Mordred said, quietly: "Don't you see, Gaheris? She lied to blind you, and she lied twice. Lamorak never killed Lot, how could he? Lot died of the wounds he got at Caledon, and they fought on the same side there. So unless Lamorak stabbed King Lot in the back, and that was not his way, he could not be his killer. Did you never think of that?"
But Gaheris had no thoughts but the same trapped and torturing ones. "She took him as her lover, and lied to me. We were all deceived, even Gawain. Mordred, the others will say that what I did was right, will they not?"
"You know as well as I how likely Gawain is to forgive you this. Or Gareth. Even your twin may not support you. And though the King isn't likely to grieve for your mother, he'll have to listen if the Orkney princes demand what they will call justice."
"They will ask it on Lamorak!"
"For what?" said Mordred, coolly. "He would have married her."
That silenced Gaheris for a moment. They had reached the orchard wall, and he paused under the apple tree and turned. The moon was rising now behind a drift of cloud, and the bloodstains on his breast showed black.
"If they do not kill him, I shall," he said.
"You can try," said Mordred dryly. "And he will kill you, make no mistake. And then your brothers will try to kill him. So you see what this night's work has done?"
"And you? You seem to care nothing for what has happened. You speak as if it hardly touched you."
"Oh, it touches me," said Mordred briefly. "Now, we are wasting time. What's done is done. You will have to leave court, you know that. You will be well advised to get away before your brothers get here. Get over the wall now, Gaheris; your horse is there."
Gaheris swung himself over, and Mordred, climbing after him, stayed astride the wall while his brother untied the horse and checked the girths. Then he handed Gaheris's sword down into his hand.
"Where will you go?" he asked him.
"North. Not to the islands, and Dunpeldyr is held for Arthur as well. What is not? But I shall find a place where I can sell my sword."
"Meantime take my purse. Here."
"My thanks, brother." Gaheris caught it. He swung himself to the saddle. It brought him almost to Mordred's level. He hung on the rein for a moment while the roan horse danced, eager to move. "When you see Gawain and the others—"
"Tell them the truth and plead your cause for you? I'll do what I can. Farewell."
Gaheris pulled the horse's head round. Soon there was no sign of him except the fast soft thud of retreating hoofs. Mordred jumped down from the wall and walked back across the orchard.
5
SO DIED MORGAUSE, WITCH-QUEEN of Lothian and Orkney, leaving by her death and its manner another hellbrew of trouble for her hated brother.
The trouble was far-reaching. Gaheris suffered banishment, and Lamorak, riding white-faced and silent into headquarters to surrender his sword, was relieved of his command and bidden to absent himself until the dust should have time to settle.
This would not be soon. Gawain, savage with outraged pride rather than grief, swore on all the wild gods of the north to be avenged both on Lamorak and on his brother, and ignored all that Arthur could say to him, pleas and threats alike.
It was pointed out that Lamorak had offered marriage to Morgause, and that her acceptance gave him the betrothed's claim to her bed, and with it the right to avenge her murder himself. This right Lamorak, one of Arthur's first and most loyal Companions, had waived. Gaheris, he had sworn, was safe from him. But none of this appeased Gawain, whose anger had in it a large measure of sheer sexual jealousy.
Just as violent was Gawain's railing against Gaheris, but there he got no support from his brothers. Agravain, who had always been the leader of the twins, seemed lost without Gaheris; he tended to turn to Mordred, who, for reasons of his own, suffered him willingly enough. Gareth said little throughout, but withdrew into silence. In her death as in her life his mother had wronged him deeply: bitter as was the story of her dreadful death to her youngest son, the tales of her impurity, which were common knowledge now, wounded him more.
But all the shouts for vengeance had to die. Lamorak had gone, no one knew where. Gaheris had vanished northward into the mists, Morgause was buried in the convent graveyard, and Arthur went with his followers back to Camelot. Gradually, for sheer lack of fuel, the blaze kindled by the murder died down. Arthur, fond of his nephews, and secretly relieved at the news of Morgause's death, steered as carefully as he could between the shoals, kept the princes as busy as he might, gave Gawain as much authority as he dared, and waited with weary apprehension for the storm to break again. About Gaheris he could not bring himself to care overmuch, but Lamorak, who was innocent of all but folly, was almost certainly doomed. Some day Arthur's valued Companion would come against one of the Orkney princes, and be killed, fair or foul. Nor would it stop there. Lamorak, too, had a brother, at present serving in Dumnonia with one Drustan, a knight whom Arthur hoped to attract into his service. It was possible that he, or even Drustan himself — who was a close friend to both brothers — would in turn swear and require vengeance.
So Morgause, in her death, did what she had planned to do with her life. She had planted a canker in the blossoming chivalry of Arthur's court: not, ironically, the bastard she had reared to be his bane, but her three legitimate oldest, her wild, unpredictable and now almost ungovernable sons.
Outside it all stood Mordred. He had shown himself resourceful and cool, had prevented further bloodshed on that murderous night, and had gained time for good counsel. That the Orkney princes would not — some said could not — respond to good counsel was hardly his fault. It was noticeable that less and less did the court count him as one of the "Orkney brood." Subtly, the distance between him and his half-brothers increased. And with Morgause dead, men hardly troubled any longer with the fiction of "the High King's nephew." He was simply "Prince Mordred," and known to be close to the King and Queen in-love and favour.
Some time after Arthur's return to Camelot he called a council in the Round Hall.
It was the first such council that the two younger Orkney brothers had been entitled, as Companions, to attend. Even Mordred, who with Gawain had been given that status some years ago, met with a change: instead of sitting at the King's left, as had been his privilege over the past two years, he was led by the royal usher to the chair on Arthur's right, where Bedwyr usually sat. Bedwyr took the seat to the left. If he felt demoted he did not show it; he gave Mordred a smile that seemed genuine, and a ceremonious little bow that acknowledged his new status to the younger man.
Bedwyr, the King's friend of boyhood days, and constant companion in the closest sense, was a quiet man with the eyes of a poet, and, after the King's, the most deadly sword in the kingdoms. He had fought at Arthur's side through all the great campaigns, and with him shared the glory of wiping the Saxon Terror from Britain's boundaries. Possibly alone of the warrior lords, he showed no impatience with the long-drawn peace, and when Arthur had had to travel abroad at the request of allies or kinsmen, and take his fighting men with him, Bedwyr never seemed to resent the necessity of staying behind as regent for his king. Rumour, as Mordred well knew, gave reasons for this: Bedwyr had not married, and in the close company as he was of both King and Queen, it was whispered that he and Queen Guinevere were lovers. But Mordred, also constantly with them, had never caught a look or gesture that bore this out. Guinevere was as gay and kind to him as he had ever seen her with Bedwyr, and, perhaps with a little of the inbred jealousy taught by Morgause, he would have denied, even with his sword, any overt hint of such a connection.