The Once and Future King (65 page)

‘Our Agnes seems to be in a nervous state,’ he said. ‘Good evening, Guenever.’

‘Good evening, Mordred.’

‘A little fine embroidery? I thought you would be knitting socks for soldiers.’

‘Why have you come?’

‘Just an evening call. You must forgive the drama.’

‘Do you always wait outside doors?’

‘One has to come through a door somehow, madam. It is more convenient than coming through the window – though, I believe, some people have been known to do that.’

‘I see. Will you sit down?’

He took his seat with an elaborate gesture, the pug jumping into his lap. In a way it was tragic to watch him, for he was doing what his mother did. He was acting, and had ceased to be real.

People write tragedies in which fatal blondes betray their paramours to ruin, in which Cressidas, Cleopatras, Delilahs, and sometimes even naughty daughters like Jessica bring their lovers or their parents to distress; but these are not the heart of tragedy. They are fripperies to the soul of man. What does it matter if Anthony did fall upon his sword? It only killed him. It is the mother’s not the lover’s lust that rots the mind. It is that which condemns the tragic character to his walking death. It is Jocasta, not Juliet, who dwells in the inner chamber. It is Gertrude, not the silly Ophelia, who sends Hamlet to his madness. The heart of tragedy does not lie in stealing or taking away. Any feather—pated girl can steal a heart. It lies in giving, in putting on, in adding, in smothering without the pillows. Desdemona robbed of life or honour is nothing to a Mordred, robbed of himself – his soul stolen, overlaid, wizened, while the mother—character lives in triumph, superfluously and with stiffling love endowed on him, seemingly innocent of illintention. Mordred was the only son of Orkney who never married. He, while his brothers fled to England, was the one who stayed alone with her for twenty years – her living larder. Now that she was dead, he had become her grave. She existed in him like the vampire. When he moved, when he blew his nose, he did it with her movement. When he acted he became
as unreal as she had been, pretending to be a virgin for the unicorn. He dabbled in the same cruel magic. He had even begun to keep lap dogs like her – although he had always hated hers with the same bitter jealousy as that with which he had hated her lovers.

‘Do I feel a coldness in the air this evening?’

‘It is bound to be cold in February.’

‘I was referring to the delicacy of our personal relationship.’

‘The Protector, whom my husband appointed, is bound to be welcome to the Queen.’

‘But not the husband’s bastard, I suppose?’

She lowered her needle and looked him in the face.

‘I don’t understand your coming like this, and I don’t know what you want.’

She had no wish to be hostile, but he was forcing her. She had never been afraid of anyone.

‘I was thinking of a chat about the political situation – just a little chat.’

She knew that they had reached a crisis of some sort, and it made her weak. She was too old now to deal with madmen, although she still had no suspicion of his sanity. Only the cumbrous irony of his tone made her feel unreal herself – made her unable to put her own words simply. But she would not give in.

‘I shall be glad to hear what you want to say.’

‘That is extremely generous of you…Jenny.’

It was monstrous. He was making her into one of his fantasies, not speaking to a real person at all.

She said indignantly: ‘Will you be so kind as to address me by my title, Mordred?’

‘But certainly. I must apologize if I have been trespassing on Lancelot’s preserves.’

The sneer acted like a tonic. It raised her stature to the royal lady which she was, to a straight—backed dowager whose rheumatic fingers flashed with rings, who had ridden the world successfully for fifty years.

‘I believe,’ she said at once, ‘you would find some difficulty in doing that.’

‘Well! However, I am afraid I asked for it. You were always a bit of a spitfire…Queen Jenny.’

‘Sir Mordred, if you can’t behave like a gentleman, I shall

go.’

‘And where will you go?’

‘I should go anywhere: anywhere where a woman old enough to be your mother would be safe from this extravagance.’

‘The question is,’ he observed reflectively, ‘where you would be safe? The plan seems bound to founder in the last resource, when you consider that everybody has gone away to France, and that I am the ruler of the kingdom. Of course, you could go to France…if you could get there.’

She understood, or began to understand.

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘Then you must think it out.’

‘If you will excuse me,’ she said, rising, ‘I will call my woman.’

‘Call her by all means. Though I should have to send her away.’

‘Agnes will take her orders from me.’

‘I doubt it. Let us try.’

‘Mordred, will you leave me?’

‘No, Jenny,’ he said. ‘I want to stay. But, if you will sit down quietly for a minute, and listen, I promise to behave like a perfect gentleman – like one of your
preux chevaliers
, in fact.’

‘You leave no option.’

‘Very little.’

‘What do you want?’ she asked. She sat down, folding her hands in her lap. She was accustomed to a life of danger.

