Queen of Camelot

by Nancy McKenzie

  In the end, it was those fatherless children who drove me from my bed. I arose, donned a fine gown, and bade Ailsa dress my hair. “Light the torch in my garden,” I told her, “and await me here. I shall be back within the hour.”

  Hall was just ending. I waited until the Companions were gathered in the library, and I went straight in. They had not yet lit the candles; the long summer twilight lingered still. Lancelot stood in the corner by Arthur’s table, half turned from me, a frown upon his face. Nearby, Lamorak rose from his seat upon a bench.

  “My lady Guinevere! How glad we are to see you!”

  Lancelot whirled, his face lighting. “Gwen!”

  “Thank you, Lamorak. I am over the worst of it, I think.”

  He withdrew as Lancelot came up. “My sweet, how are you feeling? I’ve been worried sick about you. You are pale yet, I see, but you’ve got your spirit back.”

  “Indeed, I have.” It was all I could do to look up into his eager face. “Lancelot, a matter has arisen that concerns us both. I must see you privately.”

  The smile died. “Shall I bid the men leave? Shall we go into the garden?”

  “More privately than in this public setting. We must not, on any account, be interrupted.”

  He frowned, searching my face. “Name the place, Gwen. I shall be there.”

  “My own garden. In an hour. Tell no one.”

  He stifled a gasp. “My dear, do you really think it wise?”

  “Of course it is not wise. But we must do it. Ailsa will attend us. No one else. You—you still have the key to my garden gate?”

  He nodded, a trifle furtively. “But, Guinevere—”

  “Make certain no one sees you.” The light in his eyes aroused my temper. “This is not a tryst, Lancelot. Nor a game.”

  He stiffened and squared his shoulders. “My lady Queen, I am your servant.” He bowed formally. I turned on my heel and left.

  He came on time. I sat on the stone bench that hugged the garden wall, with the torch behind me, so my face would be in shadow and his in light. He bowed and sat beside me, more puzzled than worried.

  “All right, Gwen, what’s this about? It must be desperately important, to risk all this.”

  “What would you say, Lancelot, if I told you Arthur had seduced—no, I mean debauched, a girl barely past childhood, a girl of thirteen. Against her will.”

  Lancelot gaped. “I would not believe you. He would not do it. What are you doing, Gwen? Is this a test of loyalty you have devised?”

  “And that he had got her with child and knew it not.”

  “Nonsense. You know Arthur better than that. Who has been telling you lies?”

  “More, that he never sent her so much as a loaf of bread, though the child was starving.”

  “Stop this. It isn’t funny.”

  “More, that she lives here in Camelot, not half a league from his home.”

  Lancelot rose quickly. “Enough! No one has ever said that about Arthur!”

  I rose slowly and faced him. “No. You are right. But they have said it about you.”

  He stared at me, uncomprehending, in perfect silence. “What?”

  “A wise woman told me. It is known throughout the town. And this girl is not the only one. There are others.”

  The disbelief, the hurt on Lancelot’s face was a knife in my heart, but I steeled myself against it.

  “And you believed her?” he croaked.

  “I have seen the girl. And the child. She named you as his father. To my face.”

  His jaw dropped. “What?” I stood and watched him as he paled, sank to the bench, and buried his face in his hands. “Oh, God,” he choked, “what have I done to you, Guinevere? You cannot forgive me for Elaine, is that it? You will believe any calumny against me, just because I lay with her?”

  “No,” I retorted. “Of course I did not believe it. Not at first. God knows—God knows I do not want to believe it now. But I saw the girl, Lancelot.”

  “Christ!” He looked up. “She was lying!”

  “Why?”

  “How can I know that? No doubt for money.”

  “Not for money. Poor as she is, she threw away the gold coin I pressed into her hand.”

