by Mary Stewart
She asked suddenly: "Have you never wondered who your own mother was?"
"Why, yes. Yes, of course. But—"
"I ask only because there were, in Dunpeldyr, many women who boasted of having the Sight. Was your dam, I wonder, one of those? Do you have dreams, Mordred?"
He was shivering. Through his brain went all the dreams, dreams of power and nightmares of the past: the burned cottage, the whispers in the gloom, fear, suspicion, ambition. He tried to close his mind against her probing magic.
"Madam, lady, I have never — that is—"
"Never known the Sight? Never had a dream of foreknowledge?" Her voice changed. "When the news came before of Merlin's death, with theMeridaun , you knew it was not yet true. You were heard to say so. And events proved you right. How did you know?"
"I — I didn't know, madam. I — that is—" He bit his lip, thinking back confusedly to the wharfside crowd, the shouting, the jostling. Had Gawain told her? No, Gabran must have overheard him. He licked his lips and tried again, patently struggling for the truth. "I didn't even know I had spoken aloud. It meant nothing. It's not the Sight, or — or what you said. It might have been a dream, but I think it was something I'd heard a long time ago, and it turned out then that it wasn't true, either. It makes me think of darkness, and someone whispering, and—" He stopped.
"And?" she demanded sharply. "Well? Answer me?"
"And a smell of fish," Mordred muttered, to the floor. He was not looking at her, or he would have seen the flash of relief, rather than mockery, in her face. She drew a long breath. So, no prevision there; merely a cradle memory, a half-dream from babyhood when those stupid peasants discussed the news that came from Rheged. But it would be better to make sure.
"A strange dream, indeed," she said, smiling. "And certainly this time the messengers are right. Well, let us make sure. Come with me." Then, when he did not move, with a touch of impatience: "Come when I bid you. We shall look into the crystal together now, and maybe we shall find what the future holds for you."
She left the moonlit window and went by him with a brush of velvet on his bare arm, and a faint disbreath of scent like night-flowers. The boy drew an unsteady breath and followed her, like someone drugged. Outside the doorway the guards stood motionless. At the queen's gesture Mordred lifted a lamp down from the wall, then followed her as she led the way through the silent rooms and into the antechamber, where she paused before the sealed doorway.
During his years at the palace the boy had heard many tales about what lay beyond the ancient door. It was a dungeon, a torture chamber, a place where spells were woven, the shrine where the witch-queen spoke with the Goddess herself. No one knew for sure. If anyone but the queen had ever passed through that doorway, it was certain that only the queen had ever come out again. He began to tremble again, and the flame shook in the lamp.
Morgause did not speak. She lifted a key that hung on a chain from her girdle, and unlocked the door. It opened in silence on its greased hinges. At a gesture from her, Mordred held the lamp high. Before them a flight of stone steps led steeply downwards into a passageway. The walls glimmered in the lamplight, sweating with damp. Walls and steps alike were of rough rock, unchiselled, the living rock into which the Old People had burrowed for their burial chambers. The place smelled fresh and damp, and salty from the sea.
Morgause pulled the door shut behind them. The lamp guttered in the draught and then burned strongly. She pointed, in silence, then led the way down the steps and along a passageway, straight and smoothly floored, but so low that they had to stoop to avoid striking their heads on the roof. The air of the place was dead, and one would have said still, but all the while there was a sound that seemed to come from the rock itself: a murmur, a hum, a throb, which Mordred suddenly recognized. It was the sound of the sea, echoing through the passageway more like a memory of waters that had once washed there, than like the sound of the living sea without. The two of them seemed to be walking into the corridors of a vast sea-shell whose swirling echo, straight from the depths, was breathed now by the air. It was a sound he had heard many a time, as a child, playing with shells on the beach of Seals' Bay. Momentarily, the memory dispelled the darkness and the drug of fear. Soon, surely, thought the boy, they would come out into a cave on the open shore?
The passage twisted to the left, and there, instead, was another low door. This, too, was locked, but answered to the same key. The queen led the way in, leaving the door open. Mordred followed her.
