‘Your father has never mentioned you,’ I said. One last barb before I did what he had asked of me. ‘What is your name?’
‘My father does not know me well,’ he said, an admission which clearly hurt him. ‘But he will. He will know me and we shall be friends.’ He smiled then and there was some of his father’s charm in that smile. ‘As you and he are friends, Lancelot,’ he added. Then he lifted his chin. ‘My name is Mordred.’
‘Well then, Mordred ap Arthur ap Uther, come with me,’ I said, setting off across the open plateau which sloped gently towards the hill’s summit, upon which Arthur was building his hall.
‘Lancelot,’ Arthur called, straightening from the timber he had been smoothing with an adze. ‘You’ve come to do some real work?’ The hall seemed to be springing up from the grass, and hardly surprising for there were so many labourers and craftsmen planing and hammering, working pole lathes, shouldering beams here and there and sinking posts into holes cut in the limestone bedrock.
‘The young men need to be taught how to fight,’ I replied, smiling in spite of myself. I too was a young man and had not known Arthur long, yet it seemed we were old friends and I had missed him. Not that missing him made it any easier being there.
‘They do, they do,’ Arthur admitted, ‘but, Lancelot, there’s something about building. About making a thing from nothing.’ He gestured with the adze behind him, at the framework of timbers which more than hinted at his ambition. A quarter of it was already walled with wattle and roofed with golden thatch, so that with a little imagination it was possible to see the finished hall in the eye of your mind. Smoke drifted out into the day from that finished section where I knew Arthur and Guinevere spent the nights together. It sickened me to look at it.
‘It will be perfect,’ Arthur said, laying the adze on the timber and coming over to me. ‘Ten feet wide and sixty-three feet in length. Sixty-three!’ The same size as King Uther’s hall, I guessed. The same but no bigger, for Arthur was clever like that. He would not build a hall larger than King Uther’s, not until he had proved himself in the eyes of the other kings of Britain. But nor would this hall be smaller than his father’s, and I imagined him pacing out the Pendragon’s hall and keeping those calculations to himself. Storing them away until they were needed. Until now.
‘A fine place to hold our victory feasts,’ I said, catching a whiff of parsnips, onion and garlic. But Arthur was no longer looking at me. He was looking at the young man on the pony behind me. Not just looking. Scowling. And then I saw Guinevere. She stood inside the structure at the divide where the thatched roof gave way to the open sky, holding two cups which steamed in the chill morning air. I wondered how long she had been there, watching me as I spoke with Arthur.
‘Lord,’ I said, feeling the occasion required that formality which Arthur didn’t usually favour, ‘Mordred asked me to bring him to you.’ I tried to keep my eyes off Guinevere, though I felt hers on me.
‘Mordred,’ Arthur said quietly, as though feeling the shape of that name on his lips. Samhain was almost a moon behind us but Arthur looked as if he had seen a spirit from beyond the veil.
‘Father,’ Mordred said, and gestured in such a way as though he sought Arthur’s permission to dismount.
Arthur nodded. There were tears in his eyes.
Guinevere walked over and handed a steaming cup to Arthur, who took it without taking his eyes from Mordred. She gave the other to me and I took the moment to look her in the eye. We were so close I could have reached out and touched her arm. Her face. Her raven hair.
A shiver ran through me but I sensed Arthur turn and so snatched my eyes from Guinevere’s.
‘This is my son,’ Arthur told me, extending an arm towards Mordred. Then he looked at Guinevere. ‘My son,’ he said, raising his voice above the constant hammering and planing and the barking of instructions from Donaut, Arthur’s ham-armed chief builder. There it was, given to the day like a confession. But a confession to himself perhaps, or even to Mordred, for I could tell in Guinevere’s face, and by the way she nodded, that Mordred’s existence had not come as a surprise to her. Unlike me.
‘I am pleased to meet you, Mordred,’ she said with a smile, though what she really thought about coming face to face with this young man whom her husband had sired when she was just a little girl was hidden even from me.
‘None of us can say what the day will bring,’ Arthur said, knuckling a tear from his cheek as he watched his wife and son greet one another. ‘And this, my dear, is Lancelot. My truest friend.’ He smiled at me. ‘Who has been far too busy digging ditches and teaching young men how to fight, so that I have been wondering if he is avoiding me.’
