“The world knows your tongue, Sir Kay,” said Astamore, letting his ring alone for a moment. “And the world knows your insults are meaningless, since you can speak in nothing else. Sir Gawain killed King Bagdemagus in misfortune, not in treachery.”
Pinel rubbed his chubby fingers together, as if limbering them for a lively hour with his harp. “But we don’t know that. We have only Sir Gawain’s word for what happened.”
Astamore turned his stare from me to Pinel. “And the testimony of both their squires, and that of the monks who tended my uncle in his last moments and buried him in their abbey. King Bagdemagus of Gorre was a generous knight. He did not blame Lancelot for killing his son Sir Meliagrant in fair combat, and his soul can hardly blame Sir Gawain for the misfortune of killing him in a joust of friendship.”
Pinel subsided, muttering, “We don’t even know the fruit was meant for Sir Gawain.” In contradiction to my comment earlier.
“We know the fruit was meant for Gawain,” I said, “especially at this season of the year. We don’t know the poison was meant for him. But if it was meant for someone else, the poisoner apparently wouldn’t have minded getting Gawain as well.”
Astamore started twisting his ring again. “An enemy of Sir Arthur. Some enemy of the entire Round Table.”
“No—no enemy of the Round Table,” Pinel broke in. “Who knew that anyone else but Gawain would have eaten the fruit so quickly?”
Speculating on all sides of any question at once—except a theological one—was a custom of Pinel’s. As I had told him to his face, his gadfly arguing was probably the reason King Pellam sent him away from Carbonek. They are said to like singleness of purpose there.
“The question is, who would not be likely to eat it.” I glanced at the dead bitch lying between the tables. “The bowl was heaped. No doubt enough for every man of us to have his choice.”
Astamore looked at the bowl in the fireplace. “We don’t know that every piece was poisoned,” he said carefully.
I thought of the strange colors the rest of the fruit had given the flames for a moment or two. Astamore played with his ring. Pinel rubbed at the short, honey-colored beard he wore to help hide his smallpox scars.
“Maybe they had simply gone bad?” Pinel said at last.
“An adder bit the tree when it was in bloom?” I said. “Or maybe someone pissed into the earth where the fruit was stored? God’s Blood, Pinel, go convince Mador de la Porte the fruit had simply gone bad and no one was to blame. I’m going to see if the corpse bleeds at my approach.”
Knights who were not even conceived when we fought the rebel kings at Bedegraine and Terrabil have won their shares of glory and sired a new brood of men, and in all those years of my seneschalling, no one has doubled over because of rotten meat or badly-stored food served at Arthur’s table. A rotten apple that a man could eat half down without noticing anything wrong until it suddenly burst his guts within a few moments? But first Dame Lore and now Pinel of Carbonek suddenly saw fit to insinuate that the fault was in the storing of the apples. God’s Wounds, if they were going to accuse me now, it might at least be of deadly malice, not of incompetence!
Once out of the death chamber, I found Gouvernail and told him to see to having the dog’s body burned and the rest of the room cleared and cleaned. New rushes for the floor, and burn the old rushes and all the left-over food along with the bitch.
“The common folk will think it a great waste,” said Gouvernail. “Especially in this thin season of the year.”
“Give them the scraps, and then when they find out about Sir Patrise, if they don’t know it already, the first urchin who gets stomach cramps from wolfing down his food too fast is going to cry poison. No. Burn it all, and scour the dishes with sand.”
He nodded and went about his work. Knowing my cooks and scullions, I doubted the remains of our dinner would go to waste. That everyone except Patrise was still alive proved nothing but the fruit had been poisoned, and that was already burned. Everything else would probably find its way, gingerly at first but with increasing greed, into greasy paunches in the kitchen when my back was turned. It did not matter, so long as there was no danger of further scandal because of a few coincidental pains in some commoner’s belly. The food would be reported burned, and Artus would be praised for taking care to safeguard his people from all possible danger.
* * * *
I decided to put off my visit to the chapel awhile longer. It seemed more important to beg a private audience with the Queen.
She was closeted alone with Arthur, but I insisted that Dame Elyzabel let me through the antechamber to pound on the door. It has its uses, being the King’s foster-brother.
Maybe they were just as glad of a third person. The remains of a quarrel lay heavy in the air. Arthur was poking up the logs in the fireplace. I went and knelt before the Queen’s chair.
Her voice was low. “You do not believe me guilty, also, Sir Kay?”
“Madame, I hold you the world’s Queen of virtue.”
She leaned forward, still twisting a sodden cloth in her left hand, and put her right hand on my shoulder. Command me, madame, I thought. Give me the word, and I’ll cleave Mador’s lying tongue into his breastbone, skull, helmet, and all. Let me save you again as I saved you on Humber bank, before any of us had heard of your French cock-a-dandy.
“Kay,” she said, “find me Sir Lancelot.”
“Madame,” I said, “the fruit may have been tainted somehow in storage. A viper…”
“Find us that viper, then!” said the King.
I nodded, kissed the Queen’s hand, and turned to go. Artus joined me at the door. “What ails her, Kay, that she can never keep Lancelot at her side?”
“What ails the rest of us?” I said. “You know him, Artus. Fickle as quicksilver. When has our Lancelot ever chosen to stay at court waiting to be needed when he could sneak away and seek a little more glory on his own? What makes you think it was the Queen’s fault he left us this time?”
“Not even his kinsmen know where he is. She’s already asked them.”
“That’s nothing new. Most of the time Lancelot himself doesn’t know where he is.”
“Kex,” said Arthur, “Mador will not believe it was tainted by mishap unless he sees an apple drawn from the earth with a viper still clinging to it by the fangs.”
“You have other knights besides Lancelot.”
“And most of those who could have hoped to defeat Mador de la Porte were with you at the Queen’s dinner.” He shook his head and sighed. “If we still had Merlin among us…”
More than thirty years, and Artus still had not figured out that we were probably better off without the old troublemaker. “Merlin would have given us riddles, not answers. The old gaffer cared more about appearing mystical and mysterious than about deigning to state things clearly.” He had also made a few of his cleverly obscure prophecies that could be interpreted as slandering the Queen; and, since for all his supposed foresight he used to have a habit of turning up a day or so too late to save a person’s life, I was not sure he would have bestirred his white beard to save Her Grace anyway. “Have you sent out pursuivants to look for Lancelot?” I asked.
Artus shook his head. “See to it, Kex.… But Mador thinks his cause is right. He will fight like a mad lion.”
“Stall the combat as long as you can. Give her every extra day possible.”
“I will do everything in my power. All that the law allows.”
“You’ve twisted the law before. For the love of Ihesu, Artus, you won’t find another queen like Dame Guenevere. That witch