Morgause sighed. “He has begged me to, time and time again.”
“But you fear your sons?”
Morgause’s face darkened with the shadow of a fleeting fear. “Our islands are much closer to the Norselands than they are to Camelot. There, cruel feuds last a lifetime and more. Our menfolk follow the Norse blood-hunger, not your chivalry. No, Lamorak and I are best off as we are, living quietly and giving no offense. As long as my sons are here, we are safe up there with the secret of our love. In such a faraway land, who cares what we do?”
“And there, you are the queen.”
“And a queen must have her knights.” Morgause smiled, a long, full, radiant smile.
Guenevere turned her head away, scorched by Morgause’s naked joy. She felt again the same wild envy as before. Morgause has four fine sons and a lover for her bed, and I have nothing, nothing at all!
“You understand me, Guenevere.” Morgause looked at her keenly. “You are doing the same as I am, you are taking care,” she said abruptly. “I heard as soon as I arrived at court that Lancelot was not here, and I knew that you sent your knight away, before a breath of scandal could touch you both. With the Christians all around Arthur as they are, it’s only wise. How long will it be before he can return?”
Guenevere surged to her feet and moved to the window, where the evening candle stood waiting to be lit. She could hardly speak for pain. “He has gone back to France. He will not return.”
CHAPTER 9
Merlin went singing through the trees, weaving a thin web of notes into a chant of triumph as he rode along. Pendragon lives,” went his high, batlike call. He was alive—the boy Mordred was alive. And every day brought him closer to where the child must be.
The old man cackled with glee and flapped his bony heels against the sides of his mule. He had learned a lot in Gore. Oh, not the fear-laden gossip about how Queen Morgan had disappeared, fled from King Ursien like a shadow in the night. There was no clue to the child’s whereabouts in that.
And little had come from the silent witnesses he was hoping would tell him all. Morgan’s chamber dogs had fled from him, and her little cat would only scratch and spit as he approached. Even the mice, who must have heard her every word, did not dare to leave the wainscot to speak to him. Morgan had cast a spell against outsiders, and left them all in terror of their lives.
Merlin shifted restlessly on his mule. Well, she had the power. Yet the human witnesses had told him all they knew about the boy. From the women of the queen’s bedchamber, he learned that the baby had been a prodigy when he was born.
“As big as a two-year-old child,” the leader proudly declared. “And marked out for great things!”
Merlin’s heart thrilled. “How so?”
“He was born with teeth. Not just one or two, a full set. It’s a sign.”
The sign of the dragon, rejoiced Merlin, and it won’t be the only one. He did not need to glance down at his own wrists to see the fighting dragons tattooed there. Somewhere, he knew, Morgan would have put this mark on her son, the badge of Pendragon from the time before time.
“And our lady the queen couldn’t get enough of him,” the woman went on. “How she loved that bairn! She hugged him and kissed him and whispered in his ear, and he understood every word she said to him too. Young as he was, he was born old in his mind.”
Her face darkened. “But then they came and took him away from her.” Merlin could see the tears gathering in her eyes. “You know the rest.”
In truth he had not known it in detail then. But it had not taken long to track down the captain of the palace guard, a hard and wary man who had served King Ursien all his life. Yes, it had been a bad business, one of the worst. But the order came straight from the High King himself. Not a single newborn boy to be left alive.
The man took a long reflective pull on the ale Merlin had bought him to lubricate his tale.
“We wondered why all the newborns,” he said at last. “Why not just the King’s bastard, if that’s what the poor kid was? But I suppose the King feared they might have done a switch. Got the queen’s real son away to safety and put another in his place.”
“No doubt,” said Merlin shortly. He had no intention of revisiting Arthur’s fear of Morgan in the aftermath of the affair, the madness of his grief. “Well, on with your tale.”
“We were ordered to put them all in a boat, and cast it adrift. Lots of them, there were, but one of them stood out. He had shiny black hair, a full head, and old sort of eyes. Big too, and quiet, didn’t cry like the rest. Like he knew something they didn’t know.”
