“We didn’t suspect you because of your kinship by marriage to Sir Bagdemagus, Dame Morgan,” I assured her. “You earned the distinction of being suspected entirely on your own merits.”
“Hated, feared, and mistrusted.” She nodded. “But recognized as a power to be reckoned with. Well, my lords, I could take this chance to cast the blame on my dearly-hated Uriens. It is true that Arthur trustingly acquitted Uriens of suspicion after my ploy with the counterfeit Excalibur, even while driving my Ywain into exile for a year for no other reason than that he was my son and therefore suspect of complicity in his mother’s schemes. But Artus might more easily believe Uriens capable of striking against the killer of his nephew Bagdemagus than he was once able to believe Uriens could let himself be bent to his wife’s will. It would not be hard for me to send back with you manufactured proofs and evidences of Uriens’ guilt.”
“It would be cunning revenge, Aunt,” said Mordred, “but Uriens is uncle to us as well as to Bagdemagus.”
Morgan smiled and stroked her cat. “Uriens is uncle to you and your elder brothers by dint of his marriage to me, and I think that his feeling for me as nearly reflects mine for him as his puny soul is capable of. If he meant to avenge Bagdemagus, the beloved son of his brother, he would not hesitate to do so on the sons of his wife’s sister. Aye, family loyalties knot and tangle, do they not?”
“Whatever Uriens may be with you and other women,” I said, “among men he’s a good companion and still a strong fighter, for all his years. You wouldn’t convince anyone your husband might stoop to poison.”
“Uriens is old, Gawain still relatively young. Even at the height of his own prime, Uriens could not have defeated his nephew in fair fight. At least, my accusation might make Arthur trust Uriens a little less. But I am not going to accuse my husband or to manufacture false evidences. I merely tell you all this in the hope that, knowing I have refused to turn this to the hurt of the one creature I have most cause to hate in all your court, you will trust my testimony and the true images I have found for you.”
“I asked you to tell us about Astamore,” I said, “not to give us a long demonstration of your nobility toward Uriens.”
“Common blood does not infuse in relatives any instinctive knowledge of one another,” said Le Fay. “Did not King Pellinore, in the heat of his quest, once fail to recognize his own daughter, so that she and her wounded knight died for want of the help her father should have given to any folk in such need? I scarcely knew Astamore when I saw him among your queen’s dinner guests. The only period during which I had earlier seen him was when he was a child of six or seven. Both my husband Uriens and his nephew-regent Bagdemagus were gone from their country on the higher business of attending Arthur, and I took advantage of their absence to return, take the government from Bagdemagus’ foolish son Meliagrant, and reign again for a few months as queen in Gorre. The country was better for my governing than for Meliagrant’s.
“Astamore was a pretty page and a ready scholar. I helped instruct him, as I helped instruct other pages and small damsels, in letters, harping, falconry, and some of the finer gambits of chess. I also taught them a few simple herbs and remedies to ease the pain of wounds and sickness. Most of the lads had little liking for this sort of knowledge, assuming that when they grew to knighthood they would always find surgeons, hermits, ladies and herbwives at need. But Astamore showed greater interest in herbs than in hawks or harping. Aye, he showed somewhat too much interest, pursuing his studies unsupervised. I did not teach my pages the preparation of any poisonous or harmful herbs, my lords, and I warned them strictly against picking and mixing any except those I taught them; but I did take care to point out some of the plants and growths to be avoided with greatest caution. Astamore disobeyed me, preparing infusions of his own device and gathering unknown plants, even some I had specifically forbidden. Once I caught him at it myself, once another boy brought me the tale, and both times I punished my small kinsman, but this alone did not stop his secret studies. The third time he came to me himself, in tears, with a dead brachet in his arms. He had tried out on her one of the deadly mushrooms I had cautioned the children most strictly never to touch. I beat him myself that time, to be sure it was not done over-lightly—but I think that learning I could do nothing, with all my herbs, to bring his brachet back to life again was his greatest punishment.
