Camelot's Blood

by Sarah Zettel

  Laurel made her way down to the Queen’s Court. On the way, she met with nothing worse than stony glowers and even the lowest of serving women drawing their skirts aside lest they accidentally brush hers.

  My thanks, Sir Kai.

  She found herself in good time. Guinevere sat in her carved chair, dressed simply in shades of blue girdled with gold and lapis. Her golden torque and rings glittered in the sunlight as she bent to examine the wax tablet handed her by a stout, mottled-skinned man Laurel thought she remembered as the master of the ovens. Her ladies surrounded her, spinning, embroidering, working at their hand looms or sewing, all this accompanied by the music of the fountain that splashed merrily in the sunlight streaming down from the uncommonly blue sky.

  Lady Risa stood at the queen’s shoulder, alert for any order or errand that might be given. It was she who saw Laurel hesitate in the shadowed threshold. Even across the court, Laurel could see the controlled fury in Risa’s face. She caught her skirts up in one hand, and strode across the court to block Laurel’s way.

  “How dare you come here?” Risa hissed. “What right have you to stand before our queen?”

  She has not been told. She knows only what she sees, Laurel reminded herself firmly. But oh, it hurt. Was it really so easy for this woman who had been her friend just two nights before to believe she and her husband ingrates if not actual traitors?

  Be calm. Agravain has faced this and worse. If he can brave it, so can you.

  “I remain the queen’s subject. It is my right to be heard by her majesty,” replied Laurel evenly. Risa’s green eyes were a deeper shade than her own, and burning like dark emeralds. “It is not for you to refuse.”

  She was within her rights and they both knew it. Nonetheless, Risa spoke only with great reluctance. “Wait here.”

  But though she turned, she did not need to go any further. The whole of the assemblage in the court, Queen Guinevere first among them, had looked to see what had caused Risa’s hasty departure from their side.

  “Let her come,” said the queen crisply.

  Head properly bowed in respect, Laurel walked forward to kneel before the queen. It was only when she was bid to rise that she met Guinevere’s grey gaze. It was stern and searching, looking, perhaps, to see how well Laurel weathered this storm of her own making.

  Does she know the truth? Laurel realized with a shock that she had neglected to ask. She could not imagine Arthur failing to tell his queen of such an important plan. But then, he had not told his heir.

  “With respect, Your Majesty, I have come to ask for a thing that is rightfully mine.”

  “You should speak carefully of right, Laurel Carnbrea,” the queen’s words were clear, clipped, and ice cold, “when you aid in the commission of great wrong.”

  “It was Your Majesty who gave me in marriage to Sir Agravain,” replied Laurel. “Do you now say I should renounce this royal gift?”

  It was a hard blow, and the ladies whispered to hear it fall. A single straight line appeared between the queen’s arched brows.

  Laurel licked her lips, glancing at the icy women surrounding the queen, and at the suddenly too-alert soldiers of her guard.

  “If it please Your Majesty to speak of this in private?” she asked, hoping she did not sound frightened.

  “It does not please me,” replied the queen, stonily. “You must say what you have to say before witness and peer. What is it you lay claim to?”

  Very well. Laurel steeled herself. “The property of the royal line of Cambryn, which was this past year made my line. I ask for the scabbard of Excalibur.”

  “What!”

  “False jade!”

  “It is Sir Agravain urges this on her, mark me.”

  Exclamations and whispers flew up in a great cloud until Laurel could hear none clearly, but not one came from the queen. Guinevere sat rigid as a marble statue, and as white.

  “Leave us,” said Queen Guinevere to her assembly.

  For a single heartbeat, Risa looked as if she might refuse, but only for a heartbeat. She made her obeisance and gestured to the other women. With many a glare of contempt and poisoned whisper, the ladies retreated to the shadows in bright, rustling procession. The soldiers too followed, but did not, Laurel was sure, go so far away that a shout would not be heard.

