The Wicked Day Part 4

Mordred slid out of bed. He padded to the clothes-chest, and, kneeling upon it, looked out of the window. This faced away from the sea; from it, by craning, he could see the courtyard and the main outer gateway of the palace. The sound of the sea came muted, a murmur under the incessant calling and mewing of the gulls. He looked the other way, beyond the palace walls, where a track ran green through the heather towards the summit of a gentle hill. Beyond that curved horizon lay his foster home. His father would be breaking his fast now, and soon would be gone about his work. If Mordred wanted to see him (to get it over with, said a small voice, quickly stifled in the dark and barely heeded rearward of his mind) he must go now.

On the chest lay the good tunic that he had been given last night, with a cloak, a brooch, and a leather belt with a buckle of copper. But in the very moment of reaching for the prized new clothing he changed his mind, and with something like a shrug picked up his old garment from the corner where he had thrown it, and slipped it on. Then, ducking past the door curtain, he let himself out of the room, and padded barefooted along the chill stone corridors to the hall.

The hall was still full of sleepers, but guards were changing duty for the morning shift, and servants were already moving. No one stopped him or spoke to him as he picked his way across the cluttered floor and out into the courtyard. The outer gate was open, and a cart of turfs was being dragged in by a couple of peasants. The two guards stood watching, at ease, eating their breakfast bannocks and taking turn and turn about to drink from a horn of ale.

As Mordred approached the gate one of the men saw him, nudged the other, and said something inaudible. The boy hesitated, half expecting to be stopped, or at any rate questioned, but neither of the men made a move to do so. Instead, the nearest one lifted a hand up in a half-salute, and then stood back to let the boy go by.

Perhaps no other moment of royal ceremony in Prince Mordred's life was ever to equal that one. His heart gave a great bound, right into his throat, and he felt the colour rush into his cheeks. But he managed a calm enough "Good morning," then ran out through the palace gate and up the green track into the moor.

He ran along the track, his heart still beating high. The sun came up, and long shadows streamed away ahead of him. The night's dew shivered and steamed on the fine gra.s.ses, on the rushes smoothed by the light wind, till the whole landscape thrilled and shimmered with light, a softer repet.i.tion of the endless, achingly bright shimmer of the sea. Overhead, the clouds wisped back, and the air filled with singing as the larks launched themselves from their nests in the heather. The air rippled with song as the land with light. Soon he reached the summit of the moor, and before him stretched the long, gentle slope towards the cliffs, and beyond them again the endless, shining sea.

From this point he could see, clear across the sea in the early light, the hills of the High Island. Beyond them lay the mainland - the real mainland, the great and wonderful land that the islanders called, half in jest, half in ignorance, "the next island." Many times, from his father's boat, he had seen its northern cliffs, and had tried to imagine the rest; its vastness, its forests, its roads and ports and cities. Today, though hidden from view, it had ceased to be a dream. It was the High Kingdom, to which he would one day travel, and where he would one day matter. If his new status was to mean anything, it would mean that.

He would see to it.

He laughed aloud with joy, and ran on.

He came to the turf cutting. He paused, deliberately lingering by the ditch he had dug only yesterday.

How long ago, already, it seemed. Brude would have to finish it now - alone, too, though lately he had been complaining about pains in his back. Perhaps, thought the boy, since they were apparently going to leave him free to come and go from the palace, he could come down early each day for an hour before the other boys were up, and finish the digging. And if he were given real princely status, with servants, he could maybe set them to the task, or to the collecting of the lichens for his mother's dyestuffs. The basket was still standing there by the diggings, where he had left it yesterday, forgotten. He s.n.a.t.c.hed it up, and ran on down the track.

The gulls were up, and screaming. The sound met him, raw on the wind from the sea. Something else was on that wind, a strange smell, and in the gulls' screaming a high shiver of panic that touched him like the edge of a knife. Smoke? There was usually smoke from the cottage, but this was a different smoke, a sour, chilled and sullen emanation, carrying with it a smell that mocked the good scent of roasting meat on the rare days when Sula had meat in the pot. This was not a good smell; it was sickening, an ugly mockery, making the morning foul.

Mordred's breeding, perverse though it was, had made him the child of one fighting king, and the grandson, twice over, of another. This combined with his hard peasant upbringing to make fear, for him, something to be faced immediately, and found out. He flung the basket of lichens down and ran full tilt along the cliff path, to where he could see down into the bay that had been his home.

