Arthurian Legend-"Betrayal"

For the sake of condensing things, I'll be posting/archiving my Arthurian Legend fics over here from now on. We'll start off with this little piece, written at the insistence of mhari and assimbya. Maybe the story we know about the end of Camelot isn't quite accurate...


Betrayal

Betrayal was one thing Mordred was very used to. It came from anyone and everyone, it happened all the time, and the more you trusted, the more inevitable it was. Ergo, Mordred made a point of expecting nothing but the inevitable betrayal.

He hardly remembered how it had all happened. All he knew when he woke up the next morning was that they were al dead, and everyone was blaming him. So he ran. He ran blindly, not knowing where he was going. He thought to go the Gawain, but Gawain was dead, and Agravaine, and Gareth, and Gaheris. Arthur was dead too, and everyone said he had done it. He didn’t remember, but he didn’t want to remember either. He knew he had wanted revenge on the Frenchman for what he’d done, but he didn’t remember anything about Arthur. And he ran.

He ran until he didn’t know where he was, and collapsed, and when he woke up everything was pain and herbs and bandages and Clarissant telling him to lie down and not try to get up. And for once, he did as he was told. Two weeks later he was lucid enough to figure out that he had been stabbed in the side and then had made it some ten miles away from the battlefield before he had collapsed for his sister to find him.

He didn’t wander far from the cottage, even after he was fully recovered. He would venture a ways into the woods to help gather the plants that Clar needed, and he would haul water and chop firewood and weed the garden, and he would play with the three remaining hedgehogs in the pen out back. He also slowly pieced together what happened.

Agravaine, Gaheris, and Gareth had all been killed, murdered, before the real battle had started. The Frenchman had come to fight, as had Arthur, and most of the other knights. It had all started with clear lines drawn, and then somewhere it was every man for himself. Arthur was dead, as was the Frenchman. Slowly, ever so slowly, Mordred found out about the others.

Gawain was dead, which Mordred had felt even if he hadn’t consciously known. Percival, sweet innocent Percy, had been badly though dead and dragged off the battlefield, which had saved his life. He and Heliabel were off somewhere, no one really knew what had become of them other than that they were alive. Lionel and Bors had fought as brothers, died as brothers, and been dumped into a single grave for lack of anything better to do with them. Kay too had died. Lucan, in a supreme bit of irony, had early on saved his brother’s life and lost his right hand doing it. Unfortunately, Mordred would never get to rib them about that: Lucan had been killed later in the battle. Bedivere had survived and had retired himself to the safety and seclusion of a monastery in Wales.

He didn’t know really how much time it took for him to learn all of these things, he just did. One day he was sitting by the small pond behind the cottage with one of the hedgehogs, the one he affectionately referred to as the “peedie whalp”* of the lot, when Clar came out of the cottage and threw a bundle at him.

“There’s your clothes and a weeks worth of food, plus some coin. Now won’t you pick up your sorry arse and go do something? I don’t care much what, as long as it’s not sitting around trying not to think.” She turned and went back inside.

Mordred stared after her. Her temples were starting to go a little grey, and he had suddenly realized how much she was looking like their mother. Could that much time really have passed? He turned to the water and looked at his reflection. Other than the scar above his left eye, it was the same face he’d always seen reflected. Curiosity piqued, he picked up the bundle.

Thirty years had passed since the battle which had been the end of Camelot. Thirty years since his brothers had died, and since he had killed Arthur, although he still could not remember that. Thirty years and he hadn’t changed at all, though everything around him had. He made his way out of the Orkney isles, through Scotland, and still kept going with no real purpose other than to not have to settle anywhere. One day, it hit him where he was going. He was going to Wales.

Even though it had been only thirty years, Camelot and her knights were already the stuff of legend. It wasn’t hard for a young man to find out the location of the monastery which was supposedly home to a former Knight of the Round Table. Mordred heard the story in the first tavern he entered, and ever one thereafter.

The monastery was easy to find. Mordred was used to forests, so even a strange one wasn’t difficult to navigate. It was a small building of stone, nestled into a clearing which reminded Mordred of the one in Orkney where Clar’s cottage sat.

The brother who opened the door was surprised when the young man there asked to see the one-handed man. He hesitated, knowing the fellow didn’t like to be disturbed and rarely took visitors, but there was some curious earnestness in the young man’s dark eyes. He led him through main part of the abbey, through the back door, and to the edge of the clearing where a small stone hut sat alone against the trees.

