The Book of Mordred (27 page)

Alayna and Kiera reached Camelot in one afternoon.

Agravaine took five days, Mordred seven. In the end, Gawain, the eldest of the Orkney brothers, went out after him and brought him back.

It had rained and been unseasonably cold much of the sennight of Mordred's absence. He was pale and thin and hollow-eyed, and many expected he would sicken and take to bed before the end of the council the King convened to determine exactly what had happened. Kiera was aware that there were several wagers riding on the outcome.

Normally, councils were held in a special room. But so many people were related to the participants, or involved one way or another with the outcome, or simply curious, that this hearing took place in the Great Hall. Rows of benches had been arranged, but
still
there were more people than seats. There were, in fact, more people than even the Hall could accommodate, and the large doors were left open for the overflow of spectators. Kiera was one who got to sit, but the people were so tightly packed together in the rows ahead of her that she had to constantly shift to see around heads.

King Arthur had asked Alayna to stand before the assembly and tell what had happened. Kiera knew that her mother was probably dying inside at having to speak before so many. Several times, people in the back called for her to speak louder.

Alayna told of how they had been ambushed, and of how she and Mordred and Agravaine had fought off the knights. She didn't mention the spell Nimue had cast to cause Pinel's horse to panic.

"What, exactly," King Arthur asked, "did Sir Pinel say while he held the sword to Lady Nimue's throat?"

Alayna took a deep breath. "He said—"

"Louder!" someone called out.

"He said," Alayna repeated, marginally louder, "that Sir Mordred and his brothers had killed his cousin Lamorak and that he was going to make them pay. Mordred said that he alone had fought Lamorak, and that it had been a fair fight. But Pinel would not believe him. He said Sir Bayard of Ridgemont had witnessed it all, and that Mordred and the others had murdered Lamorak."

"That is not true," a loud voice cried out, overpowering Alayna's faint one.

One of the knights leaped to his feet, a tall, broad man whom Kiera didn't know. Sir Bayard, it had to be. Kiera felt dizzy and could hardly breathe.

"I never told Pinel that," Bayard protested. "I never claimed to be anywhere near Lothian when Lamorak was killed."

Kiera slumped in her seat willing herself not to be sick, not to have to leave.

Bayard continued. "I was at a dinner with Pinel and several others," he admitted. "We discussed rumors about how young Lamorak and Queen Morgause were killed. Several rumors: many ridiculous, many contradictory." Bayard repeated all of them for the benefit of the assemblage. Several times he mentioned what was already well known: that Morgause had been Arthur's sister as well as the mother of his son, and that Lamorak had been a godson.

Kiera could see that the court loved it.

Her mother hesitantly sat down, her part apparently done.

Arthur called on the men who had eaten with Bayard and Pinel: Sir Lancelot, Sir Bors, Sir Ector de Maris, Sir Lambert—knights of unimpeachable character, and, in the case of Lambert, a stickling adherence to detail that was almost enough to cause the assembly to lose interest. The knights all verified that Pinel had seemed distraught at the death of his cousin but that he had given no indication he planned any action. And they all agreed that Bayard had only reported the rumors circulating around Lothian, without crediting any, without stressing any, without claiming to have been there.

Mordred was called on to give his testimony. He stood somewhat unsteadily, which brought a murmur of sympathy from some of the spectators. He looked levelly at Bayard and said, "You tried to kill me once before."

The crowd burst into excited chatter.

"Enough," Arthur said. He was a king who had not often needed to raise his voice, and he didn't do so now. Kiera couldn't see much of him beyond the bulk of the woman who sat in front of her, just his silver hair. Eventually the crowd stilled, somewhat, and only then did Arthur continue. "We are discussing what happened seven days ago, not five years since."

Kiera saw Gawain put a hand on Mordred's arm. They stood near enough that Kiera could clearly see the whitened scar on Gawain's right hand. The little finger was missing, cut off during a sword fight, a sword fight Gawain had subsequently won.

If Arthur saw how angry Mordred was, he gave no indication.

If Mordred saw how desperate Arthur was, he gave no indication either.

Mordred turned to Lancelot. "And you," he said, "have been Bayard's unwitting dupe before. What makes you think that Bayard didn't talk to Pinel after your dinner?"

"I didn't!" Bayard protested.

Arthur said, "These endless old feuds, this refusal to give in no matter the cost—will destroy us all."

In the end, Arthur sent Bayard away from Camelot. Not banishment, the King stressed, but for his own safety till tempers cooled.

It was a solution that pleased no one.

The people around Kiera got up, stretching, talking, comparing opinions. Between them Kiera caught occasional glimpses of Mordred at the front of the Hall, still glowering despite his brothers and his friends gathered around him. Kiera followed his gaze and settled once again on Bayard. She forced herself to look at Bayard as he spoke quietly and earnestly to his friends. She had never met him before—everyone acknowledged it was the first time in years he had come to court.

And yet she
had
seen his face once before.

She had seen it that day on the hillside, white and drained of blood, with lifeless eyes staring up into the swirling gray mist.

Kiera was in the field of gray mist again.

At first, all she heard was a loud, hollow sound:
THUMP. THUMP. THUMP.

My heart,
she thought. Something was wrong with her heart.

But the sound also came from outside her, a steady wooden drumming.

Eventually she realized that what she heard was the clash of swords—laboriously slow, as though the fighters were hurt or weary. And it came from all around her: many, many fighters.

After that she could make out stifled moans and frantic cries. A riderless horse broke through the mist. It came within an arm's length of trampling her, close enough that the breeze of its passing rippled her hair. She gasped, and choked on the bitter taste of smoke.

