The Road to Avalon (48 page)

Gawain could feel his eyes widening. “The prince is still going to Gaul?”

Arthur’s face was absolutely remote. “The prince is my cavalry commander. I cannot imagine launching a campaign against the Saxons without him.”

“No. Of course not, my lord.” Gawain could not meet those winter-gray eyes.

“You are to say nothing to anyone of what happened here tonight, Gawain. Is that clear?”

Gawain’s startled blue eyes flew to the king’s face. “Yes, my lord.”

“Thank you for your assistance,” Arthur said then. “If we can manage to save anything at all out of this night’s debacle, it will be largely due to your good sense.”

Gawain bit his lip, nodded, and fled before he disgraced himself by bursting into tears.

Next, Arthur went to see his wife.

It was the longest night of Gwenhwyfar’s life. Olwen had come in white-faced and petrified, and Gwenhwyfar had sent her back to bed. Then she had got dressed and done her hair by herself, taking immense pains to braid some gold thread into one long red-gold lock. That done, she sat and waited. And tried to think what she could do.

She was under no illusions as to the seriousness of what had happened. Adultery by the queen was a very serious matter indeed. A state matter. Agravaine had known that when he arranged his little visit this night. He had known he would force Arthur’s hand.

It had been an attack against her, and in one way it had succeeded. Arthur would have to put her away. There was no way now that he could honorably keep her as his wife. She knew that, and accepted it. Her greatest fear was for Bedwyr.

Arthur would never physically harm Bedwyr, but if he dismissed the prince from his service, he would destroy him as surely as if he had run him through with a sword. It would break Bedwyr, to be parted from Arthur and from his beloved cavalry.

Perhaps if she offered to take all the blame, if she offered to go into a convent, Arthur would not have to punish Bedwyr.

God, what was Arthur going to do?

He had trusted them to be careful, and they had failed him.

Dawn streaked the sky, but none of her women came in to do the usual morning arrangements in her room. Olwen must be keeping everyone away. They were all waiting, as she was, for the king. Finally, in the quietness, she heard a familiar light step in the outer room, and then Arthur was standing in the doorway.

She had risen as soon as she heard his step, and they stared at each other now, the width of the room between them.

“God, Gwenhwyfar,” he said. “I am so sorry. What an unspeakable thing for you to have gone through.”

Her vision suddenly blurred and her throat closed. She found she couldn’t breathe. Before she realized what was happening, he was across the room and was taking her into his arms.

She couldn’t believe that she was actually here, being held comfortingly against him. She shuddered and he only held her closer. She buried her face in his shoulder and broke into deep, wrenching sobs.

“I am so sorry” he kept repeating. “Gwenhwyfar, I am so sorry”

She had braced herself for that remote, forbidding look, and to find instead this warmth and sympathy . . . It broke her, as sternness would not have. “We have to talk, Gwenhwyfar,” he was saying. “Try to stop crying”

She made a heroic effort to get herself under control. “That’s my girl” he said, and guided her over to sit beside him on the side of the bed. He handed her a cloth and she blew her nose.

The first thing she said, when she was able to speak, was, “Arthur, you must not put away Bedwyr.”

His face was calm. “I have no intention of putting away Bedwyr,” he answered.

His calm was infecting her. Perhaps it was not as terrible as she had feared. Perhaps she would not have to go to a convent. “I will go home to my father,” she offered tentatively. Then, when he did not answer immediately: “Or if that will not do, I will go to a convent.”

For the first time he looked angry. “I have no intention of discarding you, either. We will see this through together, all three of us, the way we have always done.”

“But . . .”A strand of hair, wet from her tears, was clinging to her cheek and he reached out absently to unstick it and smooth it back. “But the scandal,” she said.

“There will be no scandal. Not on the surface, at any rate. I am sending Bedwyr, Agravaine, and his friends to Gaul immediately. They will sail on the next tide. No one else knows exactly what happened here tonight except Gawain, and we can trust him to hold his tongue. Thank God he had the sense not to say anything specific to the men he sent to Avalon to fetch me. There will be talk, of course. The servants won’t keep quiet. But we will ignore it.”

