The Wicked Day

1

THE BOY WAS ALONE IN THE summer world with the singing of the honey bees.

He lay flat on his back in the heather at the head of the cliff. Not far from him was the straight-cut line of dark turf where he had been working. The squared peats, stacked like slices of black bread along the ditched gash, were drying in the hot sun. He had been working since daybreak, and the line was a long one. Now the mattock lay idle against the peats while the boy drowsed after his midday meal. One hand, outflung on the heather, still held the remains of a barley bannock. His mother's two hives — crude skeps of barley straw — stood fifty paces in from the brink of the cliff. The heather smelled sweet and heady, like the mead that would be made from the honey. To and fro, sometimes within a finger's breadth of his face, the bees hurtled like slingshot. The only other sound in the drowsy afternoon was the crying, remote below him, of the seabirds at their nests along the cliff.

Something changed in the note of that crying.

The boy opened his eyes, and lay still, listening. Underneath the new, disturbed screaming of kittiwakes and razorbills, he heard the deeper, four-fold alarm note of the big gulls. He himself had not moved for half an hour or more, and in any case they were used to him. He turned his head, to see a flock of wheeling wings rise like blown snow above the cliff's edge some hundred paces away. There was a cove there, a deep inlet with no beach below. Hundreds of seabirds nested there, guillemots, shags, kittiwakes, and with them the big falcon. He could see her now, flying with the gulls that screamed to and fro.

The boy sat up. He could see no boat in the bay, but then a boat would hardly have caused such a disturbance among the high-nesting colonies on the cliff. An eagle? He could see none. At the most, he thought, it might be a predatory raven after the young ones, but any change in the monotony of the day's work was to be welcomed. He scrambled to his feet. Finding the remains of the bannock still in his hand, he made as if to eat it, then saw a beetle on it, and threw it away with a look of disgust. He ran across the heather towards the cove where the disturbance was.

He reached the edge and peered down. The birds flung themselves higher, screaming. Puffins hurtled from the rock below him in clumsy glide, legs wide and wings held stiffly. The big black-backed gulls vented their harsh cries. The whitened ledges where the kittiwakes sat in rows on their nests were empty of adult birds, which were weaving and screaming in the air.

He lay down, inching forward to peer directly down the cliff. The birds were diving in past a buttress of rock where wild thyme and sea-pink made a thick carpet splashed with white. Clumps of rose-root stirred in the wind of their wings. Then, among all the commotion, he heard a new sound, a cry like the cry of a gull, but somehow subtly different. A human cry. It came from somewhere well down the cliff, out of sight beyond the rocky buttress where the birds wheeled most thickly.

He moved carefully back from the edge, and got slowly to his feet. There was no beach at the foot of the cliff, nowhere to leave a boat, nothing but the steadily beating, echoing sea. The climber had gone down and there could only be one reason for trying to climb down here.

"The fool," he said with contempt. "Doesn't he know that the eggs will all be hatched now?" Half reluctantly he picked his way along the cliff top to a point from which he could see, stranded on a ledge beyond the buttress, another boy.

It was no one he knew. Out in this lonely corner of the island there were few families, and with the sons of the other fishermen Brude's son had never felt in tune. And oddly enough his parents had never encouraged him to mix with them, even as a child. Now, at ten years old, well grown and full of a wiry strength, he had helped his father with the man's jobs already for several years. It was a long time since, on his rare days off, he had troubled with children's ploys. Not that, for such as he, birds'-nesting was a child's game; still, each spring, he made his way down these very cliffs to collect the freshly laid eggs for food. And later he and his father, armed with nets, would come to catch the young ones for Sula to skin and dry against the winter's hardships.

So he knew the ways down the cliff well enough. He also knew how dangerous they were, and the thought of being burdened with someone clumsy enough to strand himself, and probably by now thoroughly scared, was not pleasant.

The boy had seen him. His face was upturned, and he waved and called again.

Mordred made a face, then cupped his hands to his mouth. "What is it? Can't you get back?"

A vivid pantomime from below. It seemed unlikely that the climber could hear what was said, but the question was obvious, and so, too, was his answer. He had hurt his leg, otherwise — and somehow his gestures conveyed this clearly — he would not have dreamed of calling for help.

This bravado had little or no effect on the boy at the head of the cliff. With a shrug that indicated more boredom than anything else, the fisherman's son began the climb down.

It was difficult, and in two or three places dangerous, so Mordred went slowly, taking his time.

At length he landed on the ledge beside the climber.

The boys studied one another. The fisherman's son saw a boy of much his own age, with a shock of bright red-gold hair and hazel-green eyes. His complexion was clear and ruddy, his teeth good. And though his clothes were torn and stained with the dirt of the cliff, they were well made of good cloth, and brightly dyed in what looked like expensive colours. On one wrist he wore a copper bracelet no brighter than his hair. He sat with one leg over the other, gripping the hurt ankle tightly in both hands. He was obviously in pain, but when Mordred, with the working man's contempt for his idle betters, looked for signs of tears, he saw none.

"You've hurt your ankle?"

"Twisted it. I slipped."

"Is it broken?"

"I don't think so, just sprained. It hurts if I try to stand on it. I must say I'm glad to see you! I seem to have been here for ages. I didn't think anyone would be near enough to hear me, specially through all that noise."

"I didn't hear you. I saw the gulls."

"Well, thank the gods for that. You're a pretty good climber, aren't you?"

"I know these cliffs. I live near here. All right, we'll have to try it. Get up and let's see how you manage. Can't you put that foot down at all?"

The red-haired boy hesitated, looking faintly surprised, as if the other's tone was strange to him. But all he said was: "I can try. I did try before, and it made me feel sick. I don't think — some of those places were pretty bad, weren't they? Hadn't you better go and get help? Tell them to bring a rope."

"There's no one within miles." Mordred spoke impatiently. "My father's away with the boat. There's only Mother, and she'd be no use. I can get a rope, though. I've got one up at the peats. We'll manage all right with that."

"Fine." There was some attempt at a gay smile. "I'll wait for you, don't fret! But don't be too long, will you? They'll be worried at home."

At Brude's cottage, thought Mordred, his absence would never have been noticed. Boys such as he would have to break a leg and be away for a working day before anyone would start to trouble. No, that was not quite fair. Brude and Sula sometimes were as anxious over him as fowls with a single chicken. He had never seen why; he had ailed nothing in all his life.

As he turned to go he caught sight of a small lidded basket on the ledge beside the other boy. "I'll take that basket up now. Save trouble later."

"No, thanks. I'd sooner bring it up myself. It'll be all right, it hooks on to my belt."

So, maybe he had found some eggs, thought Mordred, then forgot all about it as he turned himself back to the cliff climb.

Beside the peat cuttings was the crude sled of driftwood that was used to drag the cut sods down to the stack beside the cottage. Fastened to the sled was a length of reasonably good rope. Mordred slipped this from its rings as quickly as he could, then ran back to the cliff, and once again made the slow climb down.

The injured boy looked composed and cheerful. He caught the rope's end and, with Mordred's help, made it fast to his belt. This was a good one, strongly made of polished leather, with what looked like silver studs and buckle. The basket was already clipped there.

Then began the struggle to the top. This took a very long time, with frequent pauses for rest, or for working out how best the injured boy might be helped up each section of the climb. He was obviously in pain, but made no complaint, and obeyed Mordred's sometimes peremptory instructions without hesitation or any show of fear. Sometimes Mordred would climb ahead and make the rope fast where he could, then descend to help the other boy with the support of arm or shoulder. In places they crawled, or edged along, belly to rock, while all the time the seabirds screamed and wheeled, the wind of their wings stirring the grasses on the very cliff, and their cries echoed and re-echoed to and fro over the deeper thud and wash of the waves.

At last it was over. The two boys reached the top safely, and pulled themselves over the last few feet onto the heather. They sat there, panting and sweating, and eyeing one another, this time with satisfaction and mutual respect.

"You have my thanks." The red-haired boy spoke with a kind of formality that gave the words a weight of genuine seriousness. "And I'm sorry to have given you that trouble. Once down that cliff would be enough for anyone, but you were up and down it as spry as a goat."

"I'm used to it. We take eggs in the spring, and then the young birds later. But it's a bad bit of rock. It looks so easy, with the stone weathered into slabs like that, but it's not safe, not safe at all."

"You don't need to tell me now. That was what happened. It looked like a safe step, but it broke. I was lucky to get off with just a sprained ankle. And lucky that you were there, too. I hadn't seen anyone all day. You said you lived near here?"

"Yes. In a bay about half a mile over yonder. Seals' Bay, it's called. My father's a fisherman."

"What's your name?"

"Mordred. What's yours?"

That faint look of surprise again, as if Mordred should have known. "Gawain."

It obviously meant nothing to the fisherman's son. He touched the basket which Gawain had set on the grass between them. From it came curious hissing sounds. "What's in there? I thought it couldn't be eggs."

"A couple of young peregrines. Didn't you see the falcon? I was half afraid she'd come and knock me off the ledge, but she contented herself with screaming. I left two others, anyway." He grinned. "Of course I got the best ones."

Mordred was startled. "Peregrines? But that's not allowed! Only for the palace people, that is. You'll be in real trouble if anyone sees them. And how on earth did you get near the nest? I know where it is, it's under that overhang with the yellow flowers on, but that's another fifteen feet lower than the ledge where you were."

"It's easy enough, but a bit tricky. Look." Gawain opened the basket a little way. In it Mordred could see the two young birds, fully fledged but still obviously juveniles. They hissed and bounced in their prison, floundering, with their claws fast in a tangle of thread.

"The falconer taught me." Gawain shut the lid again. "You lower a ball of wool to the nest, and they strike at it. As often as not they'll tangle themselves, and once they're fast in it, you can draw them up. You get the best ones that way, too, the bravest. But you have to watch for the mother bird."

"You got those from that ledge where you fell? After you were hurt, then?"

"Well, there wasn't much else to do while I was stuck there, and besides, that was what I'd gone for," said Gawain simply.

This was something Mordred could understand. Out of his new respect for the other, he spoke impulsively. "But you really could be in trouble, you know. Look, give me the basket. If we could get them free of the wool, I'll take them down again and see if I can get them back to the nest."

Gawain laughed and shook his head. "You couldn't. Don't worry. It's all right. I thought you didn't know me. I am from the palace, as it happens. I'm the queen's son, the eldest."

"You're Prince Gawain?" Mordred's eyes took in the boy's clothes again, the silver at his belt, the air of good living, the self-confidence. Suddenly, at a word, his own was gone, with the easy equality, even the superiority that the cliff climb had given him. This was no longer a silly boy whom he had rescued from danger. This was a prince; the prince, moreover, who was heir to the throne of Orkney; who would be King of the Orkneys, if ever Morgause saw fit — or could be forced — to step down. And he himself was a peasant. For the first time in his life he felt suddenly very conscious of how he looked. His single garment was a short tunic of coarse cloth, woven by Sula from the waste wool gathered from bramble and whin where the sheep had left it. His belt was a length of cord made from here stalks. His bare legs and feet were stained brown with peat, and were now scratched and grimy from the cliff climb.

He said, hesitating: "Well, but oughtn't you to be attended? I thought — I didn't think princes ever got out alone."

"They don't. I gave them all the slip."

"Won't the queen be angry?" asked Mordred doubtfully.

A flaw at last in that self-assurance. "Probably." The word, brought out carelessly, and rather too loudly, sounded to Mordred a distinct note of apprehension. But this, again, he understood, could even share. It was well known among the islanders that their queen was a witch and to be feared. They were proud of the fact, as they would have been proud of, and resigned to, a brutal but efficient warrior king. Anyone, even her own sons, might without shame be afraid of Morgause.

"But perhaps she won't have me beaten this time," said Orkney's young king, hopefully. "Not when she knows I've hurt my foot. And I did get the peregrines." He hesitated. "Look, I don't think I can get home without help. Will you be punished, for leaving your work? I'd see that your father didn't lose by it. Perhaps, if you want to go and tell them where you are—"

"That doesn't matter." Mordred spoke with sudden, renewed confidence. There were after all other differences between him and this wealthy heir to the islands. The prince was afraid of his mother, and would soon have to account for himself, and bribe his way back to favour with his looted hawks. Whereas he, Mordred—

He said easily: "I'm my own master. I'll help you back. Wait while I get the peat sled, and I'll pull you home. I think the rope's strong enough."

"Well, if you're sure—" Gawain took the offered hand, and was hauled to his feet. "You're strong enough, anyway. How old are you, Mordred?"

"Ten. Well, nearly eleven."

If Gawain felt any satisfaction about the answer, he concealed it. As they faced one another, eye to eye, Mordred was seen to be the taller by at least two fingers' breadth. "Oh, a year older than me. You probably won't have to take me far," added Gawain. "They'll have missed me by now, and someone'll be sent to look for me. In fact, there they are."

It was true. From the head of the next inland rise, where the heather lifted to meet the sky, came a shout. Three men came hurrying. Two of them, royal guards by their dress, bore spears and shields. The third led a horse.

"Well, that's all right," said Mordred. "And you won't need the sled." He picked up the rope. "I'll get back to the peats, then."

"Well, thanks again." Gawain hesitated. It was he, now, who suddenly seemed to feel something awkward in the situation. "Wait a minute, Mordred. Don't go yet. I said you wouldn't lose by this, that's only fair. I've no coin on me, but they'll send something.… You said you lived over that way. What's your father's name?"

"Brude the fisherman."

"Mordred, Brude's son," said Gawain, nodding. "I'm sure she'll send something. If she does send money, or a gift, you'd take it, wouldn't you?"

From a prince to a fisherman's son, it was an odd question, though neither boy seemed to find it so.

Mordred smiled, a small, close-lipped smile that Gawain found curiously familiar. "Of course. Why shouldn't I? Only a fool refuses gifts, particularly when he deserves them. And I don't think I'm a fool," added Mordred.

2

THE MESSAGE FROM THE PALACE came next day. It was brought by two men, queen's guards by their dress and weapons, and it was not coin, or any sort of gift; it was a summons to the royal presence. The queen, it seemed, wanted to thank her son's rescuer in person.

Mordred, straightening from the peat digging, stared at them, trying to control, or at least conceal, the sudden spurt of excitement within him.

"Now? Go with you now, you mean?"

"Those were the orders," said the elder of the guards, cheerfully. "That's what she said, bring you back with us now."

The other man added, with rough kindliness: "No need to be afraid, youngster. You did well, by all accounts, and there should be something in it for you."

"I'm not afraid." The boy spoke with the disconcerting self-possession that had surprised Gawain. "But I'm too dirty. I can't go to the queen like this. I'll have to go home first, and get myself decent."

The men glanced at one another, then the elder nodded. "Well, that's fair enough. How far is home from here?"

"It's only over there, you can see where the path runs along the cliff top, and then down. Only a few minutes." He stopped as he spoke, to pick up the rope of the sled. This was already half loaded. He threw the mattock on top of the load, and set off, dragging the sled. The grass of the track, worn and dry, was slippery, easy for the whalebone runners. He went quickly, the two men following. At the head of the slope the men paused, waiting, while the boy, with the ease bred by the daily task, swung the sled round to run downhill in front of him, himself leaning back against the rope to act as brake. He let the load run into the stacked peat on the grass behind the cottage, then dropped the rope and ran indoors. Sula was pounding grain in the quern. Two of the hens had come indoors and were clucking round her feet. She looked up, surprised.

"You're early! What is it?"

"Mother, get me my good tunic, will you? Quickly." He snatched up the cloth that did duty as a towel, and made again for the door. "Oh, and do you know where my necklet is, the thong with the purple shells?"

"Necklet? Washing, in the middle of the day?" Bewildered, Sula got up to do as he asked. "What's this, Mordred? What has happened?"

For some reason, probably one he did not know himself, the boy had told her nothing about his encounter with Gawain on the cliff. It is possible that his parents' intense interest in everything he did set him instinctively to guard parts of his life from them. In keeping his encounter with the prince a secret, he had hugged to himself the thought of Sula's pleasure when the queen, as he confidently expected, gave him some reward.

His pleased sense of importance, even glee, sounded in his voice. "It's messengers from Queen Morgause, Mother. They've come to bid me to the court. They're waiting for me out there. I have to go straight away. The queen wants to see me herself."

The effect of his announcement startled even him. His mother, on her way to the bedplace, stopped as if struck, then turned slowly, one hand out to the table's top, as if she would have fallen without its support. The pestle fell from her fingers and rolled to the floor, where the hens ran to it, clucking. She seemed not to notice. In the smoky light of the room her face had gone sallow. "Queen Morgause? Sent for you? Already?"

Mordred stared. " 'Already'?" What do you mean, Mother? Did somebody tell you what happened yesterday?"

Sula, her voice shaking, tried to recover herself. "No, no, I meant nothing. What did happen yesterday?"

"It was nothing much. I was out at the peats and I heard a cry from the cliff over yonder, and it was the young prince, Gawain. You know, the oldest of the queen's sons. He was half down the cliff after young falcons. He'd hurt his leg, and I had to take the rope down from the sled, and help him climb back. That's all. I didn't know who he was till afterwards. He told me his mother would reward me, but I didn't think it would happen like this, not so quickly, anyway. I didn't tell you yesterday, because I wanted it to be a surprise. I thought you'd be pleased."

"Pleased, of course I'm pleased!" She took a great breath, steadying herself by the table. Her fists, clenched on the wood, were trembling. She saw the boy staring, and tried to smile. "It's great news, son. Your father will be glad. She — she'll give you silver, I shouldn't wonder. She's a lovely lady, Queen Morgause, and generous where it pleases her."

"You don't look pleased. You look frightened." He came slowly back into the room. "You look ill, Mother. Look, you've dropped your stick. Here it is. Sit down now. Don't worry, I'll find the tunic. The necklet's in the cupboard with it, isn't it? I'll get it. Come, sit down."

He took hold of her gently, and set her back on the stool. Standing in front of her, he was taller than she. She seemed to come to herself sharply. Her back straightened. She gripped his arms above the elbows in her two hands and held him tightly. Her eyes, red-rimmed with working near the smoke of the peat fire, stared up at him with an intensity that made him want to fidget and move away. She spoke in a low, urgent whisper:

"Look, my son. This is a great day for you, a great chance. Who knows what may come of it? A queen's favour is a fine thing to come by.… But it can be a hard thing, forby. You're young yet, what would you know of great folk and their ways? I don't know much myself, but I know something about life, and there's one thing I can tell you, Mordred. Always keep your own counsel. Never repeat what you hear." In spite of herself, her hands tightened. "And never, never tell anyone anything that's said here, in your home."

"Well, of course not! When do I ever see anyone to talk to, anyway? And why should the queen or anyone at the palace be interested in what goes on here?" He shifted uncomfortably, and her grip loosened. "Don't worry, Mother. There's nothing to be afraid of. I've done the queen a favour, and if she's such a lovely lady, then I don't see what else can come of this except good, do you? Look, I must go now. Tell Father I'll finish the peats tomorrow. And keep some supper for me, won't you? I'll be back as soon as I can."

To those who knew Camelot, the High King's court, and even to people who remembered the state Queen Morgause had kept in her castle of Dunpeldyour, the "palace" of Orkney must have seemed a primitive place indeed. But to the boy from the fisherman's hut it appeared splendid beyond imagination.

The palace stood behind and above the cluster of small houses that made up the principal township of the islands. Below the town lay the harbour, its twin piers protecting a good deep anchorage where the biggest of ships could tie up in safety. Piers, houses, palace, all were built of the same flat weathered slabs of sandstone. The roofs, too, were of great flagstones hauled somehow into place and then hidden by a thick thatching of turf or heather-stems, with deep eaves that helped to throw the winter's rains away from walls and doors. Between the houses ran narrow streets, steep guts also paved with the flagstones so lavishly supplied by the local cliffs.

The main building of the palace was the great central hall. This was the "public" hall, where the court gathered, where feasts were held, petitions were heard, and where many of the courtiers — nobles, officers, royal functionaries — slept at night. It comprised a big oblong room, with other, smaller chambers opening from it.

Outside was a walled courtyard where the queen's soldiers and servants lived, sleeping in the outbuildings, and eating round their cooking fires in the yard itself. The only entrance was the main gateway, a massive affair flanked to either side by a guardhouse.

At a short distance from the main palace buildings, and connected with them by a long covered passage, stood the comparatively new building that was known as "the queen's house." This had been built by Morgause's orders when she first came to settle in Orkney. It was a smaller yet no less grandly built complex of buildings set very near the edge of the cliff that here rimmed the shore. Its walls looked almost like an extension of the layered cliffs below. Not many of the court — only the queen's own women, her advisers, and her favourites — had seen the interior of the house, but its modem splendours were spoken of with awe, and the townspeople gazed up in wonder at the big windows — an unheard-of innovation — which had been built even into the seaward walls.

Inland from palace and township stretched an open piece of land, turf grazed close by sheep, and used by the soldiers and young men for practice with horses and arms. Some of the stabling, with the kennels, and the byres for cattle and goats, was outside the palace walls, for in those islands there was little need of more defense than that provided by the sea, and to the south by the iron walls of Arthur's peace. But some way along the coast, beyond the exercise ground, stood the remains of a primitive round tower, built before men's memory by the Old People, and splendidly adaptable as both watchtower and embattled refuge. This Morgause, with the memory of Saxon incursions on the mainland kingdom, had had repaired after a fashion, and there a watch and ward was kept. This, with the guard kept constantly on the palace gate, was part of the royal state that fitted the queen's idea of her own dignity. If it did nothing else, said Morgause, it would keep the men alert, and provide some sort of military duty for the soldiers, as a change from exercises that all too readily became sport, or from idling round the palace courtyard.

When Mordred with his escort arrived at the gate the courtyard was crowded. A chamberlain was waiting to escort him to the queen.

Feeling awkward and strange in his seldom-worn best tunic, stiff as it had come from the cupboard, and smelling faintly musty, Mordred followed his guide. He was taut with nerves, and looked at nobody, keeping his head high and his eyes fixed on the chamberlain's shoulder-blades, but he felt the stares, and heard mutterings. He took them to be natural curiosity, probably mingled with contempt; he cannot have known that the figure he cut was curiously courtier-like, his stiffness very like the dignified formality of the great hall.

"A fisherman's brat?" the whispers went. "Oh, aye? We've heard that one before. Just look at him.… So who's his mother? Sula? I remember her. Pretty. She used to work at the palace here. In King Lot's time, that was. How long ago now since he visited the islands? Twelve years? Eleven? How the time does go by, to be sure.… And he must be just about that age, wouldn't you say?"

So the whispers went. They would have pleased Morgause, had she heard them, and Mordred, whom they would have enraged, did not hear them. But he heard the muttering, and felt the eyes. He stiffened his spine further, and wished the ordeal safely over, and himself home again.

Then they had reached the door of the hall, and as the servants pushed it open, Mordred forgot the whispers, his own strangeness, everything except the splendid scene in front of him.

When Morgause, suffering under Arthur's displeasure, had finally left Dunpeldyr for her other kingdom of Orkney, some stray glimmer in her magic glass must have warned her that her stay in the north would be a long one. She had managed to bring many of the treasures from Lot's southern capital. The king who reigned there now at Arthur's behest, Tydwal, must have found his stronghold stripped of most of its comforts. He was a stark lord, so cannot have cared overmuch. But Morgause, that lady of luxury, would have thought herself ill used had she been denied any of the appurtenances of royalty, and she had managed, with her spoils, to make herself a bower of comfort and colour to cushion her exile and enhance her once famous beauty. On all sides the stone walls of the hall were hung with brilliantly dyed cloths. The smooth flagstones of the floor were not, as might have been expected, strewn with rushes and heather, but had been made luxurious with islands of deerskin, brown and fawn and dappled. The heavy benches along the side walls were made of stone, but the chairs and stools standing on the platform at the hall's end were of fine wood carefully carved and painted, and bright with coloured cushions, while the doors were of strong oak, handsomely ornamented, and smelling of oil and wax.

The fisherman's boy had no eyes for any of this. His gaze was fixed on the woman who sat in the great chair at the center of the platform.

Morgause of Lothian and Orkney was still a very beautiful woman. Light from a slit window caught the glimmer of her hair, darkened from its young rose-gold to a rich copper. Her eyes, long-lidded, showed green as emerald, and her skin had the same smooth, creamy pallor as of old. The lovely hair was dressed with gold, and there were emeralds at her ears and at her throat. She wore a copper-coloured gown, and in her lap her slender white hands glinted with jewelled rings.

Behind her her five women — the queen's ladies — looked, for all their elegant clothing, plain and elderly. Those who knew Morgause had no doubt that this was an appearance as carefully contrived as her own. Some score of people stood below the dais, about the hall. To the boy Mordred it seemed crowded, and fuller of eyes even than the outer courtyard. He looked for Gawain, or for the other princes, but could not see them. When he entered, pausing rather nervously just inside the doorway, the queen was sitting half turned away, talking with one of her counsellors, a smallish, stout greybeard who bent humbly to listen as she spoke.

Then she saw Mordred. She straightened in her tall chair, and the long lids came down to conceal the sudden flash of interest in her eyes. Someone prodded the boy from behind, whispering: "Go on. Go up and then kneel."

Mordred obeyed. He approached the queen, but when he would have knelt, a movement of one of her hands bade him stand still. He waited, very straight, and apparently self-contained, but making no attempt to conceal the wonder and admiration he felt at this, his first sight of royalty enthroned. He simply stood and stared. If the onlookers expected him to be abashed, or the queen to rebuke him for impertinence, they were disappointed. The silence that held the hall was one of avid interest, coupled with amusement. Queen and fisherman's boy, islanded by that silence, measured one another eye to eye.

If Mordred had been half-a-dozen years older, men might more readily have understood the indulgence, even the apparent pleasure with which she regarded him. Morgause had made no secret of her predilection for handsome youths, a fancy which had been allowed a relatively free reign since the death of her husband. And indeed Mordred was personable enough, with his slender, straight body, fine bones, and the look of eager yet contained intelligence in the eyes under their wing-tipped brows. She studied him, stiff but far from awkward in his "best" tunic, the only one he had, apart from the rags of every day. She remembered the stuff she had sent for it, years ago, a length of homespun patchily dyed, that not even the palace slaves would have worn. Anything better, missed from the coffers, might have caused curiosity. Round his neck hung a string of shells, unevenly threaded, with some sort of wooden charm obviously carved by the boy himself from a piece of sea-wrack. His feet, though dusty from the moorland road, were finely shaped.

Morgause saw all this with satisfaction, but she saw more besides: the dark eyes, an inheritance from the Spanish blood of the Ambrosii, were Arthur's; the fine bones, the folded subtle mouth, came from Morgause herself.

At length she spoke. "Your name is Mordred, they tell me?"

"Yes." The boy's voice was hoarse with nervousness. He cleared his throat. "Yes, madam."

"Mordred," she said, consideringly. Her accent, even after her years in the north, was still that of the southern mainland kingdoms, but she spoke clearly and slowly in her pretty voice, and he understood her very well. She gave his name the island pronunciation. "Medraut, the sea-boy. So you are a fisherman like your father?"

"Yes, madam."

"Is that why they gave you your name?"

He hesitated. He could not see where this was leading. "I suppose so, madam."

