by Mary Stewart
"Hurry," said Gaheris, with urgency.
No guards came. After all, it was easy. With his half-brother's arm round him and his mistress at his other side he walked, no, floated out into the dark street where, tense and silent, Gaheris's servant waited with the horses. Somehow they got Mordred to the saddle, somehow held him between them, then they were out of the town and riding down the road to the King's Gate.
Here they were challenged. Gaheris, pulling back slightly, with his face muffled against the cold, said nothing. The servant, forward with Mordred, spoke impatiently.
"It's Prince Mordred. He's hurt, as you know. We've to take him to Applegarth. Make haste."
The guards knew the story, which had gone round with the dawn wind. The gates were opened, the riders were through, and free. Gaheris said exultantly: "We did it! We're out! Now let us lose this burden as soon as we may!"
Mordred remembered nothing of the ride. He had a vague recollection of falling, of being caught and pulled across onto the servant's horse, while the dreadful jolting ride went on. He felt the warmth of blood breaking through the bandages, then after what seemed an age the welcome stillness as the horses were pulled up.
Rain drove down on his face. It was cool and refreshing. The rest of his body, closely wrapped as it was, was clothed in hot water. He was floating again. Sounds came and went in beats, like the pulse of the blood that was seeping from the wound. Someone—it was Gaheris—was saying:
"This will do. Don't be afraid, man. The brothers will care for him. Yes, the horse, too. Tie it there. Now leave him."
He laid his cheek on wet stone. His whole body burned and throbbed. It was strange how, when the horses had stopped, the hoofbeats still thudded through his veins.
The servant reached across him and tugged at a rope. Somewhere in the distance a bell jangled. Before the sound had died away the horses were gone. There was no sound in the world but the rain driving steadily down on the stone step where they had left him.
* * *
Arthur, arriving almost on the heels of the courier, rode next morning into a city still buzzing like a stirred hive. His regent was sent for before the King had even taken off the dirt of the journey.
When Bedwyr was announced, Arthur was sitting behind the table in his business room, his man at his feet pulling off the scuffed and muddy riding boots. The servant, without a glance at either man, took the boots and withdrew. Ulfin had been Arthur's man throughout his whole reign. He had heard rather more gossip than the next man, and had said a good deal less about it than anyone. But even he, the silent and the trusted, went out with relief. Some things were better not said, or even known.
The same thought was in both men's minds. In Arthur's eyes might even be read the plea to his friend: Do not force me into asking questions. Let us in some way, in any way, get past this ambush and back into the open rides of trust. More than friendship, more than love, depends on this silence. My kingdom would even now seem to hang on it.
It would doubtless have surprised the Orkney princes, and some of their faction, if they could have heard his first words. But both King and regent knew that, if the first and greatest trouble could not be spoken of, the second would have to be dealt with soon: Gawain of Orkney.
The King shoved his feet into his furred slippers, swung round in the great chair, and said with furious exasperation: "By all the gods below, did you have to kill them?"
Bedwyr's gesture had the quality of despair.
"What was I to do? Colles I could not avoid killing. I was naked, and he was on me with his sword. I had to take it. I had neither time nor choice, if he was not to kill me. For Gareth I am sincerely sorry. I am to blame. I cannot think that he was there in treachery, but only because he was among the pack when the cry went up, and he may have been anxious for Linet. I confess I hardly saw him in the press. I did cross swords with Gaheris, but only for a moment. I think he took a cut—no more than a scratch—from me, but then he vanished. And after Agravain fell, all my thought was for the Queen. Gaheris had been loudest of all throughout, and he was still shouting insults at her. I remembered how he had dealt with his own mother." He hesitated. "That part was nightmare-like. The swords, the yelled insults, the pack near the Queen, and she, poor lady, struck dumb and shocked all in the few seconds it had taken from peace to bloody war. Have you seen her yet, Arthur? How does she do?"
