Guinevere had summoned the Royal Council to the throne room to tell them about Mordred, but at once things had begun to go wrong. Merlin would have understood better than any of them, but he was nowhere to be found, and before she could explain to the others about Mordred, a party of the younger knights forced their way in to the Great Hall, demanding an audience with the Queen. Members of the Queen’s Bodyguard followed them.
“What is it that you want?” Guinevere demanded coldly. She recognized only a few of them—Sir Hoel, Lord Caradoc, Lord Melegraunce—but those she recognized had been troublemakers even before Arthur left, and in his absence had constantly challenged her authority. She thought they were some of the men who had been gathered with Mordred around the Round Table.
“We want you to step down. Your Highness. You’re unfit to rule,” Sir Hoel said.
Guinevere stared at him coldly and did not reply.
“Gentlemen,” Sir Hector said, “Let’s be reasonable.”
“When did she ever listen to reason?” Lord Melegraunce demanded, gesturing at Guinevere as she sat upon the canopied throne. “We’re tired of a frivolous Queen and an absentee King. You say Arthur is coming back, but when? Where is he? We want someone fit to rule us seated on the throne of Britain—”
“In that case, I’ll crown my donkey,” Guinevere said tartly, “because you’re a jackass, Lord Melegraunce, and you always have been!”
“Better a jackass than a trollop,” someone called from the back of the angry crowd.
There was a sound of clashing steel, as several of the knights of the Queen’s Bodyguard drew their swords.
“Gentlemen, gentlemen,” Sir Hector said desperately. “Please! We must not be so hasty. The King will return to Camelot within the week. Surely we can reason together about this matter. Lord Melegraunce, Sir Hoel, your concerns do you credit. Put up your swords. I’m sure we can settle these matters to our mutual satisfaction.”
More knights and nobles had pushed into the throne room while Sir Hector had been speaking, until the room was dangerously crowded with armed men jostling one another.
“Down with the Queen!” someone cried.
“Prince Mordred and Britain!” someone else shouted.
“Where is everyone?” Arthur asked wonderingly.
The courtyard they had ridden into was deserted. Though it was nearly the dinner hour, when the life of the castle drew inward for the night, there were no servants going about their business, no horses waiting for stabling. The courtyard—the entire town that they’d ridden through, in fact—was as silent and still as if it had been enchanted.
“Something’s wrong,” Gawain said, worry in his voice.
Arthur flung back his faded black cape and swung down from his horse. He gazed around the deserted stab-leyard, his eyes wary, then gestured curtly for his men to follow him. Something was wrong in Camelot, and he meant to discover what it was. Though the castle had not been finished when he left, he had designed it. He knew his way.
But when he reached it, the great doors stood unguarded, and the corridors of Camelot were deserted as well. There were no servants to be seen, no guards to challenge the men they could only perceive as intruders. All was as silent as if the castle’s inhabitants had been put to sleep.
“I didn’t expect this kind of homecoming,” Arthur muttered to Gawain as he reached the doors of the throne room. He flung them open and stopped in shock. Though there had been no one elsewhere, the throne room was jammed with people, and all of them seemed to be arguing at once.
“What’s wrong here?” Arthur shouted.
Silence spread in the wake of his outcry, and the crowd parted to let him and his companions pass, though few of them recognized the tall blond bearded man as their King.
But Guinevere recognized him. His Queen was more lovely than ever before. As he came toward her, she stepped down from the throne and watched him advance, expressions of fear and longing mingled on her face.
“Guinevere…” Arthur whispered.
He clasped her shoulders, but instead of greeting him with joy, the Queen hung her head in shame. He put a hand beneath her chin and raised it to look into her eyes. They were filled with anger and grief.
All around him, the room was filled with the silence of guilty, frightened men. Arthur looked up, gazing at each member of the Royal Council in turn. Sir Bors would not even meet his eyes. He turned to Sir Hector and Lord Lot.
“Where’s Merlin?” Arthur demanded. “Where’s Lancelot?”
