by Kris Owyn
Beside her, Rufus was busy in a conversation with Eleanor; as he talked, his hand kept creeping onto Adwen’s plate, reaching for a duck leg she had only nibbled at. Each time he got close enough, she smacked his hand, and he recoiled... and did it again. Neither gave any outward indication the drama was going on, which made it all the more absurd. Adwen took a sip, and smack. Rufus complimented Eleanor’s hair, and smack.
If Lancelot was bothered by it, he didn’t show it. His eyes were locked on Guinevere, a dark frown on his face, trying to understand something he had no hope of understanding, even if she’d told him more than she had. He was a naturally paranoid person, she knew, and this kind of utter reversal would nag at him until he got his answers... so she would have to figure out an answer to give him that would satisfy that itch.
Eleanor, across from him, was an easier matter. She was shooting terrified looks her way (between pleasantries with Rufus) and it occurred to Guinevere the last Eleanor had heard about things, Rinwell was in London and they were headed for disaster. Guinevere did her best to set Eleanor at ease, with smiles and knowing nods... but that only made Lancelot even more agitated. It was an impossible situation.
Merlin, between Eleanor and Arthur, was not eating. His plate was clear, his cup empty, and he was staring down at it like it was a book worth reading. Arthur kept nudging him with his elbow, to pull him into the conversation, but Merlin never budged. He looked like he wanted to escape, and soon.
Arthur touched her hand, smiled. “Are you alright?” he asked.
She tried to shake off her daze, but it was persistent. “I’m... yes, it’s just been...”
“Because I wanted to say,” he said, leaning closer. “I know we’ve had some difficulties lately, and maybe I have been a little too overprotective, but it’s not that I don’t trust you.” She swallowed, held her breath. “It’s the world I don’t trust. The... the things out there that can...” He winced at a memory, took a sip of his wine. “The tragedies that spring on you, out of nowhere.”
She nodded, blank-faced and tortured. “Sire, I—”
“Attention, attention, everyone!” shouted Rufus, and Arthur’s head turned on cue. Rufus stood, wobbly and still unclothed from the waist down, and held his cup aloft. “To new friends, and old friends, and also to Lady Adwen here, who remains a mystery to me.” His eyes shot open. “Aha! Yes! Royal prerogative! That’s it!”
He sat down with a loud crash, a massive grin on his face. “The secrets game!”
“Secrets... game...?” Eleanor said, on behalf of everyone.
“Aye, now it’s usually played in a dungeon with fire, but we can make do here. It’s very simple, very simple: you turn to your left...” He turned to his left, facing Adwen, who refused to acknowledge him at all. “And you ask the person to your left a question, which they must answer, truthfully, and in full.”
Lancelot scratched at his beard. “Sire, I don’t think—”
“Hush!” snapped Rufus. “Royal prerogative!”
Lancelot checked with Arthur, who was too amused to say no. Rufus nodded to his counterpart, leaned an elbow on the table and pointed a twirling finger at Adwen.
“Lady Adwen,” he said, like he was still trying to think of what to ask her, “when you marry...” She cast him a sideways glare. “...will there be cakes?”
“Yes,” said Adwen, simply.
“Of what variety?”
Adwen waved her hand like a princess. “All of them.”
Rufus raised an eyebrow quite high. “I see.” He turned away from her, nodded. “Then I shall attend. You are welcome.” He gave her a stern nod. “Now your turn. Go on.”
Adwen looked to her left, to Lancelot, who had the air about him of someone who really didn’t want to participate in party games.
“Captain Lancelot,” she said, eyes searching him up and down like a predator looking for the tastiest meal. “How did you get those scars?”
“Adwen!” Eleanor hissed, but Rufus waved her quiet.
“No question’s off limits!” he pronounced.
Lancelot looked pained to answer. “That’s a tricky one,” he said. “They’re all from different adventures. Maybe you should choose just one.”
Adwen was quick to oblige. She touched a hesitant finger to the long and gnarly slice along his throat. When their eyes met, she pulled away, tucked herself tight. Lancelot squinted, following a memory back in time.