"You suppose so." She spoke lightly, her attention apparently on smoothing a fold of her gown. Only her chief counsellor, and Gabran her current lover, knowing her well, guessed that the next question mattered. "You never asked them?"

"No, madam. But I can do other things besides fish. I dig the peats, and I can turf a roof, and build a wall, and mend the boat, and — and milk the goat, even—" He paused uncertainly. A faint ripple of amusement had gone round the hall, and the queen herself was smiling.

"And climb cliffs as if you were a goat yourself. For which," she added, "we should all be grateful."

"That was nothing," said Mordred. His confidence returned. There was really no need to be afraid. The queen was a lovely lady, as Sula had told him, not at all as he had imagined a witch to be, and surprisingly easy to talk to. He smiled up at her. "Is Gawain's ankle badly sprained?" he asked.

A new rustle went round the hall. "Gawain," indeed! And a fisher-boy did not hold conversation with the queen, standing as straight as one of the young princes, and looking her in the eye. But Morgause apparently noticed nothing unusual. She ignored the murmurs. She had not ceased to watch the boy closely.

"Not very. Now that it has been bathed and bound up he can walk well enough. He will be back."…at the exercise of arms tomorrow. And for this he has you to thank, Mordred, and so have I. I repeat, we are grateful."

"The men would have found him very soon, and I could have lent them the rope."

"But they did not, and you climbed down twice yourself. Gawain tells me that it is a dangerous place. He should be whipped for climbing there, even though he did bring me two such splendid birds. But you…" The pretty teeth nibbled at the red underlip as she considered him. "You must have some proof of my gratitude. What would you like?"

Really taken aback now, he stared, swallowed, and began to stammer something about his parents, their poverty, the coming winter and the nets that had been patched twice too often, but she interrupted him. "No, no. That is for your parents, not for you. I have already found gifts for them. Show him, Gabran."

A young man, blond and handsome, who stood near her, stooped and lifted a box from behind her chair. He opened it. In it Mordred glimpsed coloured wools, woven cloth, a net purse glinting with silver, a stoppered wine flask. He went scarlet, then pale. Suddenly, the scene had become somehow unreal, like a dream. The chance encounter at the cliff, Gawain's talk of reward, the summons to the queen's house — all this had been exciting, with its promise of some change in the monotonous drudgery of his life. He had come here expecting at most a silver coin, a word from the queen, some delicacy, perhaps, that could be begged from the palace kitchens before he ran home. But this — Morgause's beauty and kindness, the unaccustomed splendours of the hall, the magnificence of the gifts for his parents, and the promise, apparently, of more for himself… Dimly, through the heart-beating confusion, he felt that it was all too much. There was something more here. Something in the looks the courtiers were exchanging, in the speculative amusement in Gabran's eyes. Something he did not understand, but that made him uneasy.

Gabran shut the lid of the box with a snap, but when Mordred reached to lift it Morgause stopped him.

"No, Mordred. Not now. We shall see that they have it before today's dusk. But you and I still have something to talk about, have we not? What is fitting for the young man to whom the future king of these islands owes a dear debt? Come with me now. We will talk of this in private."

She stood up. Gabran moved quickly to her side, his arm ready for her hand, but ignoring him, she stepped down from the dais and reached a hand towards the boy. He took it awkwardly, but somehow she made a graceful gesture of it, her jewelled fingers touching his wrist as if he were a courtier handing her from the hall. When she stood beside him she was very little taller than he. She smelled of honeysuckle, and the rich days of summer. Mordred's head swam.

"Come," she said again, softly.

The courtiers stood back, bowing, to make a way for them. Her slave drew back a curtain to show a door in the side wall. Guards stood there to either side, their spears held stiffly. Mordred was no longer conscious of the stares and the whispering. His heart was thudding. What was to come now he could not guess, but it could only, surely, be more wonders. Something was hanging in the clouds for him; fortune was in the queen's smile and in her touch.

Without knowing it, he tossed the dark hair back from his brow in a gesture that was Arthur's own, and with head high he escorted Morgause royally out of her hall.

3

THE CORRIDOR BETWEEN THE palace and the queen's house was a long one, without windows, but lit by torches hung on the walls. There were two doors in its length, both on the left. One must be the guardroom; the door stood ajar, and beyond it Mordred could hear men's voices and the click of gaming-stones. The other gave on the courtyard; he remembered seeing guards there. It was shut now, but at the end of the corridor a third door stood open, held wide by a servant for the passage of the queen and her attendants.

Beyond was a square chamber, which acted apparently as an anteroom to the queen's private apartments. It was unfurnished. To the right a slit window showed a narrow strip of sky, and let in the noise of the sea. Opposite, on the landward side, was another door, at which Mordred looked with interest, and then with awe.

This doorway was curiously low and squat — the same primitive shape as the door of his parents' cottage. It was set deep under a massive stone lintel, and flanked by jambs almost as thick. He had seen such entrance-ways before; they led down to the ancient underground chambers that could be found here and there through the islands. Some said they had been built, like the tall brochs, by the Old People, who had housed their dead there in stone chambers beneath the ground. But the simpler folk regarded them as magical places, the sidhe or hollow hills that guarded the gates of the Otherworld; and the skeletons that were found there, of men and beasts, were the remains of unwary creatures who had ventured too far within those dark precincts. When mist shrouded the islands — which was rare in those windy seas — it was said that gods and spirits could be seen riding out on their gold-decked horses, with the sad ghosts of the dead drifting round them. Whatever the truth, the islanders avoided the mounds that hid these underground chambers, but it seemed that the queen's house had been built beside one of them, perhaps only discovering it when the foundations were dug. Now the entrance was sealed off by a heavy door of oak, with big iron hasps, and a massive lock to keep it fast against whatever lurked behind it in the dark.

Then Mordred forgot it, as the tall door ahead of them opened between its two armed guards, and beyond was a blaze of sunlight, and the warmth and scent and colour of the queen's house.

The room they entered was a copy of Morgause's chamber at Dunpeldyr; a smaller copy, but still, to Mordred's eyes, magnificent. The sun streamed in through a big square window, under which a bench made a window-seat, gay with blue cushions. Near it, full in the sunlight, stood a gilded chair with its footstool and a cross-legged table nearby. Morgause sat down, and pointed to the window-seat. Mordred took his place obediently, and sat waiting in silence, with thumping heart, while the women, at a word from the queen, betook themselves with their stitchery to the far end of the room, in the light from another window. A servant came hurrying to the queen's side with wine in a silver goblet, and then, at her command, brought a cup of the sweet honey drink for Mordred. He took a sip of it, then set the cup down on the window sill. Though his mouth and throat were dry, he could not drink.

The queen finished her wine, then handed the goblet to Gabran, who must already have had his orders. He took it straight to the servant at the door, shut the door behind the man, then went to join the women at the other end of the room. He lifted a small knee harp from its shroud in the corner, and, settling himself on a stool, began to play.

Only then did the queen speak again, and she spoke softly, so that only Mordred, close beside her, would be able to hear.

"Well, Mordred, so now let us talk. How old are you? No, don't answer, let me see.… You will soon pass your eleventh birthday. Am I not right?"

"Y—yes," stammered the boy, amazed. "How did — oh, of course, Gawain told you."

She smiled. "I would have known without being told. I know more about your birth than you do yourself, Mordred. Can you guess how?"

"Why, no, madam. About my birth? That's before you came to live here, isn't it?"

"Yes. I and the king my husband still held Dunpeldyr in Lothian. Have you never heard what happened in Dunpeldyr, the year before Prince Gawain was born?"

He shook his head. He could not have spoken. He still had no inkling of why the queen had brought him here and was speaking to him like this, secretly, in her private chamber, but every instinct pricked him to the alert. It was coming now, surely, the future he had dreaded, and yet longed for, with the strange, restless and sometimes violent feelings of rebellion he had had against the life to which he had been born, and to which he had believed himself sentenced till death, like all his parents' kin.

Morgause, still watching him closely, smiled again. "Then listen now. It is time you knew. You will soon see why.…"

She settled a fold of her gown, and spoke lightly, as if talking of some trifling matter far back in the past, some story to tell a child at lamp-lighting.

"You know that the High King Arthur is my half-brother by the same father, King Uther Pendragon. Long ago King Uther planned my marriage to King Lot, and though he died before it could take place, and though my brother Arthur was never Lot's friend, we were married. We hoped that through the marriage a friendship, or at least an alliance, might be formed. But, whether through jealousy of Lot's prowess as a soldier, or (as I am persuaded) because of lies told to him by Merlin, the enchanter, who hates all women, and who fancies himself wronged by me. King Arthur has always acted more as an enemy than as a brother and a just lord."

She paused. The boy's eyes were fixed, enormous, his lips slightly parted. She smoothed her gown again, and her voice took on a deeper, graver note.

"Soon after King Arthur had assumed the throne of Britain, he was told, by the evil man Merlin, that a child had been born somewhere in Dunpeldyr, a son of its king, who would prove to be Arthur's bane. The High King never hesitated. He sent men north to Dunpeldyr to seek out and kill the king's sons. "Oh, no" — a smile of great sweetness — "not mine. Mine were not yet born. But to make sure that any bastard, perhaps unknown, of King Lot's should die, he ordered that all the children in the town, under a certain age, should die." Sorrow throbbed in her voice. "So, Mordred, on that dreadful night some score of children were taken by the soldiers. They were put out to sea in a small boat, which was driven by wind and waves until at last it drove onto rock and foundered, and the children were all drowned. All but one."

He was as still as if held by a spell. "Me?"

It was a whisper, barely audible.

"Yes, you. The boy from the sea. Now do you understand why you were given that name? It was true."

She seemed to be waiting for an answer. He said, huskily: "I thought it was because of being a fisherman, like my father. A lot of the boys that help with the nets are called Mordred, or Medraut. I thought it was a sort of charm to keep me safe from the sea-goddess. She used to sing a song about it. My mother, I mean."

The green-gilt eyes opened a little wider. "So? A song? What sort of song?"

Mordred, meeting that look, recollected himself. He had forgotten Sula's warning. Now it came back to him, but there was no harm, surely, in the truth? "A sleeping song. When I was small. I don't really remember it, except the tune."

Morgause, with a flick of her fingers, dismissed the tune. "But you never heard this tale before? Did your parents ever speak of Dunpeldyr?"

"No, never. That is" — he spoke with patent honesty — "only as all the folk speak of it. I knew that it was part of your kingdom once, and that you had dwelt there with the king, and that the three oldest princes were born there. My — my father gets news from the ships that come in, of all the kingdoms beyond the sea, the wonderful lands. He has told me so much that I—" He bit his lip, then burst out irresistibly with the question that burned him. "Madam, how did my father and mother save me from that boat and bring me here?"

"They did not save you from the boat. You were saved by the King of Lothian. When he knew what had happened to the children he sent a ship to save them, but it came too late for all but you. The captain saw some wreckage floating still, the boat's ribs, with what looked like a bundle of cloth still there. It was you. An end of your shawl had caught on a splintered spar, and held you safe. The captain took you up. By the garment you wore, and the shawl that saved your life, he knew which of the children you were. So he sailed with you to Orkney, where you might be reared in safety." She paused. "Have you guessed why, Mordred?"

She could see, from the boy's eyes, that he had guessed why long since. But he lowered his lids and answered, as meekly as a girl:

"No, madam."

The voice, the folded mouth, the maiden-like demureness, was so much Morgause's own that she laughed aloud, and Gabran, who had been her lover now for more than a year, looked up from his harp and allowed himself to smile with her. "Then I will tell you. Two of the bastards of the King of Lothian were killed in that massacre. But there were known to be three in the boat. The third was saved by the mercy of the sea-goddess, who kept him afloat in the wreckage. You are a king's bastard, Mordred, my boy from the sea."

He had seen it coming, of course. She looked to see some spark of joy, or pride, or even speculation. There was none. He was biting his lip, fighting with some trouble that he wanted to, but dared not, express.

"Well?" she asked at length.

"Madam—" Another pause.

"Well?" A touch of impatience. Having laid a royal gift in the boy's hand, albeit a false one, the lady looked for worship, not for doubts which she could not understand. Never having herself been moved by love, it did not occur to her that her son's feelings for his foster parents needed to be weighed against pleasure and ambition.

He blurted it out then. "Madam, was my mother ever in Dunpeldyr?"

Morgause, who liked to play with people as if they were creatures caged for her whims, smiled at him and told, for the first time in the interview, the simple truth. "Of course. Where else? You were born there. Did I not say so?"

"But she said she had lived in Orkney all her life!" Mordred's voice rose, so that the chatter at the room's other end hushed for a moment before a glance from the queen sent the women back, heads bent, to their work. The boy added, more softly, looking wretched: "And my father. He can't know, surely, that she — that I… ?"

"Foolish boy, you have not understood me." Her voice was indulgent. "Brude and Sula are your foster parents, who took you at the king's behest, and kept the secret for him. Sula had lost a son, and she took you to nurse. No doubt she has given you the love and care she would have given her own child. As for your real mother" — quickly, she forestalled the question that in fact he was too dazed to ask — "I cannot tell you that. For very fear she said nothing, nor made any claim, and for fear of the High King, nothing has ever been said. She may have been only too thankful to forget the matter herself. I asked no questions, though I knew one of the boys had been saved from the boat. Then when King Lot died, and I came to Orkney to bear my youngest son and care for the other three in safety, I was content to let the matter rest. As you must, Mordred."

Not knowing what to say, he was silent.

"For all I know your own mother may be dead. To dream of some day seeking her out would be folly — and what would be the profit? A girl of the town, the pleasure of a night?" She studied his down-dropped lids, his expressionless face. "Now Dunpeldyr is in the hands of a king who is Arthur's creature. There would be no profit in such a search, Mordred, and there might well be much danger. Do you understand me?"

"Yes, madam."

"What you do when you are a man grown is your affair, but you will do well to remember that King Arthur is your enemy."

"Then — I am the one? I am to be — his bane?"

"Who knows? That is with the gods. But he is a hard man, and his adviser Merlin is both clever and cruel. Do you think they would take any chances? But while you remain in these islands—and while you keep silent—you are safe."

Another pause. He asked, almost whispering it: "But why have you told me, then? It will be secret, yes, I promise, but why did you want me to know?"

"Because of the debt I owe you for Gawain. Had you not helped him, he might have tried to climb himself, and fallen to his death. I was curious to see you, so I sent for you on that excuse. It might have been better to leave you there all your life, knowing nothing. Your foster parents would never have dared to speak. But after what happened yesterday—" A pretty, half-deprecating gesture. "Not every woman wishes to nurture her husband's bastards, but I and my family owe you something, and I pay my debts. And now that I have seen you, and spoken with you, I have decided how to make that payment."

The boy said nothing. He seemed to have stopped breathing. From the far end of the room came the murmur of music, and the soft voices of the women.

"You are ten years old," said Morgause. "You are well grown and healthy, and I think that you could do me some service. There are not so many in these islands with the blood and the promise that might make a leader. In you I think I see that promise. It is time you left your foster home, and took your place here with the other princes. Well, what do you say?"

"I — I will do as you wish, madam," stammered the boy. It was all he could say, above the words that went on and on in his brain, like the music of the harp. The other princes. It is time you took your place here with the other princes.… Later, perhaps, he would think of his foster parents with affection and with regret, but now all he had room for was the vague but dazzling vision of such a future as he had barely dared even to dream of. And this woman, this lovely royal lady, would in her graciousness offer him, her husband's bastard, a place beside her own true-born sons. Mordred, moved by an impulse he had never felt before, slipped from the window-seat and knelt at Morgause's feet. With a gesture at once graceful and touchingly unpracticed, he lifted a fold of the copper-coloured velvet and kissed it. He sent a look of worship up at her and whispered: "I will serve you with my life, madam. Only ask me. It is yours."

His mother smiled down at him, well satisfied with the conquest she had made. She touched his hair, a gesture that brought the blood up under his skin, then sat back against the cushions, a pretty, fragile queen looking for strong arms and ready swords to protect her. "It may be a hard service, Mordred. A lonely queen needs all the love and protection that her fighting men can give her. For that you will be trained alongside your brothers, and live with them here in my palace. Now you will go down to Seals' Bay to take leave of your parents, then bring your things back here."

"Today? Now?"

"Why not? When decisions are taken they should be acted upon. Gabran will go with you, and a slave to carry your goods. Go now."

Mordred, still too awed and confused to point out that he could carry all his worldly goods himself, and in one hand, got to his feet, then stooped to kiss the hand she held out to him. It was noticeable that this time the courtly move came almost naturally. Then the queen turned away, dismissing him, and Gabran was at his elbow, hurrying him from the room, along the corridor, and out into the courtyard where the coloured sky of sunset was already fading into dusk, and the air smelled of the smoke of fires where suppers were being cooked.

A man, a groom by his dress, came up with a horse ready bridled. It was one of the sturdy island ponies, cream-coloured and as shaggy as a sheep.

"Come," said Gabran, "we'll be late for supper as it is. You don't ride, I suppose? No? Well, get up behind me. The man can follow."

Mordred hung back. "There's no need, I've nothing to carry, really. And you don't need to come either, sir. If you stay and get your supper now, I can run home and—"

"You'll soon learn that when the queen says I have to go with you, then I have to go." Gabran did not trouble to explain that his orders had been even more explicit. "He is not to have speech alone with Sula," Morgause had said. "Whatever she has guessed, she has told him nothing yet, it seems. But now that she is going to lose him, who knows what she may come out with? The man does not matter: He is too stupid to guess at the truth, but even he may give the boy the true tale of how he was brought, by arrangement, from Dunpeldyr. So take him, and stay with them, and bring him back quickly. I shall see to it that he does not go back there again."

So Gabran said, crisply: "Come, your hand," and with Mordred behind him on the cob, and clinging to him like a young peregrine to its ball of fleece, he cantered off along the track that led to Seals' Bay.

4

SULA HAD BEEN SITTING OUTSIDE the cottage door in the last of the daylight, gutting and splitting a catch of fish ready for drying. When the horse appeared at the head of the cliff path she had just carried the bucket of offal down to throw it onto the shingle, where the hens wrangled with the seabirds for their share of the stinking pile. The noise was deafening as the big gulls swooped and fought and chased one another, and the smell rose sickeningly on the wind.

Mordred slipped off the cob's rump as Gabran drew rein. "If you wait here, sir, I'll run down with this, and get my things. I'll be back in just a moment. It — it won't take long. I think my mother was expecting this, or something like it. I'll be as quick as I can. Maybe I can come back tomorrow, if they want me to? Just for a talk?"

Gabran, without even troubling to reply, slid off the horse's back and looped the rein over his wrist. When Mordred, holding the box carefully, started down the slope, the man followed.

Sula, turning back towards the cottage, saw them. She had been watching the cliff top for Mordred's return, and now, seeing how he was accompanied, she stood for a few moments very still, unconsciously clutching the slimy bucket close to her body. Then, coming to herself, she threw the bucket down by the doorway, and went quickly into the cottage. A dim yellow glow showed round the curtain's edge as she lighted the lamp.

The boy pushed the curtain aside and went in eagerly, carrying the box.

For once the room was free of smoke. On good summer days Sula cooked their food in the clay oven outside, over a fire built up of dried kelp and dung. But the stink of fish pervaded the whole cove, and inside the cottage the smell of the fish-oil in the lamp caught at the throat. Though he had been used to it all his life, Mordred — with the scents and colours of the queen's room bright in his memory — noticed it now, with a mixture of pity, shame and what he was too young to recognize as self-dislike; shame because Gabran so obviously intended to come in with him, and guilt because he was ashamed for him to do so.

To his immediate relief, Sula was alone. She was wiping her hands on a rag. Blood from a grazed finger mingled on the rag with the slime and scales from the fish. The flint knife lying on the table showed a rim of blood, too.

"Your hand. Mother, you've cut it!"

"It's nothing. They kept you a long time."

"I know. The queen herself wanted to talk to me. Wait till I tell you! The palace, it's a wonderful place, and I went right into the queen's own house… But look here first, Mother! She gave me presents."

He set the box on the table, and opened it.

"Mother, look! The silver is for you and Father, and the cloth, see, isn't it fine? Thick, too, good for winter. And a flask of good wine, with a capon from the palace kitchen. All this is for you.…"

His voice trailed away uneasily. Sula had not even glanced at the treasures; she was still wiping her hands, over and over again, on the greasy rag.

Suddenly, Mordred was impatient. He took the rag from her and threw it down, shoving the box nearer. "Aren't you even going to look at them? Don't you even want to know what the queen said to me?"

"I can see she was generous. We all know she can be generous when it takes her. What was there for you?"

"Promises." Gabran spoke from the doorway as he stooped to enter. When he straightened his head was only a finger's breadth from the stones of the roof. He was dressed in a knee-length robe of yellow, with a deep tagged border of green. Yellow stones winked at his belt, and he wore a collar of worked copper. He was a fair man, with a crisp mane as blond as barley straw falling to his shoulders, and the blue eyes of the north. His presence filled the room and made the cottage seem more poverty-stricken and dingy even than before.

If Mordred was conscious of this, Sula was not. Unimpressed, she faced Gabran squarely, as she would have faced an enemy. "What sort of promises?"

Gabran smiled. "Only what every man should have, and Mordred has proved himself a man now — or at least the queen thinks so. A cup and a platter for his meat, and tools for his work."

She stared at him, her lips working. She did not ask what he meant. Nor did she make any of the gestures of hospitality that came naturally to the folk of the islands.

She said harshly: "These he has."

"But not such as he should have," said Gabran, gently. "You know as well as I, woman, that there should be silver on his cup, and that his tools are not mattocks and fish hooks, but a sword and a spear."

To expect and dread a thing for a lifetime does not prepare one for the thing itself. It was as if he had set the very spear to her breast. She threw up her hands, hiding her face with her apron, and sank onto the stool beside the table.

"Mother, don't!" cried Mordred. "The queen — she told me — you must know what she told me!" Then, to Gabran, distressed: "I thought she knew. I thought she would understand."

"She does understand. Do you not, Sula?"

A nod. She had begun to rock herself, as if in grief, but she made no sound.

Mordred hesitated. Among the rough folk of the islands, affectionate gestures were rarely made. He went to her, but contented himself with a touch on the shoulder. "Mother, the queen told me the whole story. How you and my father took me from the sea-captain who had found me, and reared me for your own. She told me who I am… at least, who my real father is. So now she thinks I should go up to the palace with the other—King Lot's other sons, and the nobles, and train as a fighting man."

Still she said nothing. Gabran, watching by the door, never moved.

Mordred tried again. "Mother, you must have known I would be told some day. And now that I know… you mustn't be sorry. still can't be sorry, you must see that. It doesn't change anything here, this is still my home, and you and Father are still…" He swallowed. "You'll always be my folk, you will, believe me! Some day—"

"Aye, some day," she interrupted him, harshly. The apron came down. In the wavering light of the lamp her face was sickly pale, smeared with dirt from the apron. She did not look at Gabran, elegant in the doorway. Mordred watched her appealingly; there was love in his face, and distress, but there was also something she recognized, a high look of excitement, ambition, the iron-hard will to go his way. She had never set eyes on Arthur, High King of Britain, but looking at Mordred, she recognized his son.

She said, heavily: "Aye, some day. Some day you'll come back, grown and grand, and carrying gold to give the poor folk who nursed you. But now you try to tell me that nothing's changed. For all you say it makes no difference who you are—"

"I didn't say that! Of course it makes a difference! Who wouldn't be glad to know he was a king's son? Who wouldn't be glad to have the chance to bear arms, and maybe some day to travel abroad and see the mainland kingdoms, where things are happening that matter to the world? When I said nothing would change, I mean the way I feel — the way I feel about you and my father. But I can't help wanting to go! Please try to understand. I can't pretend, not all the way, that I'm sorry."

At the distress in his face and voice she softened suddenly. "Of course you can't, boy. You must forgive an old woman who's dreaded this moment for so long. Yes, you must go. But do you have to go now? Is yon fine gentleman waiting to take you back with him?"

"Yes. They said I had just to get my things and go straight back."

"Then get them. Your father won't be back till the dawn tide. You can come and see him as soon as they let you." A glimmer of something that was almost a smile. "Don't you worry, boy, I'll tell him what's happened."

"He knows all about it, too, doesn't he?"

"Of course he does. And he'll see that it had to come. He's made himself forget it, I think, though I've seen it coming this past year or so. Yes, in you, Mordred. Blood tells. Still, you've been a good son to us, for all there's been something in you fretting after a different way.… We took pay for you, you know that.… Where did you think we got the money for the good boat, and the foreign nets? I'd have nursed you for nothing, in place of the one I lost, and then you were as good as our own, and better. Aye, we'll miss you sorely. It's a hard trade for a man as he gets older, and you've pulled your weight on the rope, that you have."

Something was working in the boy's face. He burst out: "I won't go! I won't leave you. Mother! They can't make me!"

She looked sadly at him. "You will, lad. Now you've had a sight of it, and a taste of it, you will. So get your things. Yon gentleman's on the fidget to be gone."

Mordred glanced from her to Gabran. The latter nodded and said, not unkindly: "We should hurry. The gates will soon be shut."

The boy went across to his bedplace. This was a stone shelf, with a bag stuffed full of dried bracken for a mattress, and a blue blanket spread across. From a recess in the wall below the shelf he took his possessions. A sling, some fish hooks, a knife, his old working tunic. He had no shoes. He laid the fish hooks back on the bed, and the working tunic with them. He hesitated over the sling. He felt the smooth wood that fitted so readily into his hand, and fingered the bag of pebbles, rounded and glossy, gathered so carefully from the beach. Then these, too, he laid aside. Sula watched him, saying nothing. Between them the words hung, unspoken: the tools for his work; a sword and a spear…

He turned back. "I'm ready now." He was empty-handed, but for his knife.

If any of the three noticed the symbolism of the moment, nothing was said. Gabran reached for the door curtain. Before he could touch it it was pushed aside, as the goat shouldered her way into the room. Sula got up from her stool, and reached for the bowl to hold the milk. "You'd best go, then. Come back when they let you, and tell us what it's like up there at the palace."

Gabran held the curtain wide. Mordred went slowly towards the door. What was there to say? Thanks were not enough, and yet were more than enough. He said awkwardly: "Goodbye then, Mother," and went out. Gabran let the curtain fall behind them.

Outside, the tide was on the turn, and the wind had freshened, dispersing the smell of fish. The sweet air met him. It was like plunging into a different stream.

Gabran was untying the horse. In the growing darkness the knots were awkward, and he fumbled over them. Mordred hesitated, then ran back into the stink of the hut. Sula was milking the goat. She did not look up. He could see a track of moisture in the dirt on her cheek like the track of a snail. He stopped in the doorway, clutching the curtain, and said hoarsely and rapidly: "I'll come back whenever they let me, truly I will. I — I'll see you're all right, you and he. Some day… some day I promise I'll be somebody, and I'll look after you both."

She made no sign.

"Mother."

She did not look up. Her hands never stopped.

"I hope," said Mordred, "that I never do find out who my real mother is." He turned and ran out again into the dusk.

"Well?" asked Morgause.

It was well past dawn. She and Gabran were alone together in her bedchamber.

