At Arthur’s side, Gawain grabbed his hand and kissed it, his great shoulders heaving with relief. Lovingly Arthur raised him to his feet. “Your brother’s a brave man, Gawain,” he said. “There aren’t many knights so unafraid to die. For that alone, he deserves to live. And I don’t doubt we’ll make him a credit to us after all!”
“Bless you, my lord.”
Gawain turned away to hide his tears. On the grass below, Sir Mador was approaching the gallery with his helmet in the crook of his arm. His face was scored with the dirt of the field, and his young eyes were full of dismay.
Arthur smiled at Guenevere. “He doesn’t know yet whether he’s won or lost,” he said gently. “Tell him, Guenevere.”
Guenevere nodded. She moved to the edge of the gallery, where the waist-high wooden wall was already crowded with lords and ladies craning for a glimpse of the new young knight.
“Sir Knight,” she called. “The King honors you for your chivalry, to spare a fallen knight. And the Queen hails you for your victory.”
The whole of the crowd erupted in wild applause. Mador looked around in dawning wonderment.
Above him, Guenevere was leaning down again. “Sir Mador,” she called to him huskily, out of hearing of the crowd, “you are well worthy to bear the name of knight. Take this as recompense for your goodness today.”
From the balcony, a scrap of white lawn came fluttering down. Tears rushed to Mador’s eyes as he caught it with both hands. Far off he heard faint music from the spheres. My lady Guenevere, I shall wear this for your honor in the lists.
He brought the square of cambric to his lips, and felt its flowery fragrance feed his soul. The Queen is everything, he thought humbly, and I am nothing at all. But I will be among her knights one day. He raised his face to the gallery, blind with love. Guenevere my lady, Guenevere the Queen.
Arthur looked down and smiled. “He loves you, Guenevere,” he said wryly. “They all do.” He reached for her hand, and smiled into her eyes. “How can they help it?”
Guenevere felt fear rising in her soul.
Lancelot.
Did he suspect? “Arthur—”
He stilled her protests with an upraised hand. “Guenevere, I was the man who loved you first of all. I understand.” He signaled to the chamberlain, and looked around. “On with the tournament, sir. Now, where’s Lancelot?”
AT DINNER THAT NIGHT, the Great Hall rang with Sir Lancelot’s name. All there marveled at his chivalry, how he had come in after the others to give the new knights a chance, and then swept all before him, wearing Guenevere’s favor on his sleeve. Now he sat huge-eyed and silent, watching the dais where Guenevere dined with the King. As the compliments flowed, he accepted them as well as he could, picking at his food and drawing sparely on his wine.
One by one, the great candles burned down. At last all the guests had been wined and dined, and all the knights and ladies had gone brimful of cheer to their beds. The last of the servants had finally been sent away, and Guenevere was attending Arthur to bed.
“Lancelot won’t change, will he?” Arthur said fondly as he climbed into bed.
Goddess, Mother, let him Just sleep now, I don’t want to talk—
“What do you mean?”
“What we talked about.” Arthur patted the side of the bed. “Sit down a minute, will you? I know you must have spoken to him by now, and told him what we wanted for him.”
Guenevere perched on the side of the bed. “I told him you wanted him to have a wife.”
“And?”
“It’s still the life of arms he loves best of all.”
“Is that what he said?” Arthur chuckled regretfully. “Well, maybe he’s right.” His voice warmed as he spoke. “Look at what he did today at the tournament. Last into the lists, when the light was at its worst, for the sake of the younger men.”
Guenevere clenched her teeth. “He’s not so old.”
Arthur gave a mild, reproving laugh. “He must be thirty now, Guenevere. And young Mador, for instance, hasn’t seen twenty-one. No, Lancelot’s an old man at the sport.”
Old man? Old man? What does that make me?
“He still does well.”
“The best.” Arthur smiled. “He really is the foremost knight in the world. Today we had kings and champions from as far as you could name.” He raised his fingers, mentally checking off the contestants one by one. “And he beat them all!”
