Part 26 (1/2)

”Yes. Wait, then.”

He took the letter across to a window, and with his back to the man, spread the page out on the sill. The careful script danced under his eyes. The drifting curtain of the rain seemed to have come between him and the letter. He dashed the back of his hand impatiently across his face and bent nearer.

In the end, and after three careful readings, the sense of it went right into his brain and lodged there, thrumming like the arrow that lodges deep in the flesh, spreading, not pain, but a numbing poison.

Arthur was dead. The news that followed, of complete and annihilating victory over the Romans and Burgundians, came as an irrelevance. Arthur was dead. The dispatch, dictated hastily in a field dressing station, gave few details. The High King's body had not yet been recovered from the field. Parties were still searching among the piled and pillaged dead. But if the King were still living, said Bedwyr tersely, he would by this time have made himself known. The regent must a.s.sume his death, and act accordingly.

The parchment slipped from Mordred's hand and floated to the floor. He did not notice. Through the window beside him, washed and sweet on the damp air, floated the scents of the Queen's garden. He looked out at the rain-heavy roses, the glittering leaves that quivered under the drifting drops, the misted gra.s.s. No one was there today. Wherever she was, she would know of the courier's coming, and she would be waiting for him. He would have to go to her and tell her. Arthur. And Bedwyr. Arthur and Bedwyr both. That was enough for her, and too much. But he must hear the rest first. He turned back to the courier. ”Go on.”

The man talked eagerly now, his fear forgotten. The regent was alive again, not composed exactly, but in command, his questions quick and direct.

”Yes, my lord, I was there myself. I left the field at full dark, as soon as the news was sure. The King was seen fighting still towards sunset, though by that time the main resistance was over, and Quintilia.n.u.s himself had fallen. Everywhere was chaos, and already men were robbing the bodies of the dead and killing the dying for their weapons and their clothes. Our men were not merciful, but the Franks... My lord, these are barbarians. They fight like mad wolves, and they can no more be controlled than wolves.

The enemy broke and fled in several directions, and were pursued. Some of them threw down their arms and held their hands out for chains, begging their lives. It was-was...

”The King. What of the King?”

”He was seen to fall. His standard had been cut down, and in the growing dark it could not be observed just where he was fighting, or what had happened. Bedwyr, wounded as he was, struggled to that part of the field and searched for him, and others with him, calling. But the King was not found. Many of the bodies were stripped already, and if the King had been among them-”

”You are telling me that his body had still not been recovered?”

”Yes, my lord. At least, not when I left the field. I was sent as soon as it became too dark to search further. It may well be that by this time another dispatch is on its way. But it was thought that the news should be brought to you before other rumours reached the country.”

”So this is why no token, neither sword nor ring, has been brought back to me?”

”Yes, my lord.”

Mordred was silent for a while. Then he spoke with difficulty. ”Is there still thought to be hope for the High King?”

”My lord, if you had seen the field... But yes, there is hope. Even in naked death, the High King's body would surely have been known-”

Under Mordred's gaze, he stopped. ”My lord.”

After a few more questions Mordred sent him away, and sat alone, thinking.

There was still a chance that Arthur was not dead. But his duty was plain. Before the news reached these sh.o.r.es-and with the coming of the courier's s.h.i.+p the rumours must already be spreading like heath fires-he must take control of the country. His immediate moves were easily mapped: an emergency meeting of the Council; a public reading of Arthur's declaration of succession, with its ratification of his, Mordred's authority; a copy of this to be made and sent to each of the kings; a speech made to the army leaders.

Meanwhile the Queen waited, and while she waited, suffered. He would go to her, and take what comfort he could.

And what love he might.

Before he had taken three steps into the room she was on her feet. Afterwards he realized that he had not known to whom her first query related.

She said it, hands to throat. ”He is dead?”

”Alas, madam, yes. That is the message as it came to me. He was seen to fall in the moment of victory, but, when the messenger was sent to me, they had not yet found his body.”

She was so white that he thought she might fall. He went close quickly, and put out his hands. Hers flew out and held them tightly. He said urgently: ”Madam, there is hope. And Bedwyr is alive, though wounded. He was well enough to order the search for the King's body before darkness fell.”

