The Road to Avalon (49 page)

Mordred was standing by the window with his back to the room, a slender, almost fragile-looking figure. He appeared to be watching the sky. Morgan was right, Arthur thought: he had been better off in Lothian. He closed the door behind him and spoke Mordred’s name.

The boy by the window turned slowly to face him. Mordred’s face was pinched and sallow-looking, his eyes smudged with unhappiness and fatigue. “I’m sorry, Father,” he said miserably. “I didn’t believe him, you see. He was saying filthy things about the queen and Bedwyr, and I thought I would let him make a fool of himself and shut him up once and for all.” The thin, beautiful face looked utterly stricken. “I never for a minute thought that he was right.”

Arthur ruthlessly stifled the pity he felt for his son. Mordred had to be made to understand what he had done. “I know you didn’t mean to cause such trouble, Mordred,” he said in a quiet, level voice, “but you have put me in a damnable position. You must realize that.”

“How
could
they?” Mordred cried passionately. “How could they do that to you? Betray you? Deceive you?”

The king walked slowly across the tiled floor.
“They
have not betrayed me,” he said. “You have.”

Mordred’s head jerked as if he had been struck in the face. “Nor have they deceived me,” Arthur went on remorselessly. “I have known about the queen and Bedwyr for years.”

Mordred’s face was chalk white. “I don’t understand.”

They were standing with but three feet between them. “How old are you?” his father asked.

“Seventeen.”

“Seventeen. When I was seventeen I was high king and had lost the only person in the world I loved. I have never told this to anyone, but I thought quite seriously about taking my life.” Mordred’s gray eyes were clinging to his face with horrified attention. “I did not because I had responsibilities that went beyond my own personal needs. It is not a privilege to be king, Mordred. It is a responsibility. No matter what may happen, you must always remember that you are a king. That always must take precedence over your private feelings. Do you understand what I am telling you?”

“I . . . Yes.”

“You let Agravaine use you for his own ends. You were thinking like a child, not like a king.”

Mordred pushed the hair back off his forehead. Some color had come back into his face and he stared at his father with a glimmer of defiance. “Well, if to be king means that I can no longer allow myself to feel, then you must find a new candidate for the job. I can’t do it.”

Arthur’s reply was measured. “I did not say you cannot allow yourself to feel. I said that you must not allow your feelings to influence your public acts.”

“Don’t you
care
about what they have done?” It was said wildly, passionately.

“I just told you that when I was your age I lost the only person I ever loved.” Arthur was watching him with an odd, alert look in his eyes. “After ten long years I got her back again. Why do you think I go to Avalon, Mordred?”

The blood was pounding in Mordred’s ears. “To . . . to see Morgan”

“To see Morgan. Your mother. I have not touched Gwenhwyfar in years. I certainly never begrudged her the happiness she found with Bedwyr.”

This is not happening, Mordred thought. My father is not saying these things to me.

“We were all managing quite well,” Arthur said, “until tonight. Do you realize how you humiliated her, Mordred? Do you understand the danger you have placed her in?” The voice was remorseless, giving him no room for escape. “Under Celtic law, adultery by the queen is punishable by death.”

“No!” It was a cry of shocked protest. “You wouldn’t!”

“Of course I wouldn’t. But if word of what happened here tonight gets out, there will be those who will call for punishment. I have enemies. No man can hold the power I do and not have enemies. There are those who would use her to get at me. And she has enemies too. She has no children, Mordred, so she is particularly vulnerable. There will be an outcry for me to put her aside and take another wife.”

“Would you do that?” The words were barely a whisper.

“No. But you have not made things easy for any of us, have you?”

I won’t cry, Mordred thought desperately. I won’t let him see me cry.

“I am sending Bedwyr, Agravaine, and the others to Gaul immediately.” Mordred was pinned down by that voice, the sound of sovereignty, empty of all emotion save authority. “When I leave with the army in two weeks, you will remain as co-regent with the queen. There will be talk; we cannot avoid that. You will not listen to it. You will behave toward Gwenhwyfar with the same devotion and respect that you have always shown her. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Mordred whispered.

