I smiled at Bors, draining my cup, and when I looked back across the table Guinevere was talking to old Ector while Arthur was laughing about something with Cai and Gawain. The hall flooded with noise once again and slaves moved through the smoky fug bearing more platters of roasted meats and jugs of rich red wine. Melwas took hold of a pretty slave girl’s wrist and pulled her down onto his lap, and no one seemed to think he was presuming too much for one sitting at Arthur’s table for the first time. I did not mind, either. Better that Melwas played the young Achilles and revelled in the strength of his sword arm than stirred things with his flapping tongue.
The drink flowed and men boasted, the bluster of warriors crowding my ears, shifting hearth smoke around the new pale beams above. I watched Arthur laughing and I saw him place his hand on Guinevere’s. Saw her curl a thumb over his knuckles, her face still turned to Ector, and told myself that no harm had been done. And perhaps I owed Merlin for that.
But when I ran my eyes over the rest of the room and the faces of those whom Arthur held closest and dearest, I saw that Mordred was watching me.
22
A Gift
BORS GOT HIS wish and next morning I could have been fooled into thinking that Aebbe, brother of Aella, had struck my skull a blow with that great axe of his after all. So blurry was the cold, grey world to my eyes and so sour my belly that all I could think about when a boy roused me from sleep was how Arthur managed to spring up each morning before cock’s crow, his eyes bright even if his beard and hair were wild and in need of water and a comb, no matter how much wine or ale he had seen off the night before.
‘Lord Arthur wants to see you,’ the boy said, his eyes round as coins. I knew my reputation had spread on the wings of our victory at Venta Belgarum. I’d even heard that bards sang of my killing of Aebbe, their accounts doubtless embroidered like a rich lady’s kirtle. No doubt Aebbe was eight feet tall in their songs and I had slain a score of men to reach him. Still, I had killed my share and the young messenger sent to drag me from my bed regarded me as one might a wolf with a bloody snout.
‘He is with Llamrei,’ the boy said. I swear he had not taken a breath since coming to the foot of my bed.
I was halfway across the plateau, drinking the cold air like clean water, by the time I remembered what Melwas had said to Arthur the previous night and my stomach sank with the recollection. I recalled the way Arthur had looked at me. Had he seen Guinevere and me look at each other when Melwas revealed our shared past? Clearly Arthur had not known, meaning Guinevere must not have told him of her time on Karrek. Why had she kept it from him? But of course I knew why.
I pulled my cloak tight round my neck against a sudden thin wind which stabbed from the north and I winced, feeling water seep through my leather boots. It had rained in the night and the puddles on Camelot’s heights had not yet drained.
And I thought of Mordred, who had been staring at me when all the others had fallen back to the feast. Had he spoken to Melwas?
A horse whinnied and I blinked watery eyes. There were only a few souls up and about their business in the chill dawn. One of them was Arthur, whom I saw when I rounded the corner of his stables, his cheek against Llamrei’s as he gently wiped around her eyes with a soft cloth. The mare nickered, enjoying the attention, and Arthur took up a brush and proceeded to work it through Llamrei’s tail.
‘Sleep well?’ he asked, without looking up from his work. Llamrei gleamed even on that dull day, so that I knew Arthur had been a while grooming her.
‘Well enough, until I was woken,’ I said, rubbing at a crick in my neck. I sensed something and looked round, and to my horror saw that Guinevere was there too.
‘Good morning, Lancelot,’ she said, looking from me to Arthur, her eyes as full of questions as I had been on the walk from my hut to my lord and lady’s hall. She was swathed in a long ermine cloak as white as her skin, and her hair tumbled in all its raven glory and my heart ached in my chest at the sight of her.
‘Good morning, my lady,’ I managed.
‘You want to ride, Lancelot?’ Arthur said. I saw his spear leaning against the stable wall. ‘The three of us,’ he said, then looked up at the sullen clouds which scudded southward. ‘I don’t think it will rain again.’
‘You want to hunt now?’ I asked, though I knew that he liked to ride out early, before others were awake. It had saved his life that dawn at Tintagel when his cousin Constantine had tried to carve himself a kingdom with treachery and steel.
