CHAPTER 15

The Opinions of the Duke de la Rowse on Sir Ironside, Sir Astamore, and Others as Possible Poisoners

“So he departed, and by fortune he came to a mountain, and there he found a goodly knight that bade him, Abide sir knight, and joust with me. What are ye? said Sir Gareth. My name is, said he, the Duke de la Rowse. Ah sir, ye are the same knight that I lodged once in your castle; and there I made promise unto your lady that I should yield me unto you. Ah, said the duke, art thou that proud knight that profferest to fight with my knights; therefore make thee ready, for I will have ado with you. So they let their horses run, and there Sir Gareth smote the duke down from his horse. But the duke lightly avoided his horse, and dressed his shield and drew his sword, and bade Sir Gareth alight and fight with him. So he did alight, and they did great battle together more than an hour, and either hurt other full sore. At the last Sir Gareth gat the duke to the earth, and would have slain him, and then he yield him to him. Then must ye go, said Sir Gareth, unto Sir Arthur my lord at the next feast, and say that I, Sir Gareth of Orkney, sent you unto him. It shall be done, said the duke, and I will do to you homage and fealty with an hundred knights with me; and all the days of my life to do you service where ye will command me.”

—Malory VII, 32

De la Rowse was a sensible man. He admired Gareth as a fighter—the better you can consider the man who defeats you, the more honorable it makes your own defeat—but he did not adulate him to idolatry, as Bellangere the Proud adulated his dead conqueror Lamorak de Galis. That, and the fact that nobody considered Gareth of the Clean Hands likely to have poisoned anybody’s food, enabled us to discuss matters much more reasonably at Rowse Castle than we had at Arlan. We also managed to put off discussion of the serious news from court until after supper, when we had moved to the fireside in the duke’s chamber, where Mordred, having found a suitable gnarl of wood, began carving another of his ugly coiled serpents. At least I preferred seeing him do that to seeing him make straw poppets and toss them into the flames.

“You were here in the neighborhood during Ironside’s career of infamy, Rowse,” I said, after explaining the situation at court. “Do you remember any hint, any quirk in his character, any special act of treachery, to suggest the giant’s son might be capable of using poison to fulfill his old vow?”

“I thought Ironside fulfilled it already, years ago,” said the Duke. “Didn’t he have a joust and some swordplay with both Lancelot and Gawain for form’s sake before he joined your Table?”

“Yes, he fought them, among others, at the tournament our King held at Dame Lyonors’ castle,” said Mordred. “But a joust in friendship hardly fulfills a vow of vengeance.”

De la Rowse shook his white head. “When Ironside was the Red Knight of the Red Lands, he vowed to take vengeance on all King Arthur’s knights for the sakes of Lancelot and Gawain until he met one or other of those two. And to hang all those he defeated in the meantime, as I recall. I don’t remember that he actually vowed to kill Lancelot and Gawain, but only to hang them when and if he defeated them. Well, he fought them, and he didn’t defeat them, but he would have done all he’d vowed simply by meeting them in the field and fighting ‘em.”

“It was Lancelot he was really after, whether his former leman knew it or not,” said Mordred. “She knew that ‘the greatest knight of Arthur’s court had killed her brother,’ but she did not know which of the two greatest knights that was. Gawain does not ride in disguise. He bears his own shield whenever he can, and he tells his name on demand. He also remembers and reports very diligently all whom he has fought. Ironside’s lady would have known it beyond doubt if her brother had been slain by Gawain. Since she was not sure, it must have been Lancelot, riding anonymously again, except to let it be known he was Arthur’s man, and afterwards forgetting one or two of his casual victims among the crowd of killed, maimed, and wounded.”

“What matters,” said the Duchess de la Rowse, “is not which really killed the brother of Sir Ironside’s lady, but that neither the lady nor her knight knew for sure. However, it’s all done with long ago. I cannot think that Sir Ironside would decide all at once, after so many years, that his old vow had never been fulfilled.”

“It’s not unusual for Lancelot to disappear from court without leaving word,” I said, “but it’s an uncomfortable coincidence that someone tried to poison Gawain so soon afterwards. Maybe Ironside’s gone back to the side of the Sesnes.”

