Legacy: Arthurian Saga (233 page)

The King's letter, hastily dictated,
gave the facts merely of the disastrous embassy and the running
fight that had followed. Under Mordred's questioning the courier
supplied the details. He told of the rash exchange between Gawain
and the Roman youth, of the murder, and of the flight of the
embassy and the subsequent skirmish by the river's bank. His story
confirmed what Arthur's letter indicated, that all hope even of a
temporary peace had vanished. It was possible that Hoel might be
able to take the field, but if not, Arthur must command Hoel's
army, together with such force as he had brought with him. Bedwyr
had been recalled from Benoic. Arthur had already sent to Urbgen,
to Maelgon of Gwynedd, to Tydwal and the King of Elmet. Mordred was
to send what force he could, under the command of Cei. He would
then be well advised to put forward his own meeting with Cerdic,
when he could apprise him of the situation. The letter closed
briefly, with urgency: "See Cerdic. Warn him and his neighbors to
watch the coast. Raise what force you can meanwhile. And guard the
Queen's safety."

Mordred dismissed the man at length to
rest. He knew that there was no need to enjoin discretion; the
royal couriers were well chosen and highly trained. But he knew
that the man's coming would have been noted, and rumor would have
run through Camelot within minutes of the tired horse's coming up
through the King's Gate.

He walked over to the window. The sun
had slanted some way towards the west, and shadows were
lengthening. A late thrush sang in a lime tree.

The Queen was still in the garden. She
had been cutting lilac. The girl in the blue dress walked beside
her, carrying a flat willow basket filled with the white and purple
blooms. The other girl, with the two little dogs leaping and
barking round her, was stooping, with her skirt kilted up in one
hand, over a border of ferns. She straightened with the gilded ball
in her hand and threw it, laughing, for the greyhounds. They raced
after it, both reaching it at the same moment, and fell into a
yelping, rolling tangle, while the ball flew free.

Keep the Queen safe. How long could
this serene and flower-filled garden peace be kept? The battle
might already have started. Might be over. With enough
bloodletting, thought Mordred, to content even Gawain.

His thoughts went further; were
checked. Even now he himself might be High King in fact, if not yet
in name....

As if his thought had been the shadow
of a flying cloud that touched her, he saw the Queen start, then
lift her head as if listening to some sound beyond the garden
walls. The spray of lilac which she loosened sprang back into its
own scented bank of blossom. Without looking she dropped the silver
knife into the basket which the girl held beside her. She stood
still, except for her hands, which seemed to rise of their own will
to clasp themselves at her breast. Slowly, after a moment, she
turned to look up towards the window.

Mordred drew back. He spoke to the
chamberlain. "Send down to the garden to ask if I may speak with
the Queen."

There was an arbor, pretty as a silk
picture, facing south. It was embowered with early roses, showers
of small pale-pink blossoms, with coral-colored buds among them,
and falling flowers fading to white. The Queen sat there, on a
stone bench warm from the sun, waiting to receive the regent. The
girl in yellow had taken the greyhounds away; the other remained,
but she had withdrawn to the far side of the garden, where she sat
on a bench below one of the palace windows. She had brought some
sewing out of the pouch at her girdle, and busied herself with it,
but Mordred knew how carefully he was watched, and how quickly the
rumors would spread through the palace: "He looked grave; the news
must be bad...." Or, "He seemed cheerful enough; the courier
brought a letter and he showed it to the Queen...."