“Look at me.”

Reluctantly Mordred raised his eyes. For the first time since he had known his father, he recognized the signs of fatigue in Arthur’s face. He supposed he did not look much better. He straightened his spine. Their eyes were now almost on a level. Mordred said, “I realize that such a statement cannot undo the damage, but for what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

The face that was such a mirror image of his own suddenly warmed.
“I
know” said his father, and the warmth reached to his voice as well. Mordred felt a wild desire to throw himself into Arthur’s arms and beg for reassurance that all would be well. It would be, he thought desperately. His father would handle it; he always did.

“Mordred,” Arthur asked, “why would Agravaine want to do such a thing?”

“I don’t know,” Mordred answered in obvious bewilderment. “He worships the prince. I can’t understand why he would want to hurt him. But there was no talking to him, Father. And he has a vicious tongue. He just got me so angry that I didn’t think.”

“All right.” Arthur not only looked tired, his son thought, he looked as if he were in pain. “We’ll just carry on as if nothing has happened,” Arthur said.

“What shall I do now?” Mordred asked uncertainly.

“Go back to the school. I shall be coming down with the queen very shortly. I will be putting each of the princes into a cavalry regiment. The School for Princes is now officially over.”

He had to collect Gwenhwyfar and start on his rounds, but he needed to be alone first. He went to his bedroom, told Gereint to see he was undisturbed for fifteen minutes, and went to lie on his back on the bed.

His head was pounding and all his senses were raw. He felt as if the air were full of flying glass. God! The look on the boy’s face.

He closed his eyes and out of the quiet and the dark came a feather-soft shower of love.

Morgan?

Yes. It’s all right. I know. He will survive it, Arthur. We will all survive it.

Not words, actually, but feelings. She knew. She understood. He was not alone.

How had he lived for so many years without her?

Only part of him had lived through those years, he thought now, as the tension in his head slowly relaxed. The deepest part of him had been dead and dry, like a tidal pool that has been cut off from the sea.

He lay still, his eyes closed. The feeling of being stripped of his skin, of having all his nerve ends exposed to the searing air, had gone. He would be able to do what had to be done.

What devil had driven Agravaine to do this thing? There had been hatred in his cousin’s eyes this morning. Surely all this could not have come about because Arthur had beaten him in a practice swordfight? Not even Lot’s son could be as overweeningly proud as that.

The temptation to kill the four of them had been great. What had saved them was the fact that Agravaine was Morgause’s son as well as Lot’s. He owed too much to Morgause to allow himself to take that particular road, however tempting it had been.

They had none of them liked the idea of being cooped up on a boat with Bedwyr. They should know how close they had come to death when he had walked in the door and seen their faces. If there had been any hope of keeping the matter completely quiet, he would have killed them. But there was no way he could silence the servants’ tongues. Agravaine had seen to that.

He forced his mind to practicalities.

He would have to see to the horses they were taking to Gaul now that Bedwyr was no longer here to do it. He hoped to God they had a calm crossing and he could get the horses safely across the Narrow Sea. In a battle against the Saxons, the horses were almost more important than the men.

With both Cai and Bedwyr gone, the whole of the job of moving the army was going to fall on him.

He sighed and swung his legs to the floor. No point in lying here thinking about all there was to do. Better get started.

He ran his hand through his hair. Damn Agravaine. If Bedwyr drowned all four of them on the way to Gaul, Arthur wouldn’t say a word.

Chapter 41

F
OR
the following two weeks it seemed to Mordred as if his father never slept. Arthur was everywhere in Camelot, directing and encouraging, quiet, patient, quite formidably efficient. When he was not with the army he was in his office meeting with suppliers and coping with a mountain of paperwork.

Never again did Mordred see the marks of fatigue on his father’s face. His energy seemed inexhaustible.

Toward the end of the second week, Arthur spent one night at Avalon. Then he moved five thousand men and three hundred horses to Portus Adurni, loaded them on ships, and embarked for Gaul. The messenger Arthur sent back to Camelot arrived two weeks later with the good news that the army had crossed the Narrow Sea safely and sailed into the mouth of the Loire, where Arthur had been formally greeted by Syagrius. The plan was for the two armies to combine and advance up the Loire to fight the Saxons.