  He stared in exasperation. “Then for love, or hate, or jealousy, or fear—how can I tell? I’ve never seen her—for pity’s sake, Gwen, how can I prove I did not do it?” He rose and gripped my shoulders. “Listen. Put aside your anger for just a moment. Remember who I am, what I have done, what we have been to one another.” His fingers dug into my flesh; I welcomed the pain; it kept my tears at bay. “I have never forced a woman—I would not do it—it is an evil; it is sin. You know—who better—how circumspect I’ve been. The only woman I got with child I married, though I cared nothing for her, so the child might have a name. I have always put honor first, always”—his voice shook—“even when it killed me to do it, even when I thought I could not survive it, even when it meant giving you up to Arthur. Ahhhhh, God, Guinevere!” He shook me gently, his hands sliding down my arms and across my back in a long caress. “How could you think I would behave so? I would do nothing to hurt you, or shame you, or cause you a moment’s grief. How could you think it? What has happened to you?”

  Through tears I looked up into his face. “Lancelot,” I whispered, “I know you did not do it! My dearest love, can you forgive me? I—I—I am acting just like a jealous woman!”

  He bent and kissed me and held me in his arms. “Guinevere, when you lose faith in me, then am I lost forever.”

  “I am a fool.” I hugged him tightly. “But you have an enemy, Lancelot, who has taken pains to construct a slander. It can’t be that poor girl. Who can it be?”

  I pulled away; he dropped his arms, and we stood watching one another. Together we sat carefully on the bench, well apart, not even our fingers touching.

  “That is the question I must answer. Tell me from the beginning how you heard this.”

  I told him the whole story, leaving nothing out. When I came to the shadow in his past Sybil had recounted, he rose, frowning, and began to walk about. When I described Grethe and her son, he stopped and passed a hand across his face.

  “Poor girl. Grethe is her name? I will find her and—”

  “No, Lancelot! She is terrified of you! That’s why she ran away, she thought I would make her face you. That is when—when I saw her face—I believed—I recognized that terror, you see.”

  His face hardened. He, who had rescued me from Melwas, had seen the terror firsthand. “It is not me she’s frightened of, Gwen,” he said very gently. “But whatever it is, she must be freed of that fear. No doubt someone has threatened her. Someone powerful.” He straightened. “This Sybil seems to know a good bit about me. You say she’s new here? I wonder who she is, who she’s working for.”

  I watched him standing in the torchlight, thinking hard, a tall, slender knight with a supple body, a man in his prime of life. I looked quickly away and fought to slow my breathing; perhaps it had been a mistake to bring only Ailsa. He, too, moved back a pace.

  “Well, Guinevere.” He drew a long breath. “I suppose you will want to know about Vivienne.”

  I nodded. “If you will tell me.”

  “It’s not all that important. Really.”

  “Mmmmm. Is that why no mention, no hint of her has ever passed your lips?”

  He smiled bleakly. “If I do not tell you, you will imagine her the focus of my life.”

  I did not reply to that, but watched him twist his fingers in a nearby vine.

  “In Lanascol, deep in the Wild Forest about a league from Benoic, there is a lake. Black Lake. In the middle stands an island. On the island, when I was a boy, lived the priestess Vivienne, Lady of the Lake.”

  “A pagan priestess?”

  He nodded. “A servant of the Goddess, like Niniane.”

  “An old hag, perhaps?”

  He shook his head. “Not quite.”

  “Loosen your tongue, Lance
lot. Tell me, and have it over.”

  He sighed and sat on the arm of the bench, a good three feet away. “We were forbidden to go there, Galyn and I. My father was a Christian, and a hard one. He feared the Lady. But the villagers loved her dearly; she blessed their births and deaths, treated their sick, danced with them at Beltane, and led their dark rites before the Samhain fires. We were always curious about her.” He stopped.

  “Go on. Is this so hard to tell? It’s clear you loved her, Lancelot. But everyone has a first love. What is it you dread to say?”

  If I was not mistaken, he colored. “It was more than love,” he said quietly. “It was obsession. A thirst I could not slake. I put it down to sorcery, until I met you. Then I knew, as Sybil does, the fault lies in myself.”

  I twisted my hands together in my lap and kept silent. Suddenly I did not want him to go on.

