Queen of Camelot

by Nancy McKenzie

  “I thought you might say that. It will not be pleasant, Guinevere.”

  I managed a smile. “Of a certainty. How was it left between you? Does she still feel as she did?”

  For the first time I saw Arthur embarrassed. He did not know what to say. “It is my belief her feelings are unchanged,” he admitted awkwardly. “For all that, she is angry with me.”

  “Of course she is, since you refused her. You need tell me no more. I know what line to take.”

  He rose then and took me in his arms, running his fingers through my loose hair. “Welcome home, my Queen. We missed your birthday. You are twenty now, and you are the most wonderful woman alive.”

  “Thank you, my lord.”

  “And you will be more careful of yourself from now on, for my sake, and not put my valuable captains through such tortures of soul?”

  I smiled at him. “Yes, my lord.”

  “Whatever possessed you to take off that day, if I may ask?” I looked away, the smile gone. “Never mind,” he said quickly. “I see it is as I thought.”

  “Take what comes and live without complaint, for what will be, will be,” I said slowly, looking up at him again. “I will try to put it behind me, Arthur. I know I may never give you children. I can bear it, I think, if you can forgive it. Lend me your strength.”

  A deep sigh escaped him, as if something long held in had been freed at last.

  “It is a day of miracles,” he breathed, and kissed me. At length he loosed me and squared his shoulders.

  “Let me leave first,” he said, “that I may be in another part of the castle when you go to your quarters. Give me ten minutes. I shall see you at the feast tonight.”

  “What feast, my lord?”

  His quick grin lit his face. “The Companions are throwing a great feast in the Queen’s honor. You are their darling, did you not know? And there I shall publicly declare you my Queen for my life. In Council this afternoon I will charge Melwas. So you had better confront Elaine before that.”

  “As soon as you are gone, my lord.”

  “Brave woman.” He saluted me, and left.

  When I went in I called Ailsa to me and bade her shake out my blue gown, “for it is the King’s favorite,” and sat while she bathed me and brushed out my hair. She scented my gown with the jasmine scent the King had procured from southern lands and dressed my hair with seed pearls and a net of small sapphires, also the King’s gift. When all these preparations were complete, I sat on my little needlepoint bench and bade Ailsa leave me, “for,” I said, not untruthfully, “I await the King’s command.”

  She had said very little to me, just chatted in the ordinary way, and asked no questions at all. But she looked pale and frightened, and I was sorry I could not relieve her fears. As she reached the door, I stopped her.

  “Ailsa, if the lady Elaine is at leisure, and if she is so inclined, she may come to me. Keep everyone else away.”

  “Very good, my lady.”

  Elaine came up immediately. When she saw me sitting there in Arthur’s favorite gown, dressed for a feast at midday, bathed and scented and waiting, her eyes lit, and my heart sank.

  “Gwen!” she cried, running to me and hugging me lightly. “Oh, I am so glad you are back! Was it very horrible? Have you seen the King? Is he very angry?”

  I had seated myself so my face was in shadow, and she put my nervousness down to fear of the King.

  “I was hoping perhaps you could tell me that,” I replied. “I—I have heard rumors.”

  “He is furious at Melwas, of course,” she confided, seating herself upon a cushion at my feet. Light from the terrace doorway fell on her face, which was lifted to me. “It was an insult to his honor. But he shall be avenged.” She paused. “What happened to you, Gwen? All we have heard here are rumors. That is, if you can bear to speak of it.”

  “What have you heard?”

  “That Lancelot rescued you with Merlin’s help, but that he was too late to save you from—the worst.”

  She watched me eagerly, and my flesh crept upon my bones.

  “As far as it goes, that is true,” I said, and the triumph on her face, quickly suppressed, was a knife in my heart. “But for Merlin’s Sight and Lancelot’s courage, I might still be—in that place. It was well hidden.”

  She had the grace to shudder. “And was Lancelot badly injured?” she went on. “They say he lay dying, until you went to his bedside and restored his will to live.”

  “They exaggerate,” I replied.

  “That must have been terribly hard, Gwen, to see him so near death, and for your sake.”

  “Yes. It was hard.”

  She took my hand to comfort me, and if she felt my trembling, she misconstrued it.