Autumn came to Camelot. Arthur had left but a skeleton garrison in the capital, and the falling leaves blew around empty barracks and deserted training fields. Many of the shops closed for lack of customers, and the bazaar outside the gates slowly drifted away. The heart of Camelot had gone with the king.

Mordred found that his main business as regent was to dispel the rumors that had spread like wildfire about Bedwyr and Gwenhwyfar. His most trying test came with the arrival of Cador, King of Dumnonia, who rode to Camelot to find out the truth for himself.

“What is this story I hear about you and Agravaine catching the queen in bed with Bedwyr?” Cador asked Mordred bluntly as soon as he was alone with Arthur’s son.

It was the first time Mordred had been directly confronted with such a question. He answered steadily, around the thumping of his heart, “Just that, my lord. A story.”

Cador’s eyebrows, gray and bushy, drew together. “It is not true, then?”

“It is not true.”

“Then how in Hades did such a story get started?”

Mordred had had time to think about that question. “The queen has enemies,” he replied. His gray eyes were as steady as his voice. “There are those who would like to see the king put her aside and take a new wife.” To his amazement, Cador looked uncomfortable. “I suppose someone tried to take advantage of her friendship with the prince,” Mordred concluded.

“Someone. Who is this someone, Prince Mordred?” Cador met his eyes once more.

“I don’t know. But it is unfortunate that people are willing to believe such an ugly and improbable story. Bedwyr is devoted to my father. He would cut off his right arm before he would do anything to hurt the king.”

This last statement was so true, and so universally known to be true, that Cador seemed convinced. At any rate, he left the following day, to be succeeded by Bedwyr’s father come upon the same errand. Mordred dealt with him in much the way he had dealt with Cador.

“If such a story were true,” he said to Ban, “the king would hardly have kept Bedwyr in his service. Nor would he have left the queen as co-regent with me.” Mordred raised his black brows and for a moment he looked uncannily like Arthur. “Someone must hate your son very much, my lord, to have started such an ugly rumor.”

“My son, or the queen.” Ban’s face was heavy with thought. “A childless queen is never popular.”

Mordred had agreed, and after a visit of several days, Ban and his retinue had left again for Wales, apparently satisfied.

Gwenhwyfar wrote to her father and assured him that the rumors were not true and that she did not need him to come to Camelot. Maelgwyn apparently believed her, for he stayed home.

“Dumnonia and Wales are all right,” Gwenhwyfar said to Mordred as they sat together at dinner the first night after Ban’s departure. “But there has been nothing from the north.”

“I wrote to Gaheris and told him that Agravaine had tried to cause trouble by starting an ugly rumor but that it was not true. Gaheris has no love for Agravaine. He should be satisfied.”

“It is Elmet and Rheged I’m worried about. And Manau Guotodin, to a lesser extent. They are the kingdoms that opposed Arthur on this expedition to Gaul. And they will have the direct word of their own princes to oppose ours.”

Mordred sighed and looked down at his plate.
“I
know. But there is little else we can do, save continue to act as if nothing has happened.” He picked up a piece of meat, then put it down again, untouched. The servants were out of the room for the moment and the two were alone. “I have never told you how sorry I am for the trouble I have caused,” he said in a low voice. “If I could undo it, I would.”

They were seated at the small round table in the family dining room and Gwenhwyfar looked for a long, aching moment at Mordred’s averted face. They were in their usual places and she had a good view of the hard line of his young cheek, shadowed by the down-looking black lashes. “Mordred,” she finally said sadly, “I am the one to be sorry.”

“No. My father explained it all to me. It was my fault, anyway, for listening to Agravaine.”

She tried for a lighter note. “Well, there is little point in our arguing over who is sorrier. We must simply go forward as best we can.”

He looked up at that and the glimmer of a smile lightened his set mouth. For a moment he looked so like Arthur—not just the bones, but the expression—that her breath caught. “Yes,” he said. “We must.”