Queen of the Summer Stars

by Persia Woolley

  “Do you know what it is like, to lie cradled in the arms of a god? All passion spent, and still held close and dear by the man who holds your soul in his hands? I do not know if other women…if it is the usual way of things. All I know is that it isn’t like that with Mark…not like that at all. With my husband it is a duty, a kind of bumping, squirming athletics where I try to be as accommodating as possible to the mound of flesh that huffs and puffs above me, like a walrus scratching off barnacles. And when he’s finished, he just rolls off me with a grunt and goes to sleep. I’ve lain beside him, sleepless, night after night, wondering what is wrong, what I could do to make things better. I’ve even tried to talk with him about it…” She glanced over at me, searching my face for understanding.

  “Did he listen?” I asked hopefully.

  “Listen!” Isolde snorted, the fire coming back into her voice. “Listen? Only enough to decide that I was belittling his prowess as a man. Gwen, I tried so hard to be tactful. I even suggested that there was something wrong with me…that maybe I wasn’t built like other women, because I needed petting and touching and caressing a little. But that only made things worse. Oh, sometimes after that he’d fumble around a bit with my breasts, or even put his hands between my legs, but there was always something so…so furtive about it. It was as though he were afraid of being caught, or was placating me, half hoping I wouldn’t notice, like some nasty little boy who prays the girl he’s rubbing up against won’t realize what he’s doing.”

  She shuddered violently and looked down into her lap.

  “Perhaps, if Tris and I had not…come together…if I didn’t know what it could be like…” Her tone was low and vibrant, and even her averted gaze bespoke a kind of ecstasy. “Sometimes it’s fire and fury and a kind of immolation, and sometimes it’s gentle and tender and soft as the lapping of a wave on the shore of a lake, but always afterward there is that floating, expanding, indescribable beauty, and we hold each other in an embrace of pure joy. Oh, not the laughing, bantering play, though that’s there in the beginning, usually. No…this is something else. There is nothing I would not do for him, could not be for him…or him for me at those times.”

  She shook her head and looked back at me, eyes alight with wonder and awe. I caught my breath, sure it was what Lance and I would have were we to bed—and knowing I mustn’t even think about it.

  “So I put up with his boorish behavior, and become the fishwife myself, screaming at him with no better manners than he shows me…Ah, well,” she sighed, “no one promised it would be easy.”

  Something in her voice brought back the memory of Igraine saying much the same thing. Perhaps it is the very nature of grand romances to be difficult.

  ***

  That afternoon Lance and I walked slowly down to the grove, each of us quieter than usual.

  The late August sunlight shimmered on the water and dappled the ground beneath the trees. The days were growing shorter, and before long we must decide what to do for the fall, for I doubted that Arthur intended to leave us stuck up here so far away from Cadbury through the winter months.

  A thrush was singing, clear-throated and rich, from the top of a nearby tree, its song the very essence of this summer past.

  If only there was some way to capture this peacefulness forever…to wear it as a talisman around my neck, to dip into it like an elixir and refresh my soul when times are trying.

  “At least we have the memory,” Lance said softly.

  “And a beautiful one it is, my friend,” I replied.

  Of a sudden all the beauty of our stay at Joyous Gard welled up within me: companionship and understanding, playfulness and the simple, silent reassurance that had filled every day, graced every night. I’d even known what it was to feel beautiful, here in this enchanted retreat. Tears of gratitude and pleasure filled my eyes, and I turned away hastily, determined to avoid a scene.

  “I have yet to try the swing,” I announced.

  “Well, we’ll make up for that right now.” Lance grabbed my hand and we ran to the swing where he plopped me in the seat. “Hold on, M’lady,” he cried, releasing the guy-rope that kept it tethered to the shore and giving me a push.

  And then I was flying, soaring, sailing out over the water, with the wind in my hair and those silly tears drying on my face. A rook in its acrobatics, an eagle in its soaring, even a Goddess in her majesty, were no more free than I was, and I pressed into the wind as though against a lover, letting the overflow of all the summer’s emotions sweep out and away on the rushing air.