In the outer room her women slept, and in the chamber beyond that the five boys — Lot's four and her son by Arthur — had been asleep long since. But the queen and her lover were not abed. She sat beside a glowing bank of peat. She wore a long night robe of creamy white, and furred slippers made from the winter skin of the blue hare that runs on the High Island. Her hair was loose over her shoulders, glimmering in the peat fire's glow. In that soft light she looked little more than twenty years old, and very beautiful.

Though, as ever, she stirred his senses, the young man knew that this was not the moment to show it. Still fully dressed, his damp cloak over his arm, he kept his distance and answered her, subject to monarch:

"All is very well, madam. It's done, just as you wished it done."

"No trace of violence?"

"None. They were asleep — either that, or they had drunk too much of the wine you sent them."

A small smile, that innocence would have thought innocent, hung on her pretty mouth. "If they only sipped it, Gabran, it was enough." She lifted the lovely eyes to his, saw nothing there but dazzled admiration, and added: "Did you think I would take chances? You should know better. So, it was easy?"

"Very easy. All that will appear is that they drank too deeply, and were careless, and that the lamp fell and the oil spilled on the bedding, and—" A gesture finished it for him.

She drew a breath of satisfaction, but something in his voice gave her pause. Though Morgause valued, and was even fond of, her handsome young lover, she would have got rid of him in a moment if it had suited her to do so; but as yet she had need of him, and must keep him faithful. She said gently: "Too easy, I think you mean, Gabran? I know, my dear. Men like you don't like an easy killing, and killing these folk is like slaughtering beasts — no work for a fighting man. But it was necessary. You know that."

"I suppose so."

"You told me that you thought the woman knew something."

"Or guessed. It was hard to tell. These folk all look like weathered kelp. I couldn't be certain. There was something in the way she spoke to him, and the way she looked when he said you had told him the whole story." He hesitated. "If so, then she — both of them — have kept silence all these years."

"So?" said the queen. She held a hand out to the fire's warmth. "That is not to say they would have gone on keeping it. With the boy gone, they might begin to feel they had a grievance, and folk with a grievance are dangerous."

"Would they have dared speak? And to whom?"

"Why, to the boy himself. You told me that Sula urged him to go back there, and naturally — at first — he would have been eager to go. One word, one hint, would have been enough. You know whose son he is; and you have seen him. Do you think it needs more than a breath to kindle a blaze of ambition that could destroy all my plans for the future? Take my word for it, it was necessary. Gabran, dear boy, you may be the best lover a woman ever took to her bed, but you could never rule any kingdom wider than that same bed."

"Why should I ever want to?"

She threw him a smile, part affection, part mockery. Emboldened, he took half a step towards her, but she stopped him. "Wait. Consider. This time I'll tell you why. And don't pretend you've never made a guess at my plans concerning this bastard." She turned her hand this way and that, apparently admiring the glitter of her rings. Then she looked up, confidingly. "You may be right in part. I may have flown my hawk too early and too fast, but the chance came to take the boy from his foster home and bring him here without too much questioning. Besides, he is ten years old, high time he should be trained in the skills and manners of a prince. And once I had taken that step, the other had to follow. Until the right moment comes, my brother Arthur must hear no hint of his whereabouts. Nor must that arch-mage Merlin, and in his heyday he could have heard the very rushes whispering on the Holy Isle. Old and foolish as he is, we can risk nothing. I have not kept my son and Arthur's secret all these years, to have him taken from me now. He is my pass to the mainland. When he is ready to go there, I shall go with him."

He was hers again, she noted. Pleased, nattered by her confidence, eager. "Back to Dunpeldyr, do you mean?"

"Not Dunpeldyr, no. To Camelot itself."

"To the High King."

"Why not? He has no legitimate son, and from all accounts is unlikely to get one. Mordred is my pass to Arthur's court.… And after that, we shall see."

"You sound very sure," he said.

"I am sure. I have seen it." At the look in his eyes she smiled again. "Yes, my dear, in the pool. It was clear as crystal — a witch's crystal. I and my sons, all of them, at Camelot, dressed as for a feast, and bearing gifts."

"Then surely — not that I'm questioning it, but — couldn't that mean you would have been safe, even without what was done tonight?"

"Possibly." Her voice was indifferent. "We cannot always read the signs aright, and it may be that the Goddess knew already what would be done tonight. Now I am sure that I am safe. All I have to do is wait for Merlin's death. Already, more than once, we have heard rumours of his disappearance, or death, and each time I have rejoiced, only to find that the rumour was false, and the old fool lived still. But the day must soon come when the report will be true. I have seen to that, Gabran. And when it is, when he is no longer at Arthur's side, then I may go in safety, and Mordred with me. I can deal with my brother.… If not as I dealt with him before, then as a sister deals who has some power, and a little beauty still."

"Madam — Morgause—"

She laughed gently, and stretched a hand to him. "Come, Gabran, no need for jealousy! And no need to fear me, either. All the witchcraft I ever use against you, you know well how to deal with. The rest of this night's work will be more to your taste than what is past. Come to bed now. All is safe, thanks to you. You have served me more than faithfully."

And so did they. But Gabran did not voice the thought aloud. And soon, stripped of his damp clothing, and lying in the great bed beside Morgause, he forgot it, and forgot, too, the two dead bodies he had left in the smoking shell of the cottage on the shore.

5

MORDRED WOKE EARLY, AT his usual time.

The other boys still slept, but this was the hour when his foster father had always roused him for work. For a few moments he lay, unsure of his surroundings, then he remembered. He was in the royal palace. He was a king's son, and the king's other sons were here, sleeping in the same room. The eldest of them, Prince Gawain, lay beside him, in the same bed. In the other bed slept the three younger princes, the twins, and the baby, Gareth.

He had had no speech with them yet. Last evening after Gabran had brought him to the palace, he had been taken in charge by an old woman who had been nurse to the royal boys; she was still, she told him, nurse to Gareth, and looked after the boys' clothes and to some extent their welfare. She led Mordred to a room full of chests and boxes, where she fitted him out with new clothing. No weapons yet; he would get those tomorrow, she told him sourly, soon enough, and then no doubt he would be about his killing and murdering like the rest of them. Men! Boys were bad enough, but at least they could be controlled, and let him mark her words, she might be an old woman, but she could still punish where punishment was due.… Mordred listened, and was silent, fingering the good new clothes, and trying not to yawn as the old woman fussed about him. From her chatter — and she was never silent — he learned that Queen Morgause was, to say the least, an erratic parent. One day she would take the boys riding, showing them mainland customs of hunting with hawk and hound; they would ride all day, and she would feast them late into the night, then the next day the boys would find themselves apparently forgotten, and be forbidden even to go to her rooms, only to be summoned again at night to hear a minstrel, or to entertain a bored and restless queen with talk of their own day. Nor were the boys treated alike. Possibly the only Roman principle held to by Morgause was the one of "divide and rule." Gawain, as the eldest and the heir, was given extra freedom and some privileges forbidden to the others; Gareth, the posthumous youngest, was the favourite. Which left the twins, and they, Mordred gathered from old Ailsa's pinched lips and headshakings, were difficult enough without the constant rubbings of jealousy and frustrated energies.

When at length, with his new clothes carefully folded over his arm, Mordred followed, her to the boys' bedchamber, he was thankful to find that all four were there before him, and already sound asleep. Ailsa lifted Gareth out of Gawain's bed, then pushed the twins over and tucked the younger boy in beside them. None of them so much as stirred. She pulled the coverlets up close round them, and pointed Mordred silently to the place beside Gawain. He stripped, and slipped into the warmth of the bed. The old woman tut-tutted round the room for a few more minutes, picking up discarded clothing and laying it on the chest between the beds, then went out, shutting the door gently behind her. Mordred was asleep before she even left the room.

And now it was daylight, a new day, and he was wide awake. He stretched luxuriously, with excitement running through his body. He could feel it in his very bones. The bed was soft and warm, and smelled only slightly of the dressed furs that covered it. The room was big, and to his eyes very well furnished, with the two wide beds and the clothes-chest and a thick woven rug hanging over the door to keep out the worst of the draughts. Floor and walls alike were made with the flat, local stone slabs. At this early hour, even in summer, the room was very cold, but it was cleaner than Sula's hut could ever be, and something in the boy recognized and welcomed this as desirable. Between the beds, above the clothes-chest, was a narrow window through which the early morning air poured, cool and clean and smelling of the salt wind.

He could lie still no longer. Gawain, beside him, still slept, curled like a puppy in the welter of furs. In the other bed little could be seen of the twins save the tops of their heads; Gareth had been pushed to the bed's edge, and lay sprawling half out of it, but still deeply asleep.

Mordred slid out of bed. He padded to the clothes-chest, and, kneeling upon it, looked out of the window. This faced away from the sea; from it, by craning, he could see the courtyard and the main outer gateway of the palace. The sound of the sea came muted, a murmur under the incessant calling and mewing of the gulls. He looked the other way, beyond the palace walls, where a track ran green through the heather towards the summit of a gentle hill. Beyond that curved horizon lay his foster home. His father would be breaking his fast now, and soon would be gone about his work. If Mordred wanted to see him (to get it over with, said a small voice, quickly stifled in the dark and barely heeded rearward of his mind) he must go now.

On the chest lay the good tunic that he had been given last night, with a cloak, a brooch, and a leather belt with a buckle of copper. But in the very moment of reaching for the prized new clothing he changed his mind, and with something like a shrug picked up his old garment from the corner where he had thrown it, and slipped it on. Then, ducking past the door curtain, he let himself out of the room, and padded barefooted along the chill stone corridors to the hall.

The hall was still full of sleepers, but guards were changing duty for the morning shift, and servants were already moving. No one stopped him or spoke to him as he picked his way across the cluttered floor and out into the courtyard. The outer gate was open, and a cart of turfs was being dragged in by a couple of peasants. The two guards stood watching, at ease, eating their breakfast bannocks and taking turn and turn about to drink from a horn of ale.

As Mordred approached the gate one of the men saw him, nudged the other, and said something inaudible. The boy hesitated, half expecting to be stopped, or at any rate questioned, but neither of the men made a move to do so. Instead, the nearest one lifted a hand up in a half-salute, and then stood back to let the boy go by.

Perhaps no other moment of royal ceremony in Prince Mordred's life was ever to equal that one. His heart gave a great bound, right into his throat, and he felt the colour rush into his cheeks. But he managed a calm enough "Good morning," then ran out through the palace gate and up the green track into the moor.

He ran along the track, his heart still beating high. The sun came up, and long shadows streamed away ahead of him. The night's dew shivered and steamed on the fine grasses, on the rushes smoothed by the light wind, till the whole landscape thrilled and shimmered with light, a softer repetition of the endless, achingly bright shimmer of the sea. Overhead, the clouds wisped back, and the air filled with singing as the larks launched themselves from their nests in the heather. The air rippled with song as the land with light. Soon he reached the summit of the moor, and before him stretched the long, gentle slope towards the cliffs, and beyond them again the endless, shining sea.

From this point he could see, clear across the sea in the early light, the hills of the High Island. Beyond them lay the mainland — the real mainland, the great and wonderful land that the islanders called, half in jest, half in ignorance, "the next island." Many times, from his father's boat, he had seen its northern cliffs, and had tried to imagine the rest; its vastness, its forests, its roads and ports and cities. Today, though hidden from view, it had ceased to be a dream. It was the High Kingdom, to which he would one day travel, and where he would one day matter. If his new status was to mean anything, it would mean that. He would see to it.

He laughed aloud with joy, and ran on.

He came to the turf cutting. He paused, deliberately lingering by the ditch he had dug only yesterday. How long ago, already, it seemed. Brude would have to finish it now — alone, too, though lately he had been complaining about pains in his back. Perhaps, thought the boy, since they were apparently going to leave him free to come and go from the palace, he could come down early each day for an hour before the other boys were up, and finish the digging. And if he were given real princely status, with servants, he could maybe set them to the task, or to the collecting of the lichens for his mother's dyestuffs. The basket was still standing there by the diggings, where he had left it yesterday, forgotten. He snatched it up, and ran on down the track.

The gulls were up, and screaming. The sound met him, raw on the wind from the sea. Something else was on that wind, a strange smell, and in the gulls' screaming a high shiver of panic that touched him like the edge of a knife. Smoke? There was usually smoke from the cottage, but this was a different smoke, a sour, chilled and sullen emanation, carrying with it a smell that mocked the good scent of roasting meat on the rare days when Sula had meat in the pot. This was not a good smell; it was sickening, an ugly mockery, making the morning foul.

Mordred's breeding, perverse though it was, had made him the child of one fighting king, and the grandson, twice over, of another. This combined with his hard peasant upbringing to make fear, for him, something to be faced immediately, and found out. He flung the basket of lichens down and ran full tilt along the cliff path, to where he could see down into the bay that had been his home.

Had been. The familiar cottage, with its clay oven, its lines of pegged fish, the hanging festoons of drying nets — all had vanished. Only the four walls of his home still stood, blackened and smoking with the sluggish, stinking smoke that befouled the sea-wind. Most of the outer roof slabs still lay in place, held as they were by stone supports built into the walls, but those in the center were thinner, and here and there had been pegged into place by driftwood. The thatch of the roof, dry with summer, had burned fiercely, and, with the pegs destroyed, the slabs had sagged, tilted, and then cracked, sliding down with their blazing load of thatch into the room below, making a pyre of what had been his home.

It must be, in very truth, a pyre. For now, retchingly, he recognized the smell that had reminded him of Sula's cooking pots. Sula herself, with Brude, must be inside — underneath that pile of burned rubble. The roof had fallen directly over their bedplace. To Mordred, groping, dazed, for the cause of disaster, there was only one explanation. His parents must have been asleep when some stray spark from the unwatched embers, blown by the draught, had lodged in the wind-dried turfs of the roof, and smouldered to a blaze. It was to be hoped that they had never woken, had perhaps been rendered unconscious by the smoke, to be killed by the falling roof before the fire even touched them.

He stood there so long, staring, unbelieving, sick, that only the sharp wind, piercing the shabby tunic to the skin, made him shiver suddenly and move. He squeezed his eyes shut, as if in some silly hope that when he opened them the place would be whole again, the horror only a nightmare dream. But the horror remained. His eyes, wide again, showed wild like a nervous pony's. He started slowly down the path, then suddenly, as if some invisible rider had applied whip and spur, he began to run.

Some two hours later Gawain, sent from the palace, found him there.

Mordred was sitting on a boulder at some distance from the cottage, staring out to sea. Nearby lay Brude's upturned boat, unharmed. Gawain, pale and shocked, called his name, but when Mordred gave no sign of having heard him, he reluctantly approached to touch the unheeding boy on the arm.

"Mordred. They sent me to find you. What on earth's happened?"

No reply.

"Are they — your folk — are they — in there?"

"Yes."

"What happened?"

"How do I know? It was like that when I came down."

"Ought we to — is there anything—?"

Mordred moved at that. "Don't go near. You are not to go. Let them."

He spoke sharply, authoritatively. It was the tone of an elder brother. Gawain, held by horrified curiosity, obeyed without thinking. The men who had come with him were already at the cottage, peering about them with subdued exclamations, whether of horror or simple disgust it was hard to tell.

The two boys watched, Gawain half sickened, half fascinated, Mordred pale, and stiff in every muscle.

"Did you go in?" asked Gawain.

"Of course. I had to, hadn't I?"

Gawain swallowed. "Well, I think you should come back now, with me. The queen must be told." Then, when Mordred made no move: "I'm sorry, Mordred. It's a dreadful thing to happen. I'm sorry. But there's nothing you can do now, you must see that. Leave it to them. Let's go now, shall we? You look ill."

"I'm all right. I was sick, that's all." He slid down off the boulder, stooped to a rock pool, and dashed a handful of the salt water into his face. He straightened, rubbing his eyes as if coming out of sleep. "I'll come now. Where have the men gone?" Then, angrily: "Have they gone inside? What's it to them?"

"They have to," said Gawain quickly. "Don't you see, the queen will have to know.… It isn't as if they — your folk — as if they had just been ordinary folk, is it?" Then, as Mordred turned to stare at him, half blindly: "Don't forget who you are now, and they were the king's servants, themselves, in a way. She has to know what happened, Mordred."

"It was an accident. What else?"

"I know. But she has to have a report. And they'll do whatever's decent. Come on, we don't have to stay. There's nothing we can do, nothing at all."

"Yes, there is." Mordred pointed to the cottage door, where the milch goat, bleating, pattered to and fro, to and fro, frightened by the unaccustomed movement, the smells, the chaos, but driven by the pain of her swollen udders. "We can milk the goat. Have you ever milked a goat, Gawain?"

"No, I haven't. Is it easy? Are you going to milk it now? Here?"

Mordred laughed, the brittle, light laugh of tensions released. "No. We'll take her with us. And the hens, too. If you get that net that's drying on the boat's keel, I'll see if I can catch them."

He dived for the nearest, secured it in an expert grip, then swooped on another as it wrestled with some titbit in the seaweed. The simple anticlimax to tragedy did its work as grief and shock exploded thankfully into action. Gawain, prince and king-designate of Orkney, stood irresolutely for a few moments, then did as he was bidden, and ran to strip the net off the upturned boat.

When the men at length emerged from the cottage and stood, in a close-talking huddle, near the doorway, they saw the two boys toiling up the path. Gawain led the goat, and Mordred carried, slung over his shoulder, an improvised bag of netting filled with protesting hens.

Neither boy looked back.

They were met at the palace gate by Gabran, who listened in silence to the story Gawain poured out, and thereafter, having spoken gently to Mordred, called up servants to rid the boys of their livestock ("And she is to be milked straight away!" insisted Mordred) and then hurried them straight into the palace.

"The queen must be told. I shall go to her now. Mordred, go in and change and make yourself decent. She will want to see you. Gawain, go with him."

He hurried off. Gawain, looking after him with narrowed eyes, as if seeing something far away and bright, said under his breath: "And one day, my fine Gabran, you will not command princes as if they were your dogs. We know whose dog you are! Who are you to take news to my mother in my place?" He flashed a sudden grin at Mordred. "All the same, I'd sooner he did today! Come on, we'd better get clean."

The twins were in the boys' room, ostensibly busy, but obviously waiting with some impatience for their first sight of their new half-brother. Agravain was sitting on the bed sharpening his dagger on a whetstone, while Gaheris, on the floor, rubbed a leather belt with grease to flex it. Gareth was not there.

The twins were stocky, well-built boys, with the ruddy hair and high colour that marked Morgause's sons by Lot, and, at the moment, sullen expressions that were something less than welcoming. But it had apparently been made clear to them that Mordred must be welcomed, for they gave him a civil enough greeting, and thereafter sat staring at him, much as cattle do at something strange and perhaps dangerous that has strayed into their pasture.

A servant hurried in with a bowl of water and a napkin, which he set on the floor. Gawain ran to the clothes-chest and threw Mordred's things off onto his bed. He burrowed inside the chest for his own things, while Mordred began to strip.

"What are you changing for?" asked Agravain.

"Our mother wants us," said Gawain, muffled.

"Why?" asked Gaheris.

Gawain shot a look at Mordred that meant, plainly, Not a word. Not yet. Aloud, he said: "That's our business. You'll hear later."

"Him, too?" Agravain pointed at Mordred.

"Yes."

Agravain was silent, watching as Mordred slipped into one of the new tunics, and reached for the worked leather belt with its sheath for a dagger, and the hanger for a drinking horn. He fastened the buckle, and looked about him for the silver-mounted horn Ailsa had given him.

"It's there, on the window sill," said Gaheris.

"Did she really give you that one? You're lucky. It's a beauty. It's the one I asked for," said Agravain. The words were not angry or sullen, in fact they contained no expression at all, but Mordred's eyes flicked to him and then away again, as he clipped the horn to his belt.

"There was only one." Gawain spoke over his shoulder. "And you and Gaheris always have to have the same."

"Gareth's to get the golden one," said Gaheris. He spoke in the same flat, unboylike tone. Again Mordred glanced, and again the lids dropped over his eyes. Something had registered in that cool brain, and was stored away for the future.

Gawain wiped his face and dried it, then threw the napkin to Mordred, who caught it. "Be quick, then we've got to do our feet. She's fussy about the rugs." He glanced round. "Where's Gareth, anyway?"

"With her, of course," said Gaheris.

"Did you expect a full council of welcome, then, brother?" asked Agravain.

Conversing with the twins, thought Mordred, drying his feet, was like talking with a boy and his reflection. Gawain said sharply: "It'll keep. I'll see you later. Come on, Mordred, we'd better go."

Mordred stood up, smoothing down the soft folds of the new tunic, and followed Gawain to the doorway. The servant, coming in at that moment for the bowl, held the door wide. Gawain paused without thinking, the natural gesture of a host letting the guest precede him through the doorway. Then, as if remembering something, he went quickly through himself, leaving Mordred to follow.

The queen's door was guarded as before. The spears came down as the boys approached. "Not you, Prince Gawain," said one of the men. "Orders. Just the other one."

Gawain stopped short, then stood to one side, his face stony. When Mordred glanced at him, with a word of half-anxious apology ready, he turned quickly away without speaking, and strode off down the corridor. His voice rang out, calling for a servant, peremptory, self-consciously royal.

All three of them, thought Mordred to himself. Well, Gawain's still generous because of the cliffside rescue, but the other two are angry. I'll have to go carefully. The quick brain behind the smooth brow added it all together, and found a total that did not displease him. So they saw him as a threat, did they? Why? Because he was, in fact. King Lot's eldest son? Somewhere deep inside him that tiny spark of emulation, of longing, of desire for high doing, kindled and glowed as something new: ambition. Disjointed but clear, his thoughts spun. Bastard or not, I am the king's eldest son, and they don't like it. Does this mean that I really am a threat? I must find out. Perhaps he married her, my mother, whoever she was…? Or perhaps a bastard can inherit… his Arthur himself was begotten out of wedlock, and so was Merlin, that found the King's sword of Britain.… Bastardy, what need it matter after all? What a man is, is all that counts.…

The spears lifted. The queen's door was open. He pushed the contused and mounting thoughts aside, and came to the core of the matter. I shall have to be careful, he thought. More than careful. There is no reason at all why she should favour me, but as she does, I must take care. Not just of them. Of her. Most of all, of her.

He went in.

6

MORDRED, DURING THE LONELY vigil on the beach, and then the long, silent trudge back to the palace and the bracing exchange with the twins in the boys' room, had had ample time to regain something like his normal — and formidably adult — self-command. Morgause, scanning him closely as he approached her, did not guess at it. The delayed effects of shock still showed, and the disgust and horror of what he had seen had drained the blood from his face and the life from his movements. The boy who walked forward and stood in front of the queen was silent and white-faced and kept his downcast eyes on the floor, while his hands, tucked into the new leather belt, gripped themselves into fists which apparently fought to control his emotion.

So Morgause interpreted it. She sat in her chair by the window where the sun poured in and made a pool of warmth. Gabran had gone out again, taking Gareth with him, but the queen's women were there, at the far end of the room, three of them at their stitchery, a fourth sorting a basketful of newly spun wool. The distaff, polished from much use, lay beside her on the floor. Mordred was reminded, sharply, at a moment when he least wanted it, of Sula's long days spent in the cottage doorway, spinning, a task which of late had been increasingly painful to her knotted fingers. He looked away, staring at the floor, and hoping, with violence, that the queen's condolences and kindness would not overset his control.

He need have had no fear. Morgause set her chin on her fist, regarding him. In the new clothes he looked princely, and enough like Arthur to make her eyes narrow and her mouth tighten as she said, in a light pretty voice as emotionless as a bird's: "Gabran told me what has happened. I am sorry."

She sounded completely indifferent. He glanced up, then down again, and said nothing. Why, indeed, should she care? For her it was a relief not to have to pay any more. But for Mordred… In spite of all the trappings of princedom, he saw his position. With no other place to go to, he was completely at the mercy of a queen who, apart from the trivial debt of the cliff climb, had no cause to wish him well. He did not speak.

Morgause proceeded to make the situation plain. "It seems that, nonetheless, the Goddess watches over you, Mordred. Had you not been brought to our notice, what would have become of you now, without a home, or any way to make a livelihood? Indeed, you might well have perished with your foster parents in the flames. Even had you escaped, you would have had nothing. You would have become a servant to any peasant who needed a skilled hand with his boat and net. A serfdom, Mordred, as hard to break out of as slavery."

He neither moved nor glanced up, but she saw the faint tremor of bracing muscles, and smiled to herself.

"Mordred. Look at me."

The boy's eyes lifted, expressionless.

She spoke crisply. "You have had a sad shock, but you must fight to put it behind you. You know now that you are a king's bastard, and that all you have owed to your foster home is your food and lodging — and even that by the king's orders many years ago. I also had my orders, and have obeyed them. I might never have chosen to take you from your foster home, but chance and fate willed it otherwise. The very day before you met Prince Gawain on the cliff, I saw something in the crystal that warned me."

She paused on the lie. There had been a brief flash in the boy's eyes. She interpreted it as the half-frightened, half-fascinated interest that the poor folk accorded her pretensions to magic power. She was satisfied. He would be her creature, as were the other palace folk. Without magic, and the terror she took care that it invoked, a woman could hardly have held this stark and violent kingdom, so far from the protecting swords of the kings whose task it was to keep Britain as one. She went on: "Don't misunderstand me. I had no warning of last night's disaster. If I had looked into the pool — well, perhaps. But the Goddess works in strange ways, Mordred. She told me you would come to me, and see, you have come. So now it is doubly right that you should forget all that is past, and try your best to become a fighting man who has a place here in the court." She eyed him, then added, in a softer tone: "And indeed, you are welcome. We shall see that you are made so. But, king's bastard or not, Mordred, you must earn your place."

"I will, madam."

"Then go now, and begin."

So Mordred was absorbed into the life of the palace, a life in its own way as harsh and uncompromising as his previous peasant existence, and rather less free.

The Orkney stronghold boasted nothing that a mainland king would have recognized as a military training-ground. Outside the palace walls the moor sloped up gently to landward, and this wild stretch, flat enough, and in good weather dry enough for soldiers to maneuver on, served as parade ground, practice ground, and playground, too, for the boys when they were allowed the freedom of it. Which was almost daily, for the princes of Orkney had to suffer no such formal lessons in the arts of war as disciplined the sons of the greater, mainland chiefs. Had King Lot still lived, and kept his state at Dunpeldyr in his mainland kingdom of Lothian, he would no doubt have seen to it that his elder sons, at least, went out daily with sword or spear or even the bow, to learn the bounds of their home country, and to see something of the lands that marched with theirs, from which threats or help might come in time of war. But in the islands there was no need for this kind of vigilance. All winter long — and winter lasted from October until April, and sometimes May — the seas kept the shores, and often even the neighbouring isles were seen only as clouds floating behind the other clouds that scudded, laden with rain or snow, across the sea. In some ways the boys liked winter best. Then Queen Morgause, snugged down in her palace against the incessant winds, spent her days by the fireside, and they were free even of her spasmodic interest. They were free to join the hunts for deer or boar — no wolves were to be found on the island — and enjoyed the breakneck rides when, armed with spears, they followed the shaggy hounds over wild and difficult country. There were seal-hunts, too, bloody, exciting forays over the slippery rocks, where a false step could mean a broken leg, or worse. Their bows they were soon expert with; the island abounded in birds, which could be hunted at any time. As for swordplay and the arts of war, the queen's officers saw to the first, and the second could be picked up any evening round the supper fires of the soldiers in the courtyard. Of formal learning there was none. It is possible that, in the whole of the kingdom, Queen Morgause herself was the only one who knew how to read. She kept a box full of books in her room, and sometimes, by the winter fire, she would unroll one of these, while her women looked on, awed, and begged her to read to them. This she did only rarely, because the books were for the most part collections of the old lores that men called magic, and the queen guarded her skills with jealousy. About these the boys knew nothing, and would have cared less. Whatever the power — and it was genuine enough — that had come down through some trick of the blood to Morgause, and to Morgan her half-sister, it had quite passed by every one other five sons. Indeed, they would have despised it. Magic, to them, was something for women; they were men; their power would be that of men; and they pursued it eagerly.