Had been. The familiar cottage, with its clay oven, its lines of pegged fish, the hanging festoons of drying nets - all had vanished. Only the four walls of his home still stood, blackened and smoking with the sluggish, stinking smoke that befouled the sea-wind. Most of the outer roof slabs still lay in place, held as they were by stone supports built into the walls, but those in the center were thinner, and here and there had been pegged into place by driftwood. The thatch of the roof, dry with summer, had burned fiercely, and, with the pegs destroyed, the slabs had sagged, tilted, and then cracked, sliding down with their blazing load of thatch into the room below, making a pyre of what had been his home.

It must be, in very truth, a pyre. For now, retchingly, he recognized the smell that had reminded him of Sula's cooking pots. Sula herself, with Brude, must be inside - underneath that pile of burned rubble.

The roof had fallen directly over their bedplace. To Mordred, groping, dazed, for the cause of disaster, there was only one explanation. His parents must have been asleep when some stray spark from the unwatched embers, blown by the draught, had lodged in the wind-dried turfs of the roof, and smouldered to a blaze. It was to be hoped that they had never woken, had perhaps been rendered unconscious by the smoke, to be killed by the falling roof before the fire even touched them.

He stood there so long, staring, unbelieving, sick, that only the sharp wind, piercing the shabby tunic to the skin, made him shiver suddenly and move. He squeezed his eyes shut, as if in some silly hope that when he opened them the place would be whole again, the horror only a nightmare dream. But the horror remained. His eyes, wide again, showed wild like a nervous pony's. He started slowly down the path, then suddenly, as if some invisible rider had applied whip and spur, he began to run.

Some two hours later Gawain, sent from the palace, found him there.

Mordred was sitting on a boulder at some distance from the cottage, staring out to sea. Nearby lay Brude's upturned boat, unharmed. Gawain, pale and shocked, called his name, but when Mordred gave no sign of having heard him, he reluctantly approached to touch the unheeding boy on the arm.

"Mordred. They sent me to find you. What on earth's happened?"

No reply.

"Are they - your folk - are they - in in there?" there?"

"Yes."

"What happened?"

"How do I know? It was like that when I came down."

"Ought we to - is there anything-?"

Mordred moved at that. "Don't go near. You are not to go. Let them."

He spoke sharply, authoritatively. It was the tone of an elder brother. Gawain, held by horrified curiosity, obeyed without thinking. The men who had come with him were already at the cottage, peering about them with subdued exclamations, whether of horror or simple disgust it was hard to tell.

The two boys watched, Gawain half sickened, half fascinated, Mordred pale, and stiff in every muscle.

"Did you go in?" asked Gawain.

"Of course. I had to, hadn't I?"

Gawain swallowed. "Well, I think you should come back now, with me. The queen must be told." Then, when Mordred made no move: "I'm sorry, Mordred. It's a dreadful thing to happen. I'm sorry. But there's nothing you can do now, you must see that. Leave it to them. Let's go now, shall we? You look ill."

"I'm all right. I was sick, that's all." He slid down off the boulder, stooped to a rock pool, and dashed a handful of the salt water into his face. He straightened, rubbing his eyes as if coming out of sleep. "I'll come now. Where have the men gone?" Then, angrily: "Have they gone inside? What's it to them?"

"They have to," said Gawain quickly. "Don't you see, the queen will have to know.... It isn't as if they - your folk - as if they had just been ordinary folk, is it?" Then, as Mordred turned to stare at him, half blindly: "Don't forget who you are now, and they were the king's servants, themselves, in a way. She has to know what happened, Mordred."

"It was an accident. What else?"

"I know. But she has to have a report. And they'll do whatever's decent. Come on, we don't have to stay. There's nothing we can do, nothing at all."

"Yes, there is." Mordred pointed to the cottage door, where the milch goat, bleating, pattered to and fro, to and fro, frightened by the unaccustomed movement, the smells, the chaos, but driven by the pain of her swollen udders. "We can milk the goat. Have you ever milked a goat, Gawain?"

"No, I haven't. Is it easy? Are you going to milk it now? Here?"

Mordred laughed, the brittle, light laugh of tensions released. "No. We'll take her with us. And the hens, too. If you get that net that's drying on the boat's keel, I'll see if I can catch them."

He dived for the nearest, secured it in an expert grip, then swooped on another as it wrestled with some t.i.tbit in the seaweed. The simple anticlimax to tragedy did its work as grief and shock exploded thankfully into action. Gawain, prince and king-designate of Orkney, stood irresolutely for a few moments, then did as he was bidden, and ran to strip the net off the upturned boat.

