Queen of Camelot

by Nancy McKenzie

  “Oh, my lady.” I saw she trembled.

  “Take heart, Anna. Niniane will heed my call. I am sure of it, else I would not ask her.”

  She swallowed. “It’s not that, exactly.”

  “What is it, then?”

  “Can she—my lady, can she really do such things?”

  I smiled. “Oh, yes. Do not doubt her power. If she willed, she could raise mountains from the sea. But she has a fierce pride and must be cautiously approached. Take care to speak politely and hide your crucifix under your tunic. Plead for the Kingdom, Anna! I would go myself, in an instant—but Arthur would breathe flames if he knew I went without the Council’s knowing.”

  “And they would never let you go. Never mind, my lady, I will do it. I will slip out now to the stables and be back before moonset.”

  I gave her the token. She curtsied, then paused on the verge of going. “My lady—”

  “Yes, Anna?”

  “Did you—did you really lift the High King’s Sword?”

  She stood perfectly still, but I could feel her fear across the space between us. She was barely nineteen, about to undertake a mission—alone and in secret—she had never dreamed of doing. I reached out and clasped her hand.

  “It is one of the tales they tell,” I said slowly, lowering my voice to a whisper, “and in truth, nothing is beyond a woman’s strength if the need is great enough.”

  “My lady Queen,” she breathed, “I believe it.” She smiled shyly. “I will be back before moonset, and no one will know I’ve gone.”

  Four days passed. Ailsa slept and did not awaken. Every hour, it seemed to me, she grew smaller and thinner than the hour before. I saw that she had warmed bricks put to her throughout the day and night. By her bedside I kept a carafe of sweet water, for when she should awaken. Every few minutes I moistened a cloth and pressed it to her mouth. All it did was chap her lips. Without water, I knew, she could not live long. I did not sleep much. My heart was too heavy and would not allow me peace.

  Ferron came by twice daily to report on Constantine’s progress. We had sent scouts out at once and so learned of his quick march from the coast, his turning eastward well south of Ynys Witrin, and his steady approach from the southwest. But when Ferron came to summon me to Council, I waved him away.

  “But, my lady”—he frowned—“the men are growing restless. Berys and I daily drill the troops, to keep them occupied and give Clegis and Dynas something to do, but time is running out. Something must be done. In three days Constantine will be at the banks of the Camel. We must devise a plan.”

  “Oh, Ferron! I cannot come now—I cannot even think—my thoughts are like dry leaves in a wind—”

  “But the men are all gathered in the Round Hall.”

  I looked down at Ailsa’s gray face. Anna sat in the corner, eyes averted, wrapping an herb-soaked cloth around a steaming brick. Slowly I shook my head. “I cannot leave her, Ferron. She is near death. I must be here.”

  “Guinevere, I pray you to attend us. The Council is divided, you must know that. Half of them want to take him on, face to face, if only because they are tired of waiting.”

  I looked up briefly. “Teach them patience, then. Set them an example. Do what you can, Ferron. You must see that I cannot leave her. She is a mother to me. I would never forgive myself if I were not here . . .”

  He hesitated, bowed low, and left.

  “My lady!”

  I jerked awake. It was very dark; the candle had gone out. A shadow darker than the rest, Anna leaned over the bed. “My lady!”

  Too frightened to breathe, I jumped up from the pallet.

  “Dear God, Anna—” I stopped. Ailsa’s eyes were open and looking up at me. “Ailsa! Oh, Ailsa! My dear nurse! Bide a moment, pray, and take some water. Help me, Anna!” I lifted her head and shoulders—how light she was!—and put the cup to her lips. She could barely manage to swallow; most of it dribbled from her lips, but some of it went down. Anna placed a warm brick at her feet, then went for broth. I held Ailsa in my arms, and whispered to her and thanked God that she still lived. Her lips moved. I bent my ear close to her mouth and heard her breath, just on the edge of sound.

  “Guinevere.”