She turned her head to rub her burning eyes and saw the body of a knight on the ground, his eyes open and glazed.

Bayard,
she thought.

Now he had a name and she shouldn't be afraid.

But it wasn't Bayard. It was King Arthur.

Oh no,
she thought.
Oh no, oh no, oh no.

Not the King who had always been so kind and gentle and good.

In horror she leaned closer to the corpse, and one of its eyes slowly winked at her. She slumped back, her heart racing to the same beat of the insistent pounding that was somehow louder than the other, closer sounds.

Hesitantly, afraid, she called, "Mordred!
"

He turned, always there, hut his hand was to his side and he staggered, so slowly, blood running over his fingers and down his arm.

"
Mordred!" she screamed. She wanted to run to him but something tripped her, something held her down. She twisted herself and saw the dead knight's gauntleted hand clasped around her ankle. Except that this time, it wore Agravaine's face. "Agravaine," she whimpered.

She couldn't get loose, and something was approaching: The hanging noise got louder, faster, more urgent, and she had never been afraid of Agravaine before. "Agravaine, no!"Her muscles were all tensed, but her limbs wouldn't move. A high-pitched moan made its way out from the back of her throat.

"Kiera, Kiera, hush, dear. You have been dreaming."

Kiera sat up. She had to stop to think before she recognized it was sweet, plain-faced Hildy who leaned over her in the bed, her hair hanging down in disarray. It took another few moments for Kiera to remember where she was: in the bedroom shared by Queen Guinevere's ladies-in-waiting. Somehow she'd forgotten the most important thing that had happened in her life—being chosen to train as one of the Queen's ladies.

In a soothing voice Hildy said, "Go back to sleep. It was just a dream."

But it wasn't.

"Agravaine," Kiera said—whimpered—her voice shaking.

"The King's nephew?" Hildy smiled. "Home and safe, and in his own bed." She considered. "Or somebody else's."

Was that all people around here cared about?

Always the smirking. Always men and women and beds. She didn't like thinking about it—Guinevere and Lancelot, they whispered. Mordred and Nimue.

Mordred and Alayna, they had probably said, when she'd been too young to understand it.

Agravaine and somebody.

Surely there was more to growing up than that.

Hildy said: "Quiet now, before you wake the others." Though she was probably more worried about the Queen in the adjoining chamber, she nodded toward the rest of the room where the other ladies-in-waiting slept—two or three to a bed, for that was the best way to keep warm.

"But what was that noise?" Kiera insisted. "That banging noise?"

"Shhh. There's nothing, dear. Listen."

Kiera did listen, and heard only her own heavy breathing and one of the other ladies who murmured in her sleep.

"See," Hildy said gently, not mocking the way some of the others had a tendency to do, "just a dream. Sometimes it is hard, the first few nights away from your mother."

My mother has nothing to do with this,
Kiera came close to telling her. But her mother had begged her to please, please try to make friends. She bit back her answer, realizing even as she did so that Hildy would mistake it for a homesick gulp.

Hildy patted her hand, pulled the blanket up to her neck, and started to lie back.

Then stopped at the loud noise that came from the Queen's room, someone pounding on the heavy oaken outer door.

"Open up in the name of the King!" someone—
Mordred?
—shouted.

No,
Kiera begged. Go
away.

There was a slight scurrying noise from next door, but no answer. And Arthur was away. Arthur was on a hunting trip.

Guinevere and Lancelot, they said. Guinevere and Lancelot.

Was it true, the Queen and Camelot's best knight?

The banging resumed—not the honest sound of knocking, but with a metallic ring to it: Someone, in the middle of the night, within the very heart of the King's castle at Camelot, was using a gauntleted fist or the hilt of a sword.

Another voice spoke up, this time with the stiff formality of chivalry. "Sir Lancelot Dulac, wit we well ye are in the Queens chamber and we are fourteen of us, on allowance of the King. Open the door for thou canst not escape."

Perhaps Hildy recognized Agravaine's voice. Maybe the banging was enough. She rolled out of the bed, took a step backwards from Kiera, and made the sign of the Cross. The others were beginning to stir at the noise, groggily asking what was happening. Somebody started to cry.

Wasn't anybody going to do something?

Kiera swung out of bed and went to the door that connected their room with the Queen's. "My Lady," she called softly, not to alert the men in the hallway.

"Do not be alarmed," Guinevere answered. "There is no danger." Kiera could hear her say something else, in a quiet voice, to someone in the room with her. Guinevere and Lancelot.

The pounding started again, and the cries for Sir Lancelot to show himself. Nobody was smirking now.

One of the Queen's women stifled a startled squeak, then pointed at the other door in their own room, the one that opened onto the hallway. The latch shook as someone surreptitiously tried the lock.

"My Lady," Kiera whispered, even though the door was locked. "Someone is trying to get in here."

The door connecting to the Queen's room flew open. Lancelot stood there, dressed in rumpled shirt and breeches, while Guinevere, in the background, pulled on a dressing gown.

Oh no,
Kiera thought. She had assumed the Queen's innocence would protect her.

The room had gone perfectly quiet. Even the outside door was still now. Lancelot went to the window, where he leaned out to check the distance to the ground and to examine the surrounding walls. No armor, Kiera saw, no weapons.

He turned to Guinevere, who stood in the doorway, and shook his head. She was pulling her long, graying auburn hair out from underneath her dressing gown.

"Nobody will get hurt," the Queen told her women. "Simply stay calm and out of the way."

"Traitor knight!" someone from outside shouted. "Traitor Queen!"

On the other side of their door there was a
clank
of metal, perhaps a shield brushed against a stone wall, or an armored toe stubbed.