He interrupted her. He had only heard the one thing. "I, the doom of Arthur? How?"
At the note in his voice she began to smile. "If I knew, I would hardly tell you. But I don't know. Nor did Merlin."
"Why did he not have me destroyed, if this is true?"
Her lip curled. "He had scruples. You were the son of the High King. Merlin used to say that the gods do their own work in their own way."
Another silence, then Mordred said, slowly: "But in this matter, it seems they will have to work through men's hands. Mine. And I can tell you now. Queen Morgause, that I shall bring no doom on the King!"
"How can you avoid it when not you, nor I, nor even Merlin, know how it will strike?"
"Except that it will strike through me! You think I shall wait passively for that? I shall find a way!"
She was contemptuous. "Why pretend to be so loyal? Are you telling me that you love him, all in a moment? You have neither love nor loyalty in you. Look how you have turned against me, and you were to serve me all your days."
"One cannot build on rotten rock!" he said, furiously. She was smiling now. "If I am rotten, you are my blood, Mordred. My blood."
"And his!"
"A son is his mother's stamp," she said.
"Not always! The others are yours, and their sire's, you have only to look at them. But I, no one would know me for your son!"
"But you are like me. They are not. They are bold, handsome fighters, with the minds of wild cattle. You are a witch's son, Mordred, with a smooth and subtle tongue and a serpent's tooth and a mind that works in silence. My tongue. My bite. My mind." She smiled a slow, rich smile. "They may keep me shut up till my life's end, but now my brother Arthur has taken to himself another such: a son with his mother's mind."
The cold had crept into his very bones. He said huskily: "This is not true. You cannot come at him through me. I am my own man. I will not harm him."
She leaned forward. She spoke softly, still smiling. "Mordred, listen to me. You are young, and you do not know the world. I hated Merlin, but he was never wrong. If Merlin saw it written in the stars that you would be Arthur's doom, then how can you escape it? There will come a day, the wicked day of destiny, when all will come to pass as he foretold. And I, too, have seen something, not in the heavens, but in the pool below the earth."
"What?" he asked, hoarsely.
She still spoke softly. There was colour in her face now, and her eyes shone. She looked beautiful. "I have seen a queen for you, Mordred, and a throne if you have the strength to take it. A fair queen and a high throne. And I see a snake striking at the kingdom's heel."
The words seemed to echo round the room, deep in note like a bell. Mordred spoke quickly, trying to kill the magic. "If I turned on him, then indeed I would be a snake."
"If you are," rejoined Morgause smoothly, "it is a role you share with the brightest of the angels, and the one who was closest to his lord."
"What are you talking about?"
"Oh, stories the nuns tell."
He said, very angrily: "You are talking nonsense to frighten me! I am not Lot or Gabran, a besotted tool to do your murders for you. You said I was like you. Very well. Now that I am warned, I shall know what to do. If I have to leave court and stay away from him, I shall do it. No power on earth can make me lift a hand to kill unless I wish it, and this death I swear to you I shall never undertake. I swear it by the Goddess herself."
No echo. The magic was gone. The shouted words fell into dead air. He stood panting, a hand clenched on his sword hilt.
"Brave words," said Morgause, very lightly, and laughed aloud.
He turned and ran from the room, slamming the door to shut off the laughter which followed him like a curse.
3
ONCE BACK IN CAMELOT THE memory of Amesbury and its imprisoned queen began to fade as the boys were plunged again into the life and excitement of the capital.
At first Gaheris complained loudly to whoever would listen about the hardships his mother was obviously suffering. Mordred, who might have enlightened him, said nothing. Nor did he mention his own interview with the queen. The younger boys probed now and then, but were met with silence, so soon stopped asking, and lost interest. Gawain, who must have guessed what the tenor of that interview might be, was perhaps unwilling to risk a snub, so showed no curiosity, and was told nothing. Arthur did ask Mordred how he had fared, then, accepting his son's "Well enough, sir, but not well enough to crave another meeting," merely nodded and turned the subject. It was observed that the King was angry, bored or impatient if his sisters were spoken of, so mention of them was avoided, and in time they were almost forgotten.
Queen Morgause was not after all sent north to join her sister Morgan. The latter, in fact, came south.
When King Urbgen, after a grim and lengthy interview with the High King, had finally put Queen Morgan aside, and given her back into Arthur's jurisdiction, she was held for some time at Caer Eidyn, but eventually won her brother's grudging permission to travel south to her own castle — one that Arthur himself had granted her in happier days — among the hills to the north of Caerleon. Once settled there, with a guard of Arthur's soldiers and such of her women as were willing to remain in captivity with her, she settled down to a small approximation of a royal court, and proceeded (so rumour said, and for once rumour was right) to hatch little plots of hatred against her brother and her husband, as busily and almost as cozily as a hen hatches her eggs.
She also besieged the King from time to time, through the royal couriers, for various favours. One repeated request was for her "dear sister" to be allowed to join her at Castell Aur. It was well known that the two royal ladies had little fondness for one another, and Arthur, when he brought himself to think about it all, suspected that Morgan's desire to join forces with Morgause was literally that: a wish to double the baneful power of such magic as she had. Here rumour spoke again, in whispers: It was being said that Queen Morgan far surpassed Morgause in power, and that none of it was used for good. So Morgan's requests were shrugged off, the High King tending, like any lesser man beset by a nagging woman, to shut his ears and turn the other way. He simply referred the matter to his chief adviser, and had the sense to let a woman deal with the women.
Nimuë's advice was clear and simple: keep them guarded, and keep them apart. So the two queens remained under guard, one in Wales, the other still in Amesbury, but — again on Nimuë's advice — not too strictly prisoned.
"Leave them their state and their titles, their fine clothing and their lovers," she said, and when the King raised his brows, "Men soon forget what has happened, and a fair woman under duress is a center for plotting and disaffection. Don't make martyrs. In a few years' time the younger men won't know or care that Morgause poisoned Merlin, or did murder here and there. They have already forgotten that she and Lot massacred the babies at Dunpeldyr. Give any evildoer a year or two of punishment, and there will be some fool willing to wave a banner and shout, "Cruelty, let them go." Let them have the things that don't matter, but keep them close, and watch them always."
So Queen Morgan held her small court at Castell Aur, and sent her frequent letters along the couriers' road to Camelot, and Queen Morgause remained in the convent at Amesbury. She was permitted to increase the state in which she lived, but even so her captivity was possibly not so easy as her sister's, involving as it did a certain degree of lip-service to the monastic rule. But Morgause had her methods. To the abbot she presented herself as one who, long shut away from the true faith in the pagan darkness of the Orkneys, was eager and willing to learn all she could about the "new religion" of the Christians. The women who served her attended the devotions of the good sisters, and spent many long hours helping with the nuns' sewing and other, more menial tasks. It might have been noted that the queen herself was content to delegate this side of her devotions, but she was civility itself to the abbess, and that elderly and innocent lady was easily deceived by the attentions of one who was half-sister to the High King himself, whatever the supposed crimes she had committed.