The Road to Avalon (53 page)

“I . . . Yes.”

“If you cannot get away on the road, then you must ride off the battlefield as soon as battle is engaged.” She was speaking quickly and in a low, urgent voice. Her eyes kept going to the doorway. “Join the army in Gaul. Your father will send for you once he has things under control here in Britain.”

His mouth trembled. “I don’t deserve that you should believe in me, either of you. I may have been fooled about Arthur’s death, but . . . Gwenhwyfar . . . ”

She said, “Of all of us, Mordred, you are the least to blame.” And held out her arms.

He was even thinner than Arthur, and his shoulders were bony. He was quivering all over. “I’m so sorry,” he was saying next to her ear. “Mother. I’m so sorry.”

She patted his back. “I know, Mordred. We both know. Now, quickly, before Agravaine comes, will you go to Gaul?”

She could feel him trying to pull himself together. “Y-yes,” he said.

She heard the step at the door, quiet though it was, and so had a second to prepare herself before a light voice said mockingly, “Such a touching sight.”

She felt Mordred shudder and squeezed his shoulders bracingly before allowing him to step back from her. “Family affection is not something you would understand,” she said to the chill blue eyes of her nephew.

“Aunt Morgan.” His smile was full of meretricious charm. “And did you come just to hold my little brother’s hand?”

Mordred was facing Agravaine now, and when he spoke, his voice was perfectly steady. “She didn’t come to spy on you, Agravaine. She came for reasons you would never be able to honor or to understand.”

Morgan looked at her son. He was standing straight as an arrow and the eyes he had turned on Agravaine were full of contempt. So was his voice.

Good for you,
she thought. And he gave her a quick, startled look, as though he had heard her.

Agravaine’s eyes went from Mordred’s face to Morgan’s. “You didn’t think that it might not be as easy to get out of Camelot as it was to get in?” he asked gently.

She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter to me one way or the other. Arthur will be in Camelot in a matter of days.”

The fair face darkened with anger. “Don’t be too sure of that.”

Her eyebrows were two perfect delicate arches above her clear brown eyes. “I’m very sure of it, Agravaine.”

“Get out!” he said with sudden violence, “while you still can! As you pointed out earlier, I don’t have the same reverence for family ties that you have. Go back to Avalon. And when this battle is over, Morgan, I will expect your farms to send the same supplies to Camelot that they did in the days of Arthur.”

She looked at him consideringly. He could not bear to be crossed at all these days, she thought. Would Mordred really be safe here? And what about Gwenhwyfar?

“Go,” Mordred said commandingly. “And . . . thank you for coming.”

Her son’s eyes were clear, his face suddenly and oddly mature-looking. The young, lost look had quite gone. A little of the weight of fear she always carried for him lifted and she smiled. “God keep you, Mordred.”

“And you,” came the grave reply. She brushed past Agravaine and walked out through the beautiful colonnaded great hall, out the great double doors of Arthur’s palace, and for the last time rode her pony down the main road of the famous capital city of Camelot.

Chapter 44

I
T
was a wet, misty April morning when Agravaine’s army finally rode out of Camelot to fight the king. There had to be a battle; both sides understood that. Agravaine could not afford to hide in Camelot indefinitely and allow Arthur time to call his army home from Gaul.

Mordred rode beside his brother at the head of the neat rows of marching men. As Arthur had told Morgan, Agravaine needed the king’s son. He needed his army to see that Mordred, Prince of Britain, was riding to battle with them. Two of Agravaine’s men rode beside Mordred and two behind him, effectively cutting off any chance of escape. The morning air was cold and damp on Mordred’s face. The woods on either side of the road were hung with wet white blossoms and purple twigs. Mordred watched the men beside him out of the corners of his eyes.

It was not his personal danger that was worrying him; it was the thought that his presence was helping Agravaine. He turned his head slightly and looked at his brother. Agravaine was helmetless, and even in the morning gloom his hair shone bright. He must have sensed Mordred’s regard, for his own head turned. For a brief wordless moment their eyes held. Then Agravaine said regretfully, “I always liked you, Mordred.”

