When Lynet let go for a second to wipe her nose with her sleeve I grabbed a rag and squatted to dab Elaine’s brow. I could do that much.
Elaine’s body convulsed. She moaned and pushed again, flailing her arms. I reached out in time for her to grab my arm. She squeezed my wrist so hard the blood couldn’t travel to my hand. She had such a grip on me I had no choice but to stay. I wouldn’t have left her.
“Give her the rag to bite on,” said Beatha.
I did, and Elaine bit hard, arching her back.
“Once more now, my girl!” said Beatha.
From deep inside Elaine came a groan so full and determined it sounded like she channeled it from the ground. “Nnnggghhaaaahh!” The rag fell from her lips to the floor. Beatha reached forth her slime-covered arms. A pearly white bulb of baby’s head appeared between Elaine’s legs.
“Here’s the little one, oh!” Beatha’s small hands took gentle hold of the little head.
Elaine squeezed my wrist harder and bore down. Heulwen supported from behind, peeking around Elaine’s head. All of us held our breath to witness a life’s beginning in its mess and odor and pain. Like a velvet curtain, Elaine’s womb opened. Small shoulders emerged, slick with watery blood, and the baby slipped onto the soaking blankets.
Elaine released me and collapsed onto Heulwen, who fell onto the pillows. Elaine’s eyes closed but her hands reached out and found Lynet on one side and Heulwen on the other. She grasped their clothing, hung on and gulped for air. Lynet began to weep. My hand tingled with the return of blood.
“It’s a boy.” Beatha sounded more surprised than pleased, and I remembered she’d predicted a girl. She placed the babe on his mother’s bulbous belly, his flesh-gray umbilical cord intact. Elaine made no move to hold him, but Guin instinctively reached to balance him beneath his mother’s breast. For a few seconds the only sound was Elaine’s gasping, while Beatha cleaned the boy’s nose and eyes. Guin gazed at him, her chest heaving, her lips pressed hard together.
Beatha lifted the babe and gave his behind a solid smack. The child himself announced to the dell that Lancelot’s baby was born.
“Thanks be to the gods,” Heulwen whispered. Nestled in Heulwen’s arms, Elaine let her hands flutter, feeling for something. Guinevere lifted the baby to her, and she cradled him at her breast to nurse.
I tried not to cry, blinking fast and sniffing, I turned my face upward to prevent the tears from falling. But my eyes filled and tears fell, running down my cheeks until I forgot myself.
-----
“Your birthing spell is like none I’ve witnessed before, mistress,” said Heulwen.
“Truly,” said Lynet.
We sat on the threshold of the birthing hut, watching the dawn turn pink above the trees. Heulwen had doomed one of the chickens that wandered the dell, and we huddled by the fire to eat it. With Beatha as sentinel, Elaine slept inside, her baby in her arms.
“The Saxon spell’s the only one I know,” I said. “But please, remember King Arthur said ‘no magic.’”
“Your secret’s safe,” said Lynet.
“Mmhmm.” Heulwen tossed a bone into the fire. “Saved her life.”
“And Lancelot’s baby,” said Lynet.
Guinevere gnawed at a bone and said nothing. But she smiled.
-----
“I’m afraid not.” Myrddin put down the clay battery with force, rocking the table.
“Uh-oh.”
“What is uh, oh?”
“I kind of promised someone.” Morning trickled into the dell from above the treetops. Across the garden, the women snoozed in the birthing hut.
“To whom did you promise a pregnancy potion?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
He frowned at me over his nose. If he’d had reading glasses they would have perched there, enhancing his scowl.
“You must be careful, Casey. It is perilous to promise what you cannot deliver.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
It was impossible to avoid being jostled in the tiny church. It wasn’t so easy to breathe, either. Soldiers lined the walls and filled the tiny apses of the same building on which I’d seen workers completing the thatch a few days before, a building so new that when one did manage to breathe one smelled the cow dung used to mix the plaster. Ladies and farmers squeezed together on the benches. Everyone who lived at Cadebir must have been there, Christian or no; how often does one witness the christening of the first-born male child of Lancelot du Lac?
