The Excalibur Murders (11 page)

The rest of the party dismounted. The guard in charge told them to make themselves comfortable; there was no way of knowing how long the king would be. They had brought food, which he passed around. The guide walked a few paces away from the rest of them and watched them without eating or talking to any of them.

"Merlin, are you going to tell me what this is about?" Brit tore a piece of bread and bit into it aggressively.

"You know as much as I do."

"Nonsense. I want to know. Please."

He took a deep breath, seemed to consider the possibilities then sat down on a relatively dry patch of earth. "She was their mother."

"Oh. And Arthur--?"

"Yes. Exactly."

"I see. I've wondered about that. He always seemed so attached to them."

"The attachment has been severed."

They ate without saying much more. Finally, Brit said, "So it's that much more important that we find the killer, then."

"Yes, Brit."

"If the killer knew about his sons, somehow . . . these may have been dynastic murders, intended to do more harm than most people realize."

"I don't see how anyone could have known. I didn't know myself until Arthur told me yesterday. He said Mark had guessed, but Mark and he are close friends."

"But--but if these killings were a strike at the royal house . . . I wish we had something definite to go on. No one who might have done it has a verifiable alibi. Mordred told me he went to use the privy then got lost in the unfamiliar corridors. I have no idea whether to believe him. And Lancelot says pretty much the same thing. Pellenore . . . well, you know, he was being Pellenore, charging around the castle chasing phantoms. I wish I could trust him as much as you seem to. We need to know more."

"I know it, Brit. But how?" He looked to the woman's hut; there was still no sign of Arthur. "If only Ganelin had told me what he'd learned from the servants. Or some of it, at least."

"We'll have to question them ourselves. There's no other way."

"Ganelin had a point. They won't open up to us the way they did to him."

"Then we'll have to force it out of them."

"No." His voice took on an uncharacteristically hard edge. "No torture. That is not the kind of land Arthur wants to make."

"Then how do we--"

"We'll find a way."

The hut's door opened. Arthur came out, followed closely by the woman, who was crying. Her dark features were made worse by grief. He took her by the hand and led her to where the others were waiting. From his saddlebag he got the sable cloak and placed it around her shoulders.

"No, Arthur, please. It doesn't matter. I'm numb anyway. "

He wrapped it more tightly around her. "Don't be foolish. It's a cold, wet day." He looked to Merlin and Britomart. "This is Anna, who might have been the mother of kings."

They said soft hellos to her. She averted her eyes.

"Come, Anna. I chose this horse for you myself. She's the sweetest, gentlest in my stable."

"Like me?" Her voice was bitter with her sorrow.

"Please don't talk like that." Then he turned to the others. "Anna, this is Merlin, my most trusted advisor, and Britomart, one of my senior military aides."

It was all so completely unexpected. Uncertain what to say, they made simple greetings to her, trying, not very successfully, to sound friendly and pleased she was with them.

He helped her up then mounted his own horse. "Come on, everyone, let's get home."

And so the party returned the way it had come. There was not much more talk on the return trip than there had been on the ride out. At one point Britomart reined her mount next to Anna's. Anna gaped at her, not seeming to remember their introduction.

"Hello. I'm Brit. It's a pleasure to meet you."

"Thank you." She avoided looking at her.

"You've been to Camelot before?"

"No. Never. Arthur wanted to take me. But I don't belong in a place like that."

"Just between us," she lowered her voice to a confidential whisper, "no one does."

Anna smiled shyly. "I want to see the funeral. I want to see my boys buried. I told him I'm coming home after that."

There was an awkward silence. Then, "Do you love him?"

"I don't know. It's been so many years. He told me he loved me when we first knew each other. He says that he's never stopped. But he's the king and I'm a woman from the midland swamps."

Brit tried to make more conversation, but Anna was badly out of her element and shaken by her grief. Brit determined to make the woman feel as much at home as she could, once they reached Camelot.

At one point on the long ride to the castle, she noticed that Anna had begun to cry again. Was it for her boys, or for what might have been with Arthur, or some combination of the two? There didn't seem much point in asking.

