The Road to Avalon (Rediscovered Classics)

by Joan Wolf

  “Agravaine and the men who escaped with him. It was treachery, Morgan. Arvandus, the Roman prefect, called in the Visigoths. Even Arthur could not prevail against the numbers they sent against him.”

  “And you believed this, solely on Agravaine’s word?”

  His eyes widened. “Of course I believed it! Agravaine may have a temper, but he is not a monster. Nor is he a fool. Of course he is telling the truth.”

  It was not Agravaine who was the fool. But she restrained her own temper and said calmly and rationally, “He is lying, Mordred. There was a battle. And the Saxons were routed. Your father and Bedwyr and the army are perfectly safe. Agravaine is lying.”

  He had gone pale. “How do you know this?”

  “I just know it. It is true, believe me.”

  He stared at her out of wild and wary eyes. “What do you mean, you just know it? Have you received a message from my father?”

  “In a way, yes.”

  “Stop talking in riddles, Morgan! If you have had a message, I want to see it.”

  “It was not written down.”

  “Let me talk to the messenger, then.”

  “There was no messenger.”

  There was the faintest trace of hysteria in his laugh. “And you expect me to believe you on that evidence? I know what an accomplished liar you are, remember.”

  She walked slowly across the space of floor between them. The top of her head was just level with his eyes. She looked up at him, and despite her size, there was authority in every note of her voice. “I want to see Gwenhwyfar. Gwenhwyfar will understand better than you.”

  He was shaking his head. “Oh, no. You have inflicted quite enough pain on Gwenhwyfar already. I am not going to give you the chance to hurt her again.”

  Her delicately arched brows drew together. “Nonsense, Mordred. I have no intention of hurting Gwenhwyfar. I just want to talk to her.”

  “You will keep away from Gwenhwyfar.” His voice was curiously hard. “Whatever you have to say can be said to me.”

  The slight, tense frown between her brows deepened. There was something here . . . something she knew wasn’t right . . . The door to the office opened and Agravaine walked in. His pale yellow hair framed a smiling face; his blue eyes were cloudless. “Aunt Morgan,” he said. “I heard you had come to visit. Welcome to Camelot.”

  Morgan let her eyes travel slowly from the tips of Agravaine’s shoes to the top of his polished head. “I used to think that it was Pellinore’s fault,” she said. “That he handled you wrong. I see now that I was mistaken.”

  Something flashed across that angelic face and then it was smiling again. “Pellinore,” he answered, “was a fool.”

  “Agravaine.” Mordred’s voice was urgent. “Morgan says that there was a battle and that we were victorious. She says that you are lying, that my father is alive.”

  Agravaine hooked his thumbs in his belt and regarded his aunt. “May I inquire as to the source of your information?” he asked with exaggerated courtesy.

  Morgan looked into the smiling violence of those blue eyes. Until this moment she had not realized how dark were the clefts in Agravaine’s character. “I will reveal the source of my information to the queen.” She would get nowhere with Mordred or Agravaine, she realized. But Arthur must have told Gwenhwyfar about the link between them. He must have, or she would not have said to Mordred that Morgan would know of Arthur’s death first.

  “Ah yes, the queen.” Agravaine looked at Mordred. “Have you told her the good news, little brother?”

  “What good news?” asked Morgan sharply.

  “Mordred and Gwenhwyfar are to be married. On the day of his coronation. Is that not wonderful?”

  “What?” Morgan looked at her son in horror. “Mordred, you cannot do this. Surely you must see that. Gwenhwyfar! I must talk to Gwenhwyfar!”

  “No.” Mordred’s young face was grim and set. “If you have proof that Arthur is alive, then produce it for me. I will not have you distressing the queen. She has had quite enough to bear from you already, I think.”

  There was silence as the two young men looked at her. She could see behind Mordred’s angry eyes to the fear and the dread that he was suppressing. Agravaine . . . Agravaine was looking alert. Alert and suspicious. It would not do to underrate Agravaine. They had all been guilty of that, and look where it had got them. “I would know if Arthur were dead,” she said finally. “I would feel it.”

