I had gathered scraps of news from Britain, from traders and King Syagrius himself, who sometimes received emissaries from Armorica, but I had not known how bad things were. All that Arthur had fought for, all that he had dreamed of for Britain, was crumbling.
‘You still hold Camelot?’ I asked, fearing that Arthur might have retreated back to Tintagel, having no choice but to cede the heart of Britain to the enemy.
‘Camelot is as you left it,’ Guinevere said. Nothing else is the same, her face said.
‘But Aella lives?’
She nodded. There was a golden torc at her neck. Enough gold to buy a hundred or more Frankish mercenaries. And she not a queen. But appearances were important to Arthur. I knew he could not show weakness, and yet he must be weak to have sent Guinevere across the sea.
‘Could he not have sent Gawain? Or Parcefal?’ I asked.
‘Would you have preferred that?’ she asked. I saw the challenge in her eyes.
‘No,’ I said, knowing I was behaving like a pigheaded fool, yet unable to stop myself.
She sipped her wine. ‘It’s his way of saying sorry,’ she said. ‘For sending you away.’
‘You say it as if he banished me,’ I said. ‘I came to make good his oaths.’
‘And it has taken you eight years?’ she asked. ‘Surely you have given this Roman king enough? He cannot ask more of you. Or of Arthur.’
‘Arthur owes him nothing now. I have given Syagrius a dozen victories.’
‘And still you did not come home,’ she said. That was an accusation and I could not ignore it.
‘What would you have me do?’ I asked her. ‘Should I have watched you together, day after day, year after year? Should I have honoured Arthur as my lord and friend, and honoured you as my lady, and found a wife for myself? Should I have pretended that I did not love you?’
She jerked her head back as though I had struck her, then shook her head, whether in disappointment or denial I could not know. Yet she had opened the old wound. Opened it just by being there in my tent in a dark forest in Gaul, where she was not supposed to be. I had left her far away. And years away. Now, I could smell her hair and skin, and yet if I had any courage at all, it was not enough to reach out my hand and touch her.
‘What do you want from me, Guinevere?’ I asked. ‘What have you ever wanted?’
She took the wine cup in both hands as though to draw comfort from it. Hands which I saw were trembling a little. Just a quiver, like that in a butterfly’s wings as it warms itself on a tree trunk.
‘He needs you,’ she said.
‘But you do not,’ I said.
‘He is my husband,’ she said.
I nodded. ‘He is.’ I drained my cup, then went to the table and filled it again.
‘Why did he send you?’ I asked.
‘There are few that he trusts now,’ she said. ‘He has changed, Lancelot.’
‘Why did he send you?’ I asked again.
Her eyes widened. ‘Because of all I have just told you,’ she said, then pressed her lips together and nodded. ‘And because he knew that if I asked you, you would come.’
I felt that like a spear butt to the stomach. How could Arthur know that of me? How had he known what lay in the shadow of my heart?
I drank, holding the draught in my mouth, tasting the long summer days in the grape. Gathering myself. ‘He is well?’ I asked, watching her face closely for sign of the half-truth.
I was a general then. A man whose reputation was worth fifty men on armoured horses. One hundred and fifty spearmen. I was a lord of war, not some lovesick youth. Yet, I missed my friend still. The times I had breathed in the pine-scented air and thought of Arthur, imagined him sharpening his young claws for Syagrius. Making his own reputation. I missed him. The years had not blunted it.
‘He is tired,’ she said at last. ‘He has borne such a burden these long years. So much war. So many treaties made and broken and made anew.’ She shook her head. ‘We all ask too much of him. Britain expects too much of him.’ A line etched itself into her forehead. ‘He does not know whom to trust,’ she said.
‘Merlin lives?’ I asked, for Arthur had always sought the druid’s advice and I believed for his part Merlin loved Arthur.
Guinevere nodded. ‘He lives,’ she said, ‘but we do not see him these days. He has his own matters to attend, and so Arthur listens more and more to Mordred, but I do not trust him.’
‘I would not trust him, either,’ I said.
‘Arthur needs you, Lancelot,’ she said.
‘He could have sent for me.’