There was an ache in Mordred’s stomach. “I know,” he said. But the Agravaine whom he had grown up with, the big brother he had admired and pitied, was not the man who rode now by his side. Or was he? Was he so clever a dissembler that he had been able to fool them all for so many years? Had this ruthless egotism always lain at the heart of Agravaine’s character?

Abruptly Mordred remembered Gaheris asking: “And where were you when Pellinore fell down those stairs?”

There had been regret in the blue eyes looking at him just now, but no mercy. Agravaine would have him killed, all right. The possibility which he had never quite believed, now became a certainty. Mordred stood between Agravaine and the high kingship; therefore Mordred would have to die. In Agravaine’s mind, it would be as simple as that.

Mordred felt suddenly nauseated. It was not the danger he was in that sickened him; he had a great deal of physical courage. It was Agravaine. God, what would happen to Britain should Agravaine become high king?

The setting sun was still streaking the sky with red when Agravaine’s army entered the small village of Camlann some five miles west of Avalon. On one side of the village was the river Camm; on the other were the wide, neatly plowed fields of the villagers, already sown with spring seed. It was not life but death that would be sown on those fields tomorrow, however, for it was this flat, fertile valley that Arthur had chosen to be the scene of the ultimate battle for Britain.

It was a field that afforded little in the way of topographical advantage. Mordred was surprised that his father had chosen a site that would so clearly favor the army with the greater number. Agravaine had some eight thousand men under his command; his spies had reported that the king’s army was two thousand less than that.

Mordred had not been able to effect an escape on the road, and so he was present when Agravaine made his battle dispositions for the morrow. The men of Elmet, under the command of their own prince, Baird, were given the right. Baird’s father, Elmet’s old king, was said to be very ill. Mordred doubted that he even knew of the enterprise his son was involved in. There would be two thousand men from Elmet and one thousand from Rheged under Baird’s command tomorrow, mostly all troops who had fought at one time or another in Arthur’s wars. The left wing, under the command of Innis of Manau Guotodin, was less experienced. The center, led by Agravaine himself, was a mix of seasoned veterans and youngsters from Lothian who had grown up under Pellinore’s imposed state of isolation. These were the troops Agravaine had been training so intensively and he was confident they would not panic when faced with actual battle.

The sun was setting when the soldiers took up their positions and lay down in their cloaks to sleep. On the other side of the now-darkened field the king’s army was presumably doing the same.

The night dragged on. The man sleeping beside Mordred, Agravaine’s man, began to snore. Noiselessly Mordred rose to his feet and started to move toward the wooded banks of the Camm. He was challenged by a sentry, but when he said he was going into the woods to relieve himself, he was allowed to pass.

Once he was within the trees, Mordred wasted no time. His eyesight was very keen and he could move as silently as a woodland creature when he wanted to. By the time he was missed, and men were sent to look for him, he was far down the river, hidden by the dark and by the forest.

Go to Gaul, his mother had said. Your father understands. Go to Gaul, where you will be safe.

He could get away now with little trouble, head for the coast, where there would surely be some kind of boat to take him to Gaul. The branches of the trees rustled above him and he heard the soft sound of the water of the Camm as it lapped against the rocks of the shore. The decision was made and he was moving before he consciously realized that he had even made a decision. He could not go to Gaul until he had first seen his father.

He took a few more steps and the thought settled, solidified, and became a conviction. He must see his father. He did not know why, just knew that it was a necessity. He could not run away to Gaul until he had first seen Arthur.

He changed direction and began to return to the field from a different angle. His sense of direction was always accurate, and as the sun began to rise in the sky he found himself exactly where he had aimed to be, hidden in the thicket of woods that jutted out to the left of Innis’ wing. He looked across the neatly plowed field to the army that was assembled on the other side, a quarter of a mile away.

The morning air was clear and the dragon banner of the king was easily visible in the early sun. Mordred’s long-sighted eyes were able to make out Arthur’s dispositions without difficulty. Bedwyr and the small cavalry unit were on the king’s right. The prince would throw terror into the untried troops from Manau Guotodin, Mordred thought with approval. He squinted a little to see what foot Arthur had given to Bedwyr and was surprised to see a troop of men led by Gawain. Gawain should be with the cavalry, he thought. He looked harder and realized abruptly that the auburn head of the man he was watching did not belong to Gawain after all.

