by Mary Stewart
"I prefer not to understand you, sister. You can hardly mean to accuse me—"
"Oh, come, Morgause! Everyone knows about that now! And here, in this very castle! Well, all right, it's a long time ago. But you surely don't think he's sent for you now for old times' sake? You can't be deluding yourself that he'll want you near him? Even with Merlin gone, Arthur won't want you back at court. Depend on it, all he wants is the children, and once he has them—"
"He won't touch Lot's children." Morgause's voice was raised for the first time, edged and sharp. "Even he would not dare! And why should he? Whatever quarrel lay between him and Lot in the past. Lot died fighting under the Dragon banner, and Arthur will honour his sons in consequence. He must support Gawain's claims, he can do no other. He will not dare let it be said that he is finishing the murder of the children."
Morgan was right beside the window. Her voice, pitched low, and rather breathless, was nevertheless quite clear. "Finishing? He never began it. Oh, don't look like that. Everyone knows that, too. It was not Arthur who had the babies massacred. No, nor Merlin, either. Don't pretend to me, Morgause."
There was a slight pause, then Morgause spoke with her old indifference. "Past history, like the other thing. And for what you said just now, if all he wanted was the boys, he need not have sent for me at all, only for them. But no, I am ordered to bring them myself to him at Camelot. And call it what you like, the escort is a royal one.… You will see, sister, that I shall take my rightful place again, and my sons with me."
"And the bastard? What do you imagine will happen to him? Or should I say, what do you plan to do with him?"
"Plan?"
Morgan's voice rose in sudden triumph. "Ah, yes, that's different, isn't it? That hit the center. There's danger there, Morgause, and you know it. You may tell what tale you like, but you only have to look at him to guess the truth.… So, the murder's out, and what happens now? Merlin foretold what would come of it if you let him live. The massacre may be past history, but who's to say what Arthur will do, now that he's found him at last?"
The sentence broke off as somewhere a door opened and shut. Footsteps sounded, and a servant's voice with some message, then the two queens moved away from the window. Someone else, the servant probably, came to the window and leaned out. Mordred kept close by the wall, in the deep shadow. He waited, perfectly still, till the oblong cast by the lighted window showed empty and bright on the lawn, then ran silently to the sleeping-chamber he shared with the other boys.
His pallet — he slept alone here — lay nearest the door, separated from the others by a stone buttress. Beyond the buttress Gawain lay with Gareth. Both were already asleep. From the far side of the chamber Agravain said something in a whisper, and Gaheris grunted and turned over. Mordred muttered a "Good night," then, without disrobing, drew a coverlet over himself and lay down to wait.
He lay rigid in the darkness, trying to school his racing thoughts and calm his breathing. He had been right, then. The chance that had taken him through the garden had proved it. He was not being taken south in honour, as a prince, but for some purpose he could not guess at, but which would almost certainly be dangerous. Imprisonment, perhaps, or even — the shrill malice of Morgan's voice made this seem possible — death at the hands of the High King. Morgause's patronage, for which until the night in the stillroom he had been grateful, seemed likely to prove useless. She would be powerless to protect him, and had in fact sounded indifferent.
He turned his head on the hard pillow, listening. No sound from the others except the soft regular breathing of slumber. Outside, the castle was still awake. The gates would still be open, but would soon be shut and guarded for the night. Tomorrow would see him back under escort with the Orkney party, bound for the ship, and Camelot, and whatever awaited him there. TheOrc might not even dock again before putting in to Ynys Witrin, where Arthur's ally King Melwas held the island for the King. If he was to escape, it must be now.
He was hardly aware of the moment when the decision was made. It seemed to be there ready, inevitable, awaiting only the moment. He sat up cautiously, pushing the coverlet back. He found his hands were shaking, and was angry. He was used to running alone, wasn't he? He had in a sense been alone all his life, and he would shift alone for himself again. There were no ties to break. The only tie of affection he had ever known had been swallowed by the flames on that night so many years ago. Now he was the wolf outside the pack; he was Mordred, and Mordred depended on Mordred, and on no man else, nor — and it was a relief to be rid of a half-suspicious gratitude at last — on any woman.
