Lancelot

by Giles Kristian

  Yet for all the hate that hung over Camelot, its whispers unmuffled by the snow that smothered rooftops and softened the points of palisades, I had not thought Mordred would act on it. I was still young enough and arrogant enough to think that he would not dare.

  I was wrong.

  I woke at the sound of booted feet tramping across the brittle snow and was upright in my bed, long knife in hand, even before someone hammered my door with the pommel of a sword.

  Pulling Boar’s Tusk from its sheath so that I was as well armed as I could be having just blinked awake, I walked past the hearth and opened the door to see Gawain looming in the night, his breath fogging around his big beard. I saw three spearmen behind him. Good men with whom I had fought many times, though now they were grim-faced and threatening.

  ‘Mordred wants your head, Lancelot,’ Gawain said.

  ‘Then tell him to come and take it,’ I said.

  He grinned. ‘I did. But he insisted I do it. Some sort of test, I suppose.’

  I looked at him. Felt the cold air on my bare chest. Felt the familiar comfort of the knife hilt in my left hand and Boar’s Tusk’s hilt in my right.

  ‘So, have you come to kill me, Gawain?’ I asked him. He was my friend. We had shared campfires and wine, bloodshed and sorrow. We had both shared Arthur’s dream and a love for the man himself.

  ‘No,’ he said, pressing a finger against his broken nose to close one nostril, then turning away to blow a wad of snot into the snow. His sword was sheathed, though I saw that his hand was on the hilt. ‘I’ve come to tell you that you’d best leave. Tonight.’

  ‘I thought you said Mordred wants my head,’ I said.

  ‘He does,’ Gawain said. ‘So you’re lucky he asked me to pluck it for him.’

  ‘And them?’ I said, jerking my head to indicate the fur- and mail-clad warriors waiting in the starlit gloom behind him.

  ‘They do what I say,’ he said. He sighed and I smelled wine on his breath. ‘I’ll talk to Mordred,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell him that we need you. Come the spring, with Saxon ships scraping up the shingle, he’ll beg you to come back. But spring is a way off. For now, you’d better go. I’ll say you weren’t here. That you must have known somehow. He’ll believe me.’

  ‘And if he doesn’t?’ I asked.

  He shrugged. ‘I don’t care. He needs me and he knows it. He’ll seek to make amends with you soon enough, but it’ll be best for all of us if you’re not here in Camelot for a while.’

  ‘What about Guinevere?’ I asked.

  ‘She’s safe. He won’t hurt her. The men still love Arthur too much. Mordred knows it. Even Morgana won’t risk their anger.’

  ‘And Bors?’ I asked. I knew that Bors was loyal to me. Mordred knew it too, which meant that if I was in danger, so was my cousin.

  ‘Bors is snoring in his bed. I’ve got men watching his place to make sure he stays out of this. We don’t want blood spilt. Bors is safe, you have my word. I’ll tell him what happened.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘When you’re gone,’ he said, stressing those last words.

  I wanted to put on my war gear and tramp through the snow to Arthur’s hall and challenge Mordred there and then. He had always been jealous of me and now he wanted me dead, so let us fight man against man. Let the gods and men watch. But I knew that Gawain could not allow me to challenge the new ruler of Dumnonia, let alone kill him. And Gawain was my friend, and so I would go.

  ‘I’ll talk to him,’ Gawain assured me when I had packed my gear, my scale armour and weapons, my furs and blankets, cloaks and food, and thrown my saddle upon Tormaigh, who snorted with derision at being brought out of his warm stable into the frigid night.

  ‘Don’t waste your breath, my friend,’ I said. ‘I will not come back. Not even if Mordred begs.’ I looked around at the buildings upon Camelot’s summit, most of them exhaling smoke to add murk to the darkness. It was not the same place without Arthur. As for Guinevere, my being there put her in danger, which I should have realized before then. I was sick of war. Tired of it. Wearied by years of fighting enemies I knew I could never beat, not in five lifetimes. And besides, I was not the first to turn my back on Dumnonia, on Britain herself. The gods had done that already.

  ‘You’re a good man, Lancelot,’ Gawain said. ‘I’m proud to call you my friend.’