“Let’s just say there’s a right way to cut a noose, and a wrong way.”
Everyone stopped, all together. Eleanor leaned forward, incredulous.
“You were hanged?”
“Briefly.”
“What for?” asked Adwen.
“I’d rather not say.”
“Justly or unjustly?” asked Arthur.
“I suppose that depends who you ask,” Lancelot said. “I myself was not fond of it.”
Rufus pounded his hand on the table until the cacophony died down. “Rules, rules, rules!” he shouted. “Only Lady Adwen may ask the questions. Punishable by death.”
The table quieted down as Adwen looked up at Lancelot again, this time in a new way.
“Were you scared?”
He smiled at her, without malice. “Only until it was done.”
This got a round of applause... from Rufus. He motioned across the table, to Eleanor, who was doing her best to be invisible, and failing badly. Lancelot let out a sad sigh, and gestured to her.
“Lady Eleanor. How did you first meet your soulmate, Lady Guinevere?”
Eleanor beamed an embarrassed smile at Guinevere, and laughed until the murmur of discussion around the table died down. “My mother had just died—”
Lancelot reached for her, to apologize. “Oh God, I’m sorry, I—”
“No, no, it’s been a long time, now. She died unexpectedly, and my father, he couldn’t... he wanted to...” She sighed. “He thought it best I grow up someplace calmer. So he sent me to Paris, in the care of his old friend, Lord Lyonesse.”
Guinevere smiled politely at this, bowed her head... though after what Ewen had just told her, she wondered how that story made any sense anymore. Cornwall, Eleanor’s father, had tried to force her family out of Camelot... and maybe he had, in a way. Why, then, turn around and send his daughter to the man he tried to shut out? Was that another service her father had performed, to pay off debts to his enemies? Was her entire friendship with Eleanor based on such a cruel premise?
“I remember,” Eleanor continued, “after days of traveling across roads and seas and other horrors, and I finally see someone my own age, a girl my own age, and do you know what she said to me?”
Guinevere grinned and said: “You’re awfully small for a maid.”
The table erupted into laughter, Eleanor and Guinevere most of all. It was such a hazy time in her life, but such a vivid memory, because in that moment, when tiny little Eleanor had given her a bemused smirk, she knew she had a friend for life. It was just about the only truly happy memory she had... everything else were incremental victories on the road to freedom. Or ruin.
“Now you, Eleanor,” said Rufus. “Ask the plank of wood something.”
Eleanor turned to Merlin, who refused to acknowledge her at all. She seemed stuck, trying to think of something to ask that might elicit a response. She looked around the room, as if someone might help her, but got nowhere. So instead, she went simple:
“First Minister,” she said, clear and proper. “What is your favourite invention?”
Merlin had an imperceptible frown flash across his face. He looked up, halfway, and said: “An invention of my own devising, or an invention devised by someone else?”
Eleanor smiled. “Well, yours, of course.”
He nodded, ever so slightly, then ventured: “A deciphering device.”
“And what... wh
at does that do?”
“It gives meaning to words,” he said, then shook his head like he’d made a mistake, and tried again: “It is not completed at this time, but when it is completed, it will give the meanings to words. It will be used to understand the words one might encounter in... in unfamiliar situations.”
Everyone around the table was nodding, trying to play along with Merlin’s ramblings; but not Arthur, and not Guinevere. They both knew, in that moment, what the odd First Minister was describing, and why it was important. Here was a man incapable of looking you in the eye, vehemently opposed to social interactions of any kind, who almost seemed a machine himself, sometimes... and he was trying to make a tool to help Arthur read. Not at someone’s request, and not because it was an obvious thing to do, but because his friend was in need, and he could help.
Arthur’s smile was teary. Guinevere’s wasn’t far off.
“Right, well, that made no sense,” said Rufus. “Lord Devicery, ask your question.”
Merlin looked back down at his empty plate. “No.”