Late that night, Nimue, Brit and Merlin sat before a roaring fire in his study with more spiced wine. None of them seemed to have any idea how to proceed.

"Where's Mark? I thought he'd be joining us." Brit yawned and stretched.

"He's packing for the journey back to Cornwall." One of Merlin's ravens tapped at the window, and Merlin got up to let it in. "He's done as much as he can here, and he does have his own fiefdom to govern."

"Does it occur to you," she asked, "that kingship is now firmly established in England?"

Merlin swirled the wine in his cup. "I'm not certain what you mean."

"Not so long ago queens ruled here."

"And you're saying there are at least two women who would like to see the country revert to that." It was a statement, not a question.

"Exactly."

Nimue took a long drink. "But no one likes either Morgan or Guenevere. No one would ever submit to their rule."

"Suppose they ruled through a puppet at first? A lover or a son?" Brit got up and stretched again. "It's been a long day. Too long."

"That hadn't occurred to me before, Brit." Nimue looked at Merlin to try and guess what he was thinking. "But you have a good point."

"We should have thought of it before now. And if one of them learned somehow that the squires were Arthur's sons and presumptive heirs, it would have given them the motive for . . . for what happened."

"I can easily imagine Morgan ruling through Mordred-- and Mordred going along. Guenevere and Lancelot--that's another matter." Merlin started to drink then seemed to think better of it and put his goblet on the table. "The thought of King Mordred makes my blood run cold. There couldn't possibly be enough wine to warm it again." Like Britomart, he yawned. "You're right, Brit, the day has been too long and too busy. We'll think more clearly in the morning. But I think we will need to visit our suspects on their home ground. Their guard may be down then."

He got up and poured his wine into the fireplace. "The king's wife or his sister. A fine pair of suspects we have."

They said their good nights and parted company. Merlin sat in his chair, stroking the raven's head, till he fell asleep.

It rained on and off for three more days, and there was constant fog. Merlin watched from his tower, as always. At times the rain was so heavy his ravens wouldn't leave the study.

"When I was young, I lived in Egypt for three years," he told Nimue. "In Alexandria. Studying at the great library, or what is left of it. It hardly ever rained there; the weather was warm and lovely almost all the time. It was the happiest time of my life." He turned to face her. "I had to come back to dear old England."

"You love England and you know it."

"This is not a fit place for someone who likes to think."

"Is any place?"

"I don't know. Perhaps I've romanticized Alexandria. Our memories do that to us. Did you know there are catacombs there? The dead are buried in underground chambers. You should see the catacombs sacred to the goddess Nemesis. It is a vast complex, all carved from the living bedrock. Athletes from the stadium are buried there, and even their horses."

"Charming."

He sighed. "Why do the young always sneer at everything they don't know?"

She shrugged. "It's hard to resist. It's hard to imagine that you didn't do that when you were young."

"I suppose I must have. Memory fails."

Camelot's burial ground was an eighth of a mile behind the castle, beyond a stand of blackthorn trees, distant enough to be out of sight, close enough to be nearby when necessary. The gravediggers kept trying to dig a hole for the dead squires, but the walls kept collapsing; even when they didn't, the graves filled with water. With winter approaching, no one was certain when or even if the young men would get a proper burial.

Their mother, Anna, had become a disconcerting presence in the castle. She wandered the halls, distracted, distraught,holding imaginary conversations with her dead sons and, to appearances, hearing them answer. Now and then she would go down to the basement room where their remains lay and would stroke what was left of their bodies. Arthur ordered the room to be locked.

But she kept up her long, mad walks and the fancied conversations with her boys. No one seemed able to make her see what she was doing. Even Pellenore found her alarming. And Mark was more shaken than most. "It's what I told you. Their spirits are uneasy. I'm glad I'm leaving for home." He departed the next day.

Arthur asked Merlin to talk with Anna, to counsel her in her grief. "Understand, Merlin, the life she's had. Her boys were everything to her. She lived in mud. In filth. But knowing her boys were here gave her hope. That is gone now."

"You could have brought her here before now, Arthur."

"She wouldn't come. It was all for Ganelin and Borolet."

