Wicked Day (10 page)

"It's not true."

"What's that?"

He came to himself with a start. He must, he realized, have spoken aloud. Gawain, beside him, was staring.

"What do you mean, it's not true?"

"Did I say that?"

"You know you did. What were you talking about? This news of old Merlin? So how do you know?

And what's it to us, anyway? You look as if you were seeing ghosts."

"Maybe I am. I — I don't know what I meant."

He spoke lamely, and this was so unlike him that Gawain stared still harder. Then both boys were shoved aside as a man pushed roughly through the press. The boys reacted angrily, then drew aside as they saw that the man was Gabran. The queen's lover called peremptorily over the heads of the crowd:

"You, there! Yes, you, and you, too… Come with me! Bring what tidings you have straight to the palace. The queen must hear them first."

The crowd stood back a trifle sullenly, and let the news-bringers through. They went willingly with Gabran, important and obviously hopeful of reward. The people watched them out of sight, then turned back to the wharf, fastening on the next people to disembark.

These were traders, apparently; the first, by the look of the traps his man carried, was a goldsmith, then came a worker in leather, and last of all a travelling physician, whose slave followed him, laden with his impedimenta of boxes and bags and vials. To him the folk crowded eagerly. There was no doctor in these northern islands, and one went for ailments to the wise-women or — in extreme cases — to the holy man on Papa Westray, so this was an opportunity not to be missed. The doctor, in fact, lost no time in starting business. He stood on the sunny wharfside and started his rattling spiel, while his slave began to unpack the cures for every ill that might be expected to afflict the Orcadians. His voice was loud and confident, and pitched to overbear any rival attempt at business, but the goldsmith, who had preceded him off the ship, made no attempt to set up his stall. He was an old man, stooped and grey, whose own clothes boasted examples of a refined and lovely work. He paused at the edge of the crowd, peering about him, and addressed Mordred, who was standing near.

"You, boy, can you tell me — ah, now, I beg your pardon, young sir. You must forgive an old man whose sight is bad. Now I can see that you're quality, and so I'll beg you again of your kindness to tell me which is the way to the queen's house?"

Mordred pointed. "Straight up that street, and turn west at the black altar stone. The track will carry you right to the palace. It's the big building you can see — but you said your sight was poor? Well, if you follow the crowd, I think most people will be going there now, to get more news."

Gawain took a step forward. "Perhaps you know more yourself? Those fellows with their news from court — where were they from? Camelot? Where are you from yourself, goldsmith?"

"I am from Lindum, young sir, in the south-east, but I travel, I travel."

"Then tell us the news yourself. You must have heard, on the voyage, all that those men had to tell."

"Why, as to that, I heard very little. I'm a poor sailor, you see, so I spent my time below. But there's something those fellows there didn't mention. I suppose they wanted to be first with the news. There's a royal courier on board. He was as sick as I, poor fellow, but even without that, I doubt if he'd have shared his tidings with ordinary folk like us."

"A king's courier? When did he come aboard?"

"At Glannaventa."

"That's in Rheged?"

"That is so, young sir. He hasn't disembarked yet, has he, Casso?"

This to the tall slave who stood behind him carrying his baggage. The man shook his head. "Well, he'll be going straight up to the palace, too, you can be sure of that. If you want hot news, young sirs, you'd best follow. As for me, I'm an old man, and as long as I can follow my trade, the world can pass me by.

Come, Casso, you heard? Up that path yonder as far as the black altar stone. Then turn east."

"It's west," said Mordred, quickly, to the slave. The man nodded, smiling, then took his master's arm and guided him up the rough steps towards the road. The pair trudged off and were lost to sight behind the hut where the harbour master lived.

Gawain was laughing. "Well, the palace ram has made a mistake this time! To escort a couple of tale-bearers up to the queen and not even wait to hear that there was a king's courier on board! I wonder—"

He did not finish the sentence. Some shouts and a fuss on deck indicated the approach of someone important. Presently a man came up from below, well dressed and smoothly bartered, but still pallid with sea-sickness. At his belt was a messenger's pouch, with its lock and seal. He trod importantly down the gangplank. Distracted from the physician, some of the crowd moved towards him, the boys with them, but they were disappointed. The courier, ignoring everyone, and refusing to answer any questions, climbed the steps and headed at a fast pace for the palace. As he cleared the last huts of the township he was met by Gabran, hurrying, this time with a royal escort of men-at-arms.

