Guinevere Evermore

by Sharan Newman

  Lancelot didn’t understand, exactly, but he felt the exultation in her and it worried him, even while he rejoiced that she wasn’t crushed by her misfortunes.

  “When I come back, though, you won’t turn me away, will you?”

  She laughed and rubbed her nose against his cheek. “Silly! Loving you is something I do very badly alone.”

  • • •

  Guinevere refused to return to her old rooms at Camelot. They were for the King and Queen, she insisted, and took up her lodging in the rooms reserved for visiting delegations.

  She was astonished at the change in people’s attitude toward her. She was no longer a wicked adultress, a pitied martyr or even a household treasure to be petted. Suddenly, she was a matriarch, a dowager queen. People asked her advice. They listened to her opinions. They stood when she entered and gave her the softest cushions. How very strange!

  “This is how my mother is treated!” she exclaimed to herself. It was pleasant to be respected as someone who knew all the answers, but Guinevere felt something wrong in it. She didn’t feel like a matriarch. She didn’t know all the answers. And she definitely did not want to spend the rest of her life telling stories of the old days of Camelot. The sight of the Round Table, with Arthur’s name still glowing, but without him and Gawain and Cei and Gareth and too many others, was painful to behold. She let them spoil her for a few months, wintered with them at Caerleon. But, when all the women had returned and Letitia proved an able mistress of the house, there was no reason for her to stay.

  The morning of her departure, she found Caet at the gate of Caerleon, holding the reins of his own horse as well as hers. She was surprised, but pleased.

  “What are you doing here? I thought you had to train the new men-at-arms.”

  “They can train themselves,” he replied shortly. “It’s about time we were going home.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The first few years after Guinevere came back to Cameliard were quiet ones. She returned to the room of her childhood, with its narrow bed and animal mosaic on the floor. The changelessness of it helped her to put aside the intervening time and concentrate on letting her body and spirit heal. She helped her sister-in-law, Rhianna, supervise the farmlands about the estate. She cared for her mother in her slow decline and final illness and knew the peace of letting someone she loved go gently. And slowly, carefully, she was finding out at last what Guinevere could do.

  The outside world didn’t vanish. Messengers came from Constantine and Letitia every few weeks. Sometimes Guinevere went to see them, especially after they left Camelot for good. Too many people complained that it was too haunted for anyone to live comfortably there. Also, while the country didn’t collapse, many of the kings, such as Maelgwn of Gwynedd, Ida of Northumbria, and Vortipore of Demetia, took advantage of the confusion after Camlann to declare themselves once again free of any government but their own, especially in the matter of taxes. Only Dyfnwal, now King, sent the tributes. Constantine retreated to Dumnonia, where only Agravaine’s friendly Cornwall lay at his back. From there he could still control a large part of Britain. Through him, Arthur’s laws and Arthur’s treaties continued.

  She was at the court when Gaheris left for Armorica, to train for the priesthood. He promised to send any books to be copied to her first, so that she could read them before passing them on to Illtud.

  “And if I hear word of Sir Lancelot, I’ll send that also,” he promised.

  “It’s kind of you,” she told him. “But don’t worry. I know he is well, without word of him.”

  “He’s been gone three years now,” Gaheris warned. “How can you have such faith?”

  “It’s a long walk to Jerusalem and back.” She smiled. “And we are making it together.”

  Gaheris left wondering if anything the bishops would teach him would help to explain the mysticism at home. He could hardly wait to tell them about Gawain.

  • • •

  Guinevere believed that she was managing her lands, but actually her role was more subtle. Rhianna ran the household, as she had done for twenty years. Caet had taken over the organization of the farms. He inspected the horses and sheep, gave the final approval on planting times and work owed to the villa, and went to Portsmouth to bargain with the traders for wine and silk. On the land where his grandfather had been born a slave to the Romans, Caet was now almost the lord.

  The first time a woman came to the door, asking for help with a sick child, Rhianna prepared to go without mentioning it to Guinevere. But the woman had wrung her cracked, red hands and begged that “the Queen-Lady” come too.

