The Book of Mordred

by Vivian Vande Velde

  Bayard got his leg behind Mordred's, and the younger knight staggered, parried a blow, fell, rolled in time to avoid another thrust that skewered a corner of Dolph's shirt. But Bayard's sword snagged on the uneven stone banquette, then skittered uncontrollably, and put him, momentarily, off balance.

  Mordred's own foot lashed out. Bayard threw his weight backwards, and he fell out of Mordred's reach. Mordred was back on his feet first, but Bayard had landed by the parapet and found a loose stone that he heaved at Mordred's head. Mordred ducked, and then Bayard was back up also.

  Lancelot's head suddenly appeared over the edge of the battlement, which meant that—once through the gate—he had climbed the sheer face of the rampart rather than follow the boulevard that wound its way about the inside of the walls.

  "Lance!" Nimue yelled warning as Bayard swung wide, level with Lancelot's neck.

  Mordred jumped in to protect Lancelot. But, although Lancelot had earned his reputation as Arthur's best knight almost a quarter century ago, it was not merely memory of past glories that kept him first. His head bobbed down behind the wall, then he seemed to ricochet back up and over the edge to land on his feet.

  Mordred, however, had overreached in his attempt to keep Lancelot from decapitation. Bayard swung hard, and Mordred's sword went flying. Mordred spun, retrieved the sword, and turned back at a ready crouch.

  But Bayard was not there. Instead of going after Mordred, he had faced about and engaged Lancelot. It made no sense at all, for—as long as the fight had proceeded fairly—Lancelot was restrained by the rules of chivalry from interfering. And if anyone could be counted on to abide by the rules of chivalry, it would be Lancelot.

  Bayard had been hard-pressed against Mordred. Against Lancelot, he had no chance at all. In another instant his sword clattered to the ground.

  It was then that his logic suddenly became clear.

  "Mercy, sir knight," he said, dropping to his knees. Then, to his men, "Everyone."

  They all offered their swords, hilts first.

  Lancelot sheathed his sword, and indicated for Bayard's men to do likewise.

  "No!" Mordred cried. "Kill him!"

  Lancelot looked up, startled. He grabbed the younger knight by the wrist, as though afraid Mordred would go after Bayard himself. "I have granted him mercy."

  "No, listen." Mordred's voice shook, but in another instant he had it back under control. "This man is responsible for abducting countless young village boys who—"

  "It wasn't me!" Bayard objected. "It's my uncle, the wizard Halbert! I have done nothing wrong. Find him."

  Lancelot looked to Mordred for a response.

  "He's dead," Mordred said.

  Nimue, watching Bayard, saw no reaction.

  "It was the two of them," Mordred conceded. "Halbert needed the boys to perform his loathsome rejuvenation spells, and Bayard provided them from the surrounding area."

  "It was not just rejuvenation," Bayard said. "He needed them to live. And the effects on the youths were temporary; they were returned unharmed."

  "Unharmed?" Nimue cried, unable to keep silent, to leave this to the men. "They were dead."

  "No!" Bayard protested. "You must be mistaken. Weak, yes. Perhaps temporarily confused—"

  Nimue shook from anger. "I saw Evan, Roswald's son, of the town of St. George, dead. Not weak. Not confused. Dead."

  Bayard looked from Nimue to Lancelot, avoided Mordred, came back to Nimue. "Merciful saints in Heaven," he said, his voice a reedy whisper, "he tricked me. Uncle Halbert assured me ... If I had ever thought..." He shook his head. "This is terrible."

  "It seems," said Lancelot, "you have all been ill-used. But the man responsible is now under God's jurisdiction."

  "No," Mordred protested. "No, we are not that gullible." To Bayard, he said, "You almost killed me in there, and you were about to—Lancelot, he was about to rape and torture a young peasant woman who was in our company, and he stood by while Halbert maltreated Nimue. He knew. He knew!'"

  "Was anybody killed?" Bayard asked, having found his voice again. "Was anybody tortured? My dear boy, my only intention was to frighten you. You must admit: You were frightened?"

  Mordred's fingers tightened on his sword.