‘Nonsense,’ I said and meant it. It was not Arthur I had been avoiding.
Guinevere smiled at me. ‘Then you are my true friend also, Lancelot,’ she said. ‘My husband speaks of you often. One day you must tell me the real story of how you came by Excalibur. The way Arthur tells it, the painted people saw his helmet and armour and Gawain’s big mare and thought Maximus had come back from the dead. That they just fetched Excalibur from some shrine and gave it to him. But I have heard talk of human sacrifice.’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘And of a pretty priestess.’ She looked at Arthur in a way that struck me like a blow beneath the ribs.
Arthur spread his arms wide. ‘We found the sword. With Merlin’s help,’ he added, glancing at me. ‘And we brought it back. There is not much else to tell.’
‘My husband is many things, Lancelot, but a bard is not one of them,’ Guinevere said. Then she turned to Mordred, who was watching me. ‘I will fetch you some spiced wine, Mordred,’ she said, and walked back over the unfinished threshold of her hall.
‘My son,’ Arthur said, shaking his head at Mordred as if he could still scarcely believe it. He stretched both arms towards Mordred, who stood for what seemed a long while. Too long, in truth, his face a battleground upon which suspicion and yearning fought. ‘Come,’ Arthur told him, inviting, his tear-brimmed eyes wide and full of wonder and pain, too. The heart-clenching pain of old grief.
Dropping his pony’s halter, Mordred strode across muddied ground blanketed white with sweet-smelling wood shavings, and threw himself into his father’s embrace.
‘I’m sorry,’ Arthur said, the words muffled by Mordred’s thick hair. ‘Forgive me, my son. I was young. So young.’
‘The gods spared me, Father,’ Mordred said, allowing Arthur to all but crush him against his shoulder and chest. When he broke his father’s clinch and pulled back so that their eyes could meet, Arthur nodded. It was strange seeing Arthur, whom I did not think of as so much older than me, looking at a younger reflection of himself. ‘They wanted us to find each other again,’ Mordred said. ‘To remake Britain together.’
Arthur glanced towards the thatched part of the hall, then frowned at Mordred. ‘And your mother? How is she?’ he asked in a low voice.
Their words were not meant for my ears, so I walked over to Donaut and tried to take an interest in his work. I asked him why there was a neat trench running from what would be Arthur and Guinevere’s private chambers, along the building by the far wall. It was a stupid question but the only one that came to me in the moment. Donaut was kind, considering. ‘No wonder you’re down there showing men how not to cut off their own damned legs, Lancelot,’ he said, revealing a smile that boasted all of four teeth. ‘That’ll be a passageway,’ he said, ‘along which Lord Arthur will stumble to his bed after his wine. Nothing makes a man so thirsty as killing Saxons.’ He looked over to where Guinevere stood ladling hot wine into a cup. ‘The lucky swine, eh?’ he added with a wink but only got a glower from me, at which the big man flushed then excused himself, cuffing a lad round the head for bringing him the wrong sized chisel and gouge.
So, I went to Guinevere.
I could hear the mumble of Arthur and Mordred talking in quiet voices beyond the wattle wall. In front of me, Guinevere was crouched by the hearth, feeding new sticks to the
flames above which a cauldron hung. The vegetable-smelling steam rose to seep into the new reed thatch above our heads.
‘It will be magnificent,’ I said, meaning the finished hall. My first words to her after so long. After countless reunions in my dreams. After so many imagined declarations, the first words I poured into the pain-filled void were about the home she would share with Arthur.
Guinevere stood, turning to me. ‘It will be, so long as my husband does not attempt anything more demanding than planing or digging holes,’ she said, her own first words innocuous to anyone else’s ears. Agony to mine for the ‘my husband’ in them.
The new fuel spat and popped as the flames worked into it. ‘Every time he tries his hand at some work which requires skill and patience, Donaut has to fix or replace it after, though he waits until Arthur’s back is turned.’ She smiled. I wondered how she could.
I let out a breath and just stood there, dumb as the roof post beside me, from which Guinevere had hung a bunch of dried lavender tied with a red ribbon. She saw me notice it.
‘Lancelot,’ Arthur called. I was looking at Guinevere, waiting for her to say something more. Wanting to speak myself but not finding the words. Her eyes flicked to the world beyond the new wattle wall, towards where Arthur waited, and so I stepped back out into the morning.
