Under Camelot's Banner

by Sarah Zettel

  “Add one for Iseult on my behalf…. ah no. God forgive me.” Guinevere rubbed her brow. “They suffered enough for their foolishness.”

  “And now we suffer for it. You most of all, my wife.” He reached out with his free hand and touched her fingertips.

  She smiled at the gesture, but she still shook her head. “The foolishness I suffer from is my own,” she told him. “I should have gone home before. But I thought I should be here, keeping the heart of our lands strong for you. Well.” She set her cup down as a wave of illness born of far too much gall swept through her. “In taking such good care of the heart, I have helped sicken the limbs.”

  “It is not so far gone yet, Guinevere,” said Arthur firmly. “We have time to make this right.”

  “God grant it be so.” She could not bear to look at him. She could only watch the fire, searching the patterns of the flame for some better omen than the ones she felt lurking in the shadows at her back.

  “What worries you?”

  “Do you truly need to ask?”

  “Morgaine.” Arthur whispered the word. He who had faced a hundred hosts in battle without flinching feared that by speaking that one word too loudly they might somehow call her up like the devil from Hell. “You see her hand in this?”

  “Everywhere,” said Guinevere flatly. “Since Morgause’s death, I knew she would return for me. She swore it would be so.”

  “And yet you will go to Cambryn?”

  “What happens if I do not?” Guinevere set her cup down and spoke bitterly to the fire. “The Dumonii fall into chaos, and she takes them all. Then, perhaps she makes common cause with the kings of Eire over the matter of Sir Tristan, and they come with their swords and their howling, and then what will be left of Camelot and the Britons?” Guinevere felt nerve and sinew tighten within her. “She will not destroy all we have built, my husband. God and Mary help me, I will not permit it. Not without a fight.”

  She met Arthur’s eyes then, and saw a resolve to mirror her own. He feared this particular war, a thing which perhaps only she knew, but he would not fail to fight it. Nor would he deny her part in it, for which she blessed him.

  None of his meant he would not try to shelter her all he could. “Let Merlin come with….” he began.

  “No.”

  “Guinevere …”

  “No, my lord. I will not.” He did not understand her refusal. He never did. On this one point there could never be agreement between them, and it pained Guinevere that it should be so. She knew it also pained Arthur.

  “He can see farther in these matters than those of us with only mortal eyes,” said Arthur gently, reasonably. “If this is Morgaine’s doing, you will need all the forewarning that can be had.”

  “Forgive me, my lord, but what good did his sight ever bring?” she replied, also in tones of simple reason. “To speak with him is to bring disaster. To not speak with him is to pine away for wishing one had, because no matter how great the trouble his visions have brought, we cannot help but say, ‘This time I will do better if I can but know what will come.’” She folded her arms, gripping her elbows tightly, trying to bring some warmth to herself. “Only God can know enough to see tomorrow in safety.”

  There it stood. He would not give Merlin up, and she would not accept him. It was as it had been since the days before their marriage, and would be until the day one of the three of them died.

  Thankfully, Arthur made no move to continue his argument. Had he ordered her to take Merlin to Cambryn, she would have done so, but the command and its acceptance would have cost them both something. Perhaps she was being a fool not to take a sorcerer where she knew another lurked. But she had seen too much of the invisible world and the havoc it wreaked upon the lives of mortals. She would not turn to it even when she must stand before it. Not even to save Cambryn.

  God will provide another way. Mother Mary will not desert us in this, she told herself firmly.

  “Now that we sit in such perfect harmony,” quipped Arthur mildly. “I must raise another dull and uninteresting question.”

  Guinevere smiled, chuckling softly. “Speak your dull question, my husband. I am well disposed to hear it.”

  He set his cup down, face and posture shifting subtly, and Guinevere knew his mind was turned from their room and the two of them to maps and plans, men and the thousand logistics of even the smallest battle. “You are certain Lancelot is the one you would have lead your contingent? Gawain will go, or Bedevere …”

  She shook her head with a small smile. “I do not flatter myself that my mere reappearance as Cambryn’s queen will at once lay to rest all grievances. There may well be challenges to whatever ruling I make, and I will need a champion. I do not like his manners either, but of all your men, it is Lancelot who can best answer such a challenge.”

