Legacy: Arthurian Saga (237 page)

"New terms! An alliance that sounds
like folly at its best, and at its worst a deadly peril! This about
Cynric, raising fresh Saxon levies over here. Did you know,
uncle?"

On the other side of the tent wall the
sick man cried out, then was silent. Someone spoke hurriedly, there
was muttering, quick footsteps, the swish of robes. The King was
half on his feet, the parchment falling to the floor, forgotten,
when the muttering began again. Not death yet, then; not quite yet.
Arthur sank back in his chair.

"Did you know about Cynric?" persisted
Gawain.

"Cynric? Oh, calling men to his
standard in Saxony. No, but if it is true--"

"I'm pretty sure it's true," said
Gawain. "I've already heard rumors going about the camp. Men
massing by the Neustrian shore. Longships lying in the harbors like
arrows jammed in a quiver. And for what? Cynric sails, and Cerdic
moves towards the south-east ports to meet him, then the South
Saxons are caught between the two, and the whole southeast will be
Cerdic's, with freedom to invite whomsoever he pleases to come over
and swell his army. The South Saxons have been the other wall that
contained him, and who is to contain him now?"

His angry eyes glared into the King's,
as if the latter's composure chafed him. If he heard the sounds
from beyond the wall, he gave no sign of it. He had not attempted
to lower his voice.

"No doubt the next courier will bring
me a report of Cynric's doings." Arthur sounded weary but
relatively unworried. "But for the rest of this letter, Gawain,
remember who writes. Duke Constantine did not take kindly to
Mordred's nomination as regent: He will have taken even less kindly
to his appointment as my sole heir. Everything he says there--" He
gestured to the letter on the floor, and Gawain stooped to pick it
up. "Everything he says that Mordred has done, Mordred and I agreed
should be done. We only have Constantine's word, which is hardly
the word of a friend, for the way it is being done."

"But surely Mordred himself should
have sent a report? If Constantine's man could get
through--"

"If he believed the report of my
death," said Arthur, "to whom would he send it?"

Gawain, with an impatient shrug,
started to hand the letter back to his uncle. Then he checked.
"There's more here. On the other side, see?"

Arthur took it from him, saw the last
sentences on the back, and began to read them aloud.

"Finally, with the High King gone, he
plans to take Queen Guinevere to wife. He has lodged her at
Caerleon, and--"

He did not finish it, but Gawain did,
on a rising note where genuine anger was shot with a kind of
triumph.

"And consorts with her there!" He
swung away, then back to the King. "Uncle, whether or not he
believes you dead, this is the act of a traitor! He has no proof as
yet, no shadow of reason for haling the Queen off to Caerleon, and
paying his court to her! You say the rest of this letter could be
true...If it is, in whatever fashion, then this must be true
also!"

"Gawain!--" began the King, in a
warning voice, but Gawain, burning, swept on: "No, you must hear
me! I'm your kin. You'll hear truth from me. I can tell you this,
uncle, Mordred wanted the kingdom always. I know how ambitious he
was, even at home in the islands, even before he knew he was your
son. Your son, yes! But still a fisher-brat, a peasant with a
peasant's guile and greed, and a huckster's honor! He's taken the
first chance to turn traitor and get what he wants. With the Saxons
and the Welsh at his back, and the Queen at his side... "consorts"
indeed! He wasted no time! I've seen the way he looked at
her--"

Something in Arthur's face stopped him
there. It was hard to say what it was, for the King looked like a
dead man carved in grey stone. Something about him suggested a man
who sees at his feet a deadly pitfall lined with spears, and who
with sheer stubborn faith holds to the one frail sapling that may
stop him from falling. There was silence now from the next
room.

Arthur's voice was still steady, still
reasonable, but without life or tone. "Gawain. The last thing I
enjoined on my son was, in the event of my death, to care for and
protect the Queen. He stands to her also as a son. What has been
said, we shall forget."

Gawain bowed his head and muttered
something that might have been an apology. Arthur handed him the
letter.

