Her eyes closed. She repeated the word. “Darrowfield.” There was a violent spasm of coughing, and a great deal more blood came up. It soaked her bed gown and the sheets. And she was still.
Merlin sat staring at her for a long moment. From the hallway came the sound of the women mourning, wailing, as if somehow they knew Fedora had passed on.
So young Lord Darrowfield, his father’s heir, was really the son of Uther, as had long been rumored. He was no mere lord. He was Arthur’s brother. Or had been.
But what did that tell about all the deaths, all the killings?
Then it dawned on him.
In the hallway the women were mourning, wailing, crying. Merlin paused to watch and listen. He had intended to tell them to make arrangement for Fedora’s burial. But it was no use, not in their state. He would tend to it himself.
He saw Nimue returning, at the far end of the hall. They met, and he told her, “Let us go to the refectory. I have not eaten a proper meal in days.”
“How can you eat after…?”
“It might have been me, Nimue. Fedora was twenty years older than I, but it might have been me. One day it will be. A full stomach will remind me that I am still alive.”
They walked to the dining hall without saying much more. It was past dinnertime; there were not many other people. Merlin had a plate of beef and vegetables. Nimue had already eaten, but she sat with him and sipped a goblet of wine. “Did she tell you what you needed to know?”
“I believe so.”
“What was it?”
“She talked about Uther’s sons. The late Lord Darrowfield, the one who died so horribly at Stonehenge, was Arthur’s brother.”
She drank her wine. “That has always been rumored. I mean, I had heard he was a bastard. But Uther…!”
“Yes, Uther. I should have realized long ago that Arthur’s pursuit of women was not unique to him. It was Marmaduke, of all people, who reminded me of that.”
Nimue was wry. “It’s nice to realize that Marmaduke knew anything at all.”
“Yes. But I think Fedora was trying to tell me something else. I think I understand what, but I cannot be certain. Unless…”
“Unless?”
“Nothing, Nim-Colin. Do you have any idea where Petronus is?”
She finished the wine and put the cup down. “Off at school, I think. The schoolmasters missed several of their classes because of the influenza.”
“We weathered the plague. We can weather this.”
“Yes, but the plague never really struck here, remember.”
“Except for poor John. If it was plague that killed him. Let me have a swallow of your wine.”
She turned the cup upside down to show him it was empty. “I’ll go and get you some.”
“A small cup, please.”
She went. Merlin sat alone, brooding. What he was thinking was too unpleasant to contemplate.
In a moment she was back. Merlin thanked her, and she said she wanted to go back to her room. “It has been a draining time. Worrying about you, I mean. I need some rest.”
“Fine. Go back to our tower. Oh, and start the steam engine for my lift. I certainly do not have the energy for all those stairs.”
“I’ll be sure to.”
Merlin finished his meal and his wine and began making his way back to the Wizard’s Tower. But just after leaving the refectory he encountered Simon. Simon, fussy as usual, was carrying a thick sheaf of papers and having trouble holding on to them. When one dropped, Merlin picked it up and handed it to him. He felt a twinge of pain in his back and rubbed it.
“Thank you, Merlin. I was just coming to find you. I was afraid you might still be under the weather.”
“There is always weather to be under. What is it you want?”
Simon riffled through his papers, dropping several more. “We’ve had a message from the king. I must have left it behind.”
Suddenly Merlin sneezed. More of Simon’s papers scattered and he scrambled to retrieve them.
“Does it not occur to you that you might carry those in a pouch of some sort?”
“In a pouch or out of one, the king’s message is not here.”
“Yes, of course. What does he say?”
“He is en route back to Camelot. The funeral was uneventful. Morgan never showed up.”
“That is hardly surprising, I suppose. Now if you will excuse me, I need to return to my tower and get some rest. Oh-have you heard that old Fedora died a while ago?”
“Fedora?” Simon scowled. “I wish I had visited her. She delivered me, you know.”
“Who among us is without sin?”
Simon made a sour face, commented on Merlin’s sarcasm and left. Merlin went on his way, back to his tower.
His chair lift was waiting for him at the foot of it. He could hear the steam engine chugging steadily far above. Glancing up, he saw small, periodic puffs of steam from it, a hundred feet above. Looking up the tower always made him dizzy. The vast cylindrical shape, the staircase spiraling along the wall… He leaned against the wall momentarily to steady himself.
The seat was swaying slightly, he presumed in a draft. It added a bit more to his vertigo. He reached out and steadied it. Then gingerly he took his place in it, pulled the chain to start the mechanism, and began his ascent up the height of the tower.