  He did not reply at once. He was weighing options, she knew, carefully considering and discarding other possibilities. At last he nodded, and his gaze turned outward again, seeing her fully once more.

  “I wish he was not, but he is.” Arthur leaned forward, and softly, traced her cheek with one square-tipped finger. It was a familiar touch that brought with it a kind of aching gladness. “Will my queen be angered if I beg her to take care?”

  She reached up and caught his hand, pressing it to her cheek so she could fully savor the warmth of his touch. “Never, Arthur.”

  After that, there was no more need for words between them for a long time.

  Lynet lay on the great bed, afloat on a sea of comfort like nothing she had ever known, and could not rest. She stared up at the unfamiliar shadow of the canopy overhead, her blood thrumming through her veins. She was safe, she was exhausted. She longed for sleep. Why would it not come?

  She could not have asked for the audience to go better. Despite the mistake of courtesy regarding the kitchen boy, the squire, Queen Guinevere and King Arthur had responded fully to her demands. The council had gone on for almost half the day away in that courtyard with its laughing fountain. The clouds and sun came and went and the wind blew down bringing promise of rain while Lynet told the whole of her tale to queen and king, knights and the silent, black form of Merlin the sorcerer, whose gaze never left her.

  There would be yet more talk tomorrow of strategy and men and numbers. A mass would be said for Bishop Austell by Camelot’s Bishop. Perhaps then she could mourn properly, and the sight of him vanishing before her eyes would fade.

  What was most important though, was the queen’s promise. Queen Guinevere would return with them. There was no way to be certain that the queen’s presence would bring stability to the land, but should there be those still inclined to war, she would be a far stronger rallying point than that of the untried daughters of her steward.

  Let Laurel be safe, Lynet prayed silently as she lay there in darkness. Let her be brave. We will come soon.

  She had prayed this same prayer countless times; as they walked across the country, as Captain Hale bargained for the horses with the valley chieftain whom they could barely understand, as they galloped pell-mell up the Roman road, and as they slept in the open huddled together beneath clouds and stars. She had clutched at her pouch and the mirror within, wishing to the depths of her soul that she could be alone for one moment, so that she could summon Ryol. He said he could show her all that was hidden, surely he could show her Laurel.

  Lynet blinked. Dare, the maid Queen Guinevere had given her, snored softly in her truckle bed by the fire. She was alone now, or as good as. She did not need to wait anymore.

  She fumbled with the purse’s ties and brought out the mirror. Even a night beneath the bed coverings had not warmed the metal of its frame. She cupped it in her hands, gazing at her own face in its flawless glass. She was thinner than she had been, and the circles under her eyes had darkened in just these few days. It did not matter. What mattered was to reach for Ryol. She called out with all her strength of mind, and let that call stretch out, unreeling like a ribbon before her unt
il the darkness reached up and pulled her down as if into a deeper sleep.

  She woke in the garden. Sunlight poured down on her and the air was sweet and heavy with the summer scents of herbs and blossoms. Those same blossoms bobbed pleasantly in the gentle breeze that caressed her. The grass was soft beneath her slippers, and her feet no longer ached when she stood.

  Ryol stepped out from behind his birch tree, looking just as he had before, in his ochre tunic and brown breeches. He came forward swiftly and knelt before her.

  “You have returned, my lady,” he took her hand and pressed it to his brow. “I feared …”

  This flood of feeling startled Lynet and she gestured for him to rise. “What could you fear?”

  His slight hesitation told Lynet that there was in him a thought he decided not to speak. Instead he said, “A fine riddle, my lady. What do shadows fear?” He smiled as he stood.

  “Have you an answer?” The peace and warmth of the garden worked on her as before. Her immediate fears were left behind with her body and she could indulge in a small exchange of wit.

