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The isle had been blessed this year with a late-lingering summer, the kind which wreathed itself in loops and coils of humid haze along the banks of the lake by day but shivered against the thin, changing trees further inland at night. The woman, ever industrious, had taken advantage of the unexpected gift. They labored well into the twilight hours of the shortening days, preparing food and supplies for the coming dark, and that had taken some getting used to: watching them work while he ran his fingertips over the ridges of all his new scars, waiting, feeling useless.
Not that his war-calloused fingers claimed much aptitude for churning butter or braiding the thick, sturdy ropes which would secure the little fleet of boats against the winter storms. Still, there had always been something to do – before. There had always been something necessary for him to see to.
The foundations of this borrowed home did not lay directly against the curve of the shoreline, but over the course of many long years the sea had claimed everything which nestled here on the isle: the acrid-sweet scents of salt and sand were permanently imbedded into the wood, woven fine as thread into the single tapestry which hung on the far wall. He could hear the waves, the constant pulse of the isle's heartbeat softly undulating as it mixed with the swell and ebb of voices; airy sopranos and laughing altos only sporadically colored by the lower tenors of their menfolk.
The shutters had been left open today in defiance of the gathering cold, and when the thin sea breeze came to play with the curtains it sent the shadows softly undulating, too. He watched them sway with ghostly intimacy - there, but not - against the back of his scarred hands, intricate patterns of dusk-colored lace overlapping the honey tones of his sun-kissed skin. Soon the shadowy ribbons would bleed all other hues away, leaving behind only the pale constellations of old, faded scars.
He had never been one to put off a task that needed seeing to, especially now that all practical uses for his restless energy were few and far between. He knew that he should read the missive awaiting his attention on the side table before the light became too faint to see by. This was a magical place, and never more so than at night. Firelight breathed life into the shadows, and had nothing invested in expelling them. Still, the carefully folded letter remained where Bedievere had placed it a week before, the detritus of his last visit of the year.
The chess game they had left unfinished remained spread out on the sideboard, too, little figures trapped motionless in a battle they were destined never to conclude. He smiled faintly as his gaze flickered over their shadowed faces. Bedievere's clever mind was far more analytical than his own, and chess was a game which required patience in stores he himself had never possessed. But the tactful knight had always preferred surrender to the ignominy of defeating his king.
Lancelot had never been half so considerate, but then, he had also lacked Bedievere's patience. It had been fun to defeat him; he was always so used to being victorious.
Weariness suddenly bled out into agitation, and before he had entirely decided to he was on his feet and pacing restlessly around the room. The women of the isle knew their crafts well. He barely limped anymore, and wouldn't until the crippling chill found him. All that remained of Camlann now was the spidery network of scars, spreading out from his chest like veins of thin, faded silver.
And the letter, of course.
He did not look at it, but as he stalked irritably between pools of paling sunlight he could feel it waiting. It was the final loose end, the last thread on a life that was slipping away from him as quickly as the summer had.
This had all begun with remembrances of an entirely different kind. Bedievere had reached the shore in the dead of night about two months after Arthur had begun his convalescence, bringing with him news of Constantine and a handful of his lord's personal effects. He could still remember how the knight had smelled of the sea and of the cold, how he could feel his friend's weariness in the slight tremor of his hands when they briefly brushed fingertips. There had been a book among the things which Bedievere carefully handed to him, and there had been a handful of half-forgotten letters tucked inside the old, brittle pages.
Partly to amuse his tired friend, partly to ease the sudden wave of nostalgia which had startled him with its ferocity, he had passed what remained of the night reading the old missives aloud. They were love letters, mostly; anything official had been archived in the chancery, but these belonged only to him. Some of them were from Guinevere, who wrote beautifully and with a sweetly childish innocence. Some were from Lancelot, who wrote poorly and clumsily and just as endearingly. One was from Morgause, but he did not read it and Bedievere did not mention it.
He had gone to sleep that night with the memory of Guinevere's soft mouth and Lancelot's strong, steady hands, but had awoken to Bedievere's troubled frown. “My lord,” he had asked quietly while they stood together near the shore, watching the sun rise over the sea, “have you given any thought to what story you will tell? To how you want the world to remember what happened?”