Perhaps he did, thought Merlin, with a spurt of wild hope. Ye Gods, let it be so!
The captain took another drink and went on. “A few weeks later, we had word that the boat had wrecked itself down the coast. We rode over there, and it was our boat all right. And all their bones washed up on the sand.”
“All?”
“Well, we didn’t count ’em one by one,” the captain said defensively. “But there were plenty of legs, and arms, and skulls—”
“Skulls?” said Merlin, his eyes glowing fire.
“Yes, we gathered them all up and buried them. We made a cairn of stones to mark the place. The mothers all wanted to know where their babes were, see? It was terrible for them.”
“Yes, yes,” Merlin burst out, “but hear me! Among these skulls, was there one with teeth? ”
AND THE CAPTAIN’S answer had brought him down here now, Merlin reflected. For there was no such skull among the dead. When King Ursien learned that, he had sent his men-at-arms out time and again to hunt for the boy. Each time they had drawn a blank. So Morgan had contrived to save her baby’s life, from the soldiers as well as from the sea. Where would she stow the child she had plucked from the deep?
Merlin lapsed into deep thought. The afternoon sun was warm on his back as the mule plodded west. Ahead he could hear the ocean’s comforting roar. Underfoot he felt the pulse of the earth itself in every green shoot thrusting through the loam, and his heart picked up new strength. He caught the trill of a skylark on the wing, and wove it into an airy melody of his own. All the while his mind hummed like a hive of bees. Where would Morgan have placed her baby son? Who would she trust?
“No one,” said the blackbird in the hawthorn bush.
“No one,” agreed the snake slipping sideways through the grass.
“I thank you, sirs.” Merlin nodded to his helpers as they passed. Yes, they were right. Morgan had had no ally in her life. A friendless child, a woman without a home, who could she call a friend?
So a stranger, then, must have been entrusted with the child. Someone ignorant of his parentage without doubt, but still able to give him what Morgan sought. And with a sentence of death on her infant’s head, Morgan’s concern would be for sanctuary above all.
He raised his head and savored the salt air. From the pile of stones that marked the infants’ remains, he had checked every village, every hamlet and isolated farm down the length of the coast. Time had stretched on, but he was not deterred. The child had been on the ship, that much was clear. And when it sank, he would have landed here. Merlin nodded, and renewed his song. The boy was somewhere near, and Merlin would track him down.
Yet when it came, he almost missed the place. Built into the hillside and roofed with the living turf, it seemed part of its surroundings, like the dwellings of the Fair Ones in the hollow hills. On plain inspection, it proved to be a low, one-room hovel of the humblest kind. But neat and clean, Merlin noted, with a well of its own by the door, and what was that? A child’s toy lying abandoned in the grass?
It was a carved wooden knight on the back of a horse. A grin of triumph split Merlin’s wizened face. Hurrying down from his mule, he pounced on the toy, and approached the open door. The elderly woman inside was building up the fire, a year-round necessity for hill dwellers, he surmised.
“Good day to you,” he cried. He waved the toy knight with false joviality
. “And where is your boy?”
In the darkness at the back of the room, an old man rose to his feet. “Come in, sir,” he said doubtfully.
Merlin stepped inside. On the table he could see a child’s wooden beaker, and a child-sized chair squatted beside the hearth. Every fiber of his being told him the boy was here. Mordred, his mind was humming, Pendragon, Arthur’s son—
Rashly he threw caution to the winds. “I’ve come for the boy,” he said, his voice cracking with emotion as he spoke. He nodded at the little chair. “That’s his, isn’t it?”
The old couple shared a fearful glance, then the woman spoke. “It’s his, sir, yes.”
“Don’t be afraid,” cried Merlin. “I mean you no harm. The boy is my kin, and I’ve come here for his good.” He thrust out his skinny wrists. “See these dragons?” He laughed confidently. “The child bears this mark on him, am I right?”