  Nimue saw Lancelot was watching warily, as if expecting Mordred to try something rash and sneaky. As if he were suspicious of him.

  "My Lady Nimue," Bayard pleaded. "I was not there when you saw the terrible things you saw. Was I? Tell him I was not there when Halbert did his evil magic. Tell him whether you saw me actually harm anyone."

  Nimue had to admit, "He wasn't there. He harmed no one in my sight."

  "This man is guilty of heinous crimes," Mordred protested to Lancelot, "against me, and against my companions. Once before he was involved in his uncle's crimes, and slipped away from just retribution by claiming ignorance. I demand that you withdraw from a situation in which you are not involved, and let me finish what you have interrupted."

  "When he raised his sword at me," Lancelot said evenly, though Nimue knew him well enough to suspect he was becoming heated, "I became involved. It seems to me that misunderstandings and harsh words have compounded—"

  "Oh, really!" Mordred said in exasperation.

  "Yes, well,"—Lancelot's tone remained stoically polite despite Mordred's bitter sarcasm—"in any case, now it is for the King to say."

  "Dammit! He's mine!"

  Lancelot raised his eyebrows and stopped trying to convince Mordred.

  "You fool!" Mordred's voice was a throaty whisper. "You interfering stooge! You have no idea what has been going on here. How dare you come in here, with your archaic sense of fair play, feeding your sense of self-worth with empty magnanimous gestures that endanger all? This is not a game."

  Lancelot's had always been an open face, no subtlety or guile hid his emotions. He took a moment to calm himself before answering. "I have never taken chivalry as a game. But I have overcome this knight in fair combat, and I have granted him mercy. He and his men will present themselves before King Arthur and the Lady Guinevere, and they will decide his fate. Whatever your grievances are, and I am sure they must be great to make you so forget yourself, you can address them to the King."

  Nimue put her hand on Mordred's arm. He was breathing harder now than he had when he'd been fighting Bayard. He was right. She knew he was right But so was Lance.

  Behind them, she could hear running footsteps: the group from Sir Bayard's dungeon finally catching up. Neither Mordred nor Lancelot paid any attention.

  "And what will the King decree, do you think?" Mordred asked. "Confiscation of one or two feudal properties, perhaps? A novena offered for the souls of the dead? Then again, he seems to favor banishment lately."

  "Mordred, Lancelot," Nimue pleaded. The older knight was perhaps the most decent man she knew. She hated the pain she saw in his clear blue eyes, and she hated the thought of what he could do to Mordred if he so chose.

  But she had never seen Lancelot lose his temper, and she didn't see it now. He bent to kiss her hand. He indicated for Bayard to rise to his feet. Then he turned back to Mordred. "Will you be accompanying us to Camelot?" he asked. Very formal, very cool.

  Mordred's eyes narrowed. "You were following me," he suddenly said. "That is how you came to be here in so timely a fashion—you met Dunsten on his way back to Camelot. But why?"

  "You left court in company with someone who had just lost in trial by combat—a proven criminal who had been banished."

  "I was accompanying a friend whom I may never see again, thanks to you, to the border."

  "You seem to have a number of friends among those who have been banished," Lancelot said with a tight smile. "But, there too, I am not the judge."

  Mordred stood with his teeth clenched and bared. Then he gave a half smile, and an apologetic flourish with his hand, and he walked away.

  Nimue recognized that there was nothing she could do, nothing she could say, and so it was Romola who ran afte
r him.

  Romola asked, "Where are you going?"

  "Home, it seems. To Camelot. But to get there, I need to borrow a horse from Bayard's stable."

  Romola stopped following him and faced the former prisoners. She announced, "My fathers cart is here. There is room for everyone. We're all going home."

  The ragged group cheered.

  Dolph came up behind Romola and gave her a hug. "And I want you to know I'll always love you," he said, "no matter what."

  Romola looked at him quizzically. "And I'll always love you," she answered. "What do you mean 'no matter what'?"

  Dolph made a vague gesture.

  "I just meant,"—he saw that everyone was listening, but continued, perhaps thinking they must know what he was about to say anyway—"you know, after what happened. Whatever happened. Not that I want to know," he added hastily. He gave a solid glare that included everyone. "And it's nobody else's business."

