echo in
the words, in that place, brought memory back. His glance shifted.
He said quickly: "The King told me what had happened. It seems you
tried to stop the fool Agravain, and you did prevent Gaheris from
harming the Queen. If he had even touched her--"

"Wait. This is what I don't
understand. How do you know this? Bedwyr could not have seen what
happened, or he would not have attacked me as he did. And I think
Bors had already gone for the guard. So how did the King hear the
truth of the matter?"

"The Queen told him, of
course."

Mordred was silent. The air round him
was filled with the singing of the moorland birds, but what he
heard was silence, the haunted silence of those long dreaming
nights. She had seen. She knew. She had not hunted him
away.

He said slowly: "I begin to see.
Gaheris told me the guards were coming for me, and I must leave
Camelot to save myself. He would take me away to safety, he said,
in spite of the risk to himself. Even at the time, astray though I
was in my wits, I thought it strange. I had struck him down myself,
to save the Queen."

"Gaheris, my dear Mordred, was saving
no one's skin but his own. Did it not occur to you to wonder why
the guards let him out of the gates, when they must have known of
the affray? Gaheris alone they would have stopped. But Prince
Mordred, when Bedwyr himself had given orders that he was to be
cared for...?"

"I barely remember anything about it.
The ride is like a bad dream. Part of a bad dream."

"Then think of it now. That is what
happened. Gaheris got out, and away, and as soon as he could he
left you, to die or to recover, as God and the good brothers might
contrive."

"You know of that, too?"

"Arthur found the monastery after a
time, but you had gone. He had riders out searching for you, the
length and breadth of the land. In the end they counted you lost,
or dead." A smile without mirth in it. "A grim jest of the gods,
brother. It was Gaheris who died, and you who were mourned. You
would have been flattered. When the next Council was
held--"

Mordred did not hear the rest. He got
suddenly to his feet, and took a few paces away. The' sun was
setting, and westward the water of the great loch shimmered and
shone. Beyond it, between it and the blaze of the sunset, loomed
the hills of the High Island. He drew a long breath. It was like a
slow coming alive again. Once, long ago, a boy had stood like this,
on the shore not far from here, with his heart reaching out across
the hills and the water to the remote and colored kingdoms. Now a
man stood gazing the same way, seeing the same visions, with the
hard bitterness breaking in his brain. He had not been hunted. He
had not been traduced. His name was still bright silver. His father
sought for him in peace. And the Queen...

Gawain said: "A courier will be here
within the sennight. You'll let me send a message?"

"No need. I'll go myself."

Gawain, regarding his lighted face,
nodded. "And those?" A gesture towards the distant
cottage.

"Will stay here. The boy will soon be
able to take my place and do the man's work."

"Your wife, is she?"

"So she calls herself. There was some
local rite, cakes and a fire. It pleased her." He turned the
subject. "Tell me, Gawain, how long will you be here?"

"I don't know. The courier may bring
news."

"Do you expect to be summoned back
again? I hardly need to ask," said Mordred bluntly, "why you are
here in the islands. If you do go back, what then of
Bedwyr?"

Gawain's face hardened, setting in the
familiar obstinate cast. "Bedwyr will tread warily. And so, I
suppose, will I."

His gaze went past Mordred. A woman
had come out of the distant cottage, and, with the boy beside her,
stood gazing towards them. The breeze molded her gown against her,
and her long hair blew free in a flurry of gold.

"Yes, well, I see," said Gawain. "What
is the boy's name?"

"Medraut."

"Grandson to the High King," said
Gawain, musing. "Does he know?"

"No," said Mordred sharply. "Nor will
he. He does not even know he is mine. She was wedded after I left
the islands, and she bore three other children before her man was
drowned. He was a fisherman. I knew him when we were boys. Her
parents live still, and help her care for the children. They made
me welcome, and were glad to get us hand-fasted after so long, but
I could see they never expected me to stay for long, and she,
certainly, has said she will never leave the islands. I have
promised to see them all provided for. To the children--to all four
of them--I am their stepfather. Someday Medraut may get to know
that he is the bastard of "King Lot's bastard," but that is all,
until perhaps one day I send for him. And saving your presence,
brother, there are a few of those around. What need to whet
ambition further?"

"What indeed?" Gawain got to his feet.
"Well, will you stay with them, or come with me now to await the
ship? The palace will give you more comfort than your
hiding-place."

"Give me a day or so to make my peace,
and I'll come." Mordred laughed suddenly. "It will be interesting
to see how its luxury strikes me this time, after these months back
at my old tasks! I haven't lost the taste for fishing, but I
confess I was not looking forward to digging the peats!"

The King's relief and pleasure, and
the Queen's obvious happiness at seeing him again, were, to
Mordred, like the breaking of summer after a long winter of
near-starvation. Not much was said about the events of that grim
night; it was something that neither Arthur nor the Queen wished to
dwell on; instead they asked for news of Mordred's months in exile,
and soon, as he told of his attempts to get back into the
hard-working rhythms of his childhood, they all three lost the
memories of the "dreadful night" in laughter.

They spoke then of Gawain, and Mordred
handed his half-brother's letter to the King. Arthur read it, then
looked up.

"You know what's in this?"

"The main of it, yes, sir. He said he
would petition you to let him come south again."

