Camelot's Blood (28 page)

That left the matter of the hall. Pedair had surely arrived with the men by now. It was most unfitting that they see the king in his current state, even if Agravain would consent to bring them into the hall.

“Byrd. I saw a chapel in the yard?”

Byrd nodded. “There is, my lady, though its in as fully bad shape as this kitchen. The priest is long gone and no one here prays anymore.”

“Take me. We will make a room for King Lot there.”

Byrd's gaze narrowed. Laurel could see the doubt in her. That did not matter. “As you say, my lady.”

The chapel had no walkway. They crossed the open court, skirting the growing crowd of folk milling there. The clouds scudded across the sky and the salt wind blew hard off the bay, lifting Laurel's spirits. It smelled of clean life and she welcomed it in this dying place.

Byrd had not exaggerated the state of the chapel. The painted walls were battered and soot-smeared. The plain altar table sagged in the middle and the cross on the wall tipped to the right. There was no sign of cloth or candlestick. The stone basin of holy water was dry and a dusty oak leaf lay in the bottom.

Laurel's teeth ground together in pure frustration. “We need to clean this place, Byrd. Fetch fire and water, and find out what bed and bedding may be had. My women, Cait and Jen, should have arrived with my luggage by now. Fetch them, and whoever you see standing idle with them. We must make this place hospitable at once.”

“Yes, my lady.”

Byrd hurried away again. Laurel looked about her, despair settling dangerously near in that moment's stillness. The desolation in this place went straight through her. This was beyond her skills. She did not know how to make this ruined place holy again.

Forgive me. It will be your house again, but I must beg the loan of it this little while
.

With that, Laurel tied up her sleeves, and set to work.

As Laurel walked away, Agravain made himself turn once more to his father. Perhaps the tide of Lot's pain had ebbed a little, or perhaps his strength had failed, but both the screams and the brutal contortions had eased. Lot of Gododdin lay still on his bed, breathing harshly. Sweat ran down his gaunt, yellow face.

“My father?” Agravain murmured. Lot's eyes were tight shut and he made no reply. Agravain spoke again, more loudly. “My father?”

Lot spasmed and twisted. With an effort that seemed to involve every fibre in his frame, he opened his eyes. Agravain leaned close, his shadow falling across his father.

Lot's lips moved aimlessly for a moment. Then he croaked, “Which of them are you?”

Disappointment sank through Agravain, but he pushed it aside. “I am Agravain.”

“Yes.” Lot slowly closed his eyes again. He swallowed. “Yes. Of course. It would be you.”

“I have come as I promised.” Agravain said, not understanding whether his father was pleased, or if his madness led him to rue this meeting. He almost feared to try to riddle it out.

Lot breathed deeply, once, twice, three times, searching for his strength. “You are grown to be a man, then.”

“You could see as much, Sire, if you opened your eyes.” Agravain hated the peevish, impatient tone behind the words, but it seemed he suddenly had no other voice available to him

Lot shook his head. “No. I cannot see. Not anymore. Only shadows and memory. There's nothing real. Nothing left.”

“Be easy, father,” said Agravain around the tightness filling his throat. “I am here now.”

Slowly, tentatively, his father opened his eyes. They were brown eyes, and once had been deep and clear. Age and illness now clouded them over, and turned the whites dirty yellow. They flicked back and forth restlessly, nervously.

“I had other sons, did I not?” Lot whispered. “You had brothers once.”

Agravain had to swallow hard before he could speak. “Yes.”

Lot too swallowed, and licked his lips. They were cracked, and lined with scabs. There should be water. He should get some, give an order, but he could not move.

“How do they fare?” Lot croaked.

“They are well, Sire. Gareth and Geraint are kings in their own countries now. Gawain has fathered his first son.”

“Good. Good.” Lot nodded feebly. This seemed to drain his strength so deeply that he had to close his eyes again. “Better than I deserve,” he breathed. He paused, and a thought seemed to strike him. “There was a sister,” he said slowly. “I can't see her now. Where is my Tania?”

For a long moment, Agravain could not answer. “She is not here.”

“Not here,” repeated Lot. “Not here.” His mouth moved, struggling for words. His hands plucked at the furs and his swollen legs kicked weakly. “Not here. You mean she's gone trysting with her man again. Conniving slut!” The force of Lot's scream lifted him head and shoulders from the bed. “Foul, sneaking whore! I'll kill you with my own hands!” As the words left him, his face unclenched, and his eyes opened wide in horror. “With my own hands. With my own hands.” Those hands, with the flesh hanging loose over their bones, trembled and slowly, Lot fell back down onto his pillows.

