MY STONE, IT IS MY FIXED NORTHERN STAR. EVEN when it shows me suffering and sorrow, it still eases me.
I can see Sir Mordred, Regent of England, standing on a dais, and in front of him are hundreds of knights, all wearing surcoats stitched with their shields. Dukes and earls and lords and knights. All the great men of the land.
Sir Mordred holds up a sheet of parchment. He waves it.
“My lords,” he says, and he clears his throat. “This letter comes from Sir Gawain.” Sir Mordred crosses himself. “King Arthur is dead!” he calls out in a loud voice. “Your king is dead.”
For a moment, there’s silence—the silence of disbelief—and then huge commotion in the hall.
“May God preserve his soul,” Sir Mordred calls out, but only the knights standing nearest to him can hear him. “He has been killed in battle by Sir Lancelot.”
The way thunder claps and heaven shakes, and the sound rolls round the sky’s rim: That’s how it is in the hall.
Sir Mordred waits, head bowed.
“He was my father,” he calls out, and his voice is level and somber. “I am his son.” He pauses. “His time came; his time has gone. For as long as he lived, he led us by serving us and served us by leading us. May God save his soul!”
Around Sir Mordred, men begin to call out.
“The king is dead! Long live the king!”
“Mordred!”
“Crown Mordred!”
“Vivat!”
“May Christ the Lord guide you!”
“Mordred the king!”
How can King Arthur be dead? If it were true, my seeing stone would have shown me. And how can they think Mordred would be a just king?
Now I can see Sir Mordred and Queen Guinevere at Winchester. Her silk dress is black, threaded with spears of silver.
This man who hates Sir Lancelot, her own husband’s scheming son: Guinevere can scarcely bear to look at him.
“I won’t mince my words,” Sir Mordred says. “For the good of this kingdom, you and I must be of one mind. One heart…and one body.”
The queen stiffens. She is very still.
“I desire you.…For the good of this kingdom, I will marry you.”
His father’s wife.
The queen raises her eyes and looks her stepson full in the face. “You are right,” she says. “Quite right! I lament the death of the king. I lament the cause of it.”
“You are wise,” says Sir Mordred. His voice is like a newly sharpened knife.
“If we are to marry,” the queen says, “I must go to London. I must buy samite. I must talk to my dressmakers. My jewelers. A hundred things.”
“And linen. Cornflower blue,” says Guinevere eagerly. “A new beginning!”
“Let us fix a day,” says Sir Mordred.
Now I understand!
Now I see why Queen Guinevere told Sir Mordred he was right.
She didn’t dare tell him otherwise. She wanted to win his trust, win time, escape…anywhere.
No. Not anywhere. The Tower of London. I recognize it.
Sir Mordred is standing outside the walls, and speaking to the captains of his tormenta, his ballistae and petraries and mangonels.
“I don’t care what you throw at them,” he yells. “Throw everything! Dead dogs, boulders, buckets of dung, sodden logs, river mud, rotten fish, scraps of metal, paving-stones. Flatten these walls!”
A knight stands in one of the towers, and Sir Mordred’s men howl at him. They’re a parliament of black dogs and mongrels and curs.
“Queen Guinevere says this,” the knight calls down. “She will kill herself. Rather than marry Sir Mordred, she will plunge a knife into her own heart.”
Sir Mordred’s dog-knights growl and bay and bark and howl.
Now I can see the old archbishop—the man who crowned King Arthur at Canterbury—with his golden staff and three priests.
“How dare you?” the archbishop demands. “How dare you pretend King Arthur is dead? You concocted that letter; you tricked all the knights. Today I have received a letter from the king.…” The archbishop reaches inside his cloak. “How dare you force yourself on your father’s wife?”
“You have angered God,” the old archbishop says. “You have shamed yourself. You have disgraced the whole order of knighthood.”
“Enough, I said!” Sir Mordred shouts.
“Raise this siege or I’ll curse you with book, bell, and candle.”
“Do your worst!” says Sir Mordred in a biting voice. “Whatever you do, I’ll defy you.”
“I’ll do what’s right,” the old archbishop replies. “You’re a traitor.”
“You…turbulent priest!” Sir Mordred snarls. “One more word and I’ll strike off your head.”
The archbishop gathers his cloak. He turns away.
“You old fool!” Sir Mordred calls after him. “The men of England are my men. They’re of one mind. With Arthur there was nothing but war. War on the heels of war. Argument! Anger! Now, there’s hope. I give them hope!”
“Traitor!” the archbishop says again.
Sir Mordred whirls round to face the high walls. He looks up and bawls, “Can you hear me? I’ll have Guinevere, by fair means or foul! When Arthur comes back, I’ll be waiting for him.”