Sword of the Rightful King (23 page)

“And an awed emissary is—”

Arthur sighed. “Already half won over. Yes, I remember the old man's teachings, too, Kay. Now, I mean it—
go
!”

Kay went down to the kitchens, but if he was in a swivet, the kitchens were in an uproar. Cook was howling out orders, all the ovens were ablaze at once, whole pigs roasted merrily on spits in the giant hearths, and even the dog boy and the ostlers had been pressed into kitchen service.

“Cook!” Kay shouted above the hurly. “I need to tell you what has been changed. One—the seating must be...”

 

B
Y DINNER
, the hurly had calmed and the throne room had been turned into a fine dining hall.

The Companions were shown to the long wooden tables in the center of the hall, where food was piled high. The ladies, dressed in white and green like the fey, were already seated, and the men jostled to sit by them, except for Lancelot and Gawaine, both of whom held back.

At a second and equally long table all of the outland contenders for the sword had been placed, for they had been arriving by the twos and threes all week long. Among them were seven Highlanders, each wrapped in a cloth that had dark stripes running both up-and-down and sideways. Then there were seven men who had sailed from Eire, wearing bonnets with feathers. Each of them stood taller than the tallest of the Companions, and they called themselves Fenians. A half-dozen old soldiers loyal to the Emperor Lucerius, and still in their Roman armor, were drunk already and asking for more wine. Several minor tribal kings, a half-dozen small dark Picts, and two barons who did not support Arthur had arrived only the day before. A contingent of rough-looking Saxon fighting men with their chieftain—they were known as federates—sat uneasily on one side of the table. And there were also an assortment of farm lads with bunched muscles and shocks of corn-colored hair, as well as one dark-eyed smith, with brows singed off from the smithy flames.

The pages and the knights' retinues all sat well below the salt, at the far end of both of the tables, close to the door, where they could help serve when needed.

On a dais, at a separate table, sat Arthur, with Queen Morgause at his right and Merlinnus at his left. None of them looked particularly comfortable.

Morgause was all in black, except for a heavy gold torque at her neck, gold bobs in the shape of lionesses dangling from her ears, and a simple gold fillet at her brow. She also had thirteen gold bands around her bare arms, six on her left and seven on her right. She was radiant and still.

In contrast, the king seemed unable to sit quietly. He constantly turned his head toward Merlinnus, then Morgause, as if his head were on a string, nodding left, nodding right, nodding left again. He was not laughing.

Gawen thought that Merlinnus looked like he had been washed out in a cold stream. They had worked on the protection spell right up to the moment of the dinner. But even the old mage had not predicted success with his usual certainty. All he had said was, “God is on our side.” When Gawen had asked which God, Merlinnus had smiled wanly. “With luck—all of them.”

“May Queens,” muttered Geoffrey, speaking as though enchanted. “Do you not think so?”

“What?” Gawen had no idea what he was talking about.

“The queen's women. Beautiful May Queens.”

“Are they intelligent? Do they have skills? Can they converse on matters other than embroidery?” Gawen asked in return.

“Does it matter?” Geoffrey obviously did not think so.

They hardly spoke, those soft-looking ladies, though every once in a while one would coo something to the Companions next to her. And the men sat transfixed, as if they had been bespelled.

The only woman who seemed left out of the gaiety was the actual May Queen, the pig farmers daughter, who was to rule till the Solstice morn. Next to the bright, polished beauty of the cooing women, she appeared ordinary, stunted, even uncouth. She was ignored in these final moments of her reign, and she did not giggle a bit. Indeed, she did not even smile. She lasted through the first three courses and then abruptly left, tears making dark runnels down her cheeks.

Gawen was disgusted and would have left then, too, but Morgause suddenly laughed out loud, her head thrown back and the dark curls tumbling onto her shoulders, spilling down her back, like an enormous wave. The sound of her laugh was like a bell signaling danger.

“What do you suppose she has to laugh at?” Gawen asked Ciril, who was sitting closer to the king's table by a single chair.

