The Wicked Day

by Mary Stewart

  "It's not true!" shouted Gaheris.

  "And if it were," said Gawain, cold now, and with that aggressive arrogance he had adopted since they came to Camelot, "what of it? Where is the law that says a queen may not destroy her enemy in her own way?"

  "That's so," said Agravain quickly. "She always said he was her enemy. And what other way had she? Women cannot fight."

  "He must have been too strong for her spells," said Gareth. "They didn't work." The only emotion in his voice was regret.

  Cei surveyed them. "There was a spell, certainly, and one tried many times, but in the end it was cold poisoning. This is known to be true." He added, kindly: "There's nothing to be gained in talking further about this until you see the King. What can you know of these matters? In your outland kingdom you were reared to think of Merlin, and maybe even the King himself, as your enemies."

  He paused, looking at them again. The boys were silent.

  "Yes, I see that you were. Well, until he talks with Merlin, and with Queen Morgause, we will leave the matter. She can count herself fortunate that Merlin is not dead. And as for you, you must content yourselves with the King's assurance that he will not harm you. There are things to settle, old scores to resolve that you know nothing about. Believe me, the King is a just man, and Merlin's counsels are wise, and harsh only when it is needful."

  When he left them, the boys burst out into angry talk and speculation. It seemed to Mordred, listening, that their anger was more on their own account than on their mother's. It was a matter of pride. None of them would have wanted to be, once again, under Morgause's rule. This new freedom, this world of men and men's actions, suited them all, and even Gareth, who in Orkney had run the risk of effeminacy, was hardening up to become one of them. He, like the rest, saw no reason for a prince to stop at murder if it suited his plans.

  Mordred said nothing, and the others did not find this strange. What claim after all had the bastard on the queen? But Mordred did not even hear them. He was back in the darkness, with the smoke and the smell of fish and the frightened whispering. "Merlin is dead. They made a feast at the palace, and then" — and then — "the news came." And the queen's words in the stillroom, with the potions and the scent and the indefinable smell of evil, and the feel of her mouth on his.

  He shook himself free of the memories. So Morgause had poisoned the enchanter. She had gone north to the islands knowing that she had already sown the seeds of death. And why not? The old man had been her enemy: was his, Mordred's, enemy. And now the enemy was alive, and would be at Caerleon for Christmas along with the rest.

  * * *

  Caerleon, City of Legions, was very different from Camelot. The Romans had built a strong fortress there, on the river they called the Isca Silurum; this fortress, strategically placed on the curve of the river near its confluence with a smaller stream, had been restored first by Ambrosius, then later enlarged to something like its original proportions by Arthur. A city had grown up outside the walls, with market-place and church and palace near the Roman bridge which — patched here and there, and with new lamp-posts — spanned the river.

  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 prevented 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 an
d 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.