by Gwen Rowley
It was impossible to mistake his meaning now. He wanted to share something with her that he had never shared with anyone before.
Something he could never share with Guinevere.
Elaine could accept that he had loved before. Perhaps she was not Guinevere’s equal in grace or charm or beauty, but she could make Lancelot a home, bear his children, give him the settled security he craved. He cared for her, she was certain of that much, and in time, the memory of his youthful folly would fade.
“Yes,” she said, “I would like to see it. But not until you are well again. Sleep now, and I will wake you when ’tis time to eat.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
That didn’t go too badly, Lancelot thought. He reached for the water at his bedside, though his hand was shaking so that some slopped over on the table. Abandoning the effort, he lay back against the pillow. Elaine hadn’t quite believed him, but she was prepared to let the matter rest.
He had not lied—he had promised himself he would never lie to Elaine—yet he had not betrayed Guinevere. Poor Guinevere. How would she cope without him? Apparently she was not doing very well so far, but he could not help her now. She would have to rely upon herself … and Arthur.
Something was very wrong in their marriage, though Lancelot had no idea what it was. Arthur had been delighted with his bride, and Guinevere had been half in love with him already before they wed. They had met some months before their wedding, for Arthur had ridden to King Leodegrance’s aid when Cameliard was attacked.
“Tell me everything about him!” Guinevere had demanded of Lancelot during her bridal journey to Camelot. “I want to hear it all.”
“King Arthur is …” Lancelot lifted one hand in a gesture of futility. “He is …”
“The king. Yes, so I’ve heard. But what of the man? What are his likes and dislikes, his pastimes, his passions? Oh, I know he’s a great warrior, but does he care for music? Can he dance? Have you heard him sing or play upon an instrument?”
“No, but there had been little opportunity—”
“Is he learned or one of those men who scorns the written word? What is his favorite dish?”
“How should I know?” Lancelot demanded, laughing. “Why did you not ask him all this nonsense yourself?”
“There wasn’t time! I met him twice—well, only once to speak to—and then he was sore wounded. And I did not know then that he—that we were to be—”
“Ah. I see it now. You were too dazzled by his skill at arms to ply him with impertinent questions. Very wise of you, I’m sure.” He laughed. “And now you are blushing! Don’t tell me you are in love with him already?”
“Of course not.” Guinevere sniffed delicately. “How could I be on the strength of one meeting?”
“You said two,” Lancelot pointed out. “What was the first one?”
“Oh, it was nothing. I only saw him from the battlements one evening. I did not know then who he was—nor did he know me.” Guinevere blushed and bent her head, making a show of straightening the folds of her cloak. “It was just a look, no more,” she added in a would-be careless voice. “Completely unimportant. I can’t imagine why I mentioned it.”
“Hmm. It all sounds suspiciously romantic to me. Now, if you can just stay silent until the vows are spoken, he’ll never know what a silly wench you are until it is too late.”
There was something wrong in the silence that followed. He leaned closer, trying to peer into her face. “I was only joking. You’re not so bad. I daresay he’ll resign himself in time.”
She laughed, but it was not natural, and turned her face away.
“What?” he demanded. “Tell me what is wrong.”
“Oh, ’tis naught. Only—well, I had a rather dreadful scene with Father before I left.”
Lancelot fell silent. He could well imagine what the scene had been about. He’d had a rather dreadful scene with King Leodegrance himself, when he had arrived at Cameliard to escort Arthur’s bride to court. Leodegrance, upon learning Lancelot’s identity, had seemed to go mad. Seizing his sword, he’d made a blundering attempt to run Lancelot through, and failing in that, to turn the blade upon himself. Once disarmed, he wept—it had been horrible to see—and a very nasty tale had come out.
