Under Camelot's Banner

by Sarah Zettel

  As soon as they were gone, Meg said, a little more loudly than necessary, “Here is my tally.” And unlooped her wax and wooden tablet from her belt, and opened it to show Laurel.

  There had been written a few words. CAMELOT COMES TODAY TO TINTAGEL.

  Laurel read the words, and read them again, and again. She did not lower the book until she was certain she could school her face into the properly banal expression and hand the closed tablet back to Meg.

  “Tell Jorey I’ll be with him after breakfast, and tell our other cellarers that we have received the tally and will give out what is needed, as it is needed.”

  Meg made her curtsey. “I will do that, my lady.”

  They stood side-by-side there for a moment, Meg giving her time to think if there was anything else that needed to be done in regards to the message she had just been given. Laurel surveyed the scene before her without really seeing it. Camelot comes to Tintagel? Why there? They were supposed to come here, to relieve her, and save their home.

  What is the queen playing at?

  Playing at securing the greatest power here, she answered herself. Betting it will be easier to take back Tintagel then Cambryn, rather than the other way around.

  Oh, Lynet, you must be going mad with impatience.

  Laurel looked at her people, her guests and her captors. She saw Mesek, sitting back at the table, wiping his moustaches while he reached out to spear yet another hunk of white cheese on his knife. But his opposite was nowhere to be seen.

  “And where is Master Peran?” she asked Meg.

  “He was talking to his men there.” Meg nodded toward the huddled dispirited group that held their places at the end of one of the long tables. Mesek’s men on the other side of the hall eyed them, grinning as they chewed their mouthfuls of bread and pottage. “Then he up and left. I have not seen him since. They say one of his men crept off in the night. Perhaps Peran’s gone to find him.”

  “Perhaps,” nodded Laurel, keeping her thoughts to herself. Peran’s madness would not let him leave so easily, not before he had gained Morgaine her victory and shown himself to be her true servant. No. There was danger in Master Peran still, especially if he was talking to his men who camped outside the earthworks, and if one of these had thought to set watch on the heights. The path of a queen’s progress from Camelot would not be hard to track. By noon, it would be common knowledge where that procession was going. She had but a little time to use this. “Find some of our men to keep him in sight. I do not want him to lose his way wandering about the castell, nor getting into the cellars.”

  “I understand, my lady,” said Meg sagely. Laurel took the crock from her, and Meg made her curtsey and went off to find those who could be trusted with Laurel’s errand. Laurel took the cider to the high table, and without a word re-filled Mesek’s cup. The chieftain watched her with raised brows, stroking his long moustaches thoughtfully.

  “And to what do I owe this courtesy, Lady Laurel?” he inquired as she took her seat.

  “My need to speak with you, Master,” she replied conversationally as she helped herself from the platter of salted beef and fresh bread.

  His brows shot up again. “And here I thought that was a privilege you were reserving for Master Peran. Shall the two of us lock arms and venture up to your tower?”

  “I would as soon spare us both.” Little Ama ran up to fill her cups, one with beer and one with cider. Laurel waited until she was gone to speak again. “If nothing else, we will attract far less notice as we are.”

  “This is the truest thing you have said since the beginning of this mummery.” Mesek took a healthy swig of his cider and stared down the hall, seeing his own men, and his enemies and all those in between, Laurel was certain. Seeing too, his own plans, and wondering about what was happening back among his own kindred. “What is it then, my lady?”

  Where to begin? she wondered briefly. “You are being used Mesek.”

  Mesek tipped up his cider cup, considering the dregs of it. “That is where you are wrong, my lady,” he said softly. “I and mine will not be used anymore.” He spoke firmly, and with a conviction that was absolute. Laurel found herself wondering what she would have seen had it been him she called to the tower rather than Peran.