‘Come now,’ he said, in high good humour, quite mad, enjoying his cat—and—mouse. ‘We must not rush it in this bald way. We must be at ease before we begin our conversation, otherwise it will seem so strained.’

‘I am listening.’

‘No, no. You must call me Mordy, or some such pet name. Then it will seem more natural when I call you Jenny. Everything will go forward so much more pleasantly.’

She would not answer.

‘Guenever, have you any idea of your position?’

‘My position is that of the Queen of England, as yours is that of the Protector.’

‘While Arthur and Lancelot are fighting each other in France.’

‘That is so.’

‘Suppose I were to tell you,’ he asked, stroking the pug, ‘that I had a letter this morning? That Arthur and Lancelot are dead?’

‘I should not believe you.’

‘They killed each other in battle.’

‘It is not true,’ she told him quietly.

‘As a matter of fact, it isn’t. How did you guess?’

‘If it was not true, it was cruel to say so. Why did you say it?’

‘A great many people would have believed it, Jenny. I expect a great many will.’

‘Why should they?’ she asked, before she had caught his drift. Then she stopped, catching her breath. For the first time, she began to feel afraid: but it was for Arthur.

‘You can’t mean…’

‘Oh, but I can,’ he exclaimed gaily, ‘and I do. What do you think would happen if I were to announce poor Arthur’s death?’

‘But, Mordred, you couldn’t do such a thing! They are alive…You owe everything…The King made you his deputy…Your fealty…It would not be true! Arthur has always treated you with such scrupulous justice…’

He said with cold eyes: ‘I have never asked to be treated with justice. It is something which he does to people, to amuse himself.’

‘But he is your father!’

‘So far as that goes, I did not ask to be born. I suppose he did that to amuse himself, also.’

‘I see.’

She sat, twisting her sewing in her hands, trying to think.

‘Why do you hate my husband?’ she asked, almost with wonder.

‘I don’t hate him. I despise him.’

‘He didn’t know,’ she explained gently, ‘that your mother was his sister, when it happened.’

‘And I suppose he didn’t know that I was his son, when he put us out in the boat?’

‘He was scarcely nineteen, Mordred. They had frightened him with prophecies, and he did what they made him.’

‘My mother was a good woman until she met King Arthur. She had a happy home with Lot of Orkney, and she bore him four brave sons. What happened after?’

‘But she was more than twice his age! I should have thought…’

He stopped her, holding up his hand.

‘You are speaking of my mother.’

‘I am sorry, Mordred, but really…’

‘I loved my mother.’

‘Mordred…’

‘King Arthur came to a woman who was faithful to her husband. When he left, she was a wanton. She ended her life in a naked bed with Sir Lamorak, justly slain by her own child.’

‘Mordred, it is no good saying anything if you can’t see…if you can’t believe that Arthur is kind and sorry and in trouble. He is fond of you. He was saying how he loved you only a day or two before this misery began…’

‘He can keep his love.’

‘He has been so fair,’ she pleaded.

‘The just and noble king! Yes, it is easy to be fair, when it is over. That is the amusing part. Justice! He can keep that too.’

She said, trying to speak steadily: ‘If you proclaim yourself king, they will come from France to fight you. Then we shall
have a double war instead of a single one, and it will be fought in England. The whole fellowship will be blotted out.’

He smiled in pure delight.

‘It seems unbelievable,’ she said, pinching the embroidery.

There was nothing she could do. For a moment it crossed her mind that if she humiliated herself to him, knelt down on her stiff old knees to plead for mercy, he might be soothed. But it was evidently hopeless. He was fixed in a course, like a bell in a groove. Even his conversation was, as it were, a spoken part. It would end according to the script.

‘Mordred,’ she said helplessly, ‘have pity on the country people, if you will have none on Arthur or on me.’

He pushed the pug off his lap and stood up, smiling at her with crazy satisfaction. He stretched himself, looking down on her, but not seeing her at all.

‘I should, of course, have pity on you,’ he said, ‘if not on Arthur.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I was thinking of a pattern, Jenny, a simple pattern.’

She watched him without speaking.

‘Yes. My father committed incest with my mother. Don’t you think it would be a pattern, Jenny, if I were to answer it by marrying my father’s wife?’

It was dark in Gawaine’s tent, except for a flat pan of charcoal which lit it dimly from below. The tent was poor and shabby, compared with the splendid pavilions of the English knights. On the hard bed there were a few plaids in the Orkney tartan, and the only ornaments were a leaden bottle of holy water which he was taking for medicine, marked ‘
Optimus egrorum, medicus fit Thomas bonorum
,’ together with a withered bunch of heather, tied to the pole. These were his household gods.

Gawaine was stretched face downwards on the plaids. The
man was crying slowly and hopelessly, while Arthur, sitting beside him, stroked his hand. It was his wound that had weakened him, or else he would not have cried. The old King was trying to soothe him.