  “I was twelve when I met her. After a fight with my father I rode straight out to Black Lake and swam across to the island. To prove I could do it, to defy him. She was waiting for me and called me by my name. ‘Lancelot, Prince of Lanascol, you have come to me at last. Don’t be afraid, my lord. You are a better man than your father and will outshine him in glory, could he live a thousand years.’ I smiled at that. She always knew how to bring me happiness.” He cleared his throat and did not go on.

  “What was she like?” I prompted. “Dark or fair? Short or tall? How was she featured?”

  He waited a long time, and when he spoke his voice was soft and far away. “Dark. Dark hair, as dark as night. Dark eyes, dark skin, as smooth and soft as silk. A voice like honey. A touch like fire.”

  “So that is why the men call you Lancelot of the Lake. I have often wondered. Does everyone but me know this story?”

  The color rushed to his face. “No. It is not much of a story. But those soldiers from Less Britain have heard the name and—well, you know how soldiers like to jest. It is little more than barracks teasing.”

  “I see. Go on . . . You had just washed up on shore.”

  “I visited her often. Whenever I could. I had to sneak out, of course. When I was fourteen, she made me a prophecy, the night before my father took me to Britain to fight for Uther at Caer Eden.”

  “Where he died, and where Arthur was made King.”

  “My father was wounded there and came home. But when I met Arthur, I found the service I had dreamed of all my boyhood; I found the cause, the glory, and the King. I gave no thought to returning.” He smiled briefly. “I was young. But Arthur knew better. For a month each summer, he sent me home to see my father. Of course, I went straight to Vivienne.”

  “Of course.”

  “She was proud of me. She called me a man. And she taught me many things my father’s priest knew nothing of. About women. About the art of love.”

  In the flickering light, his eyes met mine and held them. My heart began to pound, and I pressed my palms into the cool stone of the bench, to anchor me there. I could not look away.

  “I burned for her,” he whispered, clenching his fist. “With pain so fierce I wept. And she always, always quenched the fire and gave me peace and brought me back to laughter.” Beads of sweat stood out on his brow, reflecting the torchlight. “It was a sickness of the flesh, a desire so deep I had no respite from it. I thought it was a spell she put upon me. I did not know, then, it was my nature. When I was here with Arthur, it was better; she was far away, and we had the Saxon wars to fight. But let me set foot on a ship for home—I was half mad until I was back in her arms again.” He drew a long, trembling breath and slowly rose. “When I was eighteen my father died. I went home to see him buried. Something in me changed when I wore the crown of Lanascol. I knew it was time to say farewell, but when I went to see her, she was not there. Had not been there for months. The village people said she had left them in the spring, when my father first took ill.” He held his hands out helplessly. “I never saw her again.”

  “That’s all there was to it? Where is the harm in that? This cannot be the shadow that dogs you, Lancelot. She loved you, and you her.”

  “She is not the shadow.” He thumped his fist against his chest. “The shadow is in me. It is the fire in my blood. The fever that burns my soul. It is not the curse of a sorceress, but a flaw in my very being. I will never be free of it.”

  “Lancelot.” I reached out a hand to him, and he held my fingers tightly. “This is a plague all men suffer from. Even Arthur.”

  “Oh, God! That I could have Arthur’s strength! Against my will I love you, Guinevere. I cannot help it.”

  “I cannot help it, either.”

  “Vivienne was nothing to me, beside you.” He trembled violently; I saw he truly suffered, and I saw, too, how cruel I was to bring him here alone. “There are times when I am not master of myself. Believe the truth of that. Else Elaine would not be pregnant.”

  “Lancelot, you judge yourself too harshly. This is a common foible, not a curse upon your soul.”

  “The sins of the flesh,” he whispered, “will be my undoing.”

  “Perhaps. But with love, and honor and glory, it is hubris to ask for more.”

  He managed a smile. “Bless you.”

  We stood and looked at each other. Our joined hands were one hand, indivisible, a sweet secret of the dark. Behind my back I signaled Ailsa, and saw Lancelot’s relief when he heard her steps approach.

  I raised my chin. “It’s time we parted. Everyone will wonder where you are.”

  He went down on one knee and kissed my fingers. I saw him smile. “There is no one in Camelot,” he said, “who does not know where I am.”