Guinevere, too, had some work by her.
A half-embroidered napkin lay beside her on the stone bench.
Suddenly a sharp memory assailed him: Morgan's garden in the north,
the dying flowers and the ghosts of the imprisoned birds, with the
angry voices of the two witches at the window above. And the
solitary, frightened boy who hid below, believing that he, too, was
trapped, and facing an ignominious death. Like the wildcat in its
narrow cage; the wildcat, dead presumably these many years, but,
because of him, dead in freedom with its own wild home and its
kittens sired at will. With the lightning-flicker with which such
thoughts come between breath and breath, he thought of his "wife"
in the islands, of his mistress now gone from Camelot and
comfortably settled in Strathclyde, of his sons of those unions
growing up in safety -- for the children of that solitary boy could
now incur, how readily, the sting of envy and hatred. He, like the
wildcat, had found the window to freedom. More, to power. Of those
scheming witches, one was dead; the other, for all her boasted
magic, still shut away in her castle prison, and subject, now, to
his will as ruler of the High Kingdom.

He knelt before the Queen and took her
hand to kiss. He felt its faint tremor. She withdrew it and let it
fall to her lap, where the other clasped and held it tightly. She
said, with a calmness forced over drawn breath: "They tell me a
courier has come in. From Brittany?"

"Yes, madam." At her nod he rose, then
hesitated. She gestured to the seat, and he sat beside her. The sun
was hot, and the scent of the roses filled the air. Bees were loud
in the racemes of pink blossom. A little breeze moved the flowers,
and the shadows of the roses swayed and flickered over the Queen's
grey gown and fair skin. Mordred swallowed, cleared his throat and
spoke.

"You need have no fear, madam. There
have been grave doings, but the news is not altogether
bad."

"My lord is well, then?"

"Indeed yes. The letter was from
him."

"And for me? Is there a message for
me?"

"No, madam, I'm sorry. He sent in
great haste. You shall see the letter, of course, but let me give
you the gist of it first. You know that an embassy was sent,
jointly from King Hoel and King Arthur, to talk with the consul
Lucius Quintilianus."

"Yes. A fact-finding mission only, he
said, to gain time for the kingdoms of the west to band together
against the possible new alliance of Byzantium and Rome with the
Germans of Alamannia and Burgundy."

She sighed. "So, it went wrong? I
guessed it. How?"

"By your leave, the good news first.
There were other fact-finding missions on their way at the same
time. Messengers were sent to sound out the Prankish kings. They
met with encouraging success. One and all, the Franks will resist
any attempt by Justinian's armies to reimpose Roman domination.
They are arming now."

She looked away, past the boles of the
lime trees now lighted from behind by the low sun, and gilded with
red gold. The young leaves, wafers of beaten gold, shone with their
own light, and the tops of the trees, cloudy with shadow, hummed
with bees.

Mordred's "good news" did not appear
to have given her any pleasure. He thought her eyes were filled
with tears.

Still regarding those glowing
tree-trunks with their mosaic of golden leaves, she said: "And our
embassy? What happened there?"

"There had to be, for courtesy, a
representative of the royal house. It was Gawain."

Her gaze came back to him sharply. Her
eyes were dry. "And he made trouble." It was not a
question.

"He did. There was some foolish talk
and bragging that led to insults and a quarrel, and the young men
fell to fighting."

She moved her hands, almost as if she
would throw them up in a classic gesture of despair. But she
sounded angry rather than grieved. "Again!"

"Madam?"

"Gawain! The Orkney fools again!
Always that cold north wind, like a blighting frost that blasts
everything that is good and growing!" She checked herself, took in
her breath, and said, with a visible effort: "Your pardon, Mordred.
You are so different, I was forgetting. But Lot's sons, your
half-brothers--"

"Madam, I know. I agree. Hot fools
always, and this time worse than fools. Gawain killed one of the
Roman youths, and it turned out that the man was a nephew of Lucius
Quintilianus himself. The embassy was forced to flee, and
Quintilianus sent Marcellus himself after them. They had to turn
and fight, and there were deaths."

"Not Valerius? Not that good old
man?"

"No, no. They got back in good order
-- indeed, with a kind of victory. But not before there had been
several running engagements. Marcellus was killed in the first of
these, and later Petreius Cotta, who took command after him, was
taken prisoner and brought back to Kerrec in chains. I said it was
a victory of a kind. But you see what it means. Now the High King
himself must take the field."