Gaheris.
He almost said the name aloud. Gaheris, King of Lothian, had come to fight with Arthur. Mordred felt a moment of fierce pride in his brother. Then he moved his eyes to Arthur’s left wing, expecting to see Cador and Cai.

Neither Cai nor the King of Dumnonia was commanding the left wing, however. Mordred looked at the slender, dark-haired man who was walking his horse up and down in front of his troops of foot, and felt jealousy sear his heart. Constantine. Constantine, where
he
ought to be, at Arthur’s side. And instead, he was here, skulking on the edges of the field, a branded traitor. The conviction that he must see his father burned even deeper than before.

Finally, almost reluctantly, he allowed his eyes to come to rest on the figure under the great banner. He was riding Ruadh, Mordred saw at once. The center, which Arthur was commanding today, was placed on a small rise of land and the early-morning wind was blowing from its rear, causing the dragon banner to ripple almost directly over the king’s head. As Mordred watched him, Arthur moved Ruadh forward to the edge of the small hill. Standing there in front of his men, alone, he raised his voice.

“Men of the north!” There was absolute silence in Agravaine’s ranks as they listened to the clear, strong voice coming to them so effortlessly on the morning breeze. “You have fought with me before, many of you. Gaheris of Lothian fights with me today.” Mordred could hear the murmurs of surprise that ran through Agravaine’a army as Gaheris came forward to the front of the right wing. The king raised his hand and silence descended once more. “Britons!” came Arthur’s call. His black hair was blowing in the wind. “You have been deceived by a treacherous prince. Join with me today, and I will receive you like comrades.”

“You lie!” It was Agravaine’s voice, lighter than Arthur’s but audible to his men. “It is you who are the deceiver, servant of Rome!” Agravaine moved his own horse forward so he was visible to all his army. Like Arthur, he was unhelmeted. “Do not listen to him,” he cried to his men. “He is afraid because we outnumber him!”

The sound of a horn from Arthur’s lines cut across his words. Agravaine gestured and his own trumpets blew. His men raised their weapons.

This was why Arthur had chosen this ground, Mordred thought as the two armies began to move toward each other. He had wanted to make that appeal to Agravaine’s men.

Mordred had never seen a battle before, and at first he watched in horror as the two masses of men clashed and mingled and began to kill. It was perhaps ten minutes before he realized that there was a steady stream of Agravaine’s men leaving the field. They were all moving toward the small rise of land from which Arthur had addressed the troops. Mordred looked and immediately recognized the figure who was so competently forming Agravaine’s men into a unit of reserve for the king. Cai. Someone all these veterans would know and trust.

With a thrill of triumph, Mordred realized that Agravaine’s army was slowly deserting to the king.

Suddenly Mordred could stand being an outsider no longer. He grasped his sword firmly in his hand and went onto the field to find his father.

“Mercy, Prince!” A terrified face stared up at Bedwyr. “I want to declare for the king!”

“Go and join Cai on the hill, then,” Bedwyr said. He raised his voice. “Anyone who wishes to join the king is to go to the hill.”

The crowd around him began to thin noticeably. Bedwyr grinned and turned to Gawain, who was beside him. “Gods! I’m afraid to kill anyone lest he be one of ours!”

Gawain laughed. “There were at least five hundred with Cai the last time I looked. The number must be double by now.” His eyes narrowed. “Hold on. This is a group that isn’t friendly.”

“You deal with them,” Bedwyr said. “I have another job to do.” And he wheeled Sugyn away from the cavalry unit and drove him toward the center of the field. As so many years ago Cai had once searched a battlefield for Lot, so now Bedwyr searched for Lot’s son.

Agravaine saw him coming, a great golden god of a man on a huge black horse. Agravaine raised his sword and watched as Bedwyr approached, cutting his way through the northern army as easily as a hot knife going through butter.

“Prince,” he said when finally they were face-to-face. His blue eyes were fearless. “This is for you,” Agravaine said. He gestured around the field. “All for you.” And he laughed.