Legacy: Arthurian Saga (239 page)

Mordred, going the rounds that night,
found his men puzzled, beginning to be angry, but loyal. The main
opinion seemed to be that the High King, in his age, was failing in
judgment. He had wronged the Saxon king; that was one thing, and
soon forgiven; but also he had wronged his son, the regent Mordred,
who had been a faithful guardian of the kingdom and of the King's
wife. So they said to Mordred; and they were visibly cheered when
Mordred assured them that the next move would be a parley; there
would soon, he said, be daylight on these dark doings.

"No sword will be drawn against the
High King," he told them, "except we be forced to defend ourselves
from him through calumny."

"He asked for a parley," said Arthur
to Bors.

"You'll grant it?"

The King's force was drawn up at some
distance from the regent's. Between the two armies the Camel, a
small stream, flowed glittering among its reeds and kingcups. The
stormy skies had cleared, and the sun shone again in his summer
splendor. Beyond Mordred's tents and standards rose the great
flat-topped hill of Caer Camel, with the towers of Camelot
gold-crowned against the sky.

"Yes. For three reasons. The first is
that my men are weary and need rest; they are within sight of the
homes they have not seen these many weeks, and will be all the more
eager to get there. The second is that I need time, and
reinforcements."

"And the third?"

"Well, it may even be that Mordred has
something to say. Not only does he lie between my men and their
homes and wives, but between me and mine. That needs more
explaining than even a sword can do."

The two armies settled watchfully
down, and messengers, duly honored and escorted, passed between
them. Three other messengers went secretly and swiftly from
Arthur's camp: one to Caerleon, with a letter to the Queen; one to
Cornwall, bidding Constantine to his side; and the third to
Brittany, asking for Bedwyr's help, and, when he could, his
presence.

Sooner than expected, the looked-for
herald came. Bedwyr, though still not fully recovered from his
sick-bed, was on his way, and with his splendid cavalry would be at
the King's side within a few days.

And none too soon. It had come to the
King's ears that certain of the petty kings from the north were
marching with the intention of joining Mordred. And the Saxons
along the whole length of the Shore were reported to be massing for
a drive inland.

For neither of these things was
Mordred responsible, and indeed, he would have prevented them if at
this stage it had been possible; but Mordred, like Arthur, was,
without the wish for it, without the reason, being thrust closer
hour by hour to a brink from which neither man could take a
backward step.

In a castle far to the north, beside a
window where the birds of morning sang in the birch trees, Nimue
the enchantress threw back the coverlets and rose from her bed. "I
must go to Applegarth." Pelleas, her husband, stretched a lazy hand
out and pulled her to him where he still lay in bed. "Within
raven's stoop of the battlefield?"

"Who said it would be a
battlefield?"

"You, my dear. In your sleep last
night." She lifted herself from him, with her robe half round her,
staring down. Her eyes were wide, blurred still with sleep, and
tragic.

He said gently: "Come, love, it's a
hard gift to have, but you have grown used to it now. You've spoken
of this, and looked for it, for a long time. There is nothing you
can do."

"Only warn, and warn
again."

"You have warned them both. And before
you Merlin gave the same warning. Mordred will be Arthur's bane.
Now it is coming, and though you say Mordred is no traitor in his
heart, he has been led to act in ways that must appear treacherous
to all men, and certainly to the King."

"But I know the gods. I speak with
them. I walk with them. They do not mean us to cease to act, just
because we believe that action is dangerous. They have always
hidden threats with smiles, and grace lurks behind every cloud. We
may hear their words, but who is to interpret them beyond
doubt?"

"But Mordred--"

"Merlin would have wished him dead at
birth, and so would the King. But from him already much good has
come. If even now they might be brought to talk together, the
kingdom might be saved. I will not sit idly by and assume the gods"
doom. I will go to Applegarth."

"To do what?"