“As far as I know, Astamore did not meddle unguided with herbs again. But it must have been shortly afterwards that I left Gorre, at news of Bagdemagus’ return for the winter. Astamore may have set aside his study of herbs for the more common pursuits of pages, or he may have found another teacher to continue his instruction. I doubt he could ever have found one who would teach him that preparation I told you of, but even as a small boy he had learned enough to kill a person quickly with natural poisons.”
I thought of Astamore starting from the table as if about to rush from the room and be sick at sight of the bitch Mordred had poisoned to test the fruit. Strange that the death of a dog had affected him more strongly than the death of a brother knight. Guilty memory of the brachet he had killed as a child? Or fear that a more recent guilt was about to be found out? Or maybe the dog’s death had simply driven home the understanding of what had happened to the man—what could have happened to any of us there. I did not want to believe Astamore a traitor.
“But would Astamore have wished to use his knowledge?” Morgan went on. “Men and women sometimes change with the years, and I did not know him over-closely, but it seemed to me he was never a vicious nor a vengeful child. And the death of his pet may have so shaken him that he left his knowledge of herbs and poisons to rot away unused in his mind.”
Neither was Gawain a vengeful man, but his sense of justice led to results that could be about the same. Nevertheless, Astamore openly confessed that his uncle’s death had been pure misfortune. Bagdemagus and Gawain had met by chance, two knights questing for the Holy Grail and feeling the need for some of that constant exercise a man must have to keep up his jousting skill. The second time they ran together, Gawain’s spear had struck into Bagdemagus’ side and broken short. It had not even been a death in the heat of battle, when a man cleaves the head of an enemy who was on the verge of surrender, as some of the witnesses said had happened in the case of King Lot’s death.
“As for your other two,” said Morgan, “Pinel of Carbonek is a complete stranger to me; my spies have never considered him important enough to tell me more than that he had come to your court with Lancelot after the Adventures of the Sangreal. And I undoubtedly know nothing of Ironside that you do not know more fully.”
“You were not responsible for Ironside’s performance before Castle Dangerous when he played the Red Knight of the Red Lands, then, Aunt?” said Mordred.
“You may find it difficult to believe, Nephew, but there is a little evil not of my plotting in the world, and there are a few wicked folk who act independently of me.”
Meanwhile, thinking of Bagdemagus’ death had led me into another path. Gawain seemed never to hold back any truth, even if it were unflattering to himself. If his candor had a flaw, it was in leaving out self-justifications and mitigating circumstances. We knew the details of Bagdemagus’ death, Pellinore’s, and that of Ywain the Adventurous. We knew a tale of Gawain’s accidental beheading of Sir Ablamar’s lady which was probably even less flattering to Gawain than if he had told it himself rather than leave it to the only witnesses, his brother Gaheris and the bereaved Ablamar, to tell in their own way. Yet we knew almost no details of the death of Lamorak de Galis, other than that Gawain and his brothers had been responsible. He had said nothing except that his mother Queen Morgawse was avenged; his younger brothers had added nothing to the statement; and even the squires Lamorak had picked up in Surluse had been surprisingly selective how they told the confused tale that helped feed the rumors and beliefs of Lamorak’s kinsmen.
“Dame Morgan,” I said, “can you look far enough into the past
to see the death of Lamorak de Galis?”
“Lamorak de Galis? My sister’s paramour. My spies were never able to tell me quite where it happened, nor have I ever felt the need or desire to learn more than that he was dead.”
I looked at Mordred. “You were there, weren’t you?”
“I was,” he replied with a half-smile. “It happened in the forest somewhere between Surluse and Sugales.”
That took in almost as much territory as we had covered between Nimue’s Lake and Morgan’s castle. “Dame Morgawse’s murder, then,” I said. “We know where that happened, but, as I recall, there’s always been some slight doubt as to who—”
“There was no doubt!” said Mordred. “The traitor Lamorak murdered her as she waited for his love!”
