The King Arthur Trilogy (59 page)

And next day Sir Gawain came again, and this time Sir Ector answered his challenge; and he also was felled, and borne back by his rescuers within the gates.

And the siege lasted many months, and again and again Sir Gawain came with his challenge. And it seemed that no champion could stand against him; for every knight who rode out in answer to his challenge he slew or wounded, and took no scathe himself. And then one day, sear and chill on the very edge of winter, Sir Gawain came yet again, and cried out, his great voice rough and echoing within his helmet, ‘Are you listening, Sir Lancelot, traitor and coward? Or have you hidden your head beneath the pillows? Come out now and give me combat, or carry the shame for ever! For here I wait to take my vengeance for the death of my brothers!’

And Sir Lancelot could bear it no longer; and he bade his squires to harness and bring round his best horse, and he rode out to answer Sir Gawain’s challenge. ‘God knows it is with a heavy heart I join battle with you, Sir Gawain, both for the old friendship between us and because you are blood-kin to the High King, but you drive me to it, so now must I turn upon you as a boar turns at bay!’

‘This is no more the time for words,’ said Sir Gawain. ‘Now you shall give me satisfaction for my brothers’ slaying; and there shall be no breaking-off between us while the life remains in us both.’

Then they drew their horses far apart, and turning, couched their lances, struck in their spurs and came thundering down upon each other, while from the King’s camp and the walls of Benwick Castle men looked on with the breath caught in their throats. They came together with such a rending crash that both horses and riders were brought down in a struggling tangle. The champions rolled clear of their horses and stumbled to their feet, drawing their swords, and fell to, thrusting and smiting and foining until their armour was hacked and dinted, and their blood ran down to spatter the trampled grass like the small crimson flowers that the people in eastern lands used to call the Tears of Tammuz.

And at last Sir Lancelot fetched Sir Gawain such a blow on the helmet that the blade bit through and made a great wound in his head beneath, in the place where the old wound had been, so that he might not rise again. And Sir Lancelot drew aside and stood gasping for breath and leaning on his sword.

And Sir Gawain cried out to him in an agony, ‘Now slay on! For I swear that when I am whole I shall do battle with you again!’

‘That must be as it will,’ said Sir Lancelot, ‘but I never yet slew a felled and wounded knight in cold blood; and sweet Jesu knows the blood is cold within me this day!’

And he turned and limped wearily away, while men from the royal camp came out and bore Sir Gawain, still raving, back to the King’s pavilion, where the King’s own physician Morgan Tudd waited to salve his wounds.

And the siege dragged on, and the wild geese came down from the North to winter in the marshes nearby and there was ice along the edges of the tracks. And so soon as Sir Gawain could sit firm upon his horse he was back at the gates of Benwick Castle, crying like a madman for Sir Lancelot to come out to him. ‘For the last time we fought, by some mischance I had sore hurt at your hands, so now I come to take my revenge, and lay you as low as last time you laid me!’

‘Now God forbid,’ said Lancelot to his knights, ‘for then I think that my time would be short indeed!’

But he called for his horse, and rode out. And again they fought, and again after long and desperate struggle, the battle ended as it had done before; and by evil chance the final blow of Sir Lancelot’s sword fell yet again upon the selfsame place as the old wound. And Sir Lancelot, walking with a sick heart back towards his castle gates and his knights assembled there, heard behind him a terrible sobbing and gasping voice that cried after him, ‘Traitor knight! Traitor knight! When I am whole
again …’ and then ceased as Sir Gawain sank into a deep swoon, and the men from the King’s camp bore him away like one that is dead.

Sir Gawain lay for many days near to death and raving, while the siege dragged on through the chill and sodden winter, and the King’s men endured as best they could under canvas or in the wrecked and empty town. And it was the edge of spring, with the days lengthening and the first catkins showing yellow on the hazel thickets, before Sir Gawain could sit on his horse once more. But as soon as he could bear spear and shield, his first thought was to ride out and challenge Sir Lancelot yet again; for now he seemed to have no room in his poor wounded head for any thought except this one.

But on the very eve of the day when he would have ridden out again, despite all that the King or his fellow knights could say to hold him back, news came from Britain that ended the siege.

LEFT TO GOVERN
Britain while the flower of the Round Table fellowship slew each other beyond the Narrow Seas, Sir Mordred was soon about the next part of his plans. His gift for setting fashions had become the gift for leading men, which his father the High King had known that he possessed. Already he had his following among the younger knights, and as the summer passed and turned to autumn, and then the winter went by, others who had never truly been Arthur’s men gathered to him at Camelot; and the men of the North and beyond the Irish Sea began to creep back, sending in their leaders to speak with him behind closed doors, drawn by rumours of easier terms and a looser rule than ever they had had from Arthur Pendragon. Word began to go round too – no man knowing who started it – that if Mordred and not Arthur were King, the taxes that they had to
pay for the safe-keeping of the realm would somehow be lighter, and the strong laws that he had made would be slackened. Men began to prick their ears, and those who were still true to the High King in their hearts were uneasy and bewildered, not knowing what they were supposed to do. And the whole realm began to grow unsure.

Guenever knew a little of what was going on, but she kept herself close in the women’s quarters these days, rather than mingle with the new company at court; and she prayed with a heart full of dread for Arthur’s return and for peace between the sundered halves of the Round Table, and that Arthur’s return might not mean that Lancelot was slain.

The feast of Candlemas went by, and there were snowdrops in the castle’s high-walled garden, and then the first short-stemmed primroses along the river banks below the town. And a day came; a grey shivering day that had none of the hope of spring in it, but a little moaning uneasy wind that made strange whisperings along the corridors and stirred the tapestries on the walls of the Queen’s bower, where she sat at her embroidery with one of her favourite maidens.