  “Were you there when he regained his senses? Did you speak your heart?” she asked in a dreadful whisper. “It must have seemed like stolen time for both of you.”

  “Elaine,” I said quickly, “what should I do? I have heard things about the King—that he is—that he might be ready to annul our marriage. Tell me it is not true! What can I do to regain his favor?”

  She smiled. “You are off to a good start. It’s well known he cannot resist you when you wear blue!” Then she rose and took a turn about the room. “Seriously, Gwen, I would be careful.” She frowned. “I have had private speech with the King—” Here I stifled a gasp. “—and I tell you I think you are on dangerous ground. It is possible that he will put you away. He has spoken to the bishop about it.”

  It was a cool lie, and she told it without a flicker of hesitation.

  “The bishop?” I whispered.

  She turned to me. The excitement in her eyes belied the sorrow on her face. “Oh, Gwen, forgive me. I only meant—I don’t know what will happen. I only tell you to prepare you. After all, what future has Britain unless the King has sons?” She came closer and reached for my hand. But I could not help myself, and I shrank from her touch.

  “Are you so certain he has determined upon that course?”

  “No. No one is sure. But Arthur indicated, when he spoke to me—” I blushed to hear her use his name so freely. “—that it was time to put the past behind him. Listen, Gwen.” She sank to her knees and looked up at me earnestly. “Remember when we were girls in Wales? How happy you were with Lancelot, and how you longed to be his bride instead of Arthur’s? It can be so—it can happen now with no disgrace! The King will charge Melwas with abduction and rape, and when he has avenged the slight to his honor, he will free you from this bond you never wanted. Lancelot will jump at the chance to wed you. Just think of it, Gwen! Your fondest dream can come true. You can marry your true love.”

  She came to a stop, breathless and excited, and I simply could not bear to look into her face. I rose and walked away, struggling to compose myself enough to speak.

  “You have it all worked out, Elaine, do you not?” Her head went up at the tone of my voice, and she went suddenly still. “How did you make contact with Melwas? Was it after the Harvest Festival years ago when I told you how amorous he had been? Who was your go-between? The King will want to know.”

  She went white. “What are you talking about?”

  “I have trusted you with secrets, Elaine, and loved you as a sister. What have you done to me?”

  “Gwen,” she whispered, “I am innocent.”

  I whirled and faced her.

  “You should know,” I said flatly, “that before I called you up here, I was with the King an hour.”

  She gasped. Then a subtle change came over her. Surprise left her features, along with every vestige of warmth and youth. She looked suddenly old and hard.

  “Arthur made it clear to me, Elaine, very, very clear, that everything you have just said is false. You have made a grave mistake. He will not put me away. And he would not have you, even if he were free. Live with that.”

  It was cruel, and Elaine was never able to take a barb in silence.

  “You do not deserve him!” she sp
at. “You are barren! Give him up and let him wed a fertile woman who will bear him sons!”

  “That is his choice. But he will not do it. He has told me so.”

  “You are soiled!” she cried. “Do not stain his honor! Gwen, don’t rob him of his future!”

  “If I am soiled,” I said levelly, “who set me up for it? How devoted to Arthur can you be, to conspire to defile his wife?”

  “I have done nothing!” she screamed. “You can prove nothing!”

  “I can ask Melwas, when he faces judgment, who his informer was.”

  Her face flooded with color, and she stood to face me. “You dare not do it! You dare not expose your shame to public view!”

  I regarded her with heartfelt pity. “So that is what you counted on to save you. I wondered.” I found myself near the foot of my bed and gripped the bedpost for support. “I suppose now is the time to tell you that Melwas did not rape me.”

  “Coward!” she shrieked, then clapped a hand over her mouth as tears started to her eyes.

  “He tried, God knows, but was prevented by circumstance. I have told the King what happened. I tell you now so you may know how hopeless is your defense.”

