Part 2 (1/2)

Morgause saw all this with satisfaction, but she saw more besides: the dark eyes, an inheritance from the Spanish blood of the Ambrosii, were Arthur's; the fine bones, the folded subtle mouth, came from Morgause herself.

At length she spoke. ”Your name is Mordred, they tell me?”

”Yes.” The boy's voice was hoa.r.s.e with nervousness. He cleared his throat. ”Yes, madam.”

”Mordred,” she said, consideringly. Her accent, even after her years in the north, was still that of the southern mainland kingdoms, but she spoke clearly and slowly in her pretty voice, and he understood her very well. She gave his name the island p.r.o.nunciation. ”Medraut, the sea-boy. So you are a fisherman like your father?”

”Yes, madam.”

”Is that why they gave you your name?”

He hesitated. He could not see where this was leading. ”I suppose so, madam.”

”You suppose so.” She spoke lightly, her attention apparently on smoothing a fold of her gown. Only her chief counsellor, and Gabran her current lover, knowing her well, guessed that the next question mattered. ”You never asked them?”

”No, madam. But I can do other things besides fish. I dig the peats, and I can turf a roof, and build a wall, and mend the boat, and - and milk the goat, even-” He paused uncertainly. A faint ripple of amus.e.m.e.nt had gone round the hall, and the queen herself was smiling.

”And climb cliffs as if you were a goat yourself. For which,” she added, ”we should all be grateful.”

”That was nothing,” said Mordred. His confidence returned. There was really no need to be afraid. The queen was a lovely lady, as Sula had told him, not at all as he had imagined a witch to be, and surprisingly easy to talk to. He smiled up at her. ”Is Gawain's ankle badly sprained?” he asked.

A new rustle went round the hall. ”Gawain,” indeed! And a fisher-boy did not hold conversation with the queen, standing as straight as one of the young princes, and looking her in the eye. But Morgause apparently noticed nothing unusual. She ignored the murmurs. She had not ceased to watch the boy closely.

”Not very. Now that it has been bathed and bound up he can walk well enough. He will be back.”...at the exercise of arms tomorrow. And for this he has you to thank, Mordred, and so have I. I repeat, we are grateful.”

”The men would have found him very soon, and I could have lent them the rope.”

”But they did not, and you climbed down twice yourself. Gawain tells me that it is a dangerous place. He should be whipped for climbing there, even though he did bring me two such splendid birds. But you...”

The pretty teeth nibbled at the red underlip as she considered him. ”You must have some proof of my grat.i.tude. What would you like?”

Really taken aback now, he stared, swallowed, and began to stammer something about his parents, their poverty, the coming winter and the nets that had been patched twice too often, but she interrupted him.

”No, no. That is for your parents, not for you. I have already found gifts for them. Show him, Gabran.”

A young man, blond and handsome, who stood near her, stooped and lifted a box from behind her chair. He opened it. In it Mordred glimpsed coloured wools, woven cloth, a net purse glinting with silver, a stoppered wine flask. He went scarlet, then pale. Suddenly, the scene had become somehow unreal, like a dream. The chance encounter at the cliff, Gawain's talk of reward, the summons to the queen's house - all this had been exciting, with its promise of some change in the monotonous drudgery of his life. He had come here expecting at most a silver coin, a word from the queen, some delicacy, perhaps, that could be begged from the palace kitchens before he ran home. But this - Morgause's beauty and kindness, the unaccustomed splendours of the hall, the magnificence of the gifts for his parents, and the promise, apparently, of more for himself... Dimly, through the heart-beating confusion, he felt that it was all too much. There was something more here. Something in the looks the courtiers were exchanging, in the speculative amus.e.m.e.nt in Gabran's eyes. Something he did not understand, but that made him uneasy.

Gabran shut the lid of the box with a snap, but when Mordred reached to lift it Morgause stopped him.

”No, Mordred. Not now. We shall see that they have it before today's dusk. But you and I still have something to talk about, have we not? What is fitting for the young man to whom the future king of these islands owes a dear debt? Come with me now. We will talk of this in private.”

She stood up. Gabran moved quickly to her side, his arm ready for her hand, but ignoring him, she stepped down from the dais and reached a hand towards the boy. He took it awkwardly, but somehow she made a graceful gesture of it, her jewelled fingers touching his wrist as if he were a courtier handing her from the hall. When she stood beside him she was very little taller than he. She smelled of honeysuckle, and the rich days of summer. Mordred's head swam.

”Come,” she said again, softly.

The courtiers stood back, bowing, to make a way for them. Her slave drew back a curtain to show a door in the side wall. Guards stood there to either side, their spears held stiffly. Mordred was no longer conscious of the stares and the whispering. His heart was thudding. What was to come now he could not guess, but it could only, surely, be more wonders. Something was hanging in the clouds for him; fortune was in the queen's smile and in her touch.

Without knowing it, he tossed the dark hair back from his brow in a gesture that was Arthur's own, and with head high he escorted Morgause royally out of her hall.

3.

THE CORRIDOR BETWEEN THEpalace and the queen's house was a long one, without windows, but lit by torches hung on the walls. There were two doors in its length, both on the left. One must be the guardroom; the door stood ajar, and beyond it Mordred could hear men's voices and the click of gaming-stones. The other gave on the courtyard; he remembered seeing guards there. It was shut now, but at the end of the corridor a third door stood open, held wide by a servant for the pa.s.sage of the queen and her attendants.

