Guinevere cried out, but he couldn’t see her in the melee. He was being pushed toward the balcony. The third man knew his business and, despite his efforts, Lancelot could not trick him into making a sudden lunge which might take him through the air and send him over the rail. The roses were at his back. He looked down. There was only one man there now, with a horse. There was nothing for it. He would have to jump.
Lancelot took a deep breath and threw the table at his adversary. At the same time, he leapt from the balcony, catching himself on the thorny vines on the way down. He landed hard, his naked chest and arms scratched and bleeding. The man knelt over him and he swung.
“No! Wait! It’s me, Lancelot!” Gareth dodged the blow. “I’ve brought Clades. You’ve got to get out of here or they’ll kill you! Hurry!”
“But Guinevere! I have to save her! Help me, Gareth!”
Gareth pulled him up and pushed him toward the horse. “No! There’s nothing you can do. Don’t worry, I heard them talking. They’re not going to hurt her. They’re taking her to Cirencester for trial. If you don’t go now, you won’t be able to help her at all! Please, Lancelot! Believe me. There’s nothing you can do. You’ll only make it worse for her. Now! They’re coming!”
Lancelot had mounted. He leaned down to Gareth. "All right. But you get to her. Tell her I’ll be back for her! Do you understand?”
“Yes, of course. Lancelot! Please!”
He slapped Clades’ rump and the horse sped off. Lancelot knew the gate would be locked and aimed for the lower fence overlooking the practice field. He leaned over the horse’s neck and whispered fiercely.
“You’re a magic horse, my Clades, and you’re as young as ever. You can do it.”
Clades tossed his head in agreement. He galloped up to the wall and, with a mighty leap, cleared it with inches to spare. By the time anyone could mount to follow him, he was through the maze and deep into the forest.
In her confusion, Guinevere only knew that he was away and safe. She was furious at these men who dared to break into her bedchamber and tie her with coarse ropes. But as long as they could not harm Lancelot, she wouldn’t worry. They were mad, of course, with their talk of witchcraft and trials. Arthur would see to them. She told them so.
“Arthur can do nothing about it, Witch,” the leader laughed. “We’re taking you to the Bishops and St. Caradoc. And don’t try to set your sorcery on us. We’ve all got cold iron next to our skins. You won’t be working any more magic on King Arthur, either. Britain will be a strong power again, once you’re destroyed.”
He would have continued, but Guinevere had given him one incredulous stare which had turned his knees to jelly and then she had fainted.
“There,” he said in triumph. “I knew the iron would work. Hurry, men. Get her down and tied to the horse. We’ll get to the Bishops and let God take care of her kind!”
Chapter Sixteen
“How could you just let them take her!” Arthur roared to the assembled group. “What kind of men did I leave to guard Camelot?”
He pulled off his muddy boot and threw it on the floor with reverberating force. The terrified guard inched forward and knelt cringingly before the King.
“We didn’t know what to do, my Lord. The men had a pass and Sir Sagremore and Sir Perredur were there to admit them and left with them. We thought . . .” he swallowed. “We thought that it was done with your knowledge.”
Arthur scrutinized the faces around him; frightened, alarmed, curious, some even secretly gloating. Of course with his knowledge. They had even hoped it was true that he had set a trap for Guinevere and Lancelot. Is that what Guinevere believed? Was that why she had not called for help when they brought her through the compound? Is that why Lancelot had vanished? The other boot hit the wall. How dare they have so little faith in him!
“Get out!” he ordered with a sweep of his arm. “Get out every one of you! If any harm comes to the Queen through this, I’ll have you all flayed, I swear it!”
They fell over each other shoving to get through the door. Arthur rubbed his temple and exhaled slowly. Only Cei and Gawain were left in the room. Arthur looked at them and shook his head.
“Will someone tell me what in hell is going on?”
As much as they could, they did, Gawain only omitting his suspicions about Modred. Arthur listened with escalating fury.
“Whatever Lancelot and Guinevere have done is no one’s business but mine. The Church has no right to interfere, and they know it.”
Gawain agreed. “It’s more than that, much more. Someone has woven a net of lies and half-truths around Guinevere, and I was too stupid to see how thick they had grown. They are also saying that she practices sorcery.”
“Nonsense! And even if she did, what of it? Most of the people in Britain try a charm now and then. Merlin certainly worked unmolested.”
“They may have thought him too powerful to challenge.”
“All right, what’s the penalty for sorcery, then?”
“Under Roman law, if she confesses, twenty-five gold coins.”
“Someone is trying to destroy my wife for twenty-five gold coins?”
Arthur was growing increasingly bewildered. Cei put a hand on his shoulder. In the past few hours he had gathered enough information to make him very much afraid. As Gawain had said, the net had been woven by a master. He didn’t understand, yet, all the possibilities involved.
“That’s if she confesses and repents. If she does not confess and is found guilty, the punishment is excommunication, branding, and exile.”
“No man would dare!”
“Wait! That is just the beginning. The bishops at Cirencester will try her for pagan sorcery, but now the word has gone out that a civil tribunal will also meet, and there the charge will be treason.”
