The Wicked Day Part 5

Agravain, sulky and swallowing, waited only a minute or two before obeying. Gaheris, hands to his b.u.t.tocks, spat furiously: "b.a.s.t.a.r.d! Fisher-brat!"

"Both," said Mordred equably. "The b.a.s.t.a.r.d makes me older than you, and the fisher-brat stronger. So get in and shut up."

Gaheris looked at Gawain, got no help there, and, shivering, obeyed. The twins turned their backs to Mordred, and apparently went straight to sleep.

From the other side of the chamber Gawain, smiling, held up a hand in the gesture that meant "victory."

Gareth, the tears drying on his face, was grinning hugely.

Mordred answered the gesture, then pulled the coverlet closer and lay down. Soon, but not before he was certain that the twins were genuinely asleep, he allowed himself to relax into the warmth of the furs, and drifted off himself into a slumber where, as ever, the dreams of desire and the nightmares were about equally mingled.

After that there was no real trouble. Agravain, in fact, conceived some kind of reluctant admiration for Mordred, and Gaheris, though in this he would not follow his twin, accorded him a sullen neutrality.

Gareth was never a problem. His sunny nature, and the drastically swift revenge that Mordred had taken on his tormentors, ensured that he was Mordred's friend. But the latter took good care not to come between the little boy and the object of his first worship. Gawain was the one who mattered most, and Gawain, having in his nature something of the Pendragon that superseded the dark blood of Lothian and the perverse powers of his mother, would be quick to resent any usurper. As far as Gawain was concerned, Mordred himself stayed neutral, and waited. Gawain must make the pace.

So autumn went by, and winter, and by the time summer came round again, Seals' Bay was only a memory. Mordred, in bearing, dress, and knowledge of the arts necessary to a prince of Orkney, could not be distinguished from his half-brothers. The eldest by almost a year, he was necessarily matched with Gawain rather than with the younger ones, and though at first Gawain had the advantage of training, in time there was little to choose between them. Mordred had subtlety, call it cunning, and a cool head; Gawain had the flashing brilliance that on his worse days became rashness and sometimes savagery. On the whole they met equal to equal with their weapons, and respected one another with liking, though not with love. Gawain's love was still and always for Gareth, and, in a strained and often unhappy way, for his mother. The twins lived for each other. Mordred, though accepted and seemingly at home in his new surroundings, stood always outside the family, self-contained, and apparently content to be so. He saw little of the queen, and was unaware of how closely she watched him.

One day, after autumn had come again, he went down to Seals' Bay. He came to the head of the cliff path and stood as he had so often stood, looking down into the green dip of the bay. It was October, and the wind blew strongly. The heather was black and dead-looking, and here and there in the damp places the sphagnum moss grew golden green and deep. Most of the seabirds had gone south, but still out over the gray water the white gannets hovered and splashed like sea-spirits. Down in the bay the weather had so worked on the ruined cottage that the walls, washed clear of the mud that had bound their stones together, looked more like piles of rock thrown there by the tide than like part of a human dwelling. The burned and blackened debris had been long since dispersed by wind and sea.

Mordred walked down the slope and trod deliberately over the rain-washed gra.s.s to the door of his foster home. Standing on the sill, he looked about him. It had rained hard during the past week, and pools of fresh water stood here and there. In one of them, something white showed. He stooped to it, and his hand met bone.

For a shrinking second he paused, then with a sudden movement grasped the thing, and lifted it. A fragment of bone, but whether animal or human he could not tell. He stood with it in his hand, trying deliberately to let it conjure up emotion or memory. But time and weather had done their work; it was cleansed,, sterile, indifferent as the stones on the storm beach. Whatever those people, that life, had been, it was over. He dropped the bone back in the flooded crevice, and turned away.

Before he climbed the path again he stood looking out to sea. Free he was now, in one sense; but what his whole being longed for was the freedom that lay beyond that barrier of water. Still something in his spirit beat itself against the s.p.a.ce of air that lay between the Orkneys and the mainland kingdoms that were the High Kingdom.

"I'll go there," he said to the wind. "Why else did it all happen as it did? I'll go there, and see what can be made of a b.a.s.t.a.r.d prince from Orkney. She can't stop me. I'll take the next ship."

Then he turned his back on the cove, and went home to the palace.

7.