  "Dolph."

  "Yes?"

  "I have no idea what you are saying."

  It was what Nimue would have told him, too.

  Dolph lowered his voice, which only served to make everyone listen harder. "With the guards." He nodded toward her skirt, which was stained with the blood of the man Romola had slain. "I mean you're still my woman, and I'll never have you put aside or anything because you certainly couldn't help what they did to you, and it's best if we just forget the whole thing happened and pick up our lives from here."

  Nimue's heart sank.

  Romola considered this speech, a long one for Dolph, for a moment. "I'm ... What ... They ... Dolph, this isn't my blood."

  Now it was her husband's turn to look at her quizzically.

  "Dolph, I killed a guard. I ... stabbed him. This is his blood."

  "You..." Dolph lowered his voice even more. But by this point he couldn't have lowered it enough to exclude the others. "You killed a guard?"

  Romola nodded.

  "You just walked right up to a guard—an armed guard, I'm guessing—and stabbed him?"

  "Dolph," Nimue said, remembering how he had let himself be recaptured so that she would have a better chance at escape. "Dolph."

  "No, I didn't just walk right up to him," Romola said. "I..."

  "You what?" Dolph snapped.

  "Pretended to like him."

  "We both did," Nimue said, but Dolph wasn't interested in what she had done. "Romola was very brave," she said. "She came here to rescue you."

  But Dolph's gaze was centered unshakably on the skirt.

  Lancelot took a step closer to Nimue. "Who are these people?" he asked.

  Romola tossed her hair off her shoulders. She took hold of Lancelot's arm in an overly familiar gesture, which the knight accepted graciously, while she started to tell him all about the town of St. George and her parents' inn.

  Arm in arm they headed down toward the gate, with Dolph behind, close enough to keep stepping on Lancelot's heels. The wainwright, the cobbler's apprentice, and the coopers nephew crowded about and interjected their own bits of information as Romola spoke. Boy skipped along in front of them, moving backwards. Bayard, and the rest of the knights who were to present themselves to Arthur, trailed behind.

  Nimue counted, came up short, and glanced around.

  Wystan was sitting on the parapet, holding the sword Dolph had abandoned.

  With a start, she realized he was trying to catch the first of the dawn light, to see his reflection on the burnished steel of the blade.

  "Wystan." She touched his shoulder. "Wystan, I'm certain you will be all right. You look fine. If you were going to start aging, I'm sure you would have already—and you haven't."

  He laid the sword down. "I haven't." He said it tonelessly, neither question nor affirmation.

  She shook her head. She forced a smile, though there was little enough to smile about. "So. Where do you come from? Sir Lancelot, Sir Mordred, and I can escort you back to your village. How would you like that? That would shock the socks off your friends and neighbors."

  "Socks?"

  "Never mind. It's just an expression a friend of mine used to use."

  Wystan said, "Who would know me? This don't be the face I left with."

  Nimue bit her lip.

  "And I can't be going back with your friends and pretending to be the man whose face this was."

  "Oh, Wystan," she said, seeing he was right.

  He avoided her eyes, but picked up the sword. He stood straight. With determination he said, "But, then, maybe this be a new chance for me—to start new someplace different. Somewhere. It may be." His voice got less and less sure. Still, he forced a smile. "We better hurry, or they'll be leaving without us," he said. "Those friends of yours seem set on bickering and snarling all the way, and they may well overlook you."

  When Nimue and Wystan got to the stables, Dolph and Romola were sitting in the cart with the rest of the St. George group, but they were quarreling bitterly, and Mordred and Lancelot had started a debate on chivalry. Bayard wore a self-satisfied smirk.

  "Without strict rules of conduct," Lancelot was saying, "civilization itself would disintegrate. How can you call Arthur's ideas old-fashioned? The old way was to look out only for yourself, and if your neighbor had something you wanted and if he wasn't strong enough to keep it from you—well, rotten luck, neighbor. You want to go back to anarchy?"