"Ah, I knew it! I knew it! And what
force has he?"

"He leads Hoel's army, and with them
the troops he took with him, and Bedwyr is called down from Benoic
with his men." Coolly he noted the slightest reaction to the name:
She had not dared ask if Bedwyr, too, were safe; but now he had
told her, and watched her color come back. He went on: "The King
does not yet know what numbers the Prankish kings will bring to the
field, but they will not be small. From Britain he has called on
Rheged and Gwynedd, with Elmet, and Tydwal from Dunpeldyr. Here I
shall raise what reinforcements I can in haste. They will sail
under Cei's command. All will be well, madam, you will see. You
know the High King."

"And so do they," she said. "They will
only meet him if they outnumber him three to one, and that, surely,
they can do. Then even he will be in danger of defeat."

"He will not give them time. I spoke
of haste. This whole thing has blown up like a summer storm, and
Arthur intends to attack in the wake of it, rather than wait for
events. He is already marching for Autun, to meet the Burgundians
on their own ground, before Justinian's troops are gathered. He
expects the Franks to join him before he reaches the border. But
you had better read his letter for yourself. It will calm your
fears. The High King shows no doubts of the outcome, and why should
he? He is Arthur."

She thanked him with a smile, but he
saw how her hand trembled as she held it out for the letter. He
stood up and stepped down from the arbour, leaving her alone to
read. There was a fluted stone column with a carefully contrived
broken capital overhung with the yellow tassels of laburnum. He
leaned against this and waited, watching her surreptitiously from
time to time under lowered lids.

She read in silence. He saw when she
reached the end of the letter, then read it through again. She let
it sink to her lap and sat for a while with bent head. He thought
she was reading the thing for the third time, then he saw that her
eyes were shut. She was very pale.

His shoulder came away from the
pillar. Almost in spite of himself he took a step towards her.
"What is it? What do you fear?"

She gave a start, and her eyes opened.
It was as if she had been miles away in thought, recalled abruptly.
She shook her head, with an attempt at a smile. "Nothing. Really,
nothing. A dream."

"A dream? Of defeat for the High
King?"

"No. No." She gave a little laugh,
which sounded genuine enough. "Women's folly, Mordred. You would
call it so, I am sure! No, don't look so worried, I'll tell you,
even if you laugh at me. Men do not understand such things, but we
women, we who have nothing to do but wait and watch and hope, our
minds are too active. Let us but once think, What will come to me
when my lord is dead? and then all in a moment, in our imagination,
he is laid in sad pomp on his bier, and the grave is dug in the
center of the Hanging Stones, the mourning feast is over, the new
king is come to Camelot, his young wife is here in the garden with
her maidens, and the cast-off queen, still in the white of
mourning, is questing about the kingdoms to see where she may with
honor and with safety be taken in."

"But, madam," said Mordred, the
realist, "surely my -- the High King has already told you what
dispositions have been made against that day?"

"I knew you would call it folly!" With
an obvious attempt at lightness, she turned the subject.

"But believe me, it is something that
every wife does. What of your own, Mordred?"

"My--?"

She looked confused. "Am I mistaken? I
thought you were married. I am sure someone spoke of a son of yours
at Gwarthegydd's court of Dumbarton."

"I am not married." Mordred's reply
was rather too quick, and rather too emphatic. She looked
surprised, and he threw a hand out, adding: "But you heard
correctly, madam. I have two sons." A smile and a shrug. "Who am I,
after all, to insist on wedlock? The two boys are by different
mothers. Melehan is the younger, who is with Gwarthegydd. The other
is still in the islands."

"And their mothers?"

"Melehan's mother is dead." The lie
came smoothly. Since the Queen apparently had known nothing about
his illicit household in Camelot, he would not confess it to her
now. "The other is satisfied with the bond between herself and me.
She is an Orkney woman, and they have different customs in the
islands."