  After that, the only sound in the court was the endless, mindless splash of the fountain at her back.

  “Gawain came to us greatly agitated yesterday,” said Queen Guinevere at last. “He told a fantastic tale of finding you in the ruins of Merlin’s den.”

  The queen had never liked the sorcerer. She had always met him with perfect courtesy, but there was never any warmth between them, nor were their meetings ever voluntary on the queen’s part. With what she now knew, Laurel found herself wondering once more how this dislike had come about. Was this yet another wound from one of Morgaine’s many blades?

  Or was it that Merlin had refused to kill Morgaine when there was the chance?

  “I did go to Merlin’s house, and Gawain did find me there.” Laurel found herself searching the queen’s clear eyes for some sign, any sign that Guinevere knew the truth, and was only playing out her role. But the queen gave away no such sign. She sat on her throne, imperious and distant as a goddess from the ancient days.

  “You wished to hold some discourse with His Majesty’s cunning man?”

  Laurel folded her hands properly in front of her, and made sure her spine and shoulders were straight. If she must face the queen’s approbation, she would do so correctly. “I did.”

  Guinevere’s grey eyes narrowed slightly. “I would not have thought you required recourse to such.”

  “Of your courtesy, there were things he could tell me of Morgaine and her wars that Your Majesty could not.”

  It took the queen a handful of heartbeats to digest this. “I see.”

  Conscience stirred in Laurel, and sympathy for what she had seen before. “He was most unwell when I left him. Is he better now?”

  Guinevere sigh was curt and dismissive. “So says the king. I do not know.”

  Knowing the queen to be a dedicated and competent healer, this startled Laurel more than almost anything else could have. “Why is it you hate him?”

  “That is a question I am not required to answer. It has nothing to do with this brazen request you have made.”

  Laurel bowed her head once more in a show of humility she was certain the queen would not believe genuine. “I am sorry if I have offended Your Majesty.”

  “But you do not withdraw your request?”

  “No.”

  “Did Merlin tell you to do this?”

  Laurel lifted her gaze to look directly at the queen and spoke the truth. “No,” she said.

  Guinevere set her jaw. Laurel could see swift calculation in her eyes and in the shifting lines on her broad brow. For all that, she was still startled when the queen stood abruptly.

  “Come with me.”

  Guinevere swept from the court, leaving Laurel little choice but to follow. All they passed stopped to stare and point and whisper, and Laurel felt her ears begin to burn. Was this Queen Guinevere’s revenge for what she had asked? Exposing her to further humiliation and censure?

  A page opened the outer doors and the queen walked out in to the main yard without pausing. Hoods were doffed and heads lowered. If the queen noticed this propriety she gave no sign. She strode in a straight line to the chapel steps, where Laurel had stood so recently with Agravain, and this game had begun.

  The lone priest sweeping the floor in front of the altar rail looked up, sincerely startled, as the queen entered. He made awkwardly to kneel, obviously uncertain as to whether he should put his broom down first. Guinevere stopped him with a gesture.

  “I would pray alone for a few moments, Father. Please excuse me.”

  The priest looked towards Laurel, who waited uncertainly in the doorway, but he did not question the contradiction, only bowed, and, clutchin
g his broom, retreated.

  A few fragrant lamps illuminated the holy place. The saints and angels looked down from the walls, but the Christ in his agony had his face turned towards Heaven. Guinevere dipped her hand in the font and crossed herself, before holding out her arms before the altar. Laurel bowed her head in respect to the prayer, but did not move to enter the church. She did not understand what was happening, why she was being made to witness this. Impatience warred with a growing uneasiness. She felt as if storm clouds closed over her head. She had known it was no small thing that she did, but now she had the growing sense of a previously unguessed enormity.

  “Amen. Amen. Amen,” whispered the queen. She lowered her arms. “Come here,” she snapped.