He had not. But he had thought of little else since.
Merlin had taught him that memory was faulty, but that it was also surprisingly tenacious. It long outlasted the worth of remembering, and though often composed of more fiction than fact, it would always be infinitely more powerful than the truth. Bedievere's concerns were valid. But Merlin had never explained to him how fragile memory could be in the wake of civil war.
Oh, there would be a story. A rumor spun out into tale; a tale writ large as fable; a fable which would eventually become a mythology. But almost all who might have helped him compose that fiction were dead. They had left their words behind them, though: letters, documents, sometimes even books. There were still faint ink stains imbedded in the whorls of his fingerprints from when he had let his hands drift wonderingly over the pages of Kay's combat manuals, startled by the talent for detail he had never even realized his step-brother possessed. But written words were fragile, too.
He wondered if the trees of the isle could still hear their resonance when the ashes from his fire caught like spiders in their falling leaves.
He had spent the autumn agonizing over what to destroy and what to keep, pacing the rooms allotted to him until he knew the dip of every stone, the creak of every floorboard. Bedievere had returned when he could, always bringing more letters, more correspondences for him to sift listlessly through. The work was surprisingly draining. Nimue helped him occasionally when her duties permitted it, watching him all the while with her mentor's sharp grey eyes. Morgana had refused on principle. But when Bedievere had begun gathering his son's scattered writings to the salt-scented house, Arthur had sent everyone else away.
Mordred's letters were the most important. This was something he had to see to himself.
*
“Paranoid,” Bedievere had diagnosed when he'd first shown them to Arthur, running his thumb absently along one of the creases. But Arthur wasn't so sure.
When Mordred did write, it was in a strange, barely legible hand that shook and shivered across the thin membrane of the paper, like a left-handed person trying to compose with their right. He pressed down too hard with the nub of his quill, the way young children did. His writing scarred the parchment as opposed to marking it. Looking at it always made Arthur reach inside the partially open folds of his tunic to stroke the cluster of scar tissue beneath his rib cage, slightly unnerved in spite of himself just how much one scrawl resembled the other.
Perhaps it shouldn't have been so surprising, given that they shared the same author.
Mordred also edited himself constantly. In some cases, more words were scratched out than not. When he couldn't figure out how to express himself adequately, he was prone to drawing distracted doodles in the margins. “Neurotic,” Bedievere had suggested.
“Perfectionist,” Arthur had countered softly, and it hurt, to find something he could relate to so well.
He knew it was true, too, because Mordred was at his best and most lucid when he was writing letters to people who he knew would never have the chance to read them.
*
Arthur had pressed the pad of his thumb to the faded, familiar letters of his own hand, like catching a flash of his reflection in the warped glass of a window pane, before turning his attention to the small scrap of paper tucked into the missive's many folds. Bedievere, ever thorough to the end, had noted, without salutation or signature: These pages and the response which follows were found folded into the shape of lilies, which were then tucked amongst the late-flowering blossoms of the queen's garden at Camelot. They were found there by Lady Linnet, somewhat damaged by the elements and the recent passing of a rainstorm, and that good lady – recognizing the handwriting – kept them in a jewelry box until requested to relinquish them.
Lilies? A sharp spike of perplexed curiosity had cut through the cold a little, and he had traced his fingernail along one of the paper's many creases. The thought of Linnet had almost made him smile. She had been such a pretty little thing, so attentive to her beloved queen, sometimes smiling at him shyly when they passed in the halls – until she had met Gaheris, of course. After that, she had only smiled for him.
Until he died. Then she had ceased to smile at all.
His own shadowy half-smile had faded again as he'd thought about her face, grown wan and sickly-pale, her poor little frame shedding weight so fast that her delicate bones looked like they would pierce her taunt, hollow cheeks. She and the other tender hearts of his court had borne the grief he himself had not had the time to feel, and they had borne it hard. He had not even known that he had noticed before now; everything had been lost then behind the fierce, white-hot blur of angry adrenaline which had carried him through. But he had thought about it here in Avalon, and it hadn't been so hard to imagine her gathering shriveled, dirt-spattered lilies from her disgraced queen's neglected gardens.