When she was young she had worked fair and light-hearted things with her needle; a unicorn, milk-white on a background sprinkled thick with pinks and heartsease pansies, with birds and butterflies among
the leaves overhead. And later she had worked the proud red dragon of Britain upon golden damask, to make a shield-case for the High King. Now she was working angels with spread wings upon an altar hanging for the castle chapel. She had not the gift of prayer. Though she prayed long and often in these days, she knew that her prayers never truly took wing; so she embroidered the angels with their spread wings of gold and crimson and violet, with some half-hope that they might carry her prayers upward; or even that God might accept them as another kind of prayer. ‘See, I am doing this for you. You who can do all things, pray you save Arthur – pray you save Lancelot – pray you save Britain from the dark.’

It was drawing in towards evening; soon it would be time for the pages to bring the honey-wax tapers. She could scarcely see to set the fine stitches any longer. She turned her embroidery frame to catch the last fading daylight from the western window. And as she did so, she was suddenly aware of distant sounds under the little uneasy wind; a flurry of startled voices; footsteps below in the courtyard. Somewhere a woman cried out, ‘Now God save us!’

She set aside her frame and rose, spilling bright silks from her lap, and looked out of the window. Below in the inner courtyard people were gathering. She saw how they gathered in little knots, speaking together and yet seeming lost and unknowing of what to do with
themselves; here and there one glanced up towards her window, and she saw their faces stunned-looking in the fading daylight, and suddenly she was cold afraid.

‘Nesta,’ she said, ‘do you go down to the inner court and ask if word has come from Benwick. It is in my heart that something is amiss.’

And the maiden Nesta went out and down the winding stair.

Scarcely was she gone than the heavy door opened again, and Mordred stood within the opening, Mordred clad in his usual midnight black that he wore as other men wore rose-scarlet, and playing gently with a peacock’s feather, so that, meeting his gaze where she stood with the bright tangle of silks at her feet, the Queen felt as though she were being stared at by three bright unwinking eyes instead of two.

‘What is it?’ she said.

And he answered her with exquisite gentleness, ‘Letters have come from Benwick. Arthur and Lancelot are both slain.’

For a moment the Queen’s world swam and darkened, and all she saw clearly were the three eyes gazing at her, bright and mocking. But something in their gaze told her beyond all doubt that he was lying. And the world steadied again.

And she heard her own voice saying, cool and calm, ‘I do not believe you.’

‘Other people will,’ he said, ‘other people do. Do you not hear them?’

Somewhere in the castle a woman was weeping, and from St Stephen’s Church a bell began to tell.

‘I can show you the letters,’ Mordred said, smiling pleasantly; and she saw that he was so sure of himself that he did not care whether she believed him or not.

Still, she would not yield. ‘Anyone can forge such letters and claim that they came from Benwick,’ she said. ‘A few bribes –’

Mordred’s smile grew wider as he agreed. ‘Anyone. Nevertheless, the people will believe. It will be true in a short while, in any case. And meanwhile, I go to make ready for my crowning.’

‘Your
crowning
?’ said the Queen.

‘Of course. The High King is dead, Britain must have her new High King.’

And the Queen knew that it would serve no purpose to plead, nor to cry out upon him. Neither pleading nor wrath could touch him, for he breathed a higher and colder air than other men, and was beyond the reach of such things. So she said only, ‘Go now. You have told me what you came to tell, and I would be alone.’

But the worst shock was still to come.

‘I will go,’ said Mordred. ‘But presently I shall come again, from my crowning, and with the High King’s
circlet on my head, for there is another matter on which I would speak with you.’

‘There is no other matter on which I have need to speak with you,’ said the Queen.

‘Ah, but there is: for it concerns you nearly. The matter of our marriage.’

Then the Queen did indeed cry out on him; a small, desperate cry, ‘Our
marriage
? Mordred, you are mad!’

Mordred reached out the mocking peacock’s feather and touched her cheek, and she jerked her head back as though from the touch of a hot coal. ‘Nay, I speak good sense. With you to sit beside me, my claim to the High Kingship will be the more sure – and
you
, my sweet lady, will still be the Queen.’

‘Mordred!’ the Queen cried in horror. ‘I am your father’s wife!’

‘Widow.’

‘Widow or wife, it is all one in this matter. I am your stepmother!’

‘A fat purse of gold to the Church, and the Church shall cut that tangle swift enough,’ Mordred said. And then, ‘Seeing that after all there is no shared blood between us as there was between my father and
my
mother.’

And looking into his eyes, the Queen understood for the first time the full depth of his hatred for the High King.

Somehow she wrenched her gaze from his, and made a great show of stooping to gather up her embroidery silks. She knew that she must play for time. ‘When the High King hears of this, he will come back –’ she began.

And Mordred said, ‘When the High King hears –
if
the High King hears – it will be too late.’

‘You must give me time,’ she whispered, ‘time to think – to pray …’

And Mordred said, ‘Surely I will give you time; all that lies between now and tomorrow’s morning. Think and pray as much as you wish, madam; in the end you must yield yourself to do as I will.’

And he turned and left the chamber.

The Queen stood where he had left her, alone and unmoving, until in a little while Nesta returned, white-faced, with the grievous news as she had heard it in the inner courtyard. Then the Queen opened her clenched hand; and the brilliant silks for the angels’ wings fell to the ground again, stained with blood where she had closed her hand upon the needle hidden within them without ever knowing it.

‘It is all lies,’ she said, ‘all lies.’ And she told the maiden of Mordred’s visit and what had passed between them; and when Nesta began to shiver and cry out what should they do, she said, ‘Peace, my maiden; I am thinking what we shall do. I am thinking now!’