‘Would you have come back?’
I thought about that. ‘Perhaps,’ I said.
‘But you will come now?’ Guinevere asked. ‘He misses you.’
‘I am tired of this war,’ I said.
Guinevere nodded.
We had driven King Syagrius’s enemies back year on year, but at a terrible cost. Next summer, or the one after that, the Goths would push back. And in the north, Syagrius was hard pressed against the Franks. Soissons would fall. It was only a matter of time. But my loyalty was to Arthur. I had sworn an oath before High King Uther, to serve and protect Arthur. It mattered not that he was no king. Arthur needed me now, and so I would return to Britain.
That night, I slept outside Guinevere’s tent, as I had slept outside her door when we were children, and the very next day I rode north, having sought neither King Syagrius’s permission nor his blessing.
Arthur had asked that I bring the last of his men, those spearmen who were still loyal to him, who had pledged their swords to him at the beginning, but after the years and the fighting and the plagues that always ravage an army on campaign, there were just twelve men left and only seven who remembered their oaths and were willing to cross the Dividing Sea with us.
‘I was thinking we would never see Britain again,’ Bors said as we neared the coast, watching the gulls wheeling in the summer sky, the tang of sea air in our noses and making the horses skittish with nerves. The three of us rode together at the head of the column, Guinevere between Bors and me. ‘How is Emblyn?’ Bors asked Guinevere. ‘Well, I hope? With children tripping her up and a man who is good to her?’ There was a wistful smile on his lips but his sentiment was sincere. He had not expected Emblyn to wait for him. And yet, perhaps there was still some sliver of vain hope.
‘She married a spearman,’ Guinevere said. ‘There is a boy.’
Bors nodded. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘That’s good.’
Then it struck me that I did not know if Guinevere had children. It was surely likely, not only because she and Arthur had been married for years, but because Arthur needed a son with her. He might already rule in Dumnonia but one day he would be king and a king needed a legitimate heir, one whom no one would refute, as they might Mordred.
‘And you, my lady?’ Bors asked, knowing that I wanted to but could not. ‘Do you and Lord Arthur have children?’
I looked straight ahead and rubbed Tormaigh on his poll.
‘The gods have not blessed us with children,’ Guinevere said.
‘The gods are cruel,’ Bors said.
I followed Guinevere’s eyes and saw a kestrel against the blue sky, its wingtips extended and its tail fanned as it hovered in the sea breeze, looking for prey amongst the grass. ‘Perhaps when the war is won,’ Guinevere said, watching that bird.
But the war would never be won. Having fought King Euric’s hordes, I knew that now. Like them, the Saxons would keep coming. Every season, more boats would cross the Morimaru, the dead sea, and come to Britain’s eastern shores. We would fight them as our ancestors had. And after us, our children would fight them, but eventually men like Aella and Cerdic would take Britain. I knew it. Perhaps Arthur knew it too, but knowing it was not the same as accepting it, and so Arthur and I would bleed the enemy. We would make them pay in blood for every meadow, hill and wood which they may one day call their own. Arthur would fight for Britain. I would fight for
Arthur. And Guinevere would always own my soul.
The gods are cruel.
Arthur’s eagle-owl was called Hades and she was magnificent. She was even larger than my father’s gyrfalcon had been, and to my child’s eye that gyrfalcon had been the king of all birds. Yet this bird boasted talons which could crush the skull of a fox or sheep.
‘She is fearless,’ Arthur said, ‘and will go for anything, whether it flies, runs or swims. I have seen her take a roe deer,’ he said, glancing across at me as we walked, to see if I was impressed. How could I not be? I had never heard of anyone hunting with an eagle-owl as one might with a hawk, but was eager to see if it could be done.
That bird glared at me with bright, reddish eyes, as though it could see into my heart. As though it were weighing me in the scales; my sins in one dish, my honour in the other, and would whisper in Arthur’s ear its findings.
Yet I knew owls were in truth stupid birds and I took comfort in the knowledge. Old Hoel had taught me that. A lifetime ago, it seemed.