‘Why not?’ Arthur said, giving Llamrei’s hip a gentle pat. ‘There’s a bite in the air but the thrill of spying some worthy prey will warm the blood.’ His spear had a crosspiece below the blade to stop an enraged boar driving its pierced body further down the shaft to attack its killer before dying. ‘It’s the best practice for killing Saxons,’ he said. ‘Or we could ride east to Merlin’s fence. See if Aella’s men have dared to pull it down, or if they’ve had their own wizards counter Merlin’s magic in some way.’ He looked up at Guinevere as he pulled Llamrei’s long tail hairs from the brush. ‘Guinevere doesn’t mind the cold, do you, dear? Though I wonder if Merlin’s rotting heads might be a bit much so early in the day.’
Guinevere pulled the ermine cloak a little tighter round her shoulders and lifted her eyes to me as Arthur began brushing Llamrei’s mane.
‘Perhaps you know better than I, Lancelot?’ Arthur suggested.
‘Know what?’ I asked, looking from Guinevere to Arthur. I knew what he was getting at, even with my head pounding and my belly sour with last night’s wine.
‘You must know Guinevere well. If memory serves, the island of Karrek Loos yn Koos is not much bigger than this hill.’ He pulled the stiff bristles through a knot and Llamrei tossed her head in complaint. ‘Shhh, there, girl. Nearly done,’ he soothed.
‘The boys and girls were kept apart for the most,’ I said, not looking at Guinevere in case Arthur could see my heart through my eyes. Though for all I knew, Guinevere had confessed to Arthur in the night and now I was being tested. ‘We spent the days learning our weapons,’ I said. I looked at Guinevere then, needing her to deny our friendship or admit it, needing her to say something at least, so that I would know down which path we rode.
‘We were friends once, Lancelot and I,’ she said. ‘When my father’s ship brought me to the island, it struck the rocks and broke apart.’
The brush went still in Arthur’s hand and he frowned at Guinevere, as if he could not understand why she had never told him this before.
‘My nurse drowned along with everyone aboard. I would have drowned too but Lancelot swam out.’ Her eyes were on mine now and I wanted to look away, for Arthur’s sake, yet I could not. ‘I still remember how calm it was below the surface. Away from the storm. But Lancelot found me. He was just a boy.’
‘I did what anyone would do, lord,’ I said. ‘I happened to be on the cliff and saw the ship go down.’ The memory of that day was still sharp in my mind.
‘So, we both owe you our lives,’ Arthur said, and in that moment he seemed to be both grateful and resentful of the fact. He swept the brush through the white mane though it was already smooth as silk. ‘I understand why you did not wish to tell me that Lord Leodegan sent you to live on Karrek,’ he told Guinevere. ‘My mother told me long ago why some girls are sent to Lady Nimue. To learn the herb lore and other … secret arts. Though I am surprised Leodegan encouraged you in that regard. He is a Christian now, is he not?’
Guinevere nodded. ‘You know that he is,’ she said. ‘He showed you the temple ruins by the stream where he planned to build a church. He tried to give you one of his priests as part of my dowry.’
Arthur saw my surprise at that and smiled.
‘I told Leodegan that we have enough gods already without needing another, but that if his priest could beat Gawain in single combat then I would consider his god worth having on my side,’ he said, putting a plain quilted cloth on Llamrei’s back and smoothing out the creases.
‘The priest and Leodegan both declined the challenge.’
‘My father’s hall draws Christians like a dog draws fleas,’ Guinevere said. ‘I was an embarrassment to him. That is why he sent me to the Lady.’
‘No, Guinevere,’ Arthur said. His face was stern again. He put the brush down on the table which stood by the stable wall and hefted up his saddle, throwing it over his mare’s back. ‘He gave you to the Lady’s keeping because he knew that otherwise some fat old king would come courting with his silver and gold and take you away from him for ever.’
A smile touched Guinevere’s lips then. ‘So, he was saving me for you?’ she asked Arthur. ‘Not a king but a prince. A prince who spends all his silver and gold on big horses and soldiers.’ She reached out and ran a finger over the crosspiece on Arthur’s big boar spear. ‘Who is more fond of iron than silver and gold,’ she said. ‘A man who spends more time at war than in his hall with his new wife?’
