"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.