Legacy: Arthurian Saga (240 page)

"But this would be
treachery."

"Nothing is treachery if it destroys a
traitor." This time Gawain's ghost spoke, strangely, in Arthur's
own voice. "This way you will make certain." The blood-stained
knife dropped to the bed. "Crush him forever, Arthur, make certain,
make certain, certain...."

"Sir?"

The servant at his bedside, touching
the King's shoulder to wake him, started back as the King, jerking
upright in the bed, glared round as if in anger, but all he said
was, abruptly: "Tell them to see to the fastenings of the tent. How
am I expected to sleep when the whole thing shifts about as if a
storm was blowing?"

It had been agreed, in the exchange
between the heralds, that fourteen officers from each side should
meet at a spot half-way between the hosts.

There was a strip of dry moorland not
far from the Lake shore where a pair of small pavilions had been
pitched, with between them a wooden table, where the two leaders'
swords were laid. Should the parley fail, the formal declaration of
battle would be the raising, or drawing of a sword. Over one
pavilion flew the King's standard, the Dragon on gold. To this
device, Mordred, as regent, had also been entitled. He, his mind
set on the necessity of being received into grace, and not putting
in the way of grace the smallest rub, had given orders that his
royal device should be folded away, and until the day was spent and
he was declared once more as Arthur's heir, a plain standard should
be carried for him.

This flew now on the other pavilion.
As the two men took their places at the table, Mordred saw his
father eyeing it. What he cannot have known was that Arthur
himself, as a young man, had borne a plain white banner. "White is
my color," he had said, "until I have written on it my own device.
And write it, come in the way what will, I shall."

To Nimue in her convent of maidens on
the island in the Lake came Arthur's sister Queen Morgan. This was
a Morgan subdued and anxious, knowing well what might be her fate
if Arthur should be defeated or die in battle. She had been her
brother's enemy, but without him she was, and would be, nothing.
She could be trusted now to use all her skill and vaunted magic on
his behalf.

So Nimue accepted her. As Lady of the
Lake convent, Nimue stood in no awe of Morgan, either as sorceress
or queen. Among her maidens were other royal ladies; one of them a
cousin of Guinevere's from North Wales, another from Manau
Guotodin. With them she set Morgan to prepare medicines and to make
ready the barges that would be used to ferry the wounded across to
the island for healing. She had seen Arthur and delivered her
warning, and he had promised to call the parley and let the regent
have his say. But Nimue, for all her words to Pelleas, knew what
the gods withheld behind the thunder-clouds that even now were
building up beyond the shining Lake. Small from the island, the two
pavilions could be seen, with the small space between.

For all the massed clouds on the far
horizon, it promised to be a beautiful day.

The day wore on. Those officers who
had accompanied their leaders to the truce table showed ill at ease
at first, eyeing friends or former comrades on the other side with
distrust, but after a while, relaxing, they began to talk among
themselves, and fell into groups behind their respective leaders'
pavilions.

Out of earshot of them, Arthur stood
with Mordred. Occasionally they moved, as if by consent, and paced
a few steps and back. Sometimes one spoke, sometimes the other. The
watchers, focused on them even while they spoke of other things,
tried to read what was happening. But they could not. The King,
still looking tired, and frowning heavily, did nevertheless listen
with calm courtesy to what the younger man was, with emphasis,
saying.

Farther away, unable to see clearly or
to hear anything at all, the armies watched and waited. The sun
climbed the sky. The heat increased, brightness flashing back from
the glassy surface of the Lake. Horses stamped and blew and
switched their tails, impatient of heat and flies, and in the ranks
the slight fretting of suspense changed to restlessness. The
officers, themselves on the fidget, checked it where they could,
and watched the truce table and the sky with steadily growing
tension. Somewhere in the distance the first dull roll of thunder
sounded. The air weighed heavy, and men's skins tightened with the
coming storm. It was to be guessed that neither side wanted the
fight, but, by the irony that governs affairs of violence, the
longer the truce talks went on, the more the tension grew, till the
slightest spark would start such a fire as only death could
quench.