Lynet and I found seats at the back where the scarcity of oxygen was relieved by the occasional opening and closing of the wooden door. A tiny window at the front, high above the altar and barely big enough for a bird to perch in, allowed in a bit of sunlight, if not air.
I stretched my neck to peek over rows of hatless heads. Lancelot was easy to spot, glad-handing through the congratulators and glancing about to see who was seeing him. Elaine sat placidly in the front row beside Guinevere. King Arthur was seated on his wife’s other side, his arm draped across her shoulder like a comfortable scarf, his unreadable back to the crowd.
The door opened behind us. Several bodies pressed against the walls to allow passage for a ceremonial procession consisting of Caius, lugging an iron bucket in his arms, and the droopy-eyed priest, who pressed a vellum scroll to his lips. Caius bent his long legs to keep from jostling the water but he failed, sloshing and splashing himself with every step. The priest made smooth progress behind him, his pious eyes lifted to the ceiling.
Cai placed the bucket on the simple altar before the congregation, receiving a final splash to his chin. He stood aside and bowed his proud head. The priest faced the room and looked us over, waiting for all stirrings to subside. Finding us worthy at last, he unrolled the scroll and cleared his throat. The collective body leaned forward. Soldiers stood on tiptoe. Lynet breathed in but not out. The people of Cadebir were not often read to.
“Hodie congregamus nos ut filium Lancelot du Lac, dux Belgae, inungere...”
Lynet let out the air she’d been holding. “This must be the holy part,” she whispered.
“I wouldn’t know.”
The cleric droned on. His congregants relaxed into whispers and fidgets. After a while the new parents stepped to the altar. Lancelot’s posture radiated pride. Elaine cooed to the infant as she reluctantly handed him over to the priest, who dangled the babe over the bucket. “In nomine patris, filii et spiritus sancti...”
I thought it a crime to dunk the poor baby with so little air in the room already, and the underwater interval seemed perilously long. When the priest finally raised the dripping child, the boy wailed his indignant protest. Everyone laughed, perhaps in relief, and someone said that, judging by the cry, Lancelot’s offspring was as powerful as he was.
When the laughter died down, the priest spoke in words we all understood. “In the name of Jesus our Saviour, I christen thee Galahad.”
King Arthur’s back stiffened.
One little fact about Galahad, the purest and most powerful knight, the one who achieved the holy grail, had slipped my mind. He was the son of Lancelot.
The king dropped his arm from the queen’s shoulder and turned to search the crowd. Guinevere looked up at him but by then he’d forgotten her and found me. He shook his head in joyful amazement. I wondered why. Then I remembered.
I had predicted Galahad.
-----
“My lady wizard astonishes me!”
Outside the church in the blessed open air, King Arthur threw his arms around me. His enthusiastic embrace surprised me and even hurt a little. I rested my face against his chest for a second, letting my blush pass, engulfed in his smell of burnt oats and wood smoke. I hadn’t felt so approved by a man since my father was alive.
But pleasing my father was easy. “That’s my girl,” he’d say, and he’d be right. Pleasing Arthur was unexpected, “astonishing.” Pleasing him thrilled me with a blood-rush like a first kiss. And Arthur’s smell was not my father’s smell
. His arms were not my father’s arms.
With one arm around me and the other around his queen, King Arthur gabbed with his friends like a tipsy barfly, while a crowd formed on the dusty path like it does after a wedding.
Caius, his shirt finally dry, ducked out under the church doorway with his elegant, gray-haired wife. Their arrival built anticipation for Lancelot’s entrance, which, when at last it happened, the crowd greeted with applause. Lancelot accepted his accolades with a deep bow, and allowed his wife to fade into his background as though she’d had little to do with the work of bearing the child she held in her arms.
King Arthur let go of me to be the first to grasp Lancelot’s hand. “Lancelot! Have you heard the prophecy?”
“Prophecy?”
“Mistress Casey prophesied the name of your son.”
Lancelot squinted, his spotlight dimmed.