He chuckled with delight. “It must have been your favor on his arm,” he said teasingly. “A tribute to the power of white and gold. But I warn you, Guenevere, when I’m back in harness, I’ll be wearing your rosette again.” His voice thickened, and he reached for her hand. “Lancelot can be your knight, I know a queen must have her knights. But I will be your champion in the field.”
Guenevere looked at him in dread. His eyes had darkened, and he was kneading her hand, crushing the flesh. “God has been good to me,” he said thoughtfully. “With a knight like Lancelot, and a wife like you...”
He looked deep into her eyes, breathing heavily. “You know, I’ve been feeling so much better, I think I might—” He pulled her down on the bed. “I mean if you’ll help me, Guenevere, I think we could—”
He broke off and chuckled low in his throat. “You know what I mean.” His hand reached for her breast. “Come here, Guenevere.”
CHAPTER 22
Dawn over Avalon—was there anything more beautiful on the face of God’s good earth?
His soul swelling with bliss, Brother Boniface gave humble thanks to the Creator, who had placed him here. He loved Avalon more than a good Christian should, nd the dawn walk with his fellow monk was the glory of the day. From its smooth rounded top to the green flanks sloping away below, it was easy to see why the pagans saw the island as the shape of their Goddess asleep.
Ahead of them the upward swell of the great Tor gleamed with the first rays of the rising sun. On all sides, surrounding the grassy isle, the still waters of the Lake shone like glass. Boniface filled his young lungs with the soft summer air, and glowed with content. He had thought himself happy enough in London, God only knew, serving his order there with work and prayer. He loved the slow, sad rhythm of the monastic hours, vespers, prime, nones all chiming with majestic certainty night and day. With the confidence of his twenty-odd years, he had looked forward to living and dying in the abbey to which God had called him as a boy.
But then the Father Abbot had heard the voice of the Lord, summoning His servant to another task. Boniface was to bring Christ to a place where the Devil had ruled before. He was to go to Avalon, and beg the pagans there to allow him to join his prayers to theirs. So he would be a bridgehead for the Lord, allowing His soldiers entry when the time came.
What a glory, what a terror, what a challenge, what a call! Boniface knew he would have a brother-in-arms for his task, and a young monk from Rome had joined him as soon as he began. But this work would always be the greatest thing he had done. His fair cheeks still flushed every time he thought of it. How long was it now since he had come to the Sacred Isle? And still he loved the place more every day.
And today would bring a new turn to their task. At last they would meet the ruler of this place.
“They worship a great goddess,” the Abbot had said, “in plain defiance of God’s ordinance that women are subject to men.” Boniface could still remember the pale fire of anger in the Father’s eyes. “They believe that women have the right of thigh-freedom, and may choose the men they summon to their beds. A priestess of the Goddess holds sway there as the ruler of the Isle. She keeps young women around her, and trains them up in these whorish ways.”
He leaned forward, one jabbing finger lending weight to every word. “Get to know her,” he said intently. “Win her confidence, show her you mean no harm. Treat her maidens like the Mother of Our Lord and, in God’s time, we may give them back the dignity of pure womanhood they have lost.”
“Yes, Father.”
Bonifa
ce had embraced his task with all his soul. Season after season, he had labored to win an audience with the Lady, without success. But now at last she sent word that they might meet. One of her maidens would bring them to her house. And Giorgio and he were going to the meeting now.
Boniface turned to his companion, brimming with joy. But before he could speak, his fellow monk cut him off.
“And this they call summer?” the other said, looking heavily around. “Pia Maria!” He groaned. “When we see the sun?”
Boniface looked at Giorgio with concern. All these months of sharing a cell had made the young Italian more than a brother to him, more than a friend. He knew how Giorgio suffered for their cause, translated from his native land for this cold and remote place of pagans, whose tongue he did not speak. These days Giorgio’s fine aquiline features were haunted with a look of loss. How long would he keep the bloom of his golden skin, the laughter in his dark eyes, his flashing smile?