When the men at length emerged from the cottage and stood, in a close-talking huddle, near the doorway, they saw the two boys toiling up the path. Gawain led the goat, and Mordred carried, slung over his shoulder, an improvised bag of netting filled with protesting hens.

Neither boy looked back.

They were met at the palace gate by Gabran, who listened in silence to the story Gawain poured out, and thereafter, having spoken gently to Mordred, called up servants to rid the boys of their livestock ("And she is to be milked straight away!" insisted Mordred) and then hurried them straight into the palace.

"The queen must be told. I shall go to her now. Mordred, go in and change and make yourself decent.

She will want to see you. Gawain, go with him."

He hurried off. Gawain, looking after him with narrowed eyes, as if seeing something far away and bright, said under his breath: "And one day, my fine Gabran, you will not command princes as if they were your dogs. We know whose dog you you are! Who are you to take news to my mother in my place?" are! Who are you to take news to my mother in my place?"

He flashed a sudden grin at Mordred. "All the same, I'd sooner he did today! Come on, we'd better get clean."

The twins were in the boys' room, ostensibly busy, but obviously waiting with some impatience for their first sight of their new half-brother. Agravain was sitting on the bed sharpening his dagger on a whetstone, while Gaheris, on the floor, rubbed a leather belt with grease to flex it. Gareth was not there.

The twins were stocky, well-built boys, with the ruddy hair and high colour that marked Morgause's sons by Lot, and, at the moment, sullen expressions that were something less than welcoming. But it had apparently been made clear to them that Mordred must be welcomed, for they gave him a civil enough greeting, and thereafter sat staring at him, much as cattle do at something strange and perhaps dangerous that has strayed into their pasture.

A servant hurried in with a bowl of water and a napkin, which he set on the floor. Gawain ran to the clothes-chest and threw Mordred's things off onto his bed. He burrowed inside the chest for his own things, while Mordred began to strip.

"What are you changing for?" asked Agravain.

"Our mother wants us," said Gawain, m.u.f.fled.

"Why?" asked Gaheris.

Gawain shot a look at Mordred that meant, plainly, Not a word. Not yet. Aloud, he said: "That's our business. You'll hear later."

"Him, too?" Agravain pointed at Mordred.

"Yes."

Agravain was silent, watching as Mordred slipped into one of the new tunics, and reached for the worked leather belt with its sheath for a dagger, and the hanger for a drinking horn. He fastened the buckle, and looked about him for the silver-mounted horn Ailsa had given him.

"It's there, on the window sill," said Gaheris.

"Did she really give you that one? You're lucky. It's a beauty. It's the one I asked for," said Agravain.

The words were not angry or sullen, in fact they contained no expression at all, but Mordred's eyes flicked to him and then away again, as he clipped the horn to his belt.

"There was only one." Gawain spoke over his shoulder. "And you and Gaheris always have to have the same."

"Gareth's to get the golden one," said Gaheris. He spoke in the same flat, unboylike tone. Again Mordred glanced, and again the lids dropped over his eyes. Something had registered in that cool brain, and was stored away for the future.

Gawain wiped his face and dried it, then threw the napkin to Mordred, who caught it. "Be quick, then we've got to do our feet. She's fussy about the rugs." He glanced round. "Where's Gareth, anyway?"

"With her, of course," said Gaheris.

"Did you expect a full council of welcome, then, brother?" asked Agravain.

Conversing with the twins, thought Mordred, drying his feet, was like talking with a boy and his reflection. Gawain said sharply: "It'll keep. I'll see you later. Come on, Mordred, we'd better go."

Mordred stood up, smoothing down the soft folds of the new tunic, and followed Gawain to the doorway. The servant, coming in at that moment for the bowl, held the door wide. Gawain paused without thinking, the natural gesture of a host letting the guest precede him through the doorway. Then, as if remembering something, he went quickly through himself, leaving Mordred to follow.

The queen's door was guarded as before. The spears came down as the boys approached. "Not you, Prince Gawain," said one of the men. "Orders. Just the other one."

Gawain stopped short, then stood to one side, his face stony. When Mordred glanced at him, with a word of half-anxious apology ready, he turned quickly away without speaking, and strode off down the corridor. His voice rang out, calling for a servant, peremptory, self-consciously royal.

All three of them, thought Mordred to himself. Well, Gawain's still generous because of the cliffside rescue, but the other two are angry. I'll have to go carefully. The quick brain behind the smooth brow added it all together, and found a total that did not displease him. So they saw him as a threat, did they?