  "I am not against people being decent to each other," Mordred protested. "Or against table manners or social etiquette, either. But you have made a mockery of—"

  "By honoring ladies? By declaring the house of God a place of sanctuary? By establishing that once a man yields, he should not be cut down anyway?"

  Mordred jerked his head to look away from Lancelot.

  "You have no idea of the brutality of life before King Arthur. Why, the first time I heard of Arthur..." Lancelot had started to smile at the memory, but the smile faded, as did his words, when he saw that Mordred wasn't paying attention. Mordred sat on his borrowed horse looking far away at nothing in particular. "Yes, well..." Lancelot cleared his throat.

  In the silence that surrounded them, Romola's voice carried. "What am I supposed to do: Be grateful that you'd still have me? So what? I'm not impressed."

  "Outgrown us village folk, have you?" Dolph sneered.

  Mordred whirled on him and snapped, "Has anybody ever pointed out what a horse's ass you are?"

  Romola grinned, but Mordred had already stopped paying attention and missed it.

  "Here, let me help you up," Wystan said to Nimue.

  She swung up on the pony that had been readied for her. She started to thank Wystan, then saw that he had frozen. She looked at his stricken face, moved her gaze down to his hands. He had laced his fingers together to give her a lift, but the fingers wouldn't work properly. They couldn't—for they were bent and misshapen and several joints were missing.

  Boy shook the reins to the oxen, and the cart started with a jerk.

  The men's horses followed. "Listen," Lancelot was saying, "and I will tell you a story about chivalry..."

  Bayard rode in the middle, wearing an expression that said I am eager to listen to every story you are willing to share

  Mordred was in one of his silent sulks.

  Bayard's men, looking chastised and ready to be forgiven, followed.

  From the cart, the cooper's nephew looked back and saw Nimue. "Come on," he called after her. "You don't want to be left behind."

  Wystan slapped her horse on the rump.

  The last she saw him, he was sitting on the step just inside the gate, elbow on knee, chin on disfigured fist, the first pink of dawn behind him.

  PART III

  Kiera

  CHAPTER 1

  "Talking to animals isn't even a big kind of magic," Kiera protested to her mother just as they reached the shady area Agravaine had pointed out as a good place to stretch their legs and rest the horses.

  Her mother, as usual, refused to be reasonable. "Honestly," Alayna s
aid in exasperation, "you'll be the death of me yet."

  "No," Kiera said. "It won't be anything to do with me."

  She recognized her words for a mistake as soon as they were out. A death prophecy wasn't the kind of information most people wanted to hear—least of all her mother. The unsolicited prediction hung between them, just as so many things did lately.

  It shouldn't take magical sight, Kiera told herself, for someone who had reached the age of fourteen years old—and been invited, after this one last trip with her mother, to begin training as one of the Queen's ladies-in-waiting—to have the sense not to blurt out such stupid things.

  Still, her mother was the one who had started it.

  Alayna dismounted without waiting for one of the men to help her: Agravaine, who had come with them as escort, or his younger brother Mordred whom they'd chanced to meet on the road home as he traveled with Nimue.

  "Thank you for the ride," Kiera whispered to her pony, who wiggled an ear at her.

  Agravaine rushed over, too late to help mother or daughter dismount. His quick green eyes darted from one to the other, and must have caught the tension, for he spoke a bit too brightly: "Nimue says we had better make this a short stopover if we are to arrive at Camelot before the rain."

  "Yes," Alayna snapped. "So Kiera's horse was just telling us."

  Agravaine raised his eyebrows, but Alayna was already looking beyond him, her attention on his brother, who reached up to help Nimue dismount. The beautiful young enchantress leaned forward, laughing, her golden hair hanging close to Mordred's dark brown. Abruptly, Alayna turned and walked away.

  But Mordred must have heard at least part of what had been said, or he could read the situation by the set of Alayna's shoulders, for as soon as he reached Kiera he whispered, "Have you been arguing with your mother again?"

  Kiera shrugged. When Mordred didn't move away but waited for an answer, she said, "I just told her that my horse said it felt like ram." The rest of it, she thought, was best not repeated, and nobody's business anyway.