Legacy: Arthurian Saga (230 page)

Mordred made the boat fast, drew his
own weapon, and moved quietly along the shingle, looking for the
other boat.

The island was tiny. In a very few
minutes he was back at his starting-point. There was no boat.
Whoever he was, whatever he had done, he was gone. Mordred, his
sword at the ready, climbed fast after Bedwyr towards the noise of
weeping.

The fire was not quite out. A pile of
ashes still showed a residual glow. Beside it, in its faint red
light, the woman sat, hunched and wailing. Her hair, straggling
unbound over a torn robe of some dark color, showed pale. The fire
had been kindled on the island's summit, where a stand of pine
trees, clinging to what seemed to be bare rock, had laid down a
carpet of needles, and where a cairn, built long ago and fallen
apart with time and weather, made some sort of crude shelter. The
grove appeared to be empty but for the crouched and mourning figure
of the woman.

Mordred, many years younger than the
other man, was close behind him as he reached the grove. The two
men paused there.

She heard them, and looked up. The
starlight, and the faint glimmer from the fire, showed that this
was no girl, but an old woman, grey-haired, her face a mask of fear
and grief. The wailing stopped as if she had been struck in the
throat. Her body stiffened. Her mouth gaped wider, as if for a
scream.

Bedwyr put out a hand and spoke
quickly: "Madam -- Mother -- don't be afraid. We are friends.
Friends. We have come to help."

The scream was choked back on a
strangled gasp. They heard her breathing, short and ragged, as she
strained white-eyed to see them.

They moved forward slowly. "Be calm.
Mother," said Bedwyr. "We are from the King--"

"From which king? Who are
you?"

Her voice was breathless and shaking,
but now with the exhaustion of grief, not fear. Bedwyr had spoken
in the local tongue, and she answered in the same. Her accent was
broader than Bedwyr's, but the language of Less Britain was close
enough to that of the mother kingdom for Mordred to understand it
easily.

"I am Bedwyr of Benoic, and this is
Mordred, son of King Arthur. We are King's men, seeking for the
lady Elen. She has been here? You were with her?"

Mordred, while Bedwyr was speaking,
had stooped to pick up a handful of pine drift, and a broken spar
of wood. He scattered the stuff on the ashes, and a flame spurted,
caught and held. Light nickered up redly, and showed the woman more
clearly.

She was well, though plainly, dressed,
and was perhaps sixty years old. Her clothing was dirtied and torn,
as if in some sort of struggle. Her face, grimed and distorted with
weeping, showed a big discolored patch of bruising over one cheek,
and her lips were split and crusty with dried blood.

"You come too late," she
said.

"Where has he gone? Where has he taken
her?"

"I mean too late for the Princess
Elen." She pointed towards the tumbled cairn of stones. They looked
that way. Now in the strengthening light of the fire they could see
that something -- someone -- had been scrabbling in the thickly
heaped pine needles. Some of the smaller stones from the cairn had
been pulled down, and pine cones and needles scattered over
them.

"It was all I could do," said the
woman. She held out her hands. They were shaking. The men looked at
them, stirred by horror and pity. The hands were torn and bruised
and bloody.

The two knights went across to the
cairn where the body lay. It was imperfectly hidden. Beneath the
scattered stones and pine needles the girl's face could be seen,
streaked with dirt and agonized with death. Her eyes had been
closed, but the mouth gaped still, and the neck, with the death
marks on the throat, hung crookedly.

Bedwyr, still with the gentleness that
Mordred would never have suspected in him, said, half to himself:
"She has a lovely face. God give her rest." Then, turning: "Don't
grieve. Mother. She shall go home to her own people, and lie in
royal fashion, at peace with her gods. And this foul beast shall
die, and go to his, for his just reward."

He took a flask from his belt and
knelt beside her, holding it to her lips. She drank, sighed, and in
a while grew calmer. Soon she was able to tell them what had
happened.