Mordred, perhaps, more eagerly than any. He had not expected to be received easily and at once into the brotherhood of the princes, and indeed, there were difficulties. The twins were always together, and Gawain kept young Gareth close by him, protecting him against the rough fists and feet of the twins, and at the same time trying to stiffen him against the over-indulgence of his mother.

It was through this that, in the end, Mordred broke into the charmed square of Morgause's legitimate children. One night Gawain woke to hear Gareth sobbing on the floor. The twins had thrown him out of bed onto a the cold stone, and then laughingly fought off the child's attempts to climb back into the warmth. Gawain, too sleepy to take drastic action, simply pulled Gareth into his own bed, which meant that Mordred had to move out and bed down with the twins. They, wide awake and spoiling for trouble, did not move to make way for him, but, each to his edge of the wide bed, set themselves to defend it.

Mordred stood in the cold for a few minutes, watching them, while Gawain, unaware of what was going on, comforted the youngest boy, paying no heed to the stifled giggles of the twins. Then, without attempting to get into bed, Mordred reached suddenly forward, and, with a swift tug, dragged the thick furred coverlet away from the boys' naked bodies, and prepared to bed down with it himself, on the floor.

Their yells of fury roused Gawain, but he merely laughed, his arm round Gareth, and watched. Agravain and Gaheris, goosefleshed with cold, hurled themselves, all fists and teeth, at Mordred. But he was quicker, heavier, and completely ruthless. He flung Agravain back across the bed with a blow in the belly that left him retching for breath, then Gaheris's teeth met in his arm. He whipped up his leather belt from the chest where it lay, and lashed the other boy over back and buttocks till he let go and, howling, ran to protect himself behind the bed.

Mordred did not follow them. He threw the coverlet back on the bed, dropped the belt on the chest, then climbed into bed, covering himself against the brisk draught from the window.

"All right. Now that's settled. Come in. I won't touch you again, unless you make me."

Agravain, sulky and swallowing, waited only a minute or two before obeying. Gaheris, hands to his buttocks, spat furiously: "Bastard! Fisher-brat!"

"Both," said Mordred equably. "The bastard makes me older than you, and the fisher-brat stronger. So get in and shut up."

Gaheris looked at Gawain, got no help there, and, shivering, obeyed. The twins turned their backs to Mordred, and apparently went straight to sleep.

From the other side of the chamber Gawain, smiling, held up a hand in the gesture that meant "victory." Gareth, the tears drying on his face, was grinning hugely.

Mordred answered the gesture, then pulled the coverlet closer and lay down. Soon, but not before he was certain that the twins were genuinely asleep, he allowed himself to relax into the warmth of the furs, and drifted off himself into a slumber where, as ever, the dreams of desire and the nightmares were about equally mingled.

After that there was no real trouble. Agravain, in fact, conceived some kind of reluctant admiration for Mordred, and Gaheris, though in this he would not follow his twin, accorded him a sullen neutrality. Gareth was never a problem. His sunny nature, and the drastically swift revenge that Mordred had taken on his tormentors, ensured that he was Mordred's friend. But the latter took good care not to come between the little boy and the object of his first worship. Gawain was the one who mattered most, and Gawain, having in his nature something of the Pendragon that superseded the dark blood of Lothian and the perverse powers of his mother, would be quick to resent any usurper. As far as Gawain was concerned, Mordred himself stayed neutral, and waited. Gawain must make the pace.

So autumn went by, and winter, and by the time summer came round again, Seals' Bay was only a memory. Mordred, in bearing, dress, and knowledge of the arts necessary to a prince of Orkney, could not be distinguished from his half-brothers. The eldest by almost a year, he was necessarily matched with Gawain rather than with the younger ones, and though at first Gawain had the advantage of training, in time there was little to choose between them. Mordred had subtlety, call it cunning, and a cool head; Gawain had the flashing brilliance that on his worse days became rashness and sometimes savagery. On the whole they met equal to equal with their weapons, and respected one another with liking, though not with love. Gawain's love was still and always for Gareth, and, in a strained and often unhappy way, for his mother. The twins lived for each other. Mordred, though accepted and seemingly at home in his new surroundings, stood always outside the family, self-contained, and apparently content to be so. He saw little of the queen, and was unaware of how closely she watched him.

One day, after autumn had come again, he went down to Seals' Bay. He came to the head of the cliff path and stood as he had so often stood, looking down into the green dip of the bay. It was October, and the wind blew strongly. The heather was black and dead-looking, and here and there in the damp places the sphagnum moss grew golden green and deep. Most of the seabirds had gone south, but still out over the gray water the white gannets hovered and splashed like sea-spirits. Down in the bay the weather had so worked on the ruined cottage that the walls, washed clear of the mud that had bound their stones together, looked more like piles of rock thrown there by the tide than like part of a human dwelling. The burned and blackened debris had been long since dispersed by wind and sea.

Mordred walked down the slope and trod deliberately over the rain-washed grass to the door of his foster home. Standing on the sill, he looked about him. It had rained hard during the past week, and pools of fresh water stood here and there. In one of them, something white showed. He stooped to it, and his hand met bone.

For a shrinking second he paused, then with a sudden movement grasped the thing, and lifted it. A fragment of bone, but whether animal or human he could not tell. He stood with it in his hand, trying deliberately to let it conjure up emotion or memory. But time and weather had done their work; it was cleansed, sterile, indifferent as the stones on the storm beach. Whatever those people, that life, had been, it was over. He dropped the bone back in the flooded crevice, and turned away.

Before he climbed the path again he stood looking out to sea. Free he was now, in one sense; but what his whole being longed for was the freedom that lay beyond that barrier of water. Still something in his spirit beat itself against the space of air that lay between the Orkneys and the mainland kingdoms that were the High Kingdom.

"I'll go there," he said to the wind. "Why else did it all happen as it did? I'll go there, and see what can be made of a bastard prince from Orkney. She can't stop me. I'll take the next ship."

Then he turned his back on the cove, and went home to the palace.

7

IT WAS NOT WITH THE NEXT ship, or even in the next year, that the chance came. In the event Mordred, true to his nature, was content to watch and bide his time. He would go, but not until something was assured for him. He well knew how little chance there was in the world beyond the islands for an untried and untrained boy; such a one would end — king's bastard or no — in penniless servitude or slavery. Life in Orkney was better than that. Then, in his third summer in the palace, a certain ship from the mainland put into harbour, and it became, suddenly, interesting.

The Meridaun was a small trader newly come from Caer y n'a Von, as people now called the old Roman garrison town of Segontium in Wales. She carried pottery goods and ores and smelted iron and even weapons for an illegal market run by the small smithies back of the barracks in the fortified port.

She also carried passengers, and to the islanders who crowded to the wharf to meet her, these were of more interest even than the much-needed goods. Ships brought news, and the Meridaun, with her mixed cargo of travellers, brought the biggest news for many years.

"Merlin is dead!" shouted the first man off the gangplank, big with the news, but before the crowd, pressing eagerly nearer, could ask him for details, the next asserted loudly:

"Not so, good folk, not so! Not when we left port, that is, but it's true he's very sick, and not expected to see the month out.…"

Gradually, in response to the crowd's clamour for details, more news emerged. The old enchanter was certainly very ill. There had been a recurrence of the falling sickness, and he had been in a coma — "a sleep like death itself" — and had neither moved nor spoken for many days. The sleep might even now have passed into death.

The boys, with the townsfolk, had gone down to the wharf for news. The younger princes, eager and excited at the commotion and the sight of the ship, pressed forward with the crowd. But Mordred hung back. He heard the buzz of talk, the shouted questions, the self-important answers; noise surrounded him, but he might have been alone. He was back in a kind of dream. Once before, dimly in shadows somewhere, he had heard the same news, told in a frightened whisper. He had forgotten it till now. All his life he had heard tales of Merlin, the King's enchanter, along with tales of the High King himself and the court at Camelot; why, then, somewhere deep in a dream, had he already heard the news of Merlin's death? It had certainly not been true then. Perhaps it was not true now.…

"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. "And that's what you meant, too? That she's taking all that treasure to buy herself back in?"

Gawain, busy with a rope, did not reply. Gareth, understanding only half of what was said, put in eagerly: "If she goes, too, then she will take me, I know she will!"

"Buy herself back in!" Agravain repeated it explosively. "Why, that's folly! It's easy to see what's happened. It was that wicked old man Merlin who poisoned the High King's mind against us, and now he's dead at last, because you can bet anything you like, that's the news the ship brings, and now we can go to court at Camelot, and lead the High King's Companions!"

"Better and better." Mordred spoke more dryly than ever. "When I asked if you would want to go, I was remembering that you didn't approve of his policies."

"Oh, his policies," said Agravain, impatiently. "This is different. This may be a chance to get away from here, and into the middle of things. Just let me get there, to Camelot, I mean, and get half a chance to see some life and some fighting, and to hell with his policies!"

"But what fighting will there be? That's the whole point, isn't it? That's what you were so angry about. If he is really set on making a lasting peace with Cerdic the Saxon, you won't see any fighting."

"He's right," said Gaheris, but Agravain laughed.

"We'll see. For one thing, I don't think even Arthur will get a Saxon king to agree to terms and keep them, and for another, once I get there, and within reach of any Saxon, treaty or not, there'll be fighting!"

"Fine talking," said Gaheris, with scorn.

"But if there's a treaty—" began Gareth indignantly.

Gawain interrupted. His voice was tense and even, overlying excitement. "Hold your tongues, the lot of you. Let's get back home and find out. At the very least it's news. Mordred, may we put about now?" For Mordred, by consent, was always captain of their sea-going expeditions, as Gawain was of their forays by land.

Mordred nodded, and gave the orders for trimming the sail. That he allotted the hardest tasks to Agravain may not have been coincidence, but the latter said nothing, hung on to the bucking rope, and helped to bring the lively boat about and send it skimming landwards, rocking in the spreading wake of the King's ship.

Whether or not the ship carried any message concerning the boys, a royal envoy had certainly been on board, and had gone ashore before the ship was barely trimmed to the quay. Though he spoke to no one save for a brief acknowledgment of the courtesy meeting accorded him by the queen's chief men, part of his news was already known to the crew, and by the time the boys beached their craft and scrambled ashore, the words were passing from mouth to mouth with a knell of awe and dread, mingled with the poor folks' furtive excitement at the thought of such a momentous change in high places.

The boys crowded in, listening where they could, questioning those of the crew who were on the wharfside.

It was as they had guessed. The old magician was dead at last. He had been entombed, with splendid mourning, in his own cave of Bryn Myrddin, near Maridunum, where he had been born. One of the soldiers accompanying the King's messenger had been there on duty, and told vivid tales of the ceremony, the King's grief, of fires the length and breadth of the land, and finally of the court's return to Camelot and the dispatch of the royal ship to the Orkneys. About its business there the sailors were vague, but the rumour went, they told the boys, that Queen Morgause's family were to be taken back forthwith to the mainland.

"I told you so!" said Gaheris to his brothers, in triumph. They began to run along the road that led to the palace. Mordred, after a second's hesitation, followed. Suddenly, it seemed, things had changed. He was on the outside again, and Lot's four sons, united in the golden prospect opening before them, seemed hardly to notice him. They were talking busily as they ran.

"—And it was Merlin who advised the High King to make the Saxon peace," panted Agravain.

"So perhaps now we'll see our uncle taking the sword again," said Gaheris happily. "And he'll want us—"

"And break his own sworn oath?" asked Gawain, sharply.

"Perhaps it isn't only us he wants," said Gareth. "Perhaps he's sent for our mother, too, now that Merlin's gone. He was a wicked man, I've heard her say so, and he hated her because he was jealous of her magic. She told me that. Perhaps, now he's dead, our mother will work magic for the King instead."

"The King's enchantress? He's got one already," said Gawain, dryly. "Didn't you hear? The lady Nimuë has Merlin's power, and the King turns to her for everything. So they were saying."

They were near the gate now. They dropped to a walk. Gareth turned to his half-brother.

"Mordred, when we go to Camelot, you'll be the only one left here. What will you do?"

The only one left here.… The firstborn of the King of Orkney, left, alone of the princes, in Orkney? Mordred saw the same thought strike Gawain at the same moment. He said, shortly: "I haven't thought about it. Come on, let's get in and find out what the man has to say."

He ran in through the gate. Gawain hung on his heel for a moment, then followed, and the rest with him.

The palace was buzzing, but no one knew anything except the larger rumours that the boys had already heard. The envoy was still closeted with the queen. People crowded in the corridors and in the hall, but made way for the princes when in a short time, clean and changed, they pushed their way through to the doors that led to the queen's private chambers.

Time went by. The light began to fade, and servants went about kindling the torches. It was time to eat. Cooking smells crept through the rooms, making the boys remember their hunger. In their excitement they had not eaten the barley cakes they had had in the boat. But still the queen's door did not open. Once they heard her voice, raised sharply, but whether in anger or excitement it was impossible to tell. The boys shifted uneasily, looking at one another.

"It must be true that we are to go," said Agravain. "What other message would our uncle the High King send with one of the royal ships?"

"Even if it isn't," said Gawain, "we can surely send a message back by the ship to our uncle the High King, at least to remind him that we exist."

(And if any of them says "our uncle the High King" again, thought Mordred, with savage irritation, I shall start shouting about "my father the King of Lothian and Orkney," and see what they say to that!)

"Hush!" he said aloud. "He's coming out. Now we shall know."

But they were to learn nothing yet. The queen's door opened, and the envoy came out between the guards, his face set and uninformative, as such men are trained to be. He walked forward without a look to right or left, and the people made way for him. No one spoke to him, the princes themselves moving aside without asking any of the eager questions that burned on their lips. Even here, in the islands at the back of the north wind, they knew that one did not question a King's envoy any more than one questioned the King. He brushed past them as if they did not exist — as if a mere messenger of the High King were of more account than all the princes of the islands.

A chamberlain came forward to take him in charge, and he was escorted to the quarters set aside for him in the palace. The queen's door stayed all the while firmly closed.

"I want my supper," said Gareth earnestly.

"It looks as if we'll get it," said Agravain, "long before she's decided to tell us what's going on."

This proved to be the case. It was late that night, verging indeed on the hour when normally the boys were sent to bed, when the queen sent for them at last.

"All five?" repeated Gawain, when the message came.

"All five," said Gabran. He could not help looking curiously at Mordred, and the other four pairs of eyes followed his. Mordred, tensing himself against the sudden upsurge of excitement, hope and apprehension, looked, as was his habit, detached and expressionless.

"And hurry," said Gabran, holding the door.

They hurried.

They filed into Morgause's chamber, silent, expectant, and nervously awed by what they saw there. The queen had used the long interval since the messenger's dismissal to sup, talk with her counsellors, and have a stormy but satisfactory little interlude with Gabran. then she had had her women bathe and dress her in a robe of state, and arrange, for the interview with her sons, a royal setting.

Her tall gilded chair had been carried in from the hall, and she sat there beside a glowing fire of peats with her feet on a crimson footstool. On a table at her elbow stood a golden goblet, still holding wine, and beside this lay the scroll that the King's messenger had given her, the royal seal of the Dragon splashed across it like a bloodstain.

Gabran, leading the boys into the room, crossed the floor to stand behind the queen's chair. No one else was there; the women had long since been dismissed. Beyond the window the midnight moon, at the full, had cooled from marigold to silver, and a sharp-edged blade of light cut across Morgause's chair, sparking on gold and drowning in the folds of her gown. She had had herself dressed in one of her finest robes, a sweeping shimmer of bronze-coloured velvet. Her girdle was set with gold and emeralds, her hair was braided with gold, and on it she had set one of her royal coronets, a thin circlet of red Celtic gold that had been King Lot's, and that the boys had seen before only when they had been allowed to sit in on the formal royal councils.

The torches had been put out, and no lamps were lit. She sat between firelight and moonlight, looking queenly and very beautiful. Mordred, possibly alone of the five, noticed how pale she was beneath the unwonted flush in her cheeks. She had been weeping, he thought, then, more accurately, and with that touch of ice that was all Arthur's: She has been drinking. Gawain is right. They are going away. Then what of me? Why send for me? Because they are afraid to leave me here alone, King Lot's firstborn? Here alone, and royal, what of me? His face gave no sign of his racing thoughts; he held himself still, beside Gawain, and half a head taller, and waited, to all appearances the least concerned person in the room. Then he saw that, of them all, the queen was looking only at him, Mordred, and his heart gave a jump, then settled to a fast, hard beat.

Morgause looked away from him at last, and surveyed them all for a while in silence. Then she spoke.

"You all know that the ship which lies in the harbour comes from my brother the High King Arthur, and that it has brought his ambassador with messages for me."

No reply. She expected none. She looked along the row of boys, at the lifted faces, the eyes that were beginning to sparkle with joyful expectation. "I see that you have been making guesses, and I imagine they are the right ones. Yes, it has come at last, the summons that I know you have longed for. I, too, though it has come in a way I cannot welcome.…You are to go to Camelot, to the court of the High King your uncle."

She paused. Gawain, the privileged, said quickly: "Madam, Mother, if this distresses you I am truly sorry. But we've always known this would happen, haven't we? Just as we know that training and fortune, for those of our blood, must be found one day on the mainland, and in the press of affairs, rather than here in these islands?"

"Certainly." One hand was tapping on the table where the King's letter lay half unrolled. What, Mordred wondered, could the terms of that letter have been, to send Morgause to the wine flask, and to string her up until every nerve was, visibly, vibrating like an overtuned lute string?

Gawain, encouraged by her brief answer, asked impulsively: "Then why don't you welcome the summons? It isn't as if you would be losing—"

"Not the summons itself. The way it has come. We all knew it would happen one day, when — when my chief enemy was gone from the King's side. I have foretold it, and I had my own plans. I would have had you, Gawain, stay here; you are to be king, and your place is here, in my presence or without it. But he has asked for you, so you must go. And this man he has sent, this "ambassador," as he styles himself" — her voice was full of scorn — "is to stay here in your stead as "regent." And who knows where that will lead? I will tell you frankly what I fear. I fear that once you and your brothers are out of the Orkneys, Arthur will cause this creature of his to take from you the only land that still remains yours, as he took Lothian, and leave this man here in your stead."

Gawain, flushed with excitement, was disposed to argue. "But, Mother — madam — surely not? Whatever he did in Dunpeldyr out of enmity to our father King Lot, you are his sister, and we his close kin, all he has. Why should he want to shame and dispossess us?" He added, ingenuously: "He would not do it! Everyone I've talked to — sailors and travellers and the traders who come here from all over the world — they all say that Arthur is a great king, and deals only in justice. You will see, madam Mother, that there's nothing to fear!"

"You talk like a green boy," said Morgause sharply. "But this much is certain, there is nothing to be done here, nothing to be gained by disobeying the King's summons. All we can do is trust in the safe conduct he has sent, but once in Arthur's presence we can take our voices to his council — to the Round Hall if we have to — and see then if, in the face of me, his sister, and you, his nephews, he can refuse us our rights in Dunpeldyr."

Us? We? No one spoke the words, but the thought went from boy to boy with the sourness of disappointment. None of them had admitted to himself that this longed-for enlargement of their world held also the promise of a release from a capricious maternal rule. But each, now, felt a cast-down sense of loss.

Morgause, mother and witch, read it perfectly. Her lip curled. "Yes, I said 'we.' The orders are clear. I am to present myself at the court of Camelot as soon as the High King returns from Brittany. No reason is given. But I am to take with me—" Her hand touched Arthur's letter again. She seemed to be quoting. " '—All five of the princes.' "

"He said 'all five'?" This time the question burst from the twins, speaking as one. Gawain said nothing, but turned to stare at Mordred.

Mordred himself could not have spoken. A confused sense gripped him of elation, of disappointment, of plans made and abandoned, of pride and the anticipation of humiliation. And with these, fear. He was to go to Camelot, by order of the High King himself. He, the bastard of that king's erstwhile enemy. Could it be that all five of Lot's sons were summoned to some doom only held from them till now by the old enchanter's presence? He rejected that immediately. No, the legitimate princes were also the sons of the High King's sister; but what claim had he, Mordred, on any favour from Arthur? None: a memory, only, of enmity, and a tale of a past attempt to murder him by drowning. Perhaps Arthur's memory was as long as this, and now he would finish the work botched in that midnight massacre of long ago.…

This was folly. With the hard control that he had trained in himself, Mordred put speculation aside and concentrated on what was certain. He was going; that at least. And if the King had tried to murder him once, that had been when Merlin was alive, so presumably with Merlin's advice. Now, with Merlin dead, Mordred was at least as safe as his brothers. So he would take what the world of the mainland offered; and at the very least, once out of this island fastness, he could find out, by stealth if need be, or by mere precedent from the King's own advisers, what was due to the eldest born of a king, even when others were born later to supersede him.…

He dragged his attention back to what the queen was saying. They would take their own ship, it seemed, the Orc, which through Morgause's magical prevision was ready, new-rigged and painted and furnished with the luxury she craved.… And the gifts that they would take with them were all but ready.… Clothes for the boys, robes and jewels for their mother… Gabran to go with them, and men of the royal guard… A Council of four to be left in charge of affairs under the High King's ambassador… And since the High King himself would not be back in Camelot before October's end, their journey could be leisurely, and would give them time to visit Queen Morgan in Rheged.…

"Mordred!"

He jumped. "Madam?"

"Stay. The others go. Ailsa!"

The old woman appeared at the bedchamber door.

"Attend the princes to their chamber, and wait on them there. See that they do not linger to talk, but get straight to their beds. Gabran, leave me! No, this way. Wait for me."

Gabran turned on his heel and went into the bedchamber. Gawain, scowling after him, met his mother's eye, wiped the scowl from his face and led his brothers forward to kiss her hand. Ailsa swept them out, beginning to fuss and cluck before the door was well shut.

Mordred, alone with the queen, felt his skin tighten as he braced himself to hear what was to come.

9

AS THE DOOR SHUT BEHIND the other boys, Morgause rose abruptly from her chair, and went to the window.

The move took her out of the firelight and into the waxing silver of the moon. The cold light, behind her shoulder, threw her face and form into darkness, but lit the edges of hair and robe so that she seemed a creature of shadow rimmed with light, half visible and wholly unreal. Mordred felt again that pricking of the skin, as a beast's flesh furs up at the approach of danger. She was a witch, and like everyone else in those islands he feared her powers, which to him were as real and as natural as the dark that follows daylight.

He was too inexperienced, and too much in awe of the queen, to realize that she was at a loss, and was also, in spite of herself, deeply uneasy. The High King's envoy had been cool and curt; the letter he bore had been no more than a brief royal command, officially couched, demanding her presence and that of the five boys; no reason given, no excuse allowed, and an escort of soldiers on the ship to enforce it. Morgause's questions had got nothing more from the ambassador, whose cold demeanour was in itself a kind of threat.

It was not certain, but seemed probable, from the terms of the order, that Arthur had discovered where Mordred was; he obviously suspected, if he did not know, that the fifth boy at the Orkney court was his son. How he knew, she could not imagine. It had been common gossip all those years ago, that she had lain with her half-brother Arthur just before her marriage to Lot, and had been in due time brought to bed of a son, but it was also generally believed that the son, among the other babies of Dunpeldyr, had been murdered. She was sure that no one here in Orkney knew or suspected who Mordred was; the whispers at court were all of "Lot's bastard," the likely boy that the queen favoured. There were, of course, other, lewder whispers, but these only amused the queen.

But somehow Arthur knew. And this letter left no doubt. The soldiers would escort her to Camelot, and all her sons with her.

Morgause, facing the son who was to be her passport to Arthur's favour, to a renewal of power and position in the center of affairs, was trying to decide whether to tell him here and now whose son he was.

Through the years he had been in the palace, living and being taught with his half-brothers, she had never really considered telling him the truth. The time would come, she had told herself, the chance to reveal him and then to use him; either time, or her magic, would show her the moment.

The truth was that Morgause, like many women who work chiefly through their influence on men, was subtle rather than clever, and she was also by temperament lazy. So the years had gone by, and Mordred remained in ignorance, his secret known only to his mother and to Gabran.

But now, somehow, to Arthur, who, hard on Merlin's death, was sending for his son. And though Morgause had for years vilified Merlin through hatred and fear, she knew that it was he who had originally protected both Mordred and herself from Arthur's impetuous fury. So what did Arthur want now? To kill Mordred? To make sure at last? She could not guess. What would happen to Mordred did not concern her except as it would affect herself, but for herself she was apprehensive. Since the night she had lain with her half-brother to engender the boy, she had never seen Arthur; the tales of the powerful and fiercely brilliant king could not altogether be squared with her own memory of the eager boy whom she had entrapped deliberately to her bed.

She stood with her back to the bright moon. Her face was hidden from her son, and when she spoke, her voice sounded coolly normal.

"Have you, like Gawain, been talking to the sailors and the traders who come ashore here?"

"Why, yes, madam. We usually go down to the wharf, along with the folk, to hear the news."

"Have any of them… I want you to think back carefully… have any of them during the past weeks or months singled you out to talk to, and have they questioned you?"

"I don't think — about what, please, madam?"

"About yourself. Who you are, what you are doing here with the princes in the palace." She made it sound reasonable. "Most people here know by this time that you are a bastard of King Lot's, who was farmed out to foster, and who came here on your foster parents' death. What they do not know is that you were saved from the Dunpeldyr massacre, and came here by sea. Have you spoken of this to anyone?"

"No, madam. You told me not to."

Searching that schooled face, those dark eyes, she was convinced. She was used to the guileless stare of the liar—the twins lied frequently for the sheer pleasure of doing it — and was sure this was the truth. Was sure, too, that Mordred was still too much in awe of her to disobey.

She made certain. "That is as well for you." She saw the flicker in the boy's eyes, and was satisfied. "But has anyone questioned you? Anyone at all? Think carefully. Has anyone seemed to know, or to guess about it?"

He shook his head. "I can't remember anything like that. People do say things like "You're from the palace, aren't you? Five sons, then, the queen has? A fortunate lady!" And I tell them that I am the king's son, but not the queen's. But usually," he added, "they ask someone else about me. Not me."

The words were ingenuous, the tone was not. It meant: "They would not dare question me, me, but they are curious, so they ask. I am not interested in what is said."