"I am told she is well, but still shaken. She was with Linet when I sent to inquire. I shall go to her as soon as I've cleaned up. Now tell me the rest of it. What of Mordred? They tell me he was hurt, and that he has gone — fled — with Gaheris. This is something that I fail to understand. He was only with the Young Celts at my request — in fact, he came to me shortly before I left Camelot, to give me some word of warning about what they might be planning to do.… You could not have known that. It was my fault; perhaps I should have told you, but there were aspects of it…" He left it at that, and Bedwyr merely nodded: This was the debatable ground that each man could tread without a word spoken. Arthur frowned down, then raised troubled eyes to the other man's. "You cannot be blamed for turning your sword on him; how could you guess? But the Queen? He is devoted to her — we used to call it boy's love, and smile at it, and so did she — so why on earth should he have tried to harm the Queen?"
"It is not certain that he did. I'm not sure what happened there. When I crossed swords with Mordred, the affair was almost over. I had the Queen safe at my back, and by that time the guards were there. I would have disarmed him and then spoken with him, or else waited for your coming, but he is too good a fighter. I had to wound him, to get the sword from his hand."
"Well," said Arthur heavily, "he is gone. But why? And especially, why with Gaheris, unless indeed Mordred is still spying for me? You know where they will have gone, of course."
"To Gawain?"
"Exactly. And what," said Arthur, his voice warming into a kind of desperation, "are we going to do about Gawain?"
Bedwyr said, grim-mouthed: "Let me take what comes."
"And kill him? If you do not, he will kill you. You must know that. And I will not have it either way. Troublesome though he is, I need Gawain."
"I am in your hands. You'll send me away, I suppose. You can hardly send Gawain, I see that. So, when, and where?"
"As for when, not immediately." Arthur hesitated, then looked straight at the other man. "I must first of all give some public evidence of trust in you."
As if without thinking, his hand had strayed across the surface of the table. This was of veined green marble, edged with wrought gold. The King, on coming in, had flung his gloves down there, and Ulfin, in his haste to be gone, had left them. Now Arthur picked one of them up, and ran it through his fingers. It was a glove of softest calf-skin, worked as supple as velvet, its cuff embroidered with silken threads in rainbow colours, and with small river-pearls. The Queen herself had done the work, not letting her women set even one of the stitches. The pearls had come from the rivers of her native land.
Bedwyr met the King's eyes. His own, the dark poet's eyes, were profoundly unhappy. The King's were as somber, but held kindness.
"As for where, will your cousin make you welcome in your family's castle in Brittany? I should like you to be there. Go first, if you will, to King Hoel at Kerrec. I think he will be glad to know that you are so near. These are anxious times for him, and he is old, and ailing a little lately. But we'll talk about this before you go. Now I must see the Queen."
From Guinevere, to his great relief, Arthur learned the truth. Far from attacking her, Mordred had prevented Gaheris from getting to her with his sword. He had, indeed, struck Gaheris down, before himself being at tacked by Bedwyr. His subsequent flight, then, must have been through fear of being identified (as Bedwyr had apparently identified him) with the disloyal faction of Young Celts. This was puzzling enough, since Bors, as well as the Queen, could obviously swear to his loyalty, but the greater puzzle lay behind: why should he have fled with, o
f all men, Gaheris? To this Mordred's mistress, on being questioned, provided the first clue. Gaheris, himself bleeding and obviously distraught, had managed to convince her of her lover's danger; how easy, then, it had been for him to persuade the half-conscious and weakened prince that his only hope lay in flight. She had added her own pleas to Gaheris's urging, had helped them to the horses, and seen them go.
The gate guards finished the tale, and the truth was plain. Gaheris had taken the wounded man as his own shield and pass to freedom. Arthur, now seriously concerned for his son's health and safety, sent the royal couriers out immediately to find Mordred and bring him home. When it was reported that neither Mordred nor Gaheris had been to Gawain, the King ordered a country-wide search for his son. Gaheris they had orders to secure. He would be held until the King had spoken with Gawain, who was already on his way to Camelot.