  A chest waited beside the altar. As she approached, Laurel smelled cedar and saw it was bound, not in bronze, as she had first thought, but in gold worked with the sign of the cross that had been fashioned of many ribbons. The queen knelt before it. She lifted the ring of keys at her waist, and took out one that was small and gold and also fashioned into a cross’s shape. She turned it in the golden lock. When she raised the lid, the hinges made no sound. A cloud of fragrance wafted up, and Laurel for only the second time in her life smelled bitter myrrh and sweet frankincense.

  The inside of the chest was lined in shimmering white samite. In the centre of this precious nest lay a bundle of white silk wound like a shroud. This Guinevere carefully turned over, unfolding the fabric to expose the battered, flaking, stained scabbard. The queen laid her right hand on the long, dark stain that travelled half the length of the sheath, and Laurel to her astonishment realized the colour and shape of it matched the stain on the queen’s palm.

  “You do not even know what this is do you?” Queen Guinevere spoke in a whisper that was at once reverent and angry. “Let me tell you. This scabbard belonged to a Roman soldier in the holy land. His duty was to watch over a place called Calvary during an execution. That soldier took a spear and pierced the side of a certain carpenter who hung upon the cross, to end his suffering which had gone on for three days. Some of the blood that flowed free then was caught in a cup. Some clung to the lance that struck the merciful blow.

  “Some rained onto the sheath that held his sword.

  “And since that time, no one who has carried the scabbard has fallen in battle. It is said they will not even bleed.

  “This is what you are so bold to lay claim to. This is what you ask me to take from my husband before he goes off to war.”

  Laurel felt herself rooted to the spot. As soon as the queen spoke, she felt she should have known. Perhaps in her heart she had always known, but nothing short of pride had kept her from understanding. It was wrong what she had done, what she did now.

  No one who has carried the scabbard has fallen in battle. Life itself lay in that casket. Life for Arthur.

  Life for Agravain.

  You must bring to him what Guinevere brought to Arthur. Laurel’s eyes closed. She could not look any longer at the queen’s weary, frightened countenance, at her stained hand laid upon the Blood of the Saviour.

  Help me, Laurel prayed. Give me some sign.

  But perhaps signs were not for such as she. She only heard the words again. No one who has carried the scabbard has fallen in battle. She saw Agravain at his desk, his strong, careful hands working with paper and ink.

  What if Merlin is wrong? She asked herself desperately. He was not in his right mind yesterday. What if he did lie, or make a mistake? He has made others.

  She saw Morgaine’s black eyes shining in triumph. She saw her father’s corpse at her feet and felt his blood on her hands. She saw her brother’s hand closed around the knife.

  But what if he was right?

  If he was right and she did not do this thing, Agravain would die. If Agravain died, the protection Gododdin brought to Cambryn would fail. Her land, her people, hated by Morgaine would fall, and fall fast.

  Her little sister Lynet would die, would end in a pool of her own blood as their father had.

  Laurel opened her eyes. She made to speak, but found she could not raise her voice. She could only whisper hoarsely. “This is my right, and the property of my lineage. Your own doing made it so.”

  “I could refuse you.” Queen Guinevere spoke to the scabbard, not to Laurel. “I could give it formally to the mother church to hold, as perhaps I should have done years ago.”

  “My request was witnessed. If you refuse me, it will be known that you broke faith, as did Arthur with Agravain.”

  Guinevere closed her eyes for a moment, swaying on her knees as if gripped by terrible pain. Laurel’s heart strained inside her and all at once she hated herself. But she did not speak to stop it.

  Hands trembling, tears shining on her cheeks, Guinevere wrapped the silk around the scabbard, lifted it free from the chest, and handed it to Laurel. Laurel received the gift. The silk was cool and slick against her palms. She knelt before the queen, before Christ on his cross, before the understanding of that enormity she had only sensed before.

  Guinevere touched her head, and Laurel knew then the queen had been told the truth. She did understand why Agravain and Laurel acted as they did, but that made this no easier.

  “Go,” Guinevere whispered.