  ‘And I you, Gawain,’ I said. ‘But do not ask me to fight for Dumnonia again, for I will not.’

  He seemed about to say something, but then his lips tightened and he nodded. I mounted Tormaigh and took up the reins. ‘And look after Guinevere,’ I said. ‘For Arthur’s sake,’ I added.

  He nodded again. Then, the fire still burning back in my hearth, I turned Tormaigh round and walked him away across the icy ground towards the south-west gate.

  No one challenged me. It was likely that no one saw me, that Tormaigh and I moved through the freezing, smoke-haunted dark like shades stalking the night on Samhain. But then, when I was almost at the gate, above which two sentries stood huddled in furs beside a flaming brazier, I heard hooves breaking the old snow behind me. My hand fell to one of the spears which I had tied to my saddle and I turned Tormaigh to face whoever was following me. Mordred perhaps. He had learnt what Gawain had done and he had come to kill me himself. I hoped it was Mordred, and the battle thrill fluttered in my chest and in the muscles of my thighs.

  Then the rider came within the glow of the sentries’ fires which reflected off the snow and I saw that it was not Mordred. Neither was it Gawain come to make sure that I left. Nor Bors, having ridden to say goodbye or intending to come with me perhaps.

  Mounted on Eilwen, her white mare, Guinevere was swathed in wolf pelts and ermine, her face hidden but for a sliver of pale skin and her eyes, dark pools amongst the pelts. If not for Eilwen, no one would take her for the Lady of Camelot. But then I hardly looked like the champion of Dumnonia. My old bear skin was well-worn but still thick, and with Tormaigh’s winter coat shaggy at his breast and neck, in the dark it would be hard to see where I ended and the horse began. We must have appeared like some huge, hairy beast.

  ‘What in Arawn’s name are you doing?’ I said.

  She walked Eilwen closer, her gaze fixed on me as she pulled the skins down to uncover her mouth. Her breath plumed on the night air and for a long moment it seemed we were the only living souls on that Dumnonian hill. ‘Gawain said you are not coming back.’

  Strands of dark hair had fallen across her left eye and in that moment I remembered the girl she had been on Karrek Loos yn Koos. Inscrutable and knowing and yet somehow wild.

  ‘There’s nothing for me here,’ I said.

  She considered that. ‘And Dumnonia?’ she said.

  ‘I fought for Arthur, nothing else,’ I said.

  ‘Because you swore an oath to King Uther?’ she said.

  I shook my head. ‘The oath had nothing to do with it.’

  She almost smiled at that. ‘And now?’

  ‘Mordred is not Arthur,’ I said. ‘I owe him nothing.’

  ‘Where will you go?’ she asked.

  I shrugged.

  ‘I have something for you,’ she said and reached towards me. I put out my own hand and she put something in it, and in that moment as our skin touched, my blood coursed with elation and guilt, desire and shame.

  I opened my palm and looked at the silver ring sitting in it. The same ring which Guinevere had given me in the doorway of the Lady’s keep those years ago. The ring which I had returned to her when I rode out of Camelot to war in Gaul, I the one leaving, yet letting her go.

  ‘I’m not in the mood for games,’ I said, though I closed my fist around the ring, feeling its warmth in my hand.

  ‘No games, Lancelot,’ Guinevere said.

  ‘Announce yourself,’ a spearman called down from the gatehouse.

  ‘Lancelot,’ I said without turning.

  ‘You’re going out now, my lord?’ the man asked.

  ‘Open the gate,’ I said. I was still l
ooking at Guinevere, though I noticed the leather knapsacks tied to Eilwen’s saddle horns and suddenly I knew.

  ‘You’re coming with me,’ I said.

  ‘Why would I stay?’ she asked me.

  ‘You are the Lady of Dumnonia,’ I said.

  ‘I am Arthur’s wife,’ she said. ‘But Arthur is gone.’

  Even then it seemed unreal. How could Arthur not be drawing the same cold air into his lungs? How could Arthur be just a memory?

  ‘You would give up all of this?’ I asked her, glancing left and right towards the dark buildings which sat squat and leaking smoke into the night.

  The hint of a smile touched her lips. ‘If I stay I’ll only end up putting wolfsbane in Morgana’s wine,’ she said.