  “You are playing with fire, my lady,” Ailsa said primly as she pulled the pins from my hair.

  “I know, I know!” I cried, slumping on my stool. “But I had to see him alone!” Through the open terrace doorway we heard the soft thud of the garden door closing and the clink of the key as it turned in the lock.

  “Why do you treat him so? What has he done, after all, that other men have not?”

  “Nothing,” I whispered miserably. “Nothing. But he is Lancelot.”

  “And what do you want of him? That because he cannot have you, he should forsake all women and deny himself the pleasures of manhood? You are selfish to ask that.”

  I shook my head angrily, scattering pins all over the floor. “Pleasures of manhood, indeed! What right have men to demand such self-indulgence, when women are denied it, from cook to queen! I tell you, Ailsa, in spite of what I said to Lancelot about a foible, sometimes I think it is merely a convenient lie they tell us, to keep us chaste while they make what sport they please!” I turned on the stool and grabbed her hands, holding hard. “I hate it when I know Arthur has lain with some other woman! Even if he confesses it to me himself and begs my pardon—it is a weakness in him and he knows it. I do not permit myself such freedoms! And yet, and yet,” I breathed, meeting her eyes, “I burn, I ache, just as he does, Ailsa, all the while he is away—and—and for Lancelot, always, always! Since first I saw him—it is a passion I can scarce control! Yet I must bear it without complaint. Oh, God, it isn’t fair!”

  Ailsa flushed to the roots of her graying hair. “My dear child,” she said quickly, “calm yourself!” She hurried to the terrace and drew the curtain, as if by so doing she could protect me. “You will drive each other mad, if you make this known to him. Do not see him alone again, Guinevere, I beg you.”

  Half laughing, I wiped away the tears that ran down my cheeks. “Dear Ailsa! How can you think he does not know? He has known for years. And Arthur—Arthur has known since before he wed me.”

  Ailsa stared at me in horror; I slipped to the floor, covered my face, and wept.

  A week went by with no word from Lancelot. From Lamorak I learned he attended Council meetings and did not neglect his routine duties in Arthur’s absence, but I saw nothing of him. Sir Villers he left in charge of drilling the troops, and Lyonel in charge of the stables. He did not come to dinner and nev
er joined us in the library after hall.

  But Lancelot was not the only one I missed. More than once I sent to the barracks for Mordred, only to learn that he and his brothers had all but disappeared. They attended drills every morning and showed up for the soldiers’ mess every evening, but between those times no one could find them. I asked around quietly; people shrugged; no one had seen them, and no one missed them much. Mordred’s absence bothered me more than Lancelot’s. At least I could guess what Lancelot was about.

  One morning a page came to me as I sat in the High King’s workroom reading from a scroll.

  “My lady Guinevere, Prince Mordred begs your attention for a moment.”

  I rose quickly. “Prince Mordred? Where is he?” Behind the page I saw Mordred in the shadow of the doorway. “Mordred! At last! Come in, come in.”

  Mordred came and made his reverence. He was very pale.

  “Mordred!” I raised him and hugged him. “Wherever have you been? I’ve sent everywhere to find you!”

  He flushed and replied quickly, “I’ve had matters to attend to in the town, my lady.”

  “In the town!” I scanned his face and noted his uneasiness. “And your brothers, who have been as hard to find? Were they also in the town?”

  He nodded shortly and kept his eyes on the floor. “My lady, I bring you a message from Sir Lancelot.”

  I stared. Lancelot send Mordred with a message? “Why, where is he that he could not come himself?”

  Mordred flushed again and lowered his eyes. “Please, my lady, do not ask me. I mean no disrespect, but I cannot answer.”

  His discomfort confused me. I watched his face, half man, half boy, and covered a sigh. If he did not honor me with his confidence, I could not force it from him. “All right, Mordred. I yield. What is the message?”

  “My lady, it is more like a riddle. He said that if you were to retrace your steps to the kitchen gardens, you should find there the answer that you seek. But I do not know what the question is.” He watched me with curiosity.