‘I will go,’ said Mordred. ‘But presently I shall come again, from my crowning, and with the High King’s circlet on my head, for there is another matter on which I would speak with you.’
‘There is no other matter on which I have need to speak with you,’ said the Queen.
‘Ah, but there is: for it concerns you nearly. The matter of our marriage.’
Then the Queen did indeed cry out on him; a small, desperate cry, ‘Our marriage? Mordred, you are mad!’
Mordred reached out the mocking peacock’s feather and touched her cheek, and she jerked her head back as though from the touch of a hot coal. ‘Nay, I speak good sense. With you to sit beside me, my claim to the High Kingship will be the more sure – and you, my sweet lady, will still be the Queen.’
‘Mordred!’ the Queen cried in horror. ‘I am your father’s wife!’
‘Widow.’
‘Widow or wife, it is all one in this matter. I am your stepmother!’
‘A fat purse of gold to the Church, and the Church shall cut that tangle swift enough,’ Mordred said. And then, ‘Seeing that after all there is no shared blood between us as there was between my father and my mother.’
And looking into his eyes, the Queen understood for the first time the full depth of his hatred for the High King.
Somehow she wrenched her gaze from his, and made a great show of stooping to gather up her embroidery silks. She knew that she must play for time. ‘When the High King hears of this, he will come back –’ she began.
And Mordred said, ‘When the High King hears – if the High King hears – it will be too late.’
‘You must give me time,’ she whispered, ‘time to think – to pray …’
And Mordred said, ‘Surely I will give you time; all that lies between now and tomorrow’s morning. Think and pray as much as you wish, madam; in the end you must yield yourself to do as I will.’
And he turned and left the chamber.
The Queen stood where he had left her, alone and unmoving, until in a little while Nesta returned, white-faced, with the grievous news as she had heard it in the inner courtyard. Then the Queen opened her clenched hand; and the brilliant silks for the angels’ wings fell to the ground again, stained with blood where she had closed her hand upon the needle hidden within them without ever knowing it.
‘It is all lies,’ she said, ‘all lies.’ And she told the maiden of Mordred’s visit and what had passed between them; and when Nesta began to shiver and cry out what should they do, she said, ‘Peace, my maiden; I am thinking what we shall do. I am thinking now!’
She knew that she must get away from Camelot, where she was surrounded by men of Mordred’s following. At London, the royal castle was still held by Sir Galagars, an old and faithful knight of the Round Table, who she was sure would still be true to Arthur. If she could get there and put herself under his protection; under the protection also of Dubricius, the aged Archbishop, she might be safe. But before all else, she must get word to Arthur of his son’s treachery.
So she bade Nesta to bring her pen, ink and parchment, and set herself to write a letter, bidding the girl meanwhile to find a certain one among her household squires, and bring him to her with all speed, telling him nothing on the way lest they be overheard. She feared that already her own household might have been taken from her and replaced by Mordred’s men. But she had not yet finished her desperate letter when her maiden returned, and the squire Hew with her.
The young man knelt at her feet. ‘Oh, my lady – the King –’
‘The King is not dead,’ she said quickly, still writing. ‘It is all an evil plot of Mordred’s to seize the Crown and force me to wed with him.’ And while the squire gasped and stammered between astonishment and relief and fury, she finished the letter, warning her lord of what was going forward, and telling him also of what she herself planned to do. Then she folded it, and sealed the packet with a little engraved stone that hung among the jewels at her neck.
‘Hew,’ she said, ‘will you ride for me again, as you rode for me when Sir Meliagraunce had me captive in his power!’
‘To the world’s end, my lady!’ said the squire.
‘Nay, not so far. But to Benwick. Get out of Camelot this night and make for the south coast. Take the first ship you can find. I will give you journey-gold for the passage; also for a horse – it may be that you will have to escape from here on foot – and carry this to the High King with all speed!’
Even as she spoke, giving the packet into his eager hand, she heard a distant roar of voices from the Great Hall, and the bright neigh of trumpets, and knew that Mordred was already proclaiming himself High King.