The duke beckoned a servant to pour him more ale. “Even if Ironside did cast in with his father’s people again, or develop a bad conscience about keeping his vow, he’d attack Arthur’s right-hand man openly. The only reason for keeping a vow is honor. A man wouldn’t use dishonorable means to do it.”

“The vow itself included shameful death,” said Mordred. “Someone may yet discover our brave Lancelot hanging by his noble neck from a tree, like Ironside’s forty conquests at Castle Dangerous. And poison is almost as shameful a death as hanging.”

“Maybe the words of that vow left Ironside a way to wriggle out from under it honorably,” I said, “but the spirit of the thing obviously meant, ‘Kill them.’”

“The words of a vow are the spirit,” said De la Rowse. For him, no doubt they were. He had yielded to Gareth and shifted his allegiance to Arthur as genially as he would no doubt have shifted it again to any other lord whose knight happened to conquer him in fair fight.

“Maybe,” I persisted, “but there was something very strange about that vow of Ironside’s. He had made it to his light-o’-love, but he was keeping it at the castle of another lady.”

“Ah, you men!” said the duchess. “And you accuse us women of over-much romancing. Why do you all assume the Red Knight of the Red Lands was besieging Dame Lyonors to make her wed him?”

“As I recall, the Red Giant himself told Gareth so,” said Mordred.

“Maybe he said that, knowing it was not like to happen,” replied the duchess, “but the truth of it was that Sir Ironside only set up at a castle to fetch the champions to him there, and he knew they’d come soonest to rescue a besieged, unwed lady. He did not break his heart for Dame Lyonors afterwards, did he?”

“No, but neither did he ever come forward with this former love of his,” I said. “A man who would hang forty knights for love of a dame should have loved her enough to go back to her.”

The duchess remained unperturbed. “Perhaps the poor dame died. Or perhaps he would not reveal her to the clacking tongues at court. Or perhaps she would not come, but broke with him of herself when he went over to her enemies.”

“Or perhaps,” I added, “she was a convenient story to excuse his murders, and never existed at all.”

“Why, in that case,” said the duchess, “likely as not he never made a vow against Lancelot and Gawain, either.”

The duke settled back in his chair. Ironside was no longer his problem neighbor, and his sovereign’s court was far away from his own life. “No, no, my lads, you’re scenting down the wrong spoor. Ironside was never a bad fellow, when all’s said and done. No, not even when he was the Red Knight of the Red Lands besieging pretty Dame Lyonors. He didn’t hang those knights up alive, y’know. Used to strangle ‘em on the ground if they weren’t already dead of their wounds. And he let all their squires go.”

“Very generous of him,” I said. The executioner would probably slip up, ten days from now, throw a cord around Dame Guenevere’s white throat, and strangle her at the stake before lighting the pyre, to be merciful.

Mordred glanced up from his carving. “What do you think of… say… Sir La Cote Male Taile as a poisoner, your Grace?”

The Duke blinked, leaving it to his wife to ask, “Sir La Cote Male Taile? But what malice would he hold against Sir Gawain?”

Mordred held his handiwork up, turning it between forefinger and thumb to examine it in the firelight. “Interesting, how because brother Gawain loves apples and pears, all folk assume the poisoned fruit was meant for him and not for another of us.”

“Certain of Gawain’s brothers,” I explained, “managed to kill Sir La Cote Male Taile’s brother Dinadan in a grudge battle during the Grail Quest.”

“Dinadan. Yes, yes, we’d heard he was gone.” The duke was sufficiently saddened to motion for more ale.

“I think, though, that we had forgotten it,” said the duchess. “He’s a hard man to think of as dead and gone. So laughing and full of pleasant mockeries.”

In my mouth, Dinadan’s pleasant mockeries would have been called churlish sarcasm. But Dinadan had been as ready to laugh at himself as at anyone else, and never afraid to refuse a superfluous fight and be taunted for cowardice. “He had some sense,” I said. “Something besides long hair to keep his brains from rattling in his helmet.”