  “But we can’t bother her about this, Paedden,” Rhianna scolded her. “Guinevere isn’t such a one to have to mess herself with illness.”

  “Please! The old ones say she has healing hands!”

  Rhianna was growing annoyed, and only sympathy with Paedden’s worry kept her from speaking sharply. At that moment Guinevere came in.

  “I thought I heard voices. What is it?”

  “Guinevere, this poor woman thinks that somehow you can help her son. He has a sweating fever and she’s afraid he’s dying. I’ve tried to tell her . . .”

  “But if she thinks I can help, shouldn’t I try?” Guinevere asked. “Anyway, you do too much, wearing yourself out whenever there’s sickness. At least I can learn what you do, in case you need help. I’ve read our medical books, of course, but I’ve heard each illness is different and not every recommended treatment always works.”

  Rhianna looked doubtful and Risa made Guinevere tie up her hair and wear clothes that could be burnt afterward, but she went.

  It was a simple hut of stone and wood, built a hundred years before and maintained by each generation. It had only one large room, partitioned into smaller ones. The hearth in the center warmed everything and a hole in the roof provided ventilation. The walls were clean with whitewash and decorated with bright wool winter blankets and long chains of onion and herbs. Rhianna set about making a hot emetic to administer. Guinevere went to the bed.

  The boy was about nine years old. His brown hair was tangled wetly on his forehead and neck. The large brown eyes were glazed with fever as he tossed himself wildly in delirium.

  “Mama! Mama!” he called, unable to realize that his mother was next to him.

  “He mustn’t thrash about so! Galen is clear on that.” Guinevere tried to hold him, but he jerked in her arms. “Hush, dear, hush. You’ll be fine. Rhianna is making you some medicine. Just lie still, it will be all right.”

  She put one hand over his forehead and absently began to croon an old song from her childhood. Almost immediately the flailing arms relaxed and the boy’s eyes closed.

  Paedden felt his head. “He’s sleeping natural!” She burst into tears. “I knew you could save him! You knew the old words! How can we ever thank you!”

  “But I just held him a moment,” Guinevere protested. "I didn’t do anything.”

  “What did you sing to him, then?”

  “Nothing, just an old song of my nurse’s. She sang it to me when I caught a winter chill. It was only a children’s song.”

  Paedden’s face lit up. “A children’s song! As if I didn’t know the oldest language when I heard it. My grandmother always told me that Flora was teaching you. Why else would the high priestess of the goddess Epona be serving a Christian family? She must have taught you all the old charms and spells. You needn’t fear. I won’t give you away to the priests. You’ve saved my son today. Anything we have is yours.”

  “Thank you.” Guinevere was still puzzled. There were mysteries from her childhood about Flora, memories that never made sense and gaps that she could find no memory for. “But it would be well to give him the medicine, too.”

  “Of course,” Paedden agreed. “The Lady Rhianna’s potion will keep the fever from returning. But it was your hand that healed him.”

  Rhianna was silent on the walk home. Guinevere thought she was piqued at being ignored.
She tried to apologize. Rhianna laughed at her.

  “The boy is getting well. What difference does it make how it was done? If Flora had taught me her spells, I wouldn’t need to spend each spring and fall boiling down these smelly weeds.”

  “You mean you believe it? Was Flora really high priestess?”

  “Of course. Everyone knew that,” Rhianna answered. “I remember Matthew telling me of a time he and your other brothers sneaked out on solstice eve to watch the sacrifice. My, was she angry!”

  She stopped suddenly, remembering that Guinevere was not supposed to know about her nurse’s other life. But that was years ago. What harm could it do now?

  Guinevere didn’t notice, she was considering. “As far back as I can remember, Flora sang those songs to me and taught me the finger plays and hand games that went with them. But she never told me that they were anything but rustic charms. I thought they were just to amuse me.”