It was slow. The lift always took three minutes or more to travel the full height of the tower. He watched as the stones moved downward past his field of vision. The staircase spiraled around him. The slow upward movement, the gentle swaying of the seat, lulled him to a state of complete relaxation. The seat moved twenty feet up, thirty, forty. He closed his eyes.
Then suddenly there was a huge jolt. The seat swung violently, almost striking the wall. Merlin gripped the chain and held tightly. Somehow the chain must have slipped, missed a cog. He leaned back in his seat, holding tight the chain, and glanced up. Everything was as usual. Everything was as it should be. The wild swaying gradually stopped, the gears reengaged and the ascent continued.
He was sixty feet above the ground. He could hear the gears as they turned, the engine as it hummed, the clanking of the chains.
Then there was another violent jolt and the lift swung wildly again. Merlin gripped the chain for dear life and looked up again.
There was someone at the landing on the top level, partway onto the wooden landing stage there. It was a man, and he was holding a long pike. He stretched it out and poked the top of the chain with it, and the lift swung wildly a third time. The man looked down at Merlin and cried, “Fall, damn you!”
Merlin recognized him. “Peter!”
As the seat rose closer to the top, the arc of its swing grew smaller. But Merlin was now eighty feet above the stone floor of Camelot. If he slipped, if the lift jerked too violently, he would fall to a certain death.
Peter stepped farther onto the landing platform and prodded the chain again. “Go on and fall!”
“If I die, Peter, it will be with the knowledge of what you are.”
“When you sent that boy to Darrowfield, I knew that you were onto me.” He pushed the tip of his pike into the gear assembly. With another jolt, the seat stopped its ascent.
Merlin was far above the castle’s floor now. The seat was still swaying. But he realized that if he could keep Peter talking, there would be no opportunity for him to pull his pike out of the gears and start prodding the seat again.
“I sent Colin there to flush you out. You had to realize I suspected you by that time.”
“You are a good actor, Merlin. When did you first suspect? How could you possibly have guessed?” He twisted the tip of his pike and the seat rocked slightly.
Merlin tightened his grip on the chain. He had to force himself not to look down. “I found it odd when you showed up here at Camelot, abandoning your investigation into the murder of Darrowfield and his boys. And gradually it dawned on me that you were present when all of the killings were done. You were the
only one. You are quite a good actor yourself, Peter. Or should I say ‘Prince Peter’?”
“I was Father’s favorite. He always hated Arthur. But I… He loved me.”
“And not Darrowfield? Not his eldest son?”
“Darrowfield was a fool. You met him. You must have realized. Uther wanted me on the throne of England, not him.”
“And so that is what he was doing at Darrowfield Castle? Plotting his eldest son’s death with you?” He paused slightly. “With you… and Morgan?”
“Morgan despises Arthur, too. That is no secret.”
“And you let her manipulate you into doing her murders for her. It was you who attacked Arthur at Grosfalcon, not her.”
Peter nodded. “But she was concerned. After I killed Darrowfield and those two clots he called sons, she and Uther persuaded me to use, let us say, less direct methods. The plague was a gift to us. She had her own strain of belladonna. And she mixed it with some other poison from her stockpile. It made the deaths look like plague casualties.”
“Even where there was no plague. That was the other thing that made me suspicious. But then, why not simply poison that poor boy at the mill? Why crush him between the millstones?”
Peter shrugged. “He caught me as I was administering the belladonna to Accolon. What else could I do?”
“You are a fool, Peter. You cannot possibly think Morgan would have let you rule. She is ambitious for herself and for her son.”
“No. She is my sister.”
“Arthur is your brother. Did that stop you from plotting his death? Morgan wants herself on the throne, or her son Mordred, not you.”
Peter hesitated. This was obviously something he had not thought of before.
There was someone else on the landing, moving in the shadows behind him. Merlin realized it must be Nimue. He had to keep Peter talking. “So the three of you met in Darrowfield’s own castle to plot his death. Yes, that sounds callous enough for Morgan, all right.”
“The four of us. Darrowfield was a fool. He was in on our scheme from the beginning. But it never occurred to him that he might be our first victim. Why do you think he let me get close enough to kill him at Stonehenge?”
“This has gone on long enough, Peter. You cannot keep me dangling here forever. Let me finish my ascent. Surrender.”
Peter laughed at him.
“There is no use going on with this, Peter. Do you think I have kept my suspicions to myself? My assistant Colin knows. I had to explain to him when I sent him to Darrowfield. I wanted him on his guard against you.” He told the lie smoothly. Then he raised his voice slightly. “I did not want him to grapple with you. You are the larger man. He would not have had a chance against you.”
“I can keep you dangling there till I get another pike to prod you off of that absurd seat of yours. I have one waiting here for just that purpose.” He twisted the point of the pike farther into the gears, and the seat began rocking again.
