“No, Aunt. They’re a kind of Alemanni. The languages aren’t too unlike but it’s a totally different tribe. They’ve been here a few generations and know something about the way we farm and raise animals. They won’t just hunt and fight as the Saxons do, but they can fight, if we need them, and I think we will.”
“You want foederati at Cameliard?” Guinevere was outraged.
“Now Aunt.” Allard backed up a few steps. “Not hired warriors, settlers, with wives and families. They’re Christian now, you know. There was an Irish missionary among them a few years ago. That’s more than most of the peasants here are.”
“I don’t know. I have to think about it,” Guinevere hedged. “We’ve had the same families living here for three hundred years.”
“Then it’s time for new blood,” Allard insisted. “Please, Aunt Guinevere. Let me bring a few of them here. We must have more people or Cameliard won’t survive.”
“Well . . . only a few, though, two or three families to start.” She felt he was right, but hated the idea anyway.
He kissed her excitedly. “Thank you, dearest Aunt. You won’t be sorry. I’ll see that they are model tenants.”
“I’m sure,” she replied. “You know, you didn’t need my approval. You could have put them on your own land without saying anything to me at all.”
“Yes,” he answered. “But that wasn’t the way I wanted to do it.”
She felt very comforted.
The Alemanni were greeted with apathetic distrust. They cleaned out houses from which whole families had died and began to till the land. Under Allard’s guidance, they gradually blended in with the natives. The adults never gave each other more than wary acknowledgment, but watching the children together, Guinevere could see that the next generation would be as much a blend as Allard. She wondered if Arthur would approve. His walls had been built to fend off the invaders. In the rest of Britain, there was no sign that anyone else was welcoming the Germanic immigrants. Still, she was reminded more and more of the early years at Camelot when she saw the new tenants and the old together.
Another year passed and another. Allard built his villa and went north with an invitation to Lydia to spend her last years with her old friends. He brought back regrets and her youngest daughter, who was not afraid of Saxons. Guinevere received her with joy.
She was busy and useful. She was happy. But every morning she watched the road and wondered how many steps one took to Jerusalem and back.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
After the plague, the remnants of the British aristocracy who did not enter monasteries withdrew deeper into the mountains and the peninsula. Saxon, Angle, and Jutish newcomers flowed into the forsaken land. Where a number of people remained, there were battles, but not great ones as in the first days. The British loathing of the Germanic immigrants never abated, and they refused to send missionaries or envoys to “barbarians.” Intermarriage with the Franks had brought Christianity to some Saxons and the land of Britain itself had changed them, drew them into herself and away from continental relations.
They tried to conquer Cameliard, but Allard and his Alemanni settlers joined in the defense and a treaty was made and hostages exchanged.
Guinevere found herself in charge of five Saxon children, terrified of the strange world they had been sent to. Their grandmothers had told them that the old Roman buildings were full of ghosts. The first day, they refused to enter the villa.
“They can’t spend the next seven years camping in the atrium,” Letitia said in exasperation. “We’ll have to drag them through and show them there are no spirits.”
“I hate to frighten them even more,” Guinevere worried. She got down on her knees and reached out her arms to the youngest child. She racked her brain for the little bit of Saxon she had learned.
“Leof cild,” she began. The little girl started, then cautiously touched a lock of Guinevere’s hair.
She smiled. “Swa swa Mama,” she said.
“Yes!” Guinevere was pleased. “Just like Mama’s. Now, Comst! In hus na grimlicum gas turn.”
The children looked doubtful. Guinevere repeated, “Na grimlicum gas turn!”
“What are you saying?” Letitia asked.
“I think I’m telling them we have no ghosts, but I’m not sure,” Guinevere admitted.
“Well, let’s try to get them inside again and find out. I hope they learn good British soon. I’ll never get my throat around that guttural language!”
“All right,” Guinevere agreed. “Oh, what is it, Leofric?”
