Читать книгу The Idylls of the Queen - Phyllis Ann Karr - Страница 7

CHAPTER 4

Of Morgan’s Duplicity and Kay’s Jealousy

“And therewithal they set the queen in a barge into Humber; but always Queen Guenever praised Sir Kay for his deeds, and said, What lady that ye love, and she love you not again she were greatly to blame; and among ladies, said the queen, I shall bear your noble fame, for ye spake a great word, and fulfilled it worshipfully.”

—Malory IV, 3

Mordred rose, flipped a scrap of meat from his trencher to the hounds, and left the room. Agravain shrugged and followed him out, but Gaheris lingered. Gouvernail, who had returned behind the Queen, cleared the remaining platters off the table where Sir Patrise lay. Lionel and Mador lifted the board from the trestles, carrying the body out as if on a bier. Most of the others followed to watch Patrise laid out decently in chapel. Gaheris joined them, keeping toward the back. In a few moments I was left alone with Lore of Carlisle.

“Morgan le Fay.” I shook my head. “It was a beautiful thought, Dame Lore, but—”

“Not merely a thought. A certainty. Have you forgotten her poisoned cloak?”

“No, I haven’t forgotten the bloody cloak!” It had been years ago, shortly after Morgan’s second and permanent break with her husband and departure from Arthur’s court. She had sent the cloak to her brother as a pretended gift of reconciliation; but, on Dame Nimue’s advice, Arthur made the damsel-messenger who brought it try it on her own shoulders first. In an instant, the cloth had sucked around her small form and the lining glowed lividly, showing through the seams in the dark outer velvet like raw flesh in a new wound. A few moments of shrieks and writhing, and the girl collapsed, her body melting away like tallow. When it was over, and the cloth was cool enough to pull away, there were her feet, curled up like claws in the cracked leather slippers, and her head, hair singed and features screwed up with pain; there was nothing between but bones turned to charcoal. I hoped Morgan’s damsel had been in the plot with her mistress and not merely an innocent messenger, but the stench was not like the stink of Brumant’s death in the Siege Perilous or Corsabrin’s pagan soul going to Hell—it was plain, scorched human flesh.

“Morgan is as dead as her damsel by now, anyway,” I went on.

“You all assume she is dead because we’ve heard nothing of her for years,” replied dame Lore, “and therefore you say she was not responsible for this. I say that this proves she is not dead!”

“She loved her nephews. Why would she try to poison Gawain?”

“What is her love for Gawain compared with her hatred for Guenevere? She means to burn the Queen this time.”

Trying not to see the flames leaping up around Her Grace, I thought it over. Dame Lore could be right—Arthur’s half-sister might still be alive. But, if so, why had she been so quiet these last several years, since before the Grail Quest?

Dame Morgan’s first attempt on Arthur’s life had been a complicated scheme involving a counterfeit of Excalibur, sword and scabbard. When that plot went askew and Morgan’s own paramour of the moment was killed instead of the King, she had tried to murder her husband Uriens in his sleep with his own sword and, that attempt foiled by her son Ywain of the Lion, she left court for good and took up residence in various castles of her own, one of them a former gift of Arthur to her. She had gained knowledge of magic somewhere, whether in the nunnery where she was raised or from old Merlin or elsewhere—enough to establish herself as perhaps the most skillful necromancer alive in Britain, as well as the most treacherous. At one time, she had been heart and head of a whole sorority of enchantresses. Yes, this could be the latest of Morgan’s periodic attempts to destroy the Queen and court. But…

“She had to get the poison into the fruit,” I said. “I never heard of any magic strong enough to do that at a distance.”

“At what distance? She could be anywhere. Have you forgotten how she turned herself and all her attendants into rocks when she escaped from the King? And how else does poison come to be found in uncooked fruit unless by magic?”

“You poor, silly innocent, for all your silvering hairs,” I said. “Do you always look for the magical explanation first? Or do you simply assume that if it’s evil, it must be sorcery?”

“The poison was not on the skin of the fruit, Sir Seneschal! Her Grace arranged those apples and pears with her own hands, and did not wash her fingers again before sitting to eat.”

