The Idylls of the Queen. Phyllis Ann Karr

Tor, were ready to claim treason and challenge Gawain and Gaheris; but Lamorak, the best warrior of the group and the only one who could have defeated Gawain in single combat, acted like a man of sense, or at least it seemed that way at the time, and pretended that he wished to end the feud. Lamorak claimed it had been Sir Balin, not Pellinore, who killed King Lot. Agravain and Gaheris tried to give him the lie. There had been too many witnesses who testified after Terrabil that Pellinore struck the blow. But in the confusion of battle, and with Lot, Balin, and now Pellinore all three dead and most of the witnesses either dead, scattered, or no longer quite so confident of what they had glimpsed and overheard in the press, who was to say for sure any longer? Queen Morgawse at least, poor lady, believed Lamorak. So did Gareth Beaumains. Gawain did not believe him, but accepted his claim as an honest opinion and agreed to bury the past. As for Pellinore’s last known son, Percival the Pure, he showed himself more interested in baiting me and otherwise maintaining his high virtue than in the rights and wrongs of mundane family matters, and pardoned the sons of Lot out of hand.

      Then Lamorak became the lover of Queen Morgawse, and one dark night in her chamber he struck off her head. Maybe he had planned it all along, or maybe they had some kind of lovers’ quarrel. Possibly Morgawse had learned something else about her husband’s death, or Lamorak something else about his father’s. Maybe it was some foolish jest that turned into a grisly accident. Whatever happened, Lamorak did not return to court at once to report it, but disappeared in the other direction, leaving his confused dwarf to discover the mayhem and gallop back to Camelot.

      Gawain and his brothers, except Gareth, set out in pursuit, but saw nothing of Lamorak until he surfaced again at a tournament in Surluse, in borrowed armor and shield, trying to fight anonymously and bearing away the prize as calmly as if he had not left his paramour headless in her bed. Lot’s sons were able to corner Lamorak alone somewhere in the woods after the tournament.

      There was talk afterwards that all four brothers must have fallen on Lamorak at once, that he could have defeated Agravain, Gaheris, and Mordred together, or Gawain alone, even when Gawain was in his full midday strength and filled with rage for the death of his mother. No one else was present except two squires Lamorak had picked up at Surluse, full of fresh hero-worship for the hero of the tournament, not well acquainted with what the battle was about, and therefore not overly reliable witnesses. They claimed that one or more of the attackers had killed Lamorak’s horse and then, after a battle of more than three hours, another one had cut Lamorak down from behind. The Surluse lads knew Gawain’s distinctive shield, gold pentangle on gules, but the shields of the other three are pretty much alike, lions and bends in various tinctures, so it remained unsure which was the backstabber, not that it much mattered. Gareth Beaumains disowned all his brothers for the deed.

      Beaumains and the others who say Lamorak could not have been guilty of the death of Queen Morgawse, that something else must have happened to her, have nothing to go on but Lamorak’s reputation until then. And Lamorak’s reputation, like Lancelot’s, was built mainly on the might of his arm, the general opinion being that any man who can strike down ninety-nine out of a hundred other men in battle or tourney must therefore of necessity be a model of honor in every other respect as well. My own opinion was that if it had been Percival, there would have been some reason to inquire more deeply into what had happened in Dame Morgawse’s bedchamber; but since it was Lamorak, Gawain and his brothers could hardly be blamed for interpreting the matter as they did.

      Lancelot, though claiming to believe Lamorak innocent, accepted the reasonableness of Gawain’s situation and stepped in to help Arthur enforce a kind of truce between Lot’s sons and Pellinore’s remaining kindred. Knights with no other interest in the affair than professed concern for honor and justice had a good enough excuse to refrain from attacking Gawain and his brothers by saying that they were sparing the King’s nephews for Arthur’s sake. Percival held gently aloof from the business and at length went away to achieve the Holy Grail and die with Galahad. Gareth Beaumains held haughtily aloof. Dornar managed to get himself killed in a joust that had nothing to do with the old feud, leaving only Aglovale and Tor alive of all Pellinore’s known offspring. They did not seem interested in digging up the bones of the old feud with anything but their tongues, from time to time, and neither of them had been at the Queen’s dinner. Tor was not even at court, having wintered in his own castle.

