"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.