J. Blair - The Pendragon Murders

“Yes. But I think Fedora was trying to tell me something else. I think I understand what, but I cannot be certain. Unless…”

“Unless?”

“Nothing, Nim-Colin. Do you have any idea where Petronus is?”

She finished the wine and put the cup down. “Off at school, I think. The schoolmasters missed several of their classes because of the influenza.”

“We weathered the plague. We can weather this.”

“Yes, but the plague never really struck here, remember.”

“Except for poor John. If it was plague that killed him. Let me have a swallow of your wine.”

She turned the cup upside down to show him it was empty. “I’ll go and get you some.”

“A small cup, please.”

She went. Merlin sat alone, brooding. What he was thinking was too unpleasant to contemplate.

In a moment she was back. Merlin thanked her, and she said she wanted to go back to her room. “It has been a draining time. Worrying about you, I mean. I need some rest.”

“Fine. Go back to our tower. Oh, and start the steam engine for my lift. I certainly do not have the energy for all those stairs.”

“I’ll be sure to.”

Merlin finished his meal and his wine and began making his way back to the Wizard’s Tower. But just after leaving the refectory he encountered Simon. Simon, fussy as usual, was carrying a thick sheaf of papers and having trouble holding on to them. When one dropped, Merlin picked it up and handed it to him. He felt a twinge of pain in his back and rubbed it.

“Thank you, Merlin. I was just coming to find you. I was afraid you might still be under the weather.”

“There is always weather to be under. What is it you want?”

Simon riffled through his papers, dropping several more. “We’ve had a message from the king. I must have left it behind.”

Suddenly Merlin sneezed. More of Simon’s papers scattered and he scrambled to retrieve them.

“Does it not occur to you that you might carry those in a pouch of some sort?”

“In a pouch or out of one, the king’s message is not here.”

“Yes, of course. What does he say?”

“He is en route back to Camelot. The funeral was uneventful. Morgan never showed up.”

“That is hardly surprising, I suppose. Now if you will excuse me, I need to return to my tower and get some rest. Oh-have you heard that old Fedora died a while ago?”

“Fedora?” Simon scowled. “I wish I had visited her. She delivered me, you know.”

“Who among us is without sin?”

Simon made a sour face, commented on Merlin’s sarcasm and left. Merlin went on his way, back to his tower.

His chair lift was waiting for him at the foot of it. He could hear the steam engine chugging steadily far above. Glancing up, he saw small, periodic puffs of steam from it, a hundred feet above. Looking up the tower always made him dizzy. The vast cylindrical shape, the staircase spiraling along the wall… He leaned against the wall momentarily to steady himself.

The seat was swaying slightly, he presumed in a draft. It added a bit more to his vertigo. He reached out and steadied it. Then gingerly he took his place in it, pulled the chain to start the mechanism, and began his ascent up the height of the tower.

It was slow. The lift always took three minutes or more to travel the full height of the tower. He watched as the stones moved downward past his field of vision. The staircase spiraled around him. The slow upward movement, the gentle swaying of the seat, lulled him to a state of complete relaxation. The seat moved twenty feet up, thirty, forty. He closed his eyes.

Then suddenly there was a huge jolt. The seat swung violently, almost striking the wall. Merlin gripped the chain and held tightly. Somehow the chain must have slipped, missed a cog. He leaned back in his seat, holding tight the chain, and glanced up. Everything was as usual. Everything was as it should be. The wild swaying gradually stopped, the gears reengaged and the ascent continued.

He was sixty feet above the ground. He could hear the gears as they turned, the engine as it hummed, the clanking of the chains.

Then there was another violent jolt and the lift swung wildly again. Merlin gripped the chain for dear life and looked up again.

There was someone at the landing on the top level, partway onto the wooden landing stage there. It was a man, and he was holding a long pike. He stretched it out and poked the top of the chain with it, and the lift swung wildly a third time. The man looked down at Merlin and cried, “Fall, damn you!”

Merlin recognized him. “Peter!”

As the seat rose closer to the top, the arc of its swing grew smaller. But Merlin was now eighty feet above the stone floor of Camelot. If he slipped, if the lift jerked too violently, he would fall to a certain death.

Peter stepped farther onto the landing platform and prodded the chain again. “Go on and fall!”

“If I die, Peter, it will be with the knowledge of what you are.”

“When you sent that boy to Darrowfield, I knew that you were onto me.” He pushed the tip of his pike into the gear assembly. With another jolt, the seat stopped its ascent.

Merlin was far above the castle’s floor now. The seat was still swaying. But he realized that if he could keep Peter talking, there would be no opportunity for him to pull his pike out of the gears and start prodding the seat again.

“I sent Colin there to flush you out. You had to realize I suspected you by that time.”

“You are a good actor, Merlin. When did you first suspect? How could you possibly have guessed?” He twisted the tip of his pike and the seat rocked slightly.

Merlin tightened his grip on the chain. He had to force himself not to look down. “I found it odd when you showed up here at Camelot, abandoning your investigation into the murder of Darrowfield and his boys. And gradually it dawned on me that you were present when all of the killings were done. You were the only one. You are quite a good actor yourself, Peter. Or should I say ‘Prince Peter’?”

“I was Father’s favorite. He always hated Arthur. But I… He loved me.”

“And not Darrowfield? Not his eldest son?”

“Darrowfield was a fool. You met him. You must have realized. Uther wanted me on the throne of England, not him.”

“And so that is what he was doing at Darrowfield Castle? Plotting his eldest son’s death with you?” He paused slightly. “With you… and Morgan?”

“Morgan despises Arthur, too. That is no secret.”

“And you let her manipulate you into doing her murders for her. It was you who attacked Arthur at Grosfalcon, not her.”

Peter nodded. “But she was concerned. After I killed Darrowfield and those two clots he called sons, she and Uther persuaded me to use, let us say, less direct methods. The plague was a gift to us. She had her own strain of belladonna. And she mixed it with some other poison from her stockpile. It made the deaths look like plague casualties.”

“Even where there was no plague. That was the other thing that made me suspicious. But then, why not simply poison that poor boy at the mill? Why crush him between the millstones?”

Peter shrugged. “He caught me as I was administering the belladonna to Accolon. What else could I do?”

“You are a fool, Peter. You cannot possibly think Morgan would have let you rule. She is ambitious for herself and for her son.”

“No. She is my sister.”

“Arthur is your brother. Did that stop you from plotting his death? Morgan wants herself on the throne, or her son Mordred, not you.”

Peter hesitated. This was obviously something he had not thought of before.

There was someone else on the landing, moving in the shadows behind him. Merlin realized it must be Nimue. He had to keep Peter talking. “So the three of you met in Darrowfield’s own castle to plot his death. Yes, that sounds callous enough for Morgan, all right.”