That night, under cover of the first dark, the squire got out from Camelot as from an enemy camp, and headed for the south coast, bearing the Queen’s letter.
And in the morning Guenever, who had lain wakeful all night, bade her maidens to dress her in her finest blue-violet gown, and painted her eyes and her lips and put on her finest jewels. And when Mordred came again to her chamber, she received him sitting stately in her great cushioned chair beside the hearth. And she looked on him more kindly than ever she had done before, even though the golden circlet of the Pendragon was upon his head.
Mordred noticed the blue-violet gown and the jewels and the kinder aspect, and smiled within himself, thinking that he knew what they meant. ‘Madam, I had forgotten in the time since Lancelot went overseas how beautiful you are,’ he said. ‘You have been thinking of the matter of our marriage that we spoke of last night?’
‘I have been thinking,’ said the Queen. ‘Yesterday I was startled and angry and spoke in haste; but the more I thought, the more I came to see that since I am in your power and you can force me to do what you will, it would be but foolishness to struggle against you. Therefore –’ she smiled ruefully, speaking to him as though half in jest, in the words of a knight beaten in the joust to the victor who stands over him with a drawn sword – ‘I yield me, and cry your mercy … If Archbishop Dubricius gives us the Church’s leave, I will marry you – and as you yourself said, I shall still be the Queen.’
‘Madam, you are wise as well as beautiful!’ said Sir Mordred. ‘I will send word to the Archbishop within this hour. And a gift of gold.’
The Queen shook her head. ‘Sending word will not be enough. Nor will a gift of gold. I must speak with him myself.’
‘As you will,’ said Mordred. ‘I will have him sent for.’
‘Nay,’ said the Queen, ‘he is very old: too old to travel lightly, and of too high estate to be whistled for like a dog. If we are to gain his leave, I must go to him as a suppliant –’ And then, as she saw refusal in his face, ‘Give me until tomorrow’s morning to make ready for the journey; and if you fear that I plan some escape, send a strong escort of your own knights with me, so that you allow me also to have certain of my own maidens for my company. Indeed you have no more choice than I; for if I come to the Archbishop in supplication, and show myself willing for this marriage, it is in my mind that I shall win from him the Church’s leave. Then I will marry you, as I have said; but without the Church’s leave I cannot be your wife; and indeed our marriage would weaken, not strengthen, your claim to the High Kingship.’
So Sir Mordred yielded to the Queen’s demands; and next morning, with her favourite maidens about her, and a strong escort of Sir Mordred’s men, she set out for London.
Five days they were upon the journey, lodging in royal manors or in abbey guest-houses along the way. For the heavy ox-drawn cart with its cushions and tented tapestry hangings made slow travelling along the rutted roads that were still more like watercourses after the winter rains. And every lurching, jolting wheel-turn of the way, the Queen’s heart was out before her, straining towards the grey-walled castle that was her only hope of safety from the terrible fair-haired man behind her, and where she and Sir Galagars might make a strong point to hold for the rightful king. And always she wondered how it was with her youn
g squire; how far he had got on the way to Benwick; if he was on the way to Benwick at all, or lying dead in a ditch somewhere, and her letter already in Mordred’s hands.
When they reached London at last, she found that they were not to lodge in the King’s castle as she had always done, but in the royal manor, just outside the city. Her maidens looked at her with anxious eyes; but after she had had a little time to think, it seemed to the Queen that this was a difficulty easily overcome, and without the fighting in the outer courtyard that must have followed, had she ridden in through the castle gates to claim Sir Galagars’s protection with a score of Mordred’s men around her. She had been beyond caring that she was leading her escort into a trap, but the life of every man still loyal to her lord the King was precious to her, and some of them also would have died in the fighting.
The next day very early in the morning, the Queen bade horses to be brought round; for she and her maidens would go to pray at a certain shrine and holy well to Our Lady in the fields near Westminster, where she sometimes went when the King held his court in London. All her life, save in the fighting times, she had been used to ride abroad whenever she would, with no escort save a few of her ladies with her. And the knights of Sir Mordred’s following had no good reason to say her nay, especially with the steward and the manor people all around to hear. So the palfreys were brought round; and muffled close in thick-furred mantles against the chill March wind that blew upriver, the Queen and her maidens set out towards Our Lady’s shrine.