“That has been questioned. I’m not asking you to watch it, Mordred, but if Dame Morgan can show it to me—”
“No!” Morgan rose. “I could find the chamber, and wait for the moment, but to what purpose, Seneschal? What is important for you to know is not how my sister and her paramour met their deaths, but what your poisoner may believe of the case. If the kinsmen of Lamorak de Galis believe that he was guiltless in my sister’s death and that he was killed less than honorably by her sons—”
“The traitor Lamorak met a more honorable death than he deserved,” said Mordred. “Even now, the world remembers him as a great knight—the third of the world, after Lancelot and Tristram, if you please—more than as our mother’s murderer.”
“Leave this!” Morgan waved her hand. I doubt she cast a spell for silence, but the effect was about the same. She sat, calm again, took her cat from its refuge with Nimue, settled it in her own lap once more, and began to feed it tidbits from her plate. “You might be interested to know, my lords, that news of the poisoning of Sir Patrise reached me from my spies a few hours ago, while you were sleeping. No, they added nothing to what I learned from you. They are creatures of little imagination. I prefer them so, to send me news uncluttered with speculation. I instructed them to watch, and to try to send me any further information with greater speed. I will learn nothing more from them in time to save Dame Guenevere; but, if her champion saves her, I might be able to learn somewhat to lay the lingering doubts at rest and, more important perhaps, to help you flush out this particular viper from your court. Meanwhile, I will spend the week sitting here staring into my bowl of water in hopes of catching our cleric without the cowl.”
“And get the word to us a week too late?” I said.
“I can set up a kind of message link with my sister Nimue to send simple thoughts, like birds, through the air from my brain to hers, in the unlikely event I should see anything of importance. Come, will you trust me, Sir Kay? I could as easily show you false images here were you to remain, as lie to you about my intent in this.”
In other words, she was dismissing us. Well, maybe she was right, after all. “We might as well trust you,” I said.
“And in return for my good will in this, you will bring my brother here to visit me?”
I would not. Between the chance that Morgan would convince him with her pictures painted by Lancelot and then persuade him to soften his vengeance and merely banish the Queen to a convent, and the chance that he would never be convinced of it at all as things were going on of themselves, I preferred the latter. But, seeing no reason to antagonize Dame Morgan at this point, I said, “I’ll consider it.”
She sighed. “And you, Mordred? Will you consider it?”
He glanced at me. “Yes, I’ll consider it also, Aunt. But I doubt he would believe Lancelot’s silly pictures.”
She wiped the grease from her fingertips and tossed her cat lightly to the floor. “If you will not take Artus my invitation, then say nothing at all to him of me. But I think you would have kept my secret without my bidding, would you not? Well, accept my hospitality this one night longer, and you can set out well rested in the morning on your way to Astolat. And remember what I have told you, Sir Seneschal. Do not depend on the way of the tortoise. For once, play the hare.”
CHAPTER 25
The Search for Sirs Gareth and Pinel
“My sons and not my chief sons, my friends and not my warriors, go ye hence where ye hope best to do and as I bade you.”
—Malory XVII, 21
Thanks to my nap in the afternoon, I lay wakeful for some time, wondering whether the spies Morgan kept among us at court were even human, and musing that I would never again be able to look at hound or brachet, cat or hawk, or even the horses and mules in the stables without wondering which of them were acting as the eyes and ears of Le Fay. After long thoughts, which may have been half dreams, in which owls and turtles lumbered to Dame Morgan with the news that her servants, their fellow-spies the old bitch hound and the kitchen rats, had been poisoned by Mordred and myself while testing fruit, I at last decided to mull a little of the herbed wine our hostess had left, if we wanted it, to aid our sleep.
When I woke in the morning, my limbs were rested, my head felt somewhat clearer, and I was more inclined to trust Le Fay—with certain reservations. But the prospects of discovering Patrise’s murderer in time to save the Queen looked no brighter than before.
Morgan’s priests said Mass and her servants set breakfast for us, but Dame Morgan herself we did not see again. Nimue said she was already hard at work searching her images of the past, having risen at Matins and gone down immediately after the prayers.
