Part 25 (1/2)

MORDRED SAT AT THE WINDOWof the King's business room in Camelot. The scents from the garden below eddied on the warm breeze in sudden gusts of sweetness. The apple blossom was gone, but there were cherries still in bloom, standing deep among bluebells and the grey spears of iris. The air was full of the sound of bees, and birds singing, while down in the town bells rang for some Christian service.

The royal secretaries had gone, and he was alone. He sat, still thinking over some of the work that had been done that day, but gradually, in the scented warmth, his thoughts drifted into dreaming. So little time ago, it seemed, he had been in the islands, living as he had lived in boyhood, thinking in bitterness that he had lost everything in that one night when the Orkney brothers had risked all for themselves and their friends on that mad, vicious attempt to finish Bedwyr. Thinking, too, of the summer's tasks ahead of him: harvesting and drying fish, cutting peats, rebuilding walls and repairing thatch against the dreadful Orkney winter.

And now? His hand, resting on the table, touched the royal seal. He smiled.

A movement outside the window caught his eye. Guinevere the Queen was walking in the garden. She wore a gown of soft dove-grey, that s.h.i.+mmered as she moved. Her two little dogs, silver-white greyhounds, frisked round her. From time to time she threw a gilded ball and they bounded after it, yelping and wrangling as the winner carried it back to lay it at her feet. Two of her women, both young and pretty girls, one in primrose yellow and the other in blue, walked behind. Guinevere, still lovely, and secure in her loveliness, was not one of those who seek to set her beauty off by surrounding herself with plain women. The three lovely creatures, with the dainty little dogs at their skirts, moved with grace through the garden, and the flowers of that sweet May were no fairer.

Or so thought Mordred, who was rarely a poet. He gazed after the Queen, while his hand once more, but quite unconsciously, reached out and touched the dragon of the royal seal. Again he drifted into dream, but this time it was not a dream of the islands.

He was brought sharply to himself by the sounds, urgent and unmistakable, of a King's messenger being ushered through the royal apartments. A chamberlain opened the door to announce a courier, and even as he spoke the man hurried by him and knelt at the regent's feet.

One glance told Mordred that here was news from Brittany, and that it was not good. He sat in the great chair and said, coolly: ”Take your time. But first - the King is well?”

”Yes, my lord. G.o.d be thanked for it! But the news is ill enough.” The man reached into his pouch, and Mordred put out a hand.

”You have letters? Then while I read them, compose yourself and take a cup of wine.”

The chamberlain, who missed nothing, came in unbidden with the wine, and while the man drank gratefully, Mordred broke the seal of the single letter he had brought, and read it.

It was bad, but, to one remembering that last conversation with the King, not yet tragic news. Once again, thought Mordred, the evil fates summoned by Morgause were at their work. To put it more practically, the Orkney rashness had yet again brought the promise of disaster close. But possibly something could be saved from near-disaster; it was to be hoped that all Gawain had done was to bring matters to a head too soon.

The King's letter, hastily dictated, gave the facts merely of the disastrous emba.s.sy and the running fight that had followed. Under Mordred's questioning the courier supplied the details. He told of the rash exchange between Gawain and the Roman youth, of the murder, and of the flight of the emba.s.sy and the subsequent skirmish by the river's bank. His story confirmed what Arthur's letter indicated, that all hope even of a temporary peace had vanished. It was possible that Hoel might be able to take the field, but if not, Arthur must command Hoel's army, together with such force as he had brought with him. Bedwyr had been recalled from Benoic. Arthur had already sent to Urbgen, to Maelgon of Gwynedd, to Tydwal and the King of Elmet. Mordred was to send what force he could, under the command of Cei. He would then be well advised to put forward his own meeting with Cerdic, when he could apprise him of the situation. The letter closed briefly, with urgency: ”See Cerdic. Warn him and his neighbours to watch the coast. Raise what force you can meanwhile. And guard the Queen's safety.”

Mordred dismissed the man at length to rest. He knew that there was no need to enjoin discretion; the royal couriers were well chosen and highly trained. But he knew that the man's coming would have been noted, and rumour would have run through Camelot within minutes of the tired horse's coming up through the King's Gate.

He walked over to the window. The sun had slanted some way towards the west, and shadows were lengthening. A late thrush sang in a lime tree.

The Queen was still in the garden. She had been cutting lilac. The girl in the blue dress walked beside her, carrying a flat willow basket filled with the white and purple blooms. The other girl, with the two little dogs leaping and barking round her, was stooping, with her skirt kilted up in one hand, over a border of ferns. She straightened with the gilded ball in her hand and threw it, laughing, for the greyhounds. They raced after it, both reaching it at the same moment, and fell into a yelping, rolling tangle, while the ball flew free.

Keep the Queen safe. How long could this serene and flower-filled garden peace be kept? The battle might already have started. Might be over. With enough bloodletting, thought Mordred, to content even Gawain.

His thoughts went further; were checked. Even now he himself might be High King in fact, if not yet in name....

As if his thought had been the shadow of a flying cloud that touched her, he saw the Queen start, then lift her head as if listening to some sound beyond the garden walls. The spray of lilac which she loosed sprang back into its own scented bank of blossom. Without looking she dropped the silver knife into the basket which the girl held beside her. She stood still, except for her hands, which seemed to rise of their own will to clasp themselves at her breast. Slowly, after a moment, she turned to look up towards the window.

Mordred drew back. He spoke to the chamberlain. ”Send down to the garden to ask if I may speak with the Queen.”