Once the monk had left, with a warning that there might be no answer, Mordred knocked on the door. There were footsteps inside, followed by the sound of a latch being undone. The door opened, and for a moment there was only shock and silence.

The man who opened the door looked tired, and hadn’t shaved in several days. However, had he not know that thirty years had gone by, Mordred would have sworn that it had been mere days since he’d seen Sir Bedivere Bedrydant. The Welshman’s green eyes glistened with the look of one who’d seen a ghost. “Dear God,” he whispered finally, and stepped back to let Mordred enter.

They settled by the fire with tankards of ale. “I have to say, I never saw you as the monastic type, what with your wine and women,” commented Mordred.

Bedivere laughed hesitantly. “I never saw it myself, but there’s something eminently peaceful about it. Course, the wine and women was Sir Bedivere’s pastime. Bedwyr the Hermit is just an irascible loner who may or may not have once been a great knight.”

“From the stories I’ve heard, you were one of the greatest, loyal to the noble king to the end. You could have taken Excalibur and rallied the remaining men, and they would have followed, but you honored the wishes of your king and let it all play out on it’s own. At least, that seems to be the favorite version of the story. I don’t suppose there’s any truth in it.” Mordred waited for Bedivere’s protestation, the bragging about his loyalty and honor. The Welshman merely stared into the fire, his face blank and unreadable. Mordred took another drink and continued. “I seem to be the villain of the tales, the bastard son who murdered his father. Funny thing, really, I don’t remember that day at all. I wish I could sometimes; it’s rather convenient to remember when you’ve killed a man.”

“You shouldn’t remember it,” said Bedivere quietly, still looking at the fire.

Mordred snorted. “My dear Bedivere, I know you like to play the protector, but I’m a grown boy. I can face the consequences of my actions.”

“I know,” said the other man gravely. “But you shouldn’t have to face the consequences of another’s actions.”

“You sound like Pelinore, talking in riddles.”

“You didn’t kill your father.”

Mordred froze. All his life he’d been the bastard, the blemish on his father’s shining name, and the prophecies had always said that he would be his father’s doom. He did not remember murdering his father, but he had assumed and accepted that it must be true. But the grave tone in his old friend’s voice, the glimmer in his eyes told Mordred that he was serious.

“Bedwyr-”

“Do you remember anything? Anything that happened?”

“No.” Mordred too had grown serious, and a thought was beginning to claw at the back of his mind, a thought he didn’t want there. “I remember the battle beginning, after that it’s just waking up, and finding out he was dead, and running ‘til a stab in my side had bled too much for me to go further.”

“You didn’t kill him, despite what everyone says,” said Bedivere in an almost inaudible voice. “I did.”

The wooden tankard dropped from Mordred’s hand, and still the other man didn’t turn.

“We all knew Camelot was a sham, and yet there we all were, fighting for a cause that had been lost since before it had been founded. We all wanted to just leave, but we couldn’t appear as cowards and simply refuse to fight for our king. So we all fought. Bors and Lionel died, Percy almost died, and then when Lucan lost his hand covering me on my left…someone had to do something. When I found him, he was fighting with you, and when he got you in the side and you went down, and it was too perfect. Ten minutes later I got back to my men to find that Lucan was dead, and then Kay rode up bringing the news that Arthur had been cut down by the traitor Mordred. I replied that I prayed the traitor would never pass a day without guilt for what he’d done. He never has, and it seems he never will.”

Thirty years had passed, and thirty more years did pass, and thirty after that and so on, until three hundred years had passed, and even then time went on. Many things changed in the world, but there were a few that stayed the same.

The man who came into the store was perhaps in his twenties, with dark hair, dark clothes, and dark eyes that unnerved anyone who they lighted on. He came in often, and the clerks had decided he must have been using Arthurian legend for some extensive treatise, as he bought almost ever book, fiction and non, concerning that topic.

One day one clerk asked him about why he bought some many books of that nature. “To see if the story changes,” he said. “Some one is bound to get it right sometime.” When the clerk asked what he meant, he only gave her the enigmatic answer, “If a one-handed man comes in and buys a book about King Arthur, ask him. He’ll tell you how the story really goes.”

Betrayal was one thing Mordred was very used to.


*from the Orkney dialect: “little devil”