“And where shall we ride today, my lords?” the Dame of the Lake went on cheerfully when we were outside the castle and staring into the woods of Norgales. Dame Nimue was wearing her olive complexion and black hair, ready for travel. “If you had anything at all of Sir Lancelot’s,” she reminded us again, “a hair, a piece of garment or bandage, the scab of an old wound—”
“Never suspecting I’d have any use for a memento of the great man,” I said, “I had better things to do than save up his nail parings and bloody bandages.”
“After his experiences with Aunt Morgan,” said Mordred, “the noble Du Lac is more careful with the shavings of his beard than with the reputation of the Queen. If such things are what you need, however, I can provide the means of finding whichever of my brothers we might choose.”
“What?” I said.
Mordred drew a small, folded deerhide pouch from his cloak. “Here is a lock of Gawain’s hair, a few threads of raveled embroidery from one of Agravain’s older tunics, a pearl from the sleeve of the Damsel of Whitelands that Gaheris wore once or twice as his token, and a bit of bloody bandage that I believe once wrapped a wound of Gareth’s.”
“Ihesu!” I said. “Do you intend to spellcast your own brothers?”
“A mere harmless pastime of mine,” he replied. “I would not know how to use these things, nor would I commission any weaver of spells to work my brothers’ hurt. But one never knows when such items may prove useful—as, you see, they now will. Come, which shall we choose?”
“If you really expected me to kill you somewhere along the way, why bring along your tokens of your brothers?”
“You would not have known how to use them, Seneschal, any more than myself. You would probably not have been able to guess what or whose they were, even had you found them, though you might have found the pearl a pretty toy. My collection was safer with me than left at court to fall into the hands of God knows whom. What, for instance, might Dame Lynette do with a personal memento of her husband?”
“Dame Lynette could have gotten a piece of Sir Gaheris before now, more easily than you, if only a fingernail full of his skin,” I said. “If she’d wanted it.”
“More easily than I? Are you really so sure of that, Seneschal?”
“As Dame Morgan could have gotten a memento of her husband years ago, had she wanted one,” Nimue put in, riding her palfrey between ours. “Come, my lords—the value of such things has been overestimated in some part of the popular mind. They are useful to us chiefly in locating their former owners, and I thi
nk my lord Sir Mordred showed admirable foresight in bringing them along. Which shall we use?”
“Not Sir Gawain’s,” said Pelleas, with surprising forcefulness. I turned in my saddle to look at him. I had not thought he was close enough to hear our conversation, let alone take an active interest in it—Dame Nimue’s trained lap-husband, riding along with us mainly for the nights and seeming in the daytime, not exactly bored, but as if he had put most of his wits in storage and not kept enough on hand for immediate use to realize that he was bored. “I’d as lief see as little of Sir Gawain as possible,” he added.
“There’s no need to search out Sir Gawain in any case,” Nimue reassured him. “He rides with his cousin Ywain, who will hardly be our poisoner, and I understand they are as dear friends as Gawain and Lancelot himself, besides being bound by blood.”
“The more fool Sir Ywain,” murmured Pelleas, letting his palfrey fall to the rear with the squires as he gazed dreamily at the budding trees. There are gossips who say the Damsel of the Lake spoiled Pelleas for the active life, which is also what they said for a while of Dame Enide and her Erec; but from what I have heard about Pelleas’ behavior previous to his marriage, he had never been much more than a good strong fighter with a weak head and weak opinions to which he stuck doggedly because he lacked the wit to change them through his own cogitation—ripe to make a mooncalf of himself over Dame Ettard, Dame Nimue (Damsel as she was then), or any other woman with a touch more character than he could boast himself. At least the Lady of the Lake kept him out of mischief.
“Then it will be Agravain with Ironside, Gaheris with Astamore, or Gareth with Pinel,” said Nimue. “The first pair were riding south, the second pair north, and the third pair northwest. That means, unless they have changed their courses, that Sir Gareth and Sir Pinel will be closest to us.”
“At times I think you remember my memories better than I do myself, Dame,” I observed.
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