  “She had only sons and grandsons, you know, like Caet,” Rhianna said thoughtfully. “She might have decided to make you her acolyte.” She did not add that rumors hinted Guinevere was also meant to be a sacrifice. A long time ago, she repeated to herself. Flora was only ashes now.

  “Perhaps she died too soon to tell me. I was only fourteen at the time. I don’t remember it well. Rhianna,” Guinevere decided, “perhaps I should learn more about healing.”

  “It’s often very ugly, Guinevere.”

  “That’s all right. I think I’ve had enough of prettiness for this life.”

  And that was how, when the plague reached Britain, Guinevere was one of the first to be sent for. But, before that, came the Book.

  • • •

  The Book was not one sent by Gaheris. A trader brought it to Britain and showed it to Caet.

  “I can’t read but numbers,” he said with regret. “But they’re saying on the other side that this Gildas fellow gives them all hell-fire. All those kings, you know, and even the bishops. There’s supposed to be lots in there all about their sinful ways. You couldn’t read me a bit, could you?”

  Caet had to admit that his reading wasn’t up to the convolutions of Gildas, but he brought it back for Guinevere.

  It chanced that Father Antonius was visiting when he returned, and he and Guinevere were both delighted by the prospect of something new.

  “De Excidio et Conquestu Britannae, ‘Of the Destruction and Conquest of Britain.’ That’s a rather premature title, don’t you think?” Guinevere said in amusement. “Who is this Gildas?”

  “A man I was at school with, I’m afraid,” the priest admitted. “He is older than I am, of course. He studied first with St. Docca. He went to Armorica years ago.”

  “That must be why he thinks he can survive castigating every important person in Britain,” said Guinevere as she thumbed through it. “My Lord! Look what he says about Vortipore’s daughter!”

  She riffled forward a few pages and her amusement became grim. “How dare he! The sanctimonious slanderer! How can he make up such things! He accuses Constantine of murdering boys in church, and of adultery and ‘vulgar domestic impieties.’ Oh, he’d never get away with that in Rome! He’d be sued and executed for calumny before the first copy was finished.”

  But, in spite of her disgust, Guinevere went to the beginning and read the book through. She couldn’t understand how Gildas could have gotten so many facts wrong about decent people like Constantine and King Cuneglasse, who had married one sister to please his father and, after his death, divorced her, happily for both of them, to marry the sister he had wanted all along. Yet, when he spoke of Maelgwn and Vortipore, she relished knowing that their crimes were only what she had suspected.

  “He does have a way of making one feel the depths that these men have fallen to,” she admitted. “Listen to what he says about Maelgwn: ‘Why art thou foolishly rolling in the black pool of thine offences, as if soaked in the wine of the Sodomitical grape?’ It seems a fair question.”

  “Read what he says about the priests,” Risa demanded. “Of course, he doesn’t mean you, Father.”

  “Oh, he goes on about them for pages and pages, all about simony and gluttony and throwing their poor devout mothers and sisters in the street so that they might ‘familiarly and indecently entertain strange women.’ I wonder what school of rhetoric he adheres to?”

  Father Antonius was not so amused. “His words remind me of Caradoc. Obviously Gildas believes he has never sinned. Or perhaps he is hiding his own stained soul by heaping rebukes upon others. There are abuses in the Church in Britain. We know that well. But to insist that we deserve a second flood as our mildest punishment and to berate the entire country as another Sodom is not a responsible act!”

  “You’re right, Father. I’m sorry I laughed,” Guinevere apologized. “But I can’t believe that anyone will take this book seriously. Why, hardly anyone will ever read it. The Latin is very flowery and he does make mistakes in grammar. Can you see Maelgwn spending an evening listening to this?”

  “I suppose not,” the priest admitted. “But I did see how eagerly you and the other ladies here went through it.”

  They had the grace to be ashamed. “For a young man, you are very astute, Father Antonius,” Rhianna laughed. “Very well, what is the penance for enjoying seditious literature?”