  “You think you are rebelling, even against the Sleepless One, but you are doing what she wants,” Laurel told him flatly. “You are staying here and maintaining this show of an appeal to the law. You are helping keep me trapped here. Peran lied to you, Mesek. He is coaxing you along so that you will stay and continue to play their game. When the judgment comes, if it comes, it will be made to fall apart.” This last was intuition alone, but given all that had happened, she did not doubt it.

  “How?”

  “I do not know,” she admitted. “Yet.”

  Mesek sat his cup down and pushed his chair back, sticking one broad thumb into his worn leather belt. “How is it you know any of this?”

  Laurel felt a small and mirthless smile form. “You are bribing and interrogating my people about my powers, and yet you do not believe I might have my own ways to know and see?”

  Mesek considered this, fingering his moustache. “I think you fear me, lady,” he said. “I think you want to keep your place and your power, and let no person save yourself hold these things.”

  He waited to hear her denial, to find what bluster or anger she had in her. She gave him none of these things. “Yes, Mesek, I fear you,” she replied calmly. “No, I do not want to lose this fight. But listen to me carefully.” She leaned forward, stabbing the board with her finger. “The Sleepless One is not gone, Mesek. She is here, now, with us, giving her orders and positioning her powers. All is built around you failing to see what is happening.”

  “Why would you trust me?”

  “Because the Sleepless One is also counting on me not to. Listen to me, Mesek,” she lowered her voice, forcing him to lean forward to hear her clearly. “I do not like you. You are savage and you are brutal. But you are honest. You are tired of failed overlordships and you want them ended. I can understand and respect this. I ask you to believe me, you are being used, and your men stand a good chance of dying if you remain here.”

  Mesek did not answer, but his face began to flush red from suppressed fury. His hand clutched his leather belt, trying not to reach for his knife. Across the hall, one of his men saw them there, and touched his fellow’s arm, pointing. All of them fell silent and that silence grew and spread until it smothered all the voices in the hall.

  Slowly, Mesek forced himself to breathe. He took both his meaty hands and spread them out flat on the table. Gradually, the flush faded to two red spots high on his cheeks. Faces turned away and voices filled the hall once more, but not without both Mesek’s men and Peran’s casting many a worried glance toward the table.

  “Kings. Sorcerers. Madmen,” he said through gritted teeth. “Is there no release from these creatures?”

  “I do not know, Mesek. I only know this. Whatever else you think of Guinevere and Arthur, they have been open in their dealings with us. They have never asked from us but what is lawful of a lord from their liege man.”

  He regarded her for a long time, a dozen different emotions shifting across his face. His old, bluff defiance at last settled into place, and Mesek stuck his thumb back into his belt. “You speak of openness,” he said flatly. “Prove what you mean. What is the power of this place?”

  Laurel did not even blink. “Birth and blood, right and heritage, the same as any other old place of lordship. My mother came from the sea to be with my father, and she bequeathed some of the sea’s spirit to us when we were birthed. There was a mirror too, with a spirit servant within it, but that is in my sister’s hands now, not here.”

  Mesek waited, to see, Laurel thought, if she would add any other word, or if she would flinch. She did not. The tides of his emotion swirled around her, a thousand separate currents with anger as the strongest of all. She could catch and hold his gaze, sh
e knew. She could take all he poured out and force her own feeling, her own will back upon him. She did not. Mesek must make his choice freely. If he did not, it was she, the one who stood there for his liege, who would be the traitor.

  The anger grew, but so did the undercurrent of despair in his keen eyes, but neither came from weakness. All came from strength. Mesek was a strong man, head of his clan by right and reason as well as by the strength of his arm. All his rage was against the fact that he stood surrounded by powers that were greater than his, and there was nothing he could do.

  Mesek’s shoulders sank and hunched, as a man’s will in a fight when he is trying to make a smaller target of himself.

  “What would you of me?”

  “Go home, Mesek,” said Laurel quietly.

  His head snapped up. “What?”

  “Go home,” she repeated. “Take yourself and your men out of here.”

  “Are you mad?” The strain in his voice cracked on the last word. “Peran will say we have rejected the law and he’ll unleash his people on us. We are not yet ready for war.”