Flowers for the dead.
He had supposed, with so many beautiful young corpses, it didn't necessarily matter whom they had been intended for.
Blinking away the image, he had squared his shoulders again, smoothing out the rumpled paper and focusing this time on the partially smeared words. They hadn't all been legible, not anymore, but Bedievere had supplied what help he could, and Arthur's own memory had filled in the rest. Arthur still wasn't sure who had written the Biblical annotations beside the unmarked quotes.
To his beloved friend and fellow knight of Camelot, Sir Mordred of Orkney, Sir Galahad of Septimania, soldier of Christ, sends greetings.
Unworthy sinner though I am, our blessed Lord has at last seen fit in His incomparable wisdom to grant me the purest and deepest desire of my inner-most soul. After years of searching, my fellow penitents and I have followed the blessed visions bestowed upon me by the all-mighty God, and have at last found the Holy Grail in its venerable resting place at Sarras. How might I describe such a thing now? It is beyond words; as is written, Eye hath not seen it, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man. (I Cor. ii 9) My humble and unworthy tongue lacks the skill for adequate praise. It is blasphemy to even try, and yet – for all my remaining days, which I confess to you now seem to me limited in number – I shall exert the last of my remaining strength in extolling its incomparable virtues. As it is said, I thank Thee, O Father, because Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes! (S. Matt. xi, 25, 26)
Would that you were here with me, old friend, so that you might share with me in this boundless joy. Finally and for the first time, I am at peace. My visions come upon me more frequently now, as the good Lord sees fit in His mercy, but the pain is a small sacrifice for such pure and limitless ecstasy. At last, I am able to fulfill my purpose. Oh, what joy it is to do the Lord’s work! For it is known, The merciful goodness of the Lord endureth from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear Him! (Ps. ciii. 17) His mercy is great; I can already feel His radiant presence like awful thunder in my head. My whole being trembles with the force of His awesome majesty. I know that it will not be much longer now.
I trust that you will remember the conversation we had at the time of my parting, dear friend, and that you shall no longer take counsel with the slanderous words of evil. For it is written that unto you that fear My name shall the Sun of Righteousness arise, and I pray that you will heed such counsel and come to fear and love His judgment as I, ever your loving brother, do myself. (Malachi vi. 2) Satan will try to tempt you with thoughts of revenge, and with hatred, and with the lust for useless, mortal treasures, but trust in God and he will keep you strong. Come, inherit, He says, the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world (S. Matt. xxv. 34); for this is the best and only lasting kingdom man may hope to inherit. As the friendship between our fathers has for so long remained unbreakable, let it be so between us, and I pray the Lord sees fit to make both everlasting for the benefit of us all. Stray not from His sight, so that I might embrace you once more as a brother and as a comrade on that glorious day of Judgment!
I fear I must leave you now, for I feel my strength fading even as I am once more filled with His radiant light. Grieve not for my passing, for I am content in the Lord’s work and am at last at peace.
I remain ever your faithful friend and servant in Christ.
Arthur had sighed heavily and leaned back in his chair. There had been nothing new to find there; nothing unexpected. Still, he knew the letter (sloppy at times, the Latin appropriately archaic but often spelled wrong and punctuated with too many grammar mistakes) had been written by Galahad himself, and staring at the bold script until the words blurred beneath his tired gaze had too readily conjured the young man's face. He had been everything Lancelot was not: handsome, pure, so brightly self-assured. All the shadows and doubts that had haunted his father's eyes like charcoal stains had not found an echo in him, and Arthur did not know whether that was because Galahad had been so guilelessly young, or whether it was just that he possessed a certain serenity that the Lord had never seen fit to grace his father with.
That's what the court had believed, anyway. Galahad was meant to be the Savior. No one had thought to wonder what exactly he was meant to be the savior of.
Except, perhaps, for his own son.
