Wicked Day (38 page)

The King's relief and pleasure, and the Queen's obvious happiness at seeing him again, were, to Mordred, like the breaking of summer after a long winter of near-starvation. Not much was said about the events of that grim night; it was something that neither Arthur nor the Queen wished to dwell on; instead they asked for news of Mordred's months in exile, and soon, as he told of his attempts to get back into the hard-working rhythms of his childhood, they all three lost the memories of the "dreadful night" in laughter.

They spoke then of Gawain, and Mordred handed his half-brother's letter to the King. Arthur read it, then looked up.

"You know what's in this?"

"The main of it, yes, sir. He said he would petition you to let him come south again."

Arthur nodded. His next remark answered the question Mordred had not asked. "Bedwyr is still in Brittany, at his castle of Benoic, north of the great forest that they call Perilous. Indeed, to our loss, he looks to be settled there. He married during the winter."

Mordred, back in the stronghold of courtiers, betrayed no surprise except with a slight lift of the brows.

Before he could speak, Guinevere, rising, brought both men to their feet. Her face was pale, and for the first time Mordred saw, in its lively beauty, the signs of strain and sleeplessness. Her mouth had lost some of its gentle fullness, as if it had been set over too many silences.

"I will go now, by your leave, my lords. You will have much still to say to one another, after so long."

Her hand went out again to Mordred. "Come soon to talk with me again. I long to hear more of your strange islands. Meanwhile be welcome here, back in your home."

Arthur waited until the door shut behind her. He was silent for a space, and his look was heavy and brooding. Mordred wondered if he was thinking back to the events of that night, but all he said was:

"I tried to warn you, Mordred. But how could you have read my warning? Or reading it, what could you have done, more than you did? Well, it's done with. Again I thank you, and now let us speak no more of it.… But we must needs discuss the result. When you spoke with Gawain, what did he say of Bedwyr?"

"That he would contain himself as best he could. If tolerance of Bedwyr is the price for coming back into service with the Companions, then I think he will pay it."

"He says as much in this letter. Do you think he will keep to this?"

Mordred moved his shoulders in a shrug. "As far as he can, I suppose. He is loyal to you, sir, be sure of that. But you know his temper, and whether he can control it…" He shrugged again. "Will you recall him?"

"He is not banished. He is free to come, and if he does so of his own will, all should be well enough.

Bedwyr is settled in Brittany, and he has written to me that his wife goes with child. So for all our sakes, and for my cousin Hoel's, too, it is best that he stay there. There is trouble coming in Brittany, Mordred, and Bedwyr's sword may be needed there, along with mine."

"Already? You spoke of this before."

"No. Not the matter that we discussed before. There is a totally new situation. While you were away in your islands there has been news from abroad, which will bring great changes both in the eastern and western empires."

He went on to explain. News had come of the death of Theodoric, king of Rome and ruler of the western empire. He had reigned for thirty years, and his death would bring changes as great as they were sudden. Though a Goth, and therefore by definition a barbarian, Theodoric, like many of his race, had admired and respected Rome even as he fought to conquer her and make a place for his own people in the kindly climate of Italy. He had embraced what he saw to be best in Roman culture, and had attempted to restore, or shore up, the structures of Roman law and the Roman peace. Under him Goths and Romans continued to be separate nations, bound by their own laws and answerable to their own tribunals. The king, from his capital in Ravenna, ruled with justice and even with gentleness, welding together a loyal legislature both in Ravenna and Rome, where the ancient titles of procurator, consul, legate, were still conferred and upheld.

Theodoric was succeeded by his daughter, acting as regent for her ten-year-old son, Athalaric. But it was not thought that the boy had any chance of the succession. In Byzantium, too, there had been a change. The ageing emperor Justin had abdicated in favour of his nephew Justinian, and had placed upon his head the diadem of the East.

The new emperor Justinian, wealthy, ambitious, and served by brilliant commanders, was reputed to be eager to restore the lost glories of the Roman Empire. It was rumoured that he had already cast his eyes towards the land of the Vandals, on the southern fringe of the Mediterranean; but it seemed likely that he would first seek to extend his empire westward. The Franks of Childebert and his brothers kept a watch always for any movement from the east, but now to the perennial threat of the Burgundians and the Alemans might be added the larger menace of Rome. Behind the barrier of Prankish Gaul, and dependent on her goodwill, lay the tiny land of Brittany.

