She buried him in day’s first light.

She was dead herself by gray twilight.

May the gods give every knight

Such hawks, such hounds, such a lady love . . .

The wonder of the song rang through me, yet made me cold. Might the gods give me life rather than such a death, I thought, but then I put the thought away from me in shame. A coward’s thought.

The blind harper chanted on, his eyes staring as milk white as the towers of Camelot, as white as his beard. On his shoulder there perched a raven, a wise bird with a great black heavy bill that made me think of an executioner’s ax. The harper did not see me walking by, of course, but the raven saw me and croaked, “Branded, branded! Red-handed!” Those who had gathered to hear the harper laughed at its cheekiness, but I shivered, for I felt as if it spoke straight to me.

Yet—yet there was no reason for me to feel that way. I was King Arthur’s son.

Firming my face, lifting my head, I followed Gawain into the great hall with Gull pattering at my heels.

Even now, after all the years, I remember the great hall of Camelot, that aspiring vaulted hall hung with many tapestries embroidered in threads of red, royal blue, gold. I remember the tapestries: a white stag leaping, a red dragon, a lady in a garden of blue roses, many others. But that morning I saw nothing of their splendor, for my heart pounded like a war stallion charging and I could not think of anything but him, my father. At last.

Blinking in the muted light, I looked for a throne. I saw none.

Yet I knew him at once. King Arthur.

There he sat at his place upon the rim of the Round Table, and by that time he had ruled for more years than I was old. Yet he turned toward me the face of a young man at the height of his powers. No gray dulled the bronze of his beard or his hair curling crisp under his golden crown. He held his chin high as he scanned me with the sea-gray eyes of a visionary. He looked wise, regal, strong, fierce, and fair, an eagle among men, all that a King should be, and what was more to me, he was a man any daydreaming boy would choose as a father.

Such awe and longing washed through me that I could barely stand; weakness as much as courtesy made me fold to my knees at his side. He looked at me quizzically, then up at Gawain, who had not kneeled.

“My brother Mordred, Liege.”

King Arthur’s face did not change except that his smile widened, his mouth quirking at the corners. He looked straight into my face. “Mordred,” he said, “well come.”