Steeling himself with a fortifying inhalation, like a deep sea diver about to take the plunge, Arthur had set aside the heavily-worn parchment and allowed his fingers to curl cautiously around the thinner, less brittle edges of Mordred's reply. He had half expected the words to cut him, draw blood the way the hidden thorns of roses so often did, but of course there had only been the faintly earthen smell of old paper, and of ink diluted with rain. There had been no salutation and no signature. There had been little use for either. Galahad had been dead long before his farewell note had ever found Mordred's hand.
Arthur's tired eyes had breached the threshold of the first word, smudged but still legible, and then his son's voice had swelled inside his head again, very much alive and filled with curdling bitterness:
You damned fool.
You claim that you're at peace now, but you said it twice. Once, I would have believed, but twice is obviously a lie. I know your hand; your fingers were shaking as you wrote that letter – as you wrote it, not as a scribe composed it for you, which would have been proper. You said you weren't afraid, but I still remember what your fear tastes like. I can lick it off my fingertips when I touch the thick smudges of your words. You were afraid.
What did they do to you in Sarras, my poor benighted martyr? Did they hear demonic voices in your tortured cries? Did they lock you away from the light you were so desperately seeking? Did they leave you alone with your afflictions, the victim of those terrible visions unto the very end? A prince of Corbenic, the son of Camelot's First Knight, dying like a dog in some monk's cellar – choking on his own sangreal. I don't know whether to laugh or to weep. A part of me wants to kill Percival for leaving you there. Why should he get to come home? Why did he take your letter and leave you behind?
They call you a virgin, and yet you were raped by those visions, again and again.
Well. I suppose it's good to know that you let something touch you.
You told me before you left that we were nothing – I was nothing – that there was nothing except Christ and your holy mission. You used the last of your strength to compose the footnote to your own hagiography, wanting the whole world to know about the glories of that stupid cup and your success as its most recent stalker. But who wins, my dear fool? So you gazed upon a chalice which, assuming it exists at all, would have existed anyway whether you had gazed upon it or not. Arthur's kingdom has been weakened in the pursuit of this worthless object; no one has gained anything from its discovery but madness and despair. All those years of purity, of austerity, of living like a monk and suffering in silence and taking no pleasure in anything at all, and for what? So you could die gazing upon something you saw every night in your dreams?
All those words of praise. I wonder who you were trying to convince.
And why did you write to me, of all people? You must have known that I would never be able to take anything you said seriously, least of all your empty and hypocritical words of caution. Nothing about that letter was genuinely intended for me, though, was it? It was a public document, written for public consumption, and as such was it consumed. It wasn't even sealed. Percival certainly read it – he wrote your death date and the location of your final resting place at the bottom, ostensibly for the benefit of your father, who was the next recipient of that damned missive. Doubtless the good Sir Lancelot was too busy to care. Fortunately for me that was before the trial, because he still managed to give it to Arthur. Now he's a traitor and not allowed near Arthur at all. And Arthur – so very generous of him, to finally deliver my mail – passed it on to me. All three had added their own notes by then. Expressions of sympathy, but not for me. No one seemed to care what I might think – least of all you.
It's hard, loving a legend. I wanted to burn your words, so that after the others had gone you would exist nowhere except within my memory, where I wouldn't have to share you with anyone, or anything, where I could shape you into anything I wanted you to be. But cremation is so final; nothing left to bury. Let nature have you, then, to bury you or blossom you however she sees fit. No scribes means no archival copies, and thus I deny you your Christian martyrdom, and give you a pagan’s sweet remembrance instead.
You should have known better than to leave it to me.
You always knew that you would become a saint, because you were raised on the prophecies of the angels. You built your entire life around that certainty, even while cautioning me against the folly of doing the same with mine. You beautiful hypocrite; why is it that we always think the beautiful must be true, and the ugly false? Don't you understand what I'm about to do? My prophecy – which you were always so derisive of – is about to eclipse yours, like the moon overshadowing the sun. You may have found the Grail, but they will never canonize anyone touched by the ashen fingerprints of the hell I am about to create.
You didn't even leave me anything to bury – nowhere to lay the flowers. So I'll leave our last silent conversation outside, a shadow of what we were; an echo of what we never were. You would have liked that, I think, penning your own eulogy. And now Nature herself can mourn you with her tears.