Elaine gazed up at her husband. “But even I didn’t know,” she said.
“Galahad is to become a great warrior.” The king made certain to be heard above the crowd. “That’s what you said, is it not, mistress?”
“Something like that.” I regretted having mentioned it.
“I’m amazed,” said Medraut. “You are shield as well as prophet.” I detected sarcasm, but King Arthur didn’t seem to notice.
“Casey saved Elaine’s life too, Your Grace,” said Lynet. “And Galahad’s.”
“How so?” asked the king.
“She did it with—”
Lynet stopped herself and I held my breath, trying not to glare at her.
“—her womanly knowledge.” She hooked her arm in Gareth’s.
“Wizard and midwife,” said the king, apparently not caring to know the details of childbirth. “Are you a physician, too?”
“Not really, Your Grace.”
Lancelot tried to smile but his face pinched. “I am at a loss as to how to show my gratitude, Mistress Casey.”
“There’s no need. I was happy to.”
King Arthur hugged me to his side again, making me trip over his feet in the dust. “Mistress Casey, I treasure you more each day.”
“I’m glad, Your Grace.”
“So great a wizard must call me ‘Sire,’ as my closest friends do.”
I felt a rush of joy, like someone had poured a bucket of it over me. I could only bow my head to hide my blush. Lancelot called him “Sire.” Bedwyr, Sagramore, his son Medraut—even Myrddin called him “Sire.” They all did, in a way acknowledging him as “father.” I wanted that, too. Would he someday allow me to call him by his name? Even in my private thoughts I’d never dared think of him as “Arthur.”
Guin reached across her husband to take my hand.
“Are you three not a pretty picture?” said Lancelot. “Felicitations, Mistress Casey, on your promotion to ‘close friend of the king.’“
“Don’t be jealous, Lance,” said Arthur. “There’s room in my heart for an infinite number of friends. Loyalty is all I require.” He smiled at his disloyal friend and turned to me. “Casey, I’m filled with hope. How do you feel?”
“I feel fine, Sire,” I said, inhaling the thin air of the inner circle.
“Good! Sagramore, prepare the saddles. Tomorrow we ride. We have Saxons to kill.”
TWENTY-NINE
Smoke rose from the smithy behind the barn. I hunched my shoulders against the pre-dawn cold, seated astride Lucy and bundled in Sagramore’s cloak.
Myrddin’s small, gilded knife, plus the largest dagger I could manage, couldn’t protect me in battle against experienced soldiers twice my size. Bedwyr hadn’t issued me a sword because I couldn’t lift one. Magic was the only thing that could save me, and where was I going to find that?
King Arthur cantered up to me on his chocolate-brown stallion, Llamrai, the one horse at Cadebir who came close to Lucy in size. “What do you think?” he asked, stroking Llamrai’s new saddle.
“Very nice.” Sagramore and his men had made a fine copy of Lucy’s tack. The wooden stirrups were not as fancy but every bit as serviceable as Lucy’s metal ones.
“You see, we have more.” The king opened his arms to direct my gaze to the barn. Horses stamped and snorted outside its doors, their nostrils steaming in the early morning cold. I watched Sagramore cinch a new saddle onto Bedwyr’s muscular pony. Gareth and Agravain were already aboard their horses amid the group of soldiers by the pasture fence.
By the barracks, half a dozen of Lancelot’s men mounted up. Their steeds were outfitted with the usual small blankets, in apparent defiance of this new way of riding. Either that or Lancelot was low on Sagramore’s priority list.
With darkness still upon us, Bedwyr’s shout came. “The carts are ready!”
The king’s excitement was evident in the flaring of his nostrils. “You’re my protector,” he said. “You ride with me.”
Good, because I liked him. Bad, because I couldn’t even protect myself.
-----
Before we felt the heat of the rising sun we turned north, leaving the main road for a lesser path across the plains. We also left behind the tent city south of the road, and the hundreds of soldiers there.
“Why don’t we take the army, Sire?” I asked. No matter how strong our men were, no matter how fierce they looked in torch light or how excited they were to kill Saxons, fifteen of them was insufficient for my taste.
