“Then you must find another traveling companion,” said Mordred. “I have work to do here. And I doubt you will find another man fool enough not only to leave here tonight, but to spend his quest in your company, Sir Senseschal.”
“I could find another companion more easily than you could, Mordred,” I said.
“Now, perhaps. Once, of course, I had Lancelot himself as my mentor and companion.”
That had been during Mordred’s first two years of knighthood, before something happened to twist his soul out of shape about the time of the Peningues tournament. In fact, he had been traveling with Lancelot when they came to that tournament. From Mordred’s tone now, I wondered, as I had sometimes wondered before, if the great Hero had played some part in whatever happened to warp King Lot’s youngest son.
But Mordred was right that we could get a more profitable start in the morning, after a decent night’s sleep. I found Dame Bragwaine and bought one of her Irish herb concoctions to help me get that night’s sleep.
I awoke late—half of the sun was already showing above the horizon—cursed my squire Gillimer for not calling me at first cockcrow, and went to Mass with a headache and a black temper. I did not see Mordred until I was almost ready to leave without him. He found me just in time, waiting in the courtyard with Gillimer, our palfreys, and my charger Feuillemorte. Mordred was still in his tunic and light stockings.
“If you’re not armed, mounted, and ready to ride in a quarter of an hour, squire and all,” I said, “you can go to the Devil.”
“In my own good time, Seneschal. Meanwhile, calm yourself. I’ve had certain matters to see to before we could leave.”
“What ‘certain matters’?”
“Matters of some relevance to our game, Sir Kay. I’ll tell you of them as we ride. In the meantime, the doubt will give you something to occupy your mind while I ready myself for the road.”
CHAPTER 9
Of Kay’s Suspects, of Mordred’s, and of the May Babies
“Then the king dreamed a marvellous dream whereof he was sore adread… Thus was the dream of Arthur: Him thought there was come into this land griffins and serpents, and him thought they burnt and slew all the people in the land, and then him thought he fought with them, and they did him passing great harm, and wounded him full sore, but at the last he slew them.…
“Then King Arthur let send for all the children born on May-day, begotten of lords and born of ladies; for Merlin told King Arthur that he that should destroy him should be born on May-day, wherefore he sent for them all, upon pain of death; and so there were found many lords’ sons, and all were sent unto the king, and so was Mordred sent by King Lot’s wife, and all were put in a ship to the sea, and some were four weeks old, and some less. And so by fortune the ship drave unto a castle, and was all to-riven, and destroyed the most part, save that Mordred was cast up, and a good man found him…”
—Malory I, 19; I, 27
I waited until full midmorning to ask Mordred what were these important matters he had had to see to before we left. He outwaited me, smirking as we rode.
We rode unhelmed, on palfreys, with the squires behind us leading our warhorses. This was not the kind of errand on which a man should waste time looking for pleasure jousts. We rode for the most part in silence; occasionally, Mordred whistled. Sometimes our squires talked and a snatch or two of their conversation reached us. Once Lovel, Gawain’s youngest son, who was serving as Mordred’s squire, found something to laugh at. Maybe something Gillimer said. Gillimer fancies himself a wise wag.
Mordred glanced around at me. “You hear, Seneschal? His father in all likelihood a poisoner’s target and his Queen in danger of the stake, yet Lovel can still see humor in the world.”
“All right, Mordred,” I said, “what were these certain matters you had to see to before we left? Or did you make them up to excuse your laziness?”
“Accuse your kitchen whelps of laziness, Sir Seneschal. I am not lazy. Merely patient.”
“That’s another name for it,” I replied. “And my ‘kitchen whelps’ keep your belly full for you.”
“Patience another name for laziness? Perhaps. Or for fear. A person can wait with truly astonishing patience for the unpleasant events of life. I may also lay claim, I think, to a measure of subtlety.” Mordred came close to grinning. He had accomplished something. That much self-satisfaction does not come purely from baiting Arthur’s seneschal.
“Out with it, King’s Nephew,” I said.