I have no more left to shed for you.
The last words had been difficult to decipher. Arthur had thought of the incessant drumming of rain – had been able to smell it, even, curled tightly into the shadow aromas of dirt and dust, grass and greenery -- but no; it was only darkness after all. He had found himself blinking up owlishly from the letter only to find that the last of the light had stolen quietly from the room, perhaps fleeing the ghosts which then pressed up close to the back of his chair and peered hollowly over his shoulder.
He had been foolish to think he could evade them, not when the accusation in his son's sea-grey eyes was trapped in every hush and whisper of the breaking surf outside.
He was familiar with that specter, at least. But there had been a phantom of a very different kind trapped inside the letter, and this one of a more troubling sort. Arthur had expected the angry sullenness, the bitterness, the sense of betrayal. What he had not expected was the memory of Mordred glimpsed briefly out the castle window, his arm draped casually around Galahad's shoulders. Lancelot's son had been smiling quietly at something Mordred was saying, a study in his habitual poise and grace. That was not unusual. What had been unusual was the casualness of Mordred's own posture, and the sound of his laughter, heard so rarely within the walls of the castle.
The memory had lasted only the space of a moment, short as a brief glimpse through a hallway window before they had all moved on. But it was that version of Mordred which his words had brought to life: a version who could be happy, and thus who could also be sad. A version who knew what it was like to make a friend, and who had experienced the pain of losing one beyond all hope of reclamation.
He had not known that the boys had been so close. That Galahad had chosen to address his final letter to Mordred had been a curiosity, but not one which Arthur had ever had leisure enough to dwell over. But should he really have been surprised? He had loved Lancelot fiercely almost since the day they had first met. Was it any wonder their children should have felt a similar affection?
Lancelot had chosen a different love over the one they shared, and Arthur had not only had to deal with the pain of that betrayal, he had had to watch it destroy them both. That Mordred had experienced a similar pain – a similar betrayal, a similar loss – had come as a surprise.
Empathy was dangerous in situations like this. It was certainly counter-productive to his purpose.
And so Arthur had risen from his chair, pausing a moment to stretch muscles stiff with inaction and the pangs of slow healing. The night-shadows had leapt back from the sudden flare of light, but they hadn't strayed far. He had been able to feel them crowding close while he stroked his fingers once down the faded pages. Mordred had been right; Galahad would never be a saint. But he would be a hero. Not an obsessive, lost young man plagued with illness and haunted by perplexing hallucinations, but a soldier of Christ: the affirmation of Camelot's ideal,if not its salvation. And Mordred would be the shadow of that hero, not its companion: the pagan scourge opposed to all the likes of Galahad had stood for.
In the end, he had cast both letters into the fire. He'd watched as the darkness of the ink bled its sickness and sorrow into the paper, black as death beneath the blood-red flames. The ash had drifted upward towards the smoke hole in the ceiling while he'd thought of the color Mordred's eyes had become while he'd watched the last of their light fading away.
*
As before, there was neither greeting nor signature. As before, the intended recipient of the letter had already been dead.
This time, according to Bedievere's precise and impressively neutral script, the pages of the missive had been found folded into the shape of butterflies and placed in the branches of the trees surrounding Camlann. Arthur had not understood the significance of the shape, but the information had resonated with him in an entirely different way. Lancelot had once amused Guinevere with the very same trick, and it was only as he skimmed Bedievere's words that Arthur had recalled a pair of solemn grey eyes, watching curiously from the open-aired hallway behind them.
If this strange paper-folding habit was a sign of a neurotic and unstable mind, it was one his son had learned from Camelot's best knight.
The letter itself had apparently been written for Morgause.
Mordred had pressed down so hard upon the paper while writing that his quill had torn through the surface in more than one place. The words flowed steadily, unhindered by the shackles of formal punctuation, but the writing did not; it clawed and shivered its way erratically across the parchment in slanted, uneven lines, the most illegible and skeleton-thin Arthur had ever seen it. Looking at it had put him in mind of a snake with its head cut off, jerking and mindless. Reading the words had felt like slashing open the letter's raised, aching veins and watching the darkness spill out.