Arthur looked from one man to the other.
“This can’t be,” he said finally and firmly. “It makes no sense. Who would conceive such an accusation and who would believe it?”
No one answered but he could feel the fear from the other two. Arthur looked around for his boots.
“We leave for Cirencester tonight. I will have this madness ended at once.”
Cei stepped in front of him. “You can’t go, Arthur. You must stay here. Anything you do to try and save her will only convince the people that the charges are true. What man would let himself be cuckolded and then not wish to see the woman punished? Only one who had been bewitched. They will believe it if you go.”
Arthur stood. “If we were not closer than brothers, Cei, I would have run you through for saying that.”
“I know,” Cei grimaced. “That was why I had to be the one to say it.”
They glared at each other a moment, then Arthur closed his eyes and rubbed his aching head. Gawain reached out to him, grief-stricken but bound to add his say.
“And if you go to Cirencester, dissolve the courts, and bring Guinevere back, what will that do to the system of laws and justice you’ve had us working on all these years? You’ve promised the people that no man, not even the kings or the bishops, can be above the law. Are you now excepting yourself?”
Arthur looked from one to the other, anger warring with incredulity in his eyes. He slammed his fist on the table.
“I wish I had never led an army or read a law or ridden more than a day from my own hearth. I wish I had let Britain be overrun by barbarians and that I had left all of my fine knights to butcher peasants in their own happy ignorance. I wish I had never cared about anyone, that I had looted the churches and raped and burned and taken whatever I wanted. By all the gods that ever laughed at man, I wish I’d been born without a soul!”
Gawain and Cei sat on the floor at his feet. They couldn’t bear looking down on him.
Gawain broke the long silence.
“Whatever happens, Arthur, we won’t let her be harmed. You know that. Cei and I will leave today. I’ll have them tie me to my horse again rather than waste time. We’ll be there in a
day and a half.”
“It will be all right, Arthur,” Cei added. “No one could look at Guinevere and believe all the nonsense they’re saying about her.”
“No, of course not.” Arthur did not relax. “But if any harm comes to her at all, those power-hungry ‘saints’ and greedy kings will find that I have not sunk into my dotage yet. I will chase them into their warrens and burn them out to face my sword."
“If any harm comes to her,” Gawain said grimly, “we will be at your side until the last one of them is destroyed.”
• • •
Except for burns on her wrists from the ropes, Guinevere was not uncomfortable. They had not spoken to her on the hard ride to Cirencester and had served her with fear. Even Sagremore and Perredur, whom she had thought were her friends, stayed as far distant from her as possible. When she caught their eyes, the look in them made her feel shaky and cold at the pit of her stomach.
“This is ridiculous!” she told herself sternly. “I am the Queen. Moreover, I am a daughter of Rome, of a Christian family, bred to reason and to rule. They are mad or enchanted but they know better than to hurt me. Arthur will not let them. Soon, someone will come and rescue me; someone always has. I need only to be calm and wait.”
She told herself this again and again, during the long ride by day and the fearful silence by night. She remembered it when they brought her into the town and the few remaining citizens stared at her as if she had been a rare bird, captured for their astonishment. When she was taken to a room and the door barred she sat down on the bed and composed herself to wait.
When a guard brought her some food, she thanked him and calmly informed him that she would need water to wash with, a clean robe, and the services of a maid to attend her.
“I . . . I . . . don’t know about that,” he stammered.
She smiled.
“Of course it must be difficult to provide for so many in the town, when the streets have been nearly empty for so long, but perhaps you could ask?”
“Yes, of course.” He bowed. “Perhaps my wife . . .”
“If she could lend me a robe and some hair clasps, I would be grateful.” Guinevere smiled again.
An hour later, there was a timid knock on the door and a woman entered, followed by a servant carrying a steaming kettle of water scented with mint. They were followed by a shoemaker with a selection of sandals and another woman whose arms were piled with a rainbow variety of cloth. Guinevere showed no surprise. This was the way she had always been treated. People were so kind! Perhaps things hadn’t changed so much after all. Now, as long as Lancelot was safe, everything would be all right.
In the town, however, there was consternation bordering on chaos. Only St. Caradoc had known the real reason for the meeting of the holy men of the church. The others thought that it was only an unhappy coincidence and their reactions were many and varied.
Dubricius was cautious when asked about the charges.
“I did hear something about it last winter,” he admitted. “Some say that the King would never have entertained Saxons at his table if the Queen had not influenced him. Since her brother took a Saxon wife, they assumed it was her doing. But I never heard she was that fond of those heathens in spite of the gossip. I don’t know. We must have more proof before we condemn a woman of such high status.”
“Have you seen her?” Bishop Teilo asked. “I have heard that she does not age and that her beauty is a temptation to any man who dares look at her. The proof may lie in the accused herself.”
“She has not changed much since I first saw her, well over twenty years ago, but she has not had the cares of motherhood or the burden of toil to wear away her youth,” Dubricius hedged.
