a champion who could rely on his own arm in any cause, rather than leaving it to Heaven completely.
Arthur got to his feet and looked around again. “Thank God, we have other knights as good as those here present. Call for your judgment, Sir Mador, but first remember that our Queen may not prove entirely friendless.”
“I will prove my charge against Lancelot himself—if he is still in this world,” said Mador.
The Queen gasped.
“Name the day, my lord King,” Mador went on, with a glance at the Queen. Watching his face, I considered what would happen if Mador stopped living before that day came, and my hand twitched on my dagger’s hilt.
“The meadow beside Westminster,” said the King at last. “This day fifteen days hence.”
“It is not long enough!” exclaimed Dame Lore, behind me.
“It is too long,” said Mador. “But have the stake ready and the fire burning.”
“The stake will be ready,” said Arthur, his voice hard, “and the Queen will have her judgment. All things will be done lawfully.”
Mador drove his knife into the table. “I am answered, Sire.” If no knight appeared to fight for her a fortnight from now, the Queen could still plead innocent and claim another forty days to find a champion. “But you cannot delay forever in the sight of God and man!” Mador went on. “The traitress will burn before Midsummer.”
“See you do not attempt to take your former seat among us, Mador de la Porte,” said the King. Then he took the Queen from her cousin and slowly led her away, supporting her against his own shoulder.
Dame Elyzabel looked around at us once more. “God!” she said scornfully, “for a sword and a suit of armor!” Then she followed Dame Guenevere. In the language of courtliness, we were free to go where we would.
CHAPTER 4
Of Morgan’s Duplicity and Kay’s Jealousy
“And therewithal they set the queen in a barge into Humber; but always Queen Guenever praised Sir Kay for his deeds, and said, What lady that ye love, and she love you not again she were greatly to blame; and among ladies, said the queen, I shall bear your noble fame, for ye spake a great word, and fulfilled it worshipfully.”
—Malory IV, 3
Mordred rose, flipped a scrap of meat from his trencher to the hounds, and left the room. Agravain shrugged and followed him out, but Gaheris lingered. Gouvernail, who had returned behind the Queen, cleared the remaining platters off the table where Sir Patrise lay. Lionel and Mador lifted the board from the trestles, carrying the body out as if on a bier. Most of the others followed to watch Patrise laid out decently in chapel. Gaheris joined them, keeping toward the back. In a few moments I was left alone with Lore of Carlisle.
“Morgan le Fay.” I shook my head. “It was a beautiful thought, Dame Lore, but—”
“Not merely a thought. A certainty. Have you forgotten her poisoned cloak?”
“No, I haven’t forgotten the bloody cloak!” It had been years ago, shortly after Morgan’s second and permanent break with her husband and departure from Arthur’s court. She had sent the cloak to her brother as a pretended gift of reconciliation; but, on Dame Nimue’s advice, Arthur made the damsel-messenger who brought it try it on her own shoulders first. In an instant, the cloth had sucked around her small form and the lining glowed lividly, showing through the seams in the dark outer velvet like raw flesh in a new wound. A few moments of shrieks and writhing, and the girl collapsed, her body melting away like tallow. When it was over, and the cloth was cool enough to pull away, there were her feet, curled up like claws in the cracked leather slippers, and her head, hair singed and features screwed up with pain; there was nothing between but bones turned to charcoal. I hoped Morgan’s damsel had been in the plot with her mistress and not merely an innocent messenger, but the stench was not like the stink of Brumant’s death in the Siege Perilous or Corsabrin’s pagan soul going to Hell—it was plain, scorched human flesh.
“Morgan is as dead as her damsel by now, anyway,” I went on.
“You all assume she is dead because we’ve heard nothing of her for years,” replied dame Lore, “and therefore you say she was not responsible for this. I say that this proves she is not dead!”
“She loved her nephews. Why would she try to poison Gawain?”
“What is her love for Gawain compared with her hatred for Guenevere? She means to burn the Queen this time.”
Trying not to see the flames leaping up around Her Grace, I thought it over. Dame Lore could be right—Arthur’s half-sister might still be alive. But, if so, why had she been so quiet these last several years, since before the Grail Quest?
Dame Morgan’s first attempt on Arthur’s life had been a complicated scheme involving a counterfeit of Excalibur, sword and scabbard. When that plot went askew and Morgan’s own paramour of the moment was killed instead of the King, she had tried to murder her husband Uriens in his sleep with his own sword and, that attempt foiled by her son Ywain of the Lion, she left court for good and took up residence in various castles of her own, one of them a former gift of Arthur to her. She had gained knowledge of magic somewhere, whether in the nunnery where she was raised or from old Merlin or elsewhere—enough to establish herself as perhaps the most skillful necromancer alive in Britain, as well as the most treacherous. At one time, she had been heart and head of a whole sorority of enchantresses. Yes, this could be the latest of Morgan’s periodic attempts to destroy the Queen and court. But…
“She had to get the poison into the fruit,” I said. “I never heard of any magic strong enough to do that at a distance.”
“At what distance? She could be anywhere. Have you forgotten how she turned herself and all her attendants into rocks when she escaped from the King? And how else does poison come to be found in uncooked fruit unless by magic?”
“You poor, silly innocent, for all your silvering hairs,” I said. “Do you always look for the magical explanation first? Or do you simply assume that if it’s evil, it must be sorcery?”
“The poison was not on the skin of the fruit, Sir Seneschal! Her Grace arranged those apples and pears with her own hands, and did not wash her fingers again before sitting to eat.”
“Then Le Fay missed her chance, didn’t she? If the stuff had been on the skin of the fruit, it would have gotten onto the Queen’s fingers and then into her own mouth with her other food.” I threw that thought away from my mind as soon as it was spoken. “A long pin,” I went on, “dipped in poison, then inserted through the blossom end or maybe the stem end, slantwise into the meat.”
“You seem to understand the process very neatly, Sir Seneschal. Then I will find a way to poison apples without necromancy, too. Suppose they were buried in venomed earth last harvest? Suppose the venom had all the winter to penetrate each piece to the core?”
“Without tainting the peel?”
“Any surface taint would be cleaned off with the dirt when the fruit was dug up. The peel would be left harmful only to the tongue, not to the fingers. And the poison would remain within. You are in charge of seeing the fruit stored each harvest, are you not, Sir Kay?”
“Yes,
