Mordred made the boat fast, drew his own weapon, and moved quietly along the shingle, looking for the other boat.
The island was tiny. In a very few minutes he was back at his starting-point. There was no boat. Whoever he was, whatever he had done, he was gone. Mordred, his sword at the ready, climbed fast after Bedwyr towards the noise of weeping.
The fire was not quite out. A pile of ashes still showed a residual glow. Beside it, in its faint red light, the woman sat, hunched and wailing. Her hair, straggling unbound over a torn robe of some dark colour, showed pale. The fire had been kindled on the island's summit, where a stand of pine trees, clinging to what seemed to be bare rock, had laid down a carpet of needles, and where a cairn, built long ago and fallen apart with time and weather, made some sort of crude shelter. The grove appeared to be empty but for the crouched and mourning figure of the woman.
Mordred, many years younger than the other man, was close behind him as he reached the grove. The two men paused there.
She heard them, and looked up. The starlight, and the faint glimmer from the fire, showed that this was no girl, but an old woman, grey-haired, her face a mask of fear and grief. The wailing stopped as if she had been struck in the throat. Her body stiffened. Her mouth gaped wider, as if for a scream.
Bedwyr put out a hand and spoke quickly: "Madam — Mother — don't be afraid. We are friends. Friends. We have come to help."
The scream was choked back on a strangled gasp. They heard her breathing, short and ragged, as she strained white-eyed to see them.
They moved forward slowly. "Be calm. Mother," said Bedwyr. "We are from the King—"
"From which king? Who are you?"
Her voice was breathless and shaking, but now with the exhaustion of grief, not fear. Bedwyr had spoken in the local tongue, and she answered in the same. Her accent was broader than Bedwyr's, but the language of Less Britain was close enough to that of the mother kingdom for Mordred to understand it easily.
"I am Bedwyr of Benoic, and this is Mordred, son of King Arthur. We are King's men, seeking for the lady Elen. She has been here? You were with her?"
Mordred, while Bedwyr was speaking, had stooped to pick up a handful of pine drift, and a broken spar of wood. He scattered the stuff on the ashes, and a flame spurted, caught and held. Light nickered up redly, and showed the woman more clearly.
She was well, though plainly, dressed, and was perhaps sixty years old. Her clothing was dirtied and torn, as if in some sort of struggle. Her face, grimed and distorted with weeping, showed a big discoloured patch of bruising over one cheek, and her lips were split and crusty with dried blood.
"You come too late," she said.
"Where has he gone? Where has he taken her?"
"I mean too late for the Princess Elen." She pointed towards the tumbled cairn of stones. They looked that way. Now in the strengthening light of the fire they could see that something — someone — had been scrabbling in the thickly heaped pine needles. Some of the smaller stones from the cairn had been pulled down, and pine cones and needles scattered over them.
"It was all I could do," said the woman. She held out her hands. They were shaking. The men looked at them, stirred by horror and pity. The hands were torn and bruised and bloody.
The two knights went across to the cairn where the body lay. It was imperfectly hidden. Beneath the scattered stones and pine needles the girl's face could be seen, streaked with dirt and agonized with death. Her eyes had been closed, but the mouth gaped still, and the neck, with the death marks on the throat, hung crookedly.
Bedwyr, still with the gentleness that Mordred would never have suspected in him, said, half to himself: "She has a lovely face. God give her rest." Then, turning: "Don't grieve. Mother. She shall go home to her own people, and lie in royal fashion, at peace with her gods. And this foul beast shall die, and go to his, for his just reward."
He took a flask from his belt and knelt beside her, holding it to her lips. She drank, sighed, and in a while grew calmer. Soon she was able to tell them what had happened.
She did not know who the ravisher was. He was not, she affirmed to their relief, a foreigner. He had spoken but little, and that mostly curses, but he and his followers were unmistakably Bretons. The reports of a "giant" were not so very far wrong: He was a man huge in every way, stature, girth, strength, with a loud voice and a bellowing laugh. A bull of a man, who had burst out of cover with three companions — roughly clad fellows, like common thieves — and slain four of the princess's escort with his own hands before they had well had time to recover from their surprise. The remaining three fought valiantly but were all killed. Herself and the princess were dragged away, Elen's other woman ("a poor thing, who wailed and screamed so, if I had been one of those beasts I would have killed her on the spot," said the nurse trenchantly) had been left alone, but the attackers, riding off, took the party's horses with them, so had little fear of pursuit.
"They brought us to this place, at the water's edge. It was still dark, so it was hard to make out the way. One of them stayed with the horses on shore, and the others rowed us across to this rock. My lady was half fainting, and I tried to tend her. I had no other thoughts. We could not have escaped. The big man — the bull — carried her up the rocks to this place. The other fellows would have dragged me after, but I dodged them and ran, and when they saw that I had no intention of trying to leave my lady, they let me be."
She coughed, and licked her cut lips. Bedwyr held out the flask again, but she shook her head and presently continued: "The rest I cannot speak of, but you can guess at it. The two fellows held me while he — the bull — raped her. She was never strong. A pretty girl, but pale always, and often ill during the cold winters."
She stopped again, and bent her head. Her fingers twisted together.
After a while Bedwyr asked gently: "He killed her?"
"Yes. Or rather, what he did with her killed her. She died. He cursed, and left her yonder by the stones, and then came back to me. I had made no outcry — they shut my mouth with their stinking hands — but I was afraid that now they would kill me also. For what they did then… I had hardly thought… I am past my sixtieth year, and then one should be… Well, no more of that. What is done is done, and now you are here, and will slay this animal while he lies sleeping off his lust."
"Lady," said Bedwyr forcefully, "he shall die this night, if he is to be found. Where did they go?"
"I do not know. They spoke of an island, and a tower. That's all I can tell you. They had no thought of pursuit, or they would have killed me, too. Or perhaps, being animals, they did not think. They threw me down beside my lady, and left me. After a while I heard horses going. I think they went towards the coast. When I could move, I gave my lady what burial I could. I found a place in the stones of the cairn where someone, fishermen perhaps, had left flint and iron, and so made a fire. Had I not been able to do that I should have died here. There is neither fresh water nor food, and I cannot swim. If they had seen the fire and come back themselves, then I should have died sooner, that is all." She looked up. "But you — two young men like you against that monster and his fellows… No, no, you must not seek him yourselves. Take me with you, I beg of you, but do not seek him out. I would see no more deaths. Take my story back to King Hoel, and he—"
"Lady, we come from King Hoel. We were sent to find you and your lady, and punish the ravishers. Do not fear for us: I am Bedwyr of Benoic, and this is Mordred, son of Arthur of Britain."