The little Irishman spread his hands, resigned. “We saw the Faerie woman on the Wall. She sent a message, sir.” “A message? Morgana?”

Gareth still found it difficult. “We knew that the queen—Jesus God, there’s some things women just don’t understand.”

“Gareth-fach, we’re going to, be at war any day. I’ll hazard the queen’s mood.”

He said it with a hangdog duty. “She would come here with all her people. To Camelot. She would show our king his true son.”

My stomach had the gray feeling of a bad mistake, like indigestion. The news should have come to me, but everyone in Guenevere’s presence was stunned by the red, unreasoning fury that swept my queen like fire in dry grass, lashing out at everyone in sight, heaping abuse on Gareth and Bedivere. I went first to Bedivere who waited, alone and stoic, in the small chamber where Yseult had parted from Trystan. He sat on the edge of the

dais in his mud-spattered mail, seedy and tired, a shabby bundle at his feet.

“We met her at the Wall, Artos. So small, from a distance I thought she was a child gauded up in her mum’s finery, all copper and gold bangles jingling like a tinker’s shop. She remembered me from Cnoch-nan-ainneal. Called me Redhair, said she was first wife to Artos.”

I tried not to sound too eager. “Did you see her son?”

“Her folk stayed back on the hill while we talked.” Bedivere wiped at the road grit under his eyes. “I mean, we laughed at her, absurd as it was and herself near impossible to understand. Then she said look at his cheeks that are marked like mine. And she gave us this.”

He unwrapped the blanket bundle and laid out two garments.

“The cloak could’ve been anyone’s, but I wouldn’t forget this.”

Bedivere took up the filthy old jerkin, his voice soft with memory. “Long ago as it was. See this stain? It’s my own blood where you carried me when I caught the Pict arrow. You said you took a Faerie queen to wife. And I thought you were having me on.”

He folded the garments and brought them to me. “Well, we can’t laugh now, Artos. She’d come to Camelot under safe conduct with her son and the whole perishing tribe. And I was to say—uh—‘First wife needs land for her people that third husband must give out of respect.’ “

The bundle was heavy with fhain-sme\, recalling the brief, innocent time when I could live my own life like any other man.

“And this went to Guenevere?”

Bedivere’s look was eloquent. “You know how she is about the bloody Picts. God knows we tried to come to you, but young Bors went galloping off to Guenevere, and she sent for us straight.”

Guenevere had heard them out in a gathering cold, her eyes never leaving the stained old tunic. Then she rose and gave answer. How dare they? How dare they bring such a message? Her father would have sent two severed heads, the whore and her bastard. Before Lancelot, Bors and other lords, she reviled Gareth and Bedivere as peasant dolts that only my mistaken friendship raised to a semblance of honor. Then she flung herself out of the chamber, leaving them smarting in their astonishment and shame.

236

Firelord

The gray feeling thickened in my stomach. “Gwen did this? Before the court?’ ‘

“Hell, we can live with that. We’re not boys to brood over a tongue-lashing.”

“Bedwyr, I’m sorry. I’ll deal with Guenevere.”

“Yes, you will.” My friend looked at me with a searching, bewildered kind of sympathy. “I understand a bit of what she feels. All of a sudden there’s a whole Artos I never knew. And bloody Christ, you never told her.”

We hadn’t shared the same bed for some time, and instinct told me to avoid Guenevere’s closet until we were both cooler. When I entered her chamber, she dismissed her women brusquely but kept her back to me, brushing the faded auburn hair before her great bronze mirror. Silent but tensed for battle, the brush driving through her hair in quick, furious strokes. I sat on the bed, wondering how to begin.

“It’s been quite a day, Gwen.”

“Quite.” She bit the words off. *‘Cerdic’s future and your

busy past.”

“We’ll speak of that.” »

“Yes, we will.”

“Bedivere and Gareth deserve an apology.”

“No.” The brush snapped and crackled through the lashing hair. “I criticize incompetence in my own terms.”

“Incompetence?”

“They should have killed the woman and ended her presumption men and there.”

I said, “There was a time when we dreamed of something better. ‘ ‘

The brush paused, the mirrored eyes winced. “And a time when you trusted my judgment, husband. You rule the north through me, and I say it’s madness to let her come. Like disease, they’re welcome nowhere, and we must say to the princes it’s by your order because this animal calls herself your wife?” Guenevere whirled on me. “Not only wife but demanding out of respect some place for her rat’s nest. What place? Given by what generous prince? Not Peredur, he’ll go to war first.”

“I have Morgana’s word there’ll be no theft crossing our

land.”

The Ghost Dancers

237

Guenevere laughed. “Thus the weasel to the chickens: don’t get up, I’m only passing through.”