Beyond was a square chamber, which acted apparently as an anteroom to the queen's private apartments. It was unfurnished. To the right a slit window showed a narrow strip of sky, and let in the noise of the sea. Opposite, on the landward side, was another door, at which Mordred looked with interest, and then with awe.

This doorway was curiously low and squat - the same primitive shape as the door of his parents'

cottage. It was set deep under a ma.s.sive stone lintel, and flanked by jambs almost as thick. He had seen such entrance-ways before; they led down to the ancient underground chambers that could be found here and there through the islands. Some said they had been built, like the tall brochs, by the Old People, who had housed their dead there in stone chambers beneath the ground. But the simpler folk regarded them as magical places, the sidhe sidhe or hollow hills that guarded the gates of the Otherworld; and the skeletons that were found there, of men and beasts, were the remains of unwary creatures who had ventured too far within those dark precincts. When mist shrouded the islands - which was rare in those windy seas - it was said that G.o.ds and spirits could be seen riding out on their gold-decked horses, with the sad ghosts of the dead drifting round them. Whatever the truth, the islanders avoided the mounds that hid these underground chambers, but it seemed that the queen's house had been built beside one of them, perhaps only discovering it when the foundations were dug. Now the entrance was sealed off by a heavy door of oak, with big iron hasps, and a ma.s.sive lock to keep it fast against whatever lurked behind it in the dark. or hollow hills that guarded the gates of the Otherworld; and the skeletons that were found there, of men and beasts, were the remains of unwary creatures who had ventured too far within those dark precincts. When mist shrouded the islands - which was rare in those windy seas - it was said that G.o.ds and spirits could be seen riding out on their gold-decked horses, with the sad ghosts of the dead drifting round them. Whatever the truth, the islanders avoided the mounds that hid these underground chambers, but it seemed that the queen's house had been built beside one of them, perhaps only discovering it when the foundations were dug. Now the entrance was sealed off by a heavy door of oak, with big iron hasps, and a ma.s.sive lock to keep it fast against whatever lurked behind it in the dark.

Then Mordred forgot it, as the tall door ahead of them opened between its two armed guards, and beyond was a blaze of sunlight, and the warmth and scent and colour of the queen's house.

The room they entered was a copy of Morgause's chamber at Dunpeldyr; a smaller copy, but still, to Mordred's eyes, magnificent. The sun streamed in through a big square window, under which a bench made a window-seat, gay with blue cus.h.i.+ons. Near it, full in the sunlight, stood a gilded chair with its footstool and a cross-legged table nearby. Morgause sat down, and pointed to the window-seat.

Mordred took his place obediently, and sat waiting in silence, with thumping heart, while the women, at a word from the queen, betook themselves with their st.i.tchery to the far end of the room, in the light from another window. A servant came hurrying to the queen's side with wine in a silver goblet, and then, at her command, brought a cup of the sweet honey drink for Mordred. He took a sip of it, then set the cup down on the window sill. Though his mouth and throat were dry, he could not drink.

The queen finished her wine, then handed the goblet to Gabran, who must already have had his orders.

He took it straight to the servant at the door, shut the door behind the man, then went to join the women at the other end of the room. He lifted a small knee harp from its shroud in the corner, and, settling himself on a stool, began to play.

Only then did the queen speak again, and she spoke softly, so that only Mordred, close beside her, would be able to hear.

”Well, Mordred, so now let us talk. How old are you? No, don't answer, let me see.... You will soon pa.s.s your eleventh birthday. Am I not right?”

”y-yes,” stammered the boy, amazed. ”How did - oh, of course, Gawain told you.”

She smiled. ”I would have known without being told. I know more about your birth than you do yourself, Mordred. Can you guess how?”

”Why, no, madam. About my birth? That's before you came to live here, isn't it?”

”Yes. I and the king my husband still held Dunpeldyr in Lothian. Have you never heard what happened in Dunpeldyr, the year before Prince Gawain was born?”

He shook his head. He could not have spoken. He still had no inkling of why the queen had brought him here and was speaking to him like this, secretly, in her private chamber, but every instinct p.r.i.c.ked him to the alert. It was coming now, surely, the future he had dreaded, and yet longed for, with the strange, restless and sometimes violent feelings of rebellion he had had against the life to which he had been born, and to which he had believed himself sentenced till death, like all his parents' kin.

Morgause, still watching him closely, smiled again. ”Then listen now. It is time you knew. You will soon see why....”

She settled a fold of her gown, and spoke lightly, as if talking of some trifling matter far back in the past, some story to tell a child at lamp-lighting.

”You know that the High King Arthur is my half-brother by the same father, King Uther Pendragon.

Long ago King Uther planned my marriage to King Lot, and though he died before it could take place, and though my brother Arthur was never Lot's friend, we were married. We hoped that through the marriage a friends.h.i.+p, or at least an alliance, might be formed. But, whether through jealousy of Lot's prowess as a soldier, or (as I am persuaded) because of lies told to him by Merlin, the enchanter, who hates all women, and who fancies himself wronged by me. King Arthur has always acted more as an enemy than as a brother and a just lord.”

She paused. The boy's eyes were fixed, enormous, his lips slightly parted. She smoothed her gown again, and her voice took on a deeper, graver note.

”Soon after King Arthur had a.s.sumed the throne of Britain, he was told, by the evil man Merlin, that a child had been born somewhere in Dunpeldyr, a son of its king, who would prove to be Arthur's bane.