Lancelot

by Gwen Rowley

  And he raced up the stairway to the tower, flames licking at his heels. Through the smoke, he glimpsed Elaine—or no, it was another maiden, holding something in her hands that shimmered with a light too bright to look upon. He flung an elbow across his eyes, shielding them from the terrible beauty of that unbearable light . . . And then the maiden was gone, and he was alone in the burning tower. He turned back, but the steps were gone, there was no way out, he was trapped, choking, burning beams crashing all around, and the floor gave way beneath him.

  When he woke again he was cold, so cold that knew he must be dead. He tried to open his eyes, but they were weighted shut. He remembered the corpses in the crypt at Norhaut with coins upon their sunken lids. There lay his tomb, buried in the earth beneath the enormous marble slab he had once lifted with no effort. Now he was inside it, lying on the marble bier, and at his feet was a silver plaque he’d read on the day he had discovered his name. “Here will lie Sir Lancelot du Lac,” it proclaimed in letters silver bright, “son of King Ban of Benwick.”

  This, he thought, is hell. Not the fiery pit, but this frozen emptiness where he would dwell alone forevermore.

  “Sir Lancelot!” a voice called urgently, but it was too late; Sir Lancelot was dead. Why would they not let him rest? They slapped his cheeks and waved burnt feathers beneath his nose, and though he felt the blows and breathed in the acrid stench, he could not move nor speak. A deep voice intoned unfamiliar words, pausing now and then while they renewed their efforts, urging him to answer questions he did not understand, but in time they gave up and went away.

  Chapter 19

  “IT was meant to be a jest,” Guinevere said, the words coming thickly from her numb lips. Her bower was filled with people, all staring with avid curiosity from her face to the king’s. Never had they seen Arthur in such a fury. Only rarely did he lose his temper, and then it was a quick, hot flash that soon subsided. And never, never had he been angry with his queen. Guinevere did not know the man who stood before her, his face stern and his light eyes burning with an icy flame.

  “A jest?”

  “You said—his reputation—not fair to the others—do you not remember? And so he wanted to prove . . . We thought you would be amused,” she whispered.

  “Did you? Well, Guinevere, I would have been far more amused had I been let in upon the joke.”

  “Lance—he w-wanted to surprise you.”

  But he hadn’t wanted to. That had been Guinevere’s idea, not Lancelot’s at all.

  “Did you give him your sleeve?” Arthur demanded.

  “My sleeve?” Guinevere repeated blankly. “No, of course not.”

  He had not asked for one. He never had. And he surely would not have broken with his custom on the day she’d sent him out to fight disguised. He had been too angry. But she hadn’t cared.

  “He wore a lady’s favor yesterday,” Arthur said, but Guinevere scarcely heard him. She was too busy remembering how she had not thought of Lancelot at all, but only of herself and her own need. Now he was wounded, perhaps dead, and she would never have the chance to tell him she was sorry. She had killed him.

  And Arthur would never, ever forgive her for it.

  The way he was looking at her now, as though he hated her—she had lost him, lost him forever, and through her own selfish folly. She could not bear the cold contempt in his eyes. She raised shaking hands to cover her face, tears sliding between her fingers.

  The slam of her bower door told her that Arthur was gone. She rose and stumbled blindly toward her chamber. Most of her women followed, communicating surprise and sympathy and in some cases, satisfaction, in silent glances.

  Only one stayed behind. She slipped out the door and found Sir Agravaine waiting in the corridor.

  “Well?” he demanded. “How did she take it?”

  “She had her story ready,” the damsel answered with a shrug, “and not a bad one, either. She managed to shift the blame—or part of it, at least—to the king himself. Apparently he’d made some jest about Sir Lancelot’s reputation unmanning his opponents.”

  Agravaine laughed unwillingly. “Isn’t she the clever bitch? And did the king accept her story?”

  “He seemed to. He was still angry, but I think she might have talked him round. But then—” She smiled slowly. “Guinevere made her mistake. Apparently the red sleeve was not hers at all. When the king told her of it, she went dead white and burst into tears.”

  “Did she? Did she really?”

