Wicked Day (28 page)

"Then they are cruel!"

"You know that already, do you not?"

He remembered the sickening smell of the burned cottage, the feel of the sea-washed bone in his hand, the lonely cry of the gulls over the beach.

He met the grey eyes, and saw compassion there. He said quietly: "So what can a man do?"

"All that we have," she said, "is to live what life brings. Die what death comes."

"That is black counsel."

"Is it?" she said. "You cannot know that."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that you cannot know what life will bring. All I can tell you is this: that whatever years of life are left for you and for your father, they will see ambition realized, and will bring fulfilment and their need of glory, both for him and for you."

He stood silent at that. It was more than he had imagined or expected, that she would give him not only a qualified hope, but the promise of a life fulfilled.

He said: "So it won't serve for me to leave court, and stay away from him?"

"No."

He smiled for the first time. "Because he wants me where he can see me? Because the arrow by daylight is better to face than the knife in the dark?"

There was a glimmer of a smile in reply. "You are like him," was all she said, but he felt the interview begin to lighten. A sombre lady, this one. She was beautiful, yes, but he would as soon, he thought, have touched a rousing falcon.

"You can't tell me any more? Anything?"

"I do not know more."

"Would Merlin know? And would he tell me?"

"What he knew, I know," she said again. "I told you, I am Merlin."

"You said this before. Is it some kind of riddling way of telling me that his power is gone, or just that I may not approach him?" He spoke with renewed impatience. "All my life I seem to have been listening to rumours of magical deaths and vanishings, and they are never true. Tell me straightly, if you will: if I go to Bryn Myrddin, will I find him?"

"If he wishes it, yes."

"Then he is still there?"

"He is where he always was, with all his fires and travelling glories round him."

As they talked the sun had moved round, and the light from the window touched her face. He saw faint lines on the smooth brow, the shadow of fatigue under the eyes, a dew of transparency on her skin.

He said abruptly: "I am sorry if I have wearied you."

She did not deny it. She said merely: "I am glad you came," and followed him to the tower doorway.

"Thank you for your patience," he said, and drew breath for a formal farewell, but a shout from the courtyard below startled him. He swung round and looked down. Nimuë came swiftly to his elbow.

"You'd better go down, and hurry! Your horse has slipped his tether, and I think he has eaten some of the new seedlings." Her face lit with mischief, young and alive, like that of a child who misbehaves in a shrine. "If Varro kills you with his spade, as seems likely, we shall see how the fates will deal with
that!"

He kissed her hand and ran down to retrieve his horse. As he rode away she watched him with eyes that were once again sad, but no longer hostile.

7

MORDRED WAS HALF AFRAID that the King would ask him what his business had been with Nimuë, but he did not. He sent for his son next day and spoke of the proposed visit to the Saxon king, Cerdic.

"I would have left you in charge at home, which would have been useful experience for you, but it will be even more useful for you to meet Cerdic and attend the talks, so as ever I am leaving Bedwyr. I might almost say as regent, since officially I am leaving my own kingdom for a foreign one. Have you ever met a Saxon, Mordred?"

"Never. Are they really all giants, who drink the blood of babies?"

The King laughed. "You will see. They are certainly most of them big men, and their customs are outlandish. But I am told, by those who know them and can speak their tongue, that their poets and artists are to be respected. Their fighting men certainly are. You will find it interesting."

"How many men will you take?"

"Under truce, only a hundred. A regal train, no more."

"You can trust a Saxon to keep a truce?"

"Cerdic, yes, though with most Saxons it's a case of trust only from strength, and keep the memory of Badon still green. But don't repeat that," said Arthur.

Agravain was also in the chosen hundred, but neither Gawain nor Gareth. These two had gone north together soon after the council meeting. Gawain had spoken of travelling to Dunpeldyr and perhaps thence to Orkney, and, though suspecting that his nephew's real quest was far otherwise, Arthur could think of no good reason for preventing him. Hoping that Lamorak might have ridden westward to join his brother under Drustan's standard, he had to content himself with sending a courier into Dumnonia with a warning.