  “Oh, Ailsa! I am here! Do not struggle yet with speech. You will be stronger soon. I am here, my dear love, I am here.” I lit the candle and held her in my arms and told her what had happened and begged her take more water and assured her that everything would be all right in time; all the while she watched me with eyes full of fear.

  She took a little broth when it came, a very little, then fell asleep as I sang to her and stroked her hair.

  When she slept, her sleep was light and quiet, with little sighing breaths, the way she always used to sleep. Gratefully I kissed her brow and rose.

  “Shall I send for the physician, my lady?”

  “Later, Anna. Let her rest a little longer undisturbed.”

  “Will you be going back to your chamber, then?”

  “No. No, I will stay here with her until she is quite recovered. And in the morning, I suppose I ought to show my face in Council.”

  “Would you like me to attend you?”

  “Thank you, Anna, but not this time. Not in the Round Hall. To men, that is a sacred precinct. Stay by Ailsa and give her more broth if she awakens.”

  “Yes, my lady.”

  In the Round Hall the men sat with gloomy faces. They were a small gathering, eight sitting around a table built for thirty. Above the High King’s chair Excalibur’s hanger hung empty, and the great chamber, so often full of voices and the robust companionship of men, rang hollow like a gourd with its innards missing.

  Kay looked glad to see me, and Ferron, relieved, asked kindly after Ailsa. But the others stirred in their seats and glared at one another. They had reached an impasse—some wanted war, some preferred to wait out the siege until our reinforcements came, and some wavered, undecided. Without Arthur, they were like nervous horses, pulling against one another with more passion than sense, and with little result. How they missed his steady, guiding hand!

  In the middle of their arguments a scout arrived, still dusty from his ride, and fell to one knee at Ferron’s feet.

  “My lord! It is amazing—a miracle—they were bewitched, I think!”

  “Speak sense, Aranor. Remember you are a soldier.”

  The youth gulped and twisted his hands together. “My lord! Duke Constantine has disappeared!”

  “What!”

  “Regis and I were watching from Berin’s Hill, south of the Camelford—”

  “I know your posting,” Ferron said sharply. “Go on.”

  “We watched them camp, my lord, but—but in the morning, yesterday morning, they—they disappeared!”

  Ferron scowled. “They got past you unseen, you mean, you young scamp. Sneaked past while you were sleeping.”

  “No!” the youth cried. “We checked the ground! They did not get by us! My lord, please believe me. I could follow the tracks of an army without getting down from the horse. We slept in shifts—they did not pass us!”

  “Then where did they go?”

  “My lord, we could not tell. A great mist crept in that night, all up and down the valley, encircling their campsite. It came down from the Lake. We saw it come. It did not lift in the morning, but seemed to draw strength from the sun and grow thicker. Toward midday it drifted back to the Lake, and—and the army was gone! We—we covered all the ground between where they had been and the river. My lord, they did not come this way, and they are not there. The tracks led toward the Lake.” The boy gulped. “I don’t know why they would change course, my lord. And I—I don’t know where they went.”

  A couple of the men made the sign against enchantment, and the Christians crossed themselves. Ferron still scowled skeptically.

  “Believe him, my lord,” I said. “He is telling you the truth.”

  At that, they all turned to stare at me.

  Kay cleared his th
roat. “My lady, do you know aught about this?”

  “My lords, you agreed to leave that part of it to me.” I looked around at all their startled faces. “Constantine has not disappeared, he has only been misled. Eventually he will find his way again. Thank you, Aranor, for your news. It could hardly please us more.”

  As soon as the scout was gone, Clegis spoke. “And when he comes, my lords, what will he find? An army of King’s men too frightened to step outside the gates!”

  “Too wise to step outside,” Berys countered. “Don’t be a fool, Clegis.”

  I raised my hand for silence. “I am the one who must answer to Arthur for the Council’s action,” I reminded them. “And I will not risk your slaughter. If we can even the odds, that’s a different matter. But until help comes, I forbid the gates to open.”

