The Road to Avalon (39 page)

It was very quiet. She could feel his heart beating against her temple. Someone must have secured the shutter, for it was no longer tapping against the house.

“He must be told the truth,” Arthur said.

Morgan did not reply. She had always known what would happen should Arthur discover Mordred.

“He thinks himself the son of Lot and Morgause?”

“Yes.”

“Who else knows the truth?”

“No one but Morgause and Pellinore.”

Her face was still against his shoulder. She turned her head a little and settled more comfortably into his arms. He cradled her easily. “Morgan,” he said, his lips against the top of her head, “he must be told.”

She sighed. “Yes, I know. Poor boy. He must be perfectly bewildered by you.”

“Mmm.” He was thinking of something else. “I will tell Mordred the truth. That is his right. But it will be best to let everyone else go on thinking that Morgause is his mother.”

He felt her head move under his lips and looked down into her upturned face. “But why?” she asked in bewilderment. “Surely it can make no difference to the world whether his mother is Morgause or me.”

“Think,” said Arthur gently. “If the world knows that you and I have produced a son, then it will know the reason for my visits to Avalon.”

Her eyes widened. “I had not thought of that.”

He smoothed her hair back from her cheek. “I shall talk to Morgause before I see Mordred.”

“But you have never even met Morgause. How can you expect people to believe you had a child with her?”

“Who knows with certainty that we never met?” he returned. Morgan frowned in an effort of memory. “I suppose that is true, but . . .”

“I will not be expected to furnish the date and the time,” he said with assurance. “Don’t worry about it. It will be enough if I acknowledge Mordred as my son and Morgause as his mother. No one will question my word”

And no one would, she thought. You did not ask the high king anything he did not want to be asked. She looked up at him now, trying to see him as he would appear to someone who did not know him. His thick black hair was ruffled from his ride through the night and he wore no jewelry, no mark of rank save the purple border that trimmed the neck and sleeves of his tunic. Yet no one, seeing him even in this casual guise, could doubt for a moment who he was. Arthur wore power as if it were an invisible cloak. He had worn it ever since she could remember. It was stronger now than it had been when he was a boy, but even then it had been a part of him.

It was a quality his son did not possess. She would never tell him, but that was the reason she had tried to keep Mordred safe in Lothian. Mordred was the dearest boy in the world, but he would never make a king.

Now that Arthur had solved for himself the problem of Mordred, his mind turned to other things. “Were you ever tempted,” he asked, “to marry Cai?”

She smiled faintly and shook her head.

The pinched look had come back to his nostrils. “You gave me to Gwenhwyfar. I fear I am not so generous.”

She reached up with gentle fingers and touched his mouth. “I know.”

“You should have run away with me fifteen years ago. There would have been no need for all this deception, these secrets . . .”

“And there would have been no battle of Badon, either,” she returned firmly. “However the world may judge us, Arthur, at least we two will always know that we acted in the best interests of our country.”

“You did,” he returned. “I wanted to run away to Armorica.”

“You would have been miserable. You were born to be Britain’s king.”

“You are more Merlin’s pupil than I, Morgan,” he said somberly.

The room was completely dark now, the lamp the only pool of light. Morgan glanced toward the window. “Arthur. You must return to Camelot before morning. If people know that you came here tonight, it will not be possible to keep my identity a secret.”

“All right.” His light eyes were narrow in his concentrated dark face. “I’ll go.” He reached for her and, with a swift and fluid movement, brought the two of them to lie on the bed. “But not yet.”

Chapter 32

A
RTHUR
arrived back at Camelot before dawn. He had to go through the gate, of course, and the guards who opened it for him would tell their fellows that the king had ridden out this night, but no one could know for certain where he had gone. Nor was anyone likely to ask him.

He unsaddled Ruadh himself and put the chestnut in his stall. Then he walked from the stable to the palace, which he entered by way of the open window in his bedroom. He thought, with a flash of amusement, that he was getting rather old to be spending so much time climbing in and out of bedroom windows. Once inside, he stripped, threw his clothes on a chair, fell into bed, and went instantly to sleep.