There was an arbour, pretty as a silk picture, facing south. It was embowered with early roses, showers of small pale-pink blossoms, with coral-coloured buds among them, and falling flowers fading to white.

The Queen sat there, on a stone bench warm from the sun, waiting to receive the regent. The girl in yellow had taken the greyhounds away; the other remained, but she had withdrawn to the far side of the garden, where she sat on a bench below one of the palace windows. She had brought some sewing out of the pouch at her girdle, and busied herself with it, but Mordred knew how carefully he was watched, and how quickly the rumours would spread through the palace: ”He looked grave; the news must be bad....” Or, ”He seemed cheerful enough; the courier brought a letter and he showed it to the Queen....”

Guinevere, too, had some work by her. A half-embroidered napkin lay beside her on the stone bench.

Suddenly a sharp memory a.s.sailed him: Morgan's garden in the north, the dying flowers and the ghosts of the imprisoned birds, with the angry voices of the two witches at the window above. And the solitary, frightened boy who hid below, believing that he, too, was trapped, and facing an ignominious death. Like the wildcat in its narrow cage; the wildcat, dead presumably these many years, but, because of him, dead in freedom with its own wild home and its kittens sired at will. With the lightning-flicker with which such thoughts come between breath and breath, he thought of his ”wife” in the islands, of his mistress now gone from Camelot and comfortably settled in Strathclyde, of his sons of those unions growing up in safety - for the children of that solitary boy could now incur, how readily, the sting of envy and hatred.

He, like the wildcat, had found the window to freedom. More, to power. Of those scheming witches, one was dead; the other, for all her boasted magic, still shut away in her castle prison, and subject, now, to his will as ruler of the High Kingdom.

He knelt before the Queen and took her hand to kiss. He felt its faint tremor. She withdrew it and let it fall to her lap, where the other clasped and held it tightly. She said, with a calmness forced over drawn breath: ”They tell me a courier has come in. From Brittany?”

”Yes, madam.” At her nod he rose, then hesitated. She gestured to the seat, and he sat beside her. The sun was hot, and the scent of the roses filled the air. Bees were loud in the racemes of pink blossom. A little breeze moved the flowers, and the shadows of the roses swayed and flickered over the Queen's grey gown and fair skin. Mordred swallowed, cleared his throat and spoke.

”You need have no fear, madam. There have been grave doings, but the news is not altogether bad.”

”My lord is well, then?”

”Indeed yes. The letter was from him.”

”And for me? Is there a message for me?”

”No, madam, I'm sorry. He sent in great haste. You shall see the letter, of course, but let me give you the gist of it first. You know that an emba.s.sy was sent, jointly from King Hoel and King Arthur, to talk with the consul Lucius Quintilia.n.u.s.”

”Yes. A fact-finding mission only, he said, to gain time for the kingdoms of the west to band together against the possible new alliance of Byzantium and Rome with the Germans of Alamannia and Burgundy.”

She sighed. ”So, it went wrong? I guessed it. How?”

”By your leave, the good news first. There were other fact-finding missions on their way at the same time. Messengers were sent to sound out the Prankish kings. They met with encouraging success. One and all, the Franks will resist any attempt by Justinian's armies to reimpose Roman domination. They are arming now.”

She looked away, past the boles of the lime trees now lighted from behind by the low sun, and gilded with red gold. The young leaves, wafers of beaten gold, shone with their own light, and the tops of the trees, cloudy with shadow, hummed with bees.

Mordred's ”good news” did not appear to have given her any pleasure. He thought her eyes were filled with tears.

Still regarding those glowing tree-trunks with their mosaic of golden leaves, she said: ”And our emba.s.sy?

What happened there?”

”There had to be, for courtesy, a representative of the royal house. It was Gawain.”

Her gaze came back to him sharply. Her eyes were dry. ”And he made trouble.” It was not a question.

”He did. There was some foolish talk and bragging that led to insults and a quarrel, and the young men fell to fighting.”

She moved her hands, almost as if she would throw them up in a cla.s.sic gesture of despair. But she sounded angry rather than grieved. ”Again!”

”Madam?”

”Gawain! The Orkney fools again! Always that cold north wind, like a blighting frost that blasts everything that is good and growing!” She checked herself, took in her breath, and said, with a visible effort: ”Your pardon, Mordred. You are so different, I was forgetting. But Lot's sons, your half-brothers-”

”Madam, I know. I agree. Hot fools always, and this time worse than fools. Gawain killed one of the Roman youths, and it turned out that the man was a nephew of Lucius Quintilia.n.u.s himself. The emba.s.sy was forced to flee, and Quintilia.n.u.s sent Marcellus himself after them. They had to turn and fight, and there were deaths.”

”Not Valerius? Not that good old man?”

”No, no. They got back in good order - indeed, with a kind of victory. But not before there had been several running engagements. Marcellus was killed in the first of these, and later Petreius Cotta, who took command after him, was taken prisoner and brought back to Kerrec in chains. I said it was a victory of a kind. But you see what it means. Now the High King himself must take the field.”

”Ah, I knew it! I knew it! And what force has he?”

”He leads Hoel's army, and with them the troops he took with him, and Bedwyr is called down from Benoic with his men.” Coolly he noted the slightest reaction to the name: She had not dared ask if Bedwyr, too, were safe; but now he had told her, and watched her colour come back. He went on: ”The King does not yet know what numbers the Prankish kings will bring to the field, but they will not be small.