Wicked Day (11 page)

"And that's what you meant, too? That she's taking all that treasure to buy herself back in?"

Gawain, busy with a rope, did not reply. Gareth, understanding only half of what was said, put in eagerly: "If she goes, too, then she will take me, I know she will!" "Buy herself back in!" Agravain repeated it explosively. "Why, that's folly! It's easy to see what's happened. It was that wicked old man Merlin who poisoned the High King's mind against us, and now he's dead at last, because you can bet anything you like, that's the news the ship brings, and now we can go to court at Camelot, and lead the High King's Companions!"

"Better and better." Mordred spoke more dryly than ever. "When I asked if you would want to go, I was remembering that you didn't approve of his policies."

"Oh, his policies," said Agravain, impatiently. "This is different. This may be a chance to get away from here, and into the middle of things. Just let me get there, to Camelot, I mean, and get half a chance to see some life and some fighting, and to hell with his policies!"

"But what fighting will there be? That's the whole point, isn't it? That's what you were so angry about. If he is really set on making a lasting peace with Cerdic the Saxon, you won't see any fighting."

"He's right," said Gaheris, but Agravain laughed.

"We'll see. For one thing, I don't think even Arthur will get a Saxon king to agree to terms and keep them, and for another, once I get there, and within reach of any Saxon, treaty or not, there'll be fighting!"

"Fine talking," said Gaheris, with scorn.

"But if there's a treaty—" began Gareth indignantly.

Gawain interrupted. His voice was tense and even, overlying excitement. "Hold your tongues, the lot of you. Let's get back home and find out. At the very least it's news. Mordred, may we put about now?"

For Mordred, by consent, was always captain of their sea-going expeditions, as Gawain was of their forays by land.

Mordred nodded, and gave the orders for trimming the sail. That he allotted the hardest tasks to Agravain may not have been coincidence, but the latter said nothing, hung on to the bucking rope, and helped to bring the lively boat about and send it skimming landwards, rocking in the spreading wake of the King's ship.

Whether or not the ship carried any message concerning the boys, a royal envoy had certainly been on board, and had gone ashore before the ship was barely trimmed to the quay. Though he spoke to no one save for a brief acknowledgment of the courtesy meeting accorded him by the queen's chief men, part of his news was already known to the crew, and by the time the boys beached their craft and scrambled ashore, the words were passing from mouth to mouth with a knell of awe and dread, mingled with the poor folks' furtive excitement at the thought of such a momentous change in high places.

The boys crowded in, listening where they could, questioning those of the crew who were on the wharfside.

It was as they had guessed. The old magician was dead at last. He had been entombed, with splendid mourning, in his own cave of Bryn Myrddin, near Maridunum, where he had been born. One of the soldiers accompanying the King's messenger had been there on duty, and told vivid tales of the ceremony, the King's grief, of fires the length and breadth of the land, and finally of the court's return to Camelot and the dispatch of the royal ship to the Orkneys. About its business there the sailors were vague, but the rumour went, they told the boys, that Queen Morgause's family were to be taken back forthwith to the mainland.

"I told you so!" said Gaheris to his brothers, in triumph. They began to run along the road that led to the palace. Mordred, after a second's hesitation, followed. Suddenly, it seemed, things had changed. He was on the outside again, and Lot's four sons, united in the golden prospect opening before them, seemed hardly to notice him. They were talking busily as they ran.

"—And it was Merlin who advised the High King to make the Saxon peace," panted Agravain.

"So perhaps now we'll see our uncle taking the sword again," said Gaheris happily. "And he'll want us—"

"And break his own sworn oath?" asked Gawain, sharply.

"Perhaps it isn't only us he wants," said Gareth. "Perhaps he's sent for our mother, too, now that Merlin's gone. He was a wicked man, I've heard her say so, and he hated her because he was jealous of her magic. She told me that. Perhaps, now he's dead, our mother will work magic for the King instead."

"The King's enchantress? He's got one already," said Gawain, dryly. "Didn't you hear? The lady Nimuë has Merlin's power, and the King turns to her for everything. So they were saying."