He caught, against the moonlight, the shadow of a smile. Her eyes were blank and dark, gaps of nothingness. Even her jewels were quenched. She seemed to grow taller. Her shadow, thrown by the moon, grew monstrous, engulfing him. The air felt cold. In spite of himself, he began to shiver.

She watched him, still smiling, as she put out the first dark feelers of her magic. She had made her decision. She would tell him nothing; the long journey south should not be clouded and made difficult by her own sons' reaction to the news of Mordred's real status as son of the High King. Or by the knowledge that must go with it, of their mother's incest with her half-brother. It might be common talk on the mainland, but no one in the islands would have dared repeat it. Her four sons had heard nothing. Even to herself Morgause would not admit how the fact might be received.

For all her powers she had no idea why the King had sent for them. It was possible that he had sent for Mordred only to kill him. In which case, thought Morgause, coolly eyeing her eldest son, there would be no need for him to know anything — or her other sons either. If not, what was needed now was to shackle this boy to her, to ensure his obedience, and for this she had a well-tried pattern. Fear and then gratitude, complicity and then devotion; with these she had proved and held her lovers, and would now hold her son. She said: "You have been loyal. I am glad. I knew it, but I wanted to hear it from you. I need not have asked you, you realize that, don't you?"

"Yes, madam." He was puzzled by the weight she seemed to be putting on the question, but he answered simply. "Everyone knows that you know everything, because you are—" he had been going to say "a witch" but swallowed the word and said instead, "—t you have powers of magic. That you can see what is hidden from other men by distance and by time."

Now it was certain that she was smiling. "A witch, Mordred. Indeed, yes, I am a witch. I have powers. Go on, say it."

He repeated it obediently. "You are a witch, madam, and you have powers."

She inclined her head, and her shadow dipped and grew again. The cold air eddied past him. "And you do well to be afraid of them. Remember them always. And when men come to question you, as they will do, in Camelot, remember the duty you owe to me, as my subject and my — stepson."

"I will. But what will they — why should they—?" He stopped, confused.

"What is going to happen when we reach Camelot? Is that it? Well, Mordred, I will be frank with you; I have had visions, but all is not clear. Something clouds the crystal. We can guess what will come to my sons, his nephews, but to you? Are you wondering what will come to such as you?"

He nodded merely, not trusting his voice. It would have taken a stronger spirit than the island-bred boy's to outface a witch by moonlight. She seemed to gather magic round her, like the moonlight growing on the folds of velvet and in the streaming silk of her hair.

"Listen to me. If you do as I bid you, now and always, you will come to no harm. There is power in the stars, Mordred, and some of it is for you. That much I have seen. Ah, I see that you like that?"

"Madam?" Had she guessed, with her witch's powers, at his dreams, at his ignorant plotting? He held himself in, quivering. She saw his head go up and his fists clench again on the belt at his waist. Watching out of her enveloping darkness, she felt interest and a kind of perverted pride. He had courage. He was her son, after all.… The thought brought another in its wake.

"Mordred."

His eyes sought her in the shadows. She held them for a few moments, letting the silence draw out. He was her son, yes, and who knew what fragment of her power had gone down to him while she held him in her body? None of Lot's sons, those sturdy earthmen, had inherited so much as a flicker of it; but Mordred could be heir not only to the powers she had drawn from her Breton mother, but to some sidelong glimmer of the greater power of the arch-mage, Merlin. The dark eyes raised to hers and held steady there were Arthur's, but they were, too, like the enchanter's hated eyes that had held her own and beaten them down not once but many times before the last.

She asked suddenly: "Have you never wondered who your own mother was?"

"Why, yes. Yes, of course. But—"

"I ask only because there were, in Dunpeldyr, many women who boasted of having the Sight. Was your dam, I wonder, one of those? Do you have dreams, Mordred?"

He was shivering. Through his brain went all the dreams, dreams of power and nightmares of the past: the burned cottage, the whispers in the gloom, fear, suspicion, ambition. He tried to close his mind against her probing magic.

"Madam, lady, I have never — that is—"

"Never known the Sight? Never had a dream of foreknowledge?" Her voice changed. "When the news came before of Merlin's death, with the Meridaun, you knew it was not yet true. You were heard to say so. And events proved you right. How did you know?"

"I — I didn't know, madam. I — that is—" He bit his lip, thinking back confusedly to the wharfside crowd, the shouting, the jostling. Had Gawain told her? No, Gabran must have overheard him. He licked his lips and tried again, patently struggling for the truth. "I didn't even know I had spoken aloud. It meant nothing. It's not the Sight, or — or what you said. It might have been a dream, but I think it was something I'd heard a long time ago, and it turned out then that it wasn't true, either. It makes me think of darkness, and someone whispering, and—" He stopped.

"And?" she demanded sharply. "Well? Answer me?"

"And a smell of fish," Mordred muttered, to the floor. He was not looking at her, or he would have seen the flash of relief, rather than mockery, in her face. She drew a long breath. So, no prevision there; merely a cradle memory, a half-dream from babyhood when those stupid peasants discussed the news that came from Rheged. But it would be better to make sure.

"A strange dream, indeed," she said, smiling. "And certainly this time the messengers are right. Well, let us make sure. Come with me." Then, when he did not move, with a touch of impatience: "Come when I bid you. We shall look into the crystal together now, and maybe we shall find what the future holds for you."

She left the moonlit window and went by him with a brush of velvet on his bare arm, and a faint disbreath of scent like night-flowers. The boy drew an unsteady breath and followed her, like someone drugged. Outside the doorway the guards stood motionless. At the queen's gesture Mordred lifted a lamp down from the wall, then followed her as she led the way through the silent rooms and into the antechamber, where she paused before the sealed doorway.

During his years at the palace the boy had heard many tales about what lay beyond the ancient door. It was a dungeon, a torture chamber, a place where spells were woven, the shrine where the witch-queen spoke with the Goddess herself. No one knew for sure. If anyone but the queen had ever passed through that doorway, it was certain that only the queen had ever come out again. He began to tremble again, and the flame shook in the lamp.

Morgause did not speak. She lifted a key that hung on a chain from her girdle, and unlocked the door. It opened in silence on its greased hinges. At a gesture from her, Mordred held the lamp high. Before them a flight of stone steps led steeply downwards into a passageway. The walls glimmered in the lamplight, sweating with damp. Walls and steps alike were of rough rock, unchiselled, the living rock into which the Old People had burrowed for their burial chambers. The place smelled fresh and damp, and salty from the sea.

Morgause pulled the door shut behind them. The lamp guttered in the draught and then burned strongly. She pointed, in silence, then led the way down the steps and along a passageway, straight and smoothly floored, but so low that they had to stoop to avoid striking their heads on the roof. The air of the place was dead, and one would have said still, but all the while there was a sound that seemed to come from the rock itself: a murmur, a hum, a throb, which Mordred suddenly recognized. It was the sound of the sea, echoing through the passageway more like a memory of waters that had once washed there, than like the sound of the living sea without. The two of them seemed to be walking into the corridors of a vast sea-shell whose swirling echo, straight from the depths, was breathed now by the air. It was a sound he had heard many a time, as a child, playing with shells on the beach of Seals' Bay. Momentarily, the memory dispelled the darkness and the drug of fear. Soon, surely, thought the boy, they would come out into a cave on the open shore?

The passage twisted to the left, and there, instead, was another low door. This, too, was locked, but answered to the same key. The queen led the way in, leaving the door open. Mordred followed her.

It was no cave, but a small room, its walls squared and smoothed by masons, its floor made of the familiar polished slabs. There was a lamp hanging from the rocky ceiling. Against one wall stood a table, on which were boxes and bowls and sealed jars with spoons and pestles and other instruments of ivory and bone, or of bronze bright with use. Stone slabs had been set into the walls to make shelves, and on them stood more boxes and jars, and bags of leather tied with lead wire and stamped with some seal he did not recognize, of circles and knotted snakes. A high stool stood by the table, and against another wall was a small stove, with beside it a skep of charcoal. A fissure in the roof apparently served to lead the fumes away. The stove must be lit frequently, or had been very recently. The room was dry.

On a high shelf glimmered a row of what Mordred took to be globes or jars made of a strange, pale pottery. Then he saw what they were: human skulls. For a sickening moment he imagined Morgause distilling her drugs, here in her secret stillroom, and making her magic from human sacrifices, the dark Goddess herself shut away in her subterranean kingdom. Then he saw that she had merely tidied away the original owners of the place, when the gravechamber had been converted to her use.

It was bad enough. The lamp quivered in his hand again, so that the sheen on the bronze knives trembled, and Morgause said, half smiling: "Yes. You do well to be afraid. But they do not come in here."

"They?"

"The ghosts. No, hold the lamp steady, Mordred. If you are to see ghosts, then be sure to be as well armed against them as I."

"I don't understand."

"No? Well, we shall see. Come, give me the light."

She took the lamp from him and walked towards the corner beyond the stove. Now he saw that there, too, was a door. This one, of rough driftwood planks, was narrow and high, shaped irregularly like a wedge; it had been made to fit another natural fissure in the rock walls. It came open with the creak of warped wood, and the queen beckoned the boy through.

This at last was the sea-cave, or rather, some inner chamber of it. The sea itself drove and thundered somewhere near at hand, but with the hollow boom and suck of a spent force whose power has been broken elsewhere.

This cavern must be above all but the highest tides; the floor was flat, and dry, its slabs tilted only slightly towards the pool that stood at the cavern's seaward side. The only outlet must be deep under the water. No other was visible.

Morgause set the lamp down at the very edge of the water. Its light, still in the draughtless air, glowed steadily, down and down into the inky depths of the water. It must be some time since the pool had been disturbed by any stray pulse of the tides. It lay still and black, and deep beyond imagination or sight. No light could penetrate that black liquid; the lamplight merely threw back, sharp and small, the reflection of the rock that overhung the water.

The queen sank to her knees at the pool's edge, drawing Mordred down beside her. She felt him trembling.

"Are you still afraid?"

Mordred said, through shut teeth: "I am cold, madam."

Morgause, who knew that he was lying, smiled to herself. "Soon you will forget that. Kneel there, pray to the Goddess, and watch the water. Do not speak again until I bid you. Now, son of the sea, let us learn what the pool has to tell us."

She fell silent herself at that, and bent her gaze on the inky depths of the pool. The boy stayed as still as he could, staring down at the water. His mind still swam in confusion; he did not know whether he hoped more, or dreaded more, to see anything in that dead crystal. But he need not have feared. For him, the, water was only water.

Once he stole a glance sideways at the queen. He could not see her face. She was bowed over the water, and her hair, unbound, flowed down to make a tent of silk that reached and touched the surface of the pool. She was so still, so tranced, that even her breathing did not stir the surface where her hair trailed like seaweed. He shivered suddenly, then turned back and stared fiercely down into the water. But if the ghosts of Brude and Sula and of the score of murdered babies that lay to Morgause's account were present in that cave, Mordred saw no hint of them, felt no cold breath. He only knew that he hated the darkness, the tomb-like stillness, the held breath of expectation and dread, the slight but unmistakable emanations of magic that breathed from Morgause's trance-held body. He was Arthur's son, and though the woman, with all her magic, could not know it, this short hour when he was made privy to her secrets was to sever him from her more completely than banishment. Mordred himself was not aware of this; he only knew that the distant suck and thunder of the sea spoke of the open air, and wind, and light on the tide's foam, and drew him irresistibly away in spirit from the dead pool and its drowned mysteries.

The queen moved at last. She drew a long, shuddering breath, then pushed back her hair, and stood up. Mordred jumped thankfully to his feet and hurried to the door, pulling it open for her and following her through the wedge-shaped gap with a sense of relief and escape. Even the stillroom, with its gruesome watchers, seemed, after the silence of the cave, the tranced breathings of the witch, as normal as the palace kitchens. Now he could catch the smell of the oils that Morgause blended to make her heavy perfumes. He latched the door thankfully, and turned to see her setting the lamp down on the table.

It seemed that she already knew the answer to her question, because she spoke lightly.

"Well, Mordred, now you have looked into my crystal. What did you see?"

He did not trust himself to speak. He shook his head.

"Nothing? Are you telling me that you saw nothing?"

He found his voice. It came hoarsely. "I saw a pool of sea-water. And I heard the sea."

"Only that? With the pool so full of magic?" She smiled, and he was surprised. Foolishly, he had expected her to be disappointed.

"Only water, and rock. Reflections of rock. I — I did think once that I saw something move, but I thought it was an eel."

"The fisherman's son." She laughed, but this time the epithet held no mockery. "Yes, there is an eel. He was washed in last year. Well, Mordred, boy from the sea, you are no prophet. Whatever power your true mother may have had, it has passed you by."

"Yes, madam." Mordred spoke with patent thankfulness. He had forgotten what message she had bidden him look for in the crystal. He was wishing violently that the interview was over. The acrid smell of lamp oil mingling with the heavy scents of the queen's unguents oppressed him. His head swam. Even the sound of the sea seemed a whole world away. He was trapped in this shutaway silence, this ancient and airless tomb, with this sorceress of a queen who puzzled him with her questions, and confused him with her strange and shifting moods. She was watching him now, a strange look that made him shift his shoulders as if all at once he felt himself a stranger to the body inside his clothes. He said, more to break the silence than because he wanted to know:

"Did you see anything in the pool, madam?"

"Indeed, yes. It was still there, the vision that I saw yesterday, and before that, before Arthur's messenger ever came here." Her voice went deep and level, but found no echo in that deadened air.

"I saw a crystal cave, and in it my enemy, dead and on his bier between the candles, and no doubt rotting away into the forgetfulness I once cursed him with. And I saw the Dragon himself, my dear brother Arthur, sitting among his gilded towers, beside his barren queen, waiting for his ship to come back to Ynys Witrin. And then myself, with my sons, and with you, Mordred, all of us together, bearing gifts for the King and within the gates of Camelot at last… at last.… And there the vision faded, but not before I saw him coming, Mordred, the Dragon himself… a dragon wingless now, and ready to listen to other voices, try other magic, lie down with other counsellors."

She laughed then, but the sound was as discomforting as her look. "As he did once before. Come here, Mordred. No, leave the lamp alone. We will go up in a minute. Come here. Nearer."

He approached and stood in front of her. She had to look up to meet his eyes. She put up her hands and took him by the arms. "As he did once before," she repeated, smiling.

"Madam?" said the boy hoarsely.

Her hands tightened on his arms. Then suddenly she drew him to her, and before he could guess at what she purposed she reached up and kissed him, lingeringly, upon the mouth.

Bewildered, half-excited, aroused by her scent and the unexpectedly sensual kiss, he stood in her grip, trembling, but not this time with either cold or fear. She kissed him again, and her voice was honey-sweet against his lips. "You have your father's mouth, Mordred."

Lot's mouth? Her husband's, who had betrayed her by lying with his mother? And she kissed him? Wanted him, perhaps? Why not? She was a lovely woman still, and he was young, and as experienced sexually as any boy of his age. There was a certain lady of the court who had taken pleasure in teaching him pleasure, and there was also a girl, a shepherd's daughter who lived a few miles from the palace, who watched for him when he rode that way across the heather, with the evening wind blowing in from the sea.… Mordred, brought up in islands as yet untouched either by Roman civilization or Christian ethic, had no more sense of sin than a young animal, or one of the ancient Celtic gods who haunted the cairns and rode by like rainbows on sunny days. Why, then, should his body recoil, rather than respond to hers? Why feel as if, clingingly, something evil had brushed him by?

She pushed him away suddenly, and reached for the lamp. She lifted it, then paused, looking him over slowly with that same discomforting look. "Trees can grow tall, it seems, Mordred, and still be saplings. Too much, perhaps, yet not enough your father's son.… Well, let us go. I to where my patient Gabran waits for me, and you to your child's bed with the other children. Do I need to remind you to say nothing about anything that has befallen this night, or anything I have said?"

She waited for a reply. He managed to say:

"About this, madam? No. No."

"This"? What is "this"? About anything that you have seen, or not seen. Maybe you have seen enough to know that I am to be obeyed. Yes? Well then, do as I bid you, and you will come to no harm."

She led the way in silence, and he followed her up the passageway and out into the antechamber. The key shot behind them in the well-greased wards. She neither spoke again nor looked at him. He turned and ran from her along the cold corridors and through the dark palace to his bedchamber.

10

DURING THE DAYS THAT FOLLOWED, Mordred tried, along with the other boys, and half the Orcadians besides, to come near enough to the King's envoy to have speech with him. In the case of the islanders, and the younger princes, it was a matter of curiosity. What was the mainland like? The fabled castle of Camelot? The King himself, hero of a dozen stark battles, and his lovely Queen? Bedwyr his friend, and others of the companion knights?

But all, princes and commoners alike, found it impossible to come near the man. After that first night he slept on board the royal ship, and disembarked daily to be escorted, ostensibly for a word of courtesy with Queen Morgause, but really, rumour had it, to make sure that her preparations went forward fast enough to catch the good autumn weather.

The queen was not to be hurried. Her ship, the Orc, lay by the wharf, ready in all but the last touches. Workmen busied themselves with the final gilding and painting, while their women stitched at the great decorated sail. In the palace itself Morgause's own women busied themselves with the finishing, tending and packing of the sumptuous clothes that the queen planned for her reception at Camelot. Morgause herself spent many hours in her secret room below the rock. She was not, as whispers went, consulting her dark Goddess, but in fact concocting unguents and lotions and perfumes, and certain subtle drugs that had the reputation of restoring beauty and the energy of youth.

In his corner of the courtyard, Beltane the goldsmith still sat at his work. The gifts for Arthur were finished, packed in wool in the box made to receive them; the old man was busy now with jewels for Morgause herself. Casso, the dumb slave who helped him, had been set to fashioning buckles and brooches for the princes; though he was not an artist like his master, he made a good job of the designs given him by Beltane, and seemed to enjoy the time the boys spent watching him and talking round the smelting-stove. Mordred, alone of them all, tried some sort of communication with him, asking questions that needed no more than a nod or a shake of the head for answer, but he got no further than a few facts about Casso himself. He had been a slave all his life. He had not always been dumb, but had had his tongue cut out by a cruel master, and considered himself the most fortunate of men to have been taken in by Beltane and taught a trade. A dull life indeed, thought Mordred, and wondered—though only idly—at the air of contentment that the man visibly wore; the air, if the boy had recognized it, of a man who has come to terms with his limitations, and who has made a place for himself in life, which he fills with integrity. Mordred, who had had small reason during his life to think the best of any man, assumed merely that the slave had some sort of satisfactory private life which he managed independently of his master. Women, possibly? He could certainly afford them. When (his master safely abed) the slave joined in the soldiers' dice game, he always had coin in plenty, and easily stood his share of the wine. Mordred knew where the money came from. Not from Beltane, that was sure; who — apart from the odd gift — ever paid his own slaves? But there had been a day a month or so back when Mordred took a small boat out alone and went fishing, coming back late in the half-light that was all the night the islands knew in summer.

There was a small trading ship lying moored at the royal wharf; most of her men were on shore for the night, but some officers were apparently still aboard; he heard a man's voice, and then a chink that might have been the sound of coins passing. As he tied his boat to the wharf in the shadow of the trader he saw a man walk quickly down the gangplank and up through the town towards the palace gate. He recognized Casso. So, the man took commissions privately, did he? Legitimate trading would hardly need to be done at midnight. Well, a man had to fend for himself, thought Mordred, with a shrug, and forgot all about it.

The day came at last. On a bright sunny morning of October the queen with her women, followed by the five boys, Gabran, and her chief chamberlain, headed the stately procession to the wharf. Behind them a man carried the box of treasure destined for Arthur, and another bore gifts for the King of Rheged and his wife, Morgause's sister. A pageboy struggled with the leashes of two tall island-bred hounds destined for King Urbgen, while another boy, looking scared, carried at arm's length a stout wicker cage in which spat and snarled a half-grown wildcat intended as a curious addition to Queen Morgan's collection of strange birds and beasts and reptiles. With them went an escort of Morgause's own men-at-arms, and last of all — ostensibly to honour her but looking suspiciously like a guard — marched a detachment of the King's soldiers from the Sea Dragon.

Even in the merciless light of morning the queen looked lovely. Her hair, washed with sweet essences and dressed with gold, sparkled and shone. Her eyes were bright under their tinted lids. Normally she favoured rich colours, but today she wore black, and the somber dress gave her figure, thickened with child-bearing, almost the old lissome slenderness of her girlhood, and set off the jewels and the creamy skin. Her head was high and her look confident. To either side of the way the islanders crowded, calling greetings and blessings. Their comfort-loving queen had not granted them many such glimpses of her since her banishment to these shores, but now she had given them a sight indeed, a royal procession, queen and princes and their armed and jewelled escort, with, to top all, a sight of King Arthur's own ship with its dragon standard waiting to shepherd the Orc to the mainland kingdom.

The Orc took sail at last, curving out into the strait between the royal island and its neighbour. Astern of her, at the edge of her creaming wake, rode the Sea Dragon, a hound herding the hind and her five young steadily southward into the net spread for them by the High King Arthur.

Once away from the Orkneys with the queen and her family safely embarked, the captain of the Sea Dragon was not too much concerned with speed; the High King was still in Brittany, and Morgause's presence would suffice when he was once more at Camelot. But he had wisely allowed extra time for the voyage in case the ships struck bad weather, and this, very soon, they did. During their passage of the Muir Orc — that strait of the Orcadian Sea that lies between the mainland and the outer isles — they met winds of almost gale force, that drove the two ships apart, and sent even the hardiest of the passengers below. At length, after some days of stormy weather, the gales abated, and the Orcadian ship beat into the sheltered waters of the Ituna Estuary and dropped anchor there. The Sea Dragon struggled into the same wharf a few hours later, to find the Orkney party still on board, but making preparations to go ashore and travel to Luguvallium, the capital of Rheged, to visit King Urbgen and Morgan his queen.

The captain of the Sea Dragon, though perfectly aware that he was prisoners' escort rather than guard of honour, saw no reason to prevent the journey. King Urbgen of Rheged, though his queen had transgressed notably against her brother Arthur, had always been a faithful servant of the High King; he would certainly see to it that Morgause and her precious brood were kept safe and close while the ships were repaired after the gale.

Morgause, who saw no need to ask permission for the journey, had already dispatched a letter to her sister, bidding her expect them. Now a courier was sent ahead, and at length the party, as carefully escorted as before, set out for King Urbgen's castle.

For Mordred, the ride was all too short. Once the party left the shore and struck inland through the hills he was passing through very different country from any that he had seen or even been able to imagine before.

What impressed him first was the abundance of trees. In Orkney the only trees were the few stunted alders and birches and wind-bitten thorns that huddled along the meager shelter of the glens. Here there were trees everywhere, huge canopied growths, each with its island of shadow and its dependent colony of bushes and ferns and trailing plants. Great forests of oak clothed the lower hillsides, giving way on higher ground to pines that grew right up to the foot of the tallest cliffs. Down every gully in those cliffs crowded more trees, rowan and holly and birch, the thickly wooded clefts seeming to hang from the silver mountain-crests like the ropes that held down the thatch of his parents' cottage. Willow and alder lined every smallest stream, and along the roadways, on the slopes, bordering the moorland stretches and sheltering every cottage and sheep-cote, were trees and more trees, all in the russet and gold and rich red of autumn, backed with the black glint of holly and the dark accent of the pines. Along the track where they rode the hazel-nuts dropped ripe from their fringed calyxes, and under the silver webs of autumn late blackberries glinted like garnets. Gareth pointed excitedly to a burnished slow-worm pouring itself away into the bracken, and Mordred saw small deer watching them from the ferns at the edge of the forest, as still and dappled as the forest floor where they stood.

Once, when their road led them over a high pass, and between the crests of the hills the country opened on a blue distance, Mordred checked his horse, staring. It was the first time he had seen so far with no sea visible. For miles and miles the only water was the small tarns that winked in the hanging valleys, and the white of streams running down through the grey rock to feed them. Hill after blue hill rose into the distance where a great chain of mountains lifted to one square-topped and white. Mountain or cloud? It was the same. This was the mainland, the kingdom of the kingdoms, the stuff of dreams.

One of the guards closed in then, with a smile and a word, and Mordred moved back into the troop.

Afterwards he was to have only the haziest recollections of his first sojourn in Rheged. The castle was huge, crowded, grand and troubled. The boys were handed straight to the king's sons; in fact the sharp impression was of being bundled out of the way while some crisis, never fully explained to them, was sorted out. King Urbgen, perfectly courteous, was abstracted and brief; Queen Morgan did not appear at all. It seemed that recently she had been kept in a seclusion that almost amounted to imprisonment.

"Something about a sword," said Gawain, who had managed to overhear a conversation in the guardroom. "The High King's sword. She took it from Camelot while he was abroad, and put a substitute in its place."

"Not just the sword," said Gaheris. "She took a lover, and gave the sword to him. But the High King killed him just the same, and now King Urbgen wants to put her away."

"Who told you that? Surely our uncle would never let him use his sister so, whatever she had done."

"Oh, yes. Because of the sword, which was treachery. So the High King will let him put her away," said Gaheris eagerly. "As for the lover—"

But at this point Gabran came across the courtyard to them, with a summons to the stables, and even Gaheris, not famed for his tact, thought it better to postpone the discussion for the time being.

They found out a little more, but only a little, from Urbgen's two sons. They were grown men, sons by the king's first marriage, seasoned fighters who had at first taken pride in their father's alliance with Arthur's young sister, but now wished her gone, and were ready to support Urbgen's petition to have the marriage set aside.

The truth, it appeared, was this. Morgan, tied by marriage to a man many years her senior, had taken as lover one of Arthur's Companions, a man called Accolon, brave, ambitious and high-spirited. Him she had persuaded, while Arthur was abroad from Camelot, to steal his great sword Caliburn, that men called the sword of Britain, and carry it to Rheged, leaving in its place a substitute fashioned secretly by some creature of Morgan's in the north.

What the queen intended was never satisfactorily explained. She cannot have thought that young Accolon, even with Urbgen out of the way, the sword of Britain in his hand, and Morgan married to him, could ever have been able to supplant Arthur as High King. It was more probable that she had used her lover to further her own ambition, and that the tale she eventually told to Urbgen was truthful in the main. She had had dreams, she said, which had led her to expect Arthur's sudden death abroad. So, to forestall the chaos following on this, she had taken it upon herself to secure the symbolic sword of Britain for King Urbgen, that tried and brilliant veteran of a dozen battles, and husband of Arthur's only legitimate sister. True, Arthur himself had declared the Duke of Cornwall to be his heir, but Duke Cador was dead, and his son Constantine still a child.…

So went the tale. As for the substitution of a worthless copy for the royal sword, that, she alleged, had only been a device to help the theft. The sword hung habitually above the King's chair in the Round Hall at Camelot, and nowadays was taken down only for ceremony, or for battle. The copy had been hung there only to deceive the eye. But from it might have come tragedy. Arthur had returned unharmed from his travels, and afraid for himself and Morgan should the theft be discovered, challenged the King to fight, and with his own good sword attacked Arthur armed only with the brittle copy of Caliburn. The outcome of that fight was already part of the growing legend of the King. In spite of his treacherous advantage Accolon had been killed, and Morgan, afraid now of the vengeance of both brother and husband, declared to all who would listen that the fight was none of her making, but only Accolon's, and since he was dead, no one could contradict her. If she mourned her dead lover, she did so in secret. To those who would listen she deplored his folly, and protested her devotion—mistaken, she admitted, but real and deep—to her brother Arthur and to her own lord.