“My Lady, there is an old, blind monk at the gate who has asked about you.”
“Oh? Did he want to talk to me?”
“No, Lady, but Aulan thought you should be sent for. He gave me no reason.”
“Very well, I’ll be there in a moment.” Guinevere looked at the guard. “Leofric, how close is your language to that of these children?”
“I can understand them a bit, if they talk slowly.”
“Good. Then go with Lady Letitia, please, and try to make it clear to these poor babies that we are not sending them inside to be devoured by monsters, but to wash and eat and put their belongings away.”
She hurried to the gate, a hope growing in her. Her lame foot dragged as she tried to go faster. The hope flamed into certainty as Aulan hurried to meet her, pointing to a figure sitting patiently at the gate.
“He didn’t give his name, but I knew him,” Aulan told her. “He only asked for news of you. I made him wait until you could come. I hope that was right?”
“Of course. Thank you, Aulan, thank you!”
As they came closer, the pilgrim’s face turned at the sound. How worn he was! The winds of sea and desert had furrowed his face, but not stooped him. So many years! Guinevere struggled to control her trembling as she laid her hands on his shoulders.
“A long journey, Lancelot,” she whispered. “Did you find your answers?”
He took her hands in his, conscious that they were not alone.
“I only found more questions, Guinevere,” he answered. “The world is filled only with questions.”
“Not here, my love. Here there is sunshine and quiet and children discovering that, in my house at least, monsters are not real. Stay with us . . . awhile?”
“Yes, I dreamt of it, all the way to Jerusalem and back.”
She led him to a guest room and ordered that food be brought to them there. While they ate, she told him of what had happened in Britain in the years he’d been gone.
“And have you discovered what you can do?” he asked wistfully.
She laughed. “Some of it. I can help in a sickroom and play with children and, maybe, I can hold people together. I never knew that was a talent before, but I’ve worked all these years to keep Cameliard, just my own corner of Britain, safe and well. It may be selfish to preserve what I love, but it was as much as I could do.”
“From the babble of tongues I heard as I journeyed to your door, you’ve accomplished a miracle.”
She pushed her tray aside and came to sit next to him. He finished his cup, then touched her face with his fingers.
“My eyes dimmed slowly until I finally realized that I could tell nothing more than light and dark. Constantinople was only a blue and gold blur, and Jerusalem a blending of browns. It didn’t really matter. They could not have outshone the Grail. But I would give so much to be able to look at you now.”
“It’s better that you have only memory, my love.” She kissed his palm. “I’ve grown old. Feel the wrinkles in my brow. My skin has faded and my hands are mapped with veins.
“And your hair?” he asked, as he pulled out the pins and unwove it.
“Gray, almost white,” she lied, tears in her throat.
“It feels as beautiful as ever. Oh Guinevere!” He buried his face in her neck. “I’ve missed you so dreadfully. Stay with me tonight!”
“I never meant to do anything else, my dearest.”
S
he lifted his face to hers and kissed him slowly. He drew her more closely against him, sliding her robe from her shoulders. She shook it off.
“I forgot to tell you, Lancelot, my own. Loving you is what I can do best.”
• • •
They lay awake in the early morning dusk, Lancelot’s head cradled in the hollow of her shoulder and her breast. Guinevere sighed and felt all her muscles relax for the first time since Gawain’s death. Lancelot chuckled.
“My dear, you are purring like a kitten.”
“I feel like one, warm and lazy. Do you think we could just spend the rest of our lives in this bed?”
“Mmmm, what would your household think of us?”
“Probably that we were too old and feeble to get up. They are all so young! Even Risa is gone now. I hope she finally knows what happened to her son. We never heard a word of him.”
He absently let his hand drift across her body.
“Are we really the only ones left, Guinevere?”
“Nearly, I think. Agravaine died two winters ago and Lydia last summer. Gaheris, they say, is a bishop now, in iberia. We have outlived our time, my darling. To most men today we are nothing more than legends.”
