So, with unbloodied swords and fresh horses, the regent's army retreated fast towards its base, leaving the field to the two ageing kings.
Arthur's star still held steady. He was, as Merlin had foretold, the victor in every field he took. The Saxons broke and yielded the field, and the High King, pausing only to gather the wounded and bury his dead, set off towards Camelot, in pursuit of Mordred's apparently fleeing troops.
Of the battle at Cerdices-leaga it can only be said that no one celebrated a victory. Arthur won the fighting, but left the lands open again to their Saxon owners. The Saxons, gathering their dead and counting their losses, saw their old borders still intact. But Cerdic, looking after the British force as, collected now and orderly, it left the field, made a vow.
"There will be another day, even for you, Arthur. Another day."
9
THE DAY CAME.
It came with the hope of truce and the time to achieve sense and moderation.
Mordred was the first to show sense. He made no attempt to enter Camelot, much less to hold it against its King. He halted his troops short of the citadel, on the flat fields along the little River Camel. These were their practice grounds, and an encampment was there, furnished ready with supplies. This was as well, for already the warnings of war had gone out. The villagers, obedient it seemed to words carried on the wind, had withdrawn into the citadel, their women, children and cattle housed in the common land to the north-east within the walls.
Mordred, going the rounds that night, found his men puzzled, beginning to be angry, but loyal. The main opinion seemed to be that the High King, in his age, was failing in judgment. He had wronged the Saxon king; that was one thing, and soon forgiven; but also he had wronged his son, the regent Mordred, who had been a faithful guardian of the kingdom and of the King's wife. So they said to Mordred; and they were visibly cheered when Mordred assured them that the next move would be a parley; there would soon, he said, be daylight on these dark doings.
"No sword will be drawn against the High King," he told them, "except we be forced to defend ourselves from him through calumny."
• • •
"He asked for a parley," said Arthur to Bors.
"You'll grant it?"
The King's force was drawn up at some distance from the regent's. Between the two armies the Camel, a small stream, flowed glittering among its reeds and kingcups. The stormy skies had cleared, and the sun shone again in his summer splendour. Beyond Mordred's tents and standards rose the great flat-topped hill of Caer Camel, with the towers of Camelot gold-crowned against the sky.
"Yes. For three reasons. The first is that my men are weary and need rest; they are within sight of the homes they have not seen these many weeks, and will be all the more eager to get there. The second is that I need time, and reinforcements."
"And the third?"
"Well, it may even be that Mordred has something to say. Not only does he lie between my men and their homes and wives, but between me and mine. That needs more explaining than even a sword can do."
The two armies settled watchfully down, and messengers, duly honoured and escorted, passed between them. Three other messengers went secretly and swiftly from Arthur's camp: one to Caerleon, with a letter to the Queen; one to Cornwall, bidding Constantine to his side; and the third to Brittany, asking for Bedwyr's help, and, when he could, his presence.
Sooner than expected, the looked-for herald came. Bedwyr, though still not fully recovered from his sick-bed, was on his way, and with his splendid cavalry would be at the King's side within a few days.
And none too soon. It had come to the King's ears that certain of the petty kings from the north were marching with the intention of joining Mordred. And the Saxons along the whole length of the Shore were reported to be massing for a drive inland.
For neither of these things was Mordred responsible, and indeed, he would have prevented them if at this stage it had been possible; but Mordred, like Arthur, was, without the wish for it, without the reason, being thrust closer hour by hour to a brink from which neither man could take a backward step.
* * *
In a castle far to the north, beside a window where the birds of morning sang in the birch trees, Nimuë the enchantress threw back the coverlets and rose from her bed.
"I must go to Applegarth."
Pelleas, her husband, stretched a lazy hand out and pulled her to him where he still lay in bed.
"Within raven's stoop of the battlefield?"
"Who said it would be a battlefield?"
"You, my dear. In your sleep last night."
She lifted herself from him, with her robe half round her, staring down. Her eyes were wide, blurred still with sleep, and tragic.
He said gently: "Come, love, it's a hard gift to have, but you have grown used to it now. You've spoken of this, and looked for it, for a long time. There is nothing you can do."
"Only warn, and warn again."
"You have warned them both. And before you Merlin gave the same warning. Mordred will be Arthur's bane. Now it is coming, and though you say Mordred is no traitor in his heart, he has been led to act in ways that must appear treacherous to all men, and certainly to the King."
"But I know the gods. I speak with them. I walk with them. They do not mean us to cease to act, just because we believe that action is dangerous. They have always hidden threats with smiles, and grace lurks behind every cloud. We may hear their words, but who is to interpret them beyond doubt?"