  “And then the king slammed out of there—”

  “With a face like thunder,” Agravaine finished happily. “You did well, my dear. Very well indeed. I shall remember you to my mother.”

  “When will Queen Morgause be here?”

  “Soon, I think. Once she learns of this, I believe she will decide the time has come to visit Camelot.”

  Chapter 20

  LORD Pelleas greeted Will Reeve with courtesy. Though they had met only a few days before, when the reeve had come to supper, Pelleas seemed to think he was here this morning to discuss a stallion sent to him for shoeing.

  “You must mind the off foreleg,” Pelleas said. “He’ll bite, you know, if he’s handled roughly.”

  “Father,” Elaine began, but Will Reeve was smiling at his overlord.

  “Ah,” he said. “That would be Jupiter?”

  “Yes, of course.” Pelleas stared at the reeve as though he’d just stated something too obvious for words. “Jupiter.”

  “Aye, my lord,” Will said. “I know all about that off foreleg. Thass naught for you to be vexed about.”

  Pelleas nodded and returned to his perusal of the heavy volume open before him on the trestle table.

  Elaine regarded the reeve with approval as she gestured the page to fill his cup. From the first, Will’s manner to her father had been just right: respectful without a touch of servility, and he had a trick of following Pelleas’s rambling conversation with no sign of disturbance or surprise.

  “Many’s a time I helped my da shoe old Jupiter when I was nobbut a lad,” Will said with a reminiscent smile. “A fine, fettlesome stallion that one was.”

  Elaine waited until he’d taken his first sip before asking, “What of the north field? How long until you are finished?”

  “Give it four more days,” he said.

  The man went up another notch in her esteem. And if he looked a trifle smug, she could not blame him, for she had expected the planting to take at least another week. They must have worked hard to achieve so much in such a short time.

  Will cleared his throat and set his ale down. “Lady, what of Planting Day?”

  Elaine rested her chin in her palm. It was tradition to mark the end of spring planting with a day of revelry, with food and ale provided by the lord and dancing on the green. The people were within their rights to ask for it. It would put a heavy strain upon their almost nonexistent resources, but that was not what held Elaine back from agreeing.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “After . . .”

  She glanced at Torre, seated below the dais on a stool before the fire, his hands busy with a bit of harness he was mending. He did not seem to be listening, but one could never be quite sure, and she had been at great pains to keep him in ignorance of what had happened in the fields the week before. The Day, she always thought of it, for it was the day on which her life had changed forever, and the less the Torre knew of it, the better.

  Will followed both her glance and her thought. Really, he was most extraordinarily adept at reading the currents running amongst the family of his overlord.

  “I say we do it,” he declared. “Thass custom, see? Best to keep going on as even as we can. They know they don’t deserve it,” he added, lowering his voice, “mortal sorry they are, lady, for what befell that day, and they’ve done their best to show it. ’Twas a kindly thing you did, ordering food for all who worked—and a canny one, as well.”

  Their eyes met in a conspiratorial glance that broug
ht a warm glow to Elaine’s cheeks. It was very pleasant to know that someone understood what she had done, and why, and approved of it wholeheartedly.

  “Very well, then, if you think it best. Four days until the planting is done; shall we say next—” She broke off, half rising at the sound of a horn winding in the courtyard.

  “Is that Lavaine?” Lord Pelleas said, lifting his head and gazing expectantly toward the door.

  “No.” Torre let the harness fall as he stood, and Elaine realized that like her, he had been waiting. “No, that is not Lavaine’s horn.”

  Elaine’s fingers clenched the edge of the trestle table. She wanted to run out into the yard but could not seem to move.

  When the door opened at last, she knew at once the knight who stepped inside, for he was so precisely as she’d imagined him: Tall and broad of shoulder, fair of face and noble of bearing, with hair that shone like falling rain. His gray eyes flicked over the hall, across the dais, and fastened upon Elaine.

  “Sir Gawain,” she said, “you are very welcome here. Please come in and refresh yourself.”

  “Thank you, lady.” He bowed gracefully and stepped before the dais. “I fear I cannot linger; an urgent errand from the king has brought me hither.”