They were near the gate now. They dropped to a walk. Gareth turned to his half-brother.

"Mordred, when we go to Camelot, you'll be the only one left here. What will you do?"

The only one left here.…
The firstborn of the King of Orkney, left, alone of the princes, in Orkney?

Mordred saw the same thought strike Gawain at the same moment. He said, shortly: "I haven't thought about it. Come on, let's get in and find out what the man has to say."

He ran in through the gate. Gawain hung on his heel for a moment, then followed, and the rest with him.

The palace was buzzing, but no one knew anything except the larger rumours that the boys had already heard. The envoy was still closeted with the queen. People crowded in the corridors and in the hall, but made way for the princes when in a short time, clean and changed, they pushed their way through to the doors that led to the queen's private chambers.

Time went by. The light began to fade, and servants went about kindling the torches. It was time to eat.

Cooking smells crept through the rooms, making the boys remember their hunger. In their excitement they had not eaten the barley cakes they had had in the boat. But still the queen's door did not open.

Once they heard her voice, raised sharply, but whether in anger or excitement it was impossible to tell.

The boys shifted uneasily, looking at one another.

"It
must
be true that we are to go," said Agravain. "What other message would our uncle the High King send with one of the royal ships?"

"Even if it isn't," said Gawain, "we can surely send a message back by the ship to our uncle the High King, at least to remind him that we exist."

(And if any of them says "our uncle the High King" again, thought Mordred, with savage irritation, I shall start shouting about "my father the King of Lothian and Orkney," and see what they say to that!)

"Hush!" he said aloud. "He's coming out. Now we shall know."

But they were to learn nothing yet. The queen's door opened, and the envoy came out between the guards, his face set and uninformative, as such men are trained to be. He walked forward without a look to right or left, and the people made way for him. No one spoke to him, the princes themselves moving aside without asking any of the eager questions that burned on their lips. Even here, in the islands at the back of the north wind, they knew that one did not question a King's envoy any more than one questioned the King. He brushed past them as if they did not exist — as if a mere messenger of the High King were of more account than all the princes of the islands.

A chamberlain came forward to take him in charge, and he was escorted to the quarters set aside for him in the palace. The queen's door stayed all the while firmly closed.

"I want my supper," said Gareth earnestly.

"It looks as if we'll get it," said Agravain, "long before she's decided to tell us what's going on."

This proved to be the case. It was late that night, verging indeed on the hour when normally the boys were sent to bed, when the queen sent for them at last.

"All five?" repeated Gawain, when the message came.

"All five," said Gabran. He could not help looking curiously at Mordred, and the other four pairs of eyes followed his. Mordred, tensing himself against the sudden upsurge of excitement, hope and apprehension, looked, as was his habit, detached and expressionless.

"And hurry," said Gabran, holding the door.

They hurried.

They filed into Morgause's chamber, silent, expectant, and nervously awed by what they saw there. The queen had used the long interval since the messenger's dismissal to sup, talk with her counsellors, and have a stormy but satisfactory little interlude with Gabran. then she had had her women bathe and dress her in a robe of state, and arrange, for the interview with her sons, a royal setting.

Her tall gilded chair had been carried in from the hall, and she sat there beside a glowing fire of peats with her feet on a crimson footstool. On a table at her elbow stood a golden goblet, still holding wine, and beside this lay the scroll that the King's messenger had given her, the royal seal of the Dragon splashed across it like a bloodstain.

Gabran, leading the boys into the room, crossed the floor to stand behind the queen's chair. No one else was there; the women had long since been dismissed. Beyond the window the midnight moon, at the full, had cooled from marigold to silver, and a sharp-edged blade of light cut across Morgause's chair, sparking on gold and drowning in the folds of her gown. She had had herself dressed in one of her finest robes, a sweeping shimmer of bronze-coloured velvet. Her girdle was set with gold and emeralds, her hair was braided with gold, and on it she had set one of her royal coronets, a thin circlet of red Celtic gold that had been King Lot's, and that the boys had seen before only when they had been allowed to sit in on the formal royal councils.