Why? Because he was, in fact. King Lot's eldest son? Somewhere deep inside him that tiny spark of emulation, of longing, of desire for high doing, kindled and glowed as something new: ambition.

Disjointed but clear, his thoughts spun. b.a.s.t.a.r.d or not, I am the king's eldest son, and they don't like it.

Does this mean that I really am a threat? I must find out. Perhaps he married her, my mother, whoever she was...? Or perhaps a b.a.s.t.a.r.d can inherit... his Arthur himself was begotten out of wedlock, and so was Merlin, that found the King's sword of Britain.... b.a.s.t.a.r.dy, what need it matter after all? What a man is, is all that counts....

The spears lifted. The queen's door was open. He pushed the contused and mounting thoughts aside, and came to the core of the matter. I shall have to be careful, he thought. More than careful. There is no reason at all why she should favour me, but as she does, I must take care. Not just of them. Of her. Most of all, of her.

He went in.

6.

MORDRED, DURING THE LONELYvigil on the beach, and then the long, silent trudge back to the palace and the bracing exchange with the twins in the boys' room, had had ample time to regain something like his normal - and formidably adult - self-command. Morgause, scanning him closely as he approached her, did not guess at it. The delayed effects of shock still showed, and the disgust and horror of what he had seen had drained the blood from his face and the life from his movements. The boy who walked forward and stood in front of the queen was silent and white-faced and kept his downcast eyes on the floor, while his hands, tucked into the new leather belt, gripped themselves into fists which apparently fought to control his emotion.

So Morgause interpreted it. She sat in her chair by the window where the sun poured in and made a pool of warmth. Gabran had gone out again, taking Gareth with him, but the queen's women were there, at the far end of the room, three of them at their st.i.tchery, a fourth sorting a basketful of newly spun wool.

The distaff, polished from much use, lay beside her on the floor. Mordred was reminded, sharply, at a moment when he least wanted it, of Sula's long days spent in the cottage doorway, spinning, a task which of late had been increasingly painful to her knotted fingers. He looked away, staring at the floor, and hoping, with violence, that the queen's condolences and kindness would not overset his control.

He need have had no fear. Morgause set her chin on her fist, regarding him. In the new clothes he looked princely, and enough like Arthur to make her eyes narrow and her mouth tighten as she said, in a light pretty voice as emotionless as a bird's: "Gabran told me what has happened. I am sorry."

She sounded completely indifferent. He glanced up, then down again, and said nothing. Why, indeed, should she care? For her it was a relief not to have to pay any more. But for Mordred... In spite of all the trappings of princedom, he saw his position. With no other place to go to, he was completely at the mercy of a queen who, apart from the trivial debt of the cliff climb, had no cause to wish him well. He did not speak.

Morgause proceeded to make the situation plain. "It seems that, nonetheless, the G.o.ddess watches over you, Mordred. Had you not been brought to our notice, what would have become of you now, without a home, or any way to make a livelihood? Indeed, you might well have perished with your foster parents in the flames. Even had you escaped, you would have had nothing. You would have become a servant to any peasant who needed a skilled hand with his boat and net. A serfdom, Mordred, as hard to break out of as slavery."

He neither moved nor glanced up, but she saw the faint tremor of bracing muscles, and smiled to herself.

"Mordred. Look at me."

The boy's eyes lifted, expressionless.

She spoke crisply. "You have had a sad shock, but you must fight to put it behind you. You know now that you are a king's b.a.s.t.a.r.d, and that all you have owed to your foster home is your food and lodging - and even that by the king's orders many years ago. I also had my orders, and have obeyed them. I might never have chosen to take you from your foster home, but chance and fate willed it otherwise. The very day before you met Prince Gawain on the cliff, I saw something in the crystal that warned me."

She paused on the lie. There had been a brief flash in the boy's eyes. She interpreted it as the half-frightened, half-fascinated interest that the poor folk accorded her pretensions to magic power. She was satisfied. He would be her creature, as were the other palace folk. Without magic, and the terror she took care that it invoked, a woman could hardly have held this stark and violent kingdom, so far from the protecting swords of the kings whose task it was to keep Britain as one. She went on: "Don't misunderstand me. I had no warning of last night's disaster. If I had looked into the pool - well, perhaps. But the G.o.ddess works in strange ways, Mordred. She told me you would come to me, and see, you have come. So now it is doubly right that you should forget all that is past, and try your best to become a fighting man who has a place here in the court." She eyed him, then added, in a softer tone: "And indeed, you are welcome. We shall see that you are made so. But, king's b.a.s.t.a.r.d or not, Mordred, you must earn your place."