  Elaine’s legs began to tremble. “What—what is it?”

  “Five days ago the king held his great tournament—”

  “Is it Lavaine?” Pelleas cried. “Is my son—”

  “No, my lord,” Gawain said quickly. “I have no news of Sir Lavaine. It is Sir Lancelot I seek.”

  “Why, has he gone missing?” Torre inquired, his tone just short of insolent. “What a pity.”

  “I fear he has. But—” Gawain ran a hand across his jaw, looking suddenly exhausted. “On second thought, I would be grateful for a cup of ale.”

  Elaine gestured the page over and turned to Will Reeve. “I think we are finished for the day,” she said, softening her dismissal with a strained smile.

  “Aye, lady.” He touched his brow and stood, looking sideways at Sir Gawain. “Now, don’t vex yourself about Planting Day, I’ll manage everything.”

  This time Elaine’s smile was more genuine, as were her thanks as she bid the reeve farewell.

  Gawain took the seat beside her and drained his cup in a single draught. Only when it had been refilled did she send the page away, bidding him to leave the flagon on the table.

  “Now, Sir Gawain, if you would . . .”

  He told them briefly of the tournament. “We think the knight was Sir Lancelot,” he finished, “but we cannot be certain.”

  “He was here,” Elaine said. “The knight. He stayed with us before the tournament and went off with my brother Lavaine.”

  Sir Gawain looked at her with new interest, his gaze so searching that Elaine felt herself begin to blush. “The red sleeve . . . ?” he asked.

  “Was mine. His name I cannot tell you, but he borrowed Torre’s shield and left his own.”

  Gawain stood. “May I see it?”

  “Yes, I have it in my chamber,” Elaine said, jumping to her feet. “Come, I’ll show—”

  “Bring it here,” Torre ordered sharply. “Sir Gawain will wait with us.”

  Torre either had a very low opinion of her morals or a vastly inflated view of her charms, Elaine thought as she ran up the steps to her chamber and seized the covered shield. She focused on the question to hold her fear at bay, and was still undecided whether to be flattered or furious when she arrived breathless in the hall. “Here it is.”

  Sir Gawain drew off the cover to reveal a device Elaine had seen only once before, on the day Torre met its owner in the lists. She gazed at it in silence, remembering what was said: that the woman was Queen Guinevere; the knight, Sir Lancelot, the device a silent declaration of his love.

  Sir Gawain sighed. “Yes. It is Sir Lancelot’s.”

  “So it is,” Torre said, coming over to glance at the shield. “Take it to him, will you, Sir Gawain, and save him the trouble of returning for it.” He shrugged and turned away. “That is, if he should have need of it again.”

  Elaine rounded on her brother. “I never thought to be ashamed of you, but I am now. That you could speak so of a brother knight—he who was our guest—”

  “The brother knight who did this,” Torre said, striking a fist against his leg, “and then made sport of me to his companions! The guest who took advantage of your innocence and refused to give you so much as his name.”

  “He could not. He was sworn—”

  “God, Elly, don’t be more of a fool than you must. Look!” he cried, pointing toward the shield. “Whose image do you think that is? He used you. Can’t you understand that even now? He wanted your token—and whatever else he could have of you. Why not? He had nothing to lose, did he? Not even his good name.”

  “Sir Torre,” Gawain put in, “I think you wrong Sir Lancelot. He has never been accused of trifling with any lady—”

  “Well, he trifled with this one,” Torre said. “Come, Elaine, is that not so?”

  “It is not,” she said. “Whatever you imagine went on between us—”

  “Imagine? Did I imagine him kissing you in the courtyard? Did I imagine that he begged your favor as though it meant more to him than life itself? He is a deceitful, lying bastard, and if he’s dead, I won’t pretend that I am sorry.”

  “You are a fool,” Elaine said coldly, “and you understand nothing of Sir Lancelot—or me.” Drawing a deep breath, she turned to their guest. “Sir Gawain, I am heartily sorry you had to witness that. Stay a moment while I fetch my cloak, and I will come with you.”