‘At least I am not fat,’ Arthur said. ‘And not too old. Not yet,’ he added, glancing at me as though he had expected me to challenge his point. He was, after all, more than ten years older than I. Not that he looked it then.
We stood there in silence, Guinevere and I watching Arthur adjust the girth strap. Nearby, a moorhen waded in a puddle, stabbing down now and then, its red beak showing like a drop of blood against its black plumage in the bleak dawn light.
I knew that Arthur wanted me to put his mind at ease. I was his friend, closer to him perhaps even than Gawain, and all he wanted was for me to make a good explanation so that we could enjoy a dawn ride together while Camelot dreamed still.
And yet what could I say? To talk would be to lie, for I could not tell Arthur all of it. For Guinevere’s sake and Arthur’s sake and my own sake too, I could not.
‘What I cannot grasp is why neither of you told me that you knew the other,’ Arthur said, securing the breast and breaching straps to keep the saddle firmly in place. ‘Mordred has it from your friend Melwas that you were … close.’
I might have known Mordred would see a potential ally in Melwas, and that Melwas, the dust of the journey still on his cloak, would waste no time in causing trouble for me.
‘And you, Lancelot,’ Arthur went on, ‘that day we dug the eastern ramparts. I told you of Guinevere. I spoke of Lord Leodegan if I recall. You must have known then but you said nothing. Why?’ He stopped his work now and faced me, a look of confusion weighing on his handsome face.
I had to tell him. Otherwise it might stay like a blade in the flesh and go bad. He was my friend.
‘When I left, I made Lancelot promise never to tell anyone that I had lived on the island,’ Guinevere said before I could speak.
Arthur swung round to her. ‘Why?’ he asked.
‘I have the gift, husband,’ Guinevere said. ‘I can make my soul leave my body. Sometimes.’
Arthur glanced at me, his eyes questioning if I had known that, too. He knew the answer and looked back to Guinevere.
‘The ability is gods-given,’ Guinevere said. ‘So Merlin says. And Lady Nimue.’ She tilted her head slightly and touched her neck and when she took her hand away there were red lines on the white skin. ‘I think my father knew that too, for all his new god. And rather than let the Christians beat the talent out of me, for they think it a curse, he sent me to the Lady, knowing that she would help me. She would teach me.’
Above the hill to the south a murder of rooks jostled above their roosts, in the distance looking like so many specks of wind-blown ash. Now and then their raucous cries carried to us on a chill gust and for a while Arthur watched those birds, though really he was considering all that he had heard.
Guinevere had lied. Not about the reasons for Lord Leodegan sending her to live on the island – I knew that to be true – but about her having made me swear to tell no one. I remembered the night she left Karrek as if it were days ago, not years. Edern and Benesek had rowed her to The Edge to meet her father, and I had railed so that Madern and Melwas had to hold me to stop me doing something stupid. In the end and to my shame, I had watched on my knees that currach bear Guinevere across the flame-glossed water, tears in my eyes as the darkness swallowed her.
She had lied to Arthur. Yet I did not gainsay her. Perhaps there was no reason to. The past is water running in a stream. It is already long gone and you can never bring it back.
‘You feared I would think the worst,’ Arthur said, looking from Guinevere to me. He reached out and took Guinevere’s hands in his own. ‘That I would see visions of sweet young love and grow jealous,’ he said, a childlike smile breaking his golden beard.
‘Husband, you are the light and sword of Britain and can be jealous of no man,’ she said.
I wondered if that crossbar on Arthur’s spear would stop me running myself through with it.
‘Go for your ride,’ Guinevere said, nodding at us both. ‘Go and spear some poor creature or admire a few hundred rotting heads or whatever it is that will soothe your wine-addled heads. I have work to do here.’ With that she stood on her toes and kissed Arthur, and when she pulled away he looked embarrassed but happy.
‘I’ll fetch Tormaigh,’ I said, turning away from them.
And with the low clouds threatening rain on that bleak winter dawn, Arthur and I rode to see Merlin’s fence.