      Of course, the fruit could have been poisoned by someone else besides those at the dinner, and Pellinore had left nephews and nieces, and maybe a few more bastard sons and daughters not yet identified. Brandiles, Gawain’s wife’s brother, was one of Pellinore’s nephews, being the son of Pellinore’s brother Alain of Escavalon, and Brandiles had been at the fatal dinner.

      Nevertheless, the feud between Lot’s family and Pellinore’s had not led to any new known bloodshed since Lamorak’s death. King Bagdemagus’ death at Gawain’s hands during the Grail Quest was comparatively fresh. It had not led to any outward demands for justice. Like Astamore, all of Bagdemagus’ other surviving daughters, nephews, and cousins claimed to accept it as a simple misfortune of friendly combat. But the honesty of a killing does not always keep kinsfolk from seeking justice or revenge, whichever you call it. Indeed, the more fair-minded we become about refusing to put a man through process of law for killing another in honest accident, the more we seem to force any revenge-seeking relative to work in secret. I liked young Astamore and did not find it pleasant to think of him as a poisoner; but the fact that a father like Bagdemagus could produce a son like Meliagrant showed there was treachery somewhere in the bloodline. Maybe it came from Bagdemagus’ parents, had lain fallow in their children, as sometimes happens, and could surface again in their other grandchildren as it had in Meliagrant. Meliagrant had seemed a good young knight, too, at first.

      Bagdemagus was not the only man Gawain had had the misfortune to kill on the bloody Quest for the Grail. There was also Ywain the Adventurous, the namesake and bastard half-brother of Ywain of the Lion. Both Ywains were the sons of King Uriens and cousins-german to Gawain himself. If it had been Ywain of the Lion, Morgan’s son, that Gawain had killed, then Le Fay might have had reason to turn her love for her nephew into hate. But Queen Morgan had no reason that anyone knew to love her husband’s bastard; and both Ywain of the Lion and old King Uriens had forgiven Gawain, more readily than Gawain forgave himself, for the death of Ywain the Adventurous. So had The Adventurous forgiven his killer, too, before dying of his wounds.

      In the matter of Ywain’s death, we had the testimony of Ector de Maris, Lancelot’s half-brother, to second Gawain’s own account. They had been traveling together for a time. Ector de Maris had no apparent reason to gild any tale to Gawain’s advantage. Therefore, when Ector’s recital was softer toward Gawain than Gawain’s own, it was probably the truth.

      Gawain the Golden-Tongued, on the other hand, with his cultivated custom of speaking ill of nobody, might be capable of gilding a tale to the advantage of Ector de Maris or any other rival. And it was at about this point I began to suspect my own head was going unclear with wild surmise and lack of sleep. There were too many possibilities, too many possible traitors—and not enough, if you started with the premise that all of us, in theory, should be too honorable to attack a comrade with poison.

      Revenge had to be the key. But revenge of whom? I kept the keys for the King, I wore my own key on my shield… why couldn’t I find the key to Patrise’s death?

      Towards dawn, when I woke out of a doze in which I had been mixing up King Pellinore with his brother Pellam, the Maimed Fisher-King of Carbonek, I decided I had thought too much for the time being, and had better take a few hours of real sleep. As I straightened my stiff knees, I glimpsed a similar movement on the other side of the chapel.

      Mordred had left the chapel early in the evening, shortly after his brothers Agravain and Gaheris. He must have slipped back in when I was dozing; it had been some time after midnight that I noticed him again, deep in the shadows on the far left, across from me. Now he rose and followed me out, joining me in the corridor.

      “A pleasant game, is it not?” he murmured. “Not that it can save the Queen, of course. Mador will hardly withdraw his accusation on the strength of my surmises, or even yours. Still, it’s a pleasant game.”

      Like Lore of Carlisle in the banquet chamber, Mordred