‘See how busy Mordred has been, Lancelot,’ Arthur said. He stood by Mordred’s blood-streaked pony, examining the heads tied to the saddle. ‘If anyone needed proof that Uther’s blood flows in the lad’s veins.’ He batted a hand at the flies then retreated away from them.
‘Even a blind man could see he is your son, Arthur,’ I said. Mordred was more like Arthur than Arthur was like Uther.
‘Lancelot suggested I had taken the heads from dead men,’ Mordred said, looking at me with a spite that I had never seen in Arthur’s eyes. Not when those other lords of Britain had disputed his right to rule in Dumnonia. Not even when the Picts had led him into the pool to drown him for their gods.
Arthur frowned and I shrugged.
‘Lancelot meant no offence,’ Arthur assured Mordred. I had meant plenty of offence but said nothing. ‘Which lord have you been serving?’ Arthur asked his son. ‘Who have you been fighting for?’
‘I’ve fought in Caer Celemion and Caer Went,’ Mordred said, thanking Guinevere for the cup of wine. The sword which he wore on his back was a rich man’s weapon, its iron pommel and guard encrusted in silver and the wooden grip boasting three bands of iron inlaid with silver. Even the polished wooden scabbard was fitted with bronze, at its mouth and at its end, in a chape cast from bronze to resemble a raven or crow’s head. He shrugged. ‘But for no lord. I fight for myself, Father. As I have always done.’
Arthur glanced at me and I saw his discomfort at Mordred’s intimation that he had grown up fatherless, but also because of what the young man had said before that. For warriors swear themselves to lords and serve them, and we have an instinctive distrust of a man who goes from lord to lord selling his sword for silver. Even the Guardians of the Mount, who protected traders for silver, were ultimately sworn to the Lady.
‘You are still very young, Mordred,’ Arthur said, as if this excused his son for having prowled Britain like a wolf driven from its pack. ‘And did the men you fought with know that you are my son?’ he asked.
Mordred shook his head. ‘I learnt how to kill in the thick of the fray, Father, with the Saxons’ reeking breath in my nose and their rancid guts beneath my feet.’ He thought nothing of speaking thus in front of a lady, not that Guinevere seemed to mind. ‘My sword sings and the crows leave their roosts on beating wing,’ he said, that little poesy meant for Guinevere, judging by the flush of his cheeks.
Still, more a bard than his father, I thought sourly.
‘And you thought if men knew you were my son and Uther’s grandson, they would shield you from the worst?’ Arthur asked.
Mordred shrugged.
In truth there was something admirable about that. And the dead faces on Mordred’s saddle were the faces of grown men, so that if he had killed them as he claimed, he did not lack for courage or skill. Certainly he had not found that sword just lying about. Besides which, he was Arthur’s son and if he intended to stay here at Camelot, then it would be better if I liked him. Easier for all of us.
‘If you will have me, I will fight with you, Father,’ Mordred said. ‘I’ll fight beside you and Gawain and Bedwyr.’ He glanced at me. ‘And Lancelot,’ he added, giving me a conciliatory nod.
‘If I will have you?’ Arthur said, shaking his head as he walked over to place his hands on Mordred’s shoulders. ‘If you will forgive me,’ he said. ‘I was so young.’ His fingers were white, so tightly did they grip Mordred. ‘The gods know how often I have thought of you, Mordred. How often I have wondered what might have been.’
I did not know what had happened between them or why Arthur expressed such guilt, but I would find out. Guinevere knew, though. I was sure of that.
Mordred’s lip quivered a little then, but he did not weep as his father had done. ‘I forgive you, Father,’ he said.
‘Then all will be well,’ Arthur said, pulling Mordred close again. ‘My boy,’ he said and laughed. ‘None of us can say what the day will bring, hey, Lancelot?’ he called above the dull beating of hammers and the rasp of saws.
None of us, I thought, saying nothing for fear my voice would crack. I just looked at Guinevere. It was as though I had been holding my breath in the years since I had last seen her, and now, when I should have been breathing in the very sight of her, there was no air.
She would not even look at me.
‘The soup will burn,’ she said. ‘Excuse me.’ With that she turned and walked back across the narrow trench where a wall soon would be.