The torches had been put out, and no lamps were lit. She sat between firelight and moonlight, looking queenly and very beautiful. Mordred, possibly alone of the five, noticed how pale she was beneath the unwonted flush in her cheeks. She had been weeping, he thought, then, more accurately, and with that touch of ice that was all Arthur's: She has been drinking. Gawain is right. They are going away. Then what of me? Why send for me? Because they are afraid to leave me here alone, King Lot's firstborn?

Here alone, and royal, what of me? His face gave no sign of his racing thoughts; he held himself still, beside Gawain, and half a head taller, and waited, to all appearances the least concerned person in the room. Then he saw that, of them all, the queen was looking only at him, Mordred, and his heart gave a jump, then settled to a fast, hard beat.

Morgause looked away from him at last, and surveyed them all for a while in silence. Then she spoke.

"You all know that the ship which lies in the harbour comes from my brother the High King Arthur, and that it has brought his ambassador with messages for me."

No reply. She expected none. She looked along the row of boys, at the lifted faces, the eyes that were beginning to sparkle with joyful expectation. "I see that you have been making guesses, and I imagine they are the right ones. Yes, it has come at last, the summons that I know you have longed for. I, too, though it has come in a way I cannot welcome.…You are to go to Camelot, to the court of the High King your uncle."

She paused. Gawain, the privileged, said quickly: "Madam, Mother, if this distresses you I am truly sorry. But we've always known this would happen, haven't we? Just as we know that training and fortune, for those of our blood, must be found one day on the mainland, and in the press of affairs, rather than here in these islands?"

"Certainly." One hand was tapping on the table where the King's letter lay half unrolled. What, Mordred wondered, could the terms of that letter have been, to send Morgause to the wine flask, and to string her up until every nerve was, visibly, vibrating like an overtuned lute string?

Gawain, encouraged by her brief answer, asked impulsively: "Then why don't you welcome the summons? It isn't as if you would be losing—"

"Not the summons itself. The way it has come. We all knew it would happen one day, when — when my chief enemy was gone from the King's side. I have foretold it, and I had my own plans. I would have had you, Gawain, stay here; you are to be king, and your place is here, in my presence or without it. But he has asked for you, so you must go. And this man he has sent, this "ambassador," as he styles himself"

— her voice was full of scorn — "is to stay here in your stead as "regent." And who knows where that will lead? I will tell you frankly what I fear. I fear that once you and your brothers are out of the Orkneys, Arthur will cause this creature of his to take from you the only land that still remains yours, as he took Lothian, and leave this man here in your stead."

Gawain, flushed with excitement, was disposed to argue. "But, Mother — madam — surely not?

Whatever he did in Dunpeldyr out of enmity to our father King Lot, you are his sister, and we his close kin, all he has. Why should he want to shame and dispossess us?" He added, ingenuously: "He would not do it! Everyone I've talked to — sailors and travellers and the traders who come here from all over the world — they all say that Arthur is a great king, and deals only in justice. You will see, madam Mother, that there's nothing to fear!"

"You talk like a green boy," said Morgause sharply. "But this much is certain, there is nothing to be done here, nothing to be gained by disobeying the King's summons. All we can do is trust in the safe conduct he has sent, but once in Arthur's presence we can take our voices to his council — to the Round Hall if we have to — and see then if, in the face of me, his sister, and you, his nephews, he can refuse us our rights in Dunpeldyr."

Us? We?
No one spoke the words, but the thought went from boy to boy with the sourness of disappointment. None of them had admitted to himself that this longed-for enlargement of their world held also the promise of a release from a capricious maternal rule. But each, now, felt a cast-down sense of loss.

Morgause, mother and witch, read it perfectly. Her lip curled. "Yes, I said 'we.' The orders are clear. I am to present myself at the court of Camelot as soon as the High King returns from Brittany. No reason is given. But I am to take with me—" Her hand touched Arthur's letter again. She seemed to be quoting.