‘Don’t grieve about it, Gawaine,’ he said. ‘You did the best you could.’

‘It is the second time he has spared me, the second time in a month.’

‘Lancelot was always strong. The years don’t seem to touch him.’

‘Why canna he kill me, then? I begged him to have done with it. I told him that if he left me to be patched, I should but fight him fresh when I was mended.

‘And, God!’ he added tearfully, ‘my head sore aches!’

Arthur said with a sigh: ‘It was because you got both blows on the same place. That was bad luck.’

‘It makes a body feel shamed.’

‘Don’t think about it, then. Lie quiet, or you will get feverish again, and will not be able to fight for a long time. Then what would we do? We should be quite lost without our Gawaine to lead the battle for us.’

‘I am but a man of straw, Arthur,’ he said. ‘I am but an ill—passioned bully, and I canna kill him.’

‘People who say they are no good are always the good ones. Let’s change the subject and talk about something pleasant. England, for instance.’

‘We shall never see England again.’

‘Nonsense! We shall see England just in the spring. Why, it is almost spring now. The snowdrops will have been out for ages, and I dare say Guenever will have some crocuses already. She is good at gardening.’

‘Guenever was kind to me.’

‘My Gwen is kind to everybody,’ said the old man proudly. ‘I wonder what she is doing now? Going to bed, I suppose. Or perhaps she is sitting up late, having a talk with your brother. It would be nice to think that they were talking about us at this minute, perhaps saying admiring things about Gawaine’s
prowess: or Gwen might be saying that she wished her old man would come home.’

Gawaine moved restlessly on the bed.

‘I have a mind to gang hame,’ he muttered. ‘If Lancelot hates clan Orkney, as Mordred says, why does he spare the laird of it? Maybe he did kill Gareth by mischance.’

‘I am sure it was mischance. If you will help to end the war, we may be able to stop it fairly soon. It is your justice we are said to be fighting for now, you know. I and the others who want to fight would have to bow to that eventually. If you are content to make it up there is nobody who will be more happy than I will be.’

‘Aye, but I swore to fight him to the death.’

‘You have had two good tries.’

‘And taken a braw thrashing ilka time,’ he said bitterly. ‘He could have made the war end twice. Nay, it would look like cowardice to compound.’

‘The bravest people are the ones who don’t mind looking like cowards. Remember how Lancelot hid in Joyous Gard for months, while we sang songs outside.’

‘I canna forget our Gareth’s face.’

‘It was sad for all of us.’

Gawaine was trying to think, an effort not made easy to him by practice. On this dark evening it was twice as difficult, because of his head. Since the time when Galahad gave him concussion in the quest for the Grail he had been liable to headaches, and now, by a curious accident, Lancelot had given him two blows in separate duels, on the same place.

‘What for should I give in,’ he asked, ‘because he beats me? It would be fleeing him to give in now. If I could fell him in a third engagement, maybe. And spare the chiel…It would be even.’

‘The fields,’ said the King thoughtfully, ‘will soon be kingcups and daisies in England. It would be nice to win a peace.’

‘Aye, and the spring hawking.’

The figure twisted in its dim bed with a movement of remembrance, but froze as the pain shot through its skull.

‘Almighty, but my head throbs sorely.’

‘Would you like me to get a wet cloth for it, or a drink of milk?’

‘Nay. Let it bide. It willna help.’

‘Poor Gawaine. I hope nothing is broken in it.’

‘The thing that is broken is my spirit. Let us talk of other matters.’

The King said doubtfully: ‘I ought not to talk too much. I think I ought to go away, and leave you to sleep.’

‘Ach, stay. Dinna leave me by masel’. It irks me when I am by my lone.’

‘The doctor said…’

‘Tae hell wi’ the doctor. Bide a wee while. Hold my hand. Tell me of England.’

‘There ought to be a post tomorrow, and then we shall be able to read about England. We shall have the latest news, and there will be a letter from young Mordred, and perhaps my Gwen will write to me.’

‘Mordred’s letters are cold cheer, some way.’

Arthur hastened to defend him.

‘That is only because he has an unhappy life. You may depend upon it there is a regular fire of love inside him. Gwen used to say that all his warmth was for his mother.’

‘He was fond of our mother.’

‘Perhaps he was in love with her.’

‘That would account for why he was jealous of ye.’

Gawaine was surprised at this discovery, which had struck him for the first time.

‘Perhaps that was why he allowed Sir Agravaine to kill her, when she had that affair with Lamorak…Poor boy, he has been ill—treated by the world.’

‘He is the only brother I have left.’

‘I know. Lancelot’s was a tragic accident.’

The laird of Lothian moved his bandage feverishly.