“I suppose you have a rudimentary list of them in your mind, Sir Kay—those of us most likely to have been responsible for the poisoned fruit?”
“Ironside,” I said. “That smirking Bors de Ganis. Pinel the loudmouth of Carbonek. Maybe even Astamore, though I don’t much like the thought.”
“This is assuming the poison was meant for brother Gawain, of course. All us brothers of Orkney share a passion for raw apples and pears, but folk remember it more clearly of Gawain. You do not honor me on your list?”
“Since you ask me, yes. I’ll also include Queen Morgan, if you like.” Or Dame Lynette might have been trying to rid herself of her husband Gaheris, but I was not going to share that thought with Mordred.
“Astamore as seeking revenge for his dead uncle, Bagdemagus of Gorre,” said Mordred. “Pinel as…seeking to avenge King Pellinore, perhaps? Ironside as seeking to fulfill that ancient oath of his at last. Bors… I don’t entirely see why you include Bors de Ganis.”
“General principles.”
“Ah. For pure dislike. I thought you too clever to include him simply because of the common opinion that any one of us who championed the Queen would implicate himself. But your list seems to me rather short and lacking in imagination. I should add Sir La Cote Male Taile, Mador de la Porte, and the dead Sir Patrise himself.”
“But you’d omit Bors de Ganis.”
“On general principles. Obviously, the sainted Sir Bors knows where his cousin Lancelot is—assuming the great knight is still in this world—and intends to produce him at the eleventh hour to save Her Grace. Still, I doubt Sir Bors would go so far as to poison a man in order to bring the pair back together.”
“Someday, Mordred, you’re going to hint a little too much slander in my presence.”
“And then you will fight me to save Lancelot’s name, as Lancelot fought the unhappy Meliagrant to save yours?”
“I’ll fight you for my own satisfaction, when this is over.” I had said this more than once to Mordred over the years, and always meant it at the time. For now, I returned to the business of prying his thoughts out of him. “La Cote Male Taile probably still holds his brother Dinadan’s death against your family. Why the others?”
“Mador mourns his cousin’s death too loudly and seizes too quickly on the easiest explanation, whether it is the likeliest or not. As for Patrise, why should a man not wish to escape whatever Fate holds in store for him?”
“Patrise wasn’t that good a man of arms, but what man ever damned himself for a reason like that?”
“If a man were to learn some secret of himself so evil as to make suicide and Hell seem a fair price for cheating Fate, would that man tell such a secret to the world?… But you’re right, Sir Seneschal. We’ll forget Patrise of Ireland. Being dead and buried, he cannot be more than a captured pawn in our game. What of Dame Bragwaine? She presumably knows poisons as well as other herbs.”
“More to avoid them than to concoct them, and if she had anything to do with this, she’s suddenly become the most accomplished liar since Delilah.” I had questioned her when buying my sleeping herbs from her, and, even allowing for the difference in age and experience, the contrast between her open answers and Coupnez’s bawling evasions wrote Truth all over Bragwaine’s.
Mordred shrugged. “So be it. Let us forget Dame Bragwaine, even as innocent supplier of the poison. Let us also forget Bors, Mador, and La Cote Male Taile for the time, as being beyond our reach.”
“Unlike th
e others?” I said sarcastically. “If all you did last night and this morning was make up your bloody lists to compare them with mine and then say ‘Forget them,’ Mordred, I may crack your brainpan right now.”
“My list was made up long before the burial. Last night I arranged for its testing, in so far as possible.”
“A little late for testing, with everyone scattered.”
“That was my business this morning—to watch the success of my evening’s work. We agreed, you remember, that the poisoner, searching alone, might not want Lancelot found?”
“If the target was the Queen,” I said.
“As good a reason as any to travel in pairs. But if the traitor’s chief target was Gawain, and if he were given an opportunity to strike at Gawain or at one of Gawain’s brothers… even if his chief target was one of the younger brothers and he was, by good fortune, given the opportunity to strike cleanly at the one in question—”
“By God, you’ve set up who’s riding with whom!”