Apparently Leodegrance, a young man newly wed, had gone to Gaul to visit King Ban, his dear and trusted friend. When he’d been summoned back to Britain by Uther Pendragon, he left his bride in Ban’s care, expecting to return in a matter of weeks. But the Saxons had attacked, Leodegrance stayed to fight, and by the time he returned a year later, it was to find his lady heavy with child. Rather than cast herself upon his mercy—which would not in any case have been forthcoming—she’d had the audacity to beg him to leave her as she was, claiming wildly that she would rather be Ban’s leman than Leodegrance’s wedded wife.
Luckily, Leodegrance had said, his lady did not survive the birth. The child, Guinevere—which he admitted openly he planned to smother had she been born a male—was instead packed off, first to the nursery and later to a convent.
Leodegrance immediately wed again. And again. Three dead queens later and without an heir to his name, he found his grown daughter upon his doorstep. Before he could decide what was to be done with her, Cameliard was attacked. King Arthur saw the chit and fancied her, throwing Leodegrance into a quandary of conscience. Only with the greatest reluctance had he agreed to the marriage between Guinevere and the high king.
Lancelot had listened to these drunken ramblings with a distaste that soon turned to bored revulsion. Why should he care what two strangers—both dead now—had gotten up to before he was even born? Why should anyone care? What difference did it make who had fathered the girl so long as Arthur wanted her? As for Guinevere, he hadn’t regarded her at all. He had certainly felt no connection to her.
Until they met.
Lancelot had told Elaine that he and Guinevere were similar in temperament, and that, though true, did not begin to explain it. Within an hour of meeting, he and Guinevere were finishing each other’s sentences. Soon they had no need for words at all. The lift of a brow, the motion of a hand was enough to communicate volumes.
By the time they reached Camelot it seemed that Lancelot had always known her. She could be—and often was—haughty and impatient, but as these were flaws he shared, he regarded them with amused indulgence. Or he had at first. Later, he’d realized just how willful she could be—and how reckless. But by then it was too late, for he was bound to her by oaths unbreakable. Bound to silence. Bound to obedience. Bound to stand by while she laid waste to his friendship with Arthur.
What had gone wrong in their marriage? Arthur would never breathe a word of such private matters to any man—save perhaps his confessor—and Guinevere refused to admit that anything was amiss. But the signs were there. Her laughter was too shrill, her eyes too bright, her entertainments so lavish as to be absurd. She flirted shamelessly with every knight at court, and though most of the poor fools fell under her spell, a few found her both unseemly and ridiculous.
It finally occurred to Lancelot that there was only one man she was trying to impress, and she was going about it in precisely the wrong fashion. Arthur cared nothing for glittering pageantry and extravagant entertainments. The harder Guinevere tried to win his notice, the more he withdrew from the beautiful, volatile, altogether puzzling creature he had wed. So Guinevere had turned to her one friend—the word brother was never so much as whispered between them—to fill the emptiness.
Lancelot could not help but respond. He was intensely protective of her, even as he lived in dread of her next act of folly. The one thing he found impossible to forgive was that she had poisoned his relationship with Arthur, the brother he had always longed for, the father he had never known, the best friend any man could want.
But maybe, without Lancelot in the picture, they would turn to one another.
When Elaine looked in a little later with a dish of fresh fish and greens, he pretended to
be sleeping. He saw no one until the next day when Bors came to say farewell.
“Leaving so soon?” Lancelot asked, though in truth he was relieved.
“I promised the king I’d go straight back once I knew how you fared. He has been very worried,” he added mildly.
“I know. Tell him I am mending.”
Bors nodded and drew on his gloves. “He will be glad to hear it.” He was silent for a time, waiting, but at last he voiced the unspoken question hanging in the air. “When can I tell him to expect you?”
“It is better,” Lancelot said carefully, “if he does not.”
“I know it’s difficult to say—Father Bernard thinks it will be some weeks yet before you are returned to full strength. But the king will want to know. Say a month?” Lancelot shook his head. “Six weeks, then?”
In time, Arthur would understand he was not coming back at all. Let the knowledge steal upon him gradually; it would be easier that way.
“Give him my greeting, Bors.”
Bors nodded, as though he had heard the words Lancelot could not bring himself to speak. “And the queen?” he asked quietly. “Will you send no word to her?”