He slid off the bed, and in a minute or two had gathered his things together. A cloak of thick russet wool, his belt and weapon, the precious drinking horn, the kidskin pouch with the coins carefully saved over the years. He was in his best clothes; the rest were still on board theOrc, but that could not be helped. He piled the bedding so that, at a glance, it looked as if a sleeper was there, then let himself softly out of the room, and, heart beating high, found his way through the maze of empty corridors to the courtyard. All unknowing he passed the very room where the young Arthur had begotten him on his half-sister Morgause.
The courtyard, though well lighted at all times, was usually fairly empty at this time of night, when supper was done and men had gone to bed, or to the dice games round the fires. The guards would be there, and a foraging hound or two, but Mordred thought he could depend on slipping out through the shadows when the men's attention was elsewhere.
Tonight, though, late as the hour was, there was still a good deal of activity. A few men in servants' livery were standing around near the steps that led down from the main door of the castle. Among them were two whom Mordred recognized as the king's chief chamberlains. One of these, with a gesture, sent a couple of servants running with torches to the main gateway. This stood wide open, and the men ran through it to wait outside, lighting the way to the bridge. A light in one of the stables, and the sound of trampling hoofs and men's voices, indicated that horses were being saddled there.
Mordred drew back into the shadow of a deep doorway. The first shock of dismay gave way to hope. If guests were leaving the castle as late as this, he might be able, in the general coming and going, to slip out unremarked among their servants.
A stir and bustle at the head of the castle steps heralded the king's appearance there. He came out with his two sons, all three still dressed as they had been in the hall at supper time. There was a lady with them. Mordred, who had not yet seen Queen Morgan, wondered for a moment if this could be she, but this lady was dressed for travel, and her manner was by no means that of an erring wife who doubted her lord's forgiveness. She was young, and apparently unescorted save for a couple of armed servants, but she bore herself as if she was accustomed to deference, and it seemed to the watching boy that King Urbgen, as he spoke to her, inclined himself with a kind of respect. He was protesting something, perhaps asking her to defer her departure until a better time, but not (thought Mordred shrewdly) pressing it too hard. She thanked him with charm and decision, gave her hand to the two princes, then came swiftly down the steps as the horses were brought from the stable.
She passed quite close to Mordred's doorway, and he caught a glimpse of her face. She was young, and beautiful, but with a force and edge to her that, even in repose, was chilling. The veil that covered her dark hair was held in place by a narrow coronet of gold. A queen, yes. But more than that. Mordred knew straight away who this must be: Nimue, lover and successor to Merlin the King's enchanter; Nimue, the "other Merlin," the witch whom, for all their angry spite, he guessed that both Arthur's sisters feared.
Urbgen himself put her up on her horse. The two armed attendants mounted. She spoke again, smiling now, and apparently reassuring him about something. She reached her hand down to him, and he kissed it and stood back. She wheeled her horse towards the gate, but even as it started forward she reined in. Her head went up, and she looked around her. She did not se
e Mordred; he had pressed himself well back out of sight; but she said sharply, to the king: "King Urbgen, these two men leave with me, and no one else. See the gates shut after me, and set guards on your guest-chambers. Yes, I see you understand me. Keep an eye to the hen harrier and her brood. I have had a dream that one of them was fledged already, and flying. If you value Arthur's love, keep the cage locked, and see that they come safely to his hand."
She gave Urbgen no time to reply. Her heel moved, and her horse sprang forward. The two servants followed her. The king, staring after her, pulled himself out of some unpleasant abstraction, and snapped an order. The torchbearers came running in, and the gates creaked shut. Bars went down with a crash. The guards, with their lord's eye on them, stayed watchfully at attention. He spoke a few words with the captain on duty, then with his sons went back into the castle. The chamberlains and servants followed.
Mordred waited no longer. He dodged back through the shadows and made for the nearest door that would take him to the boys' side of the castle. This was a door giving on a corridor lined with workshops and storerooms. Here, at this hour, no one was about. He slipped through, and then ran.
