by Mary Stewart
The King, with most of the court, lived in the palace outside the fortress walls. Many of his knights had lodgings within the fort, and so, to begin with, had the Orkney boys. They were still lodged apart, with some of Arthur's servants doing duty alongside the people brought from Orkney. Gabran, to his own obvious discomfort, had had perforce to remain with the boys; there had naturally been no question of his being allowed to follow Morgause to Amesbury. Gawain, still smarting from the painful mixture of shame on his mother's behalf and jealousy on his own, lost no opportunity of letting the man see that now he had no standing at all. Gaheris followed suit, but more openly, as was his habit, adding insults where he could to contempt for his mother's displaced lover. The other two, less conscious perhaps of Morgause's sexual vagaries, scarcely noticed him. Mordred had other things on his mind.
But days passed, and nothing happened. If Merlin, back from the dead, was indeed planning to spur Arthur to revenge on Morgause and her family, he was in no hurry to do so. The old man, weakened by the events of the summer and autumn, kept mainly to the rooms allotted to him in the King's house. Arthur spent a good deal of time with him, and it was known that Merlin had attended one or two of the meetings of the privy council, but the Orkney boys saw nothing of him.
It was said that Merlin himself had advised against a public homecoming. There was no announcement, no scene of public rejoicing. As time went on, people came simply to accept his presence among them again, as if the "death" of the King's cousin and chief adviser, and the country-wide mourning, had been another and more elaborate example of the enchanter's habit of vanishing and reappearing at will. They had always known, men said wisely, that the great enchanter could not die. If he had chosen to lie in a death-like trance while his spirit visited the halls of the dead, why, then, he had come back wiser and more powerful than ever. Soon he would go back to his hollow hill again, the sacred Bryn Myrddin, and there he would remain, invisible at times maybe, but nevertheless present and powerful for those to call on who needed him.
Meantime, if Arthur had yet found time to discuss the Orkney boys — that Mordred was by far the most important of these none of them of course guessed — nothing was said. The truth was that Arthur, for once unsure of his ground, was procrastinating. Then his hand was forced, quite inadvertently, by Mordred himself.
It was on the evening before Christmas. All day a snowstorm had pre vented the boys from riding out, or exercising with their weapons. With the feast days, both of Christmas and the King's birthday, so near, no one troubled to give them the usual tuition, so the five of them spent an idle day kicking their heels in the big room where they slept with some of the servants. They ate too much, drank more than they were accustomed to of the strong Welsh metheglin, quarrelled, fought, and eventually subsided to watch a game of tables that had been going on for some time at the other end of the room. The final bout was in progress, watched, with advice and encouragement, by a crowd of onlookers. The players were Gabran and one of the local men, whose name was Llyr.
It was late, and the lamps burned low. The fire filled the room with smoke. A cold draught from the windows sent a gentle drift of snow to pile unheeded on the floor.
The dice rattled and fell, the counters clicked. The games went evenly enough, the piled coins being pushed from player to player as the luck changed. Slowly the piles grew to handfuls. There was silver in them, and even the glint of gold. Gradually the watchers fell silent; no more jesting, no more advice where so much was at stake. The boys crowded in, fascinated. Gawain, his hostility forgotten, peered closely over Gabran's shoulder. His brothers were as eager as he. The contest, in fact, showed signs of becoming Orkney against the rest, and for once even Gaheris found him self on Gabran's side. Mordred, no gambler himself, stood across the board from them, by chance in the opposing camp, and watched idly.
Gabran threw. A one and a two. The moves were negligible. Llyr, with a pair of fives, brought his last counter off and said exultantly: "A game! A game! That equals your last two hits! So, one more for the decider. And they are running for me, friend, so spit on your hands and pray to your outland gods."
Gabran was flushed with drinking, but still looked sober enough, and elegant enough, to obey neither of these exhortations. He pushed the stake across, saying doubtfully: "I think I'm cleaned out. Sorry, but we'll have to call that the decider. You've won, and I'm for bed."
