Legacy: Arthurian Saga (229 page)

It seemed that King Hoel had recently
received a message sent, not by the new emperor, but by an officer
purporting to represent him. This was one Lucius Quintilianus,
called Hiberus, "the Spaniard," one of the recently styled consuls.
Writing with a truly imperial arrogance, and quoting Rome as if she
still bristled with eagles and legions, he had sent to Hoel
demanding gold and a levy of troops -- far more than he could ever
raise -- to "help Rome protect Brittany from the Burgundians." He
did not state what the penalty would be for refusal; he did not
need to.

"But the Franks? King Childebert?"
asked Mordred.

"Like his brothers, a mere shadow of
their father. Hoel believes they must have had the same demand, so
it looks as if Rome must have strength enough to enforce it.
Mordred, I am afraid of this emperor. The Celtic lands have not
weathered Rome's desertion, and the threat of barbarian domination,
to accept once again the collar and chain of Rome, whatever
"protection" she brings with her."

The situation, Mordred reflected, was
not without its ironies. Arthur, blamed at home by the Young Celts
for his adherence to Roman forms of law and centralized government,
was nevertheless prepared to resist a possible attempt to bring
Celtic territories back within Rome's fold.

"Under her yoke, rather!" said Arthur,
in reply to his son's wry comment. "The times are long past when,
in return for tribute, a king and his people were protected.
Britain was taken by force, and thereafter forced to pay tribute to
Rome. In return she enjoyed, after the settlement, a period of
peace. Then Rome, self-seeking as always, lifted her shield, and
left her weakened dependencies open to the barbarians. We in these
islands, and our cousins in their near-isle of Brittany, alone kept
our nationhood and remained stable. We have achieved our own peace.
Rome cannot expect now to reimpose debts we do not owe. We have as
much right to demand tribute from her for Roman territories which
are now British again!"

Mordred said, startled: "Are you
saying that this new emperor -- Justinian? -- has demanded tribute
of us?"

"No. Not yet. But if he has asked it
of Brittany, then sooner or later he will ask it of me."

"When do you go, sir?"

"Preparations are already well
forward. We go as soon as we may. Yes, I said "we." I want you with
me."

"But with Bedwyr away in Brittany --
or will you leave Duke Constantine in charge here?"

Arthur shook his head. "No need. It
should not be a long visit. The immediate business is this trouble
in the Perilous Forest, and that should not take us long to clear
up." He smiled. "If we do see action there, you can call it
re-training after your holiday in the Orkney isles! If the other
matter becomes serious, then I shall send you home as my regent.
Meanwhile I shall leave the Council in charge, with the Queen, and
send a sop to Duke Constantine in the form of a letter charging him
with the guardianship of the west."

"A sop?"

"A comfort and a drug, maybe, for a
violent and ambitious gentleman." Arthur nodded at Mordred's quick
lift of the brows. "Yes. Too violent, I have long thought, for the
country's need. His father Cador, to whom I promised the kingdoms
in default of an heir of my body, was of different metal. This man
is as good a fighter as his father, but I dislike some of the tales
I have heard about him. So I give him a little favor, and when I
return from Brittany, I will send for him here and come to an
understanding."

They were interrupted then by an
urgent message relayed from the harbor on Ynys Witrin where the Sea
Dragon lay. She was equipped, provisioned, and ready to sail. So
the King said no more, and he and Mordred parted to make ready for
the journey into Brittany.

As so often happens, one trouble
breeds another. While Arthur and his Companions were still on the
Narrow Sea, tragedy, this time real and immediate, struck at
Brittany's royal house.

