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.