"But Mordred—"
"Merlin would have wished him dead at birth, and so would the King. But from him already much good has come. If even now they might be brought to talk together, the kingdom might be saved. I will not sit idly by and assume the gods" doom. I will go to Applegarth."
"To do what?"
"Tell Arthur that there is no treachery here, only ambition and desire. Two things he himself showed in abundance in youth. He will listen to me, and believe me. They must talk together, or between them they will break our Britain in two, and let her enemies into the breach that they have made. And who, this time, will repair it?"
* * *
In the Queen's palace at Caerleon the courier brought the letter to Guinevere. She knew the man; he had gone many times between herself and Mordred.
She turned the letter over in her hand, saw the seal, and went as white as chalk.
"This is not the regent's seal. It is from the King's ring, that was on his hand. They have found him, then? My lord is truly dead?"
The man, who was still on his knee, caught the roll as it fell from her hand, and rising, backed a step, staring.
"Why, no, madam. The King lives and is well. You have had no news, then? There have been sore happenings, lady, and all is far from well. But the King is safely back in Britain."
"He lives? Arthur lives? Then the letter — give me the letter! — it is from the King himself?"
"Why, yes, madam." The man gave it again into her hand. The colour was back in her cheeks, but the hand shook with which she tried to break the seal. A confusion of feelings played across her face like shadows driving over moving water. At the other end of the room her ladies, in a whispering cluster, watched anxiously, and the man, obedient to a gesture from the chief of them, went softly from the room. The ladies, avid for his news, went rustling after him.
The Queen did not even notice their going. She had begun to read.
When the mistress of the ladies returned, she found Guinevere alone and in visible distress.
"What, my lady, weeping? When the High King is alive?"
All Guinevere would say was "I am lost. They are at war, and whatever comes of it, I am lost."
Later she rose. "I cannot stay here. I must go back."
"To Camelot, madam? The armies are there."
"No, not to Camelot. I will go to Amesbury. None of you need come with me unless you wish it. I shall need nothing there. Tell them for me, please. And help me make ready. I shall go now. Y
es, now, tonight."
Mordred's messenger, arriving as the morning market-carts rumbled over the Isca bridge, found the palace in turmoil, and the Queen gone.
10
IT WAS A BRIGHT DAY, THE last of summer. Early in the morning the heralds of the two hosts led the leaders to the long-awaited parley.
Mordred had not slept. All night long he had lain, thinking. What to say. How to say it. What words to use that would be straightforward enough to permit of no misinterpretation, but not so blunt as to antagonize. How to explain to a man as tired, as suspicious and full of grief as the ageing King, his, Mordred's, own dichotomy: the joy in command that could be, and was, unswervingly loyal, but that could never again be secondary. (co-rulers, perhaps? Kings of North and South? Would Arthur even consider it?) At the truce table tomorrow he and his father would be meeting for the first time as equal leaders, rather than as before. King and deputy. But two very different leaders. Mordred knew that when his time came he would be not a copy of his father, but a different king. Arthur was of his own generation; by nature his son had his thoughts and ambitions channelled otherwise. Even without the difference in their upbringing this would have been so. Mordred's hard necessity was not Arthur's, but each man's commitment was the same: total. Whether the old King could ever be brought to accept the new ways that Mordred could foresee, ways that had been embodied (though in the end discreditably) in the phrase "Young Celts," without seeing them as treachery, he could not guess. And then there was the Queen. That was one thing he could not say. "Even were you dead, with Bedwyr still living, what chance had I?"
He groaned and turned on the pillow, then bit his lip in case the guards had heard him. Omens bred too fast when the armies were out.
He knew himself a leader. Even now, with the High King's standard flying over his encampment by the Lake, Mordred's men were loyal. And with them, encamped beyond the hill, were the Saxons. Between himself and Cerdic, even now, there might be the possibility of a fruitful alliance; a concourse of farmers, he had called it, and the old Saxon had laughed.… But not between Cerdic and Arthur; not now, not ever.… Dangerous ground; dangerous words. Even to think such thoughts was folly now. Was he, at this most hazardous of moments, seeing himself as a better king than Arthur? Different, yes. Better, perhaps, for the times, at any rate the times to come? But this was worse than folly. He turned again, seeking a cool place on the pillow, trying to think himself back into the mind of Arthur's son, dutiful, admiring, ready to conform and to obey.
Somewhere a cock crew. From the scrambled edges of sleep, he saw the hens come running down the salt grass to the pebbled shore. Sula was scattering the food. Overhead the gulls swept and screamed, some of them daring to swoop for it. Sula, laughing, waved an arm to beat them aside.
