Part 9 (1/2)

They were there for four days. The queen kept to her rooms with the women. The boys were allowed to explore the town, or, still carefully watched, to go down to the sh.o.r.e to hunt for crabs and sh.e.l.lfish. The second time they set out, Mordred, as if on an impulse of boredom, turned back. Though he did not say so within his brothers' hearing, he let the two guards see that crab-hunting offered no amus.e.m.e.nt to a boy who had done it for a living only a few years ago. He left them to it, and went alone into the town, then, hiding his eagerness, sauntered at an easy pace along the track that climbed away from the houses and led past the fortress walls towards the distant heights of Y Wyddfa.

The air was dazzlingly clear after the night's frost. The stones were already warm. He sat down. To any watcher he would appear to be enjoying the view and the suns.h.i.+ne. In fact he was looking carefully about him at the prospect of escape.

Above him, in the distance, a boy tended a flock of sheep. Their tracks seamed the face of the hill.

Higher, beyond the slopes of stony pasture, lay a wood, the outskirts of the forest that swept up to clothe the flanks of the Snow Hill. A gap in the trees showed where a road led eastward.

There lay the way. The road would surely join the famous Sarn Elen, the causeway that led down to Deva and the inland kingdoms. He could lose himself there, easily. He had all his money on him, and, with last night's frost as an excuse, had brought his cloak.

A pebble rattled on the path. He looked round, to see, barely a dozen paces away, the two guards standing, at ease, ostensibly gazing idly into the distance towards the beach below the town. But their pose was alert, and from time to time their glances came his way.

It was the same two men who had accompanied the princes to the sh.o.r.e. Now, small in the distance, he could see his brothers, easily recognizable among the other crab-catchers on the beach. He looked for their escort, and saw none.

The men had left the other boys to their pastime, and had followed him quietly up the hillside. The conclusion was inescapable. The guards were for him alone.

An emotion that the caged wildcat would have recognized swelled burstingly in Mordred's breast, and into his throat. He wanted to shout, to lash out, to run.

To run. He jumped to his feet. Instantly the men were moving, casually, towards him. They were young and fit. He could never outdistance them. He stood still.

”Time to be going back, young sir,” said one of them pleasantly. ”Nearly dinner time, I reckon.”

”Your brothers are going in,” said the other, pointing. ”Look, sir, you can see them from here. Shall we go down now?”

Mordred's face was still as stone. His eyes betrayed nothing of the emotion that filled him. Something that no wild animal - and few men - would have understood kept him silent and apparently indifferent.

In two deep and steadying breaths he willed the fear and with it the furious disappointment to spill from him. He could almost feel it draining from his fingertips like blood. In its place came the faintest tremor of released tension, and then, into the emptiness, the calm of his habitual control.

He nodded to the men, said something distant and polite, and walked back to the inn between them.

He tried again next day.

The princes, tired of the sh.o.r.e and the town, were avid to visit the great fortress on the hillside, but this their mother would not consider. Indeed, the escort's captain said flatly that even princes of Orkney would not be allowed within the gates. The place was fortified and always held in readiness.

”For what?” asked Gawain.

The man nodded at the sea.

”Irish?”

”Picts, Irish, Saxons. Anyone.”

”Is King Maelgon here himself?”

”No.”

”Which is Macsen's Tower?” The idle-sounding question came from Mordred.

”Whose tower?” demanded Agravain.

”Macsen's. Someone spoke of it yesterday.” The someone had been one of his guards, who had remarked that the site of the tower was well up on the hillside, not far below the wood.

The captain pointed. ”It's up there. You can't see it now, though, it's a ruin.”

”Who was Macsen?” asked Gareth.

”Do they teach you nothing in Orkney?” The man was indulgent. ”He was Emperor of Britain, Magnus Maximus, a Spaniard by birth-”

”Of course we know that,” interrupted Gawain. ”We are related to him. He was Emperor of Rome, and it was his sword that Merlin raised for the High King: Caliburn, the King's sword of Britain. Everyone knows that! Our mother is descended from him, through King Uther.”

”Then should we not visit the tower?” asked Mordred. ”It's not inside the fortress, so surely anyone can go? Even if it's ruined-”

”Sorry.” The captain shook his head. ”Too far. Against orders.”

”Orders?” Gawain was beginning to bristle, but Agravain spoke across him, rudely, to Mordred.

”Anyway, why should you want to go? You're not Macsen's kin! We are! We are royal through our mother as well.”

”Then if I am b.a.s.t.a.r.d Lothian, you can count yourselves b.a.s.t.a.r.d Macsen,” snapped Mordred, fear and tension breaking suddenly into fury, and careless for once of his tongue.

He was safe enough. The twins, loyal to their boyhood rule of silence where their mother was concerned, would never have thought of repeating the insult to Morgause. Their methods were more direct. After a startled pause of sheer surprise, they yelled with rage and fell on Mordred, and the pent-up energies of seaboard suddenly exploded in a very pretty dog-fight all round the inn yard. After they had been pulled apart and then beaten for fighting, the queen was so angry at the disturbance that she forbade any more excursions from the inn. So no one got to Macsen's Tower, and the boys had to content themselves with knucklebones and mock fights and story-telling; children's ploys, said Mordred, this time with open contempt, still smarting, and stayed away.