  Slowly the exhilaration faded, the arcs diminished, and I returned, content to be earthbound again. Lance reached out to stop me, settling his hands on my hips and holding both the swing and me safe against him. Defenseless, unguarded, I leaned back against him in sheer trust.

  “You are my love…you, and no other,” he whispered, resting his cheek against my hair. “God knows if I shall ever get another chance to say it, and I want you to hear it at least this once.”

  My spirit rose up, dancing, light-headed, enthralled. All the years of loving in silence, of never hearing, never really knowing how the other felt—all that uncertainty fled on the instant. Desire and rapture and a great surge of delight coursed through me, and I raised my arms to turn into Lance’s embrace, only to run into the ropes of the swing.

  Laughing, I left the seat and came around to stand before my love, lifting my heart as well as my arms to his embrace. But he grasped my wrists firmly and put them back down at my sides.

  “I will not play the Tristan to your Isolde,” he said softly. “The lovers from Cornwall may have their love potion, but we must live with our own consciences.”

  I stared at him uncertainly, knowing I’d just been rebuffed but not sure why. He led me to a rock where we could sit and look out over the pool as he tried to explain.

  “Call it honor, pride, responsibility—whatever term you’re most comfortable with. Tris and Isolde have sacrificed every ethic they’ve ever had in order to live out their love, until they’ve been corrupted from inside. I’ll not let that happen betwixt us, ever.”

  We sat in silence for a bit while I thought about what he’d said.

  “And when we return to Court both of us will be able to look Arthur in the eye,” he added slowly. “Gwen, I would give the world to have it otherwise…but not my honor.”

  “Spoken like a true Celt.” I sighed, half relieved, half furious that now the assurance of love had been won, there was nothing we could do about it.

  ***

  “Sir Agravain of Orkney,” Frieda announced, her guttural voice filling the kitchen.

  I turned from the berry cobbler I was making, thinking how preposterous it was to introduce Gawain’s brother so formally in this setting. But one look at the handsome Orcadian showed me why Frieda had presented him so; he was scowling at the people in the kitchen with total contempt.

  “There must be someplace we can speak in private,” he demanded as I wiped the flour off my hands and came forward to greet him.

  The youngest of the three close-born sons of Morgause, he was also the most abrasive. Gawain flashed fire and ice while Gaheris sulked amid gray rain clouds, but Agravain was as barbed and stinging as sleet.

  We settled at a table in the room next to the garden. The late morning sun was gilding the hips on the rose vine, and I made a mental note to harvest them next week.

  “King Mark of Cornwall has announced that he will declare war on Logres unless Arthur can effect a reconciliation between him and Isolde. There isn’t much room for negotiation, and the High King wants you to convince the Irish whore to go home.”

  Agravain’s tone and choice of words were unnecessarily harsh, and I was hard put not to show my aversion. Hopefully I could send him quickly back to Arthur. “Does His Highness want an immediate reply?” I asked.

  “He’s my uncle,
too, M’lady…not just Gawain’s,” Agravain noted obliquely, then shrugged. “I guess I can stay around for a few days…if the Queen’s Champion doesn’t mind, that is.”

  The innuendo wasn’t lost on me, but I stared at him with as bland an expression as I could muster. It was one thing to deal with Gawain’s explosive nature and quite another to rile Agravain, who, I suspected, had a broad cruel streak.

  “Sir Lancelot will no doubt find a place for you,” I suggested smoothly. “And I’ll take up the matter with the Queen of Cornwall as soon as possible.”

  ***

  I found Isolde seated by the window, sewing. Her face turned ashen and her eyes filled with tears when she heard Mark’s threat, and she stared at me in misery, her fingers unconsciously smoothing the seam of the shirt she had been working on for Tristan.