Boniface sighed. After Rome, he knew, Giorgio could find little to admire in the island’s apple orchards, her fluttering doves, all too pale and fragile for a young man of the full-blooded south. And Giorgio badly missed his monastery in Rome. When he spoke of his church and the holy brotherhood there, Boniface could see what a fine ideal of the godly life his friend had left behind. Against that, to be living two to a small cell, keeping their own hours of worship and trying to interest the islanders in the love of Christ, must seem a poor thing. Boniface bit his lip, and determinedly squared his chin. He must try harder to make Giorgio happier here. Perhaps when they had seen the Lady, he would see God’s will for them revealed.
Boniface’s spirits soared. He strode up the Tor, mentally making magic for the Lord. Walking alongside, Giorgio stole a look at Boniface, and shook his head. How little his friend knew or understood!
Of course this innocence, along with his fair good looks, must have been Boniface’s passport here. The Father Abbot in London would have chosen him for that purity of his, that wide-eyed stare. And Boniface could have known nothing of this at all.
His own abbot had been plainer with him from the start. The head of his order had dispatched him from Rome with a smile as old as the hills on which the city stood.
“Remember that a little sin may make a great good for the Lord,” he had said, spreading his wrinkled hands. “The Father Abbot in London needs a fine young man of ours to win an old whore’s heart. The witch of Avalon shows thigh-friendship to any man. If she favors you, sin for the Lord. I grant you absolution in advance.”
“For everything?” Giorgio said hopefully.
The tortoise-lidded eyes had been as cold as stone. “For all that you may do.”
His superior must have known, Giorgio realized now, that women did not call to him at all. Leaving Rome, bad as it was, was not as hard as leaving the boy his heart doted on, the twelve-year-old who sang in the monastery choir. Never had he known such bliss as the stolen moments behind the choir stalls, the secret sessions in the vestry when he had made the boy his own. Each night when he prayed he thought of the boy’s silky lips, the peachlike bloom on his buttocks, and the hardness of his young hands, and vowed them all to God. The boy and he were both God’s creatures, both given to His service, worshiping Him together when they joined in love like this. When the heart was pure, there was no sin in the deed. And now his own abbot had blessed him, and said as much.
So if he had to sin for God with the whore of Avalon he would, Giorgio accepted, though he approached the thought without enthusiasm, and Boniface, he knew, had never dreamed of it at all. Yet God had not called either of them to that task. The Lady had shown no interest in them at all.
Until now. And already Giorgio was convinced that whatever happened, the whore of Avalon would not drop into their hands. Yet every day God made miracles of a stranger kind. He brightened. Perhaps it could yet be.
Boniface was striding on. “God does not blame those who have never known His love,” he said earnestly. “These women have never known God’s plan for them.”
They were climbing the side of the Tor, passing through silvery apple groves and, higher up, plunging through dark, tightly clustered stands of woody pine. Somewhere near the top lay the Lady’s house, they knew, though they had never before approached so near. Even now they could not see the hidden guardians they knew must be there. But ahead of them, the close-knit pines shimmered and parted, and they saw a woman between the trees, standing beside the path.
She was robed in shades of green like the living wood, and her draperies moved with the light breath of the breeze. Her lean body and taut carriage made her look taller than she was, and beneath the veil covering her hair, her face had the age-old detachment of another world. Her neat brown hands were folded before her like paws, not far, Boniface noted with a frisson of alarm, from the formidable forked dagger at her waist. Did she always carry the means of dealing death? And what did she want from them? But there was nothing to be gleaned from her small pansy face and dusky, secret eyes. She stared at them with an indeterminate gaze as she waited for them to draw near.
“God’s plan for women?” Giorgio grinned in an effort to keep his spirits up. “God’s lesser kind, deserving the curse of Eve?” He nodded to the figure standing ahead. “I hope we can explain that to her.”
“Hush, brother!” Boniface hissed in agitation, turning a furious red.
If the woman had caught the whispered exchange, she gave no sign. “I am Nemue, the chief Maiden of the Lady of the Lake,” she murmured in a rough voice unaccustomed to speech. “The Lady welcomes you into her house.”