“Then Le Fay missed her chance, didn’t she? If the stuff had been on the skin of the fruit, it would have gotten onto the Queen’s fingers and then into her own mouth with her other food.” I threw that thought away from my mind as soon as it was spoken. “A long pin,” I went on, “dipped in poison, then inserted through the blossom end or maybe the stem end, slantwise into the meat.”

“You seem to understand the process very neatly, Sir Seneschal. Then I will find a way to poison apples without necromancy, too. Suppose they were buried in venomed earth last harvest? Suppose the venom had all the winter to penetrate each piece to the core?”

“Without tainting the peel?”

“Any surface taint would be cleaned off with the dirt when the fruit was dug up. The peel would be left harmful only to the tongue, not to the fingers. And the poison would remain within. You are in charge of seeing the fruit stored each harvest, are you not, Sir Kay?”

“Yes, I am! In whatever place the court happens to be at harvest time. And yes, we were here in London last harvest. But I don’t always watch every apple buried individually, and I don’t always stand over the servants and order them exactly which pit or bag or tub to go to for the food—or were you aware of that, Dame Cupbearer? This court has made progress through eight different cities since the storerooms were filled here in London last fall, and I go with the court—or had you forgotten that? By God, my lady, when I start poisoning people, I’ll know who I’m—”

“You will hardly need any other poison, Sir Seneschal, while you have your tongue!” She stood up. “The earth might have been tainted by a serpent, or by water from a serpent-venomed spring. Such things have happened before now. But since you have chosen to defend yourself where there was no accusation—”

“No accusation!” I was on my feet now, too. “And you call my tongue poisonous? What reason would I have—”

“Jealousy!”

“Jealousy? Jealousy, in God’s Name?”

“Aye, jealousy, Sir Seneschal! You are more jealous of Her Grace and Lancelot than that pitiful fool Meliagrant ever was! Do you think, because the King does not see it, no one else does?”

I don’t know whether Dame Lore left then because of her own rage or because of something she saw in my expression. If a tenth of what my soul felt was leaking through into my face, I must have looked fierce enough to give an ogre pause.

I stood there watching her absence until I could be reasonably sure she was not coming back again. Then I sat and stared at the begrimed silver fruitbowl lying sunk in the embers.

Dame Lore was wrong. I am not jealous of Lancelot. You can only feel jealousy toward someone for whom you have some kind of respect or affection. Jealousy is what I feel towards Gawain. What I feel towards Lancelot is something only the demons in Hell can have a name for, something that should probably frighten me about my eternal salvation, if Lancelot did not deserve every breath of it.

Who should be the King’s right hand? Kay, his foster-brother, his seneschal, the man who was raised with him, shared his training (a few years in advance of Artus, too, and for every time I may have played the bully, I smoothed out the way several times for him). Who was, in fact, recognized as Arthur’s right hand? Lancelot. And Gawain.

Gawain I can stomach. He is the King’s sister’s son, and not only is his loyalty above question, but he is usually at hand when needed. When he goes out on quest or mission, he lets it be known in advance. When he aims to kill, he has a reason, he makes sure his opponent is equally armed, and he knows what he’s doing. When Gawain’s father rebelled against Arthur, Gawain came, along with his mother Morgawse and those of his brothers who were old enough, to our side. The decision could not have been easy, especially for a man of Gawain’s scruples and family feeling.

If Lancelot had any deep, noble reason in coming across the Channel to Arthur, aside from personal glory-seeking, he kept it well concealed. He came, was dubbed knight, and left again immediately for his independent adventuring. Lancelot made sure everyone knew what a great warrior he was before he deigned attach himself permanently to Arthur’s court. If you can call it permanently when every second or third year he either slips away to go adventuring on his own again, without warning anyone beforehand, or goes out of his mind and runs amok for a year or three. And when Lancelot goes battle-berserk, in or out of a legitimate battle situation, even his friends and kinsmen had better keep out of his way.

We all know what a marvelous man of his arms is Lancelot of the Lake. He goes to any lengths to hammer it home to the world. There was the time he and I spent the night at the same forester’s lodging. Lancelot got up before dawn, put on my armor and shield, and rode off while I was still asleep, so that he would have the chance to increase his glory by striking down all the knights who would not have attacked Lancelot but were willing enough to attack a man they thought was Kay. If I had had my good charger Feuillemorte at the time, Lancelot would probably have “borrowed” him, too. Oh, I got back to court in perfect safety. I had no shield but Lancelot’s, and his reputation was already such that no one was willing to fight him in love or lightness. For which safety I was expected to be duly grateful to the generosity of the great hero. But any chance I might have had to win a little honor in my own name was gone. One of the few times I have ever been able to leave court for a few fortnights’ adventuring on my own, wasted.