"Burn this letter. Now. That's it," as
Gawain held the parchment up to a torch and watched it blacken and
curl into crow's feathers. "Now I must go to Bedwyr. In the
morning--"

He did not finish. He began to get to
his feet, moving slowly, putting weight on the arms of his chair
like an old man, or a sick one. Gawain, who was fond of him, was
seized with sudden compunction, and spoke more gently: "I'm sorry,
uncle, believe me, I am. I know you don't want to believe this of
Mordred, so let us hope there is news soon. Meanwhile, is there
anything I can do for you?"

"Yes. You can go and give the orders
for our return home. Whatever the truth of the matter, I shall have
to go back. Either I must deal with Mordred, or with Constantine.
This is not the time to pursue our victory further, or even to call
for talks with the emperor. Instead, I shall send him a
message."

"Yes?" queried Gawain, as the King
paused.

Arthur's look was cryptic. "A task
that will please you. See that Lucius Quintilianus' body is
disinterred and sent to the emperor, with this message: that this
is the tribute that the British pay to Rome. Now leave me. I must
go to Bedwyr."

Bedwyr did not die. The silence that
had frightened the King was not death, or coma, but sleep, and the
sick man woke from it with his fever gone and his wounds cool.
Arthur, in spite of what might lie ahead of him, could set out for
Britain with a free mind and a lighter heart.

The King set sail at last on a cloudy
day with white spume blowing back from the wave-tops and the far
sky leaning low over the heaving grey. The sea witch, it seemed,
held sway over the Channel waters. Though the wind had changed its
quarter at last, sea and sky alike still seemed to conspire against
Arthur her old enemy. Even the gulls, flakes ripped from the white
waves, drove to and fro in the wind with shrieks of uncanny
laughter, like a mockery. A gloomy, driving sea, without glitter,
without light, heaved northward in the sudden turn of the wind. A
gust took The Sea Dragon 's standard and shredded it into streamers
that whirled downwind. "An omen," men whispered, but Arthur,
looking up, laughed, and said: "He has gone ahead of us. If we
seize the weather, we shall fly as fast as he."

And fly they did. What they could not
know was that Cynric's Saxons had seized the same chance of wind,
and that the longboats were also on their way across the Narrow
Sea. Long and low, in those heaving seas the British caught no
sight of them until, in the final gleams of a late and clouded
afternoon, as they scudded along with the line of the Saxon Shore
like a white wall on the horizon, The Sea Dragon 's lookout saw
what looked like Saxon longships riding in nearer the
coast.

But when the King, with the heavy
slowness that he showed these days, clambered up to a viewpoint by
the mast, the longships -- or their shadows -- were
gone.

"South Saxon ships, caught by the
change of wind," said the master, at Arthur's elbow. "Shallow
draught. They're lucky. They'll be back at anchor now, and no
trouble to us. If we--

He did not finish. A shout from the
masthead made them all look round.

Low over the sea, its rain tearing out
like a witch's hair, came a squall. Its shadow fled on before like
a doom. The master shouted. The seamen ran to their places. King,
knights, sailors gripped the nearest stay.

The squall struck. In an instant all
was screaming wind and rain. The air was black. Water cascaded
down, whipping their faces so that they covered their eyes. The
little ship shook and shuddered, stopped as if struck on a rock,
then heeled over, reared and bucked like a frightened horse. Ropes
strained and snapped. The whole ship's structure groaned. Somewhere
a crack of timber gave warning.

The squall blew for perhaps ten
minutes. When, as suddenly as it had come, it blew away, fleeing
over the sea above its shadow, the fleet, scattered and damaged,
found itself driven almost within hailing distance of the coast.
But the coast was the West Saxon shore, and there was no way that
they could beat farther westward against a capriciously veering
wind, to make the Dumnonian harbors, or even the debated shelter of
Potters' Bay.

The King, with water licking the lower
deck of The Sea Dragon, and two of her sister ships wallowing badly
alongside, gave the order.