The old woman smiled, and tears stood in her eyes. “It’s hidden— but he does, sir, it’s true.”
“Then you see that he’s no ordinary child. I promise you, he is destined for higher things.”
“We don’t fear to lose him,” said the old man, shaking his head. He twisted his knotted hands as he spoke. “He’s been a joy to us, sir, but it’s been a power of effort as well. And we’ve always been afraid of the soldiers coming back.”
“The King’s soldiers?” prompted Merlin.
The old woman took up the tale with smiles and tears. “We found him in the hedge by our door, not crying, just looking up at us with those eyes of his. His swaddling clothes were all wet and torn from the sea, and we didn’t know how he got there because as big as he was, he was a baby—he still couldn’t walk. So we thought he was a changeling, and we gladly took him in.”
The old man nodded. “A child of the Fair Ones blesses any house. And it’s many a year since we had babies of our own.”
The old woman chuckled in fond reminiscence. “And he grew and throve with us from the very first. Such a child he was! Such a lovely boy.”
The old man frowned. “But then we saw the soldiers on the shore. They were searching every cave, turning every stone. We knew they were looking for him. And we didn’t want them to take away our boy.”
A sulfurous light gleamed in Merlin’s eye “Your boy?” he breathed dangerously.
“He’s been happy here, sir, and doing well,” the old woman said simply. “He can walk and talk, and understand all we say.” The light of mother-love shone in her face. “That’s how we saved him when they came for him.”
“How?” Merlin could hardly speak.
The old man grinned. “We put him down the well. We knew the soldiers’d tear the place apart, and they did too, but they never looked down there. He sat in the bucket as cool as he sat here till we pulled him up again.” He gave a delighted laugh. “He’s got an old head on young shoulders and no mistake. It’s time he was back with you, sir, where he belongs.”
Merlin was in raptures.
“You won’t lose him, I promise, when I take him away,” he cried. “We shall never forget that he is your son too.” He rose eagerly to his feet. “Let me have him then, and we’ll be on our way.”
“But sir, you have him already,” the old woman cried. The old man was aghast. “You have, haven’t you?”
Merlin felt a lightning bolt pass through his heart. “Have him?” he mouthed numbly. “What d’you mean?”
“Why, your kinswoman came and took him only hours ago!” the old woman cried in fear. “She said the same things as you about going to his kin. Don’t you know where he’s gone?”
“My kinswoman?” screeched Merlin. “I have no other kin!”
“But she knew the secret of the dragons, just as you did. She—”
Merlin was frantic with fury and distress. “Who was she?”
“Tall and queenly, sir, and royally dressed. She said she’d take him to her palace far away. He’d be safe there, she said, from those who sought him here.”
A storm of fury coursed through Merlin’s head.
Morgause.
Morgan’s sister, and queen of a faraway realm. Morgan would trust her. And it would be a fine trick to hide Mordred in the Orkneys, nine hundred miles and more away.
Well, so be it.
Merlin stood in perfect calm till he could silence the anger roaring through his head. Then he made time to reassure the old couple before he took his leave. At last he was able to heave himself up on his mule, and set its head due north, cursing all the way.
Morgause, of course. He had reckoned without the deadly sisterhood. He laughed bitterly. A precious ironic reversal, the house of Uther at the mercy of the daughters of Igraine.
But he would not be deterred. Merlin’s eyes glowed as golden as a hawk. He would overcome.
To the Orkneys, then. The boy’s destiny was not to be set aside.
For he was Pendragon, descended from the first red ravager of the islands, and the next High King. And though the youngster did not know it, his destiny was approaching even now on an old white mule treading the Great North Way.
GODS ABOVE, it was cold! King Ursien grumbled roughly to himself. A raven croaked from a branch high overhead, and he eyed it askance. Call this June? What had happened to the warmth of the summer afternoon?
A good gallop would warm him up, but not on this pitiful nag he was riding now. For the hundredth time, King Ursien hauled up his horse’s head as it stumbled through the grass, and cursed it from his heart. What was wrong with the brute? And come to that, was he ailing too? Why was he so uneasy here in this wood?
