They obeyed. "The gifts," said the chamberlain, "the gifts, quickly. All is not well yet, it seems." He seized the box from a servant, and hurried forward to lay it at the King's feet, then retreated hastily, disconcerted. Arthur did not even glance at the treasure. He was speaking to Morgause, and, though the people at the gate could neither hear what was said nor see her face, they watched how her pose stiffened to defiance, then passed again to supplication and even to fear, and how through it all the King stood like stone, and with a face of stone. Only Mordred, with his new clear sight, saw grief there, and weariness.
There was an interruption. From beyond the gates came a sound, growing rapidly louder. Hoofbeats, a horse approaching at a stumbling gallop up the chariotway. A man's voice called out hoarsely. One of the gate guards said, under his breath: "The courier from Glevum! By the thunder, he's made good time! He must bring hot news!"
The challenge, another shout, the creak and crash of the gates opening. A tired horse clattered through. They smelled the reek of exhausted sweat. A breathless word from the courier, and the horse held on its way without pausing, straight up to where the King stood with Morgause.
The rider half fell from the saddle, and went down on one knee. The King looked angry at the interruption, but the courier spoke urgently, and after a pause Arthur beckoned to the guards. Two of them went forward, halting one on either side of Morgause. Then the King turned, with a sign to the courier, and walked back up the roadway with the man following him. At the foot of the palace steps he stopped. For a few minutes the two, King and courier, stood talking, but from the gatehouse the boys could see and hear nothing. Then, suddenly, the King swung round, and shouted.
In a moment, it seemed, the frozen tensions of the night were shattered; from uneasy peace the place sprang to something very like battle orders. A huge grey war-stallion was brought by two grooms, who clung to the bit as it plunged and screamed. Servants came running with the King's cloak and sword. The gates swung open. Arthur was in the saddle. The grey stallion screamed again and climbed the torchlit air, then leaped forward under the spur, and was past the boys and out of the gates with the speed of a thrown spear. The grooms led the courier's exhausted horse away, and the courier himself, walking like a lame man, followed.
In the gatehouse all was bustle and snapped orders. Melwas's men-at-arms withdrew, and the boys, with the chamberlain and the queen's servants, found themselves being hurried up the road towards the palace, past the place where Morgause still stood stiffly between her guards. Just as they reached the palace gate, a troop of armed riders burst out of it and went streaming past at a gallop to vanish downhill in the King's wake.
The gallop died. The outer gates crashed shut once more. The echoes faded into quiet. The place seemed to edge back, quivering, towards a kind of peace. The boys, waiting at the palace gates with the servants and guards, crowded together, wondering, confused and beginning to be scared. Gareth was crying. The twins muttered together, with glances at Mordred that were far from friendly. Avoiding them, and Gawain's puzzled scowl, Mordred felt, more than ever before, isolated from them. His thoughts darted like trapped birds. They all had time, now, to feel the cold.
At length someone — a big man with a red face and a high manner — came to them. He spoke straight to Mordred.
"I am Cei, the King's seneschal. You are to come with me."
"I?"
"All of you."
Gawain elbowed Mordred aside, stepped forward and spoke. He was curt to the point of arrogance. "I am Gawain of Orkney. Where are you taking us, and what has happened to my mother?"
"King's orders," said Cei, briefly, but hardly reassuringly. "She's to wait till he gets back." He spoke more gently, to Gareth. "Don't be afraid. No harm will come to you. You heard him say you would be made welcome."
"Where's he gone?" demanded Gawain.
"Didn't you hear?" asked Cei. "It seems that Merlin's still alive, after all. The courier saw him on the road. The King's gone to meet him. Now, will you come with me?"
14
THE BOYS HAD ONLY A BRIEF stay at Camelot before orders came that the court would remove to Caerleon for Christmas. Meanwhile they were lodged apart from the other boys and young men, under the special care of Cei, who was Arthur's foster brother, and privy to all his counsels. He saw to it that none of the rumours that went flying about among the people of Camelot came to the boys' ears. Until Arthur himself had spoken with Mordred, Mordred was to learn nothing. Cei guessed, and rightly, that the King would want to consult with Merlin before he decided what was to be done with the boy, or with Morgause herself. The boys did not see Morgause; she was lodged somewhere apart, not as a prisoner, they were told, but allowed to communicate with no one, until the King returned.
In fact he did not return. The story of his wild ride to greet his old friend was brought back to a city agog for news.
It was true that Merlin the enchanter was alive. An attack of his old sickness, a trance-like death, had been taken for death itself, but he had recovered, and at length escaped from the sealed tomb where he had been left for dead. Now he had ridden with the King for Caerleon, and Arthur's Companions — the picked group of knights who were his friends — had gone with them. The court would follow.
So for the time remaining at Camelot before the court's removal to Wales, the boys were kept busy with pursuits that exhausted them, but that were much to their taste.
They were taken in hand straight away by the master-at-arms, and what training they had had in the islands was commented on with a sarcasm that even Gawain did not care in this place to resent, and augmented with a rigorous course of work. There were long hours spent, too, on horseback, and here none of them pretended that the Orkney training had been adequate. The High King's horses were as far removed from the rough ponies of the islands as Morgause's men-at-arms were from Arthur's chosen Companions.
It was not all work. Play, too, there was in plenty, but consisting entirely of war games, hours spent over maps drawn in sand, or modelled — this to the boys' wide-eyed wonder — in clay relief. Hours, too, at mock fights or competing at archery. In this last they excelled, and of all of them Mordred had the steadiest draw and the best eye. And there was hunting. In winter the wild-fowling in the marshes was varied and exciting, but there was hunting to be had as well, deer and boar, in the rolling country to the eastward, or among the wooded slopes that rose towards the downlands in the south.
The court removed itself to Caerleon in the first week of December, and the Orkney boys with it. But not their mother. Morgause was taken on Arthur's orders to Amesbury, where she was lodged in the convent. It was a nominal imprisonment only, and a gentle one, but imprisonment nonetheless. Her rooms were guarded by King's troops, and the holy women replaced her own waiting-women. Amesbury, birthplace of Ambrosius, belonged to the High King, and would see his orders carried out to the letter. When the spring weather came, and the roads opened, she would be taken north to Caer Eidyn, where her half-sister Queen Morgan was already immured.
"But what has she done?" demanded Gaheris furiously. "We know what Queen Morgan did, and she is rightly punished. But our mother? Why, she came to Orkney soon after our father was killed. The King must know that — it would be the spring after Queen Morgan's wedding in Rheged. Years ago! She's never been out of the islands since. Why should he imprison her now?"
"Because at that same wedding she tried to murder Merlin." The answer, uncompromising, came from Cei, who, alone among the nobles, spent time with the boys during their hours of leisure.