Artus may have been the only man to unite Logris, at least as well as it can ever be united. No one denies he is a fine leader in war. When he sits in judgment, so long as he is not personally involved in the case, he was a way of cutting through forms and trivialities, getting to the heart of the matter, and making a decision that endears him to the people. His knights love him because he still ventures his body on the same terms as the rest of us, in an occasional tournament as well as in battle; I suppose the popularity is worth the risk of having a dead or maimed High King and no heir ready. But as for the regular, day-to-day functioning of his kingdom and court, the kingdom runs by the Queen’s efforts and the court by my own. Nobody realizes how much. Along with my other duties, I serve as scapegoat for anything that might otherwise dent Arthur’s popularity—even Arthur does not quite understand that service. Folk should at least remember what happened in this kingdom when Guenevere’s look-alike seduced Arthur and supplanted the true Queen for two years: The country came near to rotting away, and not even the Pope’s interdict brought Artus back to his senses. Only the false queen’s dying confession woke him up; the kingdom started to recover only when Dame Guenevere agreed to leave her sanctuary in Surluse and come back to her first husband. Maybe the common people remember that interlude more clearly than they are willing to say. I am not sure.

Arthur had been ready to sentence Her Grace to death when he named her look-alike queen. He had been ready to have her hair torn out and the skin peeled from her loving face and gentle hands. If he had done it, I could not have remained loyal to him. I would have given my life to save Dame Guenevere, but Lancelot took it as his natural right to act as her champion. Again. And afterwards escorted her into Surluse to share her banishment while his liege lord played with the look-alike.

I probably owe my own life to the conceited Mirror of All Knightly Prowess. The time Bagdemagus’ worthless son Meliagrant accused Her Grace of infidelity, I was the supposed lover he named. I was newly wounded, and there was blood in her bed. There was also blood on the bars of the window, if anyone else noticed it besides myself, and Lancelot answered Meliagrant’s challenge with bandaged hands, insisting, as usual, that he and no one else should fight as the Queen’s champion. No matter that I had not asked him to clear my name as well as hers—no matter that I was more than willing to have fought Meliagrant myself as soon as I was sufficiently healed to sit my horse—no matter, even, that there was not that much glory in defeating Meliagrant, and Lancelot had to fight with his head and half his body unarmored and his left arm bound in order to win any fresh fame for the encounter.

It was more important to clear Her Grace than to quibble about who the man might have been. But, God! That he should have fought to clear me of his own deed—that he should have loved the Queen in my place!

Even remembering it, I threw the nearest goblet against the wall, denting it beyond use. No matter, I would pay for the goblet later.

If Lancelot the valorous hypocrite had never come to Britain, I might have been the Queen’s favorite knight. It’s not impossible. Or Gawain might have been. Either one of us, and it would have been a pure loyalty. Not like Lancelot the seducer, ravishing the Queen and then driving her half mad with his lesser paramours, his Elaines and Amables, and with his habit of risking his life heedlessly on less than no excuse.

At least in the earlier days he had the decency to keep his dishonesty secret. Even I could not be sure until the Meliagrant affair. But since his return from seeking the Holy Grail, he was more careless of the Queen’s safety—trusting, I suppose, that he would always happen to be on hand at the right times to prove on the field of honor that the truth was a lie. Someday Arthur was going to believe at last what Morgan le Fay had told him years ago, over and over, about Lancelot and the Queen.

And this was the man on whom the Queen’s life and safety had depended time after time—on whom it might depend again now!

Suppose Morgan was still alive. Suppose she had captured Lancelot again, even managed to seduce him at last (although, for that matter, we had only Lancelot’s word that she had never yet gotten him into her bed, or that all those months he had spent with her on various occasions he had indeed been a totally unwilling prisoner in her stronghold.) Suppose that while holding Lancelot again, whether as prisoner or paramour, she had set another kind of trap for Dame Guenevere—to see her condemned and burned while Lancelot was prevented from appearing in time to fight for her.