The next day, quite suddenly in the evening, the wind changed, and blew strongly again from the north.

Under the watchful eye of the escort the party re-embarked, and the Orc Orc made quickly south with a steady wind until she could turn in from the open weather to the quiet waters of the Severn Sea. The water was like gla.s.s. ”Right to the Gla.s.s Isle,” said the master, ”I do a.s.sure you.” And the shallow-draughted made quickly south with a steady wind until she could turn in from the open weather to the quiet waters of the Severn Sea. The water was like gla.s.s. ”Right to the Gla.s.s Isle,” said the master, ”I do a.s.sure you.” And the shallow-draughted Orc Orc did indeed sail in on an estuary mirror-smooth, with the oars out for the last stretch to take the little s.h.i.+p clear up to the wharf of Ynys Witrin, the Isle of Gla.s.s, almost in the shadow of the palace walls of Melwas, its king. did indeed sail in on an estuary mirror-smooth, with the oars out for the last stretch to take the little s.h.i.+p clear up to the wharf of Ynys Witrin, the Isle of Gla.s.s, almost in the shadow of the palace walls of Melwas, its king.

Melwas's palace was little more than a large house set in the flat meadowland r.i.m.m.i.n.g the largest of the three sister islands called Ynys Witrin. Two of the islands were hills, low and green, that rose gently from the encircling water. The third was the Tor, a high, cone-shaped hill symmetrical as an artefact, and girdled at its base with apple orchards where wisps of smoke proclaimed the cottages of the village that was Melwas's capital. It towered above the surrounding water-logged flatland of the Summer Country like a great beacon. This, in fact, was one of its functions; a beacon turret stood at the very top of the Tor, the nearest signal point to Camelot itself. From that summit, the boys were told, those walls and s.h.i.+ning towers might be seen quite close and clearly, across the gla.s.sy reaches of the Lake.

King Melwas's own fortress lay just below the Tor's summit. The approach to it was a winding road, steeply cut from the gravel of the hill. In winter, men said, the mud made it all but impossible to get to the top. But then in winter there was no fighting. The king and his company stayed in the comfort of the lakeside mansion, and their days were filled with hunting, which was mostly, in that sodden Summer Country, wild-fowling in the marshes. These stretched away to southward, with their glinting waters only occasionally broken by the willow islands and the alder-set reed-beds where the marsh-dwellers had built their raised hovels.

King Melwas received the party kindly. He was a big, brown-bearded man, with a high colour and a red, full-lipped mouth. His att.i.tude to Morgause was one of open admiration. He greeted her with the ceremonial kiss of welcome, and if this was a shade too prolonged, Morgause made no objection. When she presented her sons the king was warm in his welcome of them, and rather warmer in his praise of the woman who had borne so handsome a tribe. Mordred, as always, was presented last. If, during the formal greetings, the king's look came back rather too often to the tall boy standing behind the other princes, no one but the boy himself seemed to notice. Then Melwas, with another lingering look, turned back to Morgause, with the news that a courier awaited her from the High King.

”A courier?” Morgause was sharp. ”To me, the King's sister? You must mean one of his knights? With an escort for us?”

But no; it seemed that the go-between was merely one of the royal couriers, who, waiting duly on Morgause, gave Arthur's message briefly and with little ceremony. Morgause and her party were to remain on Ynys Witrin until the following day, when they were to ride, with an escort sent by Arthur, to Camelot. There the King would receive them in the Round Hall.

The younger boys, excited and barely controllable, noticed nothing amiss, but Gawain and Mordred could see how anger fought with growing apprehension in her, as she questioned the man sharply.

”He said nothing more, madam,” repeated the courier. ”Only that he desired your presence tomorrow in the Round Hall. Until then, you will stay here. The, Lady Nimue, madam? No, she has not yet returned from the north. That is all I know.”

He bowed and went. Gawain, puzzled and inclined to be angry, started to speak, but his mother waved him to silence, and stood for a while biting her lip and thinking. Then she turned quickly to Gabran.

”Have them call my women. They are to unpack our clothes, and lay out the white robe for me, and the scarlet cloak. Now, yes, now, man! Do you think I will stay here tamely overnight, and go at his bidding to the Round Hall tomorrow? Do you not know what that is? It's Arthur's council chamber, where judgments are given. Oh, yes, I have heard of that hall, with its 'Perilous Chair' for the wrong-doers and those with grievances against the High King!”

”But what peril can there be for you? You have done him no wrong,” said Gabran quickly.

”Of course not!” snapped Morgause. ”Which is why I will not go like a suppliant or a wrong-doer, to be received in front of the Council by my own brother! I will go now, tonight, while he is in hall at supper with the Queen and all the court. Let us see then if he intends to deny her state to the mother of-” She stopped, and apparently changed what she had been going to say. ”-To his sister and his sister's sons.”