  Relief glimmered in two sets of eyes. “Woman’s intuition,” said Agravaine contemptuously. “Go back to Avalon, Morgan, and play with your garden. I tell you, Arthur is dead. I was there. I saw him fall. And there is an end to it.”

  “Agravaine!” It was Mordred. “She has only just found out. There is no need to be cruel.”

  Agravaine shrugged.

  Arthur’s office was cold and none of them had taken off their cloaks. Morgan walked past Agravaine to the door. “If you will have a servant bring around my pony, I will be returning home,” she said quietly to Mordred.

  Agravaine opened the door for her.

  He did not leave her alone with Mordred again. The pony was brought to the door of the palace and both young men watched as she mounted and rode off down the road.

  She waited until she was outside the gates. Then she pulled the pony up and closed her eyes. She sent the message out urgently in their own private signal: Arthur. You must come home. Now. Immediately. Leave the army and come yourself. Danger. You must come home!

  The council convened in Camelot at the beginning of March in order to confirm Mordred as the next high king. The vote was unanimous and the kings and princes who composed the council proposed to stay for a few extra days in order to see him formally crowned. The day before the coronation, word came to Camelot that Arthur had landed in Cornwall with three hundred men and fifty horses. The news was brought to Cador by a few of his men who had been in contact with the king, who had actually seen him. Bedwyr and Cai and Gawain and Constantine, Cador’s son, were with him. He had left Valerius in charge of the army in Gaul.

  Mordred stood transfixed. He listened to the Cornishmen’s words and then to Cador’s and Ban’s, and all the time he stared at Agravaine, his brain echoing in horror. He lied. Arthur is not dead. Agravaine lied. Not dead. Not dead. Not dead. The words reverberated through his skull as the angry words of Cador washed over him unheard. Then: Gwenhwyfar. I must speak with Gwenhwyfar.

  “Are you coming with us, Prince Mordred?” It was Cador speaking to him.

  Mordred looked at him blankly. “Coming?”

  Cador had never looked more like an angry bull. “To join the king.”

  He couldn’t see his father. Not yet. Not until he had spoken with Gwenhwyfar. “L-later,” he said. “I’ll come later.”

  After Cador and the Welsh kings had gone, he turned to Agravaine. “How could you do it?” He was not even angry, only numb. “How could you, Agravaine?”

  They were standing on opposite sides of the council chamber’s round table and his brother’s eyes were hard and bright. “Arthur wants to bring back the empire,” Agravaine replied. “We of the north think Britain ought to be a Celtic country. This king has taken too much upon himself, Mordred. It is time to turn him out and replace him with someone more sympathetic to Celtic ideas.”

  “But you always loved Arthur. When we were children, all you ever wanted was to be one of his captains. Don’t you remember?” He was almost pleading with Agravaine, trying to make him see the horror of what he had unleashed. Now, sickeningly, Mordred understood the reason for the barracks full of north-country troops.

  “I loved him when he was fighting the Saxons. Not when he was fighting for the emperor in Gaul.” Agravaine’s eyes were like blue glass.

  Mordred was beginning to comprehend. “And so you used me for your own ends.”

  “I am making you a king, little brother. You ought not to complain about that.”

  Mordred continued as if he had not heard.
“You lied to me and then you saw to it that I was as compromised as you.” He was figuring it out as he spoke. “You were the one who suggested that I marry Gwenhwyfar.”

  “You ate her up with your eyes every time you looked at her,” Agravaine answered brutally. “You didn’t need much persuading.”

  “No. I didn’t, did I? I made everything so easy for you. It must have seemed like child’s play.” He closed his eyes for a minute. “Morgan tried to warn me, and I wouldn’t listen.”

  “For God’s sake, stop whining. You chose to stay with me, and we’ll settle the question of who is to be king on the battlefield. I had expected to have another month at least before he heard, but no matter. He left the army in Gaul. We shall still have the advantage.”

  “I didn’t choose to stay with you!” Mordred cried. “I did not want to leave before I spoke to the queen, that is all. Of course I shall join my father.”