She did not know who the ravisher was.
He was not, she affirmed to their relief, a foreigner. He had
spoken but little, and that mostly curses, but he and his followers
were unmistakably Bretons. The reports of a "giant" were not so
very far wrong: He was a man huge in every way, stature, girth,
strength, with a loud voice and a bellowing laugh. A bull of a man,
who had burst out of cover with three companions -- roughly clad
fellows, like common thieves -- and slain four of the princess's
escort with his own hands before they had well had time to recover
from their surprise. The remaining three fought valiantly but were
all killed. Herself and the princess were dragged away, Elen's
other woman ("a poor thing, who wailed and screamed so, if I had
been one of those beasts I would have killed her on the spot," said
the nurse trenchantly) had been left alone, but the attackers,
riding off, took the party's horses with them, so had little fear
of pursuit.

"They brought us to this place, at the
water's edge. It was still dark, so it was hard to make out the
way. One of them stayed with the horses on shore, and the others
rowed us across to this rock. My lady was half fainting, and I
tried to tend her. I had no other thoughts. We could not have
escaped. The big man -- the bull -- carried her up the rocks to
this place. The other fellows would have dragged me after, but I
dodged them and ran, and when they saw that I had no intention of
trying to leave my lady, they let me be."

She coughed, and licked her cut lips.
Bedwyr held out the flask again, but she shook her head and
presently continued: "The rest I cannot speak of, but you can guess
at it. The two fellows held me while he -- the bull -- raped her.
She was never strong. A pretty girl, but pale always, and often ill
during the cold winters."

She stopped again, and bent her head.
Her fingers twisted together.

After a while Bedwyr asked gently: "He
killed her?"

"Yes. Or rather, what he did with her
killed her. She died. He cursed, and left her yonder by the stones,
and then came back to me. I had made no outcry -- they shut my
mouth with their stinking hands -- but I was afraid that now they
would kill me also. For what they did then...I had hardly
thought...I am past my sixtieth year, and then one should
be...Well, no more of that. What is done is done, and now you are
here, and will slay this animal while he lies sleeping off his
lust."

"Lady," said Bedwyr forcefully, "he
shall die this night, if he is to be found. Where did they
go?"

"I do not know. They spoke of an
island, and a tower. That's all I can tell you. They had no thought
of pursuit, or they would have killed me, too. Or perhaps, being
animals, they did not think. They threw me down beside my lady, and
left me. After a while I heard horses going. I think they went
towards the coast. When I could move, I gave my lady what burial I
could. I found a place in the stones of the cairn where someone,
fishermen perhaps, had left flint and iron, and so made a fire. Had
I not been able to do that I should have died here. There is
neither fresh water nor food, and I cannot swim. If they had seen
the fire and come back themselves, then I should have died sooner,
that is all." She looked up. "But you -- two young men like you
against that monster and his fellows... No, no, you must not seek
him yourselves. Take me with you, I beg of you, but do not seek him
out. I would see no more deaths. Take my story back to King Hoel,
and he--"

"Lady, we come from King Hoel. We were
sent to find you and your lady, and punish the ravishers. Do not
fear for us: I am Bedwyr of Benoic, and this is Mordred, son of
Arthur of Britain."

She stared in the dimming light. It
was apparent that she had either not heard before, or had not
understood. She repeated, still only half believing: "Bedwyr of
Benoic? Himself? Arthur of Britain?"

"Arthur is here, not far away, with a
troop of soldiers. King Hoel is sick, but he sent us to find you.
Come now, Lady. Our boat is small, and none too seaworthy, but if
you will come with us now to safety, we will return later and carry
your lady back for a seemly burial."

So it was done. Two litters were
improvised from pine boughs, and on them the girl's body, decently
shrouded in a cloak, and the old nurse, collapsed into a feverish
sleep, were sent to Kerrec under guard. The remainder of Arthur's
force, guided by Bedwyr, rode for the sea shore.

It was low tide. The sand stretched
wide and flat and grey, shining faintly under the darkness. They
splashed across the river mouth where the lake water and the tide
mingled, and then, away ahead of them to seaward in the breaking
dawn, they saw the steep cone of the sea-islet which, by Bedwyr's
reckoning, must be the "island tower" of which the ruffians had
spoken.

