Lancelot and the Wolf

by Sarah Luddington

  “My duty is killing him,” Else said. I felt her hand on my head but I couldn’t move. A strange paralysis held me still.

  “Your duty is changing him, that’s all. He will be happy with you and do you not love him?”

  Else sighed, “Of course I love him. I just loved the life in him and the rage. He is no longer the man I knew.”

  “Good, then the transformation is almost complete. Return to the bed and continue your duty.” The woman’s voice faded away and I felt myself once more buried in Else’s body.

  “You are weeping,” I managed before once more sliding into captivity.

  “I am going to free you, my love,” she said stroking my face. “I just have to pray you will learn to forgive me.”

  I woke to Else shaking my shoulders and calling my name. I remembered feeling fear whenever this happened and I forced myself awake. A flash in my mind as I surfaced jolted me, the wolf, dead and the hart dying. My mind cleared for one moment and I focused on my lover’s face.

  “What’s happened?” I asked.

  “Thank goodness,” Else bent her head. “Drink this,” she thrust a flask into my hands.

  “Tell me what’s wrong? You look scared,” I reached for her. I had to protect her.

  “Not now, fool, just drink. Do as I ask, Lancelot and we might both live through this,” she rose and went to a pile of belongings. My armour and sword. I blinked, surprised, I’d forgotten all about them. I drank from the flask. Alcohol, brandy, burned down my throat. I coughed, I hadn’t drunk strong liquor in, well, weeks I thought. I’d been on a simple diet for a long time. Fresh spring water my only liquid.

  The brandy hit my system almost instantly. It burned in my belly and I felt my mind come screaming out of the darkness. A terrible, rushing sensation which threatened to destroy my sanity. I gasped and clutched my head. Images and memories ricochet through my head. I saw the day I became a knight, the day of the trial, a hundred jousts I had won, the day of my punishment and banishment from Arthur’s side. I witnessed the courage of my friends as they tried to save me from my miserable fate. Lastly, I remembered the reason I felt so alone. My betrayal of my friend and my King. I remembered Guinevere.

  “Lancelot,” Else’s voice whipped through my head. “We have to leave, get up and get dressed. Please,” she begged.

  “I can’t do this,” I held my head in my hands, my world crashing back into me. My soul shattering all over again. I’d spent weeks in blissful ignorance of my life and now I seemed to feel each wound a thousand fold. As though they conspired to make me suffer for the time I’d been absent from their company.

  “I know it’s hard, love, but please, I need you to get up,” she stroked my face and the pain receded.

  I looked at her, “What’s happening to me?”

  She smiled grimly, “I will tell you everything but we have to leave and we have to do it now. Just sip the brandy. If you drink too much, the real world will come back too fast. It seems we have a fine balancing act to perform.”

  Her sense of urgency finally motivated me. I dressed as quickly as my fumbling fingers would allow.

  “The horses are ready,” she said taking my hand.

  She pulled me forward and the world became peaceful. “Why are we leaving?” I asked. “I want to stay with you.” I tried to pull her to a stop. I wanted to take her in my arms.

  “Lancelot, stop, we don’t have time,” Else squirmed away and walked off. I needed her skin on mine. It drove me to her side.

  The horses were tethered outside the cave and Else managed to force me onto Ash. She tied my kit behind me, struggling with the height difference until I began to help. Her stress and fear started to mean something to my fuddled mind.

  “This way,” she ordered, forcing Mercury downstream.

  “I don’t want to leave,” I repeated for the hundredth time.

  “Fine,” Else snapped. “Then you can stay here and be fodder for the denizens of that cave. I’ll go and save Arthur alone.”

  I frowned, more confused than ever, the dream like state I craved fluctuated violently. One moment I rode and my body felt heavy and tired. The next I realised I’d become immortal, strong and capable. The further we rode from our small world, the harder it became, my body started to shiver as if with fever. I felt sick, headachy, and my bones hurt.

  “Else, we have to stop,” my stomach rebelled completely. I slid off Ash and vomited heavily. Gentle hands soon stroked my hair back and with her comforting words, the pain eased.