Nothing Lancelot wanted to say to her could be sent by such a messenger, or indeed by any messenger at all. And perhaps that, too, was for the best. “Say to the queen,” he managed, “that I commend myself to her.”
Exhausted, he turned his head upon the pillow and closed his eyes.
“All right, Lance.” Bors walked to the entrance; there his footsteps halted. “You’re doing the right thing,” he said. “God will reward you for it.”
“You might mention that in your prayers.”
“It would be better coming from you. He does listen, you know, if you would only talk to Him.”
Lancelot managed a weak smile. “You do it for me, Bors.”
“I always do,” Bors answered on a sigh. “Farewell.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“Lady, may I … ?” Mab, one of the Corbenic serving girls, gestured vaguely toward the privy.
“Of course.” Exasperated, Elaine turned to Brisen, who was tossing handfuls of wood ash into the cauldron bubbling in the center of the courtyard. “What ails these wenches?” Elaine demanded. “Is there some sickness going round?”
Brisen burst out laughing. “You could call it that. Green sickness, at any rate. Sir Lancelot is practicing in the yard.”
“Is he?” Elaine glanced toward the practice yard, then turned her attention firmly to the work at hand. “Here, now,” she called sharply. “You’re dragging that sheet through the mud!”
Giggling wildly, the three girls gathered up the dripping sheet and flung it over a shrub, their heads bent close together. The day was fine and breezy, a perfect opportunity to turn out all the bedding, the mattresses to be picked and aired, the linen washed and hung in the sun to bleach.
“Do you think he should?” Elaine asked Brisen. “It’s very soon, isn’t it?”
“I should hope he’ll have the sense to leave off if he’s in pain,” Brisen said. “But perhaps you should go and see how he gets on.”
“Yes. Perhaps I should.”
“You might want to leave the apron here,” Brisen suggested blandly.
“Wench,” Elaine muttered, but she did as Brisen bade her, leaving the sacking apron folded neatly over a stool. “I’ll be right back,” she added loudly. “Keep on with your work.”
She found not only Lancelot but Torre in the yard. Torre was astride his charger, and Lancelot bent over the stirrup. “Try it now,” he said.
To her surprise, Elaine saw that the quintain had been set up in the center of the yard. She leaned against the wooden railing of the fence and watched Torre charge it with a practice lance. He hit it true, and the arm swung round with a squeak, catching him a glancing blow upon the shoulder. He kept his seat, though, and trotted over to Lancelot.
“Not bad,” he said grudgingly. “Where did you come up with that?”
“Sir Kay’s stirrup is built up and seems to serve him well.”
“Thank you,” Torre said gruffly.
Lancelot picked up a wooden practice sword and swung it. “Care to join me?” he asked Torre.
Torre hesitated, then said with a passable attempt at carelessness, “Why not?”
Elaine retreated a little farther into the shadow of the stable as Torre dismounted. Lancelot demonstrated a complicated series of moves; Torre, after one or two false starts, followed his example. He managed surprisingly well, Elaine thought; his bad leg threw him off, but not as badly as she’d feared. Of course he could not compare to Lancelot, who moved with the ease of long practice. After half a dozen repetitions, Torre stumbled and dropped the sword.
“You do this often?” he asked, limping heavily to the bucket hanging by the gate.
“Every day.” Lunge, withdraw, lunge, and turn; Lancelot swung the practice sword in an arc above his head then dropped into a crouch, rising smoothly to lunge again at the straw target. He rested on his sword, his chest rising and falling deeply. “One hundred is the usual. More than that begins to waste the muscle. But I’ll be lucky to make twenty today.”
“Who trained you?” Torre asked, offering him the ladle.
Lancelot rinsed his mouth and spat into the dust, then poured the remainder of the water over his head. “A kinsman of my foster mother. He’d laugh himself sick to see me now.”