She shut her eyes. Her lips, thin and gaping round a black 0, drew air in as if she were drowning. Her lids fluttered. Then as if some ghostly hand had slid under her chin and drawn her up, she stiffened and grew taller, then her eyes opened and her white face composed itself. She removed her hands quietly from Mordred's grasp, but let him lead her to a chair. Her women would have cl.u.s.tered near with hands and words of comfort, but she waved them back.

”Tell me all that you know.”

”I know very little, madam. The letter was brief. But the messenger gave me a report.” He recounted what the man had told him. She listened without interruption; indeed, a casual observer might have thought without attention; she seemed to be watching the raindrops following one another down the drooping stem of a rose that hung beyond the window-frame.

Mordred stopped speaking at last. The raindrops ran, gathered, swelled on a thorn, dropped splas.h.i.+ng to the sill.

The Queen said quietly, in a calm, dead voice: ”If there is indeed hope of the King's life, then surely a second courier will be following hard on the first. Meantime we must do as my lord commanded.”

”a.s.suming his death,” said Mordred.

”a.s.suming that.” Then, with a sudden break of grief and terror: ”Mordred, what will become of Britain now? What will come to us? So short a while ago we spoke of this, you and I - and now - now the day is upon us.

He made an involuntary move towards her, only a slight one, but it sufficed. She was still again, controlled, queenly. But her eyes betrayed her. She could not have spoken again without weeping. And that must not happen until she was alone.

He said, in as flat and matter-of-fact a tone as he could manage: ”Two things must be done immediately.

I must see Cerdic. A meeting has already been arranged. And I have convened the Council. They meet tonight. Until tidings come that either confirm or deny this news, it is vital that men should see there is still a central power in Britain, with a ruler appointed by the King's command, and carrying out his wishes.”

He added, gently: ”For you, madam, I do not think anyone will wonder at it if you are not present at the Council meeting.”

”I shall be present.”

”If you so wish-”

”I do wish it. Mordred, the High King's body has not been found. You have his seal, which you and I, as co-regents here in Camelot, have been empowered to use. But his ring and his sword, the true symbols of kings.h.i.+p, cannot be brought to you except from his dead body.”

”That is so, madam.”

”So I shall attend the Council. With Arthur's Queen at your side to support you, there will be no man in the kingdoms who will not have to accept Arthur's son as his rightful ruler.”

He found nothing to say. She put out a hand, and he bent his head and kissed it. Then he left her. She would have time for her mourning before she took her place in the Round Hall beside the new King of Britain.

In a pine wood at the foot of the hills east of Autun, Arthur stirred and woke.

He lay wrapped in his war cloak, his sword to his hand. His shoulder and side were stiff with bruising from the blow that had felled him during the battle, and his head ached abominably, but he was otherwise unhurt. His tethered horse grazed near him. His companions, some forty men, were, like him, rousing to the first misty light of the new day. Three of the men were busy already relighting the blackened remains of the night fire. Others brought water, carefully cradled in their leather helmets, from the river that slid over its sparkling boulders some fifty paces away. They were cheerful, and laughed and jested, but under their breath, for fear of rousing the sleeping King.

Birds were singing in the alders by the river, and from the steep valley side beyond came the bleating of sheep, where some herdboy watched his flock. A harsher sound turned Arthur's eyes to a place beyond the ridge of woodland where big black birds swung and called in the misty morning. There lay the enemy they had pursued from the field. A few survivors, bound, lay nearby under the trees, but thirty or so men lay still unburied, their stiffened bodies exposed with the waxing day to the crows and kites.

It was well after noon before the burial party had done its work, and the King headed back with the troop towards Autun.

A mile or so short of the battlefield, he came across two bodies. The messenger he had sent back to Bedwyr and Hoel to tell them that he was safe, and would return with the daylight, had fallen in with two stragglers from Quintilia.n.u.s' army. One he had killed; the other, though wounded and now near dead with exposure and loss of blood, had killed him.

Arthur killed the man himself, and spurred his horse into a gallop back to his headquarters.

6.