Hence the turmoil in the castle. No decisions had been made as yet. The lady Nimuë, successor to Merlin as Arthur's adviser, and (it was said) to Merlin's power, had come north to recover the sword. Her message was uncompromising. Arthur was not prepared to forgive his sister for what he saw as treachery; and should Urbgen wish to avenge the betrayal of his bed, he had the King's leave to use his faithless queen as he saw fit.

As yet the King of Rheged had barely trusted himself to talk with his wife, let alone judge her. The lady Nimuë was still housed in Luguvallium, though not in the castle itself; somewhat to Urbgen's relief she had declined his offer of hospitality, and was lodged in the town. Urbgen had had enough (as he confided to his sons) of women and their dabblings in dreams and sorcery. He would have liked to refuse Morgause's visit, but there were no grounds on which he could do so, and besides, he was curious to see "the witch of Orkney" and her sons. So the great King Urbgen steered his way cautiously between Nimuë and Morgause, allowing the latter to visit and talk with her sister at will, and praying that the former, now that her business in the north was concluded, would leave Luguvallium without too embarrassing a confrontation with her old enemy Morgause.

11

AFTER SUPPER ON THE THIRD night of their visit, Mordred, avoiding the other boys, walked back alone from the hall to the rooms where the princes were housed. His way took him through a strip of land which lay between the main block of the castle buildings and the river.

Here lay a garden, planted and tended for Queen Morgan's pleasure; her windows looked out over beds of roses and flowering shrubs, and lawns that edged the water. Now the stalks of dead lilies stood up in a tangle of sweetbriar and leafless honeysuckle, and fungus rings showed dark green on the grass. Marks on the walls beside the queen's windows showed where the cages of her singing birds had hung before being carried indoors for the winter. Swans idled at the river's edge, no doubt waiting for the food the queen had brought them in less troubled days, and a pair of snow-white peacocks had flown to roost, like great ghosts, in a tall pine tree. In summer no doubt the place was pretty and full of scent and colour and the songs of birds, but now, in the chill damp of an autumn evening, it looked deserted and sad, and smelled of unswept leaves and rivermud.

But Mordred lingered, fascinated by this new example of mainland luxury. He had never seen a garden before, never even imagined that a piece of land could be carefully designed and planted simply for beauty, and its owner's pleasure. Earlier he had caught a glimpse, from a window, of a statue looking like a ghost against a dark tangle of leaves. He set himself to explore.

The statue was strange, too. A girl, airily draped, stooped as if to pour water from a foreign-looking shell into a stone basin below her. The only statues he had seen before were the crude gods of the islands, stones with watching eyes. This girl was lovely, and almost real. The dusk made gentle shadows of the grey lichen that patched her arms and gown. The fountain was dry now, the shell empty, but the stone bowl was still filled with water and the remains of the summer's water-lilies. Below the blackened leaves he could just see, dimly, the sluggish movement of fish.

He left the dead fountain, and trod softly across the lawn towards the river bank and the floating swans. There, facing the river and hidden from the palace windows by a brick wall thick with vines, was an arbour, a charming place, paved with mosaic work and furnished with a curved stone bench whose ends were richly carved with grapes and cupids.

Something was lying on the bench. He went across to look. It was an j, embroidery frame, holding its square of linen half worked with a pretty design of strawberries twined in their leaves and flowers. He picked it up curiously, to find that the linen was sodden, and marked by the stone where it had lain. It must have been there for some time, forgotten. He was not to know that Queen Morgan herself had dropped it when, here in their usual trysting-place, the news had been brought to her of her lover's death. She had not been in the garden since that day.

Mordred laid the spoiled linen back on the seat, and recrossed the lawn to the path below the windows. As he did so a light was kindled in one of them, and voices came clearly. One of these, raised in distress or anger, was unfamiliar, but the other, answering it, was the voice of Morgause. He caught the words "ship" and "Camelot," and then "the princes," and at that, without even pausing to think about it, he left the path and stepped up close to the wall under the window, listening.

The windows were unglazed, but set high in the wall, a few spans above his head. He could hear only in snatches, as the women raised their voices or moved nearer the window. Morgan — for the first voice proved to be hers — seemed to be pacing the chamber, restless, and half-distraught.

She was speaking. "If he puts me away… if he dares! I, the High King's own sister! Whose only fault is that she was led astray by care for her brother's kingdom and love of her lord! Could I help it if Accolon was mad for love of me? Could I help it if he attacked Arthur? All that I did—"

"Yes, yes, you have told me that tale already." Morgause was unsympathetic and impatient. "Spare me, I beg you! But have you managed to make Urbgen believe it?"

"He will not speak with me. If I could only come to him—"

Morgause interrupted again, amusement veiling contempt. "Why wait? You are Queen of Rheged, and you keep telling whoever will listen that you deserve nothing of your lord but gratitude and a little forgiveness for folly. So why hide away here? If I were you, sister, I would put on my finest gown, and the queen's crown of Rheged, and go into the hall, attended, when he is at meat, or in council. He will have to listen to you then. If he is still undecided about it, he won't risk slighting Arthur's sister in open court."

"With Nimuë there?" asked Morgan bitterly.

"Nimuë?" Morgause sounded considerably startled. "Merlin's trollop? Is she still here?"

"Yes, she's still here. And she's a queen now, too, sister, so watch your tongue! She married Pelleas since the old enchanter died, didn't you know? She sent the sword south, but she stayed on, lodging somewhere in the town. I suppose he didn't tell you that? Just holds his tongue and hopes you won't meet!" A shrill, edged laugh as Morgan turned away again. "Men! By Hecate, how I despise them! They have all the power, and none of the courage. He's afraid of her… and of me… and of you, too, I don't doubt! Like a big dog among spitting cats.… Oh, well, perhaps you're right. Perhaps—"

The rest was lost. Mordred waited, though the subject held small interest for him. The outcome of the queen's trespass and the king's anger concerned him not at all. But he was intrigued by what he had heard of Morgan's reputation, and by the easy mention of great names that until now had only been the stuff of lamplight tales.

In a minute or so, when he could distinguish words again, he did hear something that made him prick up his ears.

Morgause was speaking. "When Arthur gets home will you go to see him?"

"Yes. I have no choice. He has sent for me, and they tell me that Urbgen is making arrangements for my escort."

"Guard, do you mean?"

"And if I do, why should you smile, Morgause? What do you call your escort of king's soldiers that is taking you south at Arthur's orders?"

There was spite in her voice. Morgause reacted to it swiftly.

"That is rather different. I never played my lord false—"

"Ha! Not after he married you, at any rate!"

"—nor proved traitor to Arthur—"

"No?" Morgan's laugh was wild.

"Traitor, well, no! Traitor isn't quite the word, is it? And he wasn't your king at the time, I grant you that!"

"I prefer not to understand you, sister. You can hardly mean to accuse me—"

"Oh, come, Morgause! Everyone knows about that now! And here, in this very castle! Well, all right, it's a long time ago. But you surely don't think he's sent for you now for old times' sake? You can't be deluding yourself that he'll want you near him? Even with Merlin gone, Arthur won't want you back at court. Depend on it, all he wants is the children, and once he has them—"

"He won't touch Lot's children." Morgause's voice was raised for the first time, edged and sharp. "Even he would not dare! And why should he? Whatever quarrel lay between him and Lot in the past. Lot died fighting under the Dragon banner, and Arthur will honour his sons in consequence. He must support Gawain's claims, he can do no other. He will not dare let it be said that he is finishing the murder of the children."

Morgan was right beside the window. Her voice, pitched low, and rather breathless, was nevertheless quite clear. "Finishing? He never began it. Oh, don't look like that. Everyone knows that, too. It was not Arthur who had the babies massacred. No, nor Merlin, either. Don't pretend to me, Morgause."

There was a slight pause, then Morgause spoke with her old indifference. "Past history, like the other thing. And for what you said just now, if all he wanted was the boys, he need not have sent for me at all, only for them. But no, I am ordered to bring them myself to him at Camelot. And call it what you like, the escort is a royal one.… You will see, sister, that I shall take my rightful place again, and my sons with me."

"And the bastard? What do you imagine will happen to him? Or should I say, what do you plan to do with him?"

"Plan?"

Morgan's voice rose in sudden triumph. "Ah, yes, that's different, isn't it? That hit the center. There's danger there, Morgause, and you know it. You may tell what tale you like, but you only have to look at him to guess the truth.… So, the murder's out, and what happens now? Merlin foretold what would come of it if you let him live. The massacre may be past history, but who's to say what Arthur will do, now that he's found him at last?"

The sentence broke off as somewhere a door opened and shut. Footsteps sounded, and a servant's voice with some message, then the two queens moved away from the window. Someone else, the servant probably, came to the window and leaned out. Mordred kept close by the wall, in the deep shadow. He waited, perfectly still, till the oblong cast by the lighted window showed empty and bright on the lawn, then ran silently to the sleeping-chamber he shared with the other boys.

His pallet — he slept alone here — lay nearest the door, separated from the others by a stone buttress. Beyond the buttress Gawain lay with Gareth. Both were already asleep. From the far side of the chamber Agravain said something in a whisper, and Gaheris grunted and turned over. Mordred muttered a "Good night," then, without disrobing, drew a coverlet over himself and lay down to wait.

He lay rigid in the darkness, trying to school his racing thoughts and calm his breathing. He had been right, then. The chance that had taken him through the garden had proved it. He was not being taken south in honour, as a prince, but for some purpose he could not guess at, but which would almost certainly be dangerous. Imprisonment, perhaps, or even — the shrill malice of Morgan's voice made this seem possible — death at the hands of the High King. Morgause's patronage, for which until the night in the stillroom he had been grateful, seemed likely to prove useless. She would be powerless to protect him, and had in fact sounded indifferent.

He turned his head on the hard pillow, listening. No sound from the others except the soft regular breathing of slumber. Outside, the castle was still awake. The gates would still be open, but would soon be shut and guarded for the night. Tomorrow would see him back under escort with the Orkney party, bound for the ship, and Camelot, and whatever awaited him there. The Orc might not even dock again before putting in to Ynys Witrin, where Arthur's ally King Melwas held the island for the King. If he was to escape, it must be now.

He was hardly aware of the moment when the decision was made. It seemed to be there ready, inevitable, awaiting only the moment. He sat up cautiously, pushing the coverlet back. He found his hands were shaking, and was angry. He was used to running alone, wasn't he? He had in a sense been alone all his life, and he would shift alone for himself again. There were no ties to break. The only tie of affection he had ever known had been swallowed by the flames on that night so many years ago. Now he was the wolf outside the pack; he was Mordred, and Mordred depended on Mordred, and on no man else, nor — and it was a relief to be rid of a half-suspicious gratitude at last — on any woman.

He slid off the bed, and in a minute or two had gathered his things together. A cloak of thick russet wool, his belt and weapon, the precious drinking horn, the kidskin pouch with the coins carefully saved over the years. He was in his best clothes; the rest were still on board the Orc, but that could not be helped. He piled the bedding so that, at a glance, it looked as if a sleeper was there, then let himself softly out of the room, and, heart beating high, found his way through the maze of empty corridors to the courtyard. All unknowing he passed the very room where the young Arthur had begotten him on his half-sister Morgause.

The courtyard, though well lighted at all times, was usually fairly empty at this time of night, when supper was done and men had gone to bed, or to the dice games round the fires. The guards would be there, and a foraging hound or two, but Mordred thought he could depend on slipping out through the shadows when the men's attention was elsewhere.

Tonight, though, late as the hour was, there was still a good deal of activity. A few men in servants' livery were standing around near the steps that led down from the main door of the castle. Among them were two whom Mordred recognized as the king's chief chamberlains. One of these, with a gesture, sent a couple of servants running with torches to the main gateway. This stood wide open, and the men ran through it to wait outside, lighting the way to the bridge. A light in one of the stables, and the sound of trampling hoofs and men's voices, indicated that horses were being saddled there.

Mordred drew back into the shadow of a deep doorway. The first shock of dismay gave way to hope. If guests were leaving the castle as late as this, he might be able, in the general coming and going, to slip out unremarked among their servants.

A stir and bustle at the head of the castle steps heralded the king's appearance there. He came out with his two sons, all three still dressed as they had been in the hall at supper time. There was a lady with them. Mordred, who had not yet seen Queen Morgan, wondered for a moment if this could be she, but this lady was dressed for travel, and her manner was by no means that of an erring wife who doubted her lord's forgiveness. She was young, and apparently unescorted save for a couple of armed servants, but she bore herself as if she was accustomed to deference, and it seemed to the watching boy that King Urbgen, as he spoke to her, inclined himself with a kind of respect. He was protesting something, perhaps asking her to defer her departure until a better time, but not (thought Mordred shrewdly) pressing it too hard. She thanked him with charm and decision, gave her hand to the two princes, then came swiftly down the steps as the horses were brought from the stable.

She passed quite close to Mordred's doorway, and he caught a glimpse of her face. She was young, and beautiful, but with a force and edge to her that, even in repose, was chilling. The veil that covered her dark hair was held in place by a narrow coronet of gold. A queen, yes. But more than that. Mordred knew straight away who this must be: Nimuë, lover and successor to Merlin the King's enchanter; Nimuë, the "other Merlin," the witch whom, for all their angry spite, he guessed that both Arthur's sisters feared.

Urbgen himself put her up on her horse. The two armed attendants mounted. She spoke again, smiling now, and apparently reassuring him about something. She reached her hand down to him, and he kissed it and stood back. She wheeled her horse towards the gate, but even as it started forward she reined in. Her head went up, and she looked around her. She did not see Mordred; he had pressed himself well back out of sight; but she said sharply, to the king: "King Urbgen, these two men leave with me, and no one else. See the gates shut after me, and set guards on your guest-chambers. Yes, I see you understand me. Keep an eye to the hen harrier and her brood. I have had a dream that one of them was fledged already, and flying. If you value Arthur's love, keep the cage locked, and see that they come safely to his hand."

She gave Urbgen no time to reply. Her heel moved, and her horse sprang forward. The two servants followed her. The king, staring after her, pulled himself out of some unpleasant abstraction, and snapped an order. The torchbearers came running in, and the gates creaked shut. Bars went down with a crash. The guards, with their lord's eye on them, stayed watchfully at attention. He spoke a few words with the captain on duty, then with his sons went back into the castle. The chamberlains and servants followed.

Mordred waited no longer. He dodged back through the shadows and made for the nearest door that would take him to the boys' side of the castle. This was a door giving on a corridor lined with workshops and storerooms. Here, at this hour, no one was about. He slipped through, and then ran.

His first thought was only to get back to his bedchamber before the guard was set on it, but as he ran up the corridor and saw the rows of doors, some locked, some latched only, some standing wide, he realized that here might be another way of escape. The windows. The rooms on his left looked straight out over the river bank. The windows would be high, but not too high for an active boy to jump from, and as for the river, it would not be a pleasant crossing at this season, but it could be made. He might even be lucky, and find the bridge unwatched.

He checked, glancing in through the nearest open door. Useless, the window was barred. The next door was padlocked. The third was shut, but not locked. He pushed it open and went cautiously inside.

It was a storeroom of sorts, but with a strange smell to it, and full of strange sounds, small uneasy stirrings and twitterings and the occasional cheep and flutter. Of course. The queen's birds. The cages were housed here. He gave them barely a glance. The window was unbarred, but narrow. Too narrow? He ran to it. One of the cages stood on the wedge-shaped sill. He seized it in both hands to lift it to the floor.

Something hissed like a viper, spat, and slashed. The boy dropped the cage and jumped back, the back of his hand laid open. He clapped it to his mouth and tasted the spurt of salt blood. From the cage two blazing lamps glared green, and a low, threatening snarl began to rise towards a shriek.

The wildcat. It crouched at the very back of the cage, terrifying, terrified. The small, flattened ears were laid back, invisible in the bristling fur. Every fang showed. A paw was still raised, armed and ready.

Mordred, furious at the fright and the pain, reacted as he had been trained. His knife whipped out. At the sight of the blade the wildcat — instinct or recognition, it was the same — sprang immediately, furiously, and the armed paw raked out through the bars. Again and again it slashed, pressed against the cage wall, staying at the attack. Its paws and breast were bloody, but not with the boy's blood; someone had jammed a dead rat between the bars; the cat had eaten none of it, but the blood had splashed and congealed, and the cage stank.

Mordred slowly lowered his knife. He knew — what Orkney peasant did not? — a good deal about wildcats, and he knew how this one had been caught, after the dam and the rest of the brood were slaughtered. So here it was — it was little more than a kitten — so small, so fierce, so brave, caged and stinking for a queen's pleasure. And what pleasure? They could never tame it, he knew. It would be teased and made to fight, matched maybe with dogs that it would blind and then maul before they killed it. Or it would simply refuse food, and die. The rat had not been touched.

The window was far too narrow to let him through. For a moment he stood, sucking the blood from his hand, fighting down the disappointment that threatened to turn too shamefully to fear. Then with an effort he took command of himself. There would be another chance. It was a long way to Camelot. Once outside the castle, let them see if they could keep him prisoner. Let them try to harm him. Like the cat, he was no tame beast to wait caged for death to come to him. He could fight.

The cat slashed again, but could not reach him. Mordred looked around him, saw a forked pole, the sort the harvesters used for catching vipers, and with that lifted the cage and turned it with the door-hatch towards the window. The cage filled almost the whole space. He pushed the pole into the loop, and carefully raised the wicker hatch. The carcass of the rat rose with it, and the cat struck again, spitting, at this new moving danger. It found itself striking into air. For two long minutes it stayed perfectly still, no movement but the ripple of fur and the twitch of a tail, then slowly, stalking freedom as it would stalk its prey, it crept to the edge of the basket, to the edge of the sill, and looked down.

He did not see it go. One moment it was there, a prisoner, the next gone into the free night.

The other prisoner dragged the cage back from the window that was too small for him, threw it to the floor, and put the pole carefully back where he had found it.

There was already a guard on the bedchamber door. He moved his weapon to the ready, then, seeing who approached him, shifted uncertainly and grounded the spear again.

Mordred, expecting this, had slung the russet cloak round him, and underneath it clutched his effects close to him, hiding his injured hand. The guard could see nothing in his face except cool surprise.

"A guard? What's this, has something happened?"

"King's orders, sir." The man was wooden.

"Orders to keep me out? Or in?"

"Oh, in — well, that is, I mean to say, to look after you, like, sir." The man cleared his throat, ill at ease, and tried again. "I thought you was all in there, asleep. You been with your lady queen, then, maybe?"

"Ah. King's orders to report on our movements, too?" Mordred let a moment of silence hang, while the man fidgeted, then he smiled. "No, I was not with Queen Morgause. Do you always ask the king's guests where they spend their nights?"

The man's mouth opened slowly. Mordred read it all easily: surprise, amusement, complicity. He slipped his free hand into the pouch at his belt and took out a coin. They had been speaking softly, but he lowered his voice still further. "You won't tell anyone?"

The man's face relaxed into something like a grin. "Indeed, no, sir. Excuse me, I'm sure. Thank you, sir. Good night, sir."

Mordred slipped past him and let himself quietly into the bedchamber.

For all his caution, he found Gawain awake, up on an elbow, and reaching for his dagger.

"Who's that?"

"Mordred. Keep your voice down. It's all right."

"Where've you been? I thought you were in bed and asleep."

Mordred did not reply. He had a habit of quenching silences. He had discovered that if you failed to answer an awkward question, people rarely asked it twice. He did not know that this was a discovery normally only made in later life, and by some weaker natures not at all. He crossed to his bedplace, and, once hidden by the buttress, dropped his bundle on the bed, and his cloak after it. Gawain was not to know that under the cloak he had been fully dressed.

"I thought I heard voices," whispered Gawain. "They've set a guard on the door. I was talking to him."

"Oh." Gawain, as Mordred calculated, did not sound particularly interested. He probably did not realize that it was the first time in Rheged that such a guard had been set. He would be assuming, too, that Mordred had merely been out to the privy. He lay back. "That must have been what woke me. What's the time?"

"Must be well after midnight." Mordred, winding a kerchief round his injured hand, said softly: "And we have to make an early start in the morning. Best get some sleep now. Good night."

After a while Mordred slept, too. Half a league away, in the edge of the vast tract of woodland that was called the Wild Forest, a young wildcat settled into the crotch of an enormous pine tree and began washing its fur clean of the smell of captivity.

12

IN THE MORNING IT WAS APPARENT that Nimuë's warning had been extended to their escort. The soldiers saw to it that the Orkney party stayed together, and, with the greatest possible tact, made the close guardianship seem an honour. Morgause took it as such, and so did the four younger princes, who rode at ease, talking gaily with the guard and laughing, but Mordred, with a good horse under him and the open stretches of mainland moor beckoning from either side of the road, fretted and was silent.

All too soon they reached the harbour. The first thing to be noticed was that the Orc rode alone at the wharfside. The Sea Dragon, explained the escort's captain, had suffered only slight storm damage, so had held on her way south; he and the armed escort were to sail with the party in the Orc. Morgause, annoyed, but beginning to be apprehensive and so not daring to show it, acquiesced perforce, and they boarded the ship. This was now a little too crowded for comfort, but the winds had abated, and the passage out of the Ituna Estuary and southward along the coast of Rheged was smooth and even enjoyable.

The boys spent their time on deck, watching the hilly land slide past. Gulls slanted and cried behind the ship. Once they threaded a fleet of fishing boats, and once saw, in a small inlet of the hilly coast, some men on ponies herding cattle ("Probably stolen," said Agravain, sounding approving rather than otherwise), but apart from that, no sign of life. Morgause did not appear. The sailors taught the boys to tie knots, and Gareth tried to play on a little flute one of them had made from reeds. They all improvised fishing lines, and had some success, and in consequence ate good meals of fresh-baked fish. The princes were in wild spirits at the adventure, and at the dazzling prospect, as they saw it, in store for them. Even Mordred managed at times to forget the cloud of fear. The only fly in the ointment was the silence of the escort. The boys questioned the soldiers — the princes with innocent curiosity, Mordred with careful guile — but the men and their officers were as uncommunicative as the royal envoy had been. About the High King's orders or plans for their future they learned nothing.

So for three days. Then, with the ship's master cocking a worried eye aloft at the suddenly moody canvas, the Orc put into Segontium, on the coast of Wales just across from Mona's Isle.

This was a much bigger place than the little Rheged port. Caer y n'a Von, or Segontium, as it had been in Roman times, was a big military garrison, recently rebuilt to at least half its old strength. The fortress lay on the stony hillside above the town, and beyond that again rose the foothills and then the cloud-holding heights of Y Wyddfa, the Snow Hill. To seaward, across a narrow channel as blue in the sunshine as sapphire, lay the golden fields and magic stones of Mona, isle of druids.

The boys lined the ship's rail, staring and eager. At length Morgause came out of her cabin. She looked pale and ill, even after such a smooth and easy voyage. ("Because she's a witch, you see," said Gareth, proudly, to the escort's captain.) When the ship's master told her that they must wait in harbour for a change of wind, she said thankfully that she would not sleep on board, and her chamberlain was sent across to engage rooms at the wharfside inn. This was a prosperous, comfortable place, and good rooms were forthcoming. The party went cheerfully on shore.

They were there for four days. The queen kept to her rooms with the women. The boys were allowed to explore the town, or, still carefully watched, to go down to the shore to hunt for crabs and shellfish. The second time they set out, Mordred, as if on an impulse of boredom, turned back. Though he did not say so within his brothers' hearing, he let the two guards see that crab-hunting offered no amusement to a boy who had done it for a living only a few years ago. He left them to it, and went alone into the town, then, hiding his eagerness, sauntered at an easy pace along the track that climbed away from the houses and led past the fortress walls towards the distant heights of Y Wyddfa.

The air was dazzlingly clear after the night's frost. The stones were already warm. He sat down. To any watcher he would appear to be enjoying the view and the sunshine. In fact he was looking carefully about him at the prospect of escape.

Above him, in the distance, a boy tended a flock of sheep. Their tracks seamed the face of the hill. Higher, beyond the slopes of stony pasture, lay a wood, the outskirts of the forest that swept up to clothe the flanks of the Snow Hill. A gap in the trees showed where a road led eastward.

There lay the way. The road would surely join the famous Sarn Elen, the causeway that led down to Deva and the inland kingdoms. He could lose himself there, easily. He had all his money on him, and, with last night's frost as an excuse, had brought his cloak.

A pebble rattled on the path. He looked round, to see, barely a dozen paces away, the two guards standing, at ease, ostensibly gazing idly into the distance towards the beach below the town. But their pose was alert, and from time to time their glances came his way.

It was the same two men who had accompanied the princes to the shore. Now, small in the distance, he could see his brothers, easily recognizable among the other crab-catchers on the beach. He looked for their escort, and saw none.

The men had left the other boys to their pastime, and had followed him quietly up the hillside. The conclusion was inescapable. The guards were for him alone.

An emotion that the caged wildcat would have recognized swelled burstingly in Mordred's breast, and into his throat. He wanted to shout, to lash out, to run.

To run. He jumped to his feet. Instantly the men were moving, casually, towards him. They were young and fit. He could never outdistance them. He stood still.

"Time to be going back, young sir," said one of them pleasantly. "Nearly dinner time, I reckon."

"Your brothers are going in," said the other, pointing. "Look, sir, you can see them from here. Shall we go down now?"

Mordred's face was still as stone. His eyes betrayed nothing of the emotion that filled him. Something that no wild animal — and few men — would have understood kept him silent and apparently indifferent. In two deep and steadying breaths he willed the fear and with it the furious disappointment to spill from him. He could almost feel it draining from his fingertips like blood. In its place came the faintest tremor of released tension, and then, into the emptiness, the calm of his habitual control.

He nodded to the men, said something distant and polite, and walked back to the inn between them.

He tried again next day.

The princes, tired of the shore and the town, were avid to visit the great fortress on the hillside, but this their mother would not consider. Indeed, the escort's captain said flatly that even princes of Orkney would not be allowed within the gates. The place was fortified and always held in readiness.

"For what?" asked Gawain.

The man nodded at the sea.

"Irish?"

"Picts, Irish, Saxons. Anyone."

"Is King Maelgon here himself?"

"No."

"Which is Macsen's Tower?" The idle-sounding question came from Mordred.

"Whose tower?" demanded Agravain.

"Macsen's. Someone spoke of it yesterday." The someone had been one of his guards, who had remarked that the site of the tower was well up on the hillside, not far below the wood.

The captain pointed. "It's up there. You can't see it now, though, it's a ruin."

"Who was Macsen?" asked Gareth.

"Do they teach you nothing in Orkney?" The man was indulgent. "He was Emperor of Britain, Magnus Maximus, a Spaniard by birth—"

"Of course we know that," interrupted Gawain. "We are related to him. He was Emperor of Rome, and it was his sword that Merlin raised for the High King: Caliburn, the King's sword of Britain. Everyone knows that! Our mother is descended from him, through King Uther."