Caradoc overheard them and spoke across the room in the penetrating tones of one who often preaches to the stones. “Time touches us all, to remind us that we are but mortal and decay is the fate of our bodies. To go against that is to go against God’s design.”
Dubricius quelled a desire to clap his hands over his ears. These country ranters! He turned back pointedly to Teilo.
“I will wait until all have spoken and we have questioned the woman before I decide if she is a sorceress and if she has committed any evil through it.”
“Adultery isn’t evil enough for you, Dubricius?” Caradoc rang out again. “London has tainted the purity of your faith, I fear. Well, there will be enough evidence to convince even you.”
“If that is so, I will not flinch from my duty,” Dubricius answered wearily. “But I, for one, would prefer not to discuss the matter until we convene, tomorrow.”
He did not wait for a reply but returned to his rooms.
Modred was waiting there.
“I apologize,” he began. “I just rode from Camelot with Sir Gawain and Sir Cei. King Arthur has sent us to be the Queen’s defenders.”
“He wishes her defended, then?”
Modred avoided the older man’s eyes. “He does not believe she has done anything that is anyone’s affair but his own. He says there is no truth in the gossip of witchcraft and treason. He is very angry but will abide by the good sense of the tribunal.”
Dubricius concentrated, trying to find a hidden meaning in Modred’s words.
“He will not intervene, even if she is sentenced to excommunication and death?”
“Arthur told me that the laws are just and all must obey them.”
“So!” Dubricius thought. “He believes her to be guilty but will not condemn her himself. Perhaps there is some truth in all the wild rumors.”
Aloud he only murmured that it was a rare man who would not use his office to go around justice.
“My . . . uncle is indeed a rare man. If he were not the King, I think he might have been called a saint.”
“Your loyalty commends you, Sir Modred. You may tell the King that he can trust me to be true to his laws. Now, would you like some wine before you go?”
“No, thank you. I must speak to many more people tonight and, if possible, visit the Queen.”
“They won’t let you do that, I’m afraid. Sir Sagremore was terribly shocked when he discovered that she was holding a sort of court in her cell, so that he has forbidden anyone to see or speak to her. Her meals are lowered from the roof to the window in a bag. They are afraid she will work her enchantments on the guards and escape.”
“Idiot!” Modred snapped, then recovered himself. Perhaps it was just as well. “I find it difficult to believe that a being that powerful could have been captured in the first place. Clearly Sir Sagremore was overzealous.”
Dubricius had thought so himself, but there was a question in Modred’s voice that made him wonder. It was true that she had not been imprisoned a day before people began to arrive with gifts and comforts for her. Was it just that she was loved by the common people, or did she have some unnatural influence over them?
He pondered the question long after Modred had gone.
Sir Perredur had told Guinevere that the next morning she would be taken to the center of town, past the forum to the Basilica. There she would be questioned by the bishops and saints, and witnesses would speak for and against her. He held iron out before him at arm’s length to keep her away. Guinevere had watched him with sad wonder, but said nothing. What could be said?
She lay on her narrow bed that night, wrapped in the soft woolen blankets the guard’s wife had brought. He had looked fearful, and she hoped they had not punished him. There was no sound in the rooms around her. Her lamp had been taken away. For the first time in her life she was alone in the dark. She put her back to the wall and stared into the moonlit room. Her eyes drooped and she dozed. It seemed in her twilight state that she could hear music from somewhere, singing by many people, with melodies that chased each other round and round in complicated patterns until she grew dizzy trying to follow them. Only once before had she heard anything so exquisite.
“Dear Geraldus,” she murmured in her sleep. Then she sat up with a shock.
/> The moonlight quivered around the sitting forms of two men. One was slight and laughter shone in his eyes. His hands were waving in the air, in time to the music. The other man was taller. He was younger than Guinevere remembered but still as imposing. He watched her with the same look of annoyance that he had always shown in her presence.
“I should have warned Arthur before I left,” Merlin said. “I always knew she would bring him ruin.”
“She hasn’t done anything. You know that or you wouldn’t be here,” Geraldus chided. “Hello, Guinevere. I’ve missed you. How do you think we’ve improved?”
He indicated the choir.
“Geraldus!” Guinevere reached out her arms to him. “I knew you didn’t die, but no one would believe me.”
“I shouldn’t have left my body behind,” he admitted. “But I don’t seem to have missed it.”
“There is a shrine to you now. People say you work miracles.”
He squirmed. “Not really. I cured two cases of tone deafness. These things get exaggerated.”
Merlin cut in. “You can gossip later. Guinevere, they are going to condemn you at this trial.”
“No, of course not. Arthur won’t let them.”
“He can’t stop them, and if he tries to rescue you, he’ll destroy everything I worked for.”
Guinevere stared at them. “You came here to tell me that I’m going to have to let them kill me?”
“No, Guinevere.” Geraldus smiled with eagerness. “We came to take you back with us. You can live with us here until the end of the world.”
He held out his hands to her, but she drew back.
“Is Galahad with you?”
Merlin tapped his foot impatiently. “Of course not. What would he do here?”
“Then can Lancelot come with me?”
“I doubt it. He couldn’t stand the comfort.”
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