His first thought was only to get back to his bedchamber before the guard was set on it, but as he ran up the corridor and saw the rows of doors, some locked, some latched only, some standing wide, he realized that here might be another way of escape. The windows. The rooms on his left looked straight out over the river bank. The windows would be high, but not too high for an active boy to jump from, and as for the river, it would not be a pleasant crossing at this season, but it could be made. He might even be lucky, and find the bridge unwatched.
He checked, glancing in through the nearest open door. Useless, the window was barred. The next door was padlocked. The third was shut, but not locked. He pushed it open and went cautiously inside.
It was a storeroom of sorts, but with a strange smell to it, and full of strange sounds, small uneasy
stirrings and twitterings and the occasional cheep and flutter. Of course. The queen's birds. The cages were housed here. He gave them barely a glance. The window was unbarred, but narrow. Too narrow? He ran to it. One of the cages stood on the wedge-shaped sill. He seized it in both hands to lift it to the floor.
Something hissed like a viper, spat, and slashed. The boy dropped the cage and jumped back, the back of his hand laid open. He clapped it to his mouth and tasted the spurt of salt blood. From the cage two blazing lamps glared green, and a low, threatening snarl began to rise towards a shriek.
The wildcat. It crouched at the very back of the cage, terrifying, terrified. The small, flattened ears were laid back, invisible in the bristling fur. Every fang showed. A paw was still raised, armed and ready.
Mordred, furious at the fright and the pain, reacted as he had been trained. His knife whipped out. At the sight of the blade the wildcat — instinct or recognition, it was the same — sprang immediately, furiously, and the armed paw raked out through the bars. Again and again it slashed, pressed against the cage wall, staying at the attack. Its paws and breast were bloody, but not with the boy's blood; someone had jammed a dead rat between the bars; the cat had eaten none of it, but the blood had splashed and congealed, and the cage stank.
Mordred slowly lowered his knife. He knew — what Orkney peasant did not? — a good deal about wildcats, and he knew how this one had been caught, after the dam and the rest of the brood were slaughtered. So here it was — it was little more than a kitten — so small, so fierce, so brave, caged and stinking for a queen's pleasure. And what pleasure? They could never tame it, he knew. It would be teased and made to fight, matched maybe with dogs that it would blind and then maul before they killed it. Or it would simply refuse food, and die. The rat had not been touched.
The window was far too narrow to let him through. For a moment he stood, sucking the blood from his hand, fighting down the disappointment that threatened to turn too shamefully to fear. Then with an effort he took command of himself. There would be another chance. It was a long way to Camelot. Once outside the castle, let them see if they could keep him prisoner. Let them try to harm him. Like the cat, he was no tame beast to wait caged for death to come to him. He could fight.
The cat slashed again, but could not reach him. Mordred looked around him, saw a forked pole, the sort the harvesters used for catching vipers, and with that lifted the cage and turned it with the door-hatch towards the window. The cage filled almost the whole space. He pushed the pole into the loop, and carefully raised the wicker hatch. The carcass of the rat rose with it, and the cat struck again, spitting, at this new moving danger. It found itself striking into air. For two long minutes it stayed perfectly still, no movement but the ripple of fur and the twitch of a tail, then slowly, stalking freedom as it would stalk its prey, it crept to the edge of the basket, to the edge of the sill, and looked down.
He did not see it go. One moment it was there, a prisoner, the next gone into the free night.
The other prisoner dragged the cage back from the window that was too small for him, threw it to the floor, and put the pole carefully back where he had found it.
There was already a guard on the bedchamber door. He moved his weapon to the ready, then, seeing who approached him, shifted uncertainly and grounded the spear again.
Mordred, expecting this, had slung the russet cloak round him, and underneath it clutched his effects close to him, hiding his injured hand. The guard could see nothing in his face except cool surprise.
"A guard? What's this, has something happened?"
"King's orders, sir." The man was wooden.