It was no cave, but a small room, its walls squared and smoothed by masons, its floor made of the familiar polished slabs. There was a lamp hanging from the rocky ceiling. Against one wall stood a table, on which were boxes and bowls and sealed jars with spoons and pestles and other instruments of ivory and bone, or of bronze bright with use. Stone slabs had been set into the walls to make shelves, and on them stood more boxes and jars, and bags of leather tied with lead wire and stamped with some seal he did not recognize, of circles and knotted snakes. A high stool stood by the table, and against another wall was a small stove, with beside it a skep of charcoal. A fissure in the roof apparently served to lead the fumes away. The stove must be lit frequently, or had been very recently. The room was dry.
On a high shelf glimmered a row of what Mordred took to be globes or jars made of a strange, pale pottery. Then he saw what they were: human skulls. For a sickening moment he imagined Morgause distilling her drugs, here in her secret stillroom, and making her magic from human sacrifices, the dark Goddess herself shut away in her subterranean kingdom. Then he saw that she had merely tidied away the original owners of the place, when the gravechamber had been converted to her use.
It was bad enough. The lamp quivered in his hand again, so that the sheen on the bronze knives trembled, and Morgause said, half smiling: "Yes. You do well to be afraid. But they do not come in here."
"They?"
"The ghosts. No, hold the lamp steady, Mordred. If you are to see ghosts, then be sure to be as well armed against them as I."
"I don't understand."
"No? Well, we shall see. Come, give me the light."
She took the lamp from him and walked towards the corner beyond the stove. Now he saw that there, too, was a door. This one, of rough driftwood planks, was narrow and high, shaped irregularly like a wedge; it had been made to fit another natural fissure in the rock walls. It came open with the creak of warped wood, and the queen beckoned the boy through.
This at last was the sea-cave, or rather, some inner chamber of it. The sea itself drove and thundered somewhere near at hand, but with the hollow boom and suck of a spent force whose power has been broken elsewhere.
This cavern must be above all but the highest tides; the floor was flat, and dry, its slabs tilted only slightly towards the pool that stood at the cavern's seaward side. The only outlet must be deep under the water. No other was visible.
Morgause set the lamp down at the very edge of the water. Its light, still in the draughtless air, glowed steadily, down and down into the inky depths of the water. It must be some time since the pool had been disturbed by any stray pulse of the tides. It lay still and black, and deep beyond imagination or sight. No light could penetrate that black liquid; the lamplight merely threw back, sharp and small, the reflection of the rock that overhung the water.
The queen sank to her knees at the pool's edge, drawing Mordred down beside her. She felt him trembling.
"Are you still afraid?"
Mordred said, through shut teeth: "I am cold, madam."
Morgause, who knew that he was lying, smiled to herself. "Soon you will forget that. Kneel there, pray to the Goddess, and watch the water. Do not speak again until I bid you. Now, son of the sea, let us learn what the pool has to tell us."
She fell silent herself at that, and bent her gaze on the inky depths of the pool. The boy stayed as still as he could, staring down at the water. His mind still swam in confusion; he did not know whether he hoped more, or dreaded
more, to see anything in that dead crystal. But he need not have feared. For him, the, water was only water.
Once he stole a glance sideways at the queen. He could not see her face. She was bowed over the water, and her hair, unbound, flowed down to make a tent of silk that reached and touched the surface of the pool. She was so still, so tranced, that even her breathing did not stir the surface where her hair trailed like seaweed. He shivered suddenly, then turned back and stared fiercely down into the water. But if the ghosts of Brude and Sula and of the score of murdered babies that lay to Morgause's account were present in that cave, Mordred saw no hint of them, felt no cold breath. He only knew that he hated the darkness, the tomb-like stillness, the held breath of expectation and dread, the slight but unmistakable emanations of magic that breathed from Morgause's trance-held body. He was Arthur's son, and though the woman, with all her magic, could not know it, this short hour when he was made privy to her secrets was to sever him from her more completely than banishment. Mordred himself was not aware of this; he only knew that the distant suck and thunder of the sea spoke of the open air, and wind, and light on the tide's foam, and drew him irresistibly away in spirit from the dead pool and its drowned mysteries.