  “I will not bother to defend myself!” she cried hotly, and I saw with dismay that the floodgates had opened, and her words and tears tumbled forth together. “Go ahead and accuse me! I do not care! You are so high and mighty, you who were taken in as orphan by my mother, always spoiled and pampered—oh, God!—past bearing! Nothing was denied you! You took everything away from me, even that God-forsaken Irishman! Everything I ever wanted was given to you! It was I who honored Arthur from my youth, not you. It is I who should be his Queen, not you! I can breed sons aplenty—I know it—as my mother did before me. It is not fair! You will destroy him! You—he loves you for your beauty, which you have done nothing to deserve, and you love that—that broken-nosed Breton who always stinks of stables! Oh, God! I cannot bear it! Kill me and have done!”

  She flung herself to the floor, weeping horribly, while I stood by, numb, and waited. But as no one came to cosset and tend her, at length her sobs diminished and died into rhythmic whimpers.

  I found my voice. “Is that what lies at the bottom of all this?” I took a deep breath. “Have you learned nothing? Beauty may be a gift from God, but I thought by now you would have learned this lesson: that it is as hard to bear and as welcome as a double-edged sword that turns in the hand. You are a beautiful woman, Elaine—how can you not know this? Only see the cost we pay—you, Melwas, Lancelot, and even Arthur! It is the first thing anyone sees, and few ever try to get beyond it. To half of Britain, man and woman, I am a mask, an ornament, a prized possession, no more, made for the King’s pleasure, to dispose of as he wills! If Arthur regarded me so, or Lancelot, I should throw myself into the Lake of Avalon and have it over! Dear God! I have thought so often, if I were plain and men did not admire me, how simple and how easy life would be! Even you, Elaine, who have known me from childhood, do not know me. And to find that this is why! Sweet Mary! What I would not give to be judged by words and deeds and not by my face!” I stopped, gulping, forcing back the tears. Elaine had covered her ears and was not even listening.

  “I have done nothing,” I said slowly, “to deserve such treatment at your hands. I have loved you as a sister. You have shared my bed, Elaine, and shared my pillow talk. These things I cannot forget. For your treachery, which grieves me to my heart, I banish you from court. I will send you back to Alyse and Pellinore as soon as arrangements can be made, and perhaps you can find a husband in some corner kingdom of Wales.”

  “Guinevere.” She looked up, and I saw her swollen, puffy face and reddened eyes. “Do you not love Lancelot?”

  I sat suddenly upon the bed, trembling. “You know I do.”

  “Then why do you throw away the only chance you will ever have to wed him? I have done you a great service, if you but knew it.”

  “Because,” I said slowly, “it would dishonor Arthur. I don’t know if I can explain it to you, Elaine. Without Arthur, Lancelot and I would not be who we are. The love we bear each other is—is also love for the King. I can’t say it any plainer. But I knew it—we both knew it—back in Melwas’ cabin when he found me all alone, and we could so easily—how easily!—have been lovers. Don’t you see, Elaine? You talk about honor, but I don’t believe you know what it is.”

  She sank to the floor once more, utterly defeated. “You cannot have them both,” she mumbled. “It isn’t fair.”

  “I will send for your parents,” I said at length.

  “Please, Gwen,” she cried piteously, huddled on the floor, “please let me stay until the solstice. My father will be so angry to learn I have displeased you! Let me stay at court just until then.”

  “Displeased me? Elaine, you have betrayed me.”

  She shivered but did not deny it any longer.

  “I should have you whipped. Melwas, your dupe, must take his punishment publicly, like it or not. It is not fair that you should escape so lightly. But—but you were once dear to me, Elaine, and I cannot forget it. You may stay until the solstice celebrations are over. The next day you must leave. But there is one condition.” The sly smugness that had crept across her features slowly faded, and she waited in fear. She had some new plan afoot already, I saw, and my only thought was to protect the King.

  “You will not come within sight or speech of the King or of myself. You shall take all your meals in your rooms. If either of us so much as sees your face, you are gone.”

  She blanched at that, but I saw relief in her face. “You are cruel,” she whimpered, but she put no feeling in it. Her mind was already somewhere else.

  “Go now. Tell Ailsa I will speak with Alissa.”

  So Elaine left, I thought forever. With Alissa I made arrangements for her confinement and surveillance.

  Melwas was formally charged in the Round Hall with abducting the Queen and was bidden to show himself in three days’ time in the Council chamber to answer the charge, else the High King would declare war against him and confiscate his lands.