  I smiled at that. Morgana hated Guinevere as much as Mordred hated me, and ever since she had come to Camelot Mordred’s mother had tainted the very air, for all that she wanted men to revere her, for her beauty and her new status as the mother of the future king.

  Behind me, the creak of the gate announced its opening. A rush of cold night air licked the back of my neck and I heard a vixen screech somewhere in the south.

  ‘I’m never coming back,’ I said again, needing her to know that. Needing her to be sure. Hardly daring to believe why she had saddled Eilwen and followed me in the cold dark.

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘Where will we go?’

  ‘Caer Gloui,’ I suggested. In truth I did not know where I would go, only that I would leave Camelot before I killed Mordred or he killed me.

  Guinevere looked over her shoulder. Camelot slept and there were no signs that she or I had been followed. But that did not mean Mordred would not send men after us once he knew that I had ridden out of the south-west gate unharmed. I wondered if Gawain would draw his sword against me if it came to it. I wished I had said goodbye to Bors, but I knew it was better this way.

  ‘We should go,’ Guinevere said. ‘We need to be far away come dawn. And even then we must make sure that they cannot follow our tracks.’

  I knew spearmen who would baulk at the thought of riding out into such a night as that, with no promise of a fire or a roof to sleep under. With night spirits stalking and cut-throats lingering in woodland beside the roads. Not Guinevere. I nodded, my heart swelling to know that the years had not tamed her. She was still the girl who would scale ledges and crags for a gull’s egg. Who would dive through high waves and climb to the tops of slender trees to rob them of mistletoe. She was the girl whom a sea god had wanted but could not have. Whom I had wanted, but could not have.

  But now I turned Tormaigh towards the gate and Guinevere urged Eilwen forward, so that we rode out through the snow-crusted ramparts together, the gate creaking behind us and the bleak, bitter night before us.

  Thus did I turn my back on Camelot and Dumnonia, and on Britain herself. Let armies tear each other apart. Let the gods sow chaos and reap souls. I did not care.

  I move between worlds. Brisk and nimble through the forest litter. Skittering up trunks, scampering out along gnarly branches. Sharp claws finding purchase, strong hind legs impelling me up and up. Leaping from tree to tree as fast as fire running through dry thatch. I know all the paths and the nooks and all the secret places. I remember all my hoards, too, buried when the air turned thin and cold, scavenged long since.

  I run and jump, deft and brave, bounding below the sky yet above the ground, a frenzy of theft and movement. Always looking out for shifts and changes and dangers and opportunities.

  A sound in the forest stills me. A predator? From the corner of my eye I watch. Wait. A fawn, foraging amongst the forest flowers. No enemy of mine. I am all quickness again, darting from bough to bough, seeking like a breeze amongst the green canopy.

  Vigilance. Fleetness. Agility. These are mine.

  Another sound. I stiffen. There. I see them. A woman and a man walking together. Smiling. Laughing. They come to a glade where the bracken is thick and lush. A green bed. No threat to me, these two, yet I hold to the spot, feeling the breeze-fluttered leaves through the slender branch beneath my feet.

  Truly a restless spirit, this creature. It takes all my talent to hold him. But I do hold him to that branch and I watch.

  The man treads the bracken down and she watches him, and when it is done she takes the cloak from his back. Lays it down. They undress each other. They stand white and dappled gold by the warm dusk sun. Their eyes on each other like predators and like prey. They lower each other to the cloak.

  It takes an age. But I watch.

  She lies, looking up at the sky through flickering leaves. Her hair on his cloak like a raven’s wing spread in flight. Then she looks at him and smiles, her lips red as rowan berries, as his own dark hair falls to hide her face.

  I watch, seeing neither now, and yet both. Grappling and grasping, entwined like black bryony or bittersweet on the sun-stippled forest floor.

  25

  Red in the South

  WE WERE TRULY happy that summer. Perhaps as happy as we had been on the island, when the world was still new to us and the summers seemed to stretch on for ever. We lived in an old woodsman’s hut in the beech woods on the borderlands between northern Dumnonia and Caer Gloui. Long abandoned, the hut had all but been swallowed by the forest, though with sweat and resolve we reclaimed it and made it our own. Other than that simple dwelling and our horses, and those few belongings which we had carried that night we turned our backs on Camelot, we had nothing. And yet we had everything.