Shrill as a gull's scream, the trumpet sounded for the day of parley.
* * *
Half a mile away, in his tent near the Lake shore, Arthur slept, but his sleep was an uneasy one, and in it came a dream.
He dreamed that he was riding by the Lake shore, and there, standing in a boat, poling it through the shallow water, stood Nimuë; only it was not Nimuë, it was a boy, with Merlin's eyes. The boy looked at him gravely, and repeated, in Merlin's voice, what Nimuë had said to him yesterday when, arriving at the convent on Ynys Witrin among her maidens, she had sent to beg speech with him.
"You and I, Emrys," she had said, giving him the boyhood name Merlin had used for him, "have let ourselves be blinded by prophecy. We have lived under the edge of doom, and feel ourselves now facing the long-threatened fate. But hear this, Emrys: fate is made by men, not gods. Our own follies, not the gods, foredoom us. The gods are spirits; they work by men's hands, and there are men who are brave enough to stand up and say: "I am a man; I will not."
"Listen to me, Arthur. The gods have said that Mordred will be your bane. If he is so, it will not be through his own act. Do not force him to that act.… I will tell you now what should have remained a secret between Mordred and myself. He came to me some time ago, to Applegarth, to seek my help against the fate predicted for him. He swore to kill himself sooner than harm you. If I had not prevented him, he would have died then. So who is guilty, he or I? And he came to me again, on Bryn Myrddin, seeking what comfort I, Merlin, could give him. If he could seek to defy the gods, then so, Arthur, can you. Lay by your sword, and listen to him. Take no other counsel, but talk with him, listen, and learn. Yes, learn. For you grow old, Arthur-Emrys, and the time will come, is coming, has come, when you and your son may hold Britain safe between your clasped hands, like a jewel cradled in wool. But loose your clasp, and you drop her, to shatter, perhaps for ever."
In his dream Arthur knew that he had accepted her advice; he had called the parley, resolving to listen to anything his son had to say; but still Nimuë-Merlin had wept, standing in the boat as it floated away on the glassy Lake and vanished into the mist. And then, suddenly, as he turned his horse to ride up towards the meeting-place, the beast stumbled, sending him headlong into deep water. Weighted by his armour — why was he full-armed for a peaceful parley? — he sank, deep and ever deeper, into a pit of black water where fish swam around him, and water-snakes like weeds and weeds like snakes wrapped his limbs so that he could not move them.…
He cried out and woke, drenched in sweat as if he had indeed been drowning, but when his servants and guards came running, he laughed and made light of it, and sent them away, and presently fell again into an uneasy sleep. This time it was Gawain who came to him, a Gawain bloody and dead, but imbued somehow with a grotesque energy, a ghost of the old, fighting Gawain. He, too, came floating on the Lake water, but he passed from its surface right into the King's tent and, pausing beside the bed, drew a dagger from his blood-encrusted side, and held it out to the King.
"Bedwyr," he said, not in the hollow whisper in which ghosts should speak, but in a high metallic squeaking like the tent poles shifting in the breeze. "Wait for Bedwyr. Promise anything to the traitor, land, lordship, the High Kingdom after you. And with it, even, the Queen. Anything to hold him off until Bedwyr comes with his host. And then, when you have the certainty of victory, attack and kill him."
"But this would be treachery."
"Nothing is treachery if it destroys a traitor." This time Gawain's ghost spoke, strangely, in Arthur's own voice. "This way you will make certain." The blood-stained knife dropped to the bed. "Crush him for ever, Arthur, make certain, make certain, certain.…"
"Sir?"
The servant at his bedside, touching the King's shoulder to wake him, started back as the King, jerking upright in the bed, glared round as if in anger, but all he said was, abruptly: "Tell them to see to the fastenings of the tent. How am I expected to sleep when the whole thing shifts about as if a storm was blowing?"
* * *
It had been agreed, in the exchange between the heralds, that fourteen officers from each side should meet at a spot half-way between the hosts.
There was a strip of dry moorland not far from the Lake shore where a pair of small pavilions had been pitched, with between them a wooden table, where the two leaders' swords were laid. Should the parley fail, the formal declaration of battle would be the raising, or drawing of a sword. Over one pavilion flew the King's standard, the Dragon on gold. To this device, Mordred, as regent, had also been entitled. He, his mind set on the necessity of being received into grace, and not putting in the way of grace the smallest rub, had given orders that his royal device should be folded away, and until the day was spent and he was declared once more as Arthur's heir, a plain standard should be carried for him.
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 he
r 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.