"Then should we not visit the tower?" asked Mordred. "It's not inside the fortress, so surely anyone can go? Even if it's ruined—"

"Sorry." The captain shook his head. "Too far. Against orders."

"Orders?" Gawain was beginning to bristle, but Agravain spoke across him, rudely, to Mordred.

"Anyway, why should you want to go? You're not Macsen's kin! We are! We are royal through our mother as well."

"Then if I am bastard Lothian, you can count yourselves bastard Macsen," snapped Mordred, fear and tension breaking suddenly into fury, and careless for once of his tongue.

He was safe enough. The twins, loyal to their boyhood rule of silence where their mother was concerned, would never have thought of repeating the insult to Morgause. Their methods were more direct. After a startled pause of sheer surprise, they yelled with rage and fell on Mordred, and the pent-up energies of seaboard suddenly exploded in a very pretty dog-fight all round the inn yard. After they had been pulled apart and then beaten for fighting, the queen was so angry at the disturbance that she forbade any more excursions from the inn. So no one got to Macsen's Tower, and the boys had to content themselves with knucklebones and mock fights and story-telling; children's ploys, said Mordred, this time with open contempt, still smarting, and stayed away.

The next day, quite suddenly in the evening, the wind changed, and blew strongly again from the north. Under the watchful eye of the escort the party re-embarked, and the Orc made quickly south with a steady wind until she could turn in from the open weather to the quiet waters of the Severn Sea. The water was like glass. "Right to the Glass Isle," said the master, "I do assure you." And the shallow-draughted Orc did indeed sail in on an estuary mirror-smooth, with the oars out for the last stretch to take the little ship clear up to the wharf of Ynys Witrin, the Isle of Glass, almost in the shadow of the palace walls of Melwas, its king.

Melwas's palace was little more than a large house set in the flat meadowland rimming the largest of the three sister islands called Ynys Witrin. Two of the islands were hills, low and green, that rose gently from the encircling water. The third was the Tor, a high, cone-shaped hill symmetrical as an artefact, and girdled at its base with apple orchards where wisps of smoke proclaimed the cottages of the village that was Melwas's capital. It towered above the surrounding water-logged flatland of the Summer Country like a great beacon. This, in fact, was one of its functions; a beacon turret stood at the very top of the Tor, the nearest signal point to Camelot itself. From that summit, the boys were told, those walls and shining towers might be seen quite close and clearly, across the glassy reaches of the Lake.

King Melwas's own fortress lay just below the Tor's summit. The approach to it was a winding road, steeply cut from the gravel of the hill. In winter, men said, the mud made it all but impossible to get to the top. But then in winter there was no fighting. The king and his company stayed in the comfort of the lakeside mansion, and their days were filled with hunting, which was mostly, in that sodden Summer Country, wild-fowling in the marshes. These stretched away to southward, with their glinting waters only occasionally broken by the willow islands and the alder-set reed-beds where the marsh-dwellers had built their raised hovels.

King Melwas received the party kindly. He was a big, brown-bearded man, with a high colour and a red, full-lipped mouth. His attitude to Morgause was one of open admiration. He greeted her with the ceremonial kiss of welcome, and if this was a shade too prolonged, Morgause made no objection. When she presented her sons the king was warm in his welcome of them, and rather warmer in his praise of the woman who had borne so handsome a tribe. Mordred, as always, was presented last. If, during the formal greetings, the king's look came back rather too often to the tall boy standing behind the other princes, no one but the boy himself seemed to notice. Then Melwas, with another lingering look, turned back to Morgause, with the news that a courier awaited her from the High King.

"A courier?" Morgause was sharp. "To me, the King's sister? You must mean one of his knights? With an escort for us?"

But no; it seemed that the go-between was merely one of the royal couriers, who, waiting duly on Morgause, gave Arthur's message briefly and with little ceremony. Morgause and her party were to remain on Ynys Witrin until the following day, when they were to ride, with an escort sent by Arthur, to Camelot. There the King would receive them in the Round Hall.

The younger boys, excited and barely controllable, noticed nothing amiss, but Gawain and Mordred could see how anger fought with growing apprehension in her, as she questioned the man sharply.

"He said nothing more, madam," repeated the courier. "Only that he desired your presence tomorrow in the Round Hall. Until then, you will stay here. The, Lady Nimuë, madam? No, she has not yet returned from the north. That is all I know."

He bowed and went. Gawain, puzzled and inclined to be angry, started to speak, but his mother waved him to silence, and stood for a while biting her lip and thinking. Then she turned quickly to Gabran.

"Have them call my women. They are to unpack our clothes, and lay out the white robe for me, and the scarlet cloak. Now, yes, now, man! Do you think I will stay here tamely overnight, and go at his bidding to the Round Hall tomorrow? Do you not know what that is? It's Arthur's council chamber, where judgments are given. Oh, yes, I have heard of that hall, with its 'Perilous Chair' for the wrong-doers and those with grievances against the High King!"

"But what peril can there be for you? You have done him no wrong," said Gabran quickly.

"Of course not!" snapped Morgause. "Which is why I will not go like a suppliant or a wrong-doer, to be received in front of the Council by my own brother! I will go now, tonight, while he is in hall at supper with the Queen and all the court. Let us see then if he intends to deny her state to the mother of—" She stopped, and apparently changed what she had been going to say. "—To his sister and his sister's sons."

"Madam, will they let you go?"

"I am not a prisoner. How can they stop me, without letting people see that I am ill used? Besides, the King's troop has gone back to Camelot, has it not?"

"Yes, madam, but King Melwas—"

"After I am dressed, you may ask King Melwas to come and see me."

Gabran turned rather reluctantly to go.

"Gabran." He stopped and turned. "Take the boys with you. Tell the women to get them ready. Their court clothes. I will see to it that Melwas gives us horses and an escort." Her lips thinned. "As long as we are guarded, Arthur cannot hold him accountable. In any case, that is Melwas's danger, not ours. Now go. You will not ride with us. You will follow with the rest tomorrow."

Gabran hesitated, then, catching her eye, bowed his head and went from the room.

It was not hard to guess what sort of persuasion she used with Melwas. In the event, she got her way. By the brief autumnal sunset the little party was riding across the causeway that led eastwards across the Lake. Morgause rode a pretty grey mare, richly harnessed with green and scarlet, and chiming with bells. Mordred, to his great surprise, was given a handsome black horse, well matched with the one Gawain rode. The armed escort sent by Melwas clattered along, strung out alongside them on the narrow causeway. At their backs the sun set in a furnace of molten brass that died slowly to burnt green and purple. There was a chill to the air, a touch of frost coming with the blue shadows of twilight.

The horses' hoofs scrunched up to a ridge of gravel, and then the road lay ahead, a pale strip leading through the watery wilderness of reeds and alders. Duck and wading birds fled upwards with a clatter, the water rippling back from their wakes like melted metal. Mordred's horse shook its head and the bridle rang with silver. In spite of himself he felt his heart lift suddenly with excitement. Then all at once someone exclaimed and pointed.

Ahead, at the summit of a thickly rising forest, their bannered pinnacles catching the last of the sunset and flaming up into the evening sky like torches, rose the towers of Camelot.

13

IT WAS A CITY SET ON A HILL. Caer Camel was flat-topped and very wide, but it stood up as conspicuously as the Tor in the midst of that level or low-rolling countryside. Its steep sides were ridged, horizontally, as if a gigantic plough had been driven round the hill. These ridges were revetments and ditches, designed to hinder attackers. At the crest of the ringed hillside the fortress walls circled the summit like the crown on a king's head. At two points, north-east and south-west, the massive defense works were pierced by gates.

Morgause's party approached from the south-west, towards the entrance called the King's Gate. They crossed a small winding river, then followed the road as it curved steeply upwards through thick trees. At the top, set in the corner of Camelot's outer walls, stood the massive double gate, open still but guarded. They halted while the escort's captain rode forward to exchange words with the officer of the watch.

Presently both men came back together to where Morgause waited.

"Madam." The officer made her a courteous inclination. "You were not looked for until tomorrow. I have no orders concerning your party. If you will wait here, I will send a message up—"

"The King is in hall?"

"Madam, yes, he is at supper."

"Then take me to him."

"Madam, I cannot. If you—"

"You know who I am?" The icy question was meant to intimidate.

"Of course, madam—"

"I am the High King's sister, daughter of Uther Pendragon. Am I to be kept here at the gate like a suppliant or a courier?"

A faint film of sweat showed on the man's forehead, but he was not noticeably discomposed. "Of course not, madam, not here, outside the gates. Please ride within. The men are coming now to close them. But I'm afraid you must wait here while a message goes up to the hall. I have my orders."

"Very well. I won't make it hard for you. My chamberlain will go to him." Morgause spoke firmly, flatly, as if even now she had no doubt that her command would be obeyed. She softened it with one of her prettiest smiles. Mordred saw that she was nervous. Her mare, reading its rider's mood, fidgeted and tossed its head till the golden tassels swung in a tangle.

The officer, with apparent relief, agreed to this, and after a word with his mistress the chamberlain went off between two of the guards. Morgause's party rode up through the deep, fortified archway of the King's Gate, and were halted just inside it to wait.

Behind them the great gates swung shut. The bars clanged down into place. Overhead, along the battlemented walls, went the tramp and stamp of sentries. Ironically enough these sounds, which should have reminded Mordred forcibly that he was a prisoner, still constrained to meet an unknown and doubtful fate, hardly got through to him. He was too busy looking about him. This was Camelot.

Inside the gate a roadway led uphill towards the walls of the palace. Poles were set at intervals along this road, with torches hung in brackets to light the way. Midway up a considerable slope the road forked, the left-hand way leading to a gateway in the palace walls beyond which could be seen the tops of trees, now bare. Another garden? Another prison made for a queen's pleasure? The other branch of the road curled round under the palace walls to another, bigger gate which must lead into the township. Above the wall could be discerned the roofs and turrets of houses, shops and workshops grouped around the market-place, with, beyond these again to the north, the barracks and stables. The town gates were shut, and no people were about except the sentries.

"Mordred!"

Mordred, startled out of his thoughts, looked up. Morgause was beckoning.

"Here, beside me."

He urged his horse forward to her right. Gawain started to move to her other side, but him she waved back. "Stay with the others."

Gawain, who, since the dog-fight in the inn yard, had held aloof from Mordred, scowled as he reined back, but he said nothing. None of the others spoke. Something of Morgause's tension had communicated itself even to Gareth. She did not speak again, but sat straight and still, staring at her horse's ears. Her hood was back, her face expressionless and rather pale.

Then it changed. Mordred, looking where she looked, saw the chamberlain hurrying back with the two guards, and, some way behind them, alone, a man coming down the road towards them.

From the sharp reaction of the gate guards he knew who this must be, and that his coming was totally unexpected. Against all precedent, Arthur the High King had come out alone, to receive them at the outer gate of his fortress.

The King stopped a few paces away and said shortly to the guards: "Let them come."

No ceremony of welcome. No offer of the kiss and the handclasp and the smile. He stood by one of the torchpoles, its light nickering on a face as cold and indifferent as that of a judge.

The chamberlain hurried to Morgause's side, but she waved him back. "Mordred. Your hand, please."

No more time for surprise. No more time for anything except the one, overmastering apprehension. He slid from his horse, threw the rein to a servant and helped the queen dismount. She held his arm for a moment, tightly, looking up at him as if she would have said something, then she let him go, but kept him close beside her. Gawain, still scowling, pushed forward uninvited, and this time was ignored. The other boys fell in behind, nervously. Servants led the horses back. Arthur had still made no move. Morgause, with a boy to either side of her, and the three younger ones behind, went forward to meet the King.

Mordred could never afterwards say what made the first sight of the High King so impressive. No ceremony, no attendants, none of the trappings of majesty and power; the man was not even armed. He stood alone, cold, silent and formidable. The boy stared. Here was a solitary man, dressed in a brown robe trimmed with marten, dwarfed by the range of lighted buildings behind him, by the trees that lined the roadway, by the spears of the armed guards. But in fact, in all that ringing, frosty, dusk-lit space, none of the party had eyes for anything but that one man.

Morgause went down on the frosty ground in front of him, not in the deep reverence customary in the presence of the High King, but kneeling. She lifted a hand, caught Mordred by the arm, and pulled him down, too, to his knees. He felt a slight tremor in her grip. Gawain, with the other boys, stayed standing. Arthur had not even glanced at them. His attention was all for the kneeling boy, the bastard, his son, brought to his feet like a suppliant, and staying there, head up and eyes darting every way, like a wild thing wondering which way to run.

Morgause was speaking:

"My lord Arthur, brother — you may imagine what a joy it was to myself and my family when word came, after all these years, that we might once more have sight of you, and visit your court on the mainland. Who has not heard of the splendours of Camelot, and marvelled at the tales of your victories, and of your greatness as king of these lands? Greatness which, from that first great fight at Luguvallium, I, and my lord King Lot, predicted for you…"

She stole a look up at Arthur's unresponsive face. She had deliberately moved straight onto dangerous ground. At Luguvallium, Lot had tried first to betray Arthur, and then to overthrow him, but it was then that he had lain with Morgause to beget Mordred. Mordred, eyes cast down now and studying the frost patterns on the ground in front of him, caught the moment of uncertainty before she drew a quick breath and spoke again.

"Perhaps between us — between you and Lot, and even between you and myself, my brother, there have been things that were better not recalled. But Lot was slain in your service, and since then I have lived alone, quietly, in exile, but uncomplaining, devoting myself to the care and rearing of my sons.…" The faintest emphasis here, and another quick glance upward. "Now, my lord Arthur, I have come at your command, and pray you for your clemency towards us all."

Still no reply from the King, nor any movement of welcome. The light, pretty voice went on, the words like pebbles striking against the silence. Mordred, his eyes still downcast, felt something as strong as a touch, and looked up suddenly, to find the King's eyes fixed on him. He met them for the first time, eyes which were at the same time curiously familiar, and yet strange, charged with a look that sent a thrill through him, not of fear, but as if something had struck him below the heart and left him gasping. With the touch his fear was gone. Suddenly, and for the first time since Morgause had veiled logic with threats and sorcery, he saw clearly how foolish his fears had been. Why should this man, this king, trouble to pursue the bastard of an enemy dead these many years? It was beneath him. It was absurd. For Mordred the air cleared at last, as if a foul mist, magic-crammed, had blown aside.

He was here in the fabled city, the center of the mainland kingdoms. Long ago he had planned for this, dreamed of it, schemed for it. He had tried, in the fear and distrust engendered by Morgause, to escape from it, but here he had been brought, like something destined for sacrifice to her Goddess of the black altar. Now no thought of flight remained. All his old ambitions, his boyhood dreams, flew back, lodged, crystallized. He wanted this, to be part of this. Whatever it took to win a place in this king's kingdoms, he would do it, be it.…

Morgause was still speaking, with an unaccustomed note of humility. Mordred, with the new cold light illumining his brain, listened and thought: Every word she says is a lie. No, not a lie, the facts are true enough, but everything she is, everything she is trying to do… all is false. How does he bear it? Surely he cannot be deceived? Not this king. Not Arthur.

". . . So I pray you do not hold me to blame, brother, for coming now, instead of waiting for the morrow. How could I wait, with the lights of Camelot so near across the Lake? I had to come, and to make sure that in your heart you still bore me no malice. And see, I have obeyed you. I am here with all the boys. This on my left is Gawain, eldest of Orkney, my son and your servant. His brothers, too. And this on my right… this is Mordred." She looked up. "Brother, he knows nothing. Nothing. He will be—"

Arthur moved at last. He stopped her with a gesture, then stepped forward and held out a hand. Morgause, on a sudden intake of breath, fell silent and laid hers in it. The King raised her. Among the boys, and the servants watching from the gate, there was a movement of relief. They had been received. All would be well. Mordred, rising to his feet, felt something of the same lightening of tension. Even Gawain was smiling, and Mordred found himself responding. But instead of the ritual kiss of welcome, the embrace and the words of greeting, the King said merely:

"I have something to say to you that cannot be said before these children." He turned to the boys. "Be welcome here. Now go back to the gatehouse, and wait."

They obeyed. "The gifts," said the chamberlain, "the gifts, quickly. All is not well yet, it seems." He seized the box from a servant, and hurried forward to lay it at the King's feet, then retreated hastily, disconcerted. Arthur did not even glance at the treasure. He was speaking to Morgause, and, though the people at the gate could neither hear what was said nor see her face, they watched how her pose stiffened to defiance, then passed again to supplication and even to fear, and how through it all the King stood like stone, and with a face of stone. Only Mordred, with his new clear sight, saw grief there, and weariness.

There was an interruption. From beyond the gates came a sound, growing rapidly louder. Hoofbeats, a horse approaching at a stumbling gallop up the chariotway. A man's voice called out hoarsely. One of the gate guards said, under his breath: "The courier from Glevum! By the thunder, he's made good time! He must bring hot news!"

The challenge, another shout, the creak and crash of the gates opening. A tired horse clattered through. They smelled the reek of exhausted sweat. A breathless word from the courier, and the horse held on its way without pausing, straight up to where the King stood with Morgause.

The rider half fell from the saddle, and went down on one knee. The King looked angry at the interruption, but the courier spoke urgently, and after a pause Arthur beckoned to the guards. Two of them went forward, halting one on either side of Morgause. Then the King turned, with a sign to the courier, and walked back up the roadway with the man following him. At the foot of the palace steps he stopped. For a few minutes the two, King and courier, stood talking, but from the gatehouse the boys could see and hear nothing. Then, suddenly, the King swung round, and shouted.

In a moment, it seemed, the frozen tensions of the night were shattered; from uneasy peace the place sprang to something very like battle orders. A huge grey war-stallion was brought by two grooms, who clung to the bit as it plunged and screamed. Servants came running with the King's cloak and sword. The gates swung open. Arthur was in the saddle. The grey stallion screamed again and climbed the torchlit air, then leaped forward under the spur, and was past the boys and out of the gates with the speed of a thrown spear. The grooms led the courier's exhausted horse away, and the courier himself, walking like a lame man, followed.

In the gatehouse all was bustle and snapped orders. Melwas's men-at-arms withdrew, and the boys, with the chamberlain and the queen's servants, found themselves being hurried up the road towards the palace, past the place where Morgause still stood stiffly between her guards. Just as they reached the palace gate, a troop of armed riders burst out of it and went streaming past at a gallop to vanish downhill in the King's wake.

The gallop died. The outer gates crashed shut once more. The echoes faded into quiet. The place seemed to edge back, quivering, towards a kind of peace. The boys, waiting at the palace gates with the servants and guards, crowded together, wondering, confused and beginning to be scared. Gareth was crying. The twins muttered together, with glances at Mordred that were far from friendly. Avoiding them, and Gawain's puzzled scowl, Mordred felt, more than ever before, isolated from them. His thoughts darted like trapped birds. They all had time, now, to feel the cold.

At length someone — a big man with a red face and a high manner — came to them. He spoke straight to Mordred.

"I am Cei, the King's seneschal. You are to come with me."

"I?"

"All of you."

Gawain elbowed Mordred aside, stepped forward and spoke. He was curt to the point of arrogance. "I am Gawain of Orkney. Where are you taking us, and what has happened to my mother?"

"King's orders," said Cei, briefly, but hardly reassuringly. "She's to wait till he gets back." He spoke more gently, to Gareth. "Don't be afraid. No harm will come to you. You heard him say you would be made welcome."

"Where's he gone?" demanded Gawain.

"Didn't you hear?" asked Cei. "It seems that Merlin's still alive, after all. The courier saw him on the road. The King's gone to meet him. Now, will you come with me?"

14

THE BOYS HAD ONLY A BRIEF stay at Camelot before orders came that the court would remove to Caerleon for Christmas. Meanwhile they were lodged apart from the other boys and young men, under the special care of Cei, who was Arthur's foster brother, and privy to all his counsels. He saw to it that none of the rumours that went flying about among the people of Camelot came to the boys' ears. Until Arthur himself had spoken with Mordred, Mordred was to learn nothing. Cei guessed, and rightly, that the King would want to consult with Merlin before he decided what was to be done with the boy, or with Morgause herself. The boys did not see Morgause; she was lodged somewhere apart, not as a prisoner, they were told, but allowed to communicate with no one, until the King returned.

In fact he did not return. The story of his wild ride to greet his old friend was brought back to a city agog for news.

It was true that Merlin the enchanter was alive. An attack of his old sickness, a trance-like death, had been taken for death itself, but he had recovered, and at length escaped from the sealed tomb where he had been left for dead. Now he had ridden with the King for Caerleon, and Arthur's Companions — the picked group of knights who were his friends — had gone with them. The court would follow.

So for the time remaining at Camelot before the court's removal to Wales, the boys were kept busy with pursuits that exhausted them, but that were much to their taste.

They were taken in hand straight away by the master-at-arms, and what training they had had in the islands was commented on with a sarcasm that even Gawain did not care in this place to resent, and augmented with a rigorous course of work. There were long hours spent, too, on horseback, and here none of them pretended that the Orkney training had been adequate. The High King's horses were as far removed from the rough ponies of the islands as Morgause's men-at-arms were from Arthur's chosen Companions.

It was not all work. Play, too, there was in plenty, but consisting entirely of war games, hours spent over maps drawn in sand, or modelled — this to the boys' wide-eyed wonder — in clay relief. Hours, too, at mock fights or competing at archery. In this last they excelled, and of all of them Mordred had the steadiest draw and the best eye. And there was hunting. In winter the wild-fowling in the marshes was varied and exciting, but there was hunting to be had as well, deer and boar, in the rolling country to the eastward, or among the wooded slopes that rose towards the downlands in the south.

The court removed itself to Caerleon in the first week of December, and the Orkney boys with it. But not their mother. Morgause was taken on Arthur's orders to Amesbury, where she was lodged in the convent. It was a nominal imprisonment only, and a gentle one, but imprisonment nonetheless. Her rooms were guarded by King's troops, and the holy women replaced her own waiting-women. Amesbury, birthplace of Ambrosius, belonged to the High King, and would see his orders carried out to the letter. When the spring weather came, and the roads opened, she would be taken north to Caer Eidyn, where her half-sister Queen Morgan was already immured.

"But what has she done?" demanded Gaheris furiously. "We know what Queen Morgan did, and she is rightly punished. But our mother? Why, she came to Orkney soon after our father was killed. The King must know that — it would be the spring after Queen Morgan's wedding in Rheged. Years ago! She's never been out of the islands since. Why should he imprison her now?"

"Because at that same wedding she tried to murder Merlin." The answer, uncompromising, came from Cei, who, alone among the nobles, spent time with the boys during their hours of leisure.

They stared at him. "But that was years ago!" cried Gawain. "I was there — I know, because she's told me — but I don't remember it at all. I was only a baby. Why send for her now to account for something that happened then?"

"And what did happen?" This from Gaheris, red-faced and with jaw outthrust.

"He says she tried to murder Merlin," said Agravain. "Well, she didn't succeed, did she? So why—?"

"How?" asked Mordred quietly.

"Woman's way. Witch's way, if you like." Cei was unmoved by the younger boys' angry questions. "It happened at that very wedding feast. Merlin was there, representing the King. She drugged his wine, and saw to it that he would drink a deadlier poison later, when she was not there to be blamed. And so it fell. He did recover, but it left him with the sickness that recently struck him down and caused him to be left for dead—and will kill him in the end. When Arthur sent for her, and for you, Merlin was believed dead, and in his tomb. So he sent for her to answer for the murder."

"It's not true!" shouted Gaheris.

"And if it were," said Gawain, cold now, and with that aggressive arrogance he had adopted since they came to Camelot, "what of it? Where is the law that says a queen may not destroy her enemy in her own way?"

"That's so," said Agravain quickly. "She always said he was her enemy. And what other way had she? Women cannot fight."

"He must have been too strong for her spells," said Gareth. "They didn't work." The only emotion in his voice was regret.

Cei surveyed them. "There was a spell, certainly, and one tried many times, but in the end it was cold poisoning. This is known to be true." He added, kindly: "There's nothing to be gained in talking further about this until you see the King. What can you know of these matters? In your outland kingdom you were reared to think of Merlin, and maybe even the King himself, as your enemies."

He paused, looking at them again. The boys were silent.

"Yes, I see that you were. Well, until he talks with Merlin, and with Queen Morgause, we will leave the matter. She can count herself fortunate that Merlin is not dead. And as for you, you must content yourselves with the King's assurance that he will not harm you. There are things to settle, old scores to resolve that you know nothing about. Believe me, the King is a just man, and Merlin's counsels are wise, and harsh only when it is needful."

When he left them, the boys burst out into angry talk and speculation. It seemed to Mordred, listening, that their anger was more on their own account than on their mother's. It was a matter of pride. None of them would have wanted to be, once again, under Morgause's rule. This new freedom, this world of men and men's actions, suited them all, and even Gareth, who in Orkney had run the risk of effeminacy, was hardening up to become one of them. He, like the rest, saw no reason for a prince to stop at murder if it suited his plans.

Mordred said nothing, and the others did not find this strange. What claim after all had the bastard on the queen? But Mordred did not even hear them. He was back in the darkness, with the smoke and the smell of fish and the frightened whispering. "Merlin is dead. They made a feast at the palace, and then" — and then — "the news came." And the queen's words in the stillroom, with the potions and the scent and the indefinable smell of evil, and the feel of her mouth on his.

He shook himself free of the memories. So Morgause had poisoned the enchanter. She had gone north to the islands knowing that she had already sown the seeds of death. And why not? The old man had been her enemy: was his, Mordred's, enemy. And now the enemy was alive, and would be at Caerleon for Christmas along with the rest.

Caerleon, City of Legions, was very different from Camelot. The Romans had built a strong fortress there, on the river they called the Isca Silurum; this fortress, strategically placed on the curve of the river near its confluence with a smaller stream, had been restored first by Ambrosius, then later enlarged to something like its original proportions by Arthur. A city had grown up outside the walls, with market-place and church and palace near the Roman bridge which — patched here and there, and with new lamp-posts — spanned the river.

The King, with most of the court, lived in the palace outside the fortress walls. Many of his knights had lodgings within the fort, and so, to begin with, had the Orkney boys. They were still lodged apart, with some of Arthur's servants doing duty alongside the people brought from Orkney. Gabran, to his own obvious discomfort, had had perforce to remain with the boys; there had naturally been no question of his being allowed to follow Morgause to Amesbury. Gawain, still smarting from the painful mixture of shame on his mother's behalf and jealousy on his own, lost no opportunity of letting the man see that now he had no standing at all. Gaheris followed suit, but more openly, as was his habit, adding insults where he could to contempt for his mother's displaced lover. The other two, less conscious perhaps of Morgause's sexual vagaries, scarcely noticed him. Mordred had other things on his mind.

But days passed, and nothing happened. If Merlin, back from the dead, was indeed planning to spur Arthur to revenge on Morgause and her family, he was in no hurry to do so. The old man, weakened by the events of the summer and autumn, kept mainly to the rooms allotted to him in the King's house. Arthur spent a good deal of time with him, and it was known that Merlin had attended one or two of the meetings of the privy council, but the Orkney boys saw nothing of him.