Agravain remained still. He could offer no comfort or ease. His father had done this thing and would be judged. Should be judged. All he could do was be sure that Morgaine the Sleepless was delivered up to that same judgment for that same deed.

“Is the other still here, father?” Agravain asked quietly. “Does she still come to you?”

But his father did not seem able to hear him. “God, I hurt,” moaned Lot, shifting and twisting his fever-flushed frame. “Christ and Mother Mary take me away from here, or give me strength enough … I had strength enough on that day, why do I not have it now? A knife, a knife. Please God. I am damned already, one more sin is no matter. Let it be clean, let it be over … ”

“Father.” Agravain bent closer. “Is she here? Does she still come?”

Lot's eyes darted back and forth and only slowly did his gaze find Agravain's. “Oh yes,” he breathed, and there was a horrible, mad eagerness in those words. “She comes. Treacherous, faithless, burning. She comes. Steals breath and flesh and leaves me burning. Bitch. Slut. I'll kill her. I'll kill her!” The words turned into a long scream and Lot's whole body fell once more into the rolling, restless grip of his pain, stretched and tossed by its invisible waves.

Agravain found he was not breathing. He drew down great swallows of air and stumbled backwards. His heels knocked against a chair he had not realized waited there behind him. He sat down hard, running both hands through his hair, unable to stop his ears against the sound of his father's agonies.

I must think clearly. I must think clearly
.

But he could not. The sight and sound of his father permeated his thoughts as surely as the stench of the illness permeated the air. It left no corner to which he could retreat, no door of self that he could close off. He should shift himself, give orders for water, clean bedding, anything. But the thought of bringing back one of those shiftless, shambling,
things
that had surrounded his father was not to be born.

Better he should … his knife hung heavily at his side. He could feel the hilt press against his hip as another scream ripped from his father's throat. It would be murder, but that sin could be absolved. Penance, however harsh, would surely be easier than hearing one more scream.

Agravain did not know how long he sat there, suspended between awareness of his father and awareness of the knife. At times he was only angry. At other times he felt sick to his soul. It was only the fact that his breakfast had been so long ago that kept him from spilling his stomach onto the cold stone. Helplessness pressed against him like a stone against his chest, smothering breath, hope, reason.

A footstep sounded behind him. Agravain was on his feet in an instant, whirling around, ready to strike. Laurel froze on the spot, until he could see that it was her. He drew himself up at once, tight and still.

“With your permission, my lord,” Laurel said evenly. “I would minister to the king, your father.”

“Yes. Yes.” Agravain was shaking. This was inexcusable. Intolerable. He cast about for something to focus his scattered, wayward thoughts. Laurel held a wooden basin in her hands. “What is that?” The words came out far more sharply than he meant.

“Clean water,” replied Laurel, setting the basin beside the feeble, flickering fire. “Nothing more.” She faced him. Her clothing was rumpled and stained, and two locks of hair had slipped unnoticed from her braids and now made white streaks across her flushed face. “I can have beer brought, if it seems he can swallow it.”

Of course. Of course Laurel had seen to these things, and to much more by the look of her. Her hands were stained as well, and her nails freshly broken, but her demeanor was absolutely correct and courteous. She gave no hint that she was disappointed, disapproving or frightened of this place he had brought her to.

I would minister to the king, your father
.

“If you please,” Agravain said, stepping aside.

Laurel soaked a clean rag in the water, but as she approached the bed, Lot uttered a weak, keening sound of almost infantile dread. “She is come. She is come!”

“No, father,” said Agravain hurrying once more to the bedside, in case … in case …

He could not make himself finish the thought, but neither could he stand for his father, even in his madness to be so mistaken. “This is the Lady Laurel. My wife.”

That word stopped his father cold, opening his eyes once more. “Wife?” Lot repeated, stunned. “You bring a wife here?”

“Yes, Sire.”

In the space of a heartbeat, his father's hand shot out, seizing Agravain's tunic and hauling him down.

“Fool!” Lot shrieked. Flecks of spittle landed on Agravain's cheeks and mouth. “Fool! She'll break you! She'll go over to that other one!”

Which was enough to make Agravain forget these words were spoken in pain and illness. He dug his fingers hard into his father's wrists, amazed that a hand so strong could feel so fragile. He could snap it in two without effort. He remembered himself in time, and drew back, holding his father's hand at bay as if it were some enemy's blade.

“Father, I will not permit you to speak so of her.” No one, not even this man, this king, would deny Laurel her due.