  “I knew we would bring trouble to you,” she whispered. “I knew we should not have come…but Gwen, there is nowhere else we could go. And now…”

  “Are you willing to consider going back to Mark?” I put the question as gently as possible, but it jolted her nonetheless.

  “Willing…?” She drew the word out slowly and was silent for a long minute, the shirt lying forgotten in her lap. At last she turned and looked over the oak grove toward the little river and the heather-clad hills that shield Joyous Gard from the rest of the world. “I don’t want to go back,” she mused, “but that doesn’t mean I won’t, if necessary.”

  “What would make it necessary?” I was trying desperately to remember the political realities and not get tangled in emotions, though my heart went out to her now as it never had before.

  Isolde’s answer was far more practical than I anticipated.

  “If Tris wants it. If his life is in danger if I don’t. If we have nowhere safe to go from here. If we’d have to go back to living in huts and hovels with swineherds and such…”

  Her voice trailed off, and she shot me a quick look from under those lovely winged brows. “It’s hard to forget you were born and raised a Queen when your stomach is empty and you’re stiff and cold from sleeping on a dirt floor.”

  “Have you discussed the possibility of returning to his father’s people?” I queried, trying to find a solution.

  “They don’t want him.” She grimaced. “He has no standing there. And besides, the climate is terrible.”

  The girl should have been a horse trader, given the rapidity with which she assessed and dismissed the options.

  She straightened on her cushion and, carefully folding the shirt, spoke her piece with a strong, regal voice.

  “I will return to Cornwall on two conditions: that King Arthur must order it, and that he agrees to accept Tristan as his own Champion…Tris must never be left without a country, a king…someone to guide him.”

  “And Dinadan,” I added almost automatically.

  “Yes, and Dinadan. He doesn’t care much for me, or I for him, but he’s good at looking out for Tris.”

  She sighed deeply, as though giving in to something inevitable, then looked up at me with a sudden urgency. “It must be done as soon as possible. I dare not think about it, worry over it, prolong the pain of it, or I won’t be able to give him up. Help me, Gwen—help me to break out of it now, before we do more harm, dole out more pain.”

  There was such anguish in her voice, I reached out to her instinctively, putting my arms around her and promising we would leave for the High King’s Court as soon as she was ready.

  “This afternoon,” she whispered. “I’ll be ready in an hour.”

  “But Tris and Lance are out hunting; they’ll probably not be back until dark,” I reminded her, and got a wan little smile in return.

  “Gwen, if I try to tell him—if I have to face a farewell—I’ll never leave at all. Surely you can understand that.”

  So we agreed to pack immediately, and I left her chambers with infinite sadness. My respect for the child-bride had grown immensely. Weighing the options, protecting her lover, accepting her moira…all this within the space of half an hour by a girl barely past the age I was when I had married.

  The fact that I knew so clearly what she was giving up made it doubly poignant.

  ***

  It took some doing, but we were riding away with Agravain by midafternoon and were well beyond the rugged Simonside Hills before the men came home for supper. Isolde said never a word, either that day or the next, but her eyes grew swollen and blotched from crying, and my heart broke for her all over again.

  Chapter XXXII

  The Priest

  We reached South Cadbury on one of those smoke-smudged days when the stubble of the fields was being burned. A misty gray veil hung over the land and the setting sun was a copper disk.

  The tiny village at the base of the fortress’s hill was crowded with the tents of craftsmen from all over Logres who’d come to work on Arthur’s stronghold—carpenters and smiths, stone workers and plumbers, carvers and painters, all eager to take part in creating the King’s new home.

  The hill itself rises from the lowlands as suddenly as the Tor at Glastonbury, though Cadbury is more rugged and lacks the lake and marsh that lap the feet of the Tor. During the days of the Empire, when all hill-forts lay deserted, bramble and scrub had grown thick over the banks and ditches. Arthur had removed all trace of tree and vine lest they provide a handhold for attacking Saxons, and now the rock foundations of the fortress towered over the plain in four steep tiers.