  Eventually, I sat back on my heels, breathing heavily but feeling better, “I don’t think the brandy was a good idea,” I said.

  “It’s all I could use to bring you back,” she said.

  “I don’t understand,” my mind glazed over with her contact. I tried to pull her toward me, wanting to make use of my sudden strength. She wriggled out of my grasp again.

  “You have to get back on the horse and we have to ride out of this damned wood before we are found,” she instructed. “Once we are out I will tell you everything, but we cannot stop, Lancelot. We don’t have time. Please, just ride.”

  The rest of the night passed like a nightmare. My body, desperate to be near her, continued to rebel if we were apart for even a few minutes. I begged her to ride with me on Ash, but Else ignored everything except escape. She also wouldn’t tell me what we were escaping. Time moved in fits and starts. It began to rain and the wind grew stronger. The trees moaned and cried our betrayal. I felt their grief as we left. At one point, I’d had enough. I pulled Ash up and told her I was going to stay.

  “Fine, if that’s what you want,” she turned Mercury toward me, rode close and punched me full in the face. I rocked back in shock, the pain unbelievable. Before I knew what happened, she’d tied me to my saddle and taken Ash’s reins. She dragged the horse and me after Mercury.

  Blood filled my mouth and everything hurt more than any pain I had ever known. We rode on. The night turned to day. The dawn lost in cloud and drizzle. We finally broke free of the wild wood. Else slackened our pace and we rode through the widely spaced beech trees and coppiced hazel of common land.

  Just as I’d begun to think death would be fairer than this evil existence, we stopped. She untied my hands and helped me down.

  “God, you look terrible,” she said, brushing back my thick black hair.

  “What’s happening to me?” I asked my trembling, shivering body hardly able to stand.

  “Just sit and I’ll make camp,” she said gently. She guided me to the trunk of a large beech tree. “We should be safe. They don’t come out of the deep green wood anymore.”

  I huddled against the tree and wondered if I were going to die. The worst of fevers raced through my body, causing it to convulse out of my control. Else wrapped a blanket round me and built a good fire. She made me drink water and it helped the stomach cramps. Then she took my hands.

  The feeling of her fingers on mine made the world softer, gentler. I stopped convulsing and shivering so much. “I feel better with you, come be with me,” I tried to pull her into my lap.

  She looked at me for the first time in what felt like days. She wept, “I didn’t know it would cost you so much.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  The part of my mind, which seemed forever to be the warrior, asserted itself. I looked around us properly, the trees were almost bare, the wind cold. It was autumn. I knew we had hidden in the wood for a while, but two seasons?

  “What is happening?” I pulled my hands away from Else. My instinct for survival overrode my craving for her body. “Where have we been? Who are you?” I remembered the questions I’d had in my mind the day I stitched her up. The lies she’d forced on me when she had finally revealed herself as a woman and the lies she had yet to explain.

  “You must understand, Lancelot, I didn’t mean for this to happen but we had no choice. We had to survive. It was the only place we could hide and I thought I could get us through safely. But I fell under its
spell as well. I lost track and it’s taken me so long to be strong again.” Else plucked at her gambeson with nervous fingers.

  I rose on shaking legs and approached my pack. I drew my sword for the first time in months. I turned back to her as fast as I could manage, Else gasped. “Who are you?” I demanded.

  The sword point rested at the nape of her neck. It trembled but I now felt something like myself, broken and weakened, but me nonetheless.

  Else raised her hands slowly, “I am nothing you can easily understand. Please put down the sword and I’ll explain. I swear. The time for lies and tricks is so far gone. Please, love,” she began.

  “Don’t call me that,” I remembered my anger for the first time in months. I welcomed it and hoarded it close to my heart. Unfortunately, my body had other ideas. My stomach cramped, I jerked violently and my hand lost control of the sword. It clattered to the floor of the wood and I doubled over.

  Else flew to my side, “You can’t hurt me, Lancelot. Your body won’t allow you to threaten me. I know you are angry but please, be calm.”