King Hoel's niece Elen, sixteen years
old and a beauty, set out one day from her father's home towards
Hoel's castle at Kerrec. The party never arrived. Her guards and
servants were attacked and killed, and the girl and one of her
women, her old nurse, Clemency, were carried off. The other woman
in the party, though unhurt, was too shocked to give a coherent
account of what had happened. The attack had taken place at dusk,
almost within sight of the place where the party had proposed to
lodge for the night, and she had not noticed what badge the
attackers wore, or indeed anything about them, except that their
leader, he who had dragged Elen up before him on his horse and
spurred off into the forest, had been "a giant of a man, with eyes
like a wolf and a shock of hair like a bear's pelt, and an arm like
an oak tree."

Hoel, not unnaturally discounting most
of this, jumped to the conclusion that the outrage was the work of
the ruffians who had been terrorizing the Forest. Whether they were
Bretons or Franks, his hand was forced. The women must be rescued,
and the attackers punished. Even King Childebert would not blame
the Breton king for avenging such an outrage. Arthur and his party
sailed into Kerrec's harbor to find the place in a turmoil, and
themselves just in time to lead the hastily mounted punitive
expedition into the Forest. Hoel's chief captain, a trusted
veteran, with a troop of Breton cavalry, accompanied Arthur and his
Companions.

The party rode fast, and more or less
in silence. According to what information could be gathered from
the princess's surviving waiting-woman, the attack had taken place
on a lonely stretch of road just where the way left the Forest and
bordered a brackish lake. This was one of the shore lagoons, not
quite an inlet of the sea, but moved by the tides, and in spring
and autumn washed through by the sea itself.

They reached the lake shore soon after
dusk, and halted short of the site of the abduction, to wait for
daylight, and for Bedwyr to join them. There had been no rain for
several days, so Arthur was hopeful that there would still be
traces of the struggle, and tracks to show which way the marauders
had gone. Hoel's messenger had gone ahead already to Benoic, and
now, just as orders were given for the night's halt, Bedwyr arrived
out of the dark with a troop of men at his back.

Arthur greeted his friend with joy,
and over supper they fell at once to talk and planning for the next
move. No shadow of the past seemed to touch them; the only
reference, and that oblique, to the events that had banished Bedwyr
to Less Britain was when he greeted Mordred.

This was after supper, when the latter
was on his way to the pickets to see that his horse had been
properly cared for. Bedwyr fell in beside him, apparently bent on
the same errand.

"They tell me that you, too, have been
sojourning in the outer dark, Mordred. I am glad to see you back
with the King. You are fully recovered now, I trust?"

"Small thanks to you, yes," said
Mordred, but smiling. He added: "On second thoughts, all thanks to
you. You could have killed me, and we both know it."

"Not quite so easy. The decisions were
not all mine, and I think we both know that, too. You're a bonny
fighter, Mordred. Someday perhaps we may meet again... and in
rather less earnest?"

"Why not? Meantime I am told I am to
wish you happy. I gather you are lately wedded? Who is
she?"

"Her father is Pelles, a king in
Neustria whose land borders mine. Her name is Elen,
too."

The name jolted them back to the
urgencies of the moment. As they inspected their horses Mordred
said: "You must know the ground hereabouts?"

"I know it well. It's barely a day's
ride from my family's castle of Benoic. We used to hunt here, and
fish the lake. Many's the time my cousins and I--"

He broke off,
straightening.

"Look yonder, Mordred! What's
that?"

"That" was a point of light, red,
nickering with shadows. Another wavered below it.

"It's a fire. On the shore, or near
it. You can see the reflection."

"Not on the shore," said Bedwyr. "The
shore is farther away. There's an island there, though. We used to
land and make fire to cook the fish. It must be there."

"No one lives there?"

"No. There's nothing there. That side
of the lake is wild land, and the island itself nothing but a pile
of rock with ferns and heather, and on the summit a grove of pine
trees. If someone is there now it's worth our while to find out who
it is."

"An island?" said Mordred. "It might
well be. A good choice, one would think, for a night or so of
undisturbed rape."

"It has been known," said the other,
very dryly. He turned with the words, and the two men went swiftly
back to Arthur.

The King had already seen the fire. He
was giving orders, and men were hurrying to saddle up again. He
turned quickly to Bedwyr.