Three days after Arthur and I rode out to Merlin’s fence of the dead, I saw Guinevere again. It was a bright winter day of blue sky and crisp air and traders from all over Dumnonia and beyond had come to Camelot. They set up their stalls outside the gatehouse at the fort’s south-western corner, folk selling jewellery and leather goods: belts, horse tack, purses, scabbards, shoes. There were skins spread upon the ground covered in wooden cups and platters, pottery tableware, beeswax candles, jars of honey and joints of smoked meat. There were baskets of spun wool dyed red or yellow, coils of rope, racks of fleeces and whetstones and good ash shafts for spears and axes and planed limewood boards to make shields.
It was uncommon to see so many traders set up thus in the heart of winter, but news of our victory over Aella’s Saxons had spread through all of Britain, let alone Dumnonia, so perhaps it was not surprising that people saw an opportunity. They knew that the spearmen of Camelot were rich in silver and coin, amber and iron, and all the war booty they had taken in the fight for Caer Gwinntguic, and there were a thousand souls living in and around Camelot by then.
I’d heard that a hunter had brought a cartload of pelts and so Bors and I had gone down to buy something to keep us warm when the snows came. We each bought a bear skin, paying more than we should have, but it was worth it for the laughter.
‘You look like a Saxon,’ I told my cousin, who was a hulking brute in that thick fur, looking like a bear himself. I was not as broad, yet I still felt barbarous with that heavy black pelt round my shoulders. I had given Aebbe’s fur as a gift to Arthur, though it would have drowned him and I could not imagine him wearing it. Still, his own symbol, the one on his banners and our shields, being a bear, he had appreciated the gift.
‘We smell like Saxons too,’ Bors said, grinning as we walked along the stalls, getting wary looks, for it was not really cold enough that day for so much fur. At least the heads had been removed, and I thought I should be warm enough even were I to venture once more past the Wall of Antoninus, only next time on some white winter day when the air scalds the lungs with every breath.
We had stopped and I thought Bors was admiring a polished horn cup amongst an array of blowing horns, drinking horns and bone flutes, when I realized he was actually admiring the big-eyed young woman whose goods they were.
That was when I saw Guinevere.
She stood with a purveyor of herbs, her cupped hands full of some dried flowers which she held up to her nose, eyes closed as she breathed in the aroma. When she opened her eyes again she saw me.
‘I’ll give you a moment,’ I told Bors, though he didn’t seem to hear me, busy as he was persuading the girl with the big br
own eyes to stroke him, or rather his new bear skin.
‘Woundwort?’ I said, nodding at the dried flower heads, which Guinevere poured back into a linen bag.
She nodded. ‘That’s the Saxons’ name for it.’
‘Yarrow flower then,’ I said.
She looked at me askance. ‘So you were listening sometimes,’ she said.
I shrugged. ‘We all know it. Some call it soldier’s herb. I have seen men make a poultice with it and spread it on a wound. I’ve seen them chew the leaves to help a toothache.’
She lifted one of her dark eyebrows at me. ‘You could have just said you remembered some of what I taught you,’ she said. She was right, of course. But it irked me still that she had kissed Arthur so tenderly in front of me. ‘I am his wife, Lancelot,’ she said.
That came like a blow. I wondered if she was using her craft to read my thoughts. ‘It’s on your face,’ she said, and I knew it was.
‘Why did you go?’ I said. It was a childish question to ask after all those years, yet she did not chide me.
‘I had to go,’ she said. ‘I could not refuse my father. No more than could the Lady.’
I knew she was right, but no words, no simple explanation could throw off the shroud I had borne, far heavier than the thick bear skin around my shoulders, ever since I had watched her go to The Edge.
‘You will be queen,’ I said. It was a simple statement. Though of course what I meant was she would be Arthur’s queen.
‘Perhaps,’ she said.
She could stand there, two feet away, the spearmen and traders and women of Camelot flowing around us, and she could pretend that we were nothing more than old friends. Yet our eyes were in each other. Entangled. Entwined with memories and intimacies. And I ached for what might have been.
‘Does Arthur have a bad tooth?’ I asked, nodding at the bag in her hand.
‘He wouldn’t tell me if he did,’ she said.
‘I once saw him dance like a fiend even with a sword wound that had been sewn up that very morning,’ I said, touching my left hip at the point where Odgar, champion of Ebrauc, had cut Arthur. ‘He laughed and leapt like a salmon. Broke the stitches of course.’ The thought made me smile. I chose not to mention the dark-eyed girls with whom Arthur had been leaping and cavorting.
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