Legacy: Arthurian Saga (235 page)

Meanwhile the Queen waited, and while
she waited, suffered. He would go to her, and take what comfort he
could.

And what love he might.

Before he had taken three steps into
the room she was on her feet. Afterwards he realized that he had
not known to whom her first query related.

She said it, hands to throat. "He is
dead?"

"Alas, madam, yes. That is the message
as it came to me. He was seen to fall in the moment of victory,
but, when the messenger was sent to me, they had not yet found his
body."

She was so white that he thought she
might fall. He went close quickly, and put out his hands. Hers flew
out and held them tightly. He said urgently: "Madam, there is hope.
And Bedwyr is alive, though wounded. He was well enough to order
the search for the King's body before darkness fell."

She shut her eyes. Her lips, thin and
gaping, drew air in as if she were drowning. Her lids fluttered.
Then as if some ghostly hand had slid under her chin and drawn her
up, she stiffened and grew taller, then her eyes opened and her
white face composed itself. She removed her hands quietly from
Mordred's grasp, but let him lead her to a chair. Her women would
have clustered near with hands and words of comfort, but she waved
them back.

"Tell me all that you
know."

"I know very little, madam. The letter
was brief. But the messenger gave me a report." He recounted what
the man had told him. She listened without interruption; indeed, a
casual observer might have thought without attention; she seemed to
be watching the raindrops following one another down the drooping
stem of a rose that hung beyond the window-frame.

Mordred stopped speaking at last. The
raindrops ran, gathered, swelled on a thorn, dropped splashing to
the sill.

The Queen said quietly, in a calm,
dead voice: "If there is indeed hope of the King's life, then
surely a second courier will be following hard on the first.
Meantime we must do as my lord commanded."

"Assuming his death," said
Mordred.

"Assuming that." Then, with a sudden
break of grief and terror: "Mordred, what will become of Britain
now? What will come to us? So short a while ago we spoke of this,
you and I -- and now -- now the day is upon us.

He made an involuntary move towards
her, only a slight one, but it sufficed. She was still again,
controlled, queenly. But her eyes betrayed her. She could not have
spoken again without weeping. And that must not happen until she
was alone.

He said, in as flat and matter-of-fact
a tone as he could manage: "Two things must be done immediately. I
must see Cerdic. A meeting has already been arranged. And I have
convened the Council. They meet tonight. Until tidings come that
either confirm or deny this news, it is vital that men should see
there is still a central power in Britain, with a ruler appointed
by the King's command, and carrying out his wishes."

He added, gently: "For you, madam, I
do not think anyone will wonder at it if you are not present at the
Council meeting."

"I shall be present."

"If you so wish--"

"I do wish it. Mordred, the High
King's body has not been found. You have his seal, which you and I,
as co-regents here in Camelot, have been empowered to use. But his
ring and his sword, the true symbols of kingship, cannot be brought
to you except from his dead body."

"That is so, madam."

"So I shall attend the Council. With
Arthur's Queen at your side to support you, there will be no man in
the kingdoms who will not have to accept Arthur's son as his
rightful ruler."

He found nothing to say. She put out a
hand, and he bent his head and kissed it. Then he left her. She
would have time for her mourning before she took her place in the
Round Hall beside the new King of Britain.

In a pine wood at the foot of the
hills east of Autun, Arthur stirred and woke.

He lay wrapped in his war cloak, his
sword to his hand. His shoulder and side were stiff with bruising
from the blow that had felled him during the battle, and his head
ached abominably, but he was otherwise unhurt. His tethered horse
grazed near him. His companions, some forty men, were, like him,
rousing to the first misty light of the new day. Three of the men
were busy already relighting the blackened remains of the night
fire. Others brought water, carefully cradled in their leather
helmets, from the river that slid over its sparkling boulders some
fifty paces away. They were cheerful, and laughed and jested, but
under their breath, for fear of rousing the sleeping
King.

Birds were singing in the alders by
the river, and from the steep valley side beyond came the bleating
of sheep, where some herdboy watched his flock. A harsher sound
turned Arthur's eyes to a place beyond the ridge of woodland where
big black birds swung and called in the misty morning. There lay
the enemy they had pursued from the field. A few survivors, bound,
lay nearby under the trees, but thirty or so men lay still
unburied, their stiffened bodies exposed with the waxing day to the
crows and kites.

It was well after noon before the
burial party had done its work, and the King headed back with the
troop towards Autun.

A mile or so short of the battlefield,
he came across two bodies. The messenger he had sent back to Bedwyr
and Hoel to tell them that he was safe, and would return with the
daylight, had fallen in with two stragglers from Quintilianus'
army. One he had killed; the other, though wounded and now near
dead with exposure and loss of blood, had killed him.

Arthur killed the man himself, and
spurred his horse into a gallop back to his
headquarters.

7

"The treaty is void," said
Cerdic.

He and Mordred sat face to face. They
had met on a high shelf of the downs. It was a fine morning, and
larks sang wildly in the blue. To southward the smoke of a Saxon
village could be seen hanging in the still air. Here and there, in
cleared spaces between the thickets of ash and thorn, the golden
green of ripening barley showed among the white flints where some
Saxon peasant had scratched a living from the bony land.