So Merlin tried talking to her, tried to make her understand how erratic her behavior had become. But it was no use. "Honestly," he told Brit, "I'm at a loss. How can I know what to say to her? I don't know her, don't know anything about her. For all any of us knows she's been half-mad her entire life."

"Isn't there something you can give her? Some drug to calm her?"

He shook his head. "I've had the servants put a small dose of valerian in her food. It has no effect at all."

"Poor woman."

On the fourth day the rain stopped, but the clouds persisted and the world remained a bright, cold grey. If the rain didn't begin again, a funeral should be possible soon. Arthur sent word to Morgan. "Come in a fortnight." He voiced his hope repeatedly that the weather would hold-- no more rain, no more freezing till after the boys were laid to rest. Merlin's ravens were happy to be able to get outside again.

No one had inspected the bodies in the basement to make sure of their condition. No one much wanted to. Finally, Merlin offered to take some servants to prepare them. They took soap and water to clean them and winding sheets of the purest white linen from the king's own stores. Fortunately, the cold had preserved the corpses fairly well. Even so, it was an unpleasant duty.

Woodworkers fashioned two caskets from birch wood. Both were intricately, elaborately carved; at Arthur's insistence, both bore his own royal crest. A summons was sent to Pastorini in Cornwall to come and make bronze handles for them. Oddly, Mark sent word that the metalsmith was unable to come, but he made handles there and sent them.

A few days after that, Morgan arrived for the funeral, attended by her son and a dozen servants. They took over most of a wing of the castle. The first night they were there, as Morgan was going to the refectory for her dinner, she encountered Anna in the hallway. The two women, twenty feet apart, stared at one another for a long, silent moment. Then Anna moved on, looking presumably for what had always mattered in her life--her boys. Her melancholy affected Morgan, who did not say much during her meal.

Then the morning for the burial finally arrived. Well before dawn, Merlin was wakened by a persistent knocking at his door. He climbed out of bed, wrapped himself in a blanket and walked to open the door. "Yes?"

It was a boy, fourteen, maybe fifteen, with black hair, olive skin and large dark eyes. "Merlin?"

"Yes. Who the devil are you?"

"I'm Greffys, sir. The king's new squire."

"You are." His voice was neutral.

"Yes, sir. He sent me to make sure you're ready for the funeral."

"It isn't even sunrise."

The boy's face was blank. "I know that."

Merlin looked him up and down. "Why did Arthur choose you?"

"He says I'm the best athlete among the squires." The kid smiled with pride.

"It wouldn't have occurred to him to choose the best scholar, would it?"

"Uh . . . I don't know what you mean, sir."

"No. Of course not. Go and tell him I'll be ready."

"Yes, sir." The boy rushed down the stairs without bothering to close the door behind him.

A few minutes later Nimue arrived. "You're up."

"Arthur sent his new squire to rouse me." He smiled sarcastically. "Kings."

"I've brought some hot soup. Here, you'll need it."

"I'm dreading this. I wish I had a plausible reason to stay in bed all day."

"At the very least," she said, pouring the soup from a pot to a large bowl, "we'll have a chance to observe Morgan and Mordred. We were so focused on Guenevere before, we more or less ignored them."

"Stop talking sense. This is going to be a terrible day."

By the time Merlin had eaten, washed and dressed, Britomart had come to his rooms as well. He found her warming herself by the fire in the study. "You're coming to the funeral?"

"Of course. Arthur should be surrounded by his friends, don't you think?"

"Yes. But who are they, Brit? I wish I knew."

"You're in a dark mood."

He shrugged. "Funerals do that to me. Let's go."

They assembled at the rear of Camelot. Arthur was there, and Greffys, and Anna, Morgan, Mordred. Sagramore, Gawain, Bors, Accolon and the rest of the knights attended. Gossip had spread about the dead squires' connection to the king; the royal crest on the coffins seemed to cinch it in most people's minds. Pellenore was noticeably missing, but no one had expected him anyway. Twelve pages served as pallbearers, carrying the two coffins on catafalques. The court musicians were there, playing mournful tunes. The music echoed loudly and clearly through the morning air and mist.