I used to think after you died that I would be free, that I wouldn't have to do this anymore. Somehow I had become one of those self-assured idiots who believed that this was somehow all about you, that you would actually orchestrate the downfall of your own family in a fit of jealous pique, that you would hold him accountable for the sins of his father when clearly he was always just as much a victim of them as you w no that's not right, is it? Neither of you were victims. Only survivors. Maybe that's why I can still hear the pounding of the surf in my head whenever I but that's part of it too, isn't it? Why I am still here watching the crows gather in anticipation of what's to come. It's because of your death that I finally understand. We all loved and loathed you in turns, but you were the center. After father died Lot I mean, I only call him that because the playmates of my youth all worshiped him as a deity, it's so easy to do that with someone who is dead, something was bound to rub off. When he died everyone was sad of course or at least pretended to be, I never knew how you felt about anything least of all him but everything kept on going. How horrified you would be to see your precious boys now unraveled like a cheap rug because it doesn't matter how long they've been away at Uncle Arthur's court or how many adventures they've had at Uncle Arthur's behest Uncle Arthur is not their father anymore than Lot was their father really because you were father and mother both, goddess and angel both; protector and tormentor. You were their center, and without you they can't manage anything at all. That's why, do you see? That's why.
It's raining now and the men are all fretting about footing and destriers and mud and rust but I only hear in it the rhythm of the waves like soft drums and even though it doesn't help and even though it's worse than pointless stupid even I keep thinking about him. I should be thinking about what he looked like hip-deep in the river when his mother's barge came in pale as death paler than her even not saying a word but clenching and unclenching his hand the way he does did whenever he felt like he was drowning and looking more drowned than she who had actually drowned. Because that's how sane people think isn't it the water was what we had in common or maybe it was only the fear of drowning that we did. But I'm thinking about the chapel instead. I sat in there a lot much more often than the so-called devout knights, not because I cared for their god or was even curious about him but because it was cool in there and quiet and the simple architecture was pretty I remember you or Aunt Morgana or possibly Nimue saying that you didn't know how they could close off their holy places like that but I think they’re on to something because silence and stillness and a little bit of colored glass can make any place sacred that is the Christian magic – years of persecution has taught us how to hide but it has taught them how to protect and to do so not even by closing their doors to the likes of me because they don't have to, the space itself is not important, they can go anywhere, they do not rely upon the sanctity already there they just dominate the space and build the sanctity themselves. Little wonder Arthur's men would choose it for their religion. Survivors. I sat there alone all the time sometimes thinking sometimes reading sometimes doing nothing at all and sometimes he would also be there and maybe sometimes that's why I went. In the sunlight his hair looks looked like spun gold sunlight on the water but in the absence of light it was more like ash and when he bowed his head motionless in prayer he looked exactly like the stone effigies of all those dead knights ringed around him except younger and more beautiful and sometimes more dead. The light from the colored glass in the window was always too weak for flame and looked like dust in his hair and when I tried to point it out he laughed and kissed my mouth and I could taste his fear. Not fear of pain or death or even of drowning fear that he might catch my doubt like a contagion like the plague that it would burn like acid through the conviction lodged in his bones until it was gone until the center was gone and he collapsed in upon himself not strong not holy just sick not blessed not martyred just forgotten. That was why he was always so uncomfortable in the presence of his father. They could smell madness on one another the way dogs can and they were afraid to find themselves in each other's faces afraid then that the center would be gone afraid that what they bore so tirelessly on their exhausted shoulders was nothing was less than nothing weighed nothing at all and was thus heavier than everything and more important and more fragile.
And so now I understand what I have to do. It has nothing to do with crowns or religion or vengeance. It's about fictions which cannot sustain truths. I learned about centers from you and martyrs from him and the fragility of convictions from Lancelot and his beautiful benighted queen and I promised him as he lay shuddering in my arms that he would not drown but he did and but I can unmake that. And I told you once that Arthur hated you but he didn't but I can unmake that. And Lancelot told me in a dead stricken voice as I whispered the time and place of her trial into his ear that he had broken the dream with love unworthy love and he did but I can unmake that he was kind to me he trained me taught me to fight gave me the sword all the swords which will kill Arthur which have already killed him and I can unmake all of that. I owe them I loved them they loved me but I will clear my ledger tomorrow and unmake them all.
