by Sarah Zettel
Queen Guinevere settled onto her gilded throne, stern and distant. All around them, banners were unfurled, rippling with color on the morning breeze. Arthur’s gold and scarlet dragon rose beside and the queen’s own blue and white swan. Gareth carried Sir Lancelot’s own banner with its three broad blue stripes on a pure white field. He sat straight and proud on his red stallion, enjoying the pomp coming to fruition around him.
And Lynet saw him in the midst of battle, that stern face stretched and mad with fear and desperation, hacking out with his sword, trying to stay alive, bellowing his curses up to God in Heaven and down to the depths of Hell.
She squeezed her eyes shut, biting both her lips. Was that the past or the future she saw? She didn’t know. She couldn’t tell.
A blast upon a hunting horn brought Lynet back to the daylight world before her. The standard bearers raised their banners high, and the procession began to move.
They rode across the rolling country, overflowing the narrow rutted track that was the only road to the castell. The trumpeters blew their horns, and the drummers sounded the beat as their royal procession came on, slowly. But all the countryside was empty of any to see their display. The cold sea wind blew uninterrupted, causing their banners to snap and their skirts to flow and flutter. Out ahead, beyond the few trees, the world turned misted blue and white, and the terns and gulls cried out in surprised greeting to see the queen come to visit them.
In all their pomp they rode through the unguarded earthworks and into the castell of Tintagel, and only the sheep in the yards and the pigs in their pens lifted their heads to see Queen Guinevere and all her train enter there. Tintagel was a small place. It was older than Cambryn, but the homes huddled closer together, and clung more tightly to the earth. They had long houses for storage of common goods and meetings and shelter from the ordinary storms, and the high house towered over all on the headland. A far simpler edifice than Cambryn’s, it was a single hall with a roof of slate. No door or shutter opened there. No fire burned anywhere Lynet could see and the smell of smoke was nowhere on the constant wind. But the people were not gone. Not truly. Lynet could see them in their darkness. She could feel them crowded together and waiting. Nothing was to be hidden from her anymore, she realized with despair. She was to be permitted no respite from shadows and secrets.
The queen’s procession marched through the rough center of the huddled houses. Lynet found herself wondering if the queen meant to turn directly for the fortress island, but even as she thought this, the queen cried, “Halt!”
All obeyed, and her bearers set the litter chair gently onto the ground. Guinevere looked about her at the silent houses, the empty yards and the dumb, disinterested animals left to fend for themselves.
“Where will they be Lynet?” Queen Guinevere asked abruptly.
Lynet’s dry tongue pressed against the top of her mouth and her mare shifted uneasily underneath her. She saw them and she felt them, with their eyes shining in the darkness, hunched among the sacks and casks, their fear emanating up through the stones. But she did not need any such vision. They were where her people would have been, and where, she suspected, Queen Guinevere knew they were. “In the cellars, your Majesty, those that are not in the caves below the cliffs.”
“Sir Lancelot!” called the queen. Lancelot dismounted immediately and knelt before her. They could not see if they were watched, but now was the time for all observations to be made.
“You will send a man into the cellars,” Queen Guinevere ordered. “Lady Lynet will show you how they may be found. Warn him to take a light and take care. I would speak with one of the people here, so use who you find gently.”
“Majesty.” Lancelot bowed. “Gareth, Lionel, with me. If you please, my lady …?” He bowed to her, and there was something strange in his voice, something ever so slightly mocking.
Lynet slipped off her horse. Fear rose in a cloud around her with each step she took. Gareth’s worry had sharpened and she could not even spare a smile for him. With the three men following her, she circled the long house. She felt Gareth most strongly behind her, and was sure she could discern his breath and his heartbeat. She shrank away from this, fearing to raise yet more shadows.
On the far side of the long house from the procession, she found a standing stone that stuck out at an angle from the fresh spring grass. To one who did not know, it might be taken only as some ancient monument, or a place to tether horses, and the great, flattened rock beside as just one more grey and black boulder, no different from any other that dotted this land.