“Then hold me tightly, Guinevere, before even our memory fades.”
He stayed a month. They both knew from the first that he couldn’t remain forever. Too much had changed, and too much of the past was still with them. Lancelot told stories of his travels to wide-eyed listeners, and they begged for tales of Camelot and Arthur.
“Please,” the children begged. “Lady Guinevere will tell us nothing, not even if the songs the poets sing are true. Did you really walk a flaming sword over an abyss to rescue her? Did Arthur really kill a hundred men in one battle? Did the wizard Merlin build Camelot overnight? Lady Guinevere laughed and laughed when we asked her that.”
“I can’t tell you about that,” he insisted. “Camelot was finished before I came there. Be content with what the poets tell you. What I remember does not belong with their songs.”
The night before he left, they didn’t sleep at all.
“They built the monastery on the tor of the sun god. It overlooks Camlann and what remains of Camelot, so it will be good that I can no longer see. The monks will take me in as a lay brother,” Lancelot explained. “I know better now than to make impossible vows.”
“Do you think you’ll find peace there?” Guinevere asked, smoothing his hair.
“No. I found it here. But there’s a stubborn part of me yet that longs for redemption. I don’t want to be left behind in purgatory when you ascend to heaven.”
“My darling fool! You still believe that happiness must be sinful!”
“Only my own, Guinevere.”
“Someday, I’ll teach you how wrong you are.” She kissed him again and they said nothing coherent the rest of the night.
• • •
Although she appeared much younger than she was, after Lancelot left, Guinevere felt older. Being with him again had showed her the gap between her old half-Roman world and this vibrant one of eager newcomers. She had accomplished what she wanted. Arthur would not be forgotten, nor, she believed, his dream. Her home was safe. It had even become a refuge. After Allard finished building his villa across the valley, she deeded hers to the church as a house for women who needed protection. Many were relieved to know there was a monastery just for them, where they could be free to study and work without male supervision. The management of the house and lands fell to Letitia.
Her hair never lost its gold and she took to covering it. Her pale eyes and translucent skin made the contrast too startling. Occasionally, Lancelot would send word. Only that, a word. But it was enough. She was simply biding time, and the world around her grew less and less important.
Late one winter night she was in her childhood room, reading the poems of Ausonius. She heard the singing very clearly and smiled. Geraldus was at her side.
“Have you come again to ask me to come to your country?”
“This is the last time I can ask, Guinevere.”
“Really? Oh, Geraldus, how wonderful! I’ve waited so long! I only hope Lancelot will follow me soon!”
“Guinevere, please. You don’t know what waits for you out there! Our land is beautiful and filled with magic and music. It’s where you’ve always belonged. We even have a unicorn.”
“A unicorn!” Memory filled her eyes. “Of course, how could I have forgotten all these years. My other self, it was, when I was a girl. But no, not even for my unicorn. I’ve grown up, as far as I can in this life. It’s time for me to see what else there is. And I promised Lancelot. He can’t reach the gates and not find me there.”
Geraldus sighed and reached across the narrow gap between them, kissing her good-bye.
“I didn’t think you’d change your mind. I hope it’s all you want it to be.”
“If Lancelot is with me, it will be.”
His choir sang to her one more time, a song very much like the prothalamium they had made for her wedding day. Dear Geraldus!
Guinevere looked with longing into the growing dawn. She thought she saw Gawain’s face framed in the clouds. “Galahad is gone to some holy place where I may not be allowed to follow. Arthur, they say, will never die, poor dear. But I have made a promise to Lancelot and with all my heart, I want to keep it. If Lancelot is not in paradise, then I might as well be damned. Thank you, Geraldus,” she called to the fading singing. "But death seems very wonderful to me. Give my love to everyone left behind.”
Letitia found her later that morning, her face turned to the window and her eyes wide open as if in delighted surprise.