"Tell Arthur that there is no
treachery here, only ambition and desire. Two things he himself
showed in abundance in youth. He will listen to me, and believe me.
They must talk together, or between them they will break our
Britain in two, and let her enemies into the breach that they have
made. And who, this time, will repair it?"

In the Queen's palace at Caerleon the
courier brought the letter to Guinevere. She knew the man; he had
gone many times between herself and Mordred.

She turned the letter over in her
hand, saw the seal, and went as white as chalk.

"This is not the regent's seal. It is
from the King's ring, that was on his hand. They have found him,
then? My lord is truly dead?"

The man, who was still on his knee,
caught the roll as it fell from her hand, and rising, backed a
step, staring.

"Why, no, madam. The King lives and is
well. You have had no news, then? There have been sore happenings,
lady, and all is far from well. But the King is safely back in
Britain."

"He lives? Arthur lives? Then the
letter -- give me the letter! -- it is from the King
himself?"

"Why, yes, madam." The man gave it
again into her hand. The color was back in her cheeks, but the hand
shook with which she tried to break the seal. A confusion of
feelings played across her face like shadows driving over moving
water. At the other end of the room her ladies, in a whispering
cluster, watched anxiously, and the man, obedient to a gesture from
the chief of them, went softly from the room.

The ladies, avid for his news, went
rustling after him.

The Queen did not even notice their
going. She had begun to read.

When the mistress of the ladies
returned, she found Guinevere alone and in visible
distress.

"What, my lady, weeping? When the High
King is alive?"

All Guinevere would say was "I am
lost. They are at war, and whatever comes of it, I am
lost."

Later she rose. "I cannot stay here. I
must go back."

"To Camelot, madam? The armies are
there."

"No, not to Camelot. I will go to
Amesbury. None of you need come with me unless you wish it. I shall
need nothing there. Tell them for me, please. And help me make
ready. I shall go now. Yes, now, tonight."

Mordred's messenger, arriving as the
morning market-carts rumbled over the Isca bridge, found the palace
in turmoil, and the Queen gone.

It was a bright day, the last of
summer. Early in the morning the heralds of the two hosts led the
leaders to the long-awaited parley.

Mordred had not slept. All night long
he had lain, thinking. What to say. How to say it. What words to
use that would be straightforward enough to permit of no
misinterpretation, but not so blunt as to antagonize. How to
explain to a man as tired, as suspicious and full of grief as the
ageing King, his, Mordred's, own dichotomy: the joy in command that
could be, and was, unswervingly loyal, but that could never again
be secondary. (co-rulers, perhaps? Kings of North and South? Would
Arthur even consider it?) At the truce table tomorrow he and his
father would be meeting for the first time as equal leaders, rather
than as before. King and deputy. But two very different leaders.
Mordred knew that when his time came he would be not a copy of his
father, but a different king. Arthur was of his own generation; by
nature his son had his thoughts and ambitions channeled otherwise.
Even without the difference in their upbringing this would have
been so. Mordred's hard necessity was not Arthur's, but each man's
commitment was the same: total. Whether the old King could ever be
brought to accept the new ways that Mordred could foresee, ways
that had been embodied (though in the end discreditably) in the
phrase "Young Celts," without seeing them as treachery, he could
not guess. And then there was the Queen. That was one thing he
could not say. "Even were you dead, with Bedwyr still living, what
chance had I?"

He groaned and turned on the pillow,
then bit his lip in case the guards had heard him. Omens bred too
fast when the armies were out.

He knew himself a leader. Even now,
with the High King's standard flying over his encampment by the
Lake, Mordred's men were loyal. And with them, encamped beyond the
hill, were the Saxons. Between himself and Cerdic, even now, there
might be the possibility of a fruitful alliance; a concourse of
farmers, he had called it, and the old Saxon had laughed...But not
between Cerdic and Arthur; not now, not ever...Dangerous ground;
dangerous words. Even to think such thoughts was folly now. Was he,
at this most hazardous of moments, seeing himself as a better king
than Arthur? Different, yes. Better, perhaps, for the times, at any
rate the times to come? But this was worse than folly. He turned
again, seeking a cool place on the pillow, trying to think himself
back into the mind of Arthur's son, dutiful, admiring, ready to
conform and to obey.