  “Lady,” Gawain began uncomfortably.

  “I will go,” Elaine said, “if not with you, then on my own. I must. If he is wounded—”

  “You will not,” Torre declared hotly. “If you think for one moment that I will allow you to leave this hall—”

  “Peace.”

  They both turned, astonished, to their father. Lord Pelleas raised himself from his seat, palms braced upon the table. “Torre, you forget yourself,” he said mildly. “Sir Gawain, please break your fast with us before continuing your search. I would speak with you before you go. Elaine.” Pelleas shook his head and sighed. “To you I would speak privately.”

  He led her to his chamber, piled high with stacks of books and scrolls of parchments, and brushed a sleeping cat from the one stool. “Sit.”

  Elaine sat. The cat leapt into her lap, turned itself about, and curled up in a ball.

  “Often and often I have heard you speak of Sir Lancelot du Lac,” Pelleas said. “And never well.”

  Elaine drew her finger down the cat’s spine. “I did not know him then.”

  “And you do now?”

  “A little.”

  “This man you know—a little—” Pelleas said. “Is it true that he has kissed you?”

  “It is.”

  Pelleas bent to retrieve a piece of vellum from the floor. He made to toss it on the table, then halted and looked down at it. “With your leave?”

  “Yes.” Elaine waited for some response, but once again, her father seemed to have forgotten her. “Indeed,” she added boldly, “with my encouragement.”

  Pelleas glanced up. “I beg your pardon?”

  “It doesn’t bear repeating,” Elaine said wearily.

  “I should think not.” Pelleas set the vellum down upon a pile and turned to her, his expression stern. “I never got on well with your mother’s father, you know. How strange that after all these years, I should find myself in sympathy with him.”

  Not now, Elaine thought. Not another sojourn into the past. I haven’t time or patience—

  “But for a moment,” Pelleas went on, a twinkle in his light blue eyes, “I could have sworn it was your mother talking. So you are determined to seek out Sir Lancelot?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you understand what Torre referred to before, the rumors about Sir Lancelot and the queen?”


  Elaine nearly fell off her stool, wincing as the cat, alarmed, dug sharp claws into her stomach. She’d had no idea that her father was aware of anything that had happened in Britain since Joseph of Arimethea arrived. “I know of the rumors.”

  “They may well be true,” Pelleas remarked, retrieving another scrap from the floor. This time, when he examined it, she knew it was merely an excuse to keep from looking at her. “Such things happen far more often than is generally known. A young queen, a handsome knight . . . oh, yes, it happens. It may have happened this time. Would you go to him even so?”

  Elaine caught the cat’s paw between two fingers and detached it from her kirtle. “I would.”

  Pelleas leaned against the corner of the table and regarded her for a long moment. She braced herself, expecting some long-winded lecture, but he only said, “Why?”

  “Because I love him.”

  Pelleas shook his head. “No. I’m sorry, Elaine, but—”

  “If he is—if he and the queen—I can’t believe he would be happy like that. Not knowing how he feels about King Arthur. I think that I could—”

  “Change him? Child, if there is one thing I know about men and women, it is that neither can change the other.”

  “Not change him,” Elaine said. “I would not do that.”

  “Then you would give yourself to a man who loves another?”

  “Not that, either. I say I love him, but of course I can’t be certain of that yet. Nor can I say if he loves me. But there was something between us. I know it sounds absurd when he was here for but a day, yet it was so. And not only on my side, I’m sure of it. Whether it would grow to love, I cannot say, but I do know that if he is lying wounded somewhere I must go to him.”

  “Very well. You shall go with Sir Gawain. He is an honorable knight. But you will take Mistress Brisen, as well.”

  Elaine leapt up, spilling the cat from her lap, and threw her arms around her father. “Thank you.”

  He smiled and kissed her cheek. “I knew your mother for a fortnight when I sued for her hand, but my mind was set within five minutes of our first meeting. As was hers—to her father’s great distress. I pray God to send you joy, my child, but for good or ill, this path is yours to follow. I can only trust that you will not forget your own dear mother, nor do aught to shame my trust in you.”