“And Arthur knows as well,” he lied. “You will be hunted down, arrested and put to death.”
“Then I will join you in Hades.”
Suddenly Nimue stepped into sight. She was carrying a pike, the second one Peter had brought with him. She prodded Peter with the tip. “I would suggest you surrender now and peacefully.”
Startled, Peter went off balance and staggered to the edge of the platform. He reached out and grasped the end of the pike to steady himself. But Nimue was not about to let him regain his equilibrium. She let the pike go. Peter lost his balance and tumbled off the platform and fell down the hundred feet of the tower. His screams echoed. He hit the floor with a horrible sound.
Nimue stepped onto the platform and pulled the first pike loose from the gears. For a moment nothing happened. Then slowly the lift continued its ascent. When it reached the top she helped Merlin onto the platform. Grateful to be on something solid again, he put an arm around her. “Thank you, Colin. You are a good man.”
The season’s first heavy, sustained snow fell on the English countryside. Trees were airy white lace. Flakes danced in the air.
It was just after sunset, now and then the clouds parted and there was a large moon. Arthur and Merlin strolled side by side on the castle rooftop. The snow was three inches deep but neither of them seemed to mind. Except for the falling snow the world was still, and they walked in silence as if infected by it. At length they came to the rear of the castle and stood looking over the white landscape. In the distance was Camelot’s graveyard. Headstones were capped with snow.
At length Arthur spoke. “I hope Fedora is resting peacefully.”
Merlin kept his eyes on the cemetery, not the king. “There is no other way for mortal remains to rest.”
“Always the romantic, aren’t you? I wish just once you’d let your human side show.”
Merlin paused, uncertain whether to go on. “Self-revelation never comes to me easily, Arthur. You know that. When I found that poor boy crushed to death between the millstones, my feelings were human enough. But it was also human feeling that led me to trust his killer.” He turned to the king. “I was a fool to let my feeling of friendship for him cloud my judgment. He flattered me only too successfully.”
“As always, you are too hard on yourself.”
“I have never apologized for the harsh tone I took with you when we were Marmaduke’s prisoners.”
“We thought we were going to die, Merlin. No apology is necessary.”
“I think one is due. I like to think of myself as a philosopher. At least a minor one. Prepared for death. I acted like a spoiled boy.”
This made Arthur uncomfortable. A snowflake clung to his eyelash and he brushed it off. “We will never know what other secrets Fedora took with her to the grave. I suppose, in a way, we should be grateful for that.”
“Secrets are the essence of humanity, Arthur. Or at any rate of human society, human interaction. What is hidden is what keeps us going.”
“That seems an odd sentiment for a detective.”
“It is the truth. To know, to actually know another human being is impossible, for all that we pretend otherwise. For all you know, I might be planning your assassination right now.”
Arthur laughed. “As always, you are being overdramatic. I have known you since I was a boy, Merlin. Why would you wait till this moment to use the knife in the dark?”
“Ripeness is all, Arthur.” He ran his fingers through the snow on a battlement. “When Peter told me his messages to me were being interfered with, I had no reason to doubt him. Now I understand the lie.
“When he showed up here unbidden, just before John died, I should have realized. He was there when every murder was committed.”
Arthur stared up at the moon. “Are you ready for the trial of Lulua and Marmaduke?”
He nodded. “We have already selected twelve knights to form the jury. I do not think making the case against them will be difficult. There were dozens of witnesses.”
The king kept his eyes on the moon. Merlin had the impression he was trying to read something in its face. Finally he said, “That is all good, Merlin. But…”
“Yes?”
“What do we do about my sister?”
Merlin heaved a deep sigh. “I am not certain there is anything we can do. If we find her and arrest her, we could never put her on trial. The only concrete evidence against her is Peter’s confession, and Peter is… Our England is concerned with justice. We cannot expect a jury to convict her on no evidence.”
“So she remains at large, remains free to keep plotting against me.” He looked directly into Merlin’s eyes. “Against us.”
“I fear so. The best we can do is to watch her very carefully.”
Arthur looked from Merlin back to the moon. “It is too much for me. I need to have some wine and go to bed.”
Softly, “Good night, then, Arthur. Sleep well.”
“Aren’t you coming in? The wind is starting to pick up.”
“No. I need
to be alone with my thoughts for a while.”
The king left. Merlin stood alone on the rooftop. The wind gusted, and clouds filled the sky.
The raven Roc flew to Merlin’s shoulder and nuzzled his ear. He reached up and stroked it. He whispered, “Roc, there is nothing human about you. There is not the least trace of my species.” Lightly he kissed the bird’s head. “That is why I love you.”
***
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The Pendragon Murders Page 29