  “I know,” said Laurel hollowly. “I know. You must move your people up into the woods and wait. Camelot is gone to Tintagel to rally Mark, or to replace him. They come here next, or we will get word to them. I swear, they or we will come to your defence within three days.”

  “I thought you wanted to keep the peace.”

  “I do, but Morgaine has used our very desire for peace against us.” Our desire for peace. My desires as they are, and Peran’s desire for his son’s return. “She counts on us to try to move secretly and carefully even to the bitter end. So, that is what we cannot do. Go home, Mesek. Ready your men. Help will come, I swear it before God and on my mother’s grave.”

  Slowly, he shook his head. “Not enough.”

  “What then?”

  “You.” His eyes flashed as he spoke the word.

  Slowly, Laurel drew back. “What?” she asked, even though the meaning had already begun to form itself as a cold lump in the center of her throat.

  “Never again does my clan face ignominy,” said Mesek, looking directly in her eyes. “Never again do we hide, landless and claimless, waiting for our enemy to come slaughter us. I am with you in desire to end the Sleepless One’s hold, and cut off her reach, but I will not leave my people with only our spears and cattle at the end of it.”

  “You wish to marry me,” said Laurel slowly, as if trying to explain it to herself.

  “You or your sister, I care not.” Mesek shrugged. “I would rather it was you, as you are the elder.”

  “I thought you had a wife already.” Her thoughts were drifting away from her, and she could not seem to drag them back.

  He shrugged. “She is a reasonable creature and our contract is clear. Her seven years are up and she may leave me freely at any time, with her goods, her chattels and price. When I explain the case to her, I believe she will wish to go.”

  It was as if a door had closed. “I am not lady of this place,” she tried. “It is Guinevere’s prerogative to make such an agreement.”

  “You are here and she is not. You may not wear the queen’s torque yet, but you are heir to rank, and wealth, and land and fortress. In their turn, our sons will be heirs through you, and so will my clan. That,” he laid his broad, rough hand flat on the table cloth. “Is my price for this thing, Lady.”

  Laurel found her mouth had gone very dry and her heart seemed to be fluttering in her. If she set all other things aside, what he said made excellent sense. It was not, in fact, far different from negotiations that might have taken place outside her hearing had her father lived. But somehow, her reason could not prevent her from struggling against the idea. It was unreal that she should be having this conversation with the babble and activity of the hall swirling around her. “If you do nothing, you will die with nothing,” she pointed out to him.

  “But so will you,” Mesek reminded her. “And then who will stand between Cambryn and the Sleepless One?”

  It was as if a key slipped into a lock and closed a chest tightly. She asked him for a sacrifice, perhaps of the lives of his kin. She could not refuse to make sacrifice in return. “Very well, Mesek. You have my promise. I will make my oath before a witness if you require. But by stone and sea and before God and Mary, I swear, if you leave and take your men, and do not appear before Queen Guinevere when her court sits, I will be your wife.”

  Mesek nodded. “That is enough for me, Lady Laurel,” he said. She expected some ironic word of triumph, or at the very least one of his wide grins. But Mesek remained serious. “I ask you, of your courtesy, to try not to hate me for this,” he said, with something as close to gentleness as she had ever heard from him. “We are both of us victims of power, and I too must protect my people I however I can.”

  “I understand, Master Mesek.”

  “Very good.” He pushed his chair back and stood up. “I will need to go tell my men what has happened, or some of it at least. Wish me luck.” A grim twinkle shone in his black eyes.

  “God be with you,” replied Laurel gravely.

  He took her hand then and bowed over it, a strange and courtly gesture for such a rough chieftain. “And with you, lady.”

  She watched him as he strode down the length of the hall to his clutch of followers, leaning close and speaking softly. They stiffened. They set down their cups and their bread. Behind them, Peran’s men watched wide-eyed and afraid. It was they who stood up first, and all the hall watched them leave, including Mesek.