He looked around. It was only midafternoon, but evening came early in the shade of the trees. All the living things of the woodland seemed to have taken to their dens, the forest was so still. It was getting colder too, and a creeping dampness was rising from the earth. He shuddered involuntarily, and was disgusted at the weakness of his flesh. Face it, Ursien, he told himself grimly, you’re losing your nerve. Yet what was there to be concerned about?
A day in the open air had seemed just the thing when they left Camelot a few hours ago. Queen Guenevere had held him and Accolon to their promise to take Arthur hunting, and they had been glad to do anything that might help to chase the King’s sadness away. But the afternoon ride had been ill-fated from the start. First Arthur’s horse had panicked at the sight of the wood, as if reluctant to take its master into the trees, and only a horseman of Arthur’s exceptional skill could have made it obey. Then Accolon’s horse had inexplicably gone lame, and he had had to lead it a good deal of the way, so ensuring that they only reached the part of the forest they were making for when the best of the day had gone.
Yet even when they had arrived too late to begin the chase, all had been well. An old crone on the road had told them that there was a convent nearby, the House of the Little Sisters of Mercy, where travelers could find hospitality overnight.
So Ursien had remained behind with Accolon’s lame horse while the younger knight and King Arthur rode off in search of a bed. There would still be time for a gallop, Arthur had promised, when they got back. But now the sun was going down, and still there was no sign of them at all.
Ursien shivered, and found himself wishing he was not alone. The chill rose from the earth in thin white wisps, and a curious clammy smell invaded the air. Ursien’s stomach turned. He knew that smell. The last time he had smelled it was in a charnel house, where the rotting dead were groaning for burial.
His horse caught the scent and threw up its head, whinnying with distress.
“Easy, boy,” Ursien said with an assurance he did not feel.
Now the rising mist was rolling through the still forest, making a ghostly landscape all around. And through the white silence it came to Ursien: I am in the land of the dead.
He sighed.
Undead as yet. But not for long.
He bowed his head, and made a brief peace with his Gods. Then he heard his own voice in the stillness of the nigh
t. “I am ready. Come for me, then, if you must.”
He paused for an answer, and bade a tender, silent farewell to his sons. Then his thoughts turned to the beloved wife of his youth, long dead, and still mourned. He sent his spirit crying through the void: Make way for me, dearest, I am coming now. Then he squared his shoulders and lifted his old gray head.
And there it was straight ahead, looming through the trees, darkening what light remained. All his life he had prayed the old soldier’s prayer, Gods, let me see my death. And now it had come true.
“Ha!” He grinned at his savage luck, not only to see his death, but to know it too.
“You,” he said, with a total lack of surprise, as the darkness deepened and covered the earth, then took shape and leaped snarling for his throat.
CHAPTER 10
“The High King here? King Arthur and his knight? Well, don’t just stand there staring like a natural, girl, show him in!”
Jesu, Maria, what fools these young nuns were! The Abbess Placida sucked on her few sour teeth, folded er hands on the lower slopes of her belly, and cursed them in her heart. She had long ago stopped trying to live by her chosen name, when all these new young nuns tried her patience so.
Half the time now, she did not know who they were. Time was when she knew every nose on every face in the House of the Little Sisters of Mercy, formerly known as the Convent of the Holy Mother herself. And not only their faces, she smirked to herself. It was her proudest boast that she ruled her convent with the rod, and no novice so highborn but was forced to bare her body for the good of her soul.
The old woman’s fingers itched, and her rheumy eyes took on a yellow gleam. She had belabored the daughters of queens and kings. She had beaten the fat wrinkled buttocks of the old cast-off wives of good Christian lords, and their young ones too, discarded if they did not prove fertile inside a year. Her house was known as a Christian sanctuary for all unwanted females, or those for whom the Good Lord God had not ordained a place in the outside world.
The Knight of the Sacred Lake Page 7