The queen moved at last. She drew a long, shuddering breath, then pushed back her hair, and stood up. Mordred jumped thankfully to his feet and hurried to the door, pulling it open for her and following her through the wedge-shaped gap with a sense of relief and escape. Even the stillroom, with its gruesome watchers, seemed, after the silence of the cave, the tranced breathings of the witch, as normal as the palace kitchens. Now he could catch the smell of the oils that Morgause blended to make her heavy perfumes. He latched the door thankfully, and turned to see her setting the lamp down on the table.
It seemed that she already knew the answer to her question, because she spoke lightly.
"Well, Mordred, now you have looked into my crystal. What did you see?"
He did not trust himself to speak. He shook his head.
"Nothing? Are you telling me that you saw nothing?"
He found his voice. It came hoarsely. "I saw a pool of sea-water. And I heard the sea."
"Only that? With the pool so full of magic?" She smiled, and he was surprised. Foolishly, he had expected her to be disappointed.
"Only water, and rock. Reflections of rock. I — I did think once that I saw something move, but I thought it was an eel."
"The fisherman's son." She laughed, but this time the epithet held no mockery. "Yes, there is an eel. He was washed in last year. Well, Mordred, boy from the sea, you are no prophet. Whatever power your true mother may have had, it has passed you by."
"Yes, madam." Mordred spoke with patent thankfulness. He had forgotten what message she had bidden him look for in the crystal. He was wishing violently that the interview was over. The acrid smell of lamp oil mingling with the heavy scents of the queen's unguents oppressed him. His head swam. Even the sound of the sea seemed a whole world away. He was trapped in this shutaway silence, this ancient and airless tomb, with this sorceress of a queen who puzzled him with her questions, and confused him with her strange and shifting moods. She was watching him now, a strange look that made him shift his shoulders as if all at once he felt himself a stranger to the body inside his clothes. He said, more to break the silence than because he wanted to know: "Did you see anything in the pool, madam?"
"Indeed, yes. It was still there, the vision that I saw yesterday, and before that, before Arthur's messenger ever came here." Her voice went deep and level, but found no echo in that deadened air.
"I saw a crystal cave, and in it my enemy, dead and on his bier between the candles, and no doubt rotting away into the forgetfulness I once cursed him with. And I saw the Dragon himself, my dear brother Arthur, sitting among his gilded towers, beside his barren queen, waiting for his ship to come back to Ynys Witrin. And then myself, with my sons, and with you, Mordred, all of us together, bearing gifts for the King and within the gates of Camelot at last… at last.… And there the vision faded, but not before I saw him coming, Mordred, the Dragon himself… a dragon wingless now, and ready to listen to other voices, try other magic, lie down with other counsellors."
She laughed then, but the sound was as discomforting as her look. "As he did once before. Come here, Mordred. No, leave the lamp alone. We will go up in a minute. Come here. Nearer."
He approached and stood in front of her. She had to look up to meet his eyes. She put up her hands and took him by the arms. "As he did once before," she repeated, smiling.
"Madam?" said the boy hoarsely.
Her hands tightened on his arms. Then suddenly she drew him to her, and before he could guess at what she purposed she reached up and kissed him, lingeringly, upon the mouth.
Bewildered, half-excited, aroused by her scent and the unexpectedly sensual kiss, he stood in her grip, trembling, but not this time with either cold or fear. She kissed him again, and her voice was honey-sweet against his lips. "You have your father's mouth, Mordred."