And so the sea witch drove Arthur
ashore in Saxon territory where Cerdic's son Cynric, watching for
the stragglers of his own immigrant fleet, rested with a band of
his men after their stormy voyage. To him, from the ruins of the
Roman lighthouse, came the watchman, running. Ships -- three ships,
and others heading shorewards behind them -- were coming into the
deep harbor to westward. There was no standard, no device. But by
their lines and rig they were British ships, and they were setting
inshore where they surely had no right to be. He had had, in the
rapidly worsening light, no hint of their beaten
condition.

Cynric did not know that the proposed
immigration was known to, and approved by the British; nor could he
know that, by Mordred's new treaty with Cerdic, the incoming
British ships were welcome to land. He drew his own conclusions.
His landing had been observed, and was now, perhaps, to be opposed.
He sent a messenger urgently inland to report his arrival and
summon Cerdic's help, then gathered his men together to oppose the
British landing.

If the two forces could have held
apart long enough for the leaders to recognize one another or
dispatch and receive a message, all might have been well. But they
met in the growing dusk of that murky day, each side bent on its
own desperate course and blind to all else.

The Saxons were tired after a stormy
voyage, and most of them strange to the country and therefore alive
to apprehension. They also had with them their women and children.
Primed with legends about the wars fought for each hide of land
since Hengist's time, and seeing the incoming troops at a
disadvantage as their craft ran inshore, they seized their weapons
and raced down to the attack.

Arthur was indeed at a sad
disadvantage. His men were highly trained and seasoned troops, but
they had had little rest, and were some of them still suffering
badly from the effects of the voyage. He did have one stroke of
luck: the horse carriers, seeking a flat beach, had ventured
farther along the coast to land, so those of the cavalry mounts
which had survived the crossing uninjured were safely got to shore
some distance off. But they -- Arthur's best troops -- could be no
help against Cynric's men. Arthur and those of his knights who were
with him, met by armed Saxons as they struggled up the steep and
streaming pebbles of the shore, fought on foot and in no sort of
order. The struggle was disorganized, bloody and, on both sides,
disastrous. Just before dark a panting messenger on a lathered pony
came to Cynric's side. The message passed. Cerdic was on his way
and Britain's new king with him. Cynric was to withdraw.

Cynric, thankfully, withdrew as best
he could, his men streaming off inland into the gathering darkness,
guided by the messenger towards the oncoming army of the West
Saxons.

Arthur, exhausted but unhurt, listened
in silence to the report of someone who had heard the Saxon's
shouted message.

"It was Cynric himself, my lord, who
led this attack. Now he has sent to his father for help, and Cerdic
is coming. With Britain's new king, I heard them say so, marching
against you to help Cynric and these invaders."

Arthur, weary to death and grieving
over his losses, which were even now being assessed, leaned heavily
on his spear, confused, and, what was strange to him, irresolute.
That "Britain's new king" must be Mordred was obvious. Even if
Mordred believed him, Arthur, dead, he would hardly march with
Saxons to intercept British troopships obviously bringing home
Arthur's battle-weary troops, unless Constantine had been right,
and he coveted the kingdom to the point of treachery.

Someone was approaching, his feet
sliding in the grinding pebbles. As Arthur turned, half expecting
the angry Orkney voice at his elbow, triumphant over this evidence
of treachery, a man came up.

"My lord, my lord! Prince Gawain is
hurt. His boat was wrecked as it drove ashore, and he was wounded
even before he could come to land. It is thought that he is
dying."

"Take me there," said the
King.

Gawain had been carried ashore on a
stretcher of smashed planking from the wrecked boat. The remains of
this, splintered and gaping, lay tilted on the shingle in the edge
of the tide. Bodies of the dead and wounded lay about on the beach,
looking like heaps of sodden clothing.

Gawain was conscious, but it was plain
that he had received his death wound. His face was waxen, and his
breathing shallow and sparse.