"Oh, come on." Llyr shook the dice temptingly in his fist. "Your turn's coming. It's time the luck changed. Come on, give it a try. You can owe me. Don't break it up now."
"But I really am cleaned out." Gabran pulled his pouch from its hangers and dug into the depths. "Nothing, see? And where am I to get more if I lose again?" He thrust his fingers deep into the pouch, then pulled it inside out and shook it over the board. "There. Nothing." No coins fell, but something else dropped with a rattle and lay winking in the lamplight.
It was a charm, a circular amulet of wood bleached to silver by the sea, and carved crudely with eyes and a mouth. In the eye-holes were gummed a pair of blue river-pearls, and the curve of the grinning mouth had been filled with red clay. A goddess-charm of Orkney, crude and childishly made, but, to an Orcadian, a potent symbol.
Llyr poked at it with a finger. "Pearls, eh? Well, what's wrong with that for a stake? If she brings you luck you'll win her back and plenty else besides. Throw you for starters?"
The dice shook, fell, rattled to either side of the charm. Before they came to rest they were rudely disturbed. Mordred, suddenly cold sober, leaned forward, shot out a hand and grabbed the thing.
"Where did you get this?"
Gabran looked up, surprised. "I don't know. I've had it for years. Can't remember where I picked it up. Perhaps the—"
He stopped. His mouth stayed half open. Still staring at Mordred, he slowly went white. If he had announced it aloud, he could not have confessed more openly that he remembered now where the charm had come from.
"What is it?" asked someone. No one answered him. Mordred was as white as Gabran.
"I made it myself." He spoke in a flat voice that those who did not know him would have thought empty of any emotion at all. "I made it for my mother. She wore it always. Always."
His eyes locked on Gabran's. He said nothing more, but the phrase finished itself in the silence. Till she died. And now, completely, as if it had been confessed aloud, he knew how she had died. Who had killed her, and who had ordered the killing.
He did not know how the knife came into his hand. Forgotten now were all the arguments about a queen's right to kill where she chose. But a prince could, and would. He kicked the board aside, and the pieces went flying. Gabran's own knife lay to hand. He grabbed it and started up. The others, slowed with drink and not yet seeing more than a sudden sharp wrangle over the game, reacted too slowly. Llyr was protesting good-naturedly: "Well, all right. So take it, if it's yours." Another man made a grab for the boy's knife-hand, but Mordred, eluding him, jumped for Gabran, knife held low and expertly, pointing upwards to the heart. Gabran, as sober now as he, saw that the threat was real and deadly, and struck out. The blades touched, but Mordred's blow went home. The knife went deep, in below the ribs, and lodged there.
Gabran's knife fell with a clatter. Both his hands went to clasp the hilt that lodged under his ribs. He bent, folded forward. Hands caught at him and lowered him. There was very little blood.
There was complete silence now in the room, broken only by the short, exhausted breathing of the wounded man. Mordred, standing over him, flung round the shocked company a look that could have been Arthur's own.
"He deserved it. He killed my parents. That charm was my mother's. I made it for her and she wore it always. He must have taken it when he killed them. He burned them."
There was not a man present who had not killed or seen killing done. But at that there were sick looks exchanged. "Burned them?" repeated Llyr.
"Burned them alive in their home. I saw it afterwards."
"Not alive."
The whisper was Gabran's. He lay half on his side, his body curled round the knife, his hands on the hilt, but shrinkingly, as if he would have withdrawn it, but feared the pain. The silver chasing quivered with his harsh, small breaths.
"I saw it, too." Gawain came to Mordred's side, looking down. "It was horrible. They were poor people, and old. They had nothing. If this is true, Gabran… Did you burn Mordred's home?"
Gabran drew a deep breath as if his lungs were running out of air. His face was pale as parchment and the gilt curls were dark with sweat.
"Yes."
"Then you deserve to die," said Gawain, shoulder to shoulder with Mordred.
"But they were dead," whispered Gabran. "I swear it. Burned… afterwards. To hide it."
"How did they die?" demanded Mordred.