  There was a long pause and then Agravaine smiled with genuine amusement. “Wrong, little brother. Go and see the queen. After I have smashed Arthur, perhaps you can even marry her. But you are not leaving Camelot, Mordred. Not until we march to fight the king. Once Arthur is dead, then I will decide what to do with you.”

  The meeting with Gwenhwyfar was terrible. She was so pale, so strained-looking. He took her hand and she let him hold it for a moment before withdrawing it gently.

  “Bedwyr is with him. Did you know?” he asked in a low, unsteady voice.

  “Yes. My father told me before he left.”

  “I still cannot believe this of Agravaine.” His gray eyes were shocked. “I grew up with him, Gwenhwyfar. I thought I knew him.”

  “I knew him,” she answered bitterly. “I, of all people, should not have trusted him. But he seemed so . . . distraught. I did not think he could be acting.”

  “I should have let you see Morgan that day. But I did not want her to upset you.” He rubbed his left temple as if it hurt. “I did not want her to persuade you out of our marriage—that was the real reason, of course.”

  “What is this about Morgan?” She was looking directly at him for the first time since he had come into the room.

  “She came to see me not long ago. She had only just heard that day the story of Arthur’s death. I was horrified at the thought that she had heard it like that, from a wandering harper and not from me. Then she told me it was a lie, that Arthur was not dead at all. I didn’t believe her.” The gray eyes were full of misery. “She had no proof, Gwenhwyfar. No message. No messenger. Then Agravaine came in. She asked to see you, said you were the only one who would understand.” His head drooped. “We wouldn’t let her.”

  Gwenhwyfar shaded her eyes. “You should have.”

  “Yes. I know that now.” Silence fell between them. He looked around at the pretty, feminine room. “What must he think of us?” His voice was almost inaudible.

  “He thinks what Morgan thinks. She is the one who told him, of course.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Morgan was the one who called him home. He couldn’t have heard this news from anyone else; everyone in Britain thought he was dead. There are no ships crossing the Narrow Sea at this time of year to bring news to Gaul of what is happening in Britain. He knew as soon as Morgan knew. God, if I only had let you tell her when Agravaine first came home with his story, Arthur would have been here a month ago!”

  “What are you saying, Gwenhwyfar? That Morgan can reach my father’s mind?”

  “Yes,” said Gwenhwyfar. “That is what I am saying.”

  He looked all at once very young and very lost. “And Agravaine sneered at her woman’s intuition.”

  “Agravaine,” said Gwenhwyfar, and Mordred shuddered at the note in her voice.

  “I made another mistake,” he said, “to add to my already considerable collection. I should have ridden out with Cador and the Welsh. Agravaine couldn’t have stopped me from doing that. Now I am trapped.”

  Her green eyes widened. “He isn’t going to let you leave?”

  “He isn’t going to let me leave.”

  “Dear God, Mordred,” she whispered. “What are we going to do?”

  Agravaine came to the queen’s salon next. Gwenhwyfar tried to keep Olwen in the room with her, but Agravaine dismissed the girl, and Gwenhwyfar, in an effort to maintain some semblance of dignity, allowed her to go.

  “My lady the queen,” he said gently as soon as they were alone, and laughed. He was dressed now in all the glittering splendor of the Celt. There was gold at his throat and on his arms. A gold brooch held his cloak, and gold flashed on his belt. His hair was as bright as his jewelry. “You were the one I was most afraid would not believe me,” he said.

  “I shouldn’t have, of course. It was the way you spoke of Bedwyr’s death that convinced me. You seemed so genuinely grief-stricken.”

  “Bedwyr is dead, to me at least. He wanted to murder me the whole way to Gaul. You are the one for Bedwyr, unfortunately. He would have come back to you, after Gaul. It seems I made a mistake. Arthur doesn’t care.”

  She swallowed. There was something about him that was absolutely petrifying. Why had he come here? She made herself speak calmly. “And so, if you cannot have Bedwyr, you will see to it that no one else can. Is that it?”

  “Something like that.” He smiled maliciously. “I wonder how he felt when he heard you had agreed to marry Mordred?”

  “It was your idea, that marriage. Wasn’t it?”

  “Of course. Mordred would never have had the nerve to think of marrying you. It didn’t take much persuasion, though, Gwenhwyfar. Like Bedwyr, he was hungry.”