‘Men think that because they look so solemn and keep their own counsel, owls are wise and canny,’ the old falconer had said, then sighed. ‘Men always judge with their eye. Looks doesn’t mean a thing, boy. Size neither,’ he said, for he knew how the white gyrfalcon captivated me. Had seen me staring at her often enough. ‘I’ve seen a falcon lose an eye to a rook,’ he said, touching the scarred flesh around his own dead, white eye. ‘Seen a goshawk lose a talon to a crow.’
Perhaps that was another reason why he gave me the sparhawk that night when fire lit the darkness and blood melted the snow. Another lesson. The last one he would ever teach me.
‘She’ll outfly a pheasant and take a duck on the rise in the dark,’ Arthur said, hauling my mind from the past. ‘Though I cannot take the credit for her.’
I gave him a knowing look. ‘If I’d thought you were manning birds and hunting every other day, while I was up to my neck in tribesmen who had been taught how to fight by Romans …’ I raised an eyebrow at him. ‘I’d have come back sooner,’ I said.
‘I wish you had,’ he said, looking at me with tired eyes. The years lay heavy on him. His beard had been the gold of ripe wheat when I left his hall that morning eight years before. Now it was hearth-ash grey, as was the hair at his temples. He was leaner too, his face almost gaunt, which made his eyes even more arresting.
‘I’m here now,’ I said. He nodded.
We walked on up the ridge, which was fragrant with the tramped grass and yellow rock rose and purple betony, which Guinevere had once told me could stop dreams coming if hung about the neck. Insects thrummed round our knees and butterflies tumbled here and there like wind-blown blossom, and in that moment we might have forgotten we were at war.
It had been Arthur’s idea to go hunting with the eagle-owl and I had not questioned it even though I saw that some of the others, including Gawain and Bors, thought us mad. A Saxon war band had been sighted in the south of Caer Gwinntguic and tomorrow I would lead one hundred spearmen out to face them, while Arthur prepared to march north to fight alongside Einion of Ebrauc against the Picts. But first Arthur and I would hunt together no matter what anyone thought about it.
We moved with care now across the dry, crisp forest floor, avoiding the dappled sunlight filtering down through the shimmering beech canopy. The warm rising air was shrill with the songs of chaffinch and robin.
‘Syagrius must be sorry you’ve gone,’ Arthur said. ‘I have heard bards singing of your victories in Gaul.’ As we walked, he stroked his forefinger down Hades’s collar and back, as the bird turned her head this way and that, searching for prey amongst the trees.
‘Leading men does not come easily to me,’ I said, swinging my spear forward to plant its butt end in the litter with every other step.
‘Yet they fight for you. They win for you,’ he said. ‘Did you know, folk all across Britain talk of Lancelot’s courage, Lancelot’s skill?’
‘I know the people of Britain have more important things to talk about,’ I said.
Arthur made a hoom in the back of his throat. After I left for Gaul, Arthur had taken the war to the Saxons and the kings of Britain had played their part. But that four years of victories was long in the past now and it seemed that Arthur’s dream of Britain was unravelling before his eyes. The kings looked only to their own borders. Britons fought Britons and the Saxons were strong again.
‘Still, you were the most famed warrior in Gaul,’ Arthur said, unwilling to let me off the hook. ‘A man can grow to have a taste for fame. He can thirst for it as one might thirst for wine. It is a craving that can be upon him from the moment he wakes until the moment he falls asleep.’
I looked at him but he kept his own eyes busy searching ahead for prey, though I did not think he would release the bird in these woods. Safer to wait for open ground.
‘What are you saying?’ I asked him.
Above us, a nuthatch called in alarm at seeing Hades, or it might have been because of the squirrel I heard scrabbling amongst the foliage overhead.
‘Mordred questions why you came back,’ Arthur said.
‘I came because you sent for me,’ I said, sensing the cold undercurrent to the conversation and not liking it. ‘What does Mordred believe?’ I asked. From the corner of my eye I saw the squirrel race along a branch. A little streak of fire, then it was gone.
‘He thinks you want Dumnonia,’ Arthur said. ‘That you would sit on Uther’s old high seat.’
This was not what I had expected to hear and it came like a blow.