They shuffled uneasily, unwilling to speak, and Arthur’s trepidation grew. What terrible thing had occurred in his absence? He knew that a letter could have missed him as he traveled, but surely…?
“I’ll tell you,” a new voice said.
Arthur turned toward the doorway. A young man dressed all in black stood leaning negligently against the doorframe. Arthur had never seen him before.
“Who the devil are you?” the King asked. The day had been a long one and his temper was close to fraying.
“Elegantly put,” the young man said, straightening up. His voice held a faint mocking smile that filled Arthur with alarm. “ ‘Who the devil?’ ” he repeated musingly. “Yes, indeed.”
Something in Arthur’s words seemed to amuse him a great deal; he smiled as he swaggered toward the King. “ ‘Who the devil?’ ” he repeated once more. “Well, don’t you recognize me?” he asked as he advanced.
“No,” Arthur said bluntly. “Should I?”
“I’m hurt,” the young stranger said. “Here… in my heart.” He touched his breast, and his smile grew more cynical. “Not usually my most vulnerable spot,” he added confidingly.
An expression of malicious triumph seemed to kindle like flame in his pale grey eyes as he stopped before Arthur. He reached out and clasped Arthur’s shoulders overfamiliarly.
“I recognize you, Father. I’m your long-lost son, Mordred!” he cried in mock delight.
Whispers of consternation and disbelief filled the room like the sound of a rising wind. “How is that possible?” someone gasped. Arthur stared into Mordred’s eyes and knew.
“There will be a child. Mab will see to that. He’ll be the future, and he’ll destroy us.” The terrible words Merlin had spoken on that long-ago day echoed in Arthur’s ears now. The fruit of that single careless heedless act stood before him, as dangerous as Merlin had prophesied.
“He’ll be the future, and he’ll destroy us.”
Merlin had told him that Mordred would be his enemy, but Arthur was a straightforward and honest man, unused to subtlety. An enemy was someone who met you on a battlefield with an army, not someone who came to your home while you were away.
“Morgan le Fay is your mother?” Arthur asked, hoping against hope that he was wrong. Deep in his heart, Arthur still hoped that he and Mordred could be friends.
“Not is, Father, was.” Mordred strolled past him, past the Queen, toward the throne, talking all the while.
“She passed over into a better world. She sleeps alone at last. A great loss. One day she was laughing, smiling—the next, gone like a summer breeze. In the midst of life, etcetera, etcetera, and so on and so forth.” His tone made a mockery of the conventional obsequies, as did the briskness with which he changed the subject.
“It’s why I’m here,” he said, turning back to face Arthur and gesturing to include not only the throne room, but the entire castle. Morgan le Fay might have been his mother, but it was clear that Mordred had not loved her. The force of his smiling hatred was a palpable presence here in the throne room.
“I don’t understand,” Arthur said.
Mordred regarded Arthur with a false expression of surprise. “Why, to protect your interests… Father. You see, your interests are my interests. Whilst you were away on this great spiritual quest to cleanse your soul… how should I put it? You were being betrayed.”
Another ripple of dismay coursed through the room.
“Mordred! That’s e
nough!” Merlin snapped from the doorway.
As the people in the room turned to look, Merlin hurried toward the two men standing before the throne. He had ridden back to Camelot from Sarum as fast as he could, and at that, he had nearly been too late. Mordred was already here, and from the look of things, so was trouble.
“It isn’t!” Mordred protested. “Come, Merlin, let’s speak truth at last! Father—”
“This isn’t the time,” Merlin interrupted sharply, but Mordred would not be silenced.
“It is—it is! Father, Lancelot betrayed you with the Queen.”
“What?” Arthur gasped, stunned. But Mordred wasn’t through.
“Or should it be, ‘The Queen betrayed you with Lancelot’?” Mordred wondered archly, mocking them all. “No matter. There’s no point in being pedantic. You were betrayed.”
Behind him, Arthur heard Gawain—Guinevere’s brother—groan in anguish. Both factions that filled the room were arguing and jostling each other now, as revelation piled upon revelation rocked the foundations of their world.