  I caught my breath as I stared up at it. A wooden parapet had been built atop the rockwork wall, and lookout towers pointed in each direction of the compass. Large double gates, bound with iron and boasting huge hinges, opened on a steep cobbled road that led upward to the broad plateau inside the ramparts.

  It was here, on the highest ridge, that Arthur had constructed an amazing Hall. Double-storied, with a peaked roof like that of the Great Hall at Appleby, its walls of newly planked wood shimmered palely in the afternoon light.

  Pennants fluttered on the lookout towers, and the Banner of the Red Dragon floated over the roofbeam of the Hall, proclaiming the High King’s presence. Craftsmen called back and forth to each other or paused to survey their work before hurrying off for more materials. Altogether it had the life and sparkle of a miniature city spun into reality by the arts of the fey.

  I sat tall and proud in the saddle as we drew near. Thanks to Lance I was returning to my husband without a trace of guilt, yet there would be a difference. Never again need I hunger for words Arthur couldn’t say. Never again need I think of myself only as that competent but childless Queen. No matter what else the summer at Joyous Gard had brought, I knew I was loved, and even seen as lovely, by a man I admired and loved in return. That knowledge wrapped around me like a charm.

  When we reached the gates Agravain called out to the sentry in the tower, announcing that he had the Queens of Britain and Cornwall with him. There was something childishly boastful in his voice, as though he were unused to filling a position of importance. I wondered what his childhood had been like; too young to keep up with Gawain and Gaheris, too old to enjoy playing with Gareth and Mordred, perhaps he had never found a niche of his own in Morgause’s family.

  Once inside the walls we were surrounded by a fever of activity. Workers and soldiers were laying out drainage ditches while over at what I took to be the stables a cadre of men were hoisting the roofbeam into place. And all of it to be part of our new home.

  I stared about me, thrilled and impressed.

  “Almost ready for its Queen,” said a familiar voice, and there was Arthur standing in front of my mare. Featherfoot nickered and brought her nose down to be patted as he grinned up at me. He was wearing the leather apron of a laborer and was hot and sweaty from working with the builders, but the pride of accomplishment and welcome in his voice was unmistakable.

  Staring down at him, I felt the
summer past slip suddenly away. I fairly leapt off my horse and then Arthur was lifting me in one of those high, wild embraces he does so well.

  A cluster of workmen cheered and clapped approvingly, and when we’d shared a long, full kiss I threw back my head and, looking up at him, announced firmly, “Now that is more like a welcome home.”

  For a moment I thought he was going to drop me, he laughed so hard.

  ***

  Once Isolde was settled, Arthur and I sat down to exchange news.

  “Tristan didn’t know she was going to leave,” I explained. “I wrote Lance a note asking him to detain Tris at Warkworth until Isolde reaches Cornwall—with all the rest of the women to move as well, it will take them some time just to get started. What have you heard from Mark?”

  Arthur frowned. “Nothing so far, but he should be satisfied now that his wife is returning. How did you get her to agree so readily?”

  “I think,” I answered carefully, “she’s simply had enough of grand romance…She and Tris paid a very dear price for their love.” I paused, not wanting to discuss the subject. “Now tell me, what’s been happening at Court?”

  “Everyone here’s been working on the buildings. Between Bedivere’s engineering and Cei’s ability to find materials, we’ve made wonderful progress. Elsewhere, the Saxons are quiet. Sir Ector reports that Cynric is settling in well—says he’s a bright lad who seems to have accepted the loss of his father’s cause. Only time will tell if he’s willing to accept me as his overlord, so we’ll wait and see. Haven’t heard anything about Pelleas—or Gawain, for that matter. Mostly,” Arthur concluded, coming to stand in front of me, “I’ve spent the summer missing you.”

  It was such a surprising admission, I threw my arms around him in a hug, and then we were kissing and stroking and groping for the bed, everyone and everything else forgotten.

  I woke next morning to the cheerful whistling of a carpenter hammering away in the next room and, squinting in the sunshine, was surprised to find Arthur still abed.