"I will, madam."

"Then go now, and begin."

So Mordred was absorbed into the life of the palace, a life in its own way as harsh and uncompromising as his previous peasant existence, and rather less free.

The Orkney stronghold boasted nothing that a mainland king would have recognized as a military training-ground. Outside the palace walls the moor sloped up gently to landward, and this wild stretch, flat enough, and in good weather dry enough for soldiers to maneuver on, served as parade ground, practice ground, and playground, too, for the boys when they were allowed the freedom of it. Which was almost daily, for the princes of Orkney had to suffer no such formal lessons in the arts of war as disciplined the sons of the greater, mainland chiefs. Had King Lot still lived, and kept his state at Dunpeldyr in his mainland kingdom of Lothian, he would no doubt have seen to it that his elder sons, at least, went out daily with sword or spear or even the bow, to learn the bounds of their home country, and to see something of the lands that marched with theirs, from which threats or help might come in time of war. But in the islands there was no need for this kind of vigilance. All winter long - and winter lasted from October until April, and sometimes May - the seas kept the sh.o.r.es, and often even the neighbouring isles were seen only as clouds floating behind the other clouds that scudded, laden with rain or snow, across the sea. In some ways the boys liked winter best. Then Queen Morgause, snugged down in her palace against the incessant winds, spent her days by the fireside, and they were free even of her spasmodic interest. They were free to join the hunts for deer or boar - no wolves were to be found on the island - and enjoyed the breakneck rides when, armed with spears, they followed the s.h.a.ggy hounds over wild and difficult country. There were seal-hunts, too, b.l.o.o.d.y, exciting forays over the slippery rocks, where a false step could mean a broken leg, or worse. Their bows they were soon expert with; the island abounded in birds, which could be hunted at any time. As for swordplay and the arts of war, the queen's officers saw to the first, and the second could be picked up any evening round the supper fires of the soldiers in the courtyard. Of formal learning there was none. It is possible that, in the whole of the kingdom, Queen Morgause herself was the only one who knew how to read. She kept a box full of books in her room, and sometimes, by the winter fire, she would unroll one of these, while her women looked on, awed, and begged her to read to them. This she did only rarely, because the books were for the most part collections of the old lores that men called magic, and the queen guarded her skills with jealousy. About these the boys knew nothing, and would have cared less. Whatever the power - and it was genuine enough - that had come down through some trick of the blood to Morgause, and to Morgan her half-sister, it had quite pa.s.sed by every one other five sons. Indeed, they would have despised it. Magic, to them, was something for women; they were men; their power would be that of men; and they pursued it eagerly.

Mordred, perhaps, more eagerly than any. He had not expected to be received easily and at once into the brotherhood of the princes, and indeed, there were difficulties. The twins were always together, and Gawain kept young Gareth close by him, protecting him against the rough fists and feet of the twins, and at the same time trying to stiffen him against the over-indulgence of his mother.

It was through this that, in the end, Mordred broke into the charmed square of Morgause's legitimate children. One night Gawain woke to hear Gareth sobbing on the floor. The twins had thrown him out of bed onto a the cold stone, and then laughingly fought off the child's attempts to climb back into the warmth. Gawain, too sleepy to take drastic action, simply pulled Gareth into his own bed, which meant that Mordred had to move out and bed down with the twins. They, wide awake and spoiling for trouble, did not move to make way for him, but, each to his edge of the wide bed, set themselves to defend it.

Mordred stood in the cold for a few minutes, watching them, while Gawain, unaware of what was going on, comforted the youngest boy, paying no heed to the stifled giggles of the twins. Then, without attempting to get into bed, Mordred reached suddenly forward, and, with a swift tug, dragged the thick furred coverlet away from the boys' naked bodies, and prepared to bed down with it himself, on the floor.

Their yells of fury roused Gawain, but he merely laughed, his arm round Gareth, and watched. Agravain and Gaheris, goosefleshed with cold, hurled themselves, all fists and teeth, at Mordred. But he was quicker, heavier, and completely ruthless. He flung Agravain back across the bed with a blow in the belly that left him retching for breath, then Gaheris's teeth met in his arm. He whipped up his leather belt from the chest where it lay, and lashed the other boy over back and b.u.t.tocks till he let go and, howling, ran to protect himself behind the bed.

Mordred did not follow them. He threw the coverlet back on the bed, dropped the belt on the chest, then climbed into bed, covering himself against the brisk draught from the window.

"All right. Now that's settled. Come in. I won't touch you again, unless you make me."