"You saw? Well, it could be. It's
worth looking at, anyway. How do we best get there? And without
alarming them?"

"You can't surprise them with horses.
It's an island." Bedwyr repeated what he had told Mordred. "There's
a spit of land, rock and gravel, running out from the shore on the
far side of the lake. That's about three miles from here. You can
get half that distance by the shore road, then you must leave it
and enter the forest. There's no path there along the shore; you
would have to make a wide detour to skirt the thick trees. Bad
going, and quite impossible in the dark. And the forest goes all
the way to the sea."

"Then it hardly seems likely that
their horses are round there. If that's our rapist still on the
island, then he got there by boat, and his horse will still be on
the shore road. Right. We'll take a look, then picket the road in
case he tries to make a break. Meanwhile we need a boat ourselves.
Bedwyr?"

"There should be one not far away.
This is oyster water. The beds are only a short way from here, and
there may be a boat there--unless, of course, that's the one he
took."

But the oyster-fisher's boat was
there, lying beached on the shingle near a pier of rough stones.
The boat was a crude, shallow-draught affair with an almost flat
bottom. Normally she would be poled out slowly over the
oyster-beds, but there were paddles, too, tied together and stuck
up in the ground like flagstaff's.

Willing hands seized her and shoved
her down the shingle. The men moved quietly and quickly, without
talking.

Arthur, looking out towards the
distant glimmer, spoke softly. "I'll take the shore road. Bedwyr"
-- a smile sounded in his voice -- "you're the expert on
expeditions of this kind. The island's yours. Who do you want with
you?"

"These craft won't hold more than two,
and they're hard to handle if you're to go farther than pole depth.
I'll take the other expert. The fisherman's son, if he'll
come."

"Mordred?"

"Willingly." He added, dryly:
"Re-training after my sojourn in the islands?" and heard Arthur
laugh under his breath.

"Go, then, and God go with you. Let us
pray the girl still lives."

The boat went smoothly down the bank,
met the water, and rode rocking there. Bedwyr took his seat
cautiously in the stem, with the pole overside to act as rudder,
and Mordred, stepping lightly in after him, gripped the paddles,
and settled down to row. With a last shove from the men on shore,
they were afloat, and drifting into darkness. They could just hear,
above the lapping of the lake, the muffled sounds as the troop
moved off, their horses keeping to the soft edges of the
roadway.

Mordred rowed steadily, pushing the
clumsy craft through the water at a fair speed. Bedwyr, motionless
in the stem, watched for the guiding glimmer from the
island.

"The fire must be almost dead. I've
lost the light...Ah, it's all right, I can see the island shore
now. By your left a little. That's it. Keep as you are."

Soon the island was quite clear to
their night-sight. It was small, peaked, black against dark,
floating dimly on the faint luminescence of the lagoon. A slight
breeze ruffled the water, and concealed the sound of the paddles.
Now that the fitful and somehow baleful light of the fire had
vanished, the night seemed empty, and very peaceful. There were
stars, and the breeze smelled of the sea.

They both heard it at the same moment.
Over the water, in a lull of the breeze, came a sound, soft and
dreadful, that dispelled the illusory peace of the night. A long,
keening ululation of grief and fear. On the island. A woman
crying.

Bedwyr cursed under his breath.
Mordred drove the paddles in hard, and the clumsy boat jumped and
lurched, swinging broadside onto the rock of the shore. He shipped
the paddles and grabbed at the rock in one spare, expert movement.
Bedwyr jumped past him, his sword ready in his hand.

He paused for a moment, winding his
cloak round his left arm. "Beach her. Find his boat and sink it. If
he dodges me, stay here and kill him."

Mordred was already out, and busy with
the rope. From the black wooded bank above them the sounds came
again, hopeless, terrified. The night was filled with weeping.
Bedwyr, treading from shingle to pine needles, vanished in
silence.