None of those watching was ever
destined to know what Arthur and Mordred spoke of. Some said later
-- those who lived to speak -- that in the end the King smiled.
Certain it is that he was seen to put out a hand to his son's arm,
turning back with him towards the table where the two swords lay
side by side, unsheathed, and beside them two goblets and a golden
jug of wine. Those nearest heard a few words: "...To be High King
after my death," said Arthur, "and meanwhile to take lands of your
own."

Mordred answered him, but in a voice
too low to overhear. The King, gesturing to his servant to pour the
wine, spoke again. "Cornwall," they could hear, and later, "Kent,"
and then, "It may well prove that you are right."

Here he stopped and glanced round as
if some sound had interrupted him. A sudden stray current of air,
thunder-heavy, had stirred the silk of his pavilion, so that the
ropes creaked. Arthur shifted his shoulders as if against a cold
draught, and looked sideways at his son, a strange look (it was the
servant who, afterwards, told this part of the story), a look which
was mirrored in a sudden flash of doubt in Mordred's face, as if,
with the smile and the smooth words and the proffered wine, there
might still be trickery there. Then in his turn the regent
shrugged, smiled, and took the goblet from his father's
hand.

A movement went through the waiting
ranks, like a ruffle of wind across a cornfield.

The King raised his goblet, and the
sun flashed in the gold.

An answering flash, from the group
beside his pavilion, caught his eyes. He whipped round, shouting.
But too late.

An adder, a speckled snake no more
than two handspans long, had crept from its hiding to bask on the
hot ground. One of Arthur's officers, intent on the scene at the
truce table, stepped back unseeingly onto the creature's tail.
Whipping round, the adder struck. At the pain the man, whirling,
saw the snake on the recoil. His own reflex, that of a trained
fighting man, was almost as fast. He snatched his sword out and
slashed down at the snake, killing it.

The sun struck the metal. The sword's
flash, the King's raised arm, his sudden movement and shout of
command, came to the watching hosts as the long-awaited signal. The
inaction, the nerve-stretching tension, made almost unbearable by
the thundery heat and the sweating uncertainty of that long vigil,
suddenly snapped, in a wild shout from both sides of the
field.

It was war. This was the day. This was
the wicked day of destiny.

A dozen flashes answered as the
officers on both sides drew their swords. The trumpets screamed,
drowning the shouts of the knights who, trapped between the armies,
seized their horses from the grooms and turned furiously to hold
back the converging ranks. They could not be heard; their gestures,
misinterpreted as incitements to attack, were wasted. It was a
matter only of seconds, seconds of furious noise and confusion,
before the front ranks of the two armies met in a roaring clash.
The King and his son were swept apart, each to his proper station,
Arthur under the great Dragon, Mordred no longer regent and King's
son, but for all time branded traitor, under the blank standard
that, now, would never be written on. And then over the bar of the
field, called by the trumpets, like a sea of tossing manes, came
the spears and horsehair of the Saxons, and the black banners of
the northern fighters who, like the ravens, could hardly wait to
take the pickings from the dead.

Soon, too late to dull those flashing
signals, the thunderheads came slowly massing across the hot sky.
The air darkened, and in the distance came the first flicker of
lightning, the herald of the storm.

The King and his son were to meet
again.

Towards the end of the day, with his
friends and long companions dead or dying round him, and the
hundreds of wasted deaths reeking to the now dark and threatening
sky, it is doubtful if Arthur even remembered that Mordred was
anything but a traitor and an adulterer. The straight speaking, the
truths laid down during that talk by the truce table, the faith and
trust so nearly reaffirmed, all had vanished in the first stress
and storm of the attack. It was Arthur, duke of battles, who once
more took the field. Mordred was the enemy, the Saxon allies his
savage helpers; this battle had been fought before, and many times.
This was Glein and Agned, Caerleon and Linnuis, Cit Coit Caledon
and Badon Hill. On all these fields the young Arthur had triumphed;
for all of them his prophet and adviser, Merlin, had promised him
the victory and the glory. Here, too, on the Camel field, it was
victory.