  Several of them shifted in their seats; Dynas and Clegis scowled. These were strong words, and they resented hearing them from me. But my thoughts were with Ailsa, and I was almost out of patience.

  “But, my lady,” Clegis cried at last, “we cannot sit here and do nothing while the traitor approaches!”

  “Certainly we will not,” I said calmly. “We will do what we can. Sir Clegis, you are the finest archer in the High King’s army. Pick thirty men—we can spare no more—and train them to hit their mark at a hundred paces. See that we have five times the arrows you would expect to need to kill four hundred men. I give you five days.” His jaw dropped. “Can this not be done?” I asked innocently.

  He colored. “It will be done, my lady Queen.”

  “Thank you, my lord. I am sure I may rely upon you. Dynas, I charge you with readying our defense against an attack of fire arrows. If it comes to confrontation, I don’t expect Constantine has the stomach for a siege. Bid the coopers get busy. We’ll need water vats and men to carry buckets. I can spare you five soldiers only, but you may organize a brigade from the pages and grooms and chamberlains. They will need drilling, of course. Take all the time you require. With so many gone from Camelot, they have little enough to do.”

  “I will do it!” Dynas cried eagerly. “I had not thought of fire arrows!”

  Ferron of course was in charge of the fortress defense, and Kay of the castle’s, but with these two young hotheads busy at other tasks, their own plans would run a smoother course, I thought. And I saw by the half-concealed amusement on their faces that they thought so, too.

  They were all talking about siege defenses when I left. I smiled to myself. They had formed a plan, and hardly a man there knew how they had done it. Ahhhh, my dear Arthur, I thought as I walked quickly back to Ailsa, how they all must be as putty in your hands!

  Three days later Constantine was discovered mired in the bogs at the southern reaches of the Lake of Avalon. How he had come there, no one knew. But everyone knows how easy it is to lose one’s way in a fog.

  For those three days, Ailsa was much the same, more sleeping than awake, unmoving, and saying nothing. I had hoped that, once she came out of her deep sleep and opened her eyes, she would come to herself again, but the physician told me not to expect it. When she was awake, she knew me. But although she listened to my voice and smiled a trifle when I sang to her, she could not respond, even with the lift of a finger. And when she slept, her breath rattled lightly in her chest. The physician frowned when he heard it, but said nothing beyond advising more salve.

  Day and night I sat at her side; Anna and I took our meals in her little chamber. I found solace recalling events long past when Ailsa had helped me through one scrape or another, and I knew by her eyes that Ailsa enjoyed it, too. Anna, bless her, listened to my reminiscing without a word of complaint, laughed when I laughed, and once or twice was moved to tears.

  “Oh, Anna!” I cried. “There never was such a guardian in all the world as Ailsa! She knows me better, even now, than I know myself. But for Ailsa, I should have betrayed—I should have yielded—always she held up before my eyes the honor of Gwynedd, the honor of Arthur, the honor of Britain, and bade me do what I knew was right! Ah, Ailsa, my mother in life, without you I should not now be Queen!”

  I chanced to look down and found her awake and looking at me, thin tracks of tears sliding sideways down her cheeks. I fell to my knees and kissed her hands. “You know it’s true, my darling Ailsa, don’t you? You and Arthur, between you, have kept me on the straight path. Without you, I should long ago have yielded to temptation and betrayed the very things I hold most dear.”

  Half her mouth moved in a smile; her lips began to work. But as I bent down to listen, a knock came at the door, and Ferron burst in to tell me that Constantine was on his way again and fast approaching the Camel river.

  “Come out of your fastness, my lady, I beg of you! The Council needs you!”

  “Ferron, Ferron, I cannot come—”

  Behind him came Kay’s voice, stern and sad. “You must choose, Guinevere, between Ailsa and Britain. Remember Arthur once made such a choice.”

  “Oh, God!” I cried, pressing my hands against my face. “Surely that choice will not be asked of me!”

  “But it is,” Ferron pressed. “Clegis has roused Villers and Dynas and even Gryfflet almost to frenzy. They will not listen to a word we say—against orders, Sir Villers is rousing the army, even as we stand here!”