All true, perhaps, but Morgana had my son with her. “I know these people, Gwen.”

“Intimately, from the evidence.”

“I’m family to them. They wouldn’t steal a button from me.”

“Arthur, sentiment is a dangerous indulgence for a king.”

“Don’t tell me what’s indulgence, Gwen. I’ve ruled twenty-two years without much of it. I’m letting her come with her son and just a few close—”

“No, Arthur!”

“I want to see my son.”

“No, damn you—no!”

The force of it brought Gwen to her feet, quivering, arm raised as if to strike at me. But the anger melted into a cry. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You knew I had a wife.”

“Like I’ve had other men—past, gone, invisible—do you think that matters?” Suddenly she wilted down on the bed, face buried in the blankets. “But she comes with—with the one thing I couldn’t have, and I must look at him? And you knew and never told me. I fee!—”

It came out harder than I intended. “Betrayed?”

She looked away. “I didn’t say that.”

“No,” I said. “I don’t think mat’s a word for us.”

Then the habit of closeness took over and I lay down beside her. After a moment she turned and pressed to me, mouth against my throat. “You never told me about him. I’m sorry about Bedivere and Gareth, I just couldn’t stop myself. I’ve been a good queen,” she breathed like a child confiding a secret hurt. “Is this ajl I get for it, dry old age spent looking at what I can’t have? Don’t bring him here.”

I stayed with Gwen that night. You could call it love-making. We tried to join, but it was distant and sad like ghost dancers on long-abandoned ground. Don’t bring him here.

I had to, an old debt owed to my own heart. Something for myself, even as Guenevere took Lancelot. Not for a love but a bandage. Not as king but breathing man, I needed to know my flesh wouldn’t die; above all, to touch him and say “my son” just once before I ended.

Weary or not, Bedivere must carry my message north again. Morgana would trust no other.

238

Firtlord

“Bring Morgana and my son,” I told him. “And with them only these few, remember them: Cunedag, Urgus, Drost, Dorclei …”

I had a small house readied for them, warm and comfortable, but a good half mile from the palace out of deference to Guenevere. I fussed over the pile of gifts for each like a father hiding sweets for his children. When they arrived I was nervous as a bridegroom, fidgeting about my closet while Bedivere tried to fasten the rich imperial cloak about me.

“Stand still, else I’ll never get this right.”

“Who’s with her? Did you have a good journey?”

“Na, I’ve told you twice over, and we’re all nigh frozen.” Bedivere closed the brooch at my shoulder. “Do you mind if I sit down, Artos? I’m perishing tired.”

“Sit, sit. Tell me of them.”

He collapsed onto a couch and seemed to melt into it like water. “Well, there’s Morgana and her first and second husbands, devil if I know one from the other. Cooney-something.”

“Cunedag.”

“Right, and Urgus, and your son’s cousin.”

“Drost? Good lord, little Drost!”

“Not a bad lot for Picts,” Bedivere owned.

“Prydn.”

“Well, / can’t tell the difference.”

“Ask them. Picts have a place to go home. Tell me about my son, what’s he look like?”

“Modred? Like his mother. Yes, very like her. Bonny as a girl. Not as friendly as the rest. Eyes in the back of his head.”

I gave my robe one last tug in the mirror. “Is Guenevere

ready?”

Bedivere hesitated. “Not quite.” “Where is she?” “With Lancelot, I believe.” “Oh.”

Bedivere cleared his throat. “Speaking of that . , .” “Don’t.” Our eyes met in the mirror. “I know what you think you ought to say. Don’t.”

“It could be trouble, Artos. More than that, it could be used

for trouble.”

I chose the words carefully, “It could, but I’ve seen no proof. Nor would I be kind to anyone who brought it to me. Let’s go.”

The Ghost Dancers

239

I’d peopled the hall with enough of an audience to give Morgana a sense of importance, few enough to show my court that this was in no way a political occasion nor did I recognize Modred as any sort of heir. Morgana’s “demands” were a thin mask over desperation. Her band was too large and predatory now for Erca, the new king of the Picts, to overlook. If she stayed in the north, she faced a fight to extinction with no place of her own to fall back on. I was her last hope and not at all sure what to do.

I took my chair on the dais as the small audience bowed to me. Maelgwyn and his chief men, Gareth and Lady Rhian, Bors and his young wife. Guenevere swept in, followed by Lancelot and three young knights, Parisi by the look of them. I barely knew one of them by name, Brocan. My queen was impeccable as always when in public, though I noticed her hair was drawn down to soften her face that bore just a shade more assistance from powder than usual. I felt a twinge of pity. It didn’t wipe away her years, only commented on the attempt.