This flew now on the other pavilion. As the two men took their places at the table, Mordred saw his father eyeing it. What he cannot have known was that Arthur himself, as a young man, had borne a plain white banner. "White is my colour," he had said, "until I have written on it my own device. And write it, come in the way what will, I shall."
To Nimuë in her convent of maidens on the island in the Lake came Arthur's sister Queen Morgan. This was a Morgan subdued and anxious, knowing well what might be her fate if Arthur should be defeated or die in battle. She had been her brother's enemy, but without him she was, and would be, nothing. She could be trusted now to use all her skill and vaunted magic on his behalf.
So Nimuë accepted her. As Lady of the Lake convent, Nimuë stood in no awe of Morgan, either as sorceress or queen. Among her maidens were other royal ladies; one of them a cousin of Guinevere's from North Wales, another from Manau Guotodin. With them she set Morgan to prepare medicines and to make ready the barges that would be used to ferry the wounded across to the island for healing. She had seen Arthur and delivered her warning, and he had promised to call the parley and let the regent have his say. But Nimuë, for all her words to Pelleas, knew what the gods withheld behind the thunder-clouds that even now were building up beyond the shining Lake. Small from the island, the two pavilions could be seen, with the small space between.
For all the massed clouds on the far horizon, it promised to be a beautiful day.
The day wore on. Those officers who had accompanied their leaders to the truce table showed ill at ease at first, eyeing friends or former comrades on the other side with distrust, but after a while, relaxing, they began to talk among themselves, and fell into groups behind their respective leaders' pavilions.
Out of earshot of them, Arthur stood with Mordred. Occasionally they moved, as if by consent, and paced a few steps and back. Sometimes one spoke, sometimes the other. The watchers, focused on them even while they spoke of other things, tried to read what was happening. But they could not. The King, still looking tired, and frowning heavily, did nevertheless listen with calm courtesy to what the younger man was, with emphasis, saying.
Farther away, unable to see clearly or to hear anything at all, the armies watched and waited. The sun climbed the sky. The heat increased, brightness flashing back from the glassy surface of the Lake. Horses stamped and blew and switched their tails, impatient of heat and flies, and in the ranks the slight fretting of suspense changed to restlessness. The officers, themselves on the fidget, checked it where they could, and watched the truce table and the sky with steadily growing tension. Somewhere in the distance the first dull roll of thunder sounded. The air weighed heavy, and men's skins tightened with the coming storm. It was to be guessed that neither side wanted the fight, but, by the irony that governs affairs of violence, the longer the truce talks went on, the more the tension grew, till the slightest spark would start such a fire as only death could quench.
None of those watching was ever destined to know what Arthur and Mordred spoke of. Some said later — those who lived to speak — that in the end the King smiled. Certain it is that he was seen to put out a hand to his son's arm, turning back with him towards the table where the two swords lay side by side, unsheathed, and beside them two goblets and a golden jug of wine. Those nearest heard a few words: "...To be High King after my death," said Arthur, "and meanwhile to take lands of your own."
Mordred answered him, but in a voice too low to overhear. The King, gesturing to his servant to pour the wine, spoke again. "Cornwall," they could hear, and later, "Kent," and then, "It may well prove that you are right."
Here he stopped and glanced round as if some sound had interrupted him. A sudden stray current of air, thunder-heavy, had stirred the silk of his pavilion, so that the ropes creaked. Arthur shifted his shoulders as if against a cold draught, and looked sideways at his son, a strange look (it was the servant who, afterwards, told this part of the story), a look which was mirrored in a sudden flash of doubt in Mordred's face, as if, with the smile and the smooth words and the proffered wine, there might still be trickery there. Then in his turn the regent shrugged, smiled, and took the goblet from his father's hand.
A movement went through the waiting ranks, like a ruffle of wind across a cornfield.
The King raised his goblet, and the sun flashed in the gold.
An answering flash, from the group beside his pavilion, caught his eyes. He whipped round, shouting. But too late.
An adder, a speckled snake no more than two handspans long, had crept from its hiding to bask on the hot ground. One of Arthur's officers, intent on the scene at the truce table, stepped back unseeingly onto the creature's tail. Whipping round, the adder struck. At the pain the man, whirling, saw the snake on the recoil. His own reflex, that of a trained fighting man, was almost as fast. He snatched his sword out and slashed down at the snake, killing it.
The sun struck the metal. The sword's flash, the King's raised arm, his sudden movement and shout of command, came to the watching hosts as the long-awaited signal. The inaction, the nerve-stretching tension, made almost unbearable by the thundery heat and the sweating uncertainty of that long vigil, suddenly snapped, in a wild shout from both sides of the field.
It was war. This was the day. This was the wicked day of destiny.
A dozen flashes answered as the officers on both sides drew their swords. The trumpets screamed, drowning the shouts of the knights who, trapped between the armies, seized their horses from the grooms and turned furiously to hold back the converging ranks. They could not be heard; their gestures, misinterpreted as incitements to attack, were wasted. It was a matter only of seconds, seconds of furious noise and confusion, before the front ranks of the two armies met in a roaring clash. The King and his son were swept apart, each to his proper station, Arthur under the great Dragon, Mordred no longer regent and King's son, but for all time branded traitor, under the blank standard that, now, would never be written on. And then over the bar of the field, called by the trumpets, like a sea of tossing manes, came the spears and horsehair of the Saxons, and the black banners of the northern fighters who, like the ravens, could hardly wait to take the pickings from the dead.
Soon, too late to dull those flashing signals, the thunderheads came slowly massing across the hot sky. The air darkened, and in the distance came the first flicker of lightning, the herald of the storm.
The King and his son were to meet again.
Towards the end of the day, with his friends and long companions dead or dying round him, and the hundreds of wasted deaths reeking to the now dark and threatening sky, it is doubtful if Arthur even remembered that Mordred was anything but a traitor and an adulterer. The straight speaking, the truths laid down during that talk by the truce table, the faith and trust so nearly reaffirmed, all had vanished in the first stress and storm of the attack. It was Arthur, duke of battles, who once more took the field. Mordred was the enemy, the Saxon allies his savage helpers; this battle had been fought before, and many times. This was Glein and Agned, Caerleon and Linnuis, Cit Coit Caledon and Badon Hill. On all these fields the young Arthur had triumphed; for all of them his prophet and adviser, Merlin, had promised him the victory and the glory. Here, too, on the Camel field, it was victory.
At the end of the day, with the thunder overhead and the lightning flaming white from the sky and the water of the Lake, Arthur and Mordred came once again face to face. There were no words. What words could there have been? For Mordred, as for his father, the other man was now the enemy. The past was past, and there was no future to be seen beyond the need to get to the end of this moment that would bring with it the end of the day.