  He looked back at her, and she raised her brows at him. I have your promise, Master Mesek, as you have mine. Mesek, in return, nodded, as if he understood. He would not start trouble here. He would go. He slapped the shoulder of the nearest man, and they all of them got to their feet to follow their chief out from the hall.

  Laurel got to her feet. The serving women and men were beginning to clear the meal away, and the tinners had long since left for the river. There was nothing she could do now but return to her weaving and wait for Meg to bring her another message. Laurel moved between her people, calm and collected. If marriage to Mesek kept them, and her, free of Morgaine, it would be worth it. If it kept the land and the home of her father and mother together, it would be worth it. Her life had always been for barter and alliance anyway. She was luckier than some in that she entered into this with her eyes wide open.

  It would take awhile, but she would accept it. She must.

  Lynet reached the end of the hall where her wooden loom with its inch of blue cloth waited. She picked up her shuttle and slipped another thread into the warp of the cloth. Weaving steadily, facing the cloth, no one saw the single tear leave its track on her white cheek.

  “Treanhal! Treanhal!”

  Peran lifted his head. The men around him frowned and shifted uneasily. He could hear them thinking What now? because he was thinking it himself. The only difference was where their anger was plain on their faces, his fear was thinly concealed.

  Seleven topped the earthen wall, running full tilt, with all the guardsmen of Cambryn staring behind him. He skidded to a halt in front of Peran. Seleven was as thin and gangly as a beardless boy, although he’d been a man five years and more and fathered the children to prove it. His adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he gulped in air trying to catch his breath.

  “What is it man?” demanded Red Kole before Peran could get his mouth opened. Named after the color of his hair and beard which stuck out in every direction, and his tendency to flush scarlet at the slightest change of emotion, he was the eldest among Peran’s men, and he had thought one of the most loyal. But it was Red Kole who had brought him out here, and Red Kole who asked what he intended to do now that Laveen had left them.

  Seleven finally drew in enough breath to form words. “Mesek is leaving,” he said. “I heard him tell his men. They’re going home.”

  “What!” roared Peran. At the same moment, inside he wailed No!

  “Even
now. They’ve gone down to the stables to get their horses.”

  “So,” said Red Kole in a low voice full of calm and menace. “They’ve heard of Laveen’s desertion, and they have called your bluff.”

  Your bluff, not ours. Yours. Panic, burning hot and unfamiliar rose in Peran like bile.

  “I will see this for myself,” he said, fighting to keep his voice even. “Kole, you’ll get as many of us as you can inside the earthworks. Use any pretense, visit any sentry post you need. Seleven, get back inside and make sure we’re following Laurel Carnbrea at all times. If they mean to start a war, we will begin it here.”

  He strode off, as quickly as he could without breaking into a run. He left them there not knowing whether they would obey him, or if they could. They did not matter. What mattered was that Mesek stay, that the Lady’s plan be carried through, and that he be the one to present her the victory. It must be done, and it must be done by him. It was the only way he would see his son Tam again.

  By the time he reached he stables, his hands and neck were sweating, and the burn scar on his face pulled and itched painfully. Seleven made no mistake. Mesek sat on his squat, sturdy horse, with his men clustered about him, their pole-arms in their hands, waiting with at least an outward semblance of patience while thief chieftain had a last word with Cambryn’s fat stablemaster.

  “Mesek!” Peran bellowed. One of the men stepped into his path. Heedless of caution, Peran shoved him aside. Mesek watched this impassively.

  “What are you doing?” Peran demanded. “You gave your oath that you would wait for the queen’s judgment!”

  “As you gave yours,” replied Mesek, absolutely unperturbed. “And we both know that was the first lie.”

  “Oath-breaker!” he shouted. The stable-master fell back, but made no move to call help. The man closest to Mesek shifted his grip on his pole-arm, but Mesek touched his shoulder. That calm gesture stabbed straight to Peran’s heart.