  “Just tell me,” I almost collapsed into her arms, forcing myself not to weep like a babe.

  Else held me, “I’ll have to begin with my conception or this isn’t going to make any sense,” she began. I held still, my head in her lap as I shivered. “I am a sister of the woman in the cave. Our mother is the same woman but I am half mortal, sort of, my father is Merlin.” She stopped.

  I groaned, “You aren’t human at all, he’s not human.”

  “He likes people to think he’s not human but only one grandparent is fey, they just happened to be a very strong kind of fey. That’s what makes him powerful.”

  “Okay, so you are Merlin’s daughter, what more lies are there, Else?” the bitterness hurt us both. She trembled against my exhausted body.

  “There are many lies and tricks,” she said sadly. “I was raised in the wild wood until I was five. That’s how I found it this time. Then Merlin appeared and took me into the world. Your world. His magic eased my transition but I remember even now how much it hurt to leave my family. He took me to England and implanted me into a new family, the de Clare family.”

  She paused for a long time as my brain began to join up some hideous dots. “Shit,” I finally groaned. “You are Eleanor de Clare. The missing daughter.”

  “I am.”

  She’d vanished before being presented to court. I remembered the chaos it caused. I had even joined the hunt for the girl. She’d been sent to court in order for Guinevere to finish her training before Arthur allowed her to marry the man her powerful father had chosen. That had been over five years before.

  I laughed and finally found the strength to leave her lap, but I couldn’t bring myself to release her hands. “I’ve been fucking Stephen de Clare’s sister. He’s going to love me for that. He’s the one who made Arthur give me these damned stripes.” I referenced the lash marks on my back. Else looked down.

  “I didn’t know.”

  “I didn’t think you needed to know. I thought you were my squire.”

  “Do you want to hear the worst of it?” she asked.

  “Of course it gets worse. This is my life. It has to be worse.” I did pull away from her at last and moved to the other side of the fire. The ground felt cold and damp but it kept my mind focused.

  “Merlin helped me run. He hadn’t meant to leave me with the de Clare’s long enough to be married. He didn’t think they’d find me a husband when I was barely fifteen. He brought me to Europe.” Else rose and paced. Her unhappiness a living thing, the tension in her body obvious. “He told me I had to wait, I had to survive and wait for the man who would save my people and Arthur. A man would come and rescue me when I needed him most. That man would be the one to destroy our enemies.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  She threw her hands up, “I don’t know. He left me and said he would return but he never did. When you showed up and saved me from the sheriff’s men, I knew it must be you. I’d never needed help so badly. And when I realised you were Lancelot. The Lancelot, that we all dreamt about at home, I knew you were the one to help. I used to listen for hours about how much Stephen hated you winning all the tournaments and fighting by Arthur’s side,” she ran out of breath. Pausing she fought to calm herself. I watched, dumbfounded.

  “Merlin told me that when the man appeared, I had to bind him to me with ties of loyalty and love. When you thought I could be your squire you were happy to be in my company. But I’d noticed the night you arrived how you are around women and we all heard about your love for the Queen.”

  I looked away from her at that point. My relationship with Guinevere is not something I choose to talk of or think about.

  She hurried on, “So, I thought being a boy would help you come to terms with my company. I didn’t want to trick you or force you to love me.”

  “That worked so well,” I said, aching for her once more.

  She ignored me and carried on, “When we were almost caught and we ran into the wood my homing instinct kicked in. It is the place of my birth. I felt it call to me and I followed that call. When I finally woke, it was already too late. You had been enchanted and I didn’t have the strength or talent to fight my sister’s desire for you. She wanted to bind you to me, so I would force you to save our family and Arthur. In making love to me, she bound us together, driving your essence into me and mine into you. She knitted my magic through your soul and you cannot escape me without great harm. It takes a full quarter cycle for this spell to be complete. You would have been my happy companion forever if I’d left it any longer and you would never have known what I’d done.”

  “I would have been your slave,” I said slowly.