Somewhere a cock crew. From the
scrambled edges of sleep, he saw the hens come running down the
salt grass to the pebbled shore. Sula was scattering the food.
Overhead the gulls swept and screamed, some of them daring to swoop
for it. Sula, laughing, waved an arm to beat them aside.

Shrill as a gull's scream, the trumpet
sounded for the day of parley.

Half a mile away, in his tent near the
Lake shore, Arthur slept, but his sleep was an uneasy one, and in
it came a dream.

He dreamed that he was riding by the
Lake shore, and there, standing in a boat, poling it through the
shallow water, stood Nimue; only it was not Nimue, it was a boy,
with Merlin's eyes. The boy looked at him gravely, and repeated, in
Merlin's voice, what Nimue had said to him yesterday when, arriving
at the convent on Ynys Witrin among her maidens, she had sent to
beg speech with him.

"You and I, Emrys," she had said,
giving him the boyhood name Merlin had used for him, "have let
ourselves be blinded by prophecy. We have lived under the edge of
doom, and feel ourselves now facing the long-threatened fate. But
hear this, Emrys: fate is made by men, not gods. Our own follies,
not the gods, foredoom us. The gods are spirits; they work by men's
hands, and there are men who are brave enough to stand up and say:
"I am a man; I will not."

"Listen to me, Arthur. The gods have
said that Mordred will be your bane. If he is so, it will not be
through his own act. Do not force him to that act...I will tell you
now what should have remained a secret between Mordred and myself.
He came to me some time ago, to Applegarth, to seek my help against
the fate predicted for him. He swore to kill himself sooner than
harm you. If I had not prevented him, he would have died then. So
who is guilty, he or I? And he came to me again, on Bryn Myrddin,
seeking what comfort I, Merlin, could give him. If he could seek to
defy the gods, then so, Arthur, can you. Lay by your sword, and
listen to him. Take no other counsel, but talk with him, listen,
and learn. Yes, learn. For you grow old, Arthur-Emrys, and the time
will come, is coming, has come, when you and your son may hold
Britain safe between your clasped hands, like a jewel cradled in
wool. But loosen your clasp, and you drop her, to shatter, perhaps
forever."

In his dream Arthur knew that he had
accepted her advice; he had called the parley, resolving to listen
to anything his son had to say; but still Nimue-Merlin had wept,
standing in the boat as it floated away on the glassy Lake and
vanished into the mist. And then, suddenly, as he turned his horse
to ride up towards the meeting-place, the beast stumbled, sending
him headlong into deep water. Weighted by his armor -- why was he
full-armed for a peaceful parley? -- he sank, deep and ever deeper,
into a pit of black water where fish swam around him, and
water-snakes like weeds and weeds like snakes wrapped his limbs so
that he could not move them....

He cried out and woke, drenched in
sweat as if he had indeed been drowning, but when his servants and
guards came running, he laughed and made light of it, and sent them
away, and presently fell again into an uneasy sleep. This time it
was Gawain who came to him, a Gawain bloody and dead, but imbued
somehow with a grotesque energy, a ghost of the old, fighting
Gawain. He, too, came floating on the Lake water, but he passed
from its surface right into the King's tent and, pausing beside the
bed, drew a dagger from his blood-encrusted side, and held it out
to the King.

"Bedwyr," he said, not in the hollow
whisper in which ghosts should speak, but in a high metallic
squeaking like the tent poles shifting in the breeze. "Wait for
Bedwyr. Promise anything to the traitor, land, lordship, the High
Kingdom after you. And with it, even, the Queen. Anything to hold
him off until Bedwyr comes with his host. And then, when you have
the certainty of victory, attack and kill him."