“It’s the rules, boy,” warned Rufus. “Royal prerogative, and—”
“May I ask the question instead?” asked Adwen, and Rufus jolted to attention.
“Amendment of rules,” he pronounced, and bowed to give her the floor (and, in doing so, hit his head on the table).
Adwen looked to Arthur, eyes twinkling: “Is Excalibur heavy?”
He laughed. “Here, see for yourself...” He reached to the table behind him to get his sword. Lancelot was on his feet in protest.
“Sire, it’s not—”
“Oh, hush, Lancelot. I’m sure Lady Adwen can be trusted.”
He scooped up the sword, slid it out of its sheath, and walked around the table. He handed it to Adwen, who took it in two hands, eyes so wide they were like perfect discs, and lifted it; it was obviously heavy, but she managed to get it to shoulder-height, in stunned awe.
“It’s beautiful,” she whispered. Then, with a frown: “What’s this notch for?”
She turned the blade, and the table strained to see a little hole in the blade, near the tip, about the size of a finger.
“Another one of Pendragon’s mysteries,” said Arthur. “But whatever cuts the weight is fine by me.” More laughter, and he returned Excalibur to its sheath, and set it back on the table behind him once more. “So,” he said, “Lady Guinevere. I get to ask you a question, now.”
She did her best to smile politely, but she was terrified at what he might ask. Not that she was beyond lying, of course, but the act of lying drained her, sometimes. It made life heavier as she tried to navigate all falsehoods she’d spun over the years. And there were many.
“In a perfect world,” he said, grasping at the air like there was a complex idea floating next to him that he had to pluck and subdue. “In a perfect world, all things being equal, would you rather live in Paris again, or Camelot?”
“Camelot, or Lyonesse?”
He laughed, but it sounded like it hurt. “Your choice.”
What to say? Between Camelot and Lyonesse, there was no contest. But even Lyonesse felt alien to her these days; she was more at home in Paris, having lived there most of her life. But the odd thing was, whenever she thought about Paris lately, she had a sense of dread. Thanks to Gawain’s angling, she knew, but even still... in a perfect world without Gawain, would she really choose Paris? Or maybe London, with its scoundrels and criminals and mercenary hordes.
She sighed. “I’m not decided just yet, milord. It’s a close contest.”
He grinned, nodded happily. “Then I’ve still time to win you—” he seemed to catch on that word, added: “over. Win you over.”
The guests were stuck in awkward silence, because, as Guinevere knew, she and Arthur were looking far too much like a courting pair than was decent or even reasonable. He looked like he wanted to say more, to say something specific, and she—
No. She was not the subject of gossip, not the token in an exchange. She was not Bors’ poor daughter, traded between two forces who— not even if she was one of those forces, she— She was no man’s pawn. Where would she live? Where she damn well pleased. The whole conversation grated at her, digging deeper, the more she thought about it.
She was done with it. She felt a panic rising in her gut; she felt like she might scream, right there in the middle of dinner, as everyone smiled at her and laughed with her, at things she—
“King Rufus,” she said, turning to her left, and tearing the tension apart. “My question.”
“Make it count,” said Rufus in a vaguely sinister way.
Beside her, Arthur was looking on in adoration, and it made her sick. She wanted to ask him how much he’d hate the man who killed his father. How much he’d hate the woman who kept it secret. How close would he want them? How close could he stand? In the palace, at dinner, with guests, as friends?
He loved her and she hated him for it. She wanted to burn the place down. She wanted to make them all suffer along with her.
“How did your brother die?” she asked Rufus. The others recoiled, but she ignored them. “Your brother, Dolph. How did he die?”
Rufus stared at her, speechless. Lancelot was getting to his feet, ready to smooth over a diplomatic nightmare in the making. Arthur kept twitching his attention between her and Rufus, her and Rufus, trying to make sense of what he was seeing.
Finally, Rufus answered: “Murdered,” he said, toneless.
“By whom?” she asked, and Lancelot hissed a warning at her that she ignored.
“By me,” said Rufus, with a disinterested shrug.