Arthur nodded. His next remark
answered the question Mordred had not asked. "Bedwyr is still in
Brittany, at his castle of Benoic, north of the great forest that
they call Perilous. Indeed, to our loss, he looks to be settled
there. He married during the winter."

Mordred, back in the stronghold of
courtiers, betrayed no surprise except with a slight lift of the
brows. Before he could speak, Guinevere, rising, brought both men
to their feet. Her face was pale, and for the first time Mordred
saw, in its lively beauty, the signs of strain and sleeplessness.
Her mouth had lost some of its gentle fullness, as if it had been
set over too many silences.

"I will go now, by your leave, my
lords. You will have much still to say to one another, after so
long." Her hand went out again to Mordred. "Come soon to talk with
me again. I long to hear more of your strange islands. Meanwhile be
welcome here, back in your home."

Arthur waited until the door shut
behind her. He was silent for a space, and his look was heavy and
brooding. Mordred wondered if he was thinking back to the events of
that night, but all he said was: "I tried to warn you, Mordred. But
how could you have read my warning? Or reading it, what could you
have done, more than you did? Well, it's done with. Again I thank
you, and now let us speak no more of it...But we must needs discuss
the result. When you spoke with Gawain, what did he say of
Bedwyr?"

"That he would contain himself as best
he could. If tolerance of Bedwyr is the price for coming back into
service with the Companions, then I think he will pay
it."

"He says as much in this letter. Do
you think he will keep to this?"

Mordred moved his shoulders in a
shrug. "As far as he can, I suppose. He is loyal to you, sir, be
sure of that. But you know his temper, and whether he can control
it..." He shrugged again. "Will you recall him?"

"He is not banished. He is free to
come, and if he does so of his own will, all should be well enough.
Bedwyr is settled in Brittany, and he has written to me that his
wife goes with child. So for all our sakes, and for my cousin
Hoel's, too, it is best that he stay there. There is trouble coming
in Brittany, Mordred, and Bedwyr's sword may be needed there, along
with mine."

"Already? You spoke of this
before."

"No. Not the matter that we discussed
before. There is a totally new situation. While you were away in
your islands there has been news from abroad, which will bring
great changes both in the eastern and western empires."

He went on to explain. News had come
of the death of Theodoric, king of Rome and ruler of the western
empire. He had reigned for thirty years, and his death would bring
changes as great as they were sudden. Though a Goth, and therefore
by definition a barbarian, Theodoric, like many of his race, had
admired and respected Rome even as he fought to conquer her and
make a place for his own people in the kindly climate of Italy. He
had embraced what he saw to be best in Roman culture, and had
attempted to restore, or shore up, the structures of Roman law and
the Roman peace. Under him Goths and Romans continued to be
separate nations, bound by their own laws and answerable to their
own tribunals. The king, from his capital in Ravenna, ruled with
justice and even with gentleness, welding together a loyal
legislature both in Ravenna and Rome, where the ancient titles of
procurator, consul, legate, were still conferred and
upheld.

Theodoric was succeeded by his
daughter, acting as regent for her ten-year-old son, Athalaric. But
it was not thought that the boy had any chance of the succession.
In Byzantium, too, there had been a change. The ageing emperor
Justin had abdicated in favor of his nephew Justinian, and had
placed upon his head the diadem of the East.

The new emperor Justinian, wealthy,
ambitious, and served by brilliant commanders, was reputed to be
eager to restore the lost glories of the Roman Empire. It was
rumored that he had already cast his eyes towards the land of the
Vandals, on the southern fringe of the Mediterranean; but it seemed
likely that he would first seek to extend his empire westward. The
Franks of Childebert and his brothers kept a watch always for any
movement from the east, but now to the perennial threat of the
Burgundians and the Alemans might be added the larger menace of
Rome. Behind the barrier of Prankish Gaul, and dependent on her
goodwill, lay the tiny land of Brittany.

Bordered on three sides by the sea, on
the fourth Brittany was defended only by land nominally Prankish,
but in fact half deserted, a dense forest peopled by wary tribesmen
or folk displaced by war, who huddled together in makeshift
villages, and with their half-savage leaders led an existence owing
allegiance to no man.

Recently, King Hoel had written, there
had been disquieting reports from some of these forest enclaves to
the north-east of his capital. Reports had filtered in of raids,
robbery, violent attacks on householders, and, the most recent, a
horrifying case of wholesale slaughter where a farmstead had been
deliberately fired, and its inmates -- eight people with some
half-dozen children -- burned to death, and their goods and animals
stolen. Fear had spread in the forest, and it was being murmured
that the raiders were Franks. There was no confirmation of this,
but anger was rising, and Hoel feared blind reprisals and a casus
belli, at the very moment when friendship with his Prankish
neighbors was most necessary.

"Hoel's own men could doubtless deal
with it," said Arthur, "but he suggests that my presence, with some
of the Companions, and a show of strength, might be an advantage,
not just in this, but in the graver matter that he writes of. But
see for yourself."

He handed Hoel's letter to Mordred.
The latter, alone of the Orkney brothers, had, under the tuition of
the priest who had taught them the mainland speech, taken the
trouble to learn to read. Now he frowned his way slowly through the
beautifully penned Latin of Hoel's scribe.