She was staring at him with brilliant green eyes. “Are you certain this is what you want to do? You haven’t had much time to think it through if you only just learned the truth.”

“I’ve had a chance to talk to Bedwyr. And yes, I’m sure this is what I want to do.”

“There is nothing you can do to keep this story from going beyond the palace walls, you must know that. And it’s just the sort of thing any man who has no love for you will jump on.”

“I know there will be talk, Gwenhwyfar. But there will be no one left in Britain for anyone to question, except us.” He permitted himself a brief wintry smile. “And I do not think anyone is likely to broach the matter to you or to me. By the time the army returns from Gaul, the story will be an old one. It will be seen that Bedwyr is still my cavalry commander and that you are still my trusted and well-loved wife. I think the very fact that I am leaving you as co-regent will silence much of the talk immediately.”

They were sitting very close, shoulder to shoulder, and now he picked up her hand and squeezed it gently. “It will all come right,” he said. “I won’t allow a destructive little weasel like Agravaine to destroy what we have built so carefully for all these years.”

Quite suddenly words that Cai had once spoken to her sounded in her brain. “You will not find a better friend than Arthur,” Cai had said. “He will stand by you to the death.”

Cai had known his man.

She ran her tongue over dry lips. “Arthur,” she said in a low voice, “there is still Mordred. I think that was the worst part of it all”—her voice quivered—“the look on his face as he said to us, ‘How could you do this to my father?’ ” She bowed her head. “He won’t consent to have me as co-regent. I know he won’t. And,” she added sadly, “I cannot really blame him.”

He let out his breath audibly. There was the briefest silence before he said, “I am going to tell Mordred the truth about me and Morgan. This is a situation of our making, not of yours.”

For the second time in ten minutes all her faculties for breathing seemed to shut down. Never had he acknowledged his relationship with Morgan to her. He knew, of course, that she knew, but never once had he admitted it. And to say, “This is a situation of our making, not of yours”! He had, quite literally, taken her breath away.

He was still holding her hand, unconsciously, as if he had forgotten it was there in his. Never before had he touched her like that. Never before had he let her inside the space he kept around himself. She was there now, and she went very carefully. “Morgan may not want you to tell him,” she said at last.

He pushed his hair off his forehead. “Morgan is the one who said to tell him. He knows she is his mother; I told him the truth of that. He knows I go to Avalon. He, of all people, should have understood why.”

“He is a curiously innocent boy.”

“I know.” Arthur smiled wryly. “Not at all like me.”

Something had struck her and she turned to him, frowning. “Arthur, how can Morgan know what happened here? You said the men Gawain sent to Avalon told you nothing”.

He dropped her hand and linked his own together on his knee. He was not looking at her. He seemed to be trying to decide whether or not to tell her something. She watched his profile. He looked tired, she thought. There were marks of fatigue under his eyes. Finally he looked up. He had made up his mind. “She knows because I told her” he said.

“But you haven’t been back to Avalon”.

“I know.”

His long-sleeved white tunic was open at the throat, and the light from the hanging lamp played upon the bones of his face. From deep in her subconscious a picture floated to the surface of her mind: Arthur, dying, and Morgan standing beside his bed. She breathed hard through suddenly constricted lungs. “Are you saying that you can talk together with your
minds?”

“Yes.” He looked back at her, a little wary, not quite sure he should have told her this. She realized, abruptly, how astonishing this confidence was. Not only what he had told her, but the fact that he had told her at all. He was not even sure if she would believe him; she could see that in his face. Yet he had told her anyway.

“When you were so sick after Badon,” she said.
“That
was how she brought you back, wasn’t it?”

The wary look lifted. “Yes. The Saxons had been defeated, and I was so sick of being alone. I just decided it was time to go.” She remembered vividly how it had been, the long, weary vigil, the despair at watching him slip farther and farther away. “Then Morgan came and I knew I wouldn’t be alone anymore.” The simple words struck her like a blow.

She looked away from him. “Have you always been able to talk to each other like that?”