But as soon as they were beyond sight of the manor, they changed direction, turning into a narrow lane that led towards London and, setting their palfreys to a swifter pace, rode hard for the city and the royal stronghold, through the wind and the scurrying spring rain.
And so a while later those within the castle heard a great beating upon the main gate, and when it was opened, in rode a little company of wet and storm-blown women. And as the foremost of them flung back her hood, the men of the gate-guard knew her for the Queen.
‘Make the gates fast!’ she cried to them. ‘Enemies of my Lord the King will be here before long!’
They made haste to do her bidding, while pages and squires came to aid her and her maidens to dismount, and hard behind them Sir Galagars came swiftly to receive her. And when he heard what she had to tell, he was greatly wrath, and the castle was made secure to withstand all that Sir Mordred, now calling himself the High King, might bring against it.
And when the escort found how the Queen had escaped from them, they sent hurried word to Mordred, the usurper, and he gathered all the fighting men who were of his following and near at hand and sent out his summons to those who were further off to gather to him in London. And in a frenzy at seeing his smooth plans beginning to go awry, he rode for London with all speed, leaving the foot soldiers to follow after. And when he reached London, he sat down all about the castle to lay siege to it.
And he sent in heralds under the green branch with rich gifts for the Queen, bidding her leave this foolishness and come out to her wedding.
But the Queen sent back his gifts, the jewels and the rare perfumes and the pair of milk-white hounds, and with them her message, short and to the point, ‘Nay, I come not out from these walls, false traitor, for rather than wed with you, I will die by my own hand!’
Then came Dubricius the Archbishop, small and wizened with age, but with eyes like hot coals in his sunken face, and he entered Mordred’s camp, his clergy about him, and cried out upon the usurper, ‘Sir, what will you do? Will you first anger God and then shame yourself and all knighthood? The Queen is your father’s wife, and how may you wed with her without mortal sin?’
‘My father is dead,’ said Mordred, biting the words off one by one.
‘Even if that were true, still would she be your stepmother; still would a marriage between you be mortal sin!’
‘My father is dead,’ repeated Mordred. ‘And I am the new High King, with the High King’s powers. Therefore cease your prating, for I will silence you by having your head struck from your shoulders, if there is no other way!’
‘I do not believe that Arthur is slain,’ said the old man. ‘And I am not the only man in Britain to believe that this tale of his death is but a foul lie set about by yourself that you may seize his power in the land, and his Queen with all! I too can threaten, and I bid you to leave off from this evil, or I will curse you with bell and with book and with candle!’
‘Curse and be cursed to you!’ cried Mordred, and his silken smile had become a snarl; but he dared make no attempt against the old man, for there was a cold doubt in his heart whether even his own men would obey him if he ordered them to seize the Archbishop.
So the Archbishop withdrew to the great abbey church, and gathered the monks under their abbot and his own clergy about him. And there before the high altar where he had set the High King’s circlet upon Arthur’s head more than thirty years ago, he cursed Arthur’s son by bell and by book and by candle, cutting him off from all the rights and blessings of the Christian Church.
With all the forms and ceremonies of the Church, and with all the strength that was within himself, he cursed him; and when the cursing was finished, he was empty and spent, and knew that he was old; old beyond his Archbishophood, and the last of his strength for the battles of good and evil upon this earth was gone from him.
Then he thought of Merlin, who had stood with him on the day that Arthur was crowned: Merlin with his own strength spent, since then, long ago gone to his enchanted sleep. Not for him, Dubricius, that long quiet darkness under the magic hawthorn tree; but in his last years the quiet of loneliness and poverty and prayer. So he took his leave of those about him, and wearing the rusty habit of a poor monk, and mounted on a mule, he rode out from London city, none guessing as the threadbare and hooded figure passed them by that the great Archbishop rode that way.