Gareth, alone of the dead, lay in the royal chapel. After his burial Linet would take her grief back to her father's house. The affair was over, but about Camelot hung still a murmur of disaster, as if the bright gold of its towers, the vivid scarlet and green and blue of its flags, was smeared over with the grey of a coming sadness. The Queen wore mourning; it was for Gareth, and for the other deaths and spilled blood of what was noised abroad as a mistaken loyalty; but there were those who said that it was mourning for the departure of her lover into Brittany. But they whispered it more softly than before, and as often as not the rumour was hotly denied. There had been smoke, and fire, but now the fire was out, and the smoke was gone.
It was to be seen that the Queen kissed the departing marshal on both cheeks; then, after her, the King did the same. And Bedwyr, apparently unmoved after the Queen's embrace, had tears in his eyes as he turned from the King.
The court saw him off, then turned with anticipation to greet Gawain.
* * *
The doorstep where Mordred had been abandoned belonged, not to one of the King's protected foundations, but to a small community living remote from any town or road, and vowed to silence and poverty. The track that led through their little valley was used only by shepherds, or strayed travellers looking for a short cut, or, as in Gaheris's case, by fugitives. No messenger came there, no news, even, of the recent stirring scenes enacted in Arthur's capital. The good brothers nursed Mordred with dutifully Christian care, and even with some skill, for one of their number was a herbalist. They had no way of guessing who the stranger was who had been left on their doorstep during the storm. He was well dressed, but carried neither weapon nor money. Some traveller, no doubt, who had been robbed, and who owed his life to the fear — even perhaps the piety — of the thieves. So the brothers nursed the stranger, fed him from their plain rations, and were thankful when, the fever gone, he insisted on leaving their roof. His horse was there, an undistinguished beast. They packed a saddle-bag for him of black bread, wine in a leather flask, and a handful of raisins, and sent him on his way with a blessing and, it must be admitted, a private Te Deum afterwards. There had been something about the grim and silent man that had frightened them, and the brother who had watched his sleep had told them with fear of words spoken in grief and dread where the names of the High King and his Queen recurred. Nothing more could be understood: Mordred, deep in fever, had raved in the language of his childhood, where Sula and Guinevere and Queen Morgause came and went in the hot shadows, and all looks were alien, all words hurtful.
* * *
The wound was healed, but some residue of weakness remained. He rode barely eight miles on the first day, thankful for the plodding steadiness of the beast he bestrode. By instinct he went northward. That night he spent in a deserted woodcutter's hut deep in the forest; he had no money for an inn, nor had the brothers been able to spare him any. He would have to live, as they did (he thought hazily, as he huddled for warmth in his cloak and waited for sleep), on charity. Or else on work.
The thought, strange for so many years, aroused him to a sort of bitter amusement. Work? A knight's work was fighting. A weaponless man on a poor horse would be taken on only by the pettiest and poorest of rulers. And any ruler would ask questions. So, what work?
Out of the advancing clouds of sleep the answer came, with amusement still gone awry, but with something about it of an old longing. Sail. Fish. Dig peats. Grow a thin crop of grain and harvest it.
An owl sweeping low over the woodcutter's thatch gave its high, tearing cry. Half asleep, and already in vision on the edge of the northern sea, Mordred heard it as the cry of a gull, and it seemed like part of a decision already made. He would go home. He had been hidden there once before. He would hide there again. And even if they came looking for him amongst the islands, they would be hard put to it to find him. It did not occur to him to do anything but hide, so fixed in his poisoned delirium had Gaheris's lies and his own delusions become.
He turned over and slept, with cold air on his face and the cry of the gull still in his dream. Next day he turned westward. Two successive nights he spent in the open, avoiding the monastery houses where he might have heard of Arthur's search for him. The third was passed in a peasant's hut, where he shared the last of the brothers' hard bread and wine, and chopped firewood for his lodging-fee.
On the fourth day he reached the sea. He sold the horse, and with the money paid his passage northward on a small and barely seaworthy trader which was the last to leave port for the islands before winter closed the way.