“We had never tried before. There was no necessity, you see. When we were children we were always together. Then, when we were separated, we both thought we would have to live the rest of our lives apart, so it was better not even to try.”

She saw. And, painful though the knowledge was, it was also a relief. She had not failed with Arthur, nor had Morgan stolen him from her. He had belonged to Morgan long before she came into his life.

How extraordinary, she thought. She had just been caught out in adultery with another man, and she and Arthur had never been closer than they were at this minute. For the first time in all their years together, he had let her in.

She was intensely curious about what he had just told her, but she sensed that he did not want to talk about it anymore. She changed the subject. “Mordred will take it hard. He idolizes you, Arthur. You must know that. He thinks you are a hero.”

“It’s time Mordred learned that there are no heroes outside the works of the epic poets,” his father replied. “There are only men trying their best to do the job they have to do.”

She sighed. “And women.”

He smiled at her, the smile that had always been able to turn her heart. “And women,” he agreed. “Now, have something to eat, wash your face, and put on your riding clothes. As soon as Bedwyr has left, you and I are going to visit every nook and cranny of Camelot. Together.”

She smiled back, “Yes,” she said, “my lord king.”

Chapter 40

A
RTHUR
went next to talk to Agravaine. The Lothian prince and the three princes from Elmet and Manau Guotodin who had accompanied him on his visit to the queen’s bedroom were waiting for him in one of the private reception rooms in the king’s apartment.

His followers were nervous, but Agravaine felt only triumph. He had caught her, like a bitch in heat. No more would she be able to flaunt herself all over Camelot at the side of the prince. Now Arthur would know. Bedwyr’s beloved friend would know. Really, Agravaine thought with pleasure, it could hardly have turned out better. And Mordred, poor besotted devil. He had found out the truth about her too.

The door opened suddenly, and the king was in the room. The four young men, who had been lounging in chairs, jumped instinctively to their feet. Even Agravaine came upright when Arthur walked in.

The king paused in front of the closed door and regarded them for a moment in silence. His face was utterly remote, his gray eyes cold. Mordred had his features, Agravaine found himself thinking reluctantly, but Mordred could never look as frightening as this.

“I have sent a servant to your quarters with instructions to pack your things,” the king said when the silence was beginning to make the air too thick to breathe. “You will all be leaving for Gaul on the next tide.”

“For Gaul?” It was a startled exclamation made by Baird of Elmet.

“Yes. I am sending the prince on ahead to purchase wagon horses for the army. You will accompany him.”

Jesus Christ, thought Baird in horror. He was going to put them on a boat with the
prince?
After what they had just done to him? He exchanged a look of terror with his brother and with Innis of Manau Guotodin.

Only Agravaine did not appear alarmed by the king’s words. He was staring at Arthur, and the pupils of his eyes were so dilated that the irises looked black, not blue.

He isn’t going to do anything, Agravaine thought with incredulous fury. He is still sending the prince to Gaul. He doesn’t care about Gwenhwyfar. He is going to cover it up.

“You will ride for Portus Adurni in half an hour,” the king was saying in that flat, cold voice. His eyes moved from one face to the next, like the flick of a whip. “I will not prevent your communicating with your fellows once we are in Gaul. But I should advise you to take care. I am not a good enemy to make.”

In the charged silence, Arthur looked at Agravaine. Alone of the princes, his face held no fear. Only fury; blind, sick fury. The two men stared at each other, and then the king said softly, “If you enter into a contest with me, Agravaine, I will smash you to pieces.”

The faintest glimmer showed in those fixed black eyes, and then Agravaine looked away.

“Don’t leave this room until you are sent for,” Arthur said, and shut the door behind himself, leaving the four young men alone together once more.

He had left Mordred to the last. This was the interview he was most dreading. The boy must be made to understand the consequences of what he had done.

It was not going to be pleasant.

Even though Mordred lived down at the school with the other princes, he still had his own bedroom in the palace and it was there that Arthur went next. The bedroom was in Arthur’s private suite, only a few doors down from the reception room that held Agravaine. Arthur put his hand on the door latch. How in Hades had the boy allowed himself to be so manipulated by Agravaine? he thought. And pressed down on the latch.