Gabran did not reply. Mordred knelt by him quickly, and put a hand to the dagger's hilt. The man's hands twitched, but fell away, strengthless. Mordred said, still with that deceptive calm: "You will die anyway, Gabran. So tell me now. How did they die?"
"Poison."
The word sent a shiver through the company. Men repeated it to each other, so that the whisper ran through the air like a hissing. Poison. The woman's weapon. The witch's weapon.
Mordred, unmoving, felt Gawain stiffen beside him. "You took them poison?"
"Yes. Yes. With the gifts. A present of wine."
None of the local people spoke. And none of those from Orkney needed to. Mordred said softly, a statement, rather than a question: "From the queen."
Gabran said, on another long, gasping breath: "Yes."
"Why?"
"In case the woman knew… guessed… something about you."
"What about me?"
"I don't know."
"You are dying, Gabran. What about me?"
Gabran, queen's minion, queen's dupe, told his last lie for the queen. "I do not know. I… swear it."
"Then die now," said Mordred, and pulled the knife out.
They took him straight away to the High King.
15
Arthur was doing nothing more alarming than choose a hound puppy out of a litter of six. A boy from the kennels had brought them in, with the bitch in anxious attendance, and the six pups, white and brindled, rolled yapping and wrestling with one another round the King's feet. The bitch, restless and uneasy, darted in repeatedly to pick up a pup and restore it to the basket, but before she had grabbed another, the first would clamber straight out and re-join the tumble on the floor.
The King was laughing, but when his guards brought Mordred in, the laughter went out of his face as if a light had been quenched. He looked startled, then recovered himself.
"What is this? Arrian?"
The man addressed said stolidly: "Murder, sir. A stabbing. One of the Orkney men. This young man did it. I didn't get the rights of it, sir. There's others outside that saw it. Do you want them brought in as well, sir?"
"Later, perhaps. I'll talk to the boy first. I'll send when I want them. Let them go now."
The man saluted and withdrew. The hound-boy began to gather up the pups. One of them, a white one, eluded him, and, squeaking like an angry mouse, charged back to the King's feet. It seized a dangling lace in its teeth and, growling, worried it furiously. Arthur glanced down as the hound-boy pulled the pup away. "Yes. That's the one. To be named Cabal again. Thank you." The boy scuttled out with the basket, the bitch at his heels.
Mordred stayed where the men had left him, just inside the door. He could hear the guard outside being mounted again. The King left his chair by the leaping fire, and crossed to where a big table stood, littered with papers and tablets. He seated himself behind this, and pointed to the floor across the table from him. Mordred advanced and stood. He was shaking, and it took all his will-power to control this, the reaction from his first kill, from the hideous memory of the burned cottage and the feel of that weather-washed bone in his hand, and now the dreaded confrontation with the man he had been taught was a ferocious enemy. Gone, now, was the cool conviction that the High King would not trouble with such as he; Mordred had himself provided a just excuse. That he would be killed now, he had no doubt at all. He had brawled in a king's house, and, though the man he had killed was one of the Orkney household, and was justly punished for a foul murder, Mordred, even as a prince of Orkney, could hardly hope to escape punishment himself. And though Gawain had supported him, he would hardly go on doing so now that Gabran's confession had branded Morgause, too, with the murder.
None of this showed in the boy's face. He stood, pale-faced and still, with his hands gripped together behind his back where the King could not see their trembling. His eyes were lowered, his mouth compressed. His face looked sullen and obstinate, but Arthur knew men, and he saw the telltale quiver under the eyes, and the quick rise and fall of the boy's breathing.
The King's first words were hardly alarming.
"Supposing you tell me what happened."