His threadbare linen shirt was rolled up at the sleeves and hung open at the neck, the fabric plastered to his body, revealing the hard muscle of his chest and shoulders. Hearing a giggle nearby, Elaine turned to find several of the maids hanging over the fence. Torre looked over, too, and scowled.
“That’s enough,” she said, shooing them toward the courtyard. “Get back to your work. And that is enough for you, as well,” she called to Lancelot.
“I would argue the point, but I’m weak as a kitten,” he said wryly.
“Get you to the river, then,” she advised. “You’ve earned a rest.”
“Only if you come, too.”
“Some of us have work to do. Perhaps when I am finished.”
“With food?” Lancelot asked hopefully.
She smiled at him. “Possibly.”
“Coming, Torre?” Lancelot asked, propping the sword against the fence.
“No.” Torre swung himself onto his horse. “I’ve … business in the vill.” With a mocking bow to Elaine, he rode off.
“Business,” she muttered. “In the alehouse, I’ll be bound.”
“More likely in the back room.” Lancelot, his eyes narrowed against the sun, watched Torre vanish down the path. “What he needs,” he said thoughtfully, “is a dragon.”
“If you find one, let him know.”
Lancelot shook the sweat-soaked hair out of his eyes. “That wouldn’t serve. I don’t think your brother likes me much, Elaine.”
“He’ll come round.”
Lancelot grinned. “What he really needs,” he said, “is a woman.”
“Oh, he has plenty of those.”
“I should have said a lady. Someone like … well, like Mistress Brisen. She’s rather taken with him, isn’t she?”
Elaine sighed. “You noticed, did you? I think Torre is the only one who hasn’t.”
“Or he’s not interested,” Lancelot remarked, shutting the gate behind him. He and Elaine fell into step as she headed back to the courtyard. “A pity; she would do him good.”
“And since when have men wanted what is good for them?”
Lancelot tipped her face up to his. “We’re not all fools, you know. You will come down to the river, won’t you?”
“Yes,” she answered quickly, turning away to hide her sudden confusion. “The moment I am free.”
* * *
Lancelot plunged naked into the river, crying out his shock as the icy water hit his skin. He was a strong swimmer, but today he tired quickly. Just the small amount of practice had done him in. But
at least it was a start.
Leading where? he wondered as he pulled himself up upon the tiny dock and stretched out in a patch of sunlight. The questions he had put off these past weeks now rushed into his mind, demanding answers. Where would he go now? What would he do? His time as a knight was finished. Arthur had accepted his absence with a silence that said more than any words. And having served King Arthur, Lancelot had no desire to offer his sword—whatever it was worth now—to any lesser man. To raise an army and march into Benwick was a hopeless dream without Arthur’s help, and he refused to return to Camelot a beggar.
He knew naught of husbandry or farming, even less about the management of an estate. The thought of returning to Dolorous Gard reduced him to despair. What would he do there? How would he fill his days?
Unless … unless Elaine was with him.
Which brought him face-to-face with the decision he had avoided making for too long.
He had been waiting, though for what he did not know, letting day after day slip by while he basked in her attention. He loved her. Of that he had no doubt. And he thought that she loved him. But did she love him enough to accept him as he was?
Or did she only love the man she believed him to be?
As he dressed, he wondered what she would say if she knew the truth about the great du Lac. That his victories—particularly his victory over her beloved Sir Gawain—had not been his at all but the sorcery of the Lady of the Lake, who had now cast him off in disgust.
And had she not been right to do so? Would Elaine not be right to do the same? He was a sham, as hollow as the Green Knight had named him. Through his own folly he had thrown away his one chance at greatness, and his mother’s long suffering and lonely death could now never be redeemed. Arthur, who had given him so much, had been deprived of the magical protector bestowed upon him by the Lady of the Lake.
Lancelot turned and buried his face in his arms, but he could not blot out the truth. He had been given the chance to do something extraordinary, to serve the greatest king the world had ever known in a way no one else could ever do. It was a glorious destiny, just as the Lady said, surely the finest ever offered to a mortal man. But he had not been able to hold onto it.