‘Do you see a war host at my back, Arthur? Spearmen flying my banner?’ I said, not caring now if I chased away every creature within a mile so that Hades never stretched those great wings and we returned empty-handed to Camelot.
‘It was proposed that you and King Syagrius have an arrangement,’ Arthur said. ‘Why else would the king let you, his general, his champion, leave Gaul?’ He shrugged. ‘But if he loses Soissons, as he surely must sooner or later, then perhaps he sees a future here.’
‘What future? He is as old as Uther was,’ I said.
‘He has sons,’ Arthur said. ‘They are his future.’
I stopped and stood glaring at him as he took two more steps then turned to face me, the bird on his arm preening her scapular feathers.
‘I left all of it, the day after Guinevere came,’ I said, appalled at what I was hearing. ‘I did not even seek the king’s blessing. I just walked away. From my responsibilities. From my men. Why? Because you need me.’
‘You knew Guinevere was coming,’ he said. ‘You sent word telling her to wait for you on Mont Tombe.’ He lifted an eyebrow. ‘Which she ignored, of course. But you could have written to Syagrius. He could have promised you spearmen in return for Caer Gwinntguic. Or even Dumnonia, with you as his warlord. Why else would you leave those men who looked to you for leadership? Why abandon men with whom you have fought and bled?’
‘For you,’ I said. I held my spear wide and turned my empty hand palm uppermost, showing that I had nothing to hide, nor anything else to give, other than myself. ‘For you, Arthur,’ I said again, glaring my challenge at him.
Perhaps I was more stupid even than that bird on Arthur’s glove. Perhaps I had been a fool to come back. I looked at Arthur and wondered if the years had changed him so much that I could no longer read his face as I had used to. Then to my relief he gave a slight nod and I saw in that gesture the old Arthur and I knew that he did not believe his own words. That those words had tasted foul to him, for all that he had not been able to leave them unsaid. And now he was glad to be rid of them.
Poison must be drawn, I heard Merlin say in my mind.
‘You don’t believe any of this,’ I told him, relief flooding my body like the warm glow of spiced wine.
He shook his head and let out a long breath. ‘I don’t,’ he said.
The eagle-owl must have been heavy on his arm, easily as heavy as a sword, yet he kept that leather-sheathed a
rm as still as the leaf-laden boughs above us. ‘I don’t think Mordred does, either. Not really.’ His brow furrowed. ‘He doesn’t like you, Lancelot. Ever since that day we ran into those Saxons in Caer Gwinntguic and you spoiled his fight.’
Spoiled his fight? That was one way of putting it. As I remembered it the fight was over and Mordred had been about to die in the mud, when my spear took the young Saxon’s life and gave Mordred a future.
In the years I had been gone, Mordred had become a renowned warrior in his own right and one of Arthur’s ablest warlords. And yet he still hated me for saving his life.
‘He does not forgive easily,’ Arthur said, alluding to the sixteen or so years that Mordred had spent hating him, until at last he had come to Camelot to forgive his father and pledge his sword to Arthur’s service. ‘I fear you and Mordred will never be friends,’ Arthur said.
I did not answer that. Arthur was stroking Hades. The bird bobbed its head, those long ear tufts giving it an indignant look which somehow reminded me of Merlin, who had not been seen for years, so that some folk believed that the druid was dead.
Arthur lifted his chin, his eyes boring into mine. ‘But we are friends, are we not?’ he said.
I had the absurd idea then that he was going to throw his arm and send that barrel-shaped bird streaking towards me in a flurry of beak, feather and talon.
‘Of course we are friends,’ I said.
He nodded. ‘Come,’ he said.
We made our way amongst the trees again, heading east through shafts of golden summer sunlight which speared through the canopy, towards the wood’s edge and the meadow beyond.
‘Then as my friend, tell me how you felt when you saw Guinevere again,’ Arthur said, stepping over deadfall without breaking stride.
My mouth tasted sour. I would rather have fought off the eagle-owl than have that question hurled at me, and as I planted my spear I caught a glimpse of my own eyes reflected in the blade.
‘I would have the truth, whatever it is,’ Arthur said, as though he knew I was asking questions of myself.
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