  Laurel did not hesitate. Cradling the scabbard in both arms, she ran from the chapel, leaving the queen to pray and weep as she must.

  She was barely aware of the world around her as she hurried back to Agravain’s chamber. She was aware only of the weight in her arms and the soft slip of silk against skin. She was out of breath by the time she opened the door, darting inside like a thief.

  Agravain looked up at once as she stood there, panting.

  “What has happened?”

  Wordlessly, Laurel held out the silken package. Agravain’s brow furrowed with impatient incomprehension, but he stood and unfolded the silk without lifting it from her hands. When he saw the scabbard, he frowned. He picked it up and examined it with a soldier’s eye, seeing a piece of equipage that was too ancient and too worn to be of any use at all.

  “Why this thing?” he asked.

  She swallowed hard to ease the tremor that robbed her of her voice, and she told him.

  All anger and all impatience drained from Agravain’s face, leaving him nearly as pale as the silk still draped across her hands. Slowly, he set the relic back on the virgin bed she held out for it. His hands free, Agravain crossed himself. Then, he lifted the trailing silk, wrapping the scabbard once more.

  “Take it back,” he said.

  “What?” Laurel stared at him.

  He did not look at her. He looked only at the silk that concealed the scabbard. “I believe I spoke clearly,” he said, his implacable certainty returning to him now. “Take it back to Queen Guinevere. I have no right to this holy thing.”

  Unexpected relief flooded her. And yet, the vision of Merlin’s blue eyes returned to her, and the touch of his hot breath on her cheek. “Merlin said …”

  Agravain shook his head. “I do not care. This is not yours to take, nor is it mine to keep. It should be held by the bishop and the High King. You will take it back.”

  It is you who saves him. You who wins his war. You bring to him what Guinevere brought Arthur. “My lord, without this you may very well fail in all you now attempt.”

  One muscle twitched high in Agravain’s cheek. “That shall be as God wills,” he whispered. “I have seen what comes of defying the divine order.” She opened her mouth once more, but Agravain held up both hands, as if to wave her back. “You will not argue with me in this thing, my wife. You will return this relic to the queen’s hands and have nothing more to do with it.”

  He meant it. His gaze was completely closed as he looked at her. Slowly, holding that gaze, Laurel curtsied to him. Without hesitation, he nodded, distant and formal, accepting her gesture of obedience.

  Laurel walked from the room, the silken bundle cradled like a babe in her arms. Relief still ran
through her blood. She did not have to do this. She could give this back to God to whom it belonged. But with each step, that relief ebbed and a tide of fear spread through her to take its place. She could not rid herself of the echo of Merlin’s words. They drummed in the rhythm of her footsteps against stone. She felt them in the cool of the silk against her palms and arms.

  She could not rid herself of the understanding that without this, Agravain would fall, and without Agravain, Cambryn too could be so easily lost.

  A draught curled around the back of her neck, curious, comforting.

  Grandmother? Grandmother? What do I do?

  Tears threatened. Laurel hardened her heart. She must decide. If she obeyed, she and Agravain kept their honour, but if he lost life and war, if Morgaine raised her arms in triumph over his corpse, and what then?

  Relief fled her, but so too did anger. All that was left was a stone in the depth of her heart weighted with decision and determination.

  She took my father and my brother. Cost what it may and the sin be on my head, she will not have my husband nor my sister.

  I must find Sir Kai. Her mind raced. The sun had been low when they crossed the courtyard. It wanted but an hour or two before the evening meal was laid in the great hall. The seneschal would be in the cellars, supervising the selection of the wines and ciders for the high table.

  Blessing her knowledge of Camelot’s workings, Laurel hastened her steps. She held the scabbard closely, draping her sleeves and veil over the white silk to hide it from the eyes of those she passed.

  Down the stairs and down the halls. Ignore the stares and the mutters. Hurry, hurry.

  Hurry. Before I change my mind.