She waved her hand. Dissolving and emerging through the trees, they saw a frontage of white stone with a pair of massive doors set into the side of the hill. Nemue waved them forward. At their first uncertain steps, the doors opened of their own accord.
“Enter!”
The force of Nemue’s command propelled them forward into the gloom. The doors closed behind them, and Giorgio let out a sharp cry of fear.
“Courage, brother!” urged Boniface in a trembling voice. “Remember we do God’s will.” Salvi nos fac, Domine, he began to pray. Dear God, make us safe...
Slowly their eyes grew accustomed to the gloom. They stood in a darkened chamber lit only by flickering dragon lamps, tiny pinpoints of flame crouched in niches in the walls. The loam-washed space was low, and domed like the inside of the earth, and the little lights shone all around like stars. Above them they could feel the earthy mass of the great Tor, but here in the Lady’s palace the air was warm and sweet. Beyond sweet—Boniface snuffled at the living fragrance half in delight, half in dread. Already he knew that once he let it into his lungs, his soul would crave it for the rest of his life.
As they waited, growing more fearful every moment, they made out a tall throne against the wall, with a sprawl of dogs lying at its foot. Their sleek red fur and long limbs revealed them for a pack of water hounds, and each wore a collar of jeweled gold carved with runes. Rearing up on guard, they kept their eyes on the visitors, and did not move. But the glint of their white teeth was enough to make the bowels of both young men quake. Boniface renewed his prayers. How long, O Lord, how long?
It started as a whisper, hardly a breeze. Then the earth shivered, and there she was at the far end of the lamp-walled chamber, a tall female figure veiled in filmy draperies from head to foot. She wore a crystal diadem in the shape of the moon, and held another moon of rock crystal in her hand. Without movement she grew until she filled the room, and the space around her echoed with the soundless cries of creatures overhead, and the soft insistent murmur of lake water below.
“Lady?” ventured Boniface, almost weeping with fear.
The muffled figure slowly turned her head.
“What is your will?”
To Boniface it was the voice of his childhood nurse, to Giorgio the kiss of his beloved grandmother, long dead.
“Lady, we have come to offer our thanks,” Boniface began. Already he f
elt heartened, though he did not know why.
“For what?”
Giorgio felt his spirits revive a little. If he had not known she was a witch, he could have sworn he heard both humor and humanity in her tone.
Boniface plowed on. “When we came here, you graciously granted us the welcome of your isle.”
The veiled figure nodded. “You asked if you could join your prayers to ours. And truly, you have shown yourselves men of faith.”
Boniface threw a delighted glance at Giorgio. “We are strong in our love of God!” He beamed. “We came only to share that love with you.”
“Is that all?”
Suddenly the voice from within the fluttering gauze was as cold as it had before been warm.
“All?” Boniface started. “Yes, in God’s truth, that is all that brought us here.”
The chill indictment went on. “But we hear that your Christian Fathers have another aim. They plan to take our Hallows for their own.”
Boniface raised his head. “How could that be?” he said in wonderment. “They are the articles of your faith, not ours.” His face was translucent with sincerity. “Believe me, Lady, all we seek is a union of holy truth.”
The Lady inclined her head. “You perhaps,” she murmured. “Yes indeed.” She turned her head toward Giorgio and raised her hand. “But you?”
The air in the chamber dropped, and an unseen force seized Giorgio in its grip. The fluttering finger seemed to probe into his heart.
Giorgio felt faint. “Lady, I—” he stuttered.
Sin for the Lord. The voice of his Father Superior came tolling like a knell.
Giorgio reached for his flashing smile, and threw back his head. Swiftly he ran through the phrases he had ready in his mind.
“Lady, we hear of you far away in Rome,” he said winningly. “I am here to see you, and you alone. We beg to learn from you, we would sit at your feet. We pray we know you better in days to come. Any man would be glad to be admitted to your sight.” He tried for a respectful yet roguish smile. “Perhaps one day we see your face unveiled. For me, that would be a fair sight above all.” He composed his handsome face in a flattering gaze, and just in time remembered not to wink.
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