  “Of course.” Seriousness, as sudden and unexpected as his emotional greeting had been took him. “A shadow fears the light, my lady.”

  The skin on the back of her neck prickled strangely at these words, and she could find no answer. So, it was she who changed the subject now. “You told me you could show me distant happenings. Can you take me to Cambryn and show me what is happening there?”

  “It is a simple matter, my lady. Will you walk with me?” Ryol bowed, holding out his arm.

  Lynet laid her hand on his arm. Some part of her had expected his touch to be cool, like the morverch, or the mirror itself. But he was as warm in his person as any mortal man. Ryol led Lynet between the silver-skinned rowan trees and out into a second garden that sloped up and away from the first. The plants here were homely herbs; fern, tansy, sorrel, sage and rosemary. Their smell was sharp, going straight to her blood and making it course more strongly. The touch of the air around her felt deeply familiar, but she could not have said why.

  They passed a hazel tree. Ryol turned abruptly to the left, and all at once before them spread the castell of Cambryn. Lynet cried out in gladness before she saw that something was wrong. The stone walls of the cots glittered strangely, as if cut from crystal. She moved forward, and they rippled with each step she took, like a gemstone seen through water. What she trained her gaze directly on was solid enough, until she moved. Then, it rippled and receded again.

  “What is this?” she demanded. “What is happening to me?”

  “It is not you,” Ryol assured her quickly. “These things are not real, my lady. They are reflections only. Tell me what do you want most to see?”

  “Laurel,” she answered at once.

  Ryol led her forward, sweeping the way in front with his hand, as a man might clear branches from his path. The reflection of her home tore apart like scraps of mist, passing insubstantially by her shoulders, and revealing a new place ahead. Fear rose in her, but Ryol only tightened his grip a little. He pulled her through the fog that had been made of her home. Now she could see they stood beneath the eastern watch tower. The sky was heavy with the clouds foretelling another squall. The grass bent beneath the wind, but this wind Lynet could not feel, nor could she feel the cold that surely must fill the air. To her, it was still as warm as summer, and this made her shiver harder than any natural wind could.

  A plume of smoke rose from the tower’s open top. Beside it stood a single tall and slender figure. Lynet knew at once that this was Laurel, come out to look over the land, for any sign of danger, or hope. Three men stood at the tower’s entrance way, all alert, all eyeing each other. Two were strangers, Peran and Mesek’s men. The last was Daveth, a square youth with a thatch of brown hair. He was Captain Hale’s eldest nephew, his sister’s son, and seeing him there brought a rush of relief to Lynet. He would watch Laurel well. Any danger to her would have to get past him and would not find that easy.

  “Can we see her more closely?”

  “Yes …” The distraction in Ryol’s voice made Lynet look at him. Where her attention was all on Laurel’s distant silhouette, he was casting about, like a hound uncertain of a scent. At the edges of her vision, the world glittered and rippled again.

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t know. Something. Forgive me …” He reached out his free hand and slashed it through the air, tearing through the glittering whirl of color. Tower and Laurel and guardsmen all fluttered away like torn silk, and they were inside.

  After a dizzy moment, Lynet recognized Father Lucius’s chamber. The priest, as well as being Bishop Austell’s assistant, was her father’s scribe. His chamber was a place for scraping vellum, mixing inks and copying out letters. Tidy stacks of vellum and parchment lay beside stained mortars and pestles and untrimmed quills. It was frigid in the winter, because the brother would not permit a real fire in the room. A great wooden writing table and high stool stood beside the window that had the most solid shutters in the whole of the keep. On it sat an unfinished page of boldly lettered Latin, probably part of his great work to copy out the psalms. It had been meant as a gift for Lynet’s mother, but she had not lived to see it finished. Now Father had not either.

  Father Lucius was not at his work, however. Instead, at one of the two smaller desks sat Peran Treanhal. She had not known he could write, but he did so now, slowly and carefully, scratching his quill against the vellum, his fire-ravaged face as hard and grim as if he looked over some losing battle.