  He was coming toward her, all of his gold flashing in the shaft of sunlight from the window. Before she could stop herself, she took a backward step.

  A slow, mocking smile dawned on Agravaine’s face. “Frightened, little bird?”

  Her heart jolted. Little bird. That was Bedwyr’s name for her. He was staring at her out of suddenly dilated eyes and it was there between them again, that frightening, pitiless intimacy which was either hate or love, or both. “It would be interesting,” he said, “to plow where he has plowed. Would you like that, Gwenhwyfar? Gwenhwyfar my enemy, the love of my love. Would you like to lie with me?”

  “You . . . wouldn’t.”

  “I think I might.” He raised a hand. “Your hair is very beautiful.”

  She was like a creature mesmerized. He ran his fingers through her hair. His eyes were purely black.

  She forced her mind to function. “Do this, Agravaine, and you will lose Mordred.”

  His hand continued to stroke her hair. “I don’t need Mordred.”

  “Yes, you do. He will give at least a semblance of legitimacy to your fight against Arthur. And you may yet win him to your side. As you said yourself, he wants me.”

  “I have legitimacy. The legitimacy of the Celt trying to win his country back.” His hand moved to her face. “And I may want you too.”

  Think. “It would hurt Arthur so much more, to think that Mordred had turned traitor.”

  His hand dropped and his lightless eyes searched her face and she knew she had said the right thing. Her own eyes narrowed. “It’s Arthur you hate, isn’t it?” she said slowly. “You hate him more than you do me. Why? What has he done to you?”

  “Bedwyr loves him,” came the devastating reply. “I might have been able to forgive Bedwyr you. You are just a woman. But not the king.” He looked at her coldly, all the frightening intimacy gone from his face. “You are right. It would be best to have Mordred on my side, or at least appearing to be on my side.” He smiled at her. “Too bad, Gwenhwyfar. It might have been . . . interesting.”

  As soon as the door closed behind him, Gwenhwyfar collapsed into a chair. She was still shaking five minutes later when Olwen came into the room.

  Chapter 43

  THE men of Dumnonia and Wales, many of whom had fought in Arthur’s wars against the Saxons, began to stream into Cornwall to join the s
tandard of the king. This, the ultimate battle for Britain, would be fought almost entirely by auxiliary troops. The standing army, that perfectly trained instrument of war, was still in Gaul.

  Agravaine made no attempt to move south of Camelot. Clearly his strategy was to make Arthur come to him. And so, at the end of April, the king put his newly collected army on the Roman road at Isca Dumnoniorum and moved without impediment to within twenty-five miles of his occupied capital.

  It was a wet, gray spring day when Morgan rode the ten or so miles down the Camm from Avalon to Arthur’s camp. The woods were full of burgeoning green growth and white and yellow and purple blossoms. Fresh new life was coming to Britain. Morgan inhaled the damp, cool air, full of the smells of dirt and growing things. Two armies were facing each other on either side of Avalon, and her heart should be heavy, but today it was light. She was going to see Arthur. At the moment, that was all that mattered.

  The king’s camp was humming with the busy confidence all of Arthur’s armies immediately acquired. Morgan rode her pony down the roped-off street and looked around curiously at the neat row of tents backed by the competent-looking earth wall that had been thrown up as a defense against surprise attack. Arthur knew she was coming, of course, and had sent Cai to look for her.

  “Morgan!” She heard Cai’s familiar voice and turned to see him striding toward her. He was wearing the scarlet cloak of the foot and his big-boned face wore a luminous smile. He lifted her out of the saddle and hugged her soundly before he set her on her feet.

  “It’s good to see you too, Cai,” she said laughingly.

  He called to a soldier to see to her pony and put his hand on her shoulder. “Come along to Arthur’s tent. He’ll be there shortly. He’s reviewing the Dumnonian troops with Constantine. Cador broke his leg. Did you know that?”

  They stopped in front of a tent that did not look very different from any of the others and Cai held the flap for her. She went in and he ducked his head and followed. “No,” she said, “I didn’t know that. What happened?”