“There.” She pointed to the boulder. “They will be beneath that.” Huddled close in the darkness, straining to hear footsteps and voices the earth and stone keep from them. “The cellar will be bow shaped, and you must be careful, there will be a lintel set into the ground where the walls bend most sharply.”
“Why?” asked Lionel, already fingering his sword hilt nervously.
Lynet gave a small smile. “To trip up any attempting what we do now.” The Eire-landers, the Saxons, the men of the next heath … the bloody shadows flitted across the surface of the stone, and the men beneath clutched their makeshift weapons, and trying to ready themselves to spill blood one more time. “I will go down first,” she said abruptly.
Both squires looked uneasily at their knight. Sir Lancelot frowned. “That charge is not yours, Lady,” he reminded her.
“The queen bid you proceed gently, my lord Lancelot,” she said. “Can you speak the tongue of this land?”
“I cannot,” he admitted.
“And I can tell you the headman beneath us cannot speak the tongue of Arthur’s court. It may be I can coax him out with a good word and promise they will not be harmed.” But they were so afraid, down there, their eyes so wide and shining. There was a babe crying and its mother trying frantically to get it to suckle at her breast to quiet it.
She did not say the other thing. Those who hid below all knew her and what she had done. They might well turn away for that reason alone. But she had to try, and it was better they know that now. Wasn’t it?
The world swam in front of her, and Lynet stiffened her knees so that she would not sway.
“Very well,” growled the knight. “But do not, please, get yourself killed. I have no wish to explain that to our queen. Gareth keep watch,” he went on briskly. “Lionel, help me here.”
Lancelot and Lionel scrabbled at the stone. Gareth stood, hand on his sword, clearly and deliberately not looking at her. She wanted to reach out to him, to say something, to tell him she was all right, even if that was a lie. A woman stood beside him, a woman with brown hair and brown eyes. She laughed and leaned down to tousle the hair of a scrawny little boy who grinned up at her with all a child’s sweet mischief. Talia, was her name and this was Gareth’s sister, and his heart was breaking for her all over again, but she could not tell why.
Then, Lancelot grunted. He and Lionel had found the trick of the stone, and straining their arms managed to heave it onto its end and let it drop aside with a loud thump. Where it had been opened a rough, round hole. A ladder’s rungs ran down one side of its wall, and beneath that, a narrow stairway had been carved out of the hard-packed dirt.
Sir Lancelot walked up to the hole and stood for a moment, listening. He would hear nothing. They were all clustered at the far end of the cellar, and the babe was sucking peacefully now.
Lynet drew a deep breath. “Halloo!” she cried out. Ignoring the shocked and sudden anger on Sir Lancelot’s face, she went on. “I am Lynet Carnbrea of Cambryn, daughter to Kenan the Steward. I come in peace. Who will speak with me?”
Silence, deep and frightened. She saw them, stirring, straining, wishing. They whispered to one another, but they did not move. The men drew close, not daring to answer.
“I will go down,” she said.
“Not alone,” announced Gareth abruptly.
“They are terrified,” Lynet tried to explain. “God alone knows what they have been
told. They may attack out of sheer panic.”
“So you will not go alone.” Gareth repeated.
“If you pair are finished planning our strategy …” drawled Lancelot. Gareth blanched and bowed deeply, murmuring his apologies. His knight smirked, and Lynet did not dare look into his eyes, for fear she might understand what flashed through his mind.
“If you are so anxious, Gareth to bear the lady company, you may,” Sir Lancelot went on. “I just remind you not to give me something else I must explain to our king and all the court, most especially your brothers.”
She saw the three men clustered around Gareth, so alike and yet so different, all watching him, all full of love and yet of fear for their youngest sibling.
Gareth bowed, and somehow that motion wiped the shadows away.
Lionel, streaked with sweat from his efforts, fetched a light, an open brazier with a sputtering flame.
“I am coming down!” Lynet called. “And Squire Gareth with me!”