“Guinevere?” Arthur whispered, turning to look at her.
“This isn’t the place to discuss this matter,” Merlin said. With a decisive gesture he swept Arthur and Guinevere out of the center of the crowd and off behind the safety of a pillar.
“Oh, I think it’s the perfect place,” Mordred called from behind them.
“Is it true?” Arthur demanded, glaring down at his Queen. His beard made him look older, as did the lines of exhaustion that marked his face.
“Arthur,” Merlin said quickly, trying to stop the terrible disclosures. “You’ve only just returned. Arthur, we must talk—”
“Guinevere. Is it true?” Arthur asked remorselessly.
“Yes. It’s true,” Guinevere answered defiantly, glaring up into his eyes.
Arthur’s face contorted in sudden fury. In that moment, Merlin feared he might have struck her, only Mordred pushed himself forward into their midst once more.
The engaging redheaded toddler had grown into a dark and dangerous young man, Merlin saw. He was as heartless as any of the fairy race, yet more vicious than Queen Mab at her worst—as if Mordred, monster that he was, dimly suspected the wrong that had been done to him by what Mab and Morgan had made of him. But this was not the time or place for pity. Mab’s creature must be stopped.
“Mordred, you’ve no right to be here,” Merlin said.
“I’ve every right here,” Mordred said. “We all have. This isn’t a private matter. It concerns all of us.”
He gestured toward the men with him, who nodded and mumbled in agreement. Merlin realized that somehow, though he could not have been here in Camelot for very long, Mordred had amassed a dangerous majority of the knights to his cause.
“Didn’t you think of me at all?” Arthur demanded of Guinevere, oblivious to the events around him. The haven he had dreamed of for all those long years of absence was gone, swept away as though it had never been. That was what hurt the worst.
“You left me alone for years—didn’t you think of me?” the Queen shot back. “What about my honor, finding out that my husband had a child by a woman called ‘Morgan le Fay’?”
“Good one,” Mordred murmured appreciatively in the background. “Come, Father,” he said bracingly, trying to elbow his way past Merlin, “this is becoming distressingly personal. You’re forgetting it’s a matter of state.”
“A matter of state?” Merlin echoed, baffled. Mordred was dangerously clever, and Merlin could not be certain of what he was driving at.
“Well, we are talking treason here, aren’t we, my lords?” Mordred said with feigned innocence.
The men behind him—even Sir Hector and Sir Bors—nodded agreement, and there were some shouts of “Treason!” from the rowdier knights. Only then did Merlin see what Mordred’s plan was.
Under the old law codes bequeathed them from the Romans, the man was the unquestioned master of his household—he was his household—just as the King was Britain itself. Adultery was betrayal of the marriage vows. When a woman betrayed her husband, she betrayed her family.
But when a Queen betrayed her husband, she betrayed her country.
Treason.
Mordred meant for Arthur to execute his Queen. And no matter how deserved the punishment, such an act would divide the country terribly. For the last seven years, Guinevere had been the Crown, the only ruler the people knew. For the King to return and abruptly execute her would give rise to all manner of destructive speculation.
“We must consider this calmly,” Merlin pleaded, desperation filling his voice. The Queen stared at Arthur, her eyes filled with contempt, but Arthur stared at Mordred as though Mordred were something the like of which he had never seen.
“Yes,” Arthur said finally. “We must. Guards! Take the Queen to her bedchamber and keep her there. At least this way I can be sure you’ll be there alone,” he said to her in a low voice.
Guinevere stared at him with scorn, saying nothing. When the guards came to her, she led them out as though they were a guard of honor, not of shame.
“Oh, Jenny—why?” Gawain said, as she passed him.
“You of all men have no right to ask me that,” Guinevere said to her brother, stopping before him. “You followed your heart to go with Arthur when I begged you to stay with me. Well, I followed mine as well.” She turned and walked out.
“Well,” Mordred said brightly in the silence that followed. “What shall we do with the rest of the afternoon? A little tennis?”