IT WAS NOT WITH THE NEXTship, or even in the next year, that the chance came. In the event Mordred, true to his nature, was content to watch and bide his time. He would go, but not until something was a.s.sured for him. He well knew how little chance there was in the world beyond the islands for an untried and untrained boy; such a one would end - king's b.a.s.t.a.r.d or no - in penniless servitude or slavery. Life in Orkney was better than that. Then, in his third summer in the palace, a certain ship from the mainland put into harbour, and it became, suddenly, interesting.

The Meridaun Meridaun was a small trader newly come from Caer y n'a Von, as people now called the old Roman garrison town of Segontium in Wales. She carried pottery goods and ores and smelted iron and even weapons for an illegal market run by the small smithies back of the barracks in the fortified port. was a small trader newly come from Caer y n'a Von, as people now called the old Roman garrison town of Segontium in Wales. She carried pottery goods and ores and smelted iron and even weapons for an illegal market run by the small smithies back of the barracks in the fortified port.

She also carried pa.s.sengers, and to the islanders who crowded to the wharf to meet her, these were of more interest even than the much-needed goods. Ships brought news, and the Meridaun Meridaun , with her mixed cargo of travellers, brought the biggest news for many years. , with her mixed cargo of travellers, brought the biggest news for many years.

"Merlin is dead!" shouted the first man off the gangplank, big with the news, but before the crowd, pressing eagerly nearer, could ask him for details, the next a.s.serted loudly: "Not so, good folk, not so! Not when we left port, that is, but it's true he's very sick, and not expected to see the month out...."

Gradually, in response to the crowd's clamour for details, more news emerged. The old enchanter was certainly very ill. There had been a recurrence of the falling sickness, and he had been in a coma - "a sleep like death itself" - and had neither moved nor spoken for many days. The sleep might even now have pa.s.sed into death.

The boys, with the townsfolk, had gone down to the wharf for news. The younger princes, eager and excited at the commotion and the sight of the ship, pressed forward with the crowd. But Mordred hung back. He heard the buzz of talk, the shouted questions, the self-important answers; noise surrounded him, but he might have been alone. He was back in a kind of dream. Once before, dimly in shadows somewhere, he had heard the same news, told in a frightened whisper. He had forgotten it till now. All his life he had heard tales of Merlin, the King's enchanter, along with tales of the High King himself and the court at Camelot; why, then, somewhere deep in a dream, had he already heard the news of Merlin's death? It had certainly not been true then. Perhaps it was not true now....

"It's not true."

"What's that?"

He came to himself with a start. He must, he realized, have spoken aloud. Gawain, beside him, was staring.

"What do you mean, it's not true?"

"Did I say that?"

"You know you did. What were you talking about? This news of old Merlin? So how do you know?

And what's it to us, anyway? You look as if you were seeing ghosts."

"Maybe I am. I - I don't know what I meant."

He spoke lamely, and this was so unlike him that Gawain stared still harder. Then both boys were shoved aside as a man pushed roughly through the press. The boys reacted angrily, then drew aside as they saw that the man was Gabran. The queen's lover called peremptorily over the heads of the crowd: "You, there! Yes, you, and you, too... Come with me! Bring what tidings you have straight to the palace. The queen must hear them first."

The crowd stood back a trifle sullenly, and let the news-bringers through. They went willingly with Gabran, important and obviously hopeful of reward. The people watched them out of sight, then turned back to the wharf, fastening on the next people to disembark.

These were traders, apparently; the first, by the look of the traps his man carried, was a goldsmith, then came a worker in leather, and last of all a travelling physician, whose slave followed him, laden with his impedimenta of boxes and bags and vials. To him the folk crowded eagerly. There was no doctor in these northern islands, and one went for ailments to the wise-women or - in extreme cases - to the holy man on Papa Westray, so this was an opportunity not to be missed. The doctor, in fact, lost no time in starting business. He stood on the sunny wharfside and started his rattling spiel, while his slave began to unpack the cures for every ill that might be expected to afflict the Orcadians. His voice was loud and confident, and pitched to overbear any rival attempt at business, but the goldsmith, who had preceded him off the ship, made no attempt to set up his stall. He was an old man, stooped and grey, whose own clothes boasted examples of a refined and lovely work. He paused at the edge of the crowd, peering about him, and addressed Mordred, who was standing near.