At the end of the day, with the
thunder overhead and the lightning flaming white from the sky and
the water of the Lake, Arthur and Mordred came once again face to
face. There were no words. What words could there have been? For
Mordred, as for his father, the other man was now the enemy. The
past was past, and there was no future to be seen beyond the need
to get to the end of this moment that would bring with it the end
of the day.

It was said afterwards, no one knows
by whom, that at the moment of meeting, as the two men, on foot
now, and white with the sweat and dust of the battlefield, knew one
another, Mordred checked in his stride and stroke. Arthur, the
veteran, did not. His spear took his son straight and clean beneath
the rib-cage.

Blood gushed down the spear shaft in a
hot stream over Arthur's hand. He loosened the shaft, and reached
for his sword. Mordred lurched forward like a spitted boar. The
butt of the shaft struck the ground. He leaned on it, and, still
carried forward by the weight of the half-checked stroke, came
within sword's length of his father. Arthur's hand, slippery with
blood, fumbled momentarily on Caliburn's grip, and in that moment
Mordred's sword swung, even as he fell dying, in a hard and deadly
blow to the side of the King's head.

Mordred pitched down then into the
pool of his own blood. Arthur stood for a few seconds still, his
sword dropping from his bloodied hand, his other hand moving numbly
as if in an attempt to ward off some slight and trivial blow; then
slowly his body bent and buckled, and he, too, fell, and his blood
joined with Mordred's on the ground. The clouds broke, and like a
waterfall the rain came down.

EPILOGUE

The cool stream on his face brought
Mordred back for a moment into the dark. It was quiet, too, all
sounds hushed and far, like distant water lapping on a pebbled
shore.

A cry somewhere nearby."The King! The
King!"

A bird calling. The hens were coming
down the shingle for food. A gull screaming, but in words now: "The
King! The King!"

Then, and this made him sure it was a
dream, the voices of women. He could see nothing, feel nothing, but
near him was the rustle of a gown and a gust of women's scent.
Voices eddied across him, but no one touched him. A woman's voice
said: "Lift him carefully. Here. Yes, yes, my lord, lie still. All
will be well."

And the King's voice, too faint to
hear, followed -- surely? -- by Bedwyr's: "It is here. I have it
safely. The Lady will keep it for you till you need it
again."

Again the voices of women, and the
first voice, strongly: "I shall take him to Applegarth, where we
shall see to the healing of his wounds."

Then the rain, and the creak of
rowlocks, and the sound of women's weeping fading into the lapping
of the lake water and the hiss of the rain falling.

His cheek was on a cushion of thyme.
The rain had washed the blood away, and the thyme smelled sweetly
of summer.

The waves lapped. The oars creaked.
The seabirds cried. A porpoise rolled, sleek in the sun. Away on
the horizon he could see the golden edge of the kingdom where,
since he was a small child, he had always longed to go.

THE LEGEND

When King Uther Pendragon lay close to
death, Merlin approached him in the sight of all the lords and made
him acknowledge his son Arthur as the new king. Which he did, and
afterwards died, and was buried by the side of his brother Aurelius
Ambrosius within the Giants' Dance. Then Merlin had a great sword
fashioned, and fixed by his magic art into a great stone shaped
like an altar. There were gold letters on the sword which said:
"Who so pulleth out this sword of this stone, is rightwise king
born of all England." When at length it was seen by all men that
only Arthur could pull the sword from the stone, the people cried
out: "We will have Arthur unto our king, we will put him no more in
delay, for we all see that it is God's will that he should be our
king, and who that holdeth against it, we will slay him." So Arthur
was accepted by the people, high and low, and raised to be king.
When he was crowned, he made Sir Kay the seneschal of England, and
Sir Ulfius was made his chamberlain.