There's a trick with mirrors Agravain showed it to me once when he was drunk you can use the light warp the glass make it reflect only what you want to see Let's turn Gawain into a scrawny ugly bastard he said but I won't and anyway I'm not the creator just the destroyer it will be up to them to decide, the survivors.
All I have to do is rob them of their center. Watch them come undone.
Well, not watch.
Every night of my life I have heard the sea in my sleep and my earliest memory is of what it feels like to drown. I hear it now in the pounding of the rain, the pounding of the drums. It is a comfort and a terror, but I can unmake that, too. I never had a center. But each death, each desertion has found a loose thread in me and tonight I am picking at them all, pulling and pulling and watching myself unravel, past skin and muscle and tissue, blood and bone stripped away until there's nothing left to cage the darkness inside my chest.
And it consumes me, becomes me, unmakes me, and now I am nothing more than the shadow in the corners of their looking glass.
Dusty light too weak for flame.
It wouldn't occur to him until long after he'd fed the pages to the fire that this had been his only child's suicide note, left for the crows between the skeletal fingers of long-dead trees.
*
Mordred's other personal letters had been unaddressed, but this one bore his name: Arthur. No titles, no preambles, just that thin scrawl of ink on the outside of the tiny, folded square.
It was the last letter Bedievere had given him, but the first one he'd found. It had fallen out of the traitor's clothing as they'd stripped his body of armor – to the victor go the spoils – and Bedievere had hesitated over it, eventually deciding to rescue it but laying it aside. It was also the only letter which his senseschal had not read.
Arthur folded one long leg over the other as he resumed his seat, settling his strong shoulders (squared as if preparing for battle) against the upholstered back of the armchair. He had lit the hearth fire, and it was calling out to the shadows. He could feel them gathering in the corners, lapping in soft, silent waves against the toes of the foot still planted on the floor. He could feel their chill even through the leather of his boot.
No more excuses. It was time to wrap up this last loose end.
Arthur picked up the folded square. It was small; the perfect size to tuck into a palm. He imagined Mordred and his fox-faced brother passing secret notes this way in the wide, echoing halls of his mighty fortress: Agravaine's slow, sly smile, Mordred's restless impatience. It wasn't hard to do, though perhaps that was only because he could feel flakes of his son's blood catching beneath his fingernails as he turned the square over and over between his hands.
What could Mordred possibly have had to say to him? Was this another note sent to one already beyond the grave, or had the young man anticipated his father's survival? Mordred had tried his very best to kill him; Arthur had no doubt about that. He had only to skim his fingertips over the lattice of twisted scars to assuage any contrary doubts. They formed a map of resentment and ill intent across his side, thin islands of pain and fury in a purple-black sea of slow-healing bruises. And he had damn near succeeded.
The square was thin: one single sheet of cheaply-made field paper, the type used to convey hasty messages between battalions, and a small one at that. Whatever the message was, it was short.
Arthur briefly considered lighting a candle to better read by, silently berated himself for still trying to put off the inevitable, and then finally, carefully, unfolded the bloodstained note.
Mordred had written many things on the parchment, rewriting again and again over words which he had previously scratched out. If Arthur held the paper up in front of the fire's glow, he could see them burning like white veins in their own footprints. He could even make out a few – why must, I don't, until, and then – but there was only a single line remaining in ink, and it consumed, subsumed, the terrified hum of the rest; the single cry of a tern, proud, defiant, sarcastic, above the muted roar of the ocean. The words had been boldly inscribed in a hand thicker than the one he had come to expect, and even now, even blood stained, he could press his flesh against the ink and feel it vibrate with a sort of restless anger. Against the backdrop of the shifting firelight, they almost took on a life of their own.
In that bold, defiant hand, he had, in the end, written only this:
Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.*
* It is sweet and right to die for one's fatherland. – Horace, Odes 111.2.13