‘But it canna have been accident. I could jalouse it had they worn their helms, but they were bonnetless. He must have known them.’

‘We have talked this over often.’

‘Aye, it is vain.’

The old man asked with tragic diffidence: ‘You don’t think you could bring yourself to forgive him, Gawaine, however it happened? I am not seeking to abandon duty, but if justice could be tempered with mercy…’

‘I will temper it when I hold him at my mercy, not before.’

‘Well, it is for you to say. Here comes the doctor to tell me I have stayed too long. Come in, doctor, come in.’

But it was the Bishop of Rochester who entered in a bustle, carrying packets and an iron lantern.

‘It is you, Rochester. We thought you were the doctor.’

‘Good evening, sir. And good evening to you, Sir Gawaine.’

‘Good evening.’

‘How is the head today?’

‘It grows better, thank you, my lord.’

‘Well, that is excellent news.

‘And I,’ he added archly, ‘have brought some good news too. The post has come in early!’

‘Letters!’

‘One for you,’ he handed it to the King, ‘a long one.’

‘Is there aught for me?’ asked Gawaine.

‘Nothing, I am afraid, this week. You will have better luck next time.’

Arthur took the letters to the lantern and broke the seal.

‘You will excuse me if I read.’

‘Of course. We cannot stand on ceremony with the news from England. Dear me, I never thought I should become a palmer at my time of life, Sir Gawaine, and have to gallivant in foreign parts…’

The bishop’s prattle died away. Arthur had made no movement. He had turned neither red nor pale, nor dropped the letter, nor stared in front of him. He was reading quietly. But Rochester stopped speaking, and Gawaine raised himself on one elbow. They watched him reading, open—mouthed.

‘Sir…’

‘Nothing,’ he said, brushing them away with his hand. ‘Excuse me. The news.’

‘I hope…’

‘Let me finish, please. Talk to Sir Gawaine.’

Gawaine asked: ‘Is there ill tidings…May I see?’

‘No, please a minute.’

‘Mordred?’

‘No. It is nothing. The doctor says…My lord, I would like to speak to you outside.’

Gawaine began to heave himself into a sitting position.

‘I will be told.’

‘There is nothing to be upset about. Lie down. We will come back.’

‘If ye go without telling me, I shall follow.’

‘It is nothing. You will hurt your head.’

‘What is it?’

‘Nothing. It is only…’

‘Well?’

‘Well, Gawaine,’ he said, suddenly collapsing, ‘it seems that Mordred has proclaimed himself the King of England, under this New Order of his.’

‘Mordred!’

‘He has told his Thrashers that we are dead, you see,’ Arthur explained, as if it were some sort of problem, ‘and…’

‘Mordred says we are dead?’

‘He says we are dead, and…’

But he could not frame it.

‘And what?’

‘He is going to marry Gwen.’

There was a moment of dead silence, while the bishop’s hand strayed vaguely to his pectoral cross and Gawaine’s clenched itself in the bedclothes. Then they both spoke at once.

‘The Lord Protector…’

‘It canna be true. It will be a jest. My brother wouldna do a thing like yon.’

‘Unfortunately it is true,’ said the King patiently. ‘This is a letter from Guenever. Heaven knows how she managed to get it through.’

‘The Queen’s age…’

‘After the proclamation, he proposed to her. She had nobody to help. The Queen accepted his proposal.’

‘Accepted Mordred!’

Gawaine had managed to swing his legs over the side of the bed.

‘Uncle, give me the letter.’

He took it out of the limp hand, which yielded it automatically, and began to read, tilting the page to the light.

Arthur continued to explain.

‘The Queen accepted Mordred’s proposal, and asked for permission to go to London for her trousseau. When she was in London with the few who remained faithful, she threw herself suddenly into the Tower and barred the gates. Thank God, it is a strong fort. They are besieging her in the Tower of London now, and Mordred is using guns.’

Rochester asked in bewilderment: ‘Guns?’

‘He is using the cannon.’

It was too much for the old priest’s intellect.

‘It is incredible!’ he said. ‘To say we are dead, and to marry the Queen! And then to use cannon…’

‘Now that the guns have come,’ said Arthur, ‘the Table is over. We must hurry home.’

‘To use cannons against men!’

‘We must go to the rescue immediately, my lord. Gawaine can stay here…’

But the Laird of Orkney was out of bed.

‘Gawaine, what are you doing? Lie down at once.’

‘I am coming with ye.’

‘Gawaine, lie down. Rochester, help me with him.’

‘My last brother has broken his fealty.’

‘Gawaine…’

‘And Lancelot…Ah God, my head!’

He stood swaying in the dim light, holding the bandage with both hands, while his shadow moved grotesquely round the tent pole.