  In our own ways we mourned Arthur, and for a while his absence was as an invisible rampart between us. But one night, when we had finished laying the thatch of reeds across the old roof beams and a summer rain hissed down to test our labours, we became in body what we had only been in mind. Whether we made a silent pact to let Arthur go, or whether we were simply too tired to maintain the pretence of propriety, only the gods can say. But under that new thatch, at the edge of a creek hidden amongst the reed beds, we gave in to ourselves and each other.

  It was a golden time. Like the island home which we had used to roam, free as the hawk and the hare, the woods were our sanctuary, a haven far from war and people, and from time itself, or so it seemed. But we were no longer children and the summer, as glorious and yet simple as it was, could not last.

  It was dawn. Samhain was approaching, when the veil between our world and the world beyond is at its thinnest. I had been out to fetch more wood, my breath fogging in the damp, earthy air and droplets of dew falling from the sodden leaves above, when I took a moment to watch the first light creep through the forest. A small brown shape caught my eye, some creature bounding through the beech mast. A weasel, I realized, then watched with growing unease as it did not veer away but capered towards me, the white fur of its belly and chin flashing as it leapt. I spat towards the creature to avert the evil which his behaviour presaged and he stopped, stood upright, glaring at me, then hopped away amongst the trees, leaving me to ponder that ill portent. And yet it was forgotten the moment I went back inside, set the logs down by the hearth and turned to see Guinevere stretching upon the bed skins. How she could steal my breath even then.

  ‘It’s red in the south,’ I said.

  Guinevere’s beauty was timeless. Gods-given, I believed, and perhaps that’s why Arawn had coveted her and schemed with Manannán mac Lir to drown her that storm-flayed day when she had been but a child.

  ‘Then we shall have rain and cold,’ she said, sitting up, thinking nothing of her nakedness and sweeping her hair back from her face. It was as though she did not know her own power, nor how it could affect me still, like a horse kick to the chest.

  ‘Then I’ll take the bow and get a duck before it rains,’ I said.

  ‘I’ll come,’ she said, glancing at the hunting bow which leant unstrung against the wall. Next to it on a peg hung a quiver of arrows which we had fletched with goose and swan feathers in the summer. ‘I have the better eye,’ she said, those green eyes full of challenge, �
��and you don’t know how to stay quiet. You always scare them away before you get close enough,’ she said, the corner of her lips curled in a wry smile.

  ‘Do I, now?’ I said, folding my arms. Feigning offence.

  ‘Yes, Lancelot, you do,’ she said, climbing from the bed to make use of the fuel I had fetched.

  I stepped into her path and she stopped and shot me a defiant look, her head tilted to the side so that her hair fell away from her face.

  ‘But it will turn cold?’ I said.

  ‘If it was red in the south,’ she said, her eyes narrowing with suspicion.

  ‘Then we should work some warmth into our flesh before we go out,’ I said.

  ‘Should we?’ she asked, trying not to smile.

  I nodded and swept her up into my arms and she laughed because she was a full-grown woman, not some slip of a girl, but I carried her back to the bed.

  And I was happy, but it could not last for ever.

  Guinevere heard them first. Her hand tightened on my arm and she held her breath and I was looking into her eyes when the door thumped open, sending a pair of spears clattering to the floor and some roosting bird flapping and squawking up from the reed thatch roof.

  I rolled over on the bed skins, snatched my long knife from its hook on the wall and sat upright, the blade raised. And to my horror I saw who had come.

  He stood there in the doorway, Excalibur in his hand, his face ashen, his mouth hanging open.

  ‘It can’t be,’ I said. ‘How can it be? Arthur?’

  I thought it must be Samhain already. That this must be Arthur’s shade returned to haunt me.

  His eyes were wide, bulging in his grey face, as they filled themselves with the sight. Torturing him.

  He bellowed and flew across the small space, Excalibur raised as though to strike, and he swung his gaze from Guinevere to me and back to Guinevere, as if he could not decide which of us to kill first. Which of us most deserved to die.