It was said that Merlin himself had advised against a public homecoming. There was no announcement, no scene of public rejoicing. As time went on, people came simply to accept his presence among them again, as if the "death" of the King's cousin and chief adviser, and the country-wide mourning, had been another and more elaborate example of the enchanter's habit of vanishing and reappearing at will. They had always known, men said wisely, that the great enchanter could not die. If he had chosen to lie in a death-like trance while his spirit visited the halls of the dead, why, then, he had come back wiser and more powerful than ever. Soon he would go back to his hollow hill again, the sacred Bryn Myrddin, and there he would remain, invisible at times maybe, but nevertheless present and powerful for those to call on who needed him.

Meantime, if Arthur had yet found time to discuss the Orkney boys — that Mordred was by far the most important of these none of them of course guessed — nothing was said. The truth was that Arthur, for once unsure of his ground, was procrastinating. Then his hand was forced, quite inadvertently, by Mordred himself.

It was on the evening before Christmas. All day a snowstorm had prevented the boys from riding out, or exercising with their weapons. With the feast days, both of Christmas and the King's birthday, so near, no one troubled to give them the usual tuition, so the five of them spent an idle day kicking their heels in the big room where they slept with some of the servants. They ate too much, drank more than they were accustomed to of the strong Welsh metheglin, quarrelled, fought, and eventually subsided to watch a game of tables that had been going on for some time at the other end of the room. The final bout was in progress, watched, with advice and encouragement, by a crowd of onlookers. The players were Gabran and one of the local men, whose name was Llyr.

It was late, and the lamps burned low. The fire filled the room with smoke. A cold draught from the windows sent a gentle drift of snow to pile unheeded on the floor.

The dice rattled and fell, the counters clicked. The games went evenly enough, the piled coins being pushed from player to player as the luck changed. Slowly the piles grew to handfuls. There was silver in them, and even the glint of gold. Gradually the watchers fell silent; no more jesting, no more advice where so much was at stake. The boys crowded in, fascinated. Gawain, his hostility forgotten, peered closely over Gabran's shoulder. His brothers were as eager as he. The contest, in fact, showed signs of becoming Orkney against the rest, and for once even Gaheris found him self on Gabran's side. Mordred, no gambler himself, stood across the board from them, by chance in the opposing camp, and watched idly.

Gabran threw. A one and a two. The moves were negligible. Llyr, with a pair of fives, brought his last counter off and said exultantly: "A game! A game! That equals your last two hits! So, one more for the decider. And they are running for me, friend, so spit on your hands and pray to your outland gods."

Gabran was flushed with drinking, but still looked sober enough, and elegant enough, to obey neither of these exhortations. He pushed the stake across, saying doubtfully: "I think I'm cleaned out. Sorry, but we'll have to call that the decider. You've won, and I'm for bed."

"Oh, come on." Llyr shook the dice temptingly in his fist. "Your turn's coming. It's time the luck changed. Come on, give it a try. You can owe me. Don't break it up now."

"But I really am cleaned out." Gabran pulled his pouch from its hangers and dug into the depths. "Nothing, see? And where am I to get more if I lose again?" He thrust his fingers deep into the pouch, then pulled it inside out and shook it over the board. "There. Nothing." No coins fell, but something else dropped with a rattle and lay winking in the lamplight.

It was a charm, a circular amulet of wood bleached to silver by the sea, and carved crudely with eyes and a mouth. In the eye-holes were gummed a pair of blue river-pearls, and the curve of the grinning mouth had been filled with red clay. A goddess-charm of Orkney, crude and childishly made, but, to an Orcadian, a potent symbol.

Llyr poked at it with a finger. "Pearls, eh? Well, what's wrong with that for a stake? If she brings you luck you'll win her back and plenty else besides. Throw you for starters?"

The dice shook, fell, rattled to either side of the charm. Before they came to rest they were rudely disturbed. Mordred, suddenly cold sober, leaned forward, shot out a hand and grabbed the thing.

"Where did you get this?"

Gabran looked up, surprised. "I don't know. I've had it for years. Can't remember where I picked it up. Perhaps the—"

He stopped. His mouth stayed half open. Still staring at Mordred, he slowly went white. If he had announced it aloud, he could not have confessed more openly that he remembered now where the charm had come from.

"What is it?" asked someone. No one answered him. Mordred was as white as Gabran.

"I made it myself." He spoke in a flat voice that those who did not know him would have thought empty of any emotion at all. "I made it for my mother. She wore it always. Always."

His eyes locked on Gabran's. He said nothing more, but the phrase finished itself in the silence. Till she died. And now, completely, as if it had been confessed aloud, he knew how she had died. Who had killed her, and who had ordered the killing.

He did not know how the knife came into his hand. Forgotten now were all the arguments about a queen's right to kill where she chose. But a prince could, and would. He kicked the board aside, and the pieces went flying. Gabran's own knife lay to hand. He grabbed it and started up. The others, slowed with drink and not yet seeing more than a sudden sharp wrangle over the game, reacted too slowly. Llyr was protesting good-naturedly: "Well, all right. So take it, if it's yours." Another man made a grab for the boy's knife-hand, but Mordred, eluding him, jumped for Gabran, knife held low and expertly, pointing upwards to the heart. Gabran, as sober now as he, saw that the threat was real and deadly, and struck out. The blades touched, but Mordred's blow went home. The knife went deep, in below the ribs, and lodged there.

Gabran's knife fell with a clatter. Both his hands went to clasp the hilt that lodged under his ribs. He bent, folded forward. Hands caught at him and lowered him. There was very little blood.

There was complete silence now in the room, broken only by the short, exhausted breathing of the wounded man. Mordred, standing over him, flung round the shocked company a look that could have been Arthur's own.

"He deserved it. He killed my parents. That charm was my mother's. I made it for her and she wore it always. He must have taken it when he killed them. He burned them."

There was not a man present who had not killed or seen killing done. But at that there were sick looks exchanged. "Burned them?" repeated Llyr.

"Burned them alive in their home. I saw it afterwards."

"Not alive."

The whisper was Gabran's. He lay half on his side, his body curled round the knife, his hands on the hilt, but shrinkingly, as if he would have withdrawn it, but feared the pain. The silver chasing quivered with his harsh, small breaths.

"I saw it, too." Gawain came to Mordred's side, looking down. "It was horrible. They were poor people, and old. They had nothing. If this is true, Gabran… Did you burn Mordred's home?"

Gabran drew a deep breath as if his lungs were running out of air. His face was pale as parchment and the gilt curls were dark with sweat.

"Yes."

"Then you deserve to die," said Gawain, shoulder to shoulder with Mordred.

"But they were dead," whispered Gabran. "I swear it. Burned… afterwards. To hide it."

"How did they die?" demanded Mordred.

Gabran did not reply. Mordred knelt by him quickly, and put a hand to the dagger's hilt. The man's hands twitched, but fell away, strengthless. Mordred said, still with that deceptive calm: "You will die anyway, Gabran. So tell me now. How did they die?"

"Poison."

The word sent a shiver through the company. Men repeated it to each other, so that the whisper ran through the air like a hissing. Poison. The woman's weapon. The witch's weapon.

Mordred, unmoving, felt Gawain stiffen beside him. "You took them poison?"

"Yes. Yes. With the gifts. A present of wine."

None of the local people spoke. And none of those from Orkney needed to. Mordred said softly, a statement, rather than a question: "From the queen."

Gabran said, on another long, gasping breath: "Yes."

"Why?"

"In case the woman knew… guessed… something about you."

"What about me?"

"I don't know."

"You are dying, Gabran. What about me?"

Gabran, queen's minion, queen's dupe, told his last lie for the queen. "I do not know. I… swear it."

"Then die now," said Mordred, and pulled the knife out.

They took him straight away to the High King.

15

ARTHUR WAS DOING NOTHING MORE alarming than choose a hound puppy out of a litter of six. A boy from the kennels had brought them in, with the bitch in anxious attendance, and the six pups, white and brindled, rolled yapping and wrestling with one another round the King's feet. The bitch, restless and uneasy, darted in repeatedly to pick up a pup and restore it to the basket, but before she had grabbed another, the first would clamber straight out and re-join the tumble on the floor.

The King was laughing, but when his guards brought Mordred in, the laughter went out of his face as if a light had been quenched. He looked startled, then recovered himself.

"What is this? Arrian?"

The man addressed said stolidly: "Murder, sir. A stabbing. One of the Orkney men. This young man did it. I didn't get the rights of it, sir. There's others outside that saw it. Do you want them brought in as well, sir?"

"Later, perhaps. I'll talk to the boy first. I'll send when I want them. Let them go now."

The man saluted and withdrew. The hound-boy began to gather up the pups. One of them, a white one, eluded him, and, squeaking like an angry mouse, charged back to the King's feet. It seized a dangling lace in its teeth and, growling, worried it furiously. Arthur glanced down as the hound-boy pulled the pup away. "Yes. That's the one. To be named Cabal again. Thank you." The boy scuttled out with the basket, the bitch at his heels.

Mordred stayed where the men had left him, just inside the door. He could hear the guard outside being mounted again. The King left his chair by the leaping fire, and crossed to where a big table stood, littered with papers and tablets. He seated himself behind this, and pointed to the floor across the table from him. Mordred advanced and stood. He was shaking, and it took all his will-power to control this, the reaction from his first kill, from the hideous memory of the burned cottage and the feel of that weather-washed bone in his hand, and now the dreaded confrontation with the man he had been taught was a ferocious enemy. Gone, now, was the cool conviction that the High King would not trouble with such as he; Mordred had himself provided a just excuse. That he would be killed now, he had no doubt at all. He had brawled in a king's house, and, though the man he had killed was one of the Orkney household, and was justly punished for a foul murder, Mordred, even as a prince of Orkney, could hardly hope to escape punishment himself. And though Gawain had supported him, he would hardly go on doing so now that Gabran's confession had branded Morgause, too, with the murder.

None of this showed in the boy's face. He stood, pale-faced and still, with his hands gripped together behind his back where the King could not see their trembling. His eyes were lowered, his mouth compressed. His face looked sullen and obstinate, but Arthur knew men, and he saw the telltale quiver under the eyes, and the quick rise and fall of the boy's breathing.

The King's first words were hardly alarming.

"Supposing you tell me what happened."

Mordred's eyes came up to find the King watching him steadily, but not with the look that had brought Morgause to her knees in the roadway at Camelot. He had, indeed, a fleeting but powerful impression that the King's main attention was on something quite other than Mordred's recent crime. This gave him courage, and soon he found himself talking, freely for him, without noticing how Arthur's apparently half-absent questioning led him through all the details, not just of the killing of Gabran, but of his own story from the beginning. Too highly wrought to wonder why the King should want to hear it, the boy told it all: the life with Brude and Sula, the meeting with Gawain, the queen's summons and subsequent kindness, the ride to Seals' Bay with Gabran, the final hideous discovery of the burned-out cottage. It was the first time since Sula's death, and the end of his own childhood, that he had found himself talking — confiding, even — in someone with whom communication was easy. Easy? With the High King? Mordred did not even notice the absurdity. He went on. He was talking now about the killing of Gabran. At some point in the tale he took a step forward to the table's edge, and laid the wooden charm in front of the King. Arthur picked it up and studied it, his face expressionless. On his hand a great carved ruby glimmered, making the pathetic thing the crude toy that it was. He laid it down again.

Mordred came to an end at last. In the silence that followed, the flames in the big fireplace flapped like flags in the wind.

Again the King's words were unexpected. He spoke as if the question came straight from some long-held thought, that seemed, to the matter in hand, quite irrelevant.

"Why did she call you Mordred?"

With all the familiar talk behind him, the boy hardly paused to think as he replied, with a directness that only an hour ago would have been unthinkable:

"It means the boy from the sea. That's where they got me from, after I was saved from the boat that you had the children put in to drown."

"I?"

"I heard since that it wasn't you, lord. I don't know the truth of it, but that is what I was told first."

"Of course. That is what she would tell you."

"She?"

"Your mother."

"Oh, no!" said Mordred quickly. "Sula never told me anything, not about the boat, or about the killings. It was Queen Morgause who told me, much later. As for my name, half the boys in the islands are called Mordred, Medraut.… The sea is everywhere."

"So I understand. Which is why it has taken so long for me to locate you, even knowing where your mother was. No, I am not talking about Sula. I mean your real mother, the woman who bore you."

Mordred's voice came strangled. "You know that? You were — you mean you were looking for me? You actually know who my mother is — who I really am?"

"I should." The words came heavily, as if loaded with meaning, but Arthur seemed to change direction, and added merely: "Your mother is my half-sister."

"Queen Morgause?" The boy gaped, thunderstruck.

"Herself."

Arthur left it there for the moment. One thing at a time. Mordred's eyes blinked rapidly, his brain taking in this astounding new fact, thinking back, thinking ahead...

He looked up at last. Fear was forgotten now; the past, even the recent past, forgotten also. There was a blaze behind his eyes that told of an almost overmastering excitement.

"I see it now! She did tell me a little. Only hints — hints that I couldn't understand, because the truth never occurred to me. Her own son… Really her own son!" A deep breath. "Then that is why she sought me out! Gawain was only the excuse. I did think it strange that she should want to nurture one of her husband's bastards by some girl from the town. And even to show me favour! When all the time I was her own, and only a bastard because I was born before time! Oh, yes, I know that now! They had been wed barely eight months when I was born. And then King Lot came back from Linnuis and—"

A sudden complete stop. The excited comprehension vanished as if a shutter had dropped across his eyes.

More things were, coming together. He said, slowly: "It was King Lot who ordered the massacre of the babies? Because his eldest son had a doubtful birth? And my mother saved me, and sent me to Brude and Sula in the Orkneys?"

"It was King Lot who ordered the massacre. Yes."

"To kill me?"

"Yes. And to blame me for it."

"Why that?"

"For fear of the people. The other parents whose children did die. Also because, even though in the end he fought under my command, Lot was always my enemy. And for other reasons."

The last sentence came slowly. Arthur, still feeling his way towards the moment when the most important truth might be told, lent it a weight that might have been expected to set Mordred asking the question that had been fed to him. But Mordred was not to be steered. He was busy with his own long obsession. He took a step forward, to lean with both hands flat on the table and say, with intensity:

"Yes, other reasons! I know them! I was his eldest born, but because I was begotten out of wedlock he was afraid that in days to come men might doubt my birth, and make trouble in the kingdom! It was better to be rid of me, and get another prince in wedlock, who might in due time take the kingdom without question!"

"Mordred, you are running too far ahead. You must listen."

It is doubtful if Mordred noticed that the High King was speaking with less than his usual assurance. Was looking, indeed, if one could use such a word of the great duke of battles, embarrassed. But Mordred was past listening. The full implications of what he had learned in the past few minutes swept over him in a bewildering cloud, but brought with them a new confidence, a lifting of caution, the driving satisfaction of at last being able to say it all, and to say it to the man who could make it come true.

He swept on, stammering a little. "Am I not, then, in sober fact, heir to Dunpeldyr? Or, if Tydwal is to hold that stronghold for Gawain, then of the Orkneys? Sir, the two kingdoms, so far apart, are hard for one man to hold, and this, surely, could be the time to divide them? You have said you will not let Queen Morgause go back. Let me go back instead!"

"You have not understood me," said the King. "You have no right to either one of Lot's kingdoms."

"No right!" It could have been the young Arthur himself who said it, springing upright like a bow when the arrow flies. "When you yourself were begotten out of wedlock by Uther Pendragon, on the lady who was still Duchess of Cornwall, and who could not wed him before a month was out?"

No sooner was it said than he would, if he could, have swallowed the words back. The King said nothing, nor did his look change, but recollection struck Mordred silent, and with it his fear returned. Twice in one evening he had lost his temper, he, Mordred, who for years now had fought his nature down to achieve, as armour against the displacement, the insecurity of his life, that sea-cold shell of control.

Stumblingly, he tried to unsay it. "My lord, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to insult you or… or your lady mother. I only meant—I've thought about this for so long, thought every way whether it could be legal for me to have a place, a place to rule.… I know I could. One does.… And I thought about you, and how you came to it. Of course I did. Everyone knows — that is — men do say—"

"That I am technically a bastard?"

Amazingly, the King did not sound angry. Mordred's courage crept back. His fists pressed into the table, striving for steadiness. He said carefully: "Yes, sir. I wondered about the law, you see. The mainland law. I was going to find out, and then ask you. My lord, if Gawain goes to Dunpeldyr, then, by the Goddess herself, I promise you that I am fitter than Gaheris or Agravain to rule the Orkneys! And who knows what trouble and moil there could be if twins were named successors?"

Arthur did not answer at once. Mordred, his plea made, the words said, subsided into silence. The King came out of his thoughts, and spoke.

"I have listened to you because I was curious to know what kind of man you had grown to be, with your strange upbringing, so like my own." A slight smile. "As everyone knows, I, too, was begotten out of wedlock, then hidden for many years. With me it was fourteen years, but I was in a household where from the start I was taught the skills of knighthood. You have had less than four years of such teaching, but they tell me you have made much of them. You will come into your own, believe me, but not as you have planned or imagined. Now you will listen to me. And sit down, please."

Wondering, the boy pulled up a stool and sat. The King himself stood up, and paced the length of the room and back before speaking.

"First of all, whatever the law, whatever the precedent, there is no question of your taking the kingdom of the Orkneys. That will be for Gawain. My intention is to keep Gawain and his brothers here among my fighting knights, and then, when the time is right, and if he wishes it, let him take back his island kingdom from my hand. And in the meantime, Tydwal will stay in Dunpeldyr."

He stopped his pacing, and sat down again.

"This is not injustice, Mordred. You can have no claim to either Lothian or the Orkneys. You are not Lot's son." He gave it emphasis. "King Lot of Lothian was not your father."

A pause. The flames roared in the chimney. Outside in a corridor somewhere, someone called out and was answered. The boy asked, in a flattened, neutral voice: "Do you know who is?"

"I should," said the King, for the second time.

Now comprehension was instant. The boy went upright on the stool. It brought his eyes almost on a level with the King's.

"You?"

"I," said Arthur, and waited.

This time it took a moment or two, and then, not the sick disgust he expected, but merely wonder and a slow assessment of this new fact.

"With Queen Morgause? But that — that—"

"Is incest. Yes." He left it there. No excuse, no protestation of his own ignorance of the relationship when Morgause seduced her young half-brother to her bed. In the end the boy said merely: "I see."

It was Arthur's turn to be startled. Held so in his own consciousness of sin, of disgust at the memory of that night with Morgause, who had since become for him a symbol of all that was evil and unclean, he had not taken into account the peasant-reared boy's reaction to a sin far from uncommon in the inbred islands of his homeland. In that homeland, indeed, it would hardly be counted as a sin. Roman law had not stretched so far, and it was not to be supposed that Mordred's Goddess — who was also Morgause's — had implanted much sense of sin in her followers.

Mordred, indeed, was already wholly occupied in other considerations. "So that means I am — I am—"

"Yes," said Arthur, and watched the wonder, and through it the excitement, kindle in the eyes so like his own. No affection — how could there be? — but a shift of the powerful and inborn ambition. And why not? thought the King. Guinevere will have no child by me. This boy is twice Pendragon, and from all reports as well-liking as any boy will ever be. Just now he is feeling as I felt when Merlin told me the same thing, and put the sword of Britain into my hand. Let him feel it. The rest, as the gods will it, will come.

Of the prophecy of Merlin, that the boy would cause his downfall and death, he never thought at all. The moment was for him one of joy, unspoiled.

Unspoiled, too, miraculously, by Mordred's indifference to the long-past sin. Because of this very lack of reaction he found that he could speak of it himself.

"It was after the battle at Luguvallium. My first fight. Your mother, Morgause, came north to tend her father. King Uther, who was sick, and though we did not know it, dying. I did not know then that I, too, was a child of Uther Pendragon's. I believed Merlin to be my father, and, indeed, loved him as such. I had never seen Morgause before. You will be able to guess how lovely she was, at twenty.… I went to her bed that night. It was not until afterwards that Merlin told me Uther Pendragon was my father, and I myself heir to the High Kingdom."

"But she knew?" Mordred, quick as ever, had fastened on the thing unsaid.

"So I believe. But even my ignorance cannot excuse my share of the sin. I know that. In doing what I did, I wronged you, Mordred. So the wrong persists."

"How? You looked for me, and brought me here. You need not have done so. Why did you?"

"When I ordered Morgause here," said Arthur, "I thought her guilty of Merlin's death, that was — is — the best man in all this realm, and the one dearest to me. She is still guilty. Merlin is old before his time, and carries in him the germ of the poison she fed to him. He knew that she had poisoned him, but for the sake of her sons he never told me. He judged that she ought to live, so long as she stayed harmless in exile, to rear them against the day when they could serve me. I only learned of the poison when he lay, as we thought, dying, and in his delirium spoke of it, and of Morgause's repeated attempts to kill him by poison or by sorcery. So after his entombment I sent for her to answer for her crime, judging, too, that it was time her sons left her care and came into my charge."

"All five. That surprised everyone. You said you had had reports, sir. Who told you about me?"

Arthur smiled. "I had a spy in your palace. The goldsmith's man, Casso. He wrote to me."

"The slave? He could write? He gave no hint of it. He's dumb, and we thought there was no way he could communicate."

The King nodded. "That's why he is valuable. People talk freely in front of a slave, especially a dumb one. It was Merlin who had him taught to write. Sometimes I think that even his smallest acts were dictated by prevision. Well, Casso saw and heard plenty while he was in Morgause's household. He wrote to me that the "Mordred" now in the palace must be the one."

Mordred was thinking back. "I think I saw him send the message. There was a trading ship tied up at the wharf; it had been unloading wood. I saw him go on board, and someone gave him money. I thought he must be doing work on his own, that the goldsmith didn't know about. That would be it?"

"Very possibly."

The memory brought back others: Morgause and her private smiling when he spoke of his "mother." Her test to see if she had passed on the Sight to her son. And Sula; Sula must have known that one day he would be taken from her. She had been afraid. Had she suspected, then, what might one day happen?

He asked abruptly: "Did she really have Gabran kill them?"

"If he said so, knowing he was dying, you may be sure of it," said the King. "She would think no more of it than of flying her hawk at a hare. She had your first nurse, Macha, murdered in Dunpeldyr, and herself goaded Lot into killing Macha's child, who had taken your place in the royal cradle. And, though Lot gave the order, it was Morgause who instigated the massacre of the children. This we know for truth. There was a witness. There have been many killings, Mordred, and none of them clean."

"So many killings, and all for me. But why?" The one clue he had been given, all those years ago, he had, like Arthur, forgotten in the excitement and heady promise of this meeting. "Why did she keep me alive? Why trouble to have me kept in secret all those years?"

"To use as a tool, a pawn, what you will." If the King remembered the prophecy now, he did not burden the boy with it. "Maybe as a hostage in case I found out she had murdered Merlin. It was after she reckoned herself safe that she took you out of hiding, and even then the disguise she chose for you — Lot's bastard son — was sufficient to conceal you. But I can't guess further than that about her motives. I have not got her kind of subtlety." He added, in answer to some kind of appeal in the boy's intense gaze: "It does not come from the blood we share with her, Mordred. I have killed many men in my time, but not in such ways, or for such motives. Morgause's mother was a Breton girl, a wise-woman, so I have heard. These things go from mother to daughter. You must not fear these dark powers in yourself."

"I don't fear them," said Mordred quickly. "I have nothing of the Sight, no magic, she told me so. She did once try to find out about it. I think now that she was afraid I might 'see' what had happened to my foster parents. So she took me down with her to the underground chamber where there is a magic pool, and told me to look there for visions."

"And what visions did you see?"

"Nothing. I saw an eel in the pool. But the queen said there were visions. She saw them."

Arthur smiled. "I told you that you were of my blood rather than hers. To me, water is only water, though I have seen the mage-fire that Merlin can call from the air, and other marvels, but they were all marvels of the light. Did Morgause show you any magic of her own?"

"No, sir. She took me to the chamber where she made her spells and mixed her magic potions—"

"Go on. What's the matter?"

"Nothing. It was nothing, really. Just something that happened there." He looked away, towards the fire, reliving the moments in the stillroom, the clasp, the kiss, the queen's words. He added, slowly, to himself, making the discovery: "And all the time she knew I was her own son."

Arthur, watching him, made a guess that was a certainty. The rush of anger that he felt shook him. Over it he said, very gently: "You, too, Mordred?"

"It was nothing," said the boy again, rapidly, as if to brush it aside. "Nothing, really. But now I know why I felt the way I did." A quick glance across the table. "Oh, it happens, everyone knows it does. But not like that. Brother and sister, that's one thing… but mother and son? Not that, ever. At least, I never heard of it. And she knew, didn't she? She knew. I wonder why she would want—?"

He let it die and was silent, looking down at the hands held fast now between his knees. He was not asking for a reply. He and the King already knew the answer. There was no emotion in his voice but puzzled distaste, such as one might accord some perverted appetite. The flush had died from his cheeks, and he looked pale and strained.

The King was thinking, with growing relief and thankfulness, that here there would be no tie to break. Violent emotions create their own ties, but what remained between Morgause and Mordred could surely be broken here and now.

He spoke at length in a carefully low key, equal to equal, prince to prince.

"I shall not put her to death. Merlin is alive, and her other killings are not my concern to punish here and now. Moreover, you will see that I cannot keep you near me — here in my court where so many people know the story, and suspect that you are my son — and forthwith put your mother to death. So Morgause lives. But she will not be released."

He paused, leaning back in the great chair, and regarding the boy kindly. "Well, Mordred, we are here, at the start of a new road. We cannot see where it will lead us. I promised to do right by you, and I meant it. You will stay here in my court, with the other Orkney princes, and you, like them, will have royal status as my nephew. Where men guess at your parentage, you will find that you have more respect, not less. But you must see that, because of what happened at Luguvallium, and because of the presence of Queen Guinevere, I cannot openly call you son."

Mordred looked down at his hands. "And when you have others by the Queen?"

"I shall not. She is barren. Mordred, leave this now. The future will come. Take what life offers you here in my household. All the princes of Orkney will have the honour due to royal orphans, and you — I believe you will in the end have more." He saw something leap again behind the boy's eyes. "I do not speak of kingdoms, Mordred. But perhaps that, too, if you are sufficiently my son."

All at once the boy's composure shattered. He began to shake. His hands went up to cover his face. He said, muffled: "It's nothing. I thought I would be punished for Gabran. Killed, even. And now all this. What will happen? What will happen, sir?"

"About Gabran, nothing," said the King. "He was to be pitied, but his death, in its way, was just. And about you, for the moment, very little, except that tonight you will not go to your bedchamber with the other boys. You will need time alone; to come to terms with all you have just learned. No one will wonder at this; they will think merely that you are being held apart because of Gabran's death."

"Gawain, the others? Are they to know?"

"I shall talk to Gawain. The others need know nothing more yet than that you are Morgause's son, and eldest of the High King's nephews. That will be sufficient to explain your standing here. But I shall tell Gawain the truth. He needs to know that you are not a rival for Lothian or the Orkneys." He turned his head. "Listen, there is the guard changing outside. Tomorrow is the feast of Mithras, and the Christmas of the Christians, and for you, I expect, some winter festival of your outland Orkney gods. For us all, a new beginning. So be welcome here, Mordred. Go now, and try to sleep."