No answer. They all shrank back. The babe stirred restlessly and its mother clutched it close.
Gareth started down the ladder rungs. When he neared the bottom, Lionel handed him down the light and stood back so Lynet could begin her own climb. Her arms cried out in pain as her hands strained to grip ladder rungs worn smooth as ivory from years of use. When her slippers touched the earth, they turned together toward the steps. Gareth handed her the brazier. It was heavy as lead in her hands. Gareth drew his sword. The roof was low enough she had to duck, and Gareth bent almost double. The way so narrow both her elbows brushed the walls of hard packed earth that gave way to stone. How in God’s name would he swing that sword he held before him? She could not tell if that was her own thought or if it leaked to her from Gareth himself.
The sunlight did not fall past the mouth of the stair, so there was only the dim flicker of the braziers flame to see by. Their footsteps made no noise. It was their breath that echoed harshly off the damp, cold, confining walls.
Ahead of them, the stone walls widened and curved, as Lynet had known they would. These places were old when the druids and their kind still reigned here, and they followed a pattern that had proven more than once of good use. What Lynet did not understand was why the people of Tintagel should hide here now.
She could hear them with the ears of her body, breathing in the darkness, shuffling and shifting even as they tried to be still. Gareth was tight as a bowstring. Lynet touched his arm, and he knew what she meant, and he did not like it anymore than he liked that she had come down here, but he did not argue and he did not stop her. He let her slip past him with the light.
“Where is the good man, PenHarrow?” she called in the homely tongue, pressing close to the wall, holding the light well before her and as far to the side as she could, in case she had misjudged those who waited beyond. “Good PenHarrow, how is your leg that I set? Does it trouble you at all?”
In the darkness, something snapped.
“Leave us, lady! Leave us alone!”
Leave me be! she heard her own voice echo.
“I cannot,” she answered back, and she felt shadows stirring and pressing close in the back of her mind. “Good PenHarrow, I beg you, come speak with me.”
Cloth rustled and feet shuffled, and the sound of many voices hissing and murmuring came out of the darkness. Lynet stood with her sputtering light before her and Gareth at her back, every nerve and muscle straining, trying not to see and wishing desperately she could. Panic and shadows pressed at her, digging claws into her vision to tear it apart, but this one time she held, though it meant she stood there all but blind.
Then, slowly, some of that shuffling drew nearer. A sallow, dirt-streaked face came around the corner. Seth PenHarrow had changed little in the past two years. Labor had stooped him a bit more, and his brown beard was a little thicker and a little longer. He came forward hesitating, but, she was perversely pleased to note, not limping. He did clutch a cudgel in his hand. Gareth sucked in a breath, but otherwise held still.
“Go away, lady,” PenHarrow said huskily. “Tell the queen…. Just … go away.”
He licked his lips, and his gaze strayed to Gareth, and Gareth’s naked sword. Gareth did not move, nor did he lower the blade from its ready position. Lynet knew he could understand next to nothing of what was said, but he also knew enough to hold back until attacked.
“Who brought you down here, PenHarrow?”
PenHarrow’s hands trembled hard enough to shake his cudgel. “The king, Lady Lynet. When he knew you were coming, he sent word down that any who welcomed you, any who spoke to you … they would be driven into the sea.”
“There are those in the fortress who would do this thing?”
PenHarrow hunched his shoulders. “I think he would do it himself, my lady,” he whispered. “His madness has gripped him wholly. We … we did not know what else to do.”
A shadowed flash broke her thoughts, and she saw Mark, huddled on his seat of stone, his great hands hanging between his knees, fear and fury warring in his eyes. Her stomach churned and for a moment she truly feared she would be sick.
“Where are the lords? Where are your chieftains?” She did not know what was worse, this vision of a king destroyed, or the fact that these people were left to fend for themselves by those who should have protected them.