  “Then give him an order he can obey!” I cried, my eyes on Ailsa’s withered face. “Bid him take twenty men and cross the river. Set fire to the land on the other side, six leagues either way. We’ve had no rain for weeks and the land is mostly brush and meadow grasses. Let it burn toward Constantine; let him see a wall of flame. It will take him a day to get around it. A whole day of precious time.”

  For a long moment the men stood silent. Then Ferron grinned and bowed. “My lady Queen.”

  A hot afternoon, stuffy and still. Anna wiped my brow with a cool cloth, as I wiped Ailsa’s. The sun beat down upon the castle walls and warmed the stones that encased us. Somewhere, I hoped, the flames were still burning around Constantine; in that little chamber we were roasting alive.

  Ailsa was whispering, but it was mostly nonsense. She roamed a world where past and present mingled, and I could not follow half she said. Her breath came harder, no matter what we did to ease her, but she did not seem to know it. Arthur, Uther, my father Leodegrance, Alyse and Pellinore and a hundred others marched through her thoughts in a confused parade; she did not hear me when I spoke to her or listen when I sang.

  Through the window we could see dark clouds building in the distance, slowly swelling and creeping toward us. Rain might bring us sweet relief, but it also signaled danger. It would put out the fires that had, for two days, kept Constantine at bay.

  “Those men are fools!” Anna grumbled in my ear. “Sir Dynas is speaking treason! I overheard him with Sir Clegis when I went to fetch the water. He does not intend to obey you, my lady, even if you command him to his face. He says since women are not warriors, they cannot lead men!”

  “Hush, Anna. I know what they are saying. It’s even possible that it is true.”

  “But, my lady!”

  “I should be with them. I know that; but I cannot go. I am not Arthur. Listen to her, my dear, sweet Ailsa. She is not in her right mind. I am so afraid, Anna—once, Arthur put his grief behind him, for Britain’s sake. But I—I cannot seem to let go of mine.”

  When I closed my eyes I still saw Arthur, hands clasped in prayer, a shadow of himself, consumed with grief for Merlin’s passing, consumed with the fear he had buried him alive in the stony ground. It was the Sword that had roused him and brought him to his senses; the great Sword, a gift of the god, which protected Britain from her enemies. But the Sword was not here now. He had taken it with him.

  That night the skies opened. I lay on the pallet at the side of Ailsa’s bed, listening to the wheeze and shudder of her breath. A silent seed of fear took root inside my heart and set me shaking. This could not happen, not now, not after so much. It was nearly summer; the sweet warmth o
f the afternoons and the sun on her face would bring her back to health, if I could move her outdoors! But moving her the physician flatly forbade. He said she would not survive it, and that was easy enough to believe, seeing what little nourishment she took. We were doing all that we could—what more could we do?

  All that dark day her breath rattled loudly. We lit a coal fire in the grate and sprinkled herb water on it to steam the air and give her an easier breath. Anna brought me news that the Camel was in full flood, raging and impossible to ford. She crossed herself quickly and smiled.

  Ailsa woke at dusk and looked at me beseechingly; her lips moved, but no sound came out; she was in need, and I did not know what she wanted! Anna and I brought her everything we could think of: blankets, bricks, tea, broth, water, wine, salve, soap, furs, and even ribbons. Then my glance happened to fall on the kerchief on the floor where we had collected all the charms and jewels the physician had taken off her.

  “Her amulet!” I cried, lifting the soft, leather pouch full of lucky talismans. Something moved behind her eyes. I placed the amulet in her hand, and her spirit charms, too, and her prayer beads; her fingers, so long immobile, closed around them; her eyes fluttered shut, and she slept. I did not know whether to weep with joy that she could command her fingers or weep with sorrow at what her request betokened, but I wept.

  Toward dawn I was awakened by a harsh, grating sound. I sat up; in the dimness I saw the glint of Ailsa’s eyes. Her mouth was open; the horrible sound came from her throat!