“That is not my plan.” King Arthur threw his shoulders back and breathed the morning air through his nostrils.
“What is your plan, Sire? If I may ask.”
“You must, for you are to protect me.” He glanced over his shoulder, checking. The others were several horse-lengths behind us. “My plan is stealth, surprise and destruction. Keep it to yourself. The spy may be among us.”
“Sounds good.” It sounded vague.
“The Saxons we seek are mere stragglers, left behind from the incursion we were fighting when you appeared. If I’m correct, they’re caught between Poste Perdu and Beran Byrig and cannot return across our border to their people. They’re likely hiding in the woods north of the Giant’s Ring, not far from where we left them, hunting for food and robbing travelers on the road.”
“Why don’t the troops at Beran Byrig take care of them?”
He smiled as though I were the simplest child. “Because revenge is mine.”
“But you already killed the Saxon who tried to kill you.”
“You may recall I killed two. You killed a third. But they shall all die, every one.” The king shook loose his hair. “The world will know what happens to those who breach my borders and seek to murder me.”
The thought that I’d killed a man made my stomach sick. What grief had that meant to his intimates? What, if anything, had it done to the future? I preferred to think I’d accidentally run into a Saxon and accidentally forced him onto the king’s sword. I patted Lucy’s neck and kept silent.
The Tor of Ynys Witrin glowed pink in the west, sponging up the sunlight. Maybe the life of a priestess would be more suitable for me than the life of a wizard. I lacked faith in gods and goddesses, though I had a better chance of finding that than I did of finding magical powers. I was beginning to think I needed both.
-----
Our route took us straight north, leading west of where I’d originally landed instead of directly to the spot. To maintain secrecy we avoided roads and towns, using paths that were all but overgrown. At times we created our own path, single file, our shoes brushing the high grass. Late in the day we entered untraveled woods so thick our legs scraped moss off the trees as we picked our way through.
My movie riding experience had consisted of short takes for the camera. Never before had I been on horseback long enough for the ache in my behind to surpass merely uncomfortable and become downright painful. I tried leaning forward to take the weight off my posterior, but there was nothing else to sit on but my own derriere.
To make things worse, Lancelot and his menacing cousin rode near me all day. I
t was to be expected, as Lancelot was Arthur’s close confederate. Although Lynet’s announcement that I’d saved Elaine and Galahad had delighted King Arthur, it had served to make Lancelot like me less, and he wasn’t much enamored of me to begin with. When Arthur’s attention was elsewhere, Lyonel found opportunities to casually sideswipe Lucy with his horse, or to steer around and cut me off in front. He even tried “accidentally” reining right up to Lucy’s hindquarters. Any other mount would have thrown me, but being a rental horse, Lucy was accustomed to trail riding and comfortable with other horses nudging at her personal parts.
Lancelot found ways not to notice. He occupied himself in conversation with King Arthur. He rode behind to check on his men. He examined the trees. I wondered if he’d put Lyonel up to it, but I couldn’t know.
We found no clearing, nor did we need one. A stream was sufficient, with tender shoots growing alongside for the horses to munch on. At midday we came to a place in the forest where the trees stood straight and sparse enough to ride two and three abreast, though there was no path. When Bedwyr called a halt to eat I was overjoyed, though my thighs were so stiff I embarrassed myself with a clumsy dismount.
I found a place far from Lyonel and Lancelot where I could sit in peace and eat my hard, dry bread and dry, hard meat.
“Sit over here, Lyonel!” called a soldier.
“If I wanted to hear from an ass, I would fart.” This got Lyonel a big laugh. “He thinks he’s Caius, keeping everyone organized.”
“You mean Gassius Assius?” Gareth’s response got an even bigger laugh, which Lyonel didn’t seem to mind.
They continued roasting Cai with fart jokes, most of which I’d heard in Hollywood if not junior high. I moved off to find a private place to pee. “Don’t leave without me,” I told Bedwyr, tapping his shoulder as I slipped into the trees. He winked a crinkly-cornered eye at me.
Camelot & Vine Page 16