Ciril turned his handsome face toward Gawen, and the wandering eye stared off into space. “Who do you mean? Dead Lot's bitch?”

Someone's hand came down hard on Ciril's shoulder.

“Be careful what you say about my mother and father.” Agravaine shoved in between the two and, in a single practiced movement, took Gawen's trencher and cup for his own. Then he turned and set his face close to Ciril's, so close their noses were touching. “Or I will make your right eye go where the left eye has already flown.”

“I... I will,” Ciril began, though his eyes teared up and he looked down at his trencher.

Just then Arthur held up his hand and a hush descended on the hall. Standing, he raised his cup, a deeply engraved chalice.

“More of that awful Malmseyn, I bet,” muttered Agravaine, glaring into the cup that up to that moment had been Gawen's. “My father would not have had such piss at the table. I spit on a king who has such bad taste.” He held the cup up but did not, in fact, spit.

Gawen wondered what had happened to the Agravaine who had been awed by the king. The Agravaine who was the kings own man.

His mother has happened to him
, Gawen thought suddenly.
He wants to please her more than he wants to please Arthur
. Gawen wondered what this said about power and who controlled it now, and worried that there was no way to tell Merlinnus immediately.

“To the beauteous Morgause, mother of sons and dowager queen of the north,” Arthur said, his cup held high.

A low murmur fluttered around the room, which was almost—though not quite—a protest, as if some of the knights did not want to praise the North Queen. Then everyone drank down a draft as a toast. They drank not so much
to
the queen—whom most hated and feared in equal measure—but because their king asked for it. And because the beautiful cooing women among them seemed to be demanding it, too.

Morgauses sons drank to her as well. Agravaine, with his stolen cup, and the twins, sharing a single vessel. Gawaine—who sat far from any of the May Queens—drank, too, though he did not look happy at the thought of the toast.

Of all in the room—king, mage, princes, waiting women, boys, servers, and servants—only Gawen did not drink to the queen's health. Gawen no longer had a cup to drink with.

33

T
HAT NIGHT
, everyone in the castle slept deeply and with a single dream, a dream of the North Queen sitting behind the High King's great throne.

All slept except Morgause, who got up, leaving her five waiting women abed. Draping a red cloak across her shoulders, she crept down the stairs and into the courtyard. There she stood, gazing at the stone with its sword pointing hilt upward toward the stars, saying nothing and making no sound.

All in the castle slept more deeply still, and with a single dream, now a dream of King Lot astride the High King's throne, his bones showing through his skin.

All slept except Gawen, who alone had not drunk the toast because of the goblet Agravaine had taken from him, along with his trencher. So Gawen alone of Cadbury had not been ensorcelled by the magic potion that had been poured into the Malmseyn by one of the cooing women at the behest of her queen. A potion that, as it was only a deep-sleeping draft, had not been deflected by Merlinnus' vast protection spell.

Standing rock still, hidden in a doorway across from the churchyard, Gawen watched as Morgause went around and around the stone, looking at it from every conceivable angle. She stood on tiptoe and crawled on her knees. She examined the stone top and bottom, side to side.

Twice she put her hand out toward the hilt of the sword as if preparing to pull it out herself. Twice she drew her hand back. The third time, she dared. But when her hand touched the hilt, sparks flew up, bright embers of magic, and she could not take hold.

“Well, well, well,” she said, loud enough for Gawen to hear her.

Then she picked up the cloth that Gawen had dropped and wiped her right hand with it. Scrubbed away at her palm, as if to erase any of the mage's fire there. Finally, she held out that hand and something snaked from her fingers, some dark nimbus, some twisted, smoky thing. It curled up and over the stone, crawled to the sword, embraced the hilt, erased for a moment the runes along its face. Then it ran along the underside, the sharp edge of the blade, as if trying to blunt the thing. But the blade held its edge, and the smoke was halved, cut in two, lengthwise.

At the cut the North Queen shivered and let out a cry, like some small animal—a coney or a shrew. She lifted her hand higher, and the smoke reformed, left the blades edge, crept down from the stone, and crawled up the front of her black dress till it found her hand again. There it settled and disappeared into her palm.