Bordered on three sides by the sea, on the fourth Brittany was defended only by land nominally Prankish, but in fact half deserted, a dense forest peopled by wary tribesmen or folk displaced by war, who huddled together in makeshift villages, and with their half-savage leaders led an existence owing allegiance to no man.

Recently, King Hoel had written, there had been disquieting reports from some of these forest enclaves to the north-east of his capital. Reports had filtered in of raids, robbery, violent attacks on householders, and, the most recent, a horrifying case of wholesale slaughter where a farmstead had been deliberately fired, and its inmates — eight people with some half-dozen children — burned to death, and their goods and animals stolen. Fear had spread in the forest, and it was being murmured that the raiders were Franks. There was no confirmation of this, but anger was rising, and Hoel feared blind reprisals and a casus belli, at the very moment when friendship with his Prankish neighbours was most necessary.

"Hoel's own men could doubtless deal with it," said Arthur, "but he suggests that my presence, with some of the Companions, and a show of strength, might be an advantage, not just in this, but in the graver matter that he writes of. But see for yourself."

He handed Hoel's letter to Mordred. The latter, alone of the Orkney brothers, had, under the tuition of the priest who had taught them the mainland speech, taken the trouble to learn to read. Now he frowned his way slowly through the beautifully penned Latin of Hoel's scribe.

It seemed that King Hoel had recently received a message sent, not by the new emperor, but by an officer purporting to represent him. This was one Lucius Quintilianus, called Hiberus, "the Spaniard," one of the recently styled consuls. Writing with a truly imperial arrogance, and quoting Rome as if she still bristled with eagles and legions, he had sent to Hoel demanding gold and a levy of troops — far more than he could ever raise — to "help Rome protect Brittany from the Burgundians." He did not state what the penalty would be for refusal; he did not need to.

"But the Franks? King Childebert?" asked Mordred.

"Like his brothers, a mere shadow of their father. Hoel believes they must have had the same demand, so it looks as if Rome must have strength enough to enforce it. Mordred, I am afraid of this emperor. The Celtic lands have not weathered Rome's desertion, and the threat of barbarian domination, to accept once again the collar and chain of Rome, whatever "protection" she brings with her."

The situation, Mordred reflected, was not without its ironies. Arthur, blamed at home by the Young Celts for his adherence to Roman forms of law and centralized government, was nevertheless prepared to resist a possible attempt to bring Celtic territories back within Rome's fold.

"Under her yoke, rather!" said Arthur, in reply to his son's wry comment. "The times are long past when, in return for tribute, a king and his people were protected. Britain was taken by force, and thereafter forced to pay tribute to Rome. In return she enjoyed, after the settlement, a period of peace. Then Rome, self-seeking as always, lifted her shield, and left her weakened dependencies open to the barbarians. We in these islands, and our cousins in their near-isle of Brittany, alone kept our nationhood and remained stable. We have achieved our own peace. Rome cannot expect now to reimpose debts we do not owe.

We have as much right to demand tribute from her for Roman territories which are now British again!"

Mordred said, startled: "Are you saying that this new emperor — Justinian? — has demanded tribute of
us?"

"No. Not yet. But if he has asked it of Brittany, then sooner or later he will ask it of me."

"When do you go, sir?"

"Preparations are already well forward. We go as soon as we may. Yes, I said "we." I want you with me."

"But with Bedwyr away in Brittany — or will you leave Duke Constantine in charge here?"

Arthur shook his head. "No need. It should not be a long visit. The immediate business is this trouble in the Perilous Forest, and that should not take us long to clear up." He smiled. "If we do see action there, you can call it re-training after your holiday in the Orkney isles! If the other matter becomes serious, then I shall send you home as my regent. Meanwhile I shall leave the Council in charge, with the Queen, and send a sop to Duke Constantine in the form of a letter charging him with the guardianship of the west."

