Mordred's "good news" did not appear to have given her any pleasure. He thought her eyes were filled with tears.
Still regarding those glowing tree-trunks with their mosaic of golden leaves, she said: "And our embassy? What happened there?"
"There had to be, for courtesy, a representative of the royal house. It was Gawain."
Her gaze came back to him sharply. Her eyes were dry. "And he made trouble." It was not a question.
"He did. There was some foolish talk and bragging that led to insults and a quarrel, and the young men fell to fighting."
She moved her hands, almost as if she would throw them up in a classic gesture of despair. But she sounded angry rather than grieved. "Again!"
"Madam?"
"Gawain! The Orkney fools again! Always that cold north wind, like a blighting frost that blasts everything that is good and growing!" She checked herself, took in her breath, and said, with a visible effort: "Your pardon, Mordred. You are so different, I was forgetting. But Lot's sons, your half-brothers—"
"Madam, I know. I agree. Hot fools always, and this time worse than fools. Gawain killed one of the Roman youths, and it turned out that the man was a nephew of Lucius Quintilianus himself. The embassy was forced to flee, and Quintilianus sent Marcellus himself after them. They had to turn and fight, and there were deaths."
"Not Valerius? Not that good old man?"
"No, no. They got back in good order — indeed, with a kind of victory. But not before there had been several running engagements. Marcellus was killed in the first of these, and later Petreius Cotta, who took command after him, was taken prisoner and brought back to Kerrec in chains. I said it was a victory of a kind. But you see what it means. Now the High King himself must take the field."
"Ah, I knew it! I knew it! And what force has he?"
"He leads Hoel's army, and with them the troops he took with him, and Bedwyr is called down from Benoic with his men." Coolly he noted the slightest reaction to the name: She had not dared ask if Bedwyr, too, were safe; but now he had told her, and watched her colour come back. He went on: "The King does not yet know what numbers the Frankish kings will bring to the field, but they will not be small. From Britain he has called on Rheged and Gwynedd, with Elmet, and Tydwal from Dunpeldyr. Here I shall raise what reinforcements I can in haste. They will sail under Cei's command. All will be well, madam, you will see. You know the High King."
"And so do they," she said. "They will only meet him if they outnumber him three to one, and that, surely, they can do. Then even he will be in danger of defeat."
"He will not give them time. I spoke of haste. This whole thing has blown up like a summer storm, and Arthur intends to attack in the wake of it, rather than wait for events. He is already marching for Autun, to meet the Burgundians on their own ground, before Justinian's troops are gathered. He expects the Franks to join him before he reaches the border. But you had better read his letter for yourself. It will calm your fears. The High King shows no doubts of the outcome, and why should he? He is Arthur."
She thanked him with a smile, but he saw how her hand trembled as she held it out for the letter. He stood up and stepped down from the arbour, leaving her alone to read. There was a fluted stone column with a carefully contrived broken capital overhung with the yellow tassels of laburnum. He leaned against this and waited, watching her surreptitiously from time to time under lowered lids.
She read in silence. He saw when she reached the end of the letter, then read it through again. She let it sink to her lap and sat for a while with bent head. He thought she was reading the thing for the third time, then he saw that her eyes were shut. She was very pale.
His shoulder came away from the pillar. Almost in spite of himself he took a step towards her. "What is it? What do you fear?"
She gave a start, and her eyes opened. It was as if she had been miles away in thought, recalled abruptly. She shook her head, with an attempt at a smile. "Nothing. Really, nothing. A dream."
"A dream? Of defeat for the High King?"
"No. No." She gave a little laugh, which sounded genuine enough. "Women's folly, Mordred. You would call it so, I am sure! No, don't look so worried, I'll tell you, even if you laugh at me. Men do not understand such things, but we women, we who have nothing to do but wait and watch and hope, our minds are too active. Let us but once think, What will come to me when my lord is dead? and then all in a moment, in our imagination, he is laid in sad pomp on his bier, and the grave is dug in the center of the Hanging Stones, the mourning feast is over, the new king is come to Camelot, his young wife is here in the garden with her maidens, and the cast-off queen, still in the white of mourning, is questing about the kingdoms to see where she may with honour and with safety be taken in."
"But, madam," said Mordred, the realist, "surely my — the High King has already told you what dispositions have been made against that day?"
"I knew you would call it folly!" With an obvious attempt at lightness, she turned the subject.
"But believe me, it is something that every wife does. What of your own, Mordred?"
"My—?"
She looked confused. "Am I mistaken? I thought you were married. I am sure someone spoke of a son of yours at Gwarthegydd's court of Dumbarton."
"I am not married." Mordred's reply was rather too quick, and rather too emphatic. She looked surprised, and he threw a hand out, adding: "But you heard correctly, madam. I have two sons." A smile and a shrug. "Who am I, after all, to insist on wedlock? The two boys are by different mothers. Melehan is the younger, who is with Gwarthegydd. The other is still in the islands."
"And their mothers?"
"Melehan's mother is dead." The lie came smoothly. Since the Queen apparently had known nothing about his illicit household in Camelot, he would not confess it to her now. "The other is satisfied with the bond between herself and me. She is an Orkney woman, and they have different customs in the islands."
"Then married or not," said Guinevere, still with that forced lightness, "she is still a woman, and she, like me, must live through the same dreams of the wicked day when a messenger comes with worse news than this you have brought to me."
Mordred smiled. If he thought that his woman had too much to occupy her than to sit and dream about his death and burial, he did not say so. Women's folly, indeed. But as he held his hand for the letter, and she put the roll into it, he saw again how her hand shook. It changed his thoughts about her. To him she had been the Queen, the lovely consort of his King, the elusive vision, too, of his desires, a creature of gaiety and wealth and power and happiness. It was a shock to see her now, suddenly, as a lonely woman who lived with fear. "We have nothing to do but wait and watch and hope," she had said.
It was something he had never thought about. He was not an imaginative man, and in his dealings with women — Morgause apart — he followed in the main his peasant upbringing. He would not wittingly have hurt a woman, but it would not have occurred to him to go out of his way to help or serve one. On the contrary, they were there to help and serve him.
With an effort of imagination that was foreign to him he cast his mind forward, trying to think as a woman might, to fear fate as it would affect the Queen. When Arthur did meet death, what could she expect of the future? A year ago the answer would have been simple: Bedwyr would have taken the widow to Benoic, or to his lands in Northumbria. But now Bedwyr was married, and his wife was with child. More than that: Bedwyr, in sober fact, was not likely to survive any action in which Arthur was killed. Even now, as Mordred and the Queen talked together in this scented garden, the battle might already be joined that would bring to reality her dream of the wicked day. He recalled her letter to Arthur, with its unmistakable note of fear. Fear not only of Arthur's danger, but of his own. "You or your son," she had written. Now, with a sudden flash of truth as painful as a cut, he knew why. Duke Constantine. Duke Constantine, still officially next in line for the throne and already casting his eyes towards Camelot, whose title would be greatly strengthened if, first, he could claim the Queen-regent.…