Mordred's eyes came up to find the King watching him steadily, but not with the look that had brought Morgause to her knees in the roadway at Camelot. He had, indeed, a fleeting but powerful impression that the King's main attention was on something quite other than Mordred's recent crime. This gave him courage, and soon he found himself talking, freely for him, without noticing how Arthur's apparently half-absent questioning led him through all the details, not just of the killing of Gabran, but of his own story from the beginning. Too highly wrought to wonder why the King should want to hear it, the boy told it all: the life with Brude and Sula, the meeting with Gawain, the queen's summons and subsequent kindness, the ride to Seals' Bay with Gabran, the final hideous discovery of the burned-out cottage. It was the first time since Sula's death, and the end of his own childhood, that he had found himself talking
— confiding, even — in someone with whom communication was easy. Easy? With the High King? Mordred did not even notice the absurdity. He went on. He was talking now about the killing of Gabran. At some point in the tale he took a step forward to the table's edge, and laid the wooden charm in front of the King. Arthur picked it up and studied it, his face expressionless. On his hand a great carved ruby glimmered, making the pathetic thing the crude toy that it was. He laid it down again.
Mordred came to an end at last. In the silence that followed, the flames in the big fireplace flapped like flags in the wind. Again the King's words were unexpected. He spoke as if the question came straight from some long-held thought, that seemed, to the matter in hand, quite irrelevant.
"Why did she call you Mordred?" With all the familiar talk behind him, the boy hardly paused to think as he replied, with a directness that only an hour ago would have been unthinkable:
"It means the boy from the sea. That's where they got me from, after I was saved from the boat that you had the children put in to drown." "I?" "I heard since that it wasn't you, lord. I don't know the truth of it, but that is what I was told first." "Of course. That is what she would tell you." "She?" "Your mother." "Oh, no!" said Mordred quickly. "Sula never told me anything, not about the boat, or about the killings.
It was Queen Morgause who told me, much later. As for my name, half the boys in the islands are called
Mordred, Medraut.… The sea is everywhere." "So I understand. Which is why it has taken so long for me to locate you, even knowing where your mother was. No, I am not talking about Sula. I mean your real mother, the woman who bore you."
Mordred's voice came strangled. "You know that? You were — you mean you werelooking for me?
You actually know who my mother is — who I really am?" "I should." The words came heavily, as if loaded with meaning, but Arthur seemed to change direction, and added merely: "Your mother is my half-sister."
"Queen Morgause?"The boy gaped, thunderstruck. "Herself." Arthur left it there for the moment. One thing at a time. Mordred's eyes blinked rapidly, his brain taking in this astounding new fact, thinking back, thinking ahead.
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br /> He looked up at last. Fear was forgotten now; the past, even the recent past, forgotten also. There was a blaze behind his eyes that told of an almost overmastering excitement. "I see it now! She did tell me a little. Only hints — hints that I couldn't understand, because the truth never occurred to me. Her own son… Really her own son!" A deep breath. "Then that is why she sought me out! Gawain was only the excuse. I did think it strange that she should want to nurture one of her husband's bastards by some girl from the town. And even to show me favour! When all the time I was her own, and only a bastard because I was born before time! Oh, yes, I know that now! They had been wed barely eight months when I was born. And then King Lot came back from Linnuis and—"
A sudden complete stop. The excited comprehension vanished as if a shutter had dropped across his eyes.
More things were, coming together. He said, slowly: "It was King Lot who ordered the massacre of the babies? Because his eldest son had a doubtful birth? And my mother saved me, and sent me to Brude and Sula in the Orkneys?"
"It was King Lot who ordered the massacre. Yes."
"To kill me?"
"Yes. And to blame me for it."
"Why that?"
"For fear of the people. The other parents whose children did die. Also because, even though in the end he fought under my command, Lot was always my enemy. And for other reasons."
The last sentence came slowly. Arthur, still feeling his way towards the moment when the most important truth might be told, lent it a weight that might have been expected to set Mordred asking the question that had been fed to him. But Mordred was not to be steered. He was busy with his own long obsession. He took a step forward, to lean with both hands flat on the table and say, with intensity: "Yes, other reasons! I know them! I was his eldest born, but because I was begotten out of wedlock he was afraid that in days to come men might doubt my birth, and make trouble in the kingdom! It was better to be rid of me, and get another prince in wedlock, who might in due time take the kingdom without question!"
"Mordred, you are running too far ahead. You must listen."