"A sop?"

"A comfort and a drug, maybe, for a violent and ambitious gentleman." Arthur nodded at Mordred's quick lift of the brows. "Yes. Too violent, I have long thought, for the country's need. His father Cador, to whom I promised the kingdoms in default of an heir of my body, was of different metal. This man is as good a fighter as his father, but I mislike some of the tales I have heard about him. So I give him a little favour, and when I return from Brittany, I will send for him here and come to an understanding."

They were interrupted then by an urgent message relayed from the harbour on Ynys Witrin where the
Sea Dragon
lay. She was equipped, provisioned, and ready to sail. So the King said no more, and he and Mordred parted to make ready for the journey into Brittany.

2

AS SO OFTEN HAPPENS, ONE trouble breeds another. While Arthur and his Companions were still on the Narrow Sea, tragedy, this time real and immediate, struck at Brittany's royal house.

King Hoel's niece Elen, sixteen years old and a beauty, set out one day from her father's home towards Hoel's castle at Kerrec. The party never arrived. Her guards and servants were attacked and killed, and the girl and one of her women, her old nurse, Clemency, were carried off. The other woman in the party, though unhurt, was too shocked to give a coherent account of what had happened. The attack had taken place at dusk, almost within sight of the place where the party had proposed to lodge for the night, and she had not noticed what badge the attackers wore, or indeed anything about them, except that their leader, he who had dragged Elen up before him on his horse and spurred off into the forest, had been "a giant of a man, with eyes like a wolf and a shock of hair like a bear's pelt, and an arm like an oak tree."

Hoel, not unnaturally discounting most of this, jumped to the conclusion that the outrage was the work of the ruffians who had been terrorizing the Forest. Whether they were Bretons or Franks, his hand was forced. The women must be rescued, and the attackers punished. Even King Childebert would not blame the Breton king for avenging such an outrage. Arthur and his party sailed into Kerrec's harbour to find the place in a turmoil, and themselves just in time to lead the hastily mounted punitive expedition into the Forest. Hoel's chief captain, a trusted veteran, with a troop of Breton cavalry, accompanied Arthur and his Companions.

The party rode fast, and more or less in silence. According to what information could be gathered from the princess's surviving waiting-woman, the attack had taken place on a lonely stretch of road just where the way left the Forest and bordered a brackish lake. This was one of the shore lagoons, not quite an inlet of the sea, but moved by the tides, and in spring and autumn washed through by the sea itself.

They reached the lake shore soon after dusk, and halted short of the site of the abduction, to wait for daylight, and for Bedwyr to join them. There had been no rain for several days, so Arthur was hopeful that there would still be traces of the struggle, and tracks to show which way the marauders had gone.

Hoel's messenger had gone ahead already to Benoic, and now, just as orders were given for the night's halt, Bedwyr arrived out of the dark with a troop of men at his back.

Arthur greeted his friend with joy, and over supper they fell at once to talk and planning for the next move. No shadow of the past seemed to touch them; the only reference, and that oblique, to the events that had banished Bedwyr to Less Britain was when he greeted Mordred.

This was after supper, when the latter was on his way to the pickets to see that his horse had been properly cared for. Bedwyr fell in beside him, apparently bent on the same errand.

"They tell me that you, too, have been sojourning in the outer dark, Mordred. I am glad to see you back with the King. You are fully recovered now, I trust?"

"Small thanks to you, yes," said Mordred, but smiling. He added: "On second thoughts, all thanks to you. You could have killed me, and we both know it."

"Not quite so easy. The decisions were not all mine, and I think we both know that, too. You're a bonny fighter, Mordred. Some day perhaps we may meet again… and in rather less earnest?"

"Why not? Meantime I am told I am to wish you happy. I gather you are lately wedded? Who is she?"

"Her father is Pelles, a king in Neustria whose land borders mine. Her name is Elen, too."

The name jolted them back to the urgencies of the moment. As they inspected their horses Mordred said: "You must know the ground hereabouts?"

"I know it well. It's barely a day's ride from my family's castle of Benoic. We used to hunt here, and fish the lake. Many's the time my cousins and I—"