And so he went, day by day, until he came to Avalon of the Apple Trees. And there he found the little wattle-built abbey church and its beehive cells surrounding it, that Joseph of Arimathea and his companions had built when first he came to Britain carrying the Holy Grail. Through all the years between, men had dwelt there, living a life of prayer and of help to the poor. But slowly their numbers had dwindled. The living-huts were empty now, and freshly turned earth lay over the grave of the last of the brotherhood.
And in London, Mordred sent again to the Queen, with gifts and fair speeches, begging her to come out to him; but she sent back the same answer as before, that she would die by her own hand before she became his wife. And then in wrath and growing fear, he set to lay siege to the castle in good earnest; and every day his war-host grew, as more and more of his following from up and down the land came in answer to his summons.
But still the royal castle held against them, and they could not come at the Queen.
And meanwhile, the squire Hew had reached Arthur’s camp before Benwick Castle, and brought the Queen’s letter to the King’s pavilion, where he sat late with Sir Gawain, whom he had summoned to share a cup of wine with him in the hope that he might yet be able to persuade him not to ride out again next morning against Sir Lancelot.
He took the letter from the mired and weary squire, and broke the seal, and read it through without a word. And without a word he gave it to Sir Gawain.
And while Sir Gawain read it also, there was silence within the tent; a core of silence amid the sounds of the camp and the bluster of the spring gale blowing outside. But when he reached the end of the letter, Gawain let out a great roar, baffled and grief-stricken like some wild thing in a trap, and flung the closely written parchment on the bed-place beside him and buried his battered head in his arms.
The King picked up the letter again, and gentled it in his hand because the Queen had written it and found means to send it to him, while at the same time grief and anger at the news it brought tore each other within him. And he sent his tent squires to beg this one and that among his war-leaders to come to h
im; and then began to ask the squire Hew for more details than were in the letter. And while he was doing so, Sir Gawain lurched to his feet and caught up his sword-belt that he had slackened off and laid beside him earlier, and began to buckle it on again, with furious haste, as though the enemy were in the windy dark outside the tent-flap.
And the King looked at him and said, ‘Sir Gawain, you are excused this warfare.’
But Sir Gawain raised bloodshot eyes to his face, and said, ‘Sir, of all the warfares and quarrels of my life, this is the one that I would least hold back from.’
‘It will be to fight your own brother; your last remaining brother.’
‘I have no brothers now!’ Gawain roared. ‘Mordred is more dead to me than all the rest. I am all that is left of the Orkney brood, and I am your man as I always have been.’
So next day the King’s camp was struck, and the war-host marched away towards the coast, Sir Gawain with the rest of them. And watching from the ramparts of Benwick Castle, with a puzzled frown between his brows, Sir Bors said to Sir Lancelot beside him, ‘Now what could draw them away so suddenly – unless it be ill news from Britain?’
‘Ill news or not,’ said Sir Lancelot, ‘it can be no matter that concerns us any more.’ But his eyes followed the last moving flicker of the distant rear-guard until it disappeared into the forest, and he would have given all that he had in life if it could have been his concern again.
The King and his army came to the coast, and when the hastily summoned fleet had gathered, they took ship again for Britain. But Mordred had got word of their coming; and when, after a stormy crossing, they drew at last to land at Dover, they found the usurper and all his rebel war-host waiting for them.
Then the King’s trumpets and the rebel trumpets crowed against each other in the wild spring dawn; and there began a great and terrible struggle that lasted all day, as the King’s men ran their ships ashore and sprang overboard into the shallows, and the rebels came charging out to meet them. A battle fought out in the grey swinging shallows of the Narrow Seas, and on the sloping shingle that was soon running red, and along the cliff paths and among the chalky hummocks and the coarse wind-shivered grass. Until at evening the cold spitting rain died out, and the skies broke up and let through a sodden yellow gleam and the King’s men gained the cliff-tops and swept them clear, as Mordred and his men gave back and broke, and streamed away into the eye of the wild sunset.
The King Arthur Trilogy Page 45