The King and his hundred set out on a fine and blowy day of June. Their way took them over the high downs. Small blue butterflies and dappled fritillaries fluttered in clouds over the flowery turf. Larks sang.

Sunlight fell in great gold swaths over the ripening cropfields, and peasants, white with the blowing chalk dust, looked up from their work and saluted the party with smiles. The troop rode at ease, talking and laughing together, and the mood was light.

Except, apparently, for Agravain. He drew alongside Mordred where he was riding a little apart, some way behind the King, who was talking with Cei and Bors.

"Our first sally with the High King, and look at it. A carnival." He spoke with contempt. "All that talk of war, and kingdoms changing hands, and raising armies to defend our shores again, and this is all it comes to! He's getting old, that's what it is. We should drive these Saxons back into the sea first, and then it would be time enough to talk.… But no! What do we do? Here we ride with the duke of battles, and on a peace mission. To Saxons. Ally with Saxons? Pah!" He spat. "He should have let me go with Gawain."

"Did you ask to?"

"Of course."

"That was a peace mission, too," said Mordred, woodenly, looking straight between his horse's ears.

"There was no trouble forecast in Dunpeldyr, only a little diplomatic talking with Tydwal, and Gareth along to keep it muted."

"Don't play the innocent with me!" said Agravain angrily. "You know , why he's gone."

"I can guess. Anyone can guess. But if he does find Lamorak, or news of him, let us hope that Gareth can persuade him to show a little sense. Why else do you suppose Gareth asked to go?" Mordred turned and looked straight at Agravain. "And if he should come across Gaheris, you may hope the same thing yourself. I suppose you know where Gaheris is? Well, if Gawain catches up with either of them, you'd best know nothing about it. And I want to know nothing."

"You? You're so deep in the King's counsels that I'm surprised you haven't warned him."

"There was no need. He must know as well as you do what Gawain hopes to do. But he can't mew him up for ever. What the King cannot prevent, he will not waste time over. All he can do is hope, probably in vain, that wise counsel will prevail."

"And if Gawain does run across Lamorak, which might happen, even by accident, what do you expect him to do then?"

"Lamorak must protect himself. He's quite capable of it." He added: "Live what life brings. Die what death comes."

Agravain stared. "What? What sort of talk is that?"

"Something I heard recently. So what about Gaheris? Are you content for Gawain to run across him, too?"

"He'll not find Gaheris," said Agravain confidently.

"Oh, so you do know where he is?"

"What do you think? He got word to me, of course. And the King doesn't know that, you may be sure!

He's not as all-knowing as you think, brother." He slid a sideways look at Mordred, and his lowered voice was sly. "There's quite a lot that he doesn't see."

Mordred did not answer, but Agravain went on without prompting: "Else he'd hardly go off on an unnecessary jaunt like this and leave Bedwyr in Camelot."

"Someone has to stay."

"With the Queen?"

Mordred turned to look at him again. The tone, the look, said what the bare words had not expressed.

He spoke with contemptuous anger: "I'm no fool, nor am I deaf. I hear what the dirty tongues say. But you'd best keep yours clean, brother."

"Are you threatening me?"

"I don't need to. Let the King once hear—"

"If it's true they're lovers, he ought to hear."

"It cannot be true! Bedwyr is close to the King and Queen, yes, but—"

"And they do say the husband is always the last to guess."

Mordred felt a wave of fury so strong that it startled him. He began to speak, then, glancing towards the King's back and the riders to either side, said merely, in a low, suppressed voice: "Leave it. It's fool's talk anywhere, and here you might be overheard. And keep your tongue off it with me. I want no part of it."

"You were ready enough to listen when your own mother's virtue was questioned."

Mordred said, exasperated: "Questioned! I was there, my God! I saw her lying with him!"

"And cared so little that you let the man escape!"

"Let it go, Agravain! If Gaheris had killed Lamorak there, while the King was still negotiating with Drustan to leave Dumnonia and join the Companions—"

"You thought of
that? Then?
With her — them —
that
in front of your eyes?"

"Yes."