* * *
Meanwhile Gawain came back to Camelot. Arthur sent Bors to meet him, to give him a full account of the tragedy, and also to temper as far as he might Gawain's grief over Gareth and Agravain and his anger with their killer. Bors did his best, but all his talk, his assertion of the Queen's innocence, his tale of Agravain's drunkenness and habitual (in these days) violence, of Gaheris's murderous intentions, of the attack on the unarmed Bedwyr, and the half-lit chaos of the fighting in the Queen's bedchamber… say what he might, nothing moved Gawain. Gareth's undeserved death was all he spoke of, and, Bors began to think, all he slept, ate and dreamed with.
"I'll meet him, and when I do, I shall kill him" was all he would say. "He's been sent away from court. The King has banished him. Not for anything that stains the Queen, but—"
"To keep him out of my reach. Yes. Well," said Gawain stonily, "I can wait."
"If you do kill Bedwyr," said Bors, desperately, "be sure Arthur will kill you."
The hot, blood-veined Orkney eyes turned to him. "So?" Then the eyes turned away. Gawain's head went up. They were just in sight of the golden towers, and the sound of a bell tolling slowly came floating, echoing from the water that edged the roadway. They would be there for Gareth's burial.
Bors saw the tears on Gawain's cheeks, and, drawing his horse back, said no more.
* * *
What passed between Gawain and his uncle the High King no one else ever knew. They were closeted together in the King's private rooms for the best part of a day, from the moment the funeral was over, right into the night and towards the next morning. Afterwards, without a word to any man, Gawain went to his rooms and slept for sixteen hours, then rose, armed himself, and rode to the practice field. That evening he ate at a tavern in the city, and stayed through the night with a girl there, reappearing next day in the field.
For eight days and nights he did this, talking with no one except as business required. On the ninth day he left Camelot, escorted, and rode the few miles to Ynys Witrin, where the King's ship, the latest Sea Dragon, lay.
She set her golden sail, raised her crimson dragon to the autumn winds, and weighed anchor promptly for the north.
It was Arthur's bid for two things: to get a trouble-maker as far out of the way as possible, and into the cooling winds of distance and time; and to give Gawain's hurt and angry spirit some work to do.
He had done the obvious thing, the one thing Mordred had not even thought of. Gawain, King of the Orkneys, had gone back to take up the rule of his islands.
BOOK III<
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* * *
THE WICKED DAY
1
WINTER PASSED, AND MARCH came in with its roaring winds and spasmodic storms, then softened towards the sweetness of an early spring. Sea-pinks covered the cliffs with rose, white flowers danced along the arched bramble boughs, red campion and wild hyacinth shone in the grass. Nesting birds called over the lochs, and the moors echoed to the curlew's bubbling note. On every skerry, and every grassy bank near the water, swans had built their weedy castles, and on each one slept a great white bird, head under wing, while the watchful mate cruised nearby, head up and wings set like sails. The water's surface echoed with the screaming of the oystercatchers and the gulls, and the upper sky quivered with lark-song.
A man and a boy were working on the stretch of moorland heather that covers the rolling center of Orkney's main island. At this time of year the heather was dark and dead-looking, but along the edges of the trodden roadway, and by every bank, crowded the pale, scented primroses. At the foot of the rolling moorland lay a thin strip of grazing, golden with dandelions. Beyond this a great loch stretched, and beyond that again, another, lying almost parallel, the two great waters separated at their southern extremities only by a narrow causeway and a strip of land well trodden by hoofs and feet, for this was a holy place in the islands. Here stood the great circles of stone, brooding, enigmatic, huge, and to be feared even by those who knew nothing of their purpose or their building. It was well known that no horse could be made to cross the causeway between dusk and dawning, and no deer had ever been seen to feed there. Only the goats, unchancy creatures always, would graze between the stones, keeping the grass smooth and short for the ceremonies still practiced there at the right seasons.