"You, boy, can you tell me - ah, now, I beg your pardon, young sir. You must forgive an old man whose sight is bad. Now I can see that you're quality, and so I'll beg you again of your kindness to tell me which is the way to the queen's house?"

Mordred pointed. "Straight up that street, and turn west at the black altar stone. The track will carry you right to the palace. It's the big building you can see - but you said your sight was poor? Well, if you follow the crowd, I think most people will be going there now, to get more news."

Gawain took a step forward. "Perhaps you know more yourself? Those fellows with their news from court - where were they from? Camelot? Where are you from yourself, goldsmith?"

"I am from Lindum, young sir, in the south-east, but I travel, I travel."

"Then tell us the news yourself. You must have heard, on the voyage, all that those men had to tell."

"Why, as to that, I heard very little. I'm a poor sailor, you see, so I spent my time below. But there's something those fellows there didn't mention. I suppose they wanted to be first with the news. There's a royal courier on board. He was as sick as I, poor fellow, but even without that, I doubt if he'd have shared his tidings with ordinary folk like us."

"A king's courier? When did he come aboard?"

"At Glannaventa."

"That's in Rheged?"

"That is so, young sir. He hasn't disembarked yet, has he, Ca.s.so?"

This to the tall slave who stood behind him carrying his baggage. The man shook his head. "Well, he'll be going straight up to the palace, too, you can be sure of that. If you want hot news, young sirs, you'd best follow. As for me, I'm an old man, and as long as I can follow my trade, the world can pa.s.s me by.

Come, Ca.s.so, you heard? Up that path yonder as far as the black altar stone. Then turn east."

"It's west," said Mordred, quickly, to the slave. The man nodded, smiling, then took his master's arm and guided him up the rough steps towards the road. The pair trudged off and were lost to sight behind the hut where the harbour master lived.

Gawain was laughing. "Well, the palace ram has made a mistake this time! To escort a couple of tale-bearers up to the queen and not even wait to hear that there was a king's courier on board! I wonder-"

He did not finish the sentence. Some shouts and a fuss on deck indicated the approach of someone important. Presently a man came up from below, well dressed and smoothly bartered, but still pallid with sea-sickness. At his belt was a messenger's pouch, with its lock and seal. He trod importantly down the gangplank. Distracted from the physician, some of the crowd moved towards him, the boys with them, but they were disappointed. The courier, ignoring everyone, and refusing to answer any questions, climbed the steps and headed at a fast pace for the palace. As he cleared the last huts of the township he was met by Gabran, hurrying, this time with a royal escort of men-at-arms.

"Well, she knows now," said Gawain. "Come on, hurry," and the boys trotted uphill in the messenger's wake.

The letter that the courier bore came from the queen's sister Morgan, Queen of Rheged.

There was little love lost between the two ladies, but a stronger bond than love united them: hatred of their brother Arthur the King. Morgause hated him because she knew that Arthur loathed and feared the memory of the sin she had led him to commit with her; Morgan because, though married to a great and warlike king, Urbgen, she wanted at the same time a younger man and a greater kingdom. It is human to hate those whom, blameless, we hope to destroy, and Morgan was prepared to betray both brother and husband to achieve her desires.

It was of the first of these desires that she wrote to her sister. "You remember Accolon? I have him now.

He would die for me. And needs must, perchance, should Arthur or that devil Merlin come to hear of my plans. But rest easy, sister; I have it on authority that the enchanter is sick. You will know that he has taken a pupil into his house, a girl, daughter of Dyonas of the River Islands, who was one of the Ladies of the Lake convent at Ynys Witrin. Now they say she is his mistress, and that in his weakness she strives to learn his power from him, and is in a fair way to steal it all, and suck him dry and leave him bound for ever. I know that men say the enchanter cannot die, but if this tale be true, then once Merlin is helpless, and only the girl Nimue stands in his place, who is to say what power we true witches cannot grasp for ourselves?"

Morgause, reading by her window, made a mouth of impatience and contempt. "We true witches." If Morgan thought that she could even touch the edges of Morgause's art, she was an over-ambitious fool.

Morgause, who had guided her half-sister's first steps in magic, could never be brought to admit, even to herself, that Morgan's apt.i.tude for sorcery had already led her to surpa.s.s the witch of Orkney, with her s.e.x potions and poisonous spells, by almost as much as Merlin in his day had surpa.s.sed them both.