"Well, she knows now," said Gawain. "Come on, hurry," and the boys trotted uphill in the messenger's wake.

The letter that the courier bore came from the queen's sister Morgan, Queen of Rheged.

There was little love lost between the two ladies, but a stronger bond than love united them: hatred of their brother Arthur the King. Morgause hated him because she knew that Arthur loathed and feared the memory of the sin she had led him to commit with her; Morgan because, though married to a great and warlike king, Urbgen, she wanted at the same time a younger man and a greater kingdom. It is human to hate those whom, blameless, we hope to destroy, and Morgan was prepared to betray both brother and husband to achieve her desires.

It was of the first of these desires that she wrote to her sister. "You remember Accolon? I have him now.

He would die for me. And needs must, perchance, should Arthur or that devil Merlin come to hear of my plans. But rest easy, sister; I have it on authority that the enchanter is sick. You will know that he has taken a pupil into his house, a girl, daughter of Dyonas of the River Islands, who was one of the Ladies of the Lake convent at Ynys Witrin. Now they say she is his mistress, and that in his weakness she strives to learn his power from him, and is in a fair way to steal it all, and suck him dry and leave him bound for ever. I know that men say the enchanter cannot die, but if this tale be true, then once Merlin is helpless, and only the girl Nimuë stands in his place, who is to say what power we true witches cannot grasp for ourselves?"

Morgause, reading by her window, made a mouth of impatience and contempt. "We true witches." If Morgan thought that she could even touch the edges of Morgause's art, she was an over-ambitious fool.

Morgause, who had guided her half-sister's first steps in magic, could never be brought to admit, even to herself, that Morgan's aptitude for sorcery had already led her to surpass the witch of Orkney, with her sex potions and poisonous spells, by almost as much as Merlin in his day had surpassed them both.

There was not much more to the letter. "For the rest," Morgan had written, "the country is quiet, and this means, I fear, that my lord King Urbgen will soon be home for the winter. There is talk of Arthur's going to Brittany, in peace, to visit with Hoel. For the present he stays at Camelot in wedded bliss, though there is still no sign of an heir."

This time Morgause, reading, smiled. So the Goddess had heard her invocations, and savoured her sacrifices. The rumours were true. Queen Guinevere was barren, and the High King, who would not put her away, must remain without an heir of his body. She glanced out of the window. There he was, the one who was supposed, all those years ago, to have been drowned. He was standing with the other boys on the flat turf outside the walls, where the goldsmith's servant had set up his master's sleeping tent and stove, and the old man chatted with the boys as he laid out his implements.

Morgause turned abruptly from the window, and at her call a page came running.

"That man outside the walls, he's a goldsmith? Just come with the ship? I see. Then bid him bring some work to show me. If he is skilled, then there will be work for him here, and he will lodge within the palace. But the work must be good, fit for a queen's court. Tell him that, or he need not trouble me."

The boy ran. The queen, the letter lying in her lap, looked out beyond the moorland, beyond the green horizon where the sky reflected the endless shining of the sea, and smiled, seeing again the vision she had had, shrined in the crystal, of Camelot's high towers, and herself, with her sons beside her, carrying to Arthur the rich gifts that would be her pass to power and favour. And the richest gift of all stood there below her window: Mordred, the High King's son.