  But the book was not ignored. More copies found their way into Britain and excerpts of it were read aloud in court and church. Some priests found Gildas’ copious quotations from the Bible perfect for sermonizing, and spread the condemnation of rulers among their people. “Britain has kings, but they are tyrants!” became a catch phrase that prepared listeners for lurid denunciations to follow. Vortipore was furious, and had the bishop who preached the book in Demetia poisoned. He didn’t care particularly what was said about his daughter, but he wasn’t having any baseborn cleric tell him to “turn from his sinful ways with a humble and contrite heart.”

  Maelgwn, on the other hand, thought the whole thing a great joke. He had chapters read every night at dinner and roared loudest at the parts about himself.

  “Say that again,” he commanded the reader. “That part about ‘hot and prone, like a young colt coveting every pleasant pasture.’ Ah! Wonderful how this Gildas uses words. I think I should like that on my tombstone.”

  The winter was certainly livelier because of it. In spring, the interest died down, as the more mundane concerns of planting and sheep-shearing and raiding a neighbor’s land took precedence again.

  Guinevere was in her mother’s garden, thinning the lettuce, when one of the new servant girls came running.

  “My lady, come quick!” she begged. “There’s a man at the gate with Saxon hair and British eyes who says he’s your nephew. The guards want to kill him but I thought I’d better tell you first.”

  At the gate, Guinevere found a young man standing beside his horse with an air of unconcern. He was not fazed by the naked swords a few inches from his stomach. He greeted her with a smile which told his patrimony at once.

  “Aunt Guinevere! Father warned me not to expect a royal welcome, but I hoped for a little better than this.”

  “Put your weapons away, Mauric and Horn. This is my brother’s son,” Guinevere told the guards, who still looked suspiciously at the man’s hair. “It can’t be Matthew; you don’t look old enough.”

  “No, I’m Allard, Aunt. I was afraid that if I gave that Saxon name, your men would slit my throat before you could be fetched. I have a letter from father with me, if you doubt me.”

  “A letter from Mark! Oh, that’s wonderful! But you look just like he did at your age, at least in your face—just as I remember him before he went to war. Now, you must need to tend to your horse and wash and so forth. I’ll read this while you’re being settled. Grisel! Show my nephew to the corner guest room, please. You don’t need to be afraid. He’s really family.”

  As soon as he left, Guinevere unrolled the letter. It was written on a piece of lambskin, poorly scraped. Mark
was not a frequent correspondent.

  My dearest sister:

  The news of our mother’s death only just reached me. I grieve for her, and now find I can forgive her for her bitterness toward my wife. I have no desire, however, to return to my birthplace. I will die and be buried here in my own land. Matthew has married and wishes to remain here also. If my parents did not request that I be denied my share of their lands, I would like to deed them to my second son, Allard. He has always been eager for tales of Cameliard and the old days of Britain. He is an able man, whom I have sent as my agent before to various parts of Britain. He speaks Saxon as well as British and reads a little. I have not told him of this plan. Let him stay with you awhile, and if he seems to want to remain, find him a fair portion to settle on. In this, I trust your sense of honor completely.

  Mark

  Guinevere read it over several times. It was the first she had heard from her misanthropic brother since she visited him fifteen years before. He must have struggled with his pride a long time before writing such a letter. Of course, Allard did have the right to part of his grandparents’ estate, but a Saxon! Even though he was only half, his bright blond hair and solid build were so obvious. And the fear and hatred of the Germanic invaders went deep throughout all Britain. If she gave him his patrimony, it was quite possible that the peasants on the land would revolt. Yet she couldn’t deny him his right.

  The best thing to do was wait. Let Allard spend some weeks with them. Perhaps he would decide he would be happier with his mother’s people or back in the mountains. She could even hope that somehow the people of Cameliard would learn to accept him. But it was a fragile hope.

  After washing and changing Allard returned, full of enthusiasm.

  “Your baths are still working!” he said in amazement. “I thought most of the pipes north of Aquae Sulis had burst and never been repaired. This is just as my father told me. Do you have time to show me more?”