The ale was strong and the mead stronger. Many of the warriors were soon drunk, and slept where they sat. Some, too, of Arthur's train succumbed to the overwhelming hospitality, and began to doze. Mordred, still sober, but knowing that he was only so by an effort, narrowed his eyes against the low sun from the open door, and looked to see how the kings were faring. Cerdic was flushed, and leaning back in his chair, but still talked; Arthur, though his platter was empty, looked as cool as might be in that heated hall. Mordred saw how he had done it: His big hound, Cabal, lay by his chair, licking his chops under the table.
The sun set, and presently torches were lit, filling the hall with smoky light. In the still evening the fire burned brightly, the smoke filtering up through the vent in the thatch, or drifting among the diners to make them cough and wipe their eyes. At length, when the platters were empty, and the drinking horns held out less frequently for filling, the entertainment began.
First came a troop of gleemen, who danced to the music of trumpets and horns, and with them a pair of jugglers who, first with coloured balls, then with daggers or with anything those lords still sober threw to them, made dazzling patterns in the smoky air. The two kings threw money down, and the gleemen, scooping it up, bowed and went, still jigging and dancing. Then the harper took his place. He was a thin dark man, in an embroidered robe that looked costly. He set his stool near the hearth, and bent his head to tune the strings. Mordred saw Arthur turn his head quickly at the sound, then sink back in his chair to listen, his face in shadow.
Gradually the noise in the hall sank to a silence qualified only by some drunken snoring, and an occasional snarling wrangle from the dogs fighting in the straw for scraps.
The harper began to sing. His voice was true, and, as such men are, he was learned in tongues. He sang first in the guests' language, a love song, and then a lament. Then, in his own tongue, he sang a song which, after the first half-dozen lines, held every man there who could hear it, whether he understood the words or not.
Bruning the redhead, who was opposite Mordred, was sitting as still as a mouse, with the tears running down his face. Mordred, moved at the touch of some long-forgotten grief, had to exert all his self-command not to show his own emotion. Suddenly, as if his name had been called, he turned to find his father watching him. The two men's eyes, so like, locked and held. In Arthur's was something of the look that he had seen in Nimuë's: a helpless sadness. In his own, he knew, were rebellion and a fierce will. Arthur smiled at him and looked away as the applause began. Mordred got swiftly to his feet and went out of the hall.
Throughout the long feasting men had gone out from time to time to relieve themselves, so no one queried his going, or even glanced after him.
The gates were shut, but within the palisade the place was clear. Beasts, poultry and children had all been herded in with sunset to supper and bed, and now the menfolk and their women were mostly withindoors. He paced slowly along in the shadow of the palisade, trying to think.
Nimuë and her stark message: Your will is nothing, your existence is all. The King, who many years back had had the same message, and had left it to those cruel, clouded gods…
But there would be ambition fulfilled, and his due of glory.
Not, of course, that a practical man believed in such soothsaying. Nor could he believe, by the same token, in the prophecies of doom.…
He pressed a palm to his forehead. The air felt cool and sweet after the smoky reek of the hall. Gradually his brain cleared. He knew how far he must be from realizing his ambitions, those secret ambitions and desires. It would be many years, surely, before he or the King need fear what the evil gods might have in store. What Arthur had done for him all those years ago, he could do for Arthur now. Forget "doom," and wait for the future to show itself.
A movement in the shadow of a tall woodpile caught his eye. A man, one of Arthur's followers. Two men; no, three. One of them moved across the glow of a distant cooking fire, and Mordred recognized Agravain. Not out here simply to relieve himself. He had seated himself on the shaft of that cart that stood empty by the woodpile, and his two companions stood by him, bending near and talking eagerly. One of them, Calum, he knew; the other he thought he recognized. Both were young Celts, close friends of Agravain and formerly of Gaheris. When Agravain had left Mordred's side in anger during the ride, he had re-joined the group where these two were riding, and snatches of their conversation had come from time to time to Mordred's ears.
Abruptly, all thought of Nimuë and her cloudy stars went from his head. The Young Celts; the phrase had recently taken on something of a political meaning, in the sense of a party of young fighting men drawn mostly from the outland Celtic kingdoms, who were impatient with "the High King's peace" and the centralization of lowland government, and bored with the role of peaceful law-enforcement created for his knights-errant. There had been little open opposition; the young men tended to sneer at the "old man's market-place" of the Round Hall; they talked among themselves, and some of the talk, it was rumoured, verged on sedition.
Such as the whispering, which in recent weeks had grown as if somehow carefully fostered, about Bedwyr and Queen Guinevere.
Mordred moved silently away until a barn interposed its bulk between him and the little group of men. Pacing, head bent, brain working coolly now, he thought back.
It was true that in all his close dealings with them, he had never seen the Queen favour Bedwyr by word or look above other men, except as Arthur's chief friend, and in Arthur's presence. Her bearing towards him was, if anything, almost too ceremonious. Mordred had wondered, sometimes, at the air of constraint that could occasionally be felt between two people who had known one another for so long, and in such intimacy. No — he checked himself — not constraint. Rather, a distance carefully kept, where no distance seemed to be necessary. Where in fact distance seemed hardly to matter. Several times Mordred had noticed that Bedwyr seemed to know what the Queen meant without her having to put her thoughts into words.
He shook the thought away. This was poison, the poison Agravain had tried to distil. He would not even think this way. But there was one thing he could do. Like it or not, he was linked with the Orkney brothers, and lately most closely with Agravain. If Agravain approached him again, he would listen, and find out if the Young Celts' dissatisfaction was anything more than the natural rebellion of young men against the rule of their elders. As for the whispering campaign concerning Bedwyr and the Queen, that was surely only a matter of policy, too. A wedge driven in between Arthur and his oldest friend, the trusted regent who held his seal and acted as his other self, that would be the aim of any party seeking to weaken the High King's position and undermine his policies. There, too, he must listen; there, too, if he dared, he must warn the King. Of the slanders only; there were no facts; there was no truth in tales of Bedwyr and the Queen.…
He pushed the thought aside with a violence that was, he told himself, a tribute to his loyalty to his father, and his gratitude to the lovely lady who had shown such kindness to the lonely boy from the islands.