All this Gawen saw but was careful not to move or to make a sound. And the queen was so sure of her magicks that she did not think anyone was awake to watch, so she did not look around to see. Instead she did a strange little dance, a kind of dark exaltation, her arms waving over her head, and her feet drumming the ground. Then she turned and went back into the keep.

Watching still, Gawen saw triumph and exhaustion warring on her face and wondered which one would win.

 

W
AITING UNTIL
the queen was many minutes gone, Gawen finally ran up to the tower room, boots off so there would be no noise.

The old man was still asleep.

Plucking a candlestick from the table and lighting the beeswax candle from the embers of the hearth fire, Gawen went over to the mage's pallet and stared down at him. Merlinnus was never such a quiet sleeper. Normally the old man snorted and sighed and snored throughout the night; he kicked off his coverlet and drooled.

Either Merlinnus was ensorcelled, or he was dead. Gawen touched the old man's hand.

It was warm.

Not dead, then.

So Gawen backed carefully through the door and ran down the stone stairs to the king's chamber, expecting any minute to be challenged.

But the guards were asleep on their feet, and as deeply as the mage had been, like characters in a children's tale. Gawen passed the candle before their closed eyes. Pinched their cheeks. Tweaked their noses. Still they did not move.

“Forgive me, sire,” Gawen whispered, and pushed through the chamber door. The terrible groaning of the hinges wakened neither the standing guards nor Arthur, asleep on his canopied bed.

Going over to the bed, Gawen held the candle over the king's face. Arthur's sandy hair was ashen in the light, his cheeks the color of carved stone. The shadows the candle threw made him look as if he lay on a draped catafalque, hands crossed over his broad chest, ready for a king's funeral.

Gawen passed a finger beneath Arthur's nose, reassured by the breath of life there. Yet not fully reassured. Arthur stilled was not Arthur, for his power lay in movement, his beauty in the mobility of his face. Without motion he was a stranger.

In this bed, in this light
, Gawen thought,
he looks
...
ordinary
. It hurt to think so, for Gawen had known, from the moment of meeting the king, that Arthur was anything but ordinary. That he was larger than life. That he was life itself. And that to serve him, to be part of his story, was to be in both a whirlwind and a safe harbor, at one and the same time.

Yet here Arthur was, dreaming what everyone else was dreaming. At least that was what Gawen guessed.
And if one dreams what every man dreams, that is the very definition of ordinary
.

“What should I do?” Gawen whispered to the sleeping stranger. “If this were not magic, I would shake you and you would wake and ask me what I was doing in your chamber. I would tell you of the queen's treason, and you would leap from the bed and grab up your sword and strike her head from her shoulders.” Gawen was not certain of this last. Arthur had too good a heart to strike without warning, certainly not to strike a woman. He was known to be a just king, a kind man, and honorable. There would surely be a trial, a wise judgment on the kings part; possibly Morgause would be put into a prison, in a nunnery perhaps. She would hate it there, of course, which would be the point.

“But this is magic,” Gawen went on. “And I do not know if this enchantment needs a potion, a powder, a spell, or...” A small hesitation. “Or a kiss to end it.”

The king slept on.

His guards slept on.

Gawen stood, candle in hand, watching over the sleeping king till the first cock crowed. At the sound, Arthur suddenly began to stretch and mutter. Gawen blew out the stub of the candle and raced from the room, leaving a tail of smoke behind.

 

G
AWEN RAN BACK
up to the tower where Merlinnus, too, was waking.

“Magister...”

Merlinnus stared at him, muzzy and unfocused. Then, when the wizard was wholly awake, the whole nights adventure tumbled from Gawen's lips.

The old man was strangely unmoved by the story. “Only a sleeping potion? That makes no sense,” he stated bluntly. “And am I not awake? Is not the entire castle awake? No, boy, what you have seen is the triumph of my protection spell. As to the deep sleep, why, we just drank too much wine last night and celebrated too much, and far too long and...” He rubbed his hand over his white cockscomb hair and held out a hand that trembled like a leaf in the fall.