He felt Lot's hand relax in slow, jerking stages. When Agravain dared let go, his father's arm thudded onto the bed beside him like a dead thing.

“I burn Agravain,” Lot whispered.

“I know, father.” Agravain looked up at Laurel where she waited, mute and still, but not placid, nor stupefied. Readiness showed in her stance, her watchful silence, even in the way her fists knotted about the rag she held. Ready to run, or fight, whatever was needed. She waited only to see what she would be called to do.

When Lot's arm fell, she relaxed a little, readying herself for a different kind of fight. She walked forward, without hesitation, and began to sponge down Lot's face and arms with soft, competent motions. She moistened his parched lips and dribbled water into his mouth. All this Lot bore without moving, only breathing hard against the pain that surely accompanied each touch. Laurel moved down his body, carefully examining his swollen belly and legs, returning for more water.

But something was wrong. She was doing so little. Surely there was something more she could do. Was she satisfying herself on some point? Making sure of something?

Even as Agravain thought this, Laurel returned the rag to the basin and straightened up.

“My lord, we must move him.”

“No,” snapped Agravain.

Laurel's face hardened, and he thought he saw a trace of disappointment. That hit him harder than he would have believed possible.

“He cannot stay here,” she pointed out calmly. “Our people must be fed and housed, and this is the only place where there is room enough.”

This is the king's hall!
Agravain wanted to shout.
He will not be driven from it!

But she was right. If there had been space in his thoughts, he would have seen that for himself. Hours ago.

“The chapel is prepared to receive the king,” she went on more gently. Agravain found that he was grateful for the sympathy while resenting her insinuation that he needed it — and then resenting himself for his irrationality.

“You and I will do it,” Agravain said. It was the only concession he found himself able to offer. “No one else will touch him.”

It was not, however, enough for Laurel. “We cannot move him smoothly alone. Let Pedair and Ruadh help.”

This too he would have seen, if he could see, if he could think.
God and Christ, what is happening to me?
He stood here beside his father, home at last, to wage for a war he had known for ten years was coming, and in the space of a few hours, reason had utterly deserted him.

Him, but not his wife, who stood before him, waiting for him to return to his senses.

“Very well.”

Laurel curtsied with stiff formality, and went to summon the chieftains, who, he was certain, she had waiting just outside the doors.

“Thank you,” he whispered to her back. “My wife.”

• • •

As gentle as they tried to be, Lot screamed. It was horrible to hear. He twisted and writhed and though they had tried to swaddle him, he soon worked his way free. Twice, Laurel almost lost her grip on the sling. It seemed a mile across the court to the chapel where they could at last lay him down on the bedstead piled high with furs and fleeces.

As soon as Lot laid down, Laurel dismissed Pedair and Ruadh with soft orders to see to the feeding and quartering of the men, making sure they knew to go to Byrd and Ceana for all they needed. She hoped to spare Agravain the necessity of making more decisions at this moment. He could not seem to tear his eyes away from his father, but neither did he seem able to move. He just stood there, his hands opening and closing on nothing. Laurel shut the chapel door behind the two chieftains. When she turned, it was to see Agravain slumped down on a three-legged stool beside his father's head.

The second basin of clean water and the towel she had ordered from Byrd were laid on a small table beside the full pot and plate from the kitchen. She picked up a crockery jug from the floor and uncorked it, pouring an ample measure of its contents into the water and another into a wooden cup.

“What is that?” snapped Agravain, showing that he was not nearly so absorbed as she had taken him to be.

“Water of life,” she replied as she recorked the jug. “How the vultures here missed it, I do not know. It will help him sleep, if he can swallow it. It is also said to be good for fever and diseases of the skin.” She sighed, brushing her hair back from her face. “I wish Lynet were here. She is the one with the physician's training.”

But as her shadow brushed the king's bed, Lot shrank back, one hand flailing out as he tried to both fight, and find help. “Keep them away. Keep them away!”

Laurel stopped in mid-stride. Agravain caught his father's searching hand, holding it strongly. “No one comes here, father. You are thirsty. Let me help you to drink.” He beckoned to Laurel. She stretched her arm out to its utmost to put the cup into his hand, then retreated to the table. Agravain cradled Lot's head with one hand and tipped the cup up to his cracked lips. Lot choked and coughed and his eyes rolled. Laurel thought for sure he would refuse the draught, but Agravain kept at the task until the cup was emptied. Lot's eyelids fluttered and he struggled weakly. This time Agravain let him go. In a short while, his father's eyes closed, and his mouth went slack, letting out a hoarse, shallow snore.