“Not entirely to my satisfaction,” he replied. “I should have preferred Gawain to ride with Sir Ironside. But who is the youngest brother to influence the eldest? From the time Ywain joined us, there could be little doubt—”
“Stop writhing around in circles, Mordred, and just tell me how you’ve paired them up.”
Again he shrugged. “Gawain is riding with cousin Ywain, of course; I could not help that. They are riding southwest. Agravain is riding due south with Sir Ironside, Gaheris northward toward Bedegraine with Astamore, Gareth northwest with Pinel of Carbonek, and I westward with you.”
“Ihesu!” I said. “If one of them is the traitor, you may have marked one of your own brothers for death.”
“You understand the game very well, friend Kay, but do you not trust the famous sons of King Lot to defend themselves against their enemies? Ironside’s vow, however, was only against Lancelot and Gawain—and the forty unfortunate knights who happened to come his way in the meantime, of course—not against Gawain’s entire family. The most we can hope there is that brother Agravain may goad him into extending the feud, which should not be an overly difficult task for Agravain. As for Gareth…” Another shrug. “Who would include the dearly-beloved Beaumains, everybody’s favorite, in an attack on the rest of us? No, I hope for nothing from Pinel. And Gaheris is a match for young Astamore in arms, and suspicious enough not to eat or drink anything Astamore refuses to share with him. Besides, they all have their squires with them. Still, a violent attempt by one of them against one of us might clear the Queen’s good name. Would you object to the death of one of Gawain’s brothers, if thereby Dame Guenevere could be saved?”
“Not if the brother who died were you. And how did you manipulate them all according to your own bloody fancy?”
“Your ears are less sharp than your tongue, Seneschal. I think I’ve already said that I would have preferred Ironside to ride with Gawain, and Sir La Cote Male Taile with Agravain. But I could hardly separate Gawain from good cousin Ywain, and The Ill-Fitting Coat did not join us last night, though I saw him ride eastward this morning with the good Saracen Palomides and his brother. As for the rest—a word to Agravain, a word to Gaheris… and Gareth was not unwilling to go with King Pellam’s nephew and hear again of the wonders of Castle Carbonek and Lancelot’s various sojourns there.”
“And your brothers know why you paired them up like that?”
“Agravain and Gaheris do,” Mordred replied. “And I paired Pinel with our gentle Beaumains more for symmetry than for hope.”
“I’m surprised you wasted yourself with me,” I said.
“I ran out of other suspected traitors. Others, at least, whom I could manipulate to my fancy, as you put it.”
“You could have sat in London and watched Mador and Bors.”
Mordred snapped off a tree branch that was about to slap his face, and examined the new leaves on it. “I can also go with you to find Aunt Morgan le Fay.”
“If you want to find Morgan le Fay, we’ll have to separate. I’m going to find Dame Nimue.”
“I knew you had someone else in mind than Lancelot du Lac.” He threw away the first tree branch, plucked a leafier one, and twined it into his palfrey’s mane like an early sprig of May. “Yes, we have a better chance of finding the Lady of the Lake than the Queen of Gorre in the allotted time.”
“If you don’t really expect one of your pawns to make an attack on one of your brothers,” I said, “why go to all the work of pairing them together?”
“Why play any game? An attempt on the life of another of Lot’s sons within the next ten days would be enlightening, but my chief design was to keep watch on our possible traitors. We’ve arranged to meet at Astolat three days before the Queen’s trial, you see.”
“You’ve arranged that without hearing what I might want to do.”
“I assumed you would be interested in the gathering of murderers at Astolat, Sir Seneschal.”
“I’m more interested in saving the Queen,” I replied.
Mordred turned in his saddle to give me a look that was half a challenge. “They say that Merlin could cover all Britain in two days,” he remarked, “and bring along an army with him if he wished.”
“It’s the truth. I saw it myself, at Bedegraine. One of the few useful things the old meddler ever did.”
“And Dame Nimue of the Lake learned her craft from Merlin, or much of it.” Mordred whistled a few versicles of the Kyrie. “You are right, Seneschal. Find Nimue, and she can bring us back to Astolat from her Lake within a day or two.”
