The Wicked Day Part 25

MORDRED SAT AT THE WINDOWof the King's business room in Camelot. The scents from the garden below eddied on the warm breeze in sudden gusts of sweetness. The apple blossom was gone, but there were cherries still in bloom, standing deep among bluebells and the grey spears of iris. The air was full of the sound of bees, and birds singing, while down in the town bells rang for some Christian service.

The royal secretaries had gone, and he was alone. He sat, still thinking over some of the work that had been done that day, but gradually, in the scented warmth, his thoughts drifted into dreaming. So little time ago, it seemed, he had been in the islands, living as he had lived in boyhood, thinking in bitterness that he had lost everything in that one night when the Orkney brothers had risked all for themselves and their friends on that mad, vicious attempt to finish Bedwyr. Thinking, too, of the summer's tasks ahead of him: harvesting and drying fish, cutting peats, rebuilding walls and repairing thatch against the dreadful Orkney winter.

And now? His hand, resting on the table, touched the royal seal. He smiled.

A movement outside the window caught his eye. Guinevere the Queen was walking in the garden. She wore a gown of soft dove-grey, that shimmered as she moved. Her two little dogs, silver-white greyhounds, frisked round her. From time to time she threw a gilded ball and they bounded after it, yelping and wrangling as the winner carried it back to lay it at her feet. Two of her women, both young and pretty girls, one in primrose yellow and the other in blue, walked behind. Guinevere, still lovely, and secure in her loveliness, was not one of those who seek to set her beauty off by surrounding herself with plain women. The three lovely creatures, with the dainty little dogs at their skirts, moved with grace through the garden, and the flowers of that sweet May were no fairer.

Or so thought Mordred, who was rarely a poet. He gazed after the Queen, while his hand once more, but quite unconsciously, reached out and touched the dragon of the royal seal. Again he drifted into dream, but this time it was not a dream of the islands.

He was brought sharply to himself by the sounds, urgent and unmistakable, of a King's messenger being ushered through the royal apartments. A chamberlain opened the door to announce a courier, and even as he spoke the man hurried by him and knelt at the regent's feet.

One glance told Mordred that here was news from Brittany, and that it was not good. He sat in the great chair and said, coolly: "Take your time. But first - the King is well?"

"Yes, my lord. G.o.d be thanked for it! But the news is ill enough." The man reached into his pouch, and Mordred put out a hand.

"You have letters? Then while I read them, compose yourself and take a cup of wine."

The chamberlain, who missed nothing, came in unbidden with the wine, and while the man drank gratefully, Mordred broke the seal of the single letter he had brought, and read it.

It was bad, but, to one remembering that last conversation with the King, not yet tragic news. Once again, thought Mordred, the evil fates summoned by Morgause were at their work. To put it more practically, the Orkney rashness had yet again brought the promise of disaster close. But possibly something could be saved from near-disaster; it was to be hoped that all Gawain had done was to bring matters to a head too soon.

The King's letter, hastily dictated, gave the facts merely of the disastrous emba.s.sy 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 emba.s.sy 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 neighbours 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 rumour 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 loosed 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 arbour, pretty as a silk picture, facing south. It was embowered with early roses, showers of small pale-pink blossoms, with coral-coloured 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 rumours 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 a.s.sailed 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 emba.s.sy was sent, jointly from King Hoel and King Arthur, to talk with the consul Lucius Quintilia.n.u.s."

"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 emba.s.sy?

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 cla.s.sic 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 Quintilia.n.u.s himself. The emba.s.sy was forced to flee, and Quintilia.n.u.s 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 colour 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 ta.s.sels of laburnum. He leaned against this and waited, watching her surrept.i.tiously 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 honour 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."

"Then married or not," said Guinevere, still with that forced lightness, "she is still a woman, and she, like me, must live through the same dreams of the wicked day when a messenger comes with worse news than this you have brought to me."

Mordred smiled. If he thought that his woman had too much to occupy her than to sit and dream about his death and burial, he did not say so. Women's folly, indeed. But as he held his hand for the letter, and she put the roll into it, he saw again how her hand shook. It changed his thoughts about her. To him she had been the Queen, the lovely consort of his King, the elusive vision, too, of his desires, a creature of gaiety and wealth and power and happiness. It was a shock to see her now, suddenly, as a lonely woman who lived with fear. "We have nothing to do but wait and watch and hope," she had said.

It was something he had never thought about. He was not an imaginative man, and in his dealings with women - Morgause apart - he followed in the main his peasant upbringing. He would not wittingly have hurt a woman, but it would not have occurred to him to go out of his way to help or serve one. On the contrary, they were there to help and serve him.

With an effort of imagination that was foreign to him he cast his mind forward, trying to think as a woman might, to fear fate as it would affect the Queen. When Arthur did meet death, what could she expect of the future? A year ago the answer would have been simple: Bedwyr would have taken the widow to Benoic, or to his lands in Northumbria. But now Bedwyr was married, and his wife was with child. More than that: Bedwyr, in sober fact, was not likely to survive any action in which Arthur was killed. Even now, as Mordred and the Queen talked together in this scented garden, the battle might already be joined that would bring to reality her dream of the wicked day. He recalled her letter to Arthur, with its unmistakable note of fear. Fear not only of Arthur's danger, but of his own. "You or your son," she had written. Now, with a sudden flash of truth as painful as a cut, he knew why. Duke Constantine. Duke Constantine, still officially next in line for the throne and already casting his eyes towards Camelot, whose t.i.tle would be greatly strengthened if, first, he could claim the Queen-regent....

He became conscious of her strained and questioning gaze. He answered it, forcefully.