The duchess smiled. Being married to a man who had spent his life fighting for the sport of it at every opportunity, she could probably appreciate Dinadan’s good sense, though she had only met him the two or three times she and the duke came to court. “Sir Dinadan would hardly wish to be avenged with poison. He would return to haunt his avenger.”

“La Cote wouldn’t play the traitor anyway,” said De la Rowse. “He’d avenge his brother with lance and sword, the same way he avenged his father.”

“We were not all of us so enamored of Dinadan’s character,” said Mordred. “Nor has anyone been able to guess why La Cote Male Taile does not attempt to avenge his brother with honorable lance and sword, as he eventually avenged his father. True, he took a very great while avenging his father; but at that time he had to beg his knighthood first and then go in search of his father’s killers. His brother’s killers he has at hand, ready for him, and he is a knight already.”

“Maybe he doesn’t want to attack his fellows of the Table,” I said, and added, before it came out more plainly which of Gawain’s brothers had killed Dinadan, or before our host and hostess realized it to their embarrassment, “What about Bors de Ganis, agreeing to fight for the Queen after all her dinner guests had been, in effect, disqualified?”

“Can he not fight for her in the name of his kinsman Lancelot, rather than in his own?” said the duchess.

“He can, but it’s a very thin covering,” I replied.

The duke shrugged. “Only a guiltless man would be so willing to accept the appearance of guilt.”

“In other words, then,” I said, “Bors is letting us know he’s upright enough and blameless enough to stand an appearance of guilt which would destroy any of us lesser mortals.”

“Calm yourself, calm yourself, Seneschal,” murmured Mordred. “We know you would have offered yourself as her champion if you had thought of these things before Bors. And what do you think of Pinel of Carbonek or Astamore of Gorre, your Grace?” he added to De la Rowse, in a louder voice.

“Pinel and Astamore? Don’t believe I know ‘em.”

“Pinel,” I told the Duke, “is a loudvoice nephew of King Pellam of Listeneise. Hence, either a nephew or a bastard son of Pellinore of the Isles. Pellam raised him at Castle Carbonek, and he tagged along with Lancelot back to us after the adventures of the Sangreal, to Pellam’s gain and Arthur’s loss.”

“Pellam the Fisher King?” De la Rowse dismissed Pinel with a wave of his ale cup. “They don’t teach ‘em vengefulness and poison at the Castle of the Grail, lad. Who is this Astamore, now?”

“The Grail is no longer at Carbonek, by Lancelot’s report and Pinel’s,” said Mordred. “Bors de Ganis adds that it was translated into Heaven along with the soul of Galahad the Pure, to escape the sin and horror of the latter days to come. Astamore is the nephew of Bagdemagus of Gorre.”

The Duke and Duchess looked blank. “Gawain killed Sir Bagdemagus by mischance, during a joust for love on the Grail Quest,” I explained.

De la Rowse sighed and tsked.

“The land of Gorre lost a noble king,” said the duchess. “Who rules it now?”

“Officially, Uriens took it back,” I said. “He wanted to give it to his legitimate son Ywain of the Lion, but Ywain is too happy dividing his time between his own castle with Dame Laudine and the King’s court with cousin Gawain. So Bagdemagus’ daughter Dame Clarisin is acting as lady vice-regent.”

“Leaving Astamore in the cold, eh? Did Astamore have any claim to the vice-regency?

I shrugged. “No more than Dame Clarisin, but Astamore doesn’t seem particularly ambitious.”

“Can’t always tell. Sometimes it lies hid, they say. Well, your young Astamore may have complaints against King Uriens and his kinswoman, but I don’t see he has any against Gawain. Chances of combat.”

“Yet ambition may twist a man’s thoughts into strange patterns,” said the duchess, probably speaking from books of romance and philosophy. Then she glanced at me and blushed. Sometimes news is so scarce in these self-sufficient little castles that old stories stay fresh for a couple of generations. Especially in the minds of the older folk. (I remember how it was in my own father’s castle, before we knew we were raising a High King.) The Duchess had obviously just remembered the affair of the Sword in the Stone, and feared her philosophical platitude about ambition twisting men’s thoughts would be taken personally by present company.