Mordred had come in kingly state. The
Council, apprised of Arthur's wishes before he left for Brittany,
had raised no slightest-objection to Mordred's assumption of
leadership; on the contrary; those councilors who were left after
the departure of Arthur and his Companions into Brittany were most
of them greybeards, and in their grief and fear at the news from
the battlefield they acclaimed Mordred with outspoken relief.
Mordred, wise in the ways of councils, moved with care. He
emphasized the doubtful nature of the news, spoke of his still-held
hope of his father's life, disclaimed any title but that of regent,
and renewed his vows of faith to the Council, and liege homage to
his father's Queen. After him Guinevere, speaking briefly and with
obviously fragile composure in her husband's name, affirmed her
belief that Mordred must now be invested with power to act as he
saw fit, and, herself resigning, proposed him as sole regent. The
Council, moved to a man, accepted her withdrawal and decided then
and there to send a message to Constantine of Cornwall asking him
to affirm his loyalty to the High King's successor.

Finally Mordred spoke again of
urgency, and made clear his intention of riding south next day to
the interview with Cerdic. He would take with him a detachment of
the newly raised troops; it was never wise to approach their good
Saxon neighbors without some show of strength. This, too, the
Council voted him. So, escorted like a king, he faced Cerdic on the
downs.

The Saxons, too, kept state. Cerdic's
thegns crowded behind his chair, and an awning of brightly colored
cloth woven with gold and silver thread made a regal background to
the thrones set for him and the regent. Mordred regarded Cerdic
with interest. It was barely a year since he had last met the Saxon
king, but in that time the latter had aged perceptibly and appeared
not to be in robust health. Beside his chair stood his grandson
Ceawlin, a young copy of the old fighter, who was said to have
already fathered a brood of sturdy boys.

"The treaty is void."

The old king said it like a challenge.
He was watching Mordred closely.

"Why else am I here?" Nothing could be
gathered from the regent's smooth tone. "If it is true that the
High King is dead, then the treaty -- the same, or one revised as
we may agree -- must be ratified between myself and
you."

"Until we know for certain, there is
little point in talking," said Cerdic bluntly.

"On the contrary. When I last spoke
with my father he gave me a mandate to make a new agreement with
you, though I agree that there is little point in discussing that
until another matter is cleared up. I doubt if I need to tell you
what that is?"

"It would be best to come to the
point," said Cerdic.

"Very well. It has lately come to my
ears that Cynric, your son, and others of your thegns are even now
back in your old lands beyond the Narrow Sea, and that more men
daily flock to their standards. The bays fill with their longships.
Now with the treaty between our peoples made void by the High
King's death -- supposing this to be true -- what am I to think of
this?"

"Not that we prepare war again. Until
proof comes of Arthur's death this would not only be ignoble, but
folly." There was a gleam in the old king's eyes as he looked at
the younger man. "I should perhaps make it clear that in no case
are we contemplating war. Not with you, prince."

"Then what?"

"Only that with the advance of the
Franks and the westward spread of people who are not our friends,
we in our turn must move westward. Your King has halted this
emperor's first sally, but there will be another, and after that
another. My people want a safe frontier. They are gathering to
embark for these shores, but in peace. We shall receive
them."

"I see." Mordred was remembering what
Arthur had said to him in their last discussion at Kerrec."First
the Narrow Sea, and then the ramparts of the Saxon and English
kingdoms...Men fight for what is theirs." So might Vortigern have
reasoned when he first called Hengist and Horsa to these shores.
Arthur was no Vortigern, and so far he had been right not to doubt
Cerdic: Men fight for what is theirs, and the more men manning the
ramparts of the Shore, the more safely could the Celtic kingdoms
lie behind them.

The old king was watching him closely,
as if guessing what thoughts raced behind the smooth brow and
unexpressive eyes. Mordred met his look.

"You are a man of honor, king, and
also a man of wisdom and experience. You know that neither Saxon
nor Briton wants another Badon Hill."

Cerdic smiled. "Now you have flashed
your weapon at me. Prince Mordred, and I mine at you. That is done.
I said they would come in peace. But they will come, and many of
them. So, let us talk." He sat back in his chair, shifting a fold
of the blue robe over his arm. "For the present I believe we must
assume the High King's death?"

"I think so. If we make plans for that
assumption they can be revised if necessary."

"Then I say this. I am willing, and
Cynric with me, who will reign here when I am too old to fight, to
remake the treaty with you that I made with your uncle." A sharp,
twinkling look from under the shaggy brows. "It was your uncle last
time we met. Now your father, it seems?"

"Father, yes. And in
return?"

"More land."

"That was easily guessed." Mordred
smiled in his turn. "More men need more land. But you are already
too close for some men's peace of mind. How can you move forward?
Between your lands and ours there lies this stretch of high
downland. You see it." He gestured to the thin patch of barley
shoots. "No ploughs, not even yours. King Cerdic, can make these
stony uplands into rich fields of grain. And I am told that your
neighbors, the South Saxons, no longer grant you free movement
there."

Cerdic made no immediate reply. He
reached behind him, and a guard put a spear into his hand. Behind
Mordred a rustle and a whisper of metal betrayed quick movement
among his own fighting men. He gestured with a hand, palm down, and
the movement stilled. Cerdic reversed the spear and, leaning
forward in his chair, began to draw in the chalky dust.

"Here we are, the men of Wessex. Here,
in the rich corner lands, the South Saxons. And here stand you and
I, now. The lands I am thinking of would be no nearer to your
capital than our present borders. Here. And here."

The spear moved gently northward,
then, just as Mordred would have protested, veered to the east and
across the downland towards the upper Thames valley. "This way.
This part is thick forest, and here is marshland, thinly peopled
and poor. Both can be made good."

"Surely much of that is already Saxon
land? Where your spear is now, that is the southern region, as they
call it, of the Middle Saxons?"

"The Suthrige. Yes. I told you that we
would take nothing that need trouble you."