Since the old woman had been abandoned
to die on the lake island, the tide had flowed and ebbed again, so
there were no guiding marks on the sand, but inland on the flats
where the river wound its way through its delta of salt turf to the
sea, the tracks of horses were plain to be seen making straight for
the shore and the rough causeway that led across, at low tide, to
the island. Its high rocks, cloudy with trees, loomed out of a calm
sea, the tide, just on the turn, creaming along the island's base
and between the stones of the causeway. No light showed anywhere,
but they could just see, guided by Bedwyr's pointing finger, the
outlines of a tower at the summit.

The King regarded this, sitting his
horse at the sea's edge, motionless but for the knuckle that tapped
thoughtfully at his lip. He might have been contemplating the
making of a rose-bed in the Queen's garden at Camelot. He looked no
more warlike than he had done on that "peace mission" to Cerdic,
when Agravain had inveighed so bitterly against the apparent
tameness of the "duke of battles." But Mordred, at his side,
watching with interest and a rising excitement that he found hard
to conceal, knew that he was seeing for the first time, at last,
the Arthur of the legends; this was a professional, an expert at
his trade, the man who alone had saved Britain from the Saxon
Terror, deciding how best to set about a very minor
matter.

The King spoke at last. "The place
looks half ruined. The fellow is a brigand, holed up here like a
badger. This is not a case for siege, or even attack. By rights we
should take hounds and bay him out like a boar."

There was a murmur from the others,
like a growl. They had all seen the girl Elen's body as it was
carried ashore. Bedwyr's horse reared suddenly, as if sharing its
rider's tension. Bedwyr's hand was already at his sword, and
behind, among the Companions, metal gleamed in the chill dawn
light.

"Put up your swords." Arthur neither
glanced aside, nor raised his voice. He sat relaxed and quiet,
knuckle to lip. "I was about to say that this was a matter for One
man only. Myself. Do not forget that the Princess Elen was kin to
me, and I am here for King Hoel, whose niece and subject she was.
This beast's blood is for me." He turned then, stilling the renewed
murmur. "If he kills me, then you, Mordred, will take him. After
you, if it becomes necessary, then Bedwyr and the others will do as
they wish. Understood?"

There were assenting noises, some of
them obviously reluctant. Mordred saw Arthur smile as he went on:
"Now listen to me, before we scale the island. There are apparently
at least three other men with him. There may be more. They are your
meat; tackle them how you will. Now, they may have seen our
approach; they will surely suspect it. They may come out to face
us, or they may try to barricade themselves in the tower. In that
case it will be your task to bay or burn them out, and bring their
leader to face me." He shook the reins, and his horse moved
forward, fetlock deep in the sea. "We must cross now. If we delay
longer the tide will be over the causeway, and they will come down
to take us at a loss as we swim our beasts ashore."

In this he proved wrong. The gang,
secure in their knowledge of the rising tide, and, with the
stupidity of their brutish natures, unheeding of pursuit, were all
within the tower's walls, and had set no watch. Round the remains
of their supper fire they slept, four of them, in a litter of
gnawed bones and greasy remnants of food. The leader was still
awake, nearest the fire, turning over in filthy hands a pair of
golden bangles and the jeweled charm that he had torn from Elen's
pretty neck. Then some sound must have caught his ear. He looked
up, to see Arthur in the moonlight beyond the tower
doorway.

The roar he gave was indeed like a
bayed boar. And he was as swift, a giant of a man, with thews like
a smith, and eyes blazing red as a wild beast's. The King would not
have scrupled to kill him unarmed -- this was no fight, as he had
said, but the slaughter of mad brutes -- but no sword could have
been wielded within the tower's walls, so Arthur perforce stayed
where he was, and let the man snatch up his weapon, a massive club
which outreached the shorter man's weapon by inches, and rush out
on him. His fellows, slower with sleep and surprise, tumbled out in
his wake, to be seized by the knights who waited to either side of
the tower door, and killed forthwith. Mordred, hand to hand with a
burly fellow who stank, and whose breath reeked like an open drain,
found himself forgetting all the knightly practice that the years
had taught him, and reverting to the tricks that had once served
the fisherman's son in the rough tussles of his boyhood. And it was
two to one in the end. As Mordred, tripping, went down under the
other man's weight, Bedwyr, joining him almost casually, spitted
the fellow like a fowl, then stooping, cleaned his sword on the
grass. The dead man's clothes were too dirty for the
office.