  I was worried about Lancelot’s safety, but the King was not, which reassured me. When he met me before hall that night to take me into the feast, he asked after Elaine, and I told him what had happened and what I had done.

  “My poor Gwen. I see you have suffered. I can imagine the kind of things she said.”

  “I did not know she had it in her.”

  “Sometimes those closest are the last to know. What will you do with her?”

  “I will send her back to Wales after the solstice.”

  “Three weeks? That is generous indeed.”

  “She begged me so piteously to stay for that. And I could not forget what we have been.”

  He smiled. “You are kindhearted. Don’t tell me she wants to celebrate our anniversary with us. She must have another reason. Look she does not take advantage of your lenience.”

  “In truth, my lord,” I said slowly, “I do not want to send her back to Wales. It would break poor Pellinore’s heart, and Alyse would never forgive her. If I know Elaine, in three weeks she will get herself a husband, and when she leaves, it will not be in disgrace. Pellinore and Alyse will be deceived, but you and I and Elaine will know the truth. I care not if she escapes public disgrace, so long as I never see her again.”

  He regarded me with approval. “A shrewd observation, Guinevere. Well done. Though but a girl, you are a diplomat.”

  “I am twenty, my lord!” I protested, grinning, pleased by his praise. “As old as you were when you married me. Did you think yourself a boy at this age, after six years as King?”

  He laughed and slipped an arm about my waist. “But you are ageless, Gwen. Merlin says it is your fate. You will be as young at forty as you are today. You are my child Queen.”

  A childless queen was closer to the truth, I thought, but I did not speak it for Arthur’s sake.

  19 THE TRAITOR

  Three day
s later King Melwas of the Summer Country rode into Camelot with a force of armed men and Lancelot. He was received by Kay and escorted to the Round Hall where he sat in the Chair of Complaint opposite the King. Bedwyr later told me everything that happened, sparing no details, for I was wild to know.

  In response to the King’s accusation of abduction, Melwas said he had rescued me when my horse slipped on the muddy bank and, hearing no one else about, had taken me to a hunting cabin where he could attend me. He had had no servant, but had dried my wet clothing and fed me with his own hands, and was on his way to Avalon to fetch attendants and a barge when Arthur had sailed into the estuary.

  “Liar!” Lancelot cried, struggling to his feet. “You were still on the island when the ships were sighted! Your confederate signaled you from shore!”

  “What confederate?” Melwas demanded.

  “And it was no hunting cabin, my lord,” Lancelot persisted, who did not wish to accuse the lady Seulte without proofs of her guilt, “but furnished with furs and wine and gilded candlesticks! He had prepared the place, my lord! He had planned to bring her there!”

  The Companions muttered among themselves, watching Arthur’s stony face and waiting for Melwas’ reply.

  Melwas rose. “You lie, Lancelot. I never touched the Queen. And the place is a ramshackle cabin, nothing more. Come, my lords all, and I will show it to you.”

  “No doubt it is so now!” Lancelot shouted. “You have had plenty of time to put it back to rights! But it was not thus the night of your arrival, my lord King! I was there!”

  “Yes,” Melwas sneered, his voice gone dangerously soft. “Let us not forget that you were there.” He lifted a hand and signaled to his servant, who brought up a canvas satchel. Melwas faced Arthur boldly. “While I was gone for help, my lord,” he said coolly, “this ardent hothead broke in upon the Queen.” He reached into the satchel and brought forth an armful of wrinkled sheets, foul with bloodstains and reeking with old wine. “I found these on the bed the morning after. I swear by Llyr, by Lluden, by Bilis, by the Great Goddess herself, that I was not the one between these sheets! But I can tell you who was.” He turned to Lancelot and snarled, “If there was rape done, sir, you did it! You are the one who was wounded and bleeding—you are the one who was there when I was gone, all alone with the Queen!” He whirled toward Arthur. “He has loved her beyond all sense for years, my lord King. It’s about time you knew it. And here is proof he has betrayed you!” He raised high the bloody sheets; the Companions sat stunned; Arthur shot to his feet, gray-faced. Lancelot’s strangled shriek rent the silence. He threw himself across the Round Table at Melwas and caught him by the throat.