There was not much more to the letter. "For the rest," Morgan had written, "the country is quiet, and this means, I fear, that my lord King Urbgen will soon be home for the winter. There is talk of Arthur's going to Brittany, in peace, to visit with Hoel. For the present he stays at Camelot in wedded bliss, though there is still no sign of an heir."

This time Morgause, reading, smiled. So the G.o.ddess had heard her invocations, and savoured her sacrifices. The rumours were true. Queen Guinevere was barren, and the High King, who would not put her away, must remain without an heir of his body. She glanced out of the window. There he was, the one who was supposed, all those years ago, to have been drowned. He was standing with the other boys on the flat turf outside the walls, where the goldsmith's servant had set up his master's sleeping tent and stove, and the old man chatted with the boys as he laid out his implements.

Morgause turned abruptly from the window, and at her call a page came running.

"That man outside the walls, he's a goldsmith? Just come with the ship? I see. Then bid him bring some work to show me. If he is skilled, then there will be work for him here, and he will lodge within the palace. But the work must be good, fit for a queen's court. Tell him that, or he need not trouble me."

The boy ran. The queen, the letter lying in her lap, looked out beyond the moorland, beyond the green horizon where the sky reflected the endless shining of the sea, and smiled, seeing again the vision she had had, shrined in the crystal, of Camelot's high towers, and herself, with her sons beside her, carrying to Arthur the rich gifts that would be her pa.s.s to power and favour. And the richest gift of all stood there below her window: Mordred, the High King's son.

Though as yet only the queen knew it, it was to be the boys' last summer together in the islands, and it was a lovely one. The sun shone, the winds were warm and moderate, the fishing and hunting good. The boys spent their days out in the air. For some time now, under Mordred's tuition, they had even taken to the sea, something that the islanders did not readily do for sport, since the currents, at that meeting-place of two great seas, were fickle and dangerous. To begin with, Gaheris was seasick, but was ashamed to let the "fisher-brat" get the better of him, so persisted, and in time became a pa.s.sable sailor. The other three took to sailing like gulls to the wave-tops, and a new respect grew up between the "real princes"

and the elder boy, when they saw how well and with what authority he handled a boat in those difficult waters. His seamanship, it is true, was never tried in rough weather; the queen's indulgence would have come to a speedy end if there had been any evidence of real risk; so the five of them held their tongues about the moments of excitement, and did their exploring of the coastlines unrebuked. If Morgause's counsellors knew better than she what risks were run even in summer weather, they said nothing to Morgause; Gawain would be king one of these days, and his favour was already courted. Morgause, in fact, took little interest in anything beyond her palace walls, and "Witches don't like sailing," said Gareth, in all innocence of what his words implied. Indeed, the princes were proud, if anything, of their mother's reputation as a witch.

This showed itself in certain ways through that summer. Beltane the goldsmith and his slave Ca.s.so were housed in one of the palace outbuildings, and were seen daily working at their trade in the courtyard. This by the queen's commission; she gave them silver, and some small store of precious stones salvaged years ago from Dunpeldyr, and set them to fashioning torques and arm-rings and other jewels "fit for a king."

She told no one why, but word got about that the queen had had a magical vision concerning things of such beauty and price, and that the goldsmith had come - by chance, magic, what you would - to make reality catch up with the dream.

Beautiful the things certainly were. The old man was a superb craftsman, and more than that, an artist of rare taste, who had been taught - as he never tired of telling - by the best of masters. He could work both in the Celtic mode, those lovely patterns of strongly angled but fluid lines, and also in ways learned, so he said, from the Saxons in the south, with enamel and niello and metals finely worked as filigree. The finer work he did himself; he was so shortsighted as to be, for normal purposes, almost blind, but he could do close work with a marvellous precision. The larger work, and all the routine, was done by the man Ca.s.so, who was also permitted to take in repairs and other local commissions from time to time.

Ca.s.so was as silent as Beltane was garrulous, and it was some time before the boys - who spent long hours hanging around the stove when anything interesting was being done - discovered that Ca.s.so was in fact dumb. So all their questions were fired at Beltane, who talked and worked happily and without ceasing; but Mordred, watching almost as silently as the slave, saw that the latter missed very little, and gave, when those downcast eyes lifted now and again, an impression of intelligence far quicker than his master's. The impression was momentary, and soon forgotten; a prince had little thought to spare for a dumb slave, and Mordred, these days, was completely the prince, accepted by his half-brothers and - still to his puzzlement - high in the queen's favour.