“We must decide what to do about this,” Arthur said. “Merlin—Knights of the Round Table—come with me.”
When Arthur had left on his quest, this room had barely been finished. Like the table it contained, the chamber was round. Its walls were a deep celestial blue, and upon them were painted the images of the great kings who had been Arthur’s ancestors, stretching back to that noble warrior, Brutus, who had fought at the siege of Troy. The walls also held images of the saints who concerned themselves most with Britain—Columba, Patric, George—and the timbers of the roof were carved with angels. All the figures, painted and carved, seemed to gaze down on the round table below.
Lord Lot had given this table to Arthur as a wedding gift. From the white rose of chivalry painted in the center, spokes of green and white radiated outward across its thirty-foot diameter, symbolizing the beauty and the holiness of Britain, until the whole surface of the table looked like a starburst. Around its rim were painted the names of the noblest members of the order of knighthood it symbolized. Bors—Bedivere—Gawain—Perceval—their names were there along with those of so many others. The table was without a head or a foot, a perfect circle that symbolized the perfect unity of Arthur’s kingdom, but today the men gathered about it were divided as never before.
“It is treason,” Sir Hoel—Mordred’s partisan—said stubbornly. “When Guinevere betrayed you, she betrayed the Crown and the Country.”
There was a murmur of approval when Sir Hoel finished speaking, but Arthur stood firm. The years had left their mark upon him, Merlin saw, darkening the gold of youth to the bronze of maturity. In his dark tunic and cloak, covered with the dust of the road, Arthur looked nothing like the splendid youth who had set off upon his doomed quest so long ago—but in spite of his failure to achieve the Grail, he looked more kingly now than ever before.
“I don’t see it as treason,” Arthur said. “She betrayed me and only me.” Though worn and tired, he spoke patiently.
“It’s the law of the land,” Mordred called. He was standing in the doorway, underscoring the fact that there was no place for him within the room.
“That’s enough!” Arthur snapped.
“No, Sire. Mordred is right,” Sir Boris said slowly. He was a knight of the old school, scarred by the events of Uther’s reign, and Guinevere’s adultery had been something he could not forgive. “You’re the King. And that makes her adultery treason.”
“But th
en we must condemn her to death!” Gawain said, outraged.
“Do you really think we should do that?” Merlin asked conciliating. He stood in the corner of the room, not a member of the knightly company, but there as Arthur’s adviser. If only they would stop and think about the enormity of what they were doing, surely they would choose mercy, just as Arthur wished to.
He desperately wished he’d had a chance to speak with Guinevere before Arthur—and Mordred—had arrived. Mordred must have gotten here first, and Merlin would have given a great deal to know more about the enemy facing them now.
That Mordred was the pawn of Mab, Merlin already knew, but this was the first chance he’d really had to take Mordred’s measure. He did not sense that Mab had taught her protégé any of the Old Ways, since for all his eldritch upbringing, Mordred was the child of two mortal parents, and thus his ability to learn magic was limited. But if Mab had not taught Mordred sorcery, it was clear that she had bestowed upon him many of the old fairy gifts. Mordred was beautiful and charismatic, and men would believe in his words and follow him without thinking of what they did. Mordred was using that unnatural ability now, to make them listen to him, to keep them from questioning how it was that Arthur could have a full-grown son when he was not yet thirty.
But what could Mordred hope to gain from forcing Arthur to execute the Queen? The Iceni, Guinevere’s people, were still half-Pagan. And because of that, when Arthur executed their Princess for something many of them did not consider a crime, they would rise up against him. There would be war. That was what Mordred—what Mab—wanted. A war. A war that Mab thought she could win. And though Merlin knew that she must inevitably lose, the loss would come at an enormous cost in human lives.
Lord Lot was speaking now.
“It’s the law,” he said. He was Guinevere’s father, and this public shame seemed to have aged him ten years in a matter of hours. The lines of care were etched deeply into his face, and his beard was almost white.
“It’s harsh,” Merlin said, hoping once more to sway them to compassion.
The End of Magic Page 12