Lot's mouth? Her husband's, who had betrayed her by lying with his mother? And she kissed him? Wanted him, perhaps? Why not? She was a lovely woman still, and he was young, and as experienced sexually as any boy of his age. There was a certain lady of the court who had taken pleasure in teaching him pleasure, and there was also a girl, a shepherd's daughter who lived a few miles from the palace, who watched for him when he rode that way across the heather, with the evening wind blowing in from the sea.… Mordred, brought up in islands as yet untouched either by Roman civilization or Christian ethic, had no more sense of sin than a young animal, or one of the ancient Celtic gods who haunted the cairns and rode by like rainbows on sunny days. Why, then, should his body recoil, rather than respond to hers? Why feel as if, clingingly, something evil had brushed him by?
She pushed him away suddenly, and reached for the lamp. She lifted it, then paused, looking him over slowly with that same discomforting look. "Trees can grow tall, it seems, Mordred, and still be saplings. Too much, perhaps, yet not enough your father's son.… Well, let us go. I to where my patient Gabran waits for me, and you to your child's bed with the other children. Do I need to remind you to say nothing about anything that has befallen this night, or anything I have said?"
She waited for a reply. He managed to say:
"About this, madam? No. No."
"This"? What is "this"? About anything that you have seen, or not seen. Maybe you have seen enough to know that I am to be obeyed. Yes? Well then, do as I bid you, and you will come to no harm."
She led the way in silence, and he followed her up the passageway and out into the antechamber. The key shot behind them in the well-greased wards. She neither spoke again nor looked at him. He turned and ran from her along the cold corridors and through the dark palace to his bedchamber.
During the days that followed, Mordred tried, along with the other boys, and half the Orcadians besides, to come near enough to the King's envoy to have speech with him. In the case of the islanders, and the younger princes, it was a matter of curiosity. What was the mainland like? The fabled castle of Camelot? The King himself, hero of a dozen stark battles, and his lovely Queen? Bedwyr his friend, and others of the companion knights?
But all, princes and commoners alike, found it impossible to come near the man. After that first night he slept on board the royal ship, and disembarked daily to be escorted, ostensibly for a word of courtesy with Queen Morgause, but really, rumour had it, to make sure that her preparations went forward fast enough to catch the good autumn weather.
The queen was not to be hurried. Her ship, theOrc, lay by the wharf, ready in all but the last touches. Workmen busied themselves with the final gilding and painting, while their women stitched at the great decorated sail. In the palace itself Morgause's own women busied themselves with the finishing, tending and packing of the sumptuous clothes that the queen planned for her reception at Camelot. Morgause herself spent many hours in her secret r
oom below the rock. She was not, as whispers went, consulting her dark Goddess, but in fact concocting unguents and lotions and perfumes, and certain subtle drugs that had the reputation of restoring beauty and the energy of youth.
In his corner of the courtyard, Beltane the goldsmith still sat at his work. The gifts for Arthur were finished, packed in wool in the box made to receive them; the old man was busy now with jewels for Morgause herself. Casso, the dumb slave who helped him, had been set to fashioning buckles and brooches for the princes; though he was not an artist like his master, he made a good job of the designs given him by Beltane, and seemed to enjoy the time the boys spent watching him and talking round the smelting-stove.
Mordred, alone of them all, tried some sort of communication with him, asking questions that needed no more than a nod or a shake of the head for answer, but he got no further than a few facts about Casso himself. He had been a slave all his life. He had not always been dumb, but had had his tongue cut out by a cruel master, and considered himself the most fortunate of men to have been taken in by Beltane and taught a trade. A dull life indeed, thought Mordred, and wondered—though only idly—at the air of contentment that the man visibly wore; the air, if the boy had recognized it, of a man who has come to terms with his limitations, and who has made a place for himself in life, which he fills with integrity. Mordred, who had had small reason during his life to think the best of any man, assumed merely that the slave had some sort of satisfactory private life which he managed independently of his master. Women, possibly? He could certainly afford them. When (his master safely abed) the slave joined in the soldiers' dice game, he always had coin in plenty, and easily stood his share of the wine. Mordred knew where the money came from. Not from Beltane, that was sure; who — apart from the odd gift — ever paid his own slaves? But there had been a day a month or so back when Mordred took a small boat out alone and went fishing, coming back late in the half-light that was all the night the islands knew in summer.