Though as yet only the queen knew it, it was to be the boys' last summer together in the islands, and it was a lovely one. The sun shone, the winds were warm and moderate, the fishing and hunting good. The boys spent their days out in the air. For some time now, under Mordred's tuition, they had even taken to the sea, something that the islanders did not readily do for sport, since the currents, at that meeting-place of two great seas, were fickle and dangerous. To begin with, Gaheris was seasick, but was ashamed to let the "fisher-brat" get the better of him, so persisted, and in time became a passable sailor. The other three took to sailing like gulls to the wave-tops, and a new respect grew up between the "real princes"

and the elder boy, when they saw how well and with what authority he handled a boat in those difficult waters. His seamanship, it is true, was never tried in rough weather; the queen's indulgence would have come to a speedy end if there had been any evidence of real risk; so the five of them held their tongues about the moments of excitement, and did their exploring of the coastlines unrebuked. If Morgause's counsellors knew better than she what risks were run even in summer weather, they said nothing to Morgause; Gawain would be king one of these days, and his favour was already courted. Morgause, in fact, took little interest in anything beyond her palace walls, and "Witches don't like sailing," said Gareth, in all innocence of what his words implied. Indeed, the princes were proud, if anything, of their mother's reputation as a witch.

This showed itself in certain ways through that summer. Beltane the goldsmith and his slave Casso were housed in one of the palace outbuildings, and were seen daily working at their trade in the courtyard. This by the queen's commission; she gave them silver, and some small store of precious stones salvaged years ago from Dunpeldyr, and set them to fashioning torques and arm-rings and other jewels "fit for a king."

She told no one why, but word got about that the queen had had a magical vision concerning things of such beauty and price, and that the goldsmith had come — by chance, magic, what you would — to make reality catch up with the dream.

Beautiful the things certainly were. The old man was a superb craftsman, and more than that, an artist of rare taste, who had been taught — as he never tired of telling — by the best of masters. He could work both in the Celtic mode, those lovely patterns of strongly angled but fluid lines, and also in ways learned, so he said, from the Saxons in the south, with enamel and niello and metals finely worked as filigree. The finer work he did himself; he was so shortsighted as to be, for normal purposes, almost blind, but he could do close work with a marvellous precision. The larger work, and all the routine, was done by the man Casso, who was also permitted to take in repairs and other local commissions from time to time.

Casso was as silent as Beltane was garrulous, and it was some time before the boys — who spent long hours hanging around the stove when anything interesting was being done — discovered that Casso was in fact dumb. So all their questions were fired at Beltane, who talked and worked happily and without ceasing; but Mordred, watching almost as silently as the slave, saw that the latter missed very little, and gave, when those downcast eyes lifted now and again, an impression of intelligence far quicker than his master's. The impression was momentary, and soon forgotten; a prince had little thought to spare for a dumb slave, and Mordred, these days, was completely the prince, accepted by his half-brothers and —

still to his puzzlement — high in the queen's favour.

So the summer wore through, and at the end of it the queen's magical prevision was justified. On a fine day of September another ship docked. And the news came that changed life for all of them.

8

IT WAS A ROYAL SHIP.The boys saw it first. They had their boat out that day, and were fishing some way out in the firth. The ship came scudding with a fair wind, her sails set full, and the gilded mast flying a pennant that, though none of them had seen it before, they recognized immediately, with excitement. A red dragon on a background of yellow gold.

"The High King's standard!" Mordred, at the steering-oar, saw it first.

Gaheris, never one to control himself, gave a yell of exultation, as savage as a war-cry. "He's sent for us!

We are to go to Camelot! Our uncle the High King has remembered, and sent for us!"

Gawain said, slowly: "So she saw it truly. The silver gifts are for King Arthur. But if she is his sister, why should she need such gifts as those?"

His brothers paid no heed. "Camelot!" said Gareth, wide-eyed.

"He won't want
you."
That was Agravain, sharply. "You're far too young. She wouldn't let you go, anyway. But if our uncle the High King sends for
us,
how can she stop us?"

"You'd go?" That was Mordred, dryly.

"What do you mean? I'd have to. If the High King—"

"Yes, I know. I meant, would you want to go?"

Agravain stared. "Are you mad? Not want to go? Why on earth not?"

"Because the High King was never a friend to our father, that's what he means," put in Gaheris. He added, nastily: "Well, we can see why Mordred might not dare go, but the High King's our mother's brother, after all, and why should he be our enemy, even if he was our father's?" He glanced at Gawain.