"Orders to keep me out? Or in?"
"Oh, in — well, that is, I mean to say, to look after you, like, sir." The man cleared his throat, ill at ease, and tried again. "I thought you was all in there, asleep. You been with your lady queen, then, maybe?"
"Ah. King's orders to report on our movements, too?" Mordred let a moment of silence hang, while the man fidgeted, then he smiled. "No, I was not with Queen Morgause. Do you always ask the king's guests where they spend their nights?"
The man's mouth opened slowly. Mordred read it all easily: surprise, amusement, complicity. He slipped his free hand into the pouch at his belt and took out a coin. They had been speaking softly, but he lowered his voice still further. "You won't tell anyone?"
The man's face relaxed into something like a grin. "Indeed, no, sir. Excuse me, I'm sure. Thank you, sir. Good night, sir."
Mordred slipped past him and let himself quietly into the bedchamber.
For all his caution, he found Gawain awake, up on an elbow, and reaching for his dagger.
"Who's that?"
"Mordred. Keep your voice down. It's all right."
"Where've you been? I thought you were in bed and asleep."
Mordred did not reply. He had a habit of quenching silences. He had discovered that if you failed to answer an awkward question, people rarely asked it twice. He did not know that this was a discovery normally only made in later life, and by some weaker natures not at all. He crossed to his bedplace, and, once hidden by the buttress, dropped his bundle on the bed, and his cloak after it. Gawain was not to know that under the cloak he had been fully dressed.
"I thought I heard voices," whispered Gawain. "They've set a guard on the door. I was talking to him."
"Oh." Gawain, as Mordred calculated, did not sound particularly interested. He probably did not realize that it was the first time in Rheged that such a guard had been set. He would be assuming, too, that
Mordred had merely been out to the privy. He lay back. "That must have been what woke me. What's the time?"
"Must be well after midnight." Mordred, winding a kerchief round his injured hand, said softly: "And we have to make an early start in the morning. Best get some sleep now. Good night."
After a while Mordred slept, too. Half a league away, in the edge of the vast tract of woodland that was called the Wild Forest, a young wildcat settl
ed into the crotch of an enormous pine tree and began washing its fur clean of the smell of captivity.
In the morning it was apparent that Nimue's warning had been extended to their escort. The soldiers saw to it that the Orkney party stayed together, and, with the greatest possible tact, made the close guardianship seem an honour. Morgause took it as such, and so did the four younger princes, who rode at ease, talking gaily with the guard and laughing, but Mordred, with a good horse under him and the open stretches of mainland moor beckoning from either side of the road, fretted and was silent.
All too soon they reached the harbour. The first thing to be noticed was that theOrc rode alone at the wharfside. The Sea Dragon, explained the escort's captain, had suffered only slight storm damage, so had held on her way south; he and the armed escort were to sail with the party in theOrc . Morgause, annoyed, but beginning to be apprehensive and so not daring to show it, acquiesced perforce, and they boarded the ship. This was now a little too crowded for comfort, but the winds had abated, and the passage out of the Ituna Estuary and southward along the coast of Rheged was smooth and even enjoyable.
The boys spent their time on deck, watching the hilly land slide past. Gulls slanted and cried behind the ship. Once they threaded a fleet of fishing boats, and once saw, in a small inlet of the hilly coast, some men on ponies herding cattle ("Probably stolen," said Agravain, sounding approving rather than otherwise), but apart from that, no sign of life. Morgause did not appear. The sailors taught the boys to tie knots, and Gareth tried to play on a little flute one of them had made from reeds. They all improvised fishing lines, and had some success, and in consequence ate good meals of fresh-baked fish. The princes were in wild spirits at the adventure, and at the dazzling prospect, as they saw it, in store for them. Even Mordred managed at times to forget the cloud of fear. The only fly in the ointment was the silence of the escort. The boys questioned the soldiers — the princes with innocent curiosity, Mordred with careful guile — but the men and their officers were as uncommunicative as the royal envoy had been. About the High King's orders or plans for their future they learned nothing.