Gereint woke him three hours later with a surprised “My lord! I did not know you had returned!”

Arthur half-opened his eyes and regarded his young body servant. “I apologize for not checking in with you, Gereint.”

The boy grinned. As he began to pick up the clothes Arthur had thrown in a heap on the chair, he said, “The queen wished to see you last night, my lord.”

At that Arthur opened his eyes fully and sat up. He rubbed his head, yawned, and stretched. Gereint watched with admiration as the muscles in the king’s shoulders and arms flexed under the smooth brown skin. “I want a bath,” Arthur said. The boy’s eyes moved to the king’s face. All its humor had vanished. “First a bath,” Arthur repeated. “Then I will see the queen.”

The palace did not have a private bath wing as did Avalon. There was no one left in Britain skilled enough to install the elaborate piping required for a traditional Roman bath. But Arthur had been brought up with the Roman ideal of cleanliness, and even in the coldest weather he insisted on bathing in the big wooden tub that had to be filled and emptied by hand.

After he had bathed and shaved and dressed, Arthur had his usual breakfast of bread and fruit. Then he sent Gereint to the queen’s rooms to ask if his wife would receive him.

She would. It was still very early and the little hall was filled with servants carrying water and breakfast to the various bedrooms. Arthur crossed the hall and entered the door that led to the queen’s suite of rooms. Olwen was waiting for him in the anteroom. “The queen is in her sitting room, my lord,” she said, and Arthur nodded and walked down the corridor, a faint line between his brows. He hoped Gwenhwyfar was not going to ask where he had been last night.

Gwenhwyfar was alone, standing beside a small marble-topped table that held a particularly unusual brass lamp that had come from Rome. It had once graced Igraine’s chambers at Venta. For a brief, vivid moment the sight of the lamp conjured up his mother for him and he could see her quite clearly: the narrow, fine-boned face, the winged brows and dark blue eyes. A hawk in a cage—that was what she had always put him in mind of. His eyes moved slowly from the lamp to the woman standing beside it.

Gwenhwyfar was dressed in a pale yellow tunic and gown and the glow of her hair was brighter than the polished brass of Igraine’s lamp. She was paler than usual; she did not look as if she had slept well. She regarded him silently, waiting for him to speak first.

He felt a moment’s flash of gratitude for Gwenhwyfar’s practical good sense. She would never grow hard and embittered, as his mother had, no matter what her disappointments might be. She had the ability to look for happiness, something Igraine had not known. He gave her a quick warm smile. “Thank you for acting so intelligently yesterday. You saved us all from an extremely embarrassing situation.”

She did not return his smile. “Who is he, Arthur?” she asked.

“Surely you have guessed.” He crossed the room toward her, walking so lightly that his feet made no noise on the uncovered floor. He stopped in front of her and said, “He is my son.”

She seemed to flinch and he looked away from her, looked once more at his mother’s lamp. “I did not know of his existence myself until yesterday,” he said, trying to give her time to recover. “Nor do I believe he knows. He thinks himself the son of Morgause and Lot.”

“He doesn’t know.” Her voice was flat with hard-controlled emotion. “When I took him to his room last night he was obviously bewildered by his remarkable resemblance to you.” Arthur’s hair, still damp from his bath, had fallen forward across his forehead. “Was Morgause insane,” Gwenhwyfar went on, “to have introduced him to you in such a public fashion?
She
certainly knows who he is.”

Arthur thrust his hair back from his brow and walked to the window. He put a hand up to touch the thin drapery that covered it, then turned to her and said, “I suppose she thought this was one sure way to get me to recognize him. No one in that room can be in much doubt as to his identity.”

“And are you going to recognize him?”

“As I just said, I don’t think I have much choice.”

“You can say he resembles Igraine.” She took a step toward him. “You told that to Gawain when he remarked on the likeness. Don’t you remember? It was the time I took him down to the cavalry ring to meet you.”

Arthur said gently, “I’m sorry, my dear, but as Cai pointed out to me last night, Mordred has my eyes. And they are from Uther, not Igraine.”

Her hands clenched into fists at her sides. “So you will acknowledge him. Then what?”