“You’re that sure the traitor is one of them?”
He glanced at me again. “Unless it is Aunt Morgan. Or someone else. But I say the fact is not without its meaning that we agreed upon three suspected poisoners, and those three, by coincidence or Fate, the three with whom I was able to pair my brothers.”
“ I don’t take my suspicions as Gospel,” I told him. “It could have been the little damsel Senehauz for all I know, and my thinking it was Ironside or Pinel wouldn’t change the fact. Nor would your thinking so, for all your subtlety.”
“The fair Nimue may even have time to help us find Queen Morgan before we gather at Astolat,” Mordred remarked. For a moment he seemed almost wistful. “Yes, I’d enjoy seeing my aunt again. I haven’t seen her since I was a boy, you know. Not since she found me at old Sir Antor’s castle after the shipwreck and helped restore me to my kith and kin.”
That shipwreck had been the result of the worst pieces of so-called prophecy Merlin had ever given Arthur under the name of counsel and advice.
Near the beginning of his reign, Artus had a bad dream one night at Caerleon. Under the circumstances, it was wonderful he did not have nightmares every time he lay down to sleep. We had just more or less quelled the first wave of rebellion at Bedegraine, in a battle so bloody even Merlin was disgusted; and even then our victory had less to do with the truce than with the fact that a convenient Saxon attack on one of the rebel kings’ cities called them away from our throats for a while. Our allies at Bedegraine, Kings Ban and Bors, had gone home to Gaul, on the understanding that Artus was to come across the Channel and help them in their war with Claudas. Leodegrance of Cameliard was calling for Arthur’s help against Ryons of Norgales, while Ryons was threatening, independently of his broil with Leodegrance, to flay off Arthur’s young beard and have it sewn on his mantle beside the beards of eleven other kings he had conquered. None of the recent rebels were asking for help against the Saxons, which was the only call for help that would really have pleased Artus. Queen Morgawse, the wife of Lot, who was one of the leading kings in the first rebellion, had come to our court, gracious and beautiful—Artus was infatuated, and hoped to work out an alliance with King Lot through her as ambassador; but, instead, they yielded to their mutual lusts. They thought they were being very subtle about it, and, in fact, no one could be completely certain how far they had gone; but the gossip was not likely to help the peace effort
if Lot got wind of it. Morgawse had picked up old-fashioned ideas about men sharing women to cement friendship, but Lot did not share her opinions; and Artus meanwhile, after she was gone, spent several days moping for her like a moonstruck rooster, while the rest of us waited for news that Lot was forming a new rebel coalition.
Being attacked from two or three sides at once, expecting a call for help from Brittany fortnightly (though as things turned out, we never did get across the Channel until long after Claudas had already defeated and killed Ban and Bors), moping for his latest light-o’-love, and suffering frustration in his hopes for a truce and alliance with Lot and the other recent rebels would have been enough to give any old, seasoned monarch a few bad dreams. Artus was not yet twenty, had not even had the chance to get a few years’ experience as simple knight under his belt before jumping from squire (and a rather indifferent squire) to High King, and did not yet know who his parents were—Merlin had stunned him, and me, with the news that my father and mother were not Artus’ parents also—but the great mage saw fit to point to the damn Sword in the Stone as the only test and proof that was needed, and save the revelation of Arthur’s true parentage for a little later, after several thousand knights had died and the rebellion against a king of unknown parentage, who even feared himself a bastard, was firmly entrenched.
Ordinary, honest, simple-minded folk like my father, myself, and my old nurse did not have to look any farther than the present situation to understand why Artus dreamed one night that a serpent came out of his side and destroyed all the land. Every peasant in the country, at least every peasant who knew anything about what was going on beyond his own fields and village, was probably having worse dreams every night. But Merlin, who still had not bothered to tell Arthur or anyone else that Arthur was the lawful son of Uther Pendragon and Igraine of Cornwall and that King Lot was his brother-in-law, now told him his nightmare meant that his own son would cause his downfall and the destruction of the realm.
The Idylls of the Queen Page 7