“They’ve gone to the caves and the moors my lady, with all the rest who could make it that far.” For the first time, anger touched PenHarrow, and his hand ceased to tremble. “Those that could not get away … they are in the fortress, and all their women and children with them.”
Cold flooded Lynet. “What does King Mark say he will do to them?”
“What he would do to us, lady, if any came out to welcome the queen.”
“I understand.” She did and in her heart she howled out against the horror and the wrong of it all. She touched PenHarrow’s hand. “Thank you, PenHarrow. Take care of your people now.”
Suddenly, he caught her hand, holding it hard. Gareth sucked in a breath, but Lynet waved him back.
“Help us, lady,” whispered PenHarrow hoarsely. “Tell the queen. Help us.”
Softly, she laid her hand over his. “We will. You must wait and trust, but tell them all, we will help you.”
His lips moved. She thought he said “bless you,” but his throat would make no sound. Instead, he raised her hand, touching it to his brow, and she accepted the gesture, trying her hardest to impart the blessing she had no right to give. PenHarrow straightened, his eyes full of mute thanks, and he walked back into the darkness, vanishing as surely as Ryol in his garden of shadow.
“Let us go,” said Lynet as she turned to Gareth. “The queen needs to know how it is here.”
“Let me say one thing first, Lynet.”
She looked up at him. He was close to her. She could feel his warmth against her skin, feel his breath on his face. He smelled sweet and musky at the same time. “I don’t know when I will see you alone again,” he murmured. “It feels … I don’t know, but I’m afraid what will happen to you in this place. I looked at you there and you were so far away …”
“Don’t Gareth.” She stopped him. What reassurance could she give when she did not know herself? How could she say anything of the shadows that could carry her away at a moment’s notice. Then, she remembered how those same shadows faded away when he looked at her. “I promise you, somehow I will find my way back to you,” she murmured. “I don’t know how far I will have to go, or what will happen, but let you be my anchor. You will bring me back.”
His hand curled around hers, and it was warm and strong and the touch was as sweet as the scent of him. For that moment all the pain she felt vanished. How so much could come from the handful of moments they had shared and the few touches they had exchanged, she did not know, but it was true and it was real. While he held her hand there was only warmth and heart’s deep ease. “Your anchor, then,” he said. “Until I can be your heart’s home.”
/> With those words, something changed inside her. If Lynet had ever dared to think at all about a moment of true redemption, she had thought she would weep when it came. She had poured out so many tears over the nature of her life and her transgressions, it was natural to believe that in this final moment, more would fall. But there were no more tears, no last extreme of feeling to transport her. There was only a quiet wonder filling her to the brim, overflowing the dams of her soul and causing all she had clenched so tightly to flow freely away. Gareth lifted her hand and laid it against his breast. A simple, wondrous movement. Lynet found she was all air and light. Light enough to fly, free enough to move, to reach forward, to touch her lips to Gareth’s in a gentle kiss that passed to her the life and longing that belonged wholly to another being, and knowing that he felt all of hers.
The moment could not have lasted more than a handful of heartbeats, but it was enough to change the world, and it was with her heart full of song and strength that Lynet mounted the steps and climbed the ladder into the sunlight with Gareth, her anchor, her shelter, her promise, close behind.
One glance at Lancelot’s stern and impatient visage was enough to bring her wholly back to the other grim reality waiting before them both.
Lancelot looked Gareth up and down. Lynet could not tell whether he was pleased or disappointed to find his squire unhurt. “How many down there?” he barked. “What are their arms?”
“I could not make a direct count, my lord,” Gareth answered promptly. “But from the size of the cellar and the sounds that I heard, I would say there were perhaps two dozen men and boys, with as many again women and girls. There are children and infants as well. They are husbandmen and serfs with only such things as they were able to carry from their homes to arm themselves.”
It was all Lynet could do not to gape. She could not have been more surprised if Gareth had revealed he could see in the dark. Yet he spoke with absolute confidence, and Sir Lancelot nodded judiciously, accepting Gareth’s assessment, and that acceptance caused Gareth to shine with pride.