Agravain stared with bolting eyes. The blood flushed his cheeks and ran into his forehead. Then, with a sound of contempt and helpless fury, he reined his horse back so sharply that blood sprang on the bit.

Mordred, relieved of his presence, rode on alone, until Arthur, turning, saw him there and beckoned him forward.

"See! There is the border. And we are awaited. The man in the center, the fair man in the blue mantle, that's Cerdic himself."

Cerdic was a big man, with silvery hair and beard, and blue eyes. He wore a long robe of grey, with over it a caped blue mantle. He was unarmed save for his dagger, but a page behind him bore his sword, the heavy Saxon broadsword, sheathed in leather bound with worked gold. On his long, carefully combed hair was a tall crown also of gold, elaborately chased, and in his left hand he held a staff which, from its golden finial and carved shaft, appeared to be a staff of royal office. Beside him waited an interpreter, an elderly man who, it transpired, had been son and grandson of federates, and had spent all his life within the bounds of the Saxon Shore.

Behind Cerdic stood his thegns, or warrior lords, dressed like their king save that where he wore a crown, they had tall caps of brightly coloured leather. Their horses, small beasts that showed almost like ponies beside Arthur's carefully bred cavalry mounts, were held in the background by their grooms.

Arthur and his party dismounted. The kings greeted one another, two tall men, richly dressed and glittering with jewels, dark and fair, eyeing one another over the unspoken truce like big dogs held back on leash. Then, as if some spark of liking had suddenly been kindled between them, they both smiled and, each at the same moment, held out a hand. They grasped one another's arms, and kissed.

It was the signal. The ranks of tall blond warriors broke, moving forward with shouts of welcome. The grooms came running forward with the horses, and the party remounted. Mordred, beckoned forward by the King, received Cerdic's ceremonial kiss, then found himself riding between the Saxon king and a red-haired thegn who was a cousin of Cerdic's queen.

It was not far to the Saxon capital, perhaps an hour's ride, and they took it slowly. The two kings seemed content to let their mounts pace gently, side by side, while they talked, with the interpreter craning to catch and relay what was said.

Mordred, on Cerdic's other side, could hear little, and after a while ceased trying to listen through the shouts and laughter of the troop, as Saxon and Briton tried to make themselves mutually understood. He and his neighbour, with gestures and grins, managed to exchange names: the red-haired thegn was called Bruning. A few of the Saxons — those who had spent all their lives in the federated territories of the Shore — knew enough of the others' language; these were mostly the older men; the younger men on both sides had to depend on goodwill and laughter to establish some sort of rapport. Agravain, scowling, rode apart with a small group of the younger Britons, who talked among themselves in low tones, and were ignored.

Mordred, looking about him, found plenty to interest him in the landscape that very soon began, even in the scant miles traversed, to look foreign. Lacking an interpreter, he and Bruning contented themselves with exchanging smiles from time to time, and occasionally pointing to some feature that they passed. The fields here were differently tilled; the instruments used by the working peasants were strange, some crude, some ingenious. Such buildings as they passed were very different from the stone-built structures he knew; here little stone was used, but the huts and shippons of the peasants showed great skill in the working of wood. The grazing cattle and flocks looked fat and well cared for.

A flock of geese, screaming, flapped across the road, sending the foremost of the horses rearing and plunging. The goosegirl, a flaxen child with round blue eyes and a lovely face aflame with blushes, scampered after them, waving her stick. Arthur, laughing, threw her a coin, and she called something in response, caught it, and ran off after her geese. The Saxons, it seemed, were not in awe of kings; indeed, the cavalcade that Agravain had angrily called a carnival now really began to bear that appearance. The younger men whistled and called after the running girl, who had kilted her long skirts up and was running as lightly as a boy, with a free display of long bare legs. Bruning, pointing, leaned across towards Mordred.

"Hwæt! Fæger mægden!"

Mordred nodded with a smile, then realized with surprise what had been slowly coming through to him now for some minutes. Through the shouting and laughter had come words here and there, and sometimes phrases, which, without consciously translating, he found himself understanding. "A fair maid!