“Gwenhwyfar.” She heard the note of compassion in his voice, and bitter gall rose in her heart. “Try to see this from a political and not a personal point of view. You have grieved because you have no children, I know that well. And you know also the problem our childlessness has posed for Britain. This boy gives me an heir, a blood descendant who can be accepted by all the regional kings and chiefs as the next high king.”

She stared at him with eyes that glittered with hostility. “You mean to make him your heir?”

“Yes.”

“But he is a bastard!”

His mouth thinned and all the gentleness left his voice. “He is the only son I have got.”

The bitterness spilled over into angry words. “Your son, and who else’s, Arthur? Don’t try to tell me that you got a child on Morgause! I know full well who bore him—your precious Morgan. And she never told you. She has kept him from you for all these years. Will you forgive her that, Arthur? Did she have a good excuse for you last night? Are there any other little bastards in hiding around Britain?”

“Be quiet.” The words were spoken softly, but they stopped Gwenhwyfar instantly. “Morgause is Mordred’s mother,” he said in the same soft, deadly voice. “Do you understand that?”

Under the pretty primrose gown, she was shaking uncontrollably. “Yes” she managed to say. She had not meant . . . it was only that she was so hurt . . . and now Arthur was speaking to her in that cold, inflectionless voice and looking at her as if he hated her.

“I want to see Morgause as soon as she awakens,” he said. He had ceased talking to her; now he was just giving orders.

Her stomach was heaving. “All right”

His gray eyes were icy. “You are Britain’s queen, Gwenhwyfar. It would be well if you remembered that.” Then he was gone.

Gwenhwyfar crumpled into a chair and raised her shaking hands to her face. You coward, she chastised herself. He has only to look at you with that hard face, and you shake as if you had the ague. Why didn’t you stand up to him? You’re right. You know you are.

But she knew the answer before she even asked the question. She was not afraid of his anger, she was afraid of being locked out from him altogether. He was perfectly capable of doing that, of denying their friendship, their partnership, of treating her like an unwelcome stranger for the rest of their lives together. He would be able to live like that, but she could not. She cared too much. She could not bear to lose the little piece of him that she had.

If she wanted him back, she would have to accept Mordred. The witch’s son. She did not know if she would be able to do it.

She longed, with all her sore and aching heart, for the comfort of Bedwyr.

Arthur sent a servant to instruct both Lothian princes to keep to their rooms until they were sent for. Then he went to his office, ostensibly to read his weekly dispatches from the garrisons stationed around the country, in reality to stare at his desk and to think.

Gwenhwyfar had given him an unpleasant shock. He had not expected her to accept Mordred easily. Mordred’s very existence must be a reproach to her, a proof and a reminder of her own barrenness. He had been prepared for that. He had even been prepared for her to suspect that Morgan was Mordred’s mother. What he had not been prepared for was the evident jealousy and bitterness that Gwenhwyfar felt toward Morgan. He had thought she was happy with their domestic arrangements. He had thought she was happy with Bedwyr.

Of course, he acknowledged honestly to himself, he had never wanted to know the secrets of her heart. It was enough for him if the surface of their lives together was serene. All his emotions were tied up with Morgan. It had always been like that. He thought she had ceased to care.

The sword Merlin had given him, the sword he had carried throughout the Saxon wars, hung on the wall of his office. His eyes fastened on it much as they had fastened on his mother’s lamp earlier. It seemed to be a day for remembering, and he thought now of his grandfather, who had saved him and taught him and made him a king. It was Merlin, not Uther, who had been his true father.

Hadrian’s great ruby glittered in the sword’s handle. A king is a public thing, Merlin had told him. Well, he thought now as he stared at the sword that had won him so many victories, so is a queen. Morgan had put country first, and at a far greater cost than that he was asking of Gwenhwyfar. She would have to accept Mordred. Britain needed an heir.

The war against the Saxon, was won, true, but victory was worthless unless he could secure another fifty years of peace. Britain needed time, time for the barbarians to become civilized, for the inevitable merging of Saxon and Celt to be peaceful and beneficial, just as the empire had been strengthened and revitalized by the additions of the Goths and the Visigoths.