They put her in a sarcophagus made for one of her ancestors, wrapped in her brilliant hair and with Galahad’s curl tucked into her hand.
Letitia took the message to Lancelot herself. His tears slipped quietly through his gnarled hands as she told him.
“I should have felt it,” he muttered. “But she still lives in my heart. I don’t understand.”
“Poor old man,” Letitia said to herself.
The monks thought the news would kill him, but Lancelot could not will himself dead. Later the Lady of the Lake tried to make him come home to her, threatening him with eternal youth, but he laughed in her face.
“That was my third offer, Lancelot. Take your humanity and rot in it!” she screamed at him.
“There is nothing I want more,” Lancelot answered. She vanished in a puff of fuchsia smoke, which quite unnerved the monks working outside.
He took her words as a gift. That afternoon he complained of a fever and chills, and a week later he finally died.
When they heard of Lancelot’s passing, the women of Cameliard took Guinevere’s coffin to Glastonbury.
“We promised her, Lord Abbot,” the abbess, Elfgifu, insisted, with a melting glance. “She was to be buried again with Sir Lancelot. Please allow us to fulfill her last desire.”
“Brother Lancelot renounced all earthly desires when he came to us in his last years. We cannot permit such blasphemy as to have his paramour laid with him in the grave.”
“What harm could they do there?” Elfgifu’s face was innocent, but the abbot sensed her mocking.
“It grieves us terribly,” she continued, “that you won’t let us lay our poor lady to rest. We have labored in the time since her death to create fine offerings to give the monastery at Glastonbury, for the peace of her soul, of course. Fine altar cloths, exquisitely wrought candlesticks of silver, gold patens, and a relic which was brought to our lady while she was Queen and which she always kept in this carved ivory box.”
“What is it?” The abbot sniffed greedily at the hoard.
Elfgifu opened the box, but only for a moment. “Baby teeth from John the Baptist and Saints Peter and James, saved by their mothers and lovingly preserved. We felt they should rest in the chapel over our lady’s grave.”
The abbot relented. “Very well. Perhaps she was not so wi
cked as the tales say. Some of them do tell that she was kind to the poor and needy. But we will not let them lie side by side; her bones must rest at his feet in an attitude of submission.”
Elfgifu looked at Letitia, who shrugged. “All right, we agree.”
So they put her bones, still wrapped in her golden hair, at Lancelot’s feet and buried them both in a sealed lead coffin.
Legends grew up about the place, as about Arthur and Merlin and all the knights of the Round Table, until they obscured the truth like ivy on a wall. A generation later, a monk of Glastonbury reasoned that if the woman buried by the chapel were Guinevere, then the man with her must be King Arthur. He had a lead cross carved to that effect and placed it above the grave. In time, it came to be believed. Then for many years the grave was forgotten and new buildings and new monks came and only the poets remembered the tale.
In 1184 a fire raced through the monastery. In the extensive clearing out and rebuilding, the association of the monastery with Camelot was recalled. In 1191, while digging a foundation for a new chapel, the cross was discovered to great excitement.
It read: HIC JACET INCLITUS REX ARTURIS IN INSULA AVALLONIS SEPULTUS CUM WENNEVERIA UXORE SUA SECUNDA.
“Here lies the famous King Arthur, in the isle of Avalon buried, with Guinevere, his second wife.”
Why the cross said second wife, no one knew, unless the monk knew Modred was Arthur’s son and that Guinevere was not his mother.
When the coffin was opened, the bones of a large man were found, with those of a woman curled at his feet. In the sunlight, something gleamed from her and the monks saw a single strand of hair, the color of gold. One monk leaped into the coffin, grasped it and held it up. It was caught by the breeze and crumbled to dust in his hands.
King Henry the Second and his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, had the coffin taken in state and buried in a great tomb in front of the high altar of Glastonbury. It remained there until the Reformation, when it was destroyed and the bones were scattered.
• • •
Guinevere Evermore Page 29