declaiming, in a voice that he probably hoped would reach the King himself but which in fact hardly carried above the clamor of his own kitchen, that no stew or soup of his seasoning had ever so much as given anyone wind-pains. What other mischief was going on I did not have the chance to see, since most of the noise and confusion stilled at my entrance.
I rescued Tilda’s kittens, ordered sound thrashings for her tormentors and those of old Rozennik, and told the entire kitchen staff that if the court went supperless that evening, so would they.
“Nay, then, sir,” said Chloda, who interprets the fact that she became chief cook a few days before I was made seneschal as grounds for questioning my judgment from time to time, “I doubt they’ll be in overmuch appetite for supper tonight, nor for livery neither.”
“Whether anyone has appetite for it or not, I want supper on the tables at the usual time, or you’ll go hungry tomorrow as well, if I have to brank every one of you myself. Now, what cellar did the fruit come from?”
Chloda folded her arms across her scrawny chest. “Nay, then, how would I know? I told Flaptongue to fetch it, or send folk to do it for him.”
“Flaptongue,” I said; and Tychus Flaptongue, who has been with us almost as long as Chloda and would probably be jealous if her were less afraid of responsibility, replied that he had sent Rozennik and helpers of her choosing to whatever cellar she liked.
The fruit pits were nearly emptied by this time of year, and it turned out that Rozennik and her helpers, Nat Torntunic and Wilkin, had visited several in order to find what the old woman considered a suitable bagful for Her Grace to choose from. Fortunately, they thought they would at least remember which cellars, if not which exact pits, they had visited. Leaving instructions for Clarance to follow us with Coupnez, we started for the storage cellars.
In the end, we visited all of them, since we found traces of digging in more pits than Rozennik and her scullions remembered. Wherever any ground seemed to have been recently turned, we dug in search of adders or their traces. We found none, but I took an apple or pear from each place we dug, except two pits that seemed completely emptied.
Clarance, pulling Coupnez along, did not find us until we were more than halfway finished with the task. The delay had been occasioned by Clarance’s trouble in locating the younger page. Although it was not the usual kind of work for noble-born pages, I set Clarance digging in my place with the scullions and watching for adder-traces, while I questioned Coupnez.
It was hard work—he seemed to think I was accusing him of poisoning the fruit, and I had to cuff him a couple of times and threaten him with being locked up alone overnight before I could get anything more than tearful and half-incoherent protests of innocence and pleas not to make him eat any fruit. What I finally learned, if it could be called learning, was that Coupnez had answered the Queen’s bell in her own antechamber, taken the bowl of apples and pears ready-arranged from her, and brought it at once to the small banquet chamber, where he had left it on a sideboard; and the chamber had already been full of servants setting things up.
Knowing Coupnez, I doubted he had gone straight from the Queen’s apartment to the banqueting chamber without stopping once or twice on the way to gawk at something or put his burden down and run or doze for a few moments. That, however, was his tale, and for once he kept to it. I suspected he was more afraid, this time, of being thought to have had anything to do with a knight’s death than of being punished for lying; but you can hardly rack a nobly-born infant, or even threaten him with more than a light whip, so in the end I had to accept his story and let him go without learning where or when he had loitered during his errand.
Having spent the afternoon in an unsuccessful quest for poisonous serpents, I left orders that all rats and mice should be left in their traps and brought to me alive early in the morning, instead of being killed at once. I locked the bag of fruit in my room and then, having already laid myself open to criticism from courtly tongues that would call it the first duty of a true knight to offer his last respects to a comrade’s corpse, I went to sup before visiting Sir Patrise in the chapel.
CHAPTER 6
Of the Blood Feuds of the Sons of Lot
“Wit thou well, sir knight, said they, we fear not to tell thee our names, for my name is Sir Agravaine, and my name is Gaheris, brethren unto the good knight Sir Gawaine, and we be nephews unto King Arthur. Well, said Sir Tristram, for King Arthur’s sake I shall let you pass as at this time. But it is shame, said Sir Tristram, that Sir Gawaine and ye be come of so great a blood that ye four brethren are so named as ye be, for ye be called the greatest destroyers and murderers of good knights that be now in this realm; for it is but as I heard say that Sir Gawaine and ye slew among you a better knight than ever ye were, that was the noble knight Sir Lamorak de Galis.”
—Malory X, 55
Mordred met me on the way to chapel. “We are gathering together after the burial,” he said, cleaning his fingernails with the tip of his knife as we walked. “All those of us who, having been guests of the Queen, share in some degree the suspicion that has fallen on her fair, silvering head.”
“I’ve told you before, keep your evil-meaning tongue off Her Grace.”
“Ah, yes. I sometimes forget. We all love Guenevere, but some of us more than others, eh? Mador de la Porte is to be excluded from our meeting, of course.”
“Whose inspiration was this meeting?”
“Brother Gawain’s, naturally. Since all of us are prevented from defending the Queen, both because we are all under suspicion with her and because a few evil-minded ones among us suspect her ourselves, Gawain has had the incredibly novel idea that we should vow ourselves to another quest for our missing Lancelot. Who, sharing no kind of sympathy at all with Her Grace, could not possibly fall under suspicion of sharing any sort of plot whatsoever with her.”
Gawain’s idea. As usual, one or other of the great ones had taken the credit before me. “At least this won’t be the usual year-and-a-day quest, not counting the time spent coming back,” I said.
“I see no reason why it shouldn’t. A year and a day have never sufficed before to locate the noble Du Lac. Of course, if he is not found and brought back within… I reckon fifty-five days at the most that our King may claim custom and postponement… even Lancelot will be able to do little except clear the name of a small heap of ashes.”
“God damn you to Hell, Mordred!”
“Very likely.” It was his standard response whenever I, or anyone else, damned him. “Indeed, I have had it on the authority of a saint that my damnation is a fact already recorded wherever they record such matters. So you see, when I speak of Her Grace as a small heap of ashes, I have good reason to sympathize with that same small heap of ashes.” He turned his head to look at me, and for a moment his voice sounded sincere beneath the glaze of witticism. “I would prefer that the Queen not burn. Therefore I will join the new quest with a ready heart. But suppose whoever finds Lancelot is the true poisoner? Will he tell the great hero of the Queen’s danger, or will he find means to ensure that Lancelot stays away?”
“We’ll go in pairs.”
“And thus cover less country, which we would have little enough time to cover singly. Will you join the quest this time, Seneschal?”
“Even if it means traveling with you.” If we went in pairs, it would probably come to that in any case. Mordred and I could get along more companionably with each other, most of the time, than most other men could get along with either of us.
He