20
Spear Song
WE FEASTED TO celebrate Mordred’s return. There was music and wine, mead and flesh and fire to defy the dark winter nights. Some cautioned Arthur against the extravagance. They said that come the spring, when the Saxons renewed their raids, we would need all the grain and smoked meats, honey and flour that we had stored at the last summer’s end. But Arthur shrugged off their warnings. ‘After Beltane we will take the fight to the Saxons,’ he said, ‘and will be eating their grain, slaughtering their cattle.’ He knew how to dispel men’s fears, did Arthur, and so we ate and drank because the son whom Arthur had thought lost to him was found.
It was from Merlin that I learnt what had happened between them and why Arthur had sought Mordred’s forgiveness that day when Mordred rode into Camelot like the young man in the story which the Christians like to tell, where a lovesick father welcomes home the son who wasted his fortune. Except in Mordred’s case I soon realized he had every right to hate Arthur.
‘Arthur has a weakness for women,’ Merlin said, snapping off a large growth of bracket fungus from a birch trunk. He had needed to go into the woods to gather ingredients and asked me to help him, which I did not mind doing. Anything to take me away from Camelot and Arthur’s shining new hall. ‘I don’t suppose you have any idea how useful this is?’ the druid asked, examining the whitish brown fungus which was the size of his outstretched hand. ‘Although the tree slugs have been gorging on this,’ he said, poking a little finger into a burrow hole.
‘It’ll carry an ember a good while,’ I said. I had taken little notice of the herbal lore which the girls practised on Karrek, but everyone knew how useful such fungus was as tinder.
‘Yes, yes,’ Merlin said, ‘but it is so much more, Lancelot.’ He put the fungus to his nose and inhaled. ‘Applied to a bandage it will stop bleeding. It can prevent a wound going bad and lessen the scarring. It will numb pain, reduce swelling and even cleanse your guts of worms.’ He turned the fungus over to display more holes on its underside. ‘Though they are better taken when they are young and tender,’ he said, ‘before they spoil.’
I was more interested in what he had been saying before he stopped to pilfer from tha
t old birch. ‘You were talking about Arthur,’ I reminded him.
‘I’m still talking about Arthur, more or less,’ he said with a wry smile. ‘You see, there was a girl. Young and tender.’ He reached up and snapped off another white fungus, this one the size of a hen’s egg. ‘Just right for the plucking, she was. Clear skin. Bright eyes. Tits you could hang your helmet and shield on.’ Satisfied with the specimen, he put it in his linen bag. ‘Arthur was the age Mordred is now. Younger perhaps, but broad and handsome. As kings’ sons are in songs and tales, not as they so often are in reality, snivelling little turds or bullies bloated with self-importance.’ He slapped the birch trunk. ‘The sap was rising in Arthur, as it will in young men.’ He lifted his staff and knocked another small white fungus off the tree, cursing when he couldn’t find where it had landed. ‘I thought you were here to help me, Lancelot,’ he said, leaning his staff against another tree so that he might search for the lost prize. I poked around half-heartedly in the leaf litter with my spear. ‘The girl’s name was Morgaine and Arthur had his way with her,’ he said. ‘More than once.’
‘He was a prince,’ I said with a shrug, yet to see Arthur’s crime.
‘Spoken like a prince, Lancelot son of King Ban,’ Merlin observed, on his hands and knees in the dirt now. I had seen a flash of white beneath an exposed root but did not tell Merlin. I was enjoying seeing him scrabble around like a pig in the mast. ‘Poor young Arthur could not have known. He was never the brightest young man, but still.’ He glared up at me. ‘You are supposed to be helping me.’
Where was his Saxon slave, Oswine, anyway? I wondered.
‘Could not have known what?’ I asked, with my spear point knocking the little fungus ball out from under the root.
‘Ah, there you are,’ Merlin said, gathering it up and blowing the dirt off it. ‘That a girl was in Igraine’s belly when Uther slaughtered her husband, Lord Gorlois,’ he said. ‘No bigger than this fungus, yet she was in there. After she was born, Uther feared the girl’s curse and well he might, having killed her father, but he loved Igraine too much to kill the child and so the girl was sent away to be raised in Caer Gwinntguic. Except she wasn’t, because Igraine kept her close without Uther knowing. You see, Lancelot, you cannot blame Arthur for his blindness. He gets it from Uther,’ he said, giving me a knowing look.
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