  “Yes,” she said quietly. “When I realised what we were doing to you I tried to talk to her, to explain this wasn’t a good idea. That as a man you would have helped if I were just honest. That she needed to remove the spell. She needed to free you from me and the land of the fey. But she wouldn’t. She told me I had to attend to my duty and my duty was to save our family by using you.” Else sat as though all this exhausted her. “But I know we have to save Arthur without lies and trickery. I wanted the love of the man, Lancelot, not the halfwit her magic was creating. That’s when I knew we had to leave. So, I’ve been working on that for the last few days and nights but it’s hard because the human part of me is as vulnerable to the spells of the fey as you are. I just knew I must take you from that place before the autumn equinox.”

  “So, now what?”

  “Now you have to survive the withdrawal of the magic from your blood and your soul. Now you have a choice. Travel with me to England and help Arthur, or leave and try to survive without me.”

  “What is the threat to Arthur?” I asked.

  “A rival fey family want him dead. They are using the de Clare family to cause trouble in Camelot. You are the only one who can help. You are the only one Arthur loves enough to trust.”

  “That’s it?”

  “More or less,” she said.

  “But I am addicted to you aren’t I?”

  “Yes,” she said so quietly I could hardly hear her. “I am sorry. I didn’t know it was happening until too late. I loved you so much, Lancelot, I didn’t have the will to stop you.”

  “Love me,” I began to shiver. “Love me,” I said dully. “You have lied to me, tricked me, manipulated me and hurt me. You are just like all other fucking women and I hate you.” The shiver turned into a jerking aching reaction to my emotional withdrawal.

  “Let me touch you and I can ease your pain,” she rose and came to my side. Her hand outstretched to my face.

  I reacted violently. I threw myself backward and pushed her hard in the chest, sending her sprawling. “Don’t you fucking touch me. Don’t ever touch me again, you scheming bitch,” I growled at her. She went white with shock. “I would rather suffer a thousand whips on my back than ever have you touch me again. I will s
ave Arthur,” as though it had been in any doubt. “But you do not come to me again, ever.” My rage and sense of betrayal; my self pity and misery were the only things which made any sense to my beleaguered mind.

  We didn’t speak other than to see to the camp. When she left me alone to see to her toilet, I wept silently. Eventually I felt able to sleep, but I had vivid evil dreams of slaughtered white doe’s and bloody wolf pelts. Of the antlers of a great white stag hung on the wall of a dark castle. I woke fitfully, my body racked in pain. Else watched, her misery clear, but she maintained her distance.

  When dawn came, I forbid her from touching Ash. I moved slowly, painfully, every muscle ached but I vowed I would break myself of my cravings for her body. My only goal to smash the spell placed on me. I would not love this fairy witch. She stayed quiet and small. My anger made Ash nervous and tetchy, he nipped and stamped every time I came close. It took a long time to saddle him and even longer to climb into my gambeson and hauberk. I mounted and a small whimper escaped my control as I settled in the saddle.

  “Please, Lancelot, I beg you, let me ease your pain,” Else cried.

  “Leave me alone,” I growled. “I will kill you if you touch me. Now, just get me out of this fucking wood and back to England. If Arthur doesn’t kill me on sight we might find a way through this shit.”

  “Yes, my Lord,” she said humbly.

  We rode. I sweated, first burning with fire through my blood and guts, then so cold I thought I’d rather die than move another step. Everything hurt more than I had ever considered possible. I knew every sinew and bone which laced my body in an eternity of pain. We left the wood around midday and that night we paid for lodgings in a farmer’s hay barn. I curled around my pain and nursed my rage.

  It took almost a week but we made it to the coast. It rained constantly adding to my misery. We were too impoverished to pay for transport across the channel but Else vanished at one point and reappeared with a purse of small coins. I didn’t ask. I didn’t care. England beckoned regardless of my state of mind. I suppose I became accustomed to the pain and the terrible convulsions almost stopped. I merely ached, a hidden wound in my chest, which refused to heal, bleeding constantly.