So the summer wore through, and at the end of it the queen's magical prevision was justified. On a fine day of September another ship docked. And the news came that changed life for all of them.

8.

IT WAS A ROYAL SHIP.The boys saw it first. They had their boat out that day, and were fishing some way out in the firth. The ship came scudding with a fair wind, her sails set full, and the gilded mast flying a pennant that, though none of them had seen it before, they recognized immediately, with excitement. A red dragon on a background of yellow gold.

"The High King's standard!" Mordred, at the steering-oar, saw it first.

Gaheris, never one to control himself, gave a yell of exultation, as savage as a war-cry. "He's sent for us!

We are to go to Camelot! Our uncle the High King has remembered, and sent for us!"

Gawain said, slowly: "So she saw it truly. The silver gifts are for King Arthur. But if she is his sister, why should she need such gifts as those?"

His brothers paid no heed. "Camelot!" said Gareth, wide-eyed.

"He won't want you." you." That was Agravain, sharply. "You're far too young. She wouldn't let you go, anyway. But if our uncle the High King sends for That was Agravain, sharply. "You're far too young. She wouldn't let you go, anyway. But if our uncle the High King sends for us, us, how can she stop us?" how can she stop us?"

"You'd go?" That was Mordred, dryly.

"What do you mean? I'd have to. If the High King-"

"Yes, I know. I meant, would you want to go?"

Agravain stared. "Are you mad? Not want to go? Why on earth not?"

"Because the High King was never a friend to our father, that's what he means," put in Gaheris. He added, nastily: "Well, we can see why Mordred might not dare go, but the High King's our mother's brother, after all, and why should he be our enemy, even if he was our father's?" He glanced at Gawain.

"And that's what you meant, too? That she's taking all that treasure to buy herself back in?"

Gawain, busy with a rope, did not reply. Gareth, understanding only half of what was said, put in eagerly: "If she goes, too, then she will take me, I know she will!" "Buy herself back in!" Agravain repeated it explosively. "Why, that's folly! It's easy to see what's happened. It was that wicked old man Merlin who poisoned the High King's mind against us, and now he's dead at last, because you can bet anything you like, that's the news the ship brings, and now we can go to court at Camelot, and lead the High King's Companions!"

"Better and better." Mordred spoke more dryly than ever. "When I asked if you would want to go, I was remembering that you didn't approve of his policies."

"Oh, his policies," said Agravain, impatiently. "This is different. This may be a chance to get away from here, and into the middle of things. Just let me get there, to Camelot, I mean, and get half a chance to see some life and some fighting, and to h.e.l.l with his policies!"

"But what fighting will there be? That's the whole point, isn't it? That's what you were so angry about. If he is really set on making a lasting peace with Cerdic the Saxon, you won't see any fighting."

"He's right," said Gaheris, but Agravain laughed.

"We'll see. For one thing, I don't think even Arthur will get a Saxon king to agree to terms and keep them, and for another, once I get there, and within reach of any Saxon, treaty or not, there'll be fighting!"

"Fine talking," said Gaheris, with scorn.

"But if there's a treaty-" began Gareth indignantly.

Gawain interrupted. His voice was tense and even, overlying excitement. "Hold your tongues, the lot of you. Let's get back home and find out. At the very least it's news. Mordred, may we put about now?"

For Mordred, by consent, was always captain of their sea-going expeditions, as Gawain was of their forays by land.

Mordred nodded, and gave the orders for tr.i.m.m.i.n.g the sail. That he allotted the hardest tasks to Agravain may not have been coincidence, but the latter said nothing, hung on to the bucking rope, and helped to bring the lively boat about and send it skimming landwards, rocking in the spreading wake of the King's ship.

Whether or not the ship carried any message concerning the boys, a royal envoy had certainly been on board, and had gone ash.o.r.e before the ship was barely trimmed to the quay. Though he spoke to no one save for a brief acknowledgment of the courtesy meeting accorded him by the queen's chief men, part of his news was already known to the crew, and by the time the boys beached their craft and scrambled ash.o.r.e, the words were pa.s.sing from mouth to mouth with a knell of awe and dread, mingled with the poor folks' furtive excitement at the thought of such a momentous change in high places.

The boys crowded in, listening where they could, questioning those of the crew who were on the wharfside.