"Madam, for your dreams and fears, let me only say this. I am certain that the King's own skill, and your prayers, will keep him safe for many years to come, but if it should happen, then have no fear for yourself. I know that Constantine of Cornwall may try to dispute the King's latest disposition-"

"Mordred-"

"With your leave, madam. Let us speak directly. He has ambitions for the High Kingdom, and you fear him. Let me say this. You know my father's wish, and you know that it will be carried out. When I succeed him as High King, then you need fear nothing. While I live you will be safe, and honoured."

The red flew up into her cheeks, and her look thanked him, but all she said was, trying still to smile: "No cast-off queen?"

"Never that," said Mordred, and took his leave.

In the shadow of the garden gateway, out of sight of the arbour, he stopped. His pulse was racing, his flesh burned. He stood there motionless while the heat and hammering slowly subsided. Coldly he crushed back the lighted picture in his mind: the roses, the grey-blue eyes, the smile, the touch of the tremulous hands. This was folly. Moreover, it was useless folly. Arthur, Bedwyr... whatever Mordred was or might be, until both Arthur and Bedwyr were dead, with that lovely lady he could come only a poor and halting third.

He had been too long without a woman. To tell the truth, he had been too busy to think about them. Till now. He would find time tonight, and quench these hot imaginings.

But all the same, he knew that today his ambition had taken a different turn. There were precedents, undisputed. He had no wife. She was barren, but he had two sons. If Constantine could think about it, then so could he. And by all the G.o.ds in heaven and h.e.l.l, Constantine should not have her.

With the King's letter crumpled fiercely in his hand, he strode back to the royal chamber, shouting for the secretaries.

5.

IT WAS SOME TIME BEFOREMordred saw the Queen again. He was plunged immediately into the whirlwind business of equipping and embarking the troops Arthur had asked for. In a commendably short time the expeditionary force sailed, under the command of Cei, the King's foster brother, with a reasonable hope of coming up with Arthur's army before the clash came. The courier who returned from this voyage brought news that was, on the whole, cheering: Arthur, with Bedwyr and Gawain, had already set out on the march eastward, and King Hoel, finding himself miraculously recovered at the prospect of action, had gone with them. The Frankish kings, with a considerable army, were also reported to be converging on Autun, where Arthur would set up his camp.

After this, news came only spasmodically. None of it was bad, but, coming as it did long after the events reported, it could not be satisfactory. Cei and the British kings had joined Arthur; that much was known; and so had the Franks. The weather was good, the men were in high heart, and no trouble had been met with on the march.

So far, that was all. What the Queen was feeling Mordred did not know, nor did he have time to care.

He was setting about the second of Arthur's commissions, raising and training men to bring the standing army up to strength after the departure of the expeditionary force. He sent letters to all the petty kings and leaders in the north and west, and himself followed where persuasion was needed. The response was good: Mordred had laid openly on the table the reasons for his demand, and the response from the Celtic kingdoms was immediate and generous. The one leader who made no reply at all was Duke Constantine.

Mordred, keeping the promised eye on the Cornish dukedom, said nothing, set spies, and doubled the garrison at Caerleon. Then, once the tally of kings and the arrangements for receiving and training the new army were complete, he sent at last to Cerdic the Saxon king, to propose the meeting Arthur had suggested.

It was late July when Cerdic's answer came, and that same day, on an afternoon of misty rain, a courier arrived from the Burgundian battlefront, bearing with him a single brief dispatch, with other tokens which, when the man spilled them on the table in front of Mordred, told a dreadful tale.

As was usual, most of his news would be given verbally, learned by rote. He began to recite it, now to the still-faced regent.

"My lord, the battle is over, and the day was ours. The Romans and the Burgundians were put to flight, and the emperor himself recalled what force was left. The Franks fought n.o.bly alongside us, and on all sides some marvellous deeds were done. But-"

The man hesitated, wetting his lips. It was apparent that he had given the good news first, in the hope of cushioning what was to follow. Mordred neither moved nor spoke. He was conscious of a fast-beating heart, a constricted throat, and the necessity for keeping steady the hand that lay beside the spilled tokens on the table. They lay in a jumbled and glittering pile, proof that a tragic story was still to come.

Seals, rings, badges of office, campaign medals, all the mementoes that, stripped from the dead, would be sent home to the widows. Cei's badge was there, the royal seneschal's gilded brooch. And a medal from Kaerconan, rubbed thin and bright; that could only be Valerius". No royal ring; no great ruby carved with the Dragon, but- But the man, the veteran of a hundred reports, both good and evil, was hesitating. Then, meeting Mordred's eye, he swallowed and cleared his throat. It was a long time since the bearers of bad news had had, as in some barbarous lands, to fear ill-treatment and even death at the hands of their masters; nevertheless his voice was hoa.r.s.e with something like fear as he spoke again. This time he was direct to the point of brutality.

"My lord, the King is dead."

Silence. Mordred could not trust himself with word or movement. The scene took on the shifting and misted edges of unreality. Thought was suspended, as random and weightless as a drop of the fine rain that drifted past the windows.

"It happened near the end of the day's fighting. Many had fallen, Cei among them, and Gugein, Valerius, Mador and many others. Prince Gawain fought n.o.bly; he is safe, but Prince Bedwyr fell wounded on the left. It is feared that he, too, will die...."

His voice went on, naming the dead and wounded, but it was doubtful if Mordred heard a word of it. He moved at last, interrupting the recital. His hand went out to the parchment lying on the table.

"It is all here?"

"The news, my lord, but not the details. The dispatch was sent by Prince Bedwyr himself. While he could still speak he had them write it. The list of casualties will follow as soon as they are known and checked, but this, my lord, could not be delayed."