Yes, when Artus came to me bringing the Sword, putting it into my hands, I probably did develop a sudden overpowering itch to sit on the throne of Britain. But, Sweet Ihesu! An untried boy, not yet fifteen years old, who brings his elder brother Merlin’s famous Proof of Kingship as if he is completely unaware that the whole gathering and furor all around him—the only reason for us being in London at all—is to see who can pull this same Sword out of its blasted anvil and rock, who seems to think of it as no more than another weapon to use in the tourneying… What man would not have thought he could make a better High King than this slowheaded squire? And when I remarked on the Sword’s importance, when he finally understood what he had done and as good as begged me, like a half-frightened child, to let him slip it back and not tell anyone… Well, maybe I should have let him do that, instead of trying to pretend I had been the one to draw the Sword; but that would have left us in the same turmoil we had already been in for years. Trying to take the credit myself for drawing the Sword had seemed the sensible thing to do. I was a young fool, too, at the time, not much older than Artus.

“Don’t worry, Dame,” I said. “You’ll have to work harder than that if you want to throw the Sword in the Stone back in my teeth.”

“Sir Kay was wise enough,” said Mordred, “to see the hollowness of the crown and settle for the office of seneschal instead.”

“Where I have most of the work and none of the glory.”

“Exactly. The King’s invisible but invaluable errand boy.” Mordred put down his knife and held up his right hand to show he spoke in friendly jest. His smirk half belied the gesture. “But we stray from our serious discussion,” he went on. “What would you think of, say, Gaheris of Orkney as a poisoner?”

“Nay, nay!” said the duke. “When you start accusing your own brothers, then it’s plain the serious talk is done with.”

“True.” Mordred rose and sheathed his knife. “And the sooner we’re abed, the earlier we can ride in the dawning. Here, Seneschal, I find I’ve carved this ring too large for my finger. It may fit yours.” He tossed his latest serpent ring into my lap.

* * * *

That night I dreamed someone had found Lancelot hanging from a yew tree, his body cut off at the waist and moss growing in his beard. I was fighting as the Queen’s champion against Bors de Ganis. He ran me through in the second or third charge. Artus was screaming at me for a traitor and throwing things at me… those strange things you glimpse in dreams and know to be foul, but cannot quite recognize. Then I was at the stake, standing in the middle of the faggots, tied face to face with Guenevere. Her face was horrible, expressionless, as if she had lost her mind and feeling… like the face of her false look-alike when Heaven struck her with paralysis and she took months to decay alive in her bed. Except that this was the true Guenevere. Her face was stiff, but her arms were passionate, pulling me closer to her, into her. I realized Bors’ splintered lance was still in my side, piercing the Queen. I tried to pull away, but she held me fast, skewering herself, murmuring that the sword was swifter than the flame. Her lips did not move as she spoke. Holding her tightly to me, I looked around and saw it was not Arthur throwing things at us, but Mordred. I turned back to kiss Guenevere, and her face was already burned away to the skull, only her eyes staring back at me, perfectly round, the gray irises surrounded top and bottom by rings of white beginning to melt down on the blackened cheekbones.

I awoke screaming. I had not awakened screaming at a nightmare for years. Mordred was in the next chamber and heard it.

“And will you not do something to prevent its coming true?” he asked next day. “As your foster-brother the King did something about his serpent nightmare the year of my birth?”

“I am doing something to prevent it. We’ve been working to prevent it for the last four days. And I don’t have any Merlin at my elbow to interpret every bad dream as a direct prophecy.”

“And yet you saw me instead of the King, standing beyond the fire to pelt you with unpleasant things. Well, you might ask Dame Nimue of the Lake to interpret it for you.”

“The reason you got into it,” I said, “is because I’ve had to look at your smirking face all day, every day for the last four days and because of that damn serpent ring you tossed me last night.”

He smiled. “Yes, I do suffer from a fascination with serpents, do I not? Well, I suppose it must have been a shower of my little serpents with which I was pelting you in your dream.”