“And why?” she said, and felt Arthur touch her arm, trying to pull her off this line of questioning. “Why kill your brother?”
“He tried to depose me,” said Rufus, remembering the events like he was recounting the ingredients to a pie he’d eaten some days before. “He said I was mad — which I was. Which I am. But he said I was a bad king, that I was betraying our ancestors, our Saxon heritage...” He sighed. “He raised an army against me, killed our sisters, our mother, our uncle. So I had to chase him, and bind him, and bring him home.”
Lancelot was glaring at her so fiercely, it almost had a weight to it. “Sire,” he said, “there’s no need to—”
“I had to kill him,” said Rufus, distant and calm. “I’d no choice, after that.”
“Could you have forgiven him?” Guinevere asked.
“He never wanted forgiveness,” said Rufus.
“But if he had—”
“Why? What did you hear?”
“Nothing, sire, nothing, but...” She couldn’t look up, couldn’t look at any of them anymore. “If he was sorry for what he’d done, could you have seen past it? Or would you carry that hate to your grave?”
Rufus thought. He thought and he thought and he struggled, and—
“Please excuse me,” said Arthur, and left the table. His guards rushed to his sides and escorted him away; he even left Excalibur on the table next to them, and never sent anyone back for it. After that, the conversation died, and they all went their separate ways.
It was just as well. Guinevere had things to do.
Thirty-six
By the time the carriages arrived, Lancelot’s men had already secured the area. Guards stood ready, every dozen paces from the worksite, down past a point carefully measured as double the range of a crossbow. Hands on hilts, eyes narrow, a bustling neighbourhood made timid by force of will, and threat of force.
Their fleet was tucked close to the houses on the north side of the street, close enough to create a workable buffer, but too near to allow a clear view in, from the outside. The occupants had been removed from their homes just after dawn, and they waited, now, on the south side of the street, in a neat line, like a greeting party for the King.
If Arthur kne
w any of this, he didn’t show it. He emerged from his carriage, hand held high in greeting, and called out to them: “Good morning! Lovely day today!” The evicted citizens bowed on cue, and Arthur turned his attention to other things. The royal party was only there for a short while: a ceremonial overseeing of the first shovelfuls, then whisked back to the castle.
That made for a very tight timeline for Guinevere. The second the carriages came to a halt, she dropped into the drying mud and checked that the coast was clear. Guards were fanning out, but they were far more concerned with Arthur’s safety than hers. She waited until they were fully distracted elsewhere, and leaned into the open door of the carriage.
“I won’t be long,” she said to Eleanor and Adwen, both wide-eyed with anxiety at her plan. “But if they do knock...”
“We won’t open,” said Eleanor, confidently.
“The sun’s too hot,” added Adwen. “We’d wilt.”
Guinevere smiled. “Excellent. And if there’s an emergency, if you have to leave...”
“Delay as long as possible,” said Eleanor, then reached out, took her friend’s hand. “But Guin, they said they won’t stay long. What if they pack up to go, and you’re not back? Wouldn’t you rather one of us come with you?”
It was something she’d considered, but had to dismiss. Ewen had two men inside the safehouse, watching the money... more than enough brawn to get it out to the wagons. But the space was apparently tight, so any extra bodies would only slow things down, and make it more likely a guard would take note and investigate. Also, she couldn’t shake the memory of Eleanor’s earlier gaffe, and was wary of including her on such an important matter. Friendship was important, but success was vital.
“I’ll be fine,” she said, and closed the carriage, as quietly as she could.
The doors to the evacuated buildings were nailed shut, but that was less of a concern for Guinevere, because her entry wasn’t a door, anyway. She sidled down closer to the first of the wagons, and paused, leaning against the wall like she was taking a rest. A guard took note of her, and she smiled at him, looked upward to indicate she was availing herself of the building’s shade for a spell. He had better things to do than babysit noblemen, anyway, so he continued his sweep of the area. Once he was out of sight, she ducked around the corner to the short alley-ish space between houses; just barely enough room to stand in, and home to a rancid puddle.