"But surely Mordred himself should have sent a report? If Constantine's man could get through—"
"If he believed the report of my death," said Arthur, "to whom would he send it?"
Gawain, with an impatient shrug, started to hand the letter back to his uncle. Then he checked. "There's more here. On the other side, see?"
Arthur took it from him, saw the last sentences on the back, and began to read them aloud.
" 'Finally, with the High King gone, he plans to take Queen Guinevere to wife. He has lodged her at Caerleon, and—' "
He did not finish it, but Gawain did, on a rising note where genuine anger was shot with a kind of triumph.
" 'And consorts with her there'!" He swung away, then back to the King. "Uncle, whether or not he believes you dead, this is the act of a traitor! He has no proof as yet, no shadow of reason for haling the Queen off to Caerleon, and paying his court to her! You say the rest of this letter could be true.… If it is, in whatever fashion, then this must be true also!"
"Gawain!—" began the King, in a warning voice, but Gawain, burning, swept on: "No, you must hear me! I'm your kin. You'll hear truth from me. I can tell you this, uncle, Mordred wanted the kingdom always. I know how ambitious he was, even at home in the islands, even before he knew he was your son. Your son, yes! But still a fisher-brat, a peasant with a peasant's guile and greed, and a huckster's honour! He's taken the first chance to turn traitor and get what he wants. With the Saxons and the Welsh at his back, and the Queen at his side… "consorts" indeed! He wasted no time! I've seen the way he looked at her—"
Something in Arthur's face stopped him there. It was hard to say what it was, for the King looked like a dead man carved in grey stone. Something about him suggested a man who sees at his feet a deadly pitfall lined with spears, and who with sheer stubborn faith holds to the one frail sapling that may stop him from falling. There was silence now from the next room.
Arthur's voice was still steady, still reasonable, but without life or tone. "Gawain. The last thing I enjoined on my son was, in the event of my death, to care for and protect the Queen. He stands to her also as a son. What has been said, we shall forget."
Gawain bowed his head and muttered something that might have been an apology. Arthur handed him the letter.
"Burn this letter. Now. That's it," as Gawain held the parchment up to a torch and watched it blacken and curl into crow's feathers. "Now I must go to Bedwyr. In the morning—"
He did not finish. He began to get to his feet, moving slowly, putting weight on the arms of his chair like an old man, or a sick one. Gawain, who was fond of him, was seized with sudden compunction, and spoke more gently: "I'm sorry, uncle, believe me, I am. I know you don't want to believe this of Mordred, so let us hope there is news soon. Meanwhile, is there anything I can do for you?"
"Yes. You can go and give the orders for our return home. Whatever the truth of the matter, I shall have to go back. Either I must deal with Mordred, or with Constantine. This is not the time to pursue our victory further, or even to call for talks with the emperor. Instead, I shall send him a message."
"Yes?" queried Gawain, as the King paused.
Arthur's look was cryptic. "A task that will please you. See that Lucius Quintilianus' body is disinterred and sent to the emperor, with this message: that this is the tribute that the British pay to Rome. Now leave me. I must go to Bedwyr."
Bedwyr did not die. The silence that had frightened the King was not death, or coma, but sleep, and the sick man woke from it with his fever gone and his wounds cool. Arthur, in spite of what might lie ahead of him, could set out for Britain with a free mind and a lighter heart.
The King set sail at last on a cloudy day with white spume blowing back from the wave-tops and the far sky leaning low over the heaving grey. The sea witch, it seemed, held sway over the Channel waters. Though the wind had changed its quarter at last, sea and sky alike still seemed to conspire against Arthur her old enemy. Even the gulls, flakes ripped from the white waves, drove to and fro in the wind with shrieks of uncanny laughter, like a mockery. A gloomy, driving sea, without glitter, without light, heaved northward in the sudden turn of the wind. A gust took the Sea Dragon's standard and shredded it into streamers that whirled downwind. "An omen," men whispered, but Arthur, looking up, laughed, and said: "He has gone ahead of us. If we seize the weather, we shall fly as fast as he."
And fly they did. What they could not know was that Cynric's Saxons had seized the same chance of wind, and that the longboats were also on their way across the Narrow Sea. Long and low, in those heaving seas the British caught no sight of them until, in the final gleams of a late and clouded afternoon, as they scudded along with the line of the Saxon Shore like a white wall on the horizon, the Sea Dragon's lookout saw what looked like Saxon longships riding in nearer the coast.
But when the King, with the heavy slowness that he showed these days, clambered up to a viewpoint by the mast, the longships — or their shadows — were gone.
"South Saxon ships, caught by the change of wind," said the master, at Arthur's elbow. "Shallow draught. They're lucky. They'll be back at anchor now, and no trouble to us. If we—
He did not finish. A shout from the masthead made them all look round.
Low over the sea, its rain tearing out like a witch's hair, came a squall. Its shadow fled on before like a doom. The master shouted. The seamen ran to their places. King, knights, sailors gripped the nearest stay.
The squall struck. In an instant all was screaming wind and rain. The air was black. Water cascaded down, whipping their faces so that they covered their eyes. The little ship shook and shuddered, stopped as if struck on a rock, then heeled over, reared and bucked like a frightened horse. Ropes strained and snapped. The whole ship's structure groaned. Somewhere a crack of timber gave warning.
The squall blew for perhaps ten minutes. When, as suddenly as it had come, it blew away, fleeing over the sea above its shadow, the fleet, scattered and damaged, found itself driven almost within hailing distance of the coast. But the coast was the West Saxon shore, and there was no way that they could beat farther westward against a capriciously veering wind, to make the Dumnonian harbours, or even the debated shelter of Potters' Bay.
The King, with water licking the lower deck of the Sea Dragon, and two of her sister ships wallowing badly alongside, gave the order.
And so the sea witch drove Arthur ashore in Saxon territory where Cerdic's son Cynric, watching for the stragglers of his own immigrant fleet, rested with a band of his men after their stormy voyage. To him, from the ruins of the Roman lighthouse, came the watchman, running. Ships — three ships, and others heading shorewards behind them — were coming into the deep harbour to westward. There was no standard, no device. But by their lines and rig they were British ships, and they were setting inshore where they surely had no right to be. He had had, in the rapidly worsening light, no hint of their beaten condition.
Cynric did not know that the proposed immigration was known to, and approved by the British; nor could he know that, by Mordred's new treaty with Cerdic, the incoming British ships were welcome to land. He drew his own conclusions. His landing had been observed, and was now, perhaps, to be opposed. He sent a messenger urgently inland to report his arrival and summon Cerdic's help, then gathered his men together to oppose the British landing.