  “What does he write?” Lynet made to step forward, but Ryol held her back.

  “Wait,” he said.

  The door opened then, and Mesek walked in. Peran looked up, and in the next breath shot to his feet, knocking the bench backward and dropping the quill, which stabbed down onto his uncompleted letter, leaving a great black blot to drown the words he had laid so carefully down.

  “How did you know?” breathed Lynet, but Ryol made no answer.

  Mesek regarded Peran with contemptuous eyes. “So, here you are,” he said with his false mildness.

  “The priest told me you had squirrelled yourself away in here.” Mesek was, Lynet saw, very careful not to move any closer.

  Peran drew himself up, recovering from his shock. “A wise man might fear to meet his enemy alone.” He nodded toward the corridor. If there were more men outside, they kept themselves out of sight.

  Mesek shrugged. “Wisdom is one crime I’ve never been accused of.” Deliberately, he turned his back on Peran, and closed the door.

  Peran’s fingers rubbed together, itching for a weapon, Lynet was sure. The pebbled skin on the back of his burned hand wrinkled and bunched, but he made no other movement. “What do you want?”

  “To offer you compensation,” replied Mesek sticking his thumbs in his broad belt. “For all that you have suffered.”

  Wariness filled Lynet, and not a little fear.

  Evidently deciding Mesek had not come there to do murder, at least not immediately, Peran reached down to pick up the bench. “Since I doubt you are about to impale your own head on a pikestaff, what compensation could you offer me?”

  “Freedom,” said Mesek simply.

  Peran froze, his big hand clamped around the bench’s board seat. “What?”

  Mesek crossed the room, peered out the window and pulled the shutters half closed. Peran stood, the bench forgotten and stared after the other man as Mesek leaned himself against the wall beside the window. “You’ve sold yourself to Morgaine the Sleepless and you are finding that she drives a hard bargain. I’ve been thinking over all that has happened in these past days, and I’ve come to say I’ll help you out of that bargain, if you’re willing.”

  Hard and bitter laughter bubbled out of Peran’s throat. He marched to the window, pulled open the shutter and looked in all directions before he shut it firmly, plunging the room into twilight. “If you think you can break a pledge made with the goddess,
you are mad.”

  “Now, now, Peran. If you keep on you will make me angry.” Mesek stuck his thumbs in his belt again. He wore no weapon openly, of course. Lynet wondered if he had concealed one somewhere. She could not believe he had truly walked into this room unarmed. “I am come with an honest offer that will profit us both.”

  Peran wanted to lash out at the other chieftain. Every hard line of his body said so, but he also was unarmed and it took time to kill someone with hands alone. That left him with only words and it seemed he had but a poor store of those. “Honest offer? You murdered my son!”

  This repetition of his charge left Mesek quite unmoved. Lynet expected he would answer with more scorn. Instead, he said quietly, “Peran, we both know it is Morgaine who killed your son.”

  Lynet gaped at this, but Peran staggered as if he’d been struck. He shook his head violently, seeking to scatter Mesek’s words. “No.”

  Slowly Mesek pushed himself away from the wall. Slowly, he took a step forward, and then another. “She is the reason you came to my doorstep, not some half-starved cows. She sent you to test me in some manner. You failed, and it was your son who paid when the word came from the ravens and their mistress that you must take me down.”

  “No!” shouted Peran more toward the door than to Mesek. It was as if he willed it to open, for someone, anyone, to enter and save him from these words.

  But Mesek did not relent. “I was not to fall right away, and not by myself. She does not think so small. Cambryn and its family must come with me. So, rather than let you take your vengeance as you so plainly desired, she ordered you instead to drag me to court so that you can goad the young Colan into breaking the steward’s family for her. She likes a broad and open road when she travels, does Morgaine.” Mesek was close enough now to grip the work desk with both hands. “But there are other powers than hers, Peran. Some of them serve in this place.”

  Lynet’s throat closed. Ryol’s hand tightened around hers, but he showed no trace of surprise.