Wicked Day Read Online Free PDF Page B

ordeal safely over, and himself home again.
    Then they had reached the door of the hall, and as the servants pushed it open, Mordred forgot the whispers, his own strangeness, everything except the splendid scene in front of him.
    When Morgause, suffering under Arthur's displeasure, had finally left Dunpeldyr for her other kingdom of Orkney, some stray glimmer in her magic glass must have warned her that her stay in the north would be a long one. She had managed to bring many of the treasures from Lot's southern capital. The king who reigned there now at Arthur's behest, Tydwal, must have found his stronghold stripped of most of its comforts. He was a stark lord, so cannot have cared overmuch. But Morgause, that lady of luxury, would have thought herself ill used had she been denied any of the appurtenances of royalty, and she had managed, with her spoils, to make herself a bower of comfort and colour to cushion her exile and enhance her once famous beauty. On all sides the stone walls of the hall were hung with brilliantly dyed cloths. The smooth flagstones of the floor were not, as might have been expected, strewn with rushes and heather, but had been made luxurious with islands of deerskin, brown and fawn and dappled. The heavy benches along the side walls were made of stone, but the chairs and stools standing on the platform at the hall's end were of fine wood carefully carved and painted, and bright with coloured cushions, while the doors were of strong oak, handsomely ornamented, and smelling of oil and wax.
    The fisherman's boy had no eyes for any of this. His gaze was fixed on the woman who sat in the great chair at the center of the platform.
    Morgause of Lothian and Orkney was still a very beautiful woman. Light from a slit window caught the glimmer of her hair, darkened from its young rose-gold to a rich copper. Her eyes, long-lidded, showed green as emerald, and her skin had the same smooth, creamy pallor as of old. The lovely hair was dressed with gold, and there were emeralds at her ears and at her throat. She wore a copper-coloured gown, and in her lap her slender white hands glinted with jewelled rings.
    Behind her her five women — the queen's ladies — looked, for all their elegant clothing, plain and elderly. Those who knew Morgause had no doubt that this was an appearance as carefully contrived as her own. Some score of people stood below the dais, about the hall. To the boy Mordred it seemed crowded, and fuller of eyes even than the outer courtyard. He looked for Gawain, or for the other princes, but could not see them. When he entered, pausing rather nervously just inside the doorway, the queen was sitting half turned away, talking with one of her counsellors, a smallish, stout greybeard who bent humbly to listen as she spoke.
    Then she saw Mordred. She straightened in her tall chair, and the long lids came down to conceal the sudden flash of interest in her eyes. Someone prodded the boy from behind, whispering: "Go on. Go up and then kneel."
    Mordred obeyed. He approached the queen, but when he would have knelt, a movement of one of her hands bade him stand still. He waited, very straight, and apparently self-contained, but making no attempt to conceal the wonder and admiration he felt at this, his first sight of royalty enthroned. He simply stood and stared. If the onlookers expected him to be abashed, or the queen to rebuke him for impertinence, they were disappointed. The silence that held the hall was one of avid interest, coupled with amusement.
    Queen and fisherman's boy, islanded by that silence, measured one another eye to eye.
    If Mordred had been half-a-dozen years older, men might more readily have understood the indulgence, even the apparent pleasure with which she regarded him. Morgause had made no secret of her predilection for handsome youths, a fancy which had been allowed a relatively free reign since the death of her husband. And indeed Mordred was personable enough, with his slender,