He was already drifting off to sleep. I rolled on to my back, feeling my eyes wide open, pressing against the black. The information rushed around me, but it seemed also to sluice off me, and all I could feel was a sudden acute awareness that the way I loved Arthur was not enough. I suddenly felt very naked, and small and alone. His love was strong and insistent, but it did not fill me to the heart. There was an emptiness in the pit of my stomach that was filled over and over again in the darkness by Lancelot’s name. Lancelot didn’t want to take a wife. He had not lain with any of the camp women. Arthur, implicitly, had. When I imagined his voice again, it was as though his lips were by my ear, forbidden and velvety. Why had Arthur had to say his name? Saying his name was like calling him into being, between us in the bed. What if Lancelot had refused Morgan not out of love for Kay, but out of love for me? What if his love could make me whole? Arthur was a good man. He was good, and kind, and he loved me the best way he could. There must be something rotten and hollow with me that the love of a good man could not make me whole. I had been happy. I was sure I had been happy. I want to feel whole. What had changed? What had become of me for my happiness to evaporate around me like a fog, and leave me with this terrifying sense of my emptiness?
In the darkness, Arthur sleeping beside me, all I could think of was Lancelot.
Chapter Eighteen
When I woke in the morning, all the thoughts of the night before seemed distant, and out of proportion, as though I had dreamed them. Alone in the dark I had allowed myself to half dream, half think something that was not true. Arthur was still sleeping beside me as I woke, and I slipped out of bed to dress. I wanted a hot bath, but if I called for one then I would wake him, and I wanted to run out into the beautiful frosty morning I could see out of my window. As I dressed quietly in a simple wool dress and fur-lined cloak, I thought again of everything Arthur had told me last night. Morgan’s desire for Lancelot; I was not surprised, although I did not see why sending him to sleep would help her in that. Lancelot and Kay; though I thought Arthur was seeing something that wasn’t there in order to try to understand a man who was not controlled by his desire for women. And yet all that I could grasp in my mind were his words I was afraid the two of you did not like each other. A queen should show some favour to her champion.
He had saved my life, and I intended to do my queenly duty and show favour. Everything else was the half-sleeping mirage of my dreams. He had not said anything to me either way. I could not know if it was Kay or Morgan or I that he thought of when he was alone. There was nothing, only the vaporous late-night thoughts. And yet when I turned to go and looked at Arthur, and felt the warmth within me of the love we had shared for years now, I had the sense again that something had changed within me and I was aware it was not enough. I put the thought out of my mind as I slipped from the room and down the stairs.
I was up early enough to smell the baking bread in the courtyard, and the smell of it made me hungry. I was not sure what I had come down for, apart from to feel the cool air against my face, and look at the white winter sun in the morning. Gareth was out there, sharpening his sword. He smiled when he saw me, and I walked over to him.
“That’s a fine sword,” I told him, lifting it out of his hands. It was heavy for me, and it took me two hands to hold it up when it would have taken Gareth only one. Still, I could feel its steady balance, I could feel that for a man’s sword it was light and quick. So Gareth was old enough to own a sword, to be expected to kill. I looked at him, thoughtful. He was beginning to look like a man. The winter and the company of men had brought that on him. His kind, open face had a shadow of stubble across the skin, and across his shoulders, from the training in the yard, the muscles of a man were growing. I touched his cheek lightly with my hand, unable to restrain the motherly impulse, and said, “You’re half a man these days, Gareth. I will have to find a knight for you to squire.”
“More than half, I hope,” he answered, grinning.
I took a step away and swung the sword a little, testing the feel of it in my hand. It had been a long time since I had held a sword. The one made for me that I had tried to smuggle in from Carhais had been lost or stolen on the journey and I missed it. I had not thought it would be impossible to get a woman’s sword in Logrys; nor had I thought I would have a need for it. The thought had been half in my mind as I crossed the sea that the only sword I would bear was one against myself. Perhaps if I had had a sword on the battlefield rather than a spear – I pushed the thought away. No sense in re-thinking the moment again and again. The young man’s light sword was the closest thing, but I still had trouble lifting it and wielding it as I was used to. Still, it felt good to hold a sword again.
Then, from behind me, a mailed fist grabbed the sword as I lifted it and wrenched it out of my hands. I wheeled around. It was Gawain.
“A sword is not a toy, my lady,” he said gruffly. Gareth had jumped to his feet, unsure whose side he was meant to take. I was sure he could see from my face, and Gawain’s, that there would be a fight.
“I was not playing, sir.”
I reached for the sword and he stepped back. I felt my face flush with anger and stepped forward for it again. He was holding a sword and dressed all in chainmail, and yet in my anger I did not see that, and as he stepped away, I stepped forward with a hand raised, ready to strike him. Gareth stepped between us.
“It’s my sword.” Gareth reached out his hand for it, and Gawain, not looking away from me with his sullen eyes, handed it back to him.
“Don’t give your sword to a woman again,” Gawain told him, still not looking from me. I held myself drawn up with trembling rage, but I let him go. I wished I was taller, stronger, bigger. I wished I had my sword. I was angry enough I would have struck him with my bare hand, though it would only have torn against the chainmail. I wanted Gawain to be sorry for all of the things he had said to me. I wanted to force him to respect me, to see that though I was not a man I was brave and strong enough to fight, but I could not. Again, again I felt my powerlessness.
“Is everything well, here?” Lancelot, who to my surprise I had not noticed across the yard, had come over. But he did not speak to me, he spoke to Gareth. He did not meet my look, and he stood warily at a distance from me. This is because Arthur found us reading together, I thought. He’s wary. He feels guilty. I was surprised, and at the back of my mind, the thought came that he would not feel this if he had not felt, as I had, a secret, illicit thrill at being alone together. But it only stoked my frustration harder, that after that brief moment together the day before, he was ignoring me again. Or perhaps he really did not like me, or he was afraid of Morgan, or he wanted Morgan and he didn’t want Arthur to have told her and made her jealous. Arthur had only said that he did not want to marry Morgan.
Gareth nodded, and Lancelot moved away, back across the yard, and Gawain followed him. I could hear them beginning to fight, not with the wooden practice-swords that the young men like Gareth used, but blunted iron swords that drew sparks from one another and rang out through the courtyard as they met. Gareth looked at me apologetically and went back to sharpening his sword. I sat down beside him, looking out at the fighting.
“Where I grew up,” I told him, thoughtfully, as I watched Lancelot and Gawain fight, “women fought and hunted alongside men. I’m still getting used to Logrys.”
“You would get hurt,” Gareth replied, his tone half-defensive of his brother’s actions.
I looked at Lancelot and Gawain. Gareth was right; the Breton men fought as the women did, lightly armoured, with bows and light little shortswords, and our warfare had been different, little skirmishes fought in forests, small-scale ambush attacks. Compared to the men I had seen growing up, Arthur’s knights were giants all, rippling with muscle from bearing heavy platemail on their backs and the huge two-handed broadswords they fought with in their hands. The lances, too, they took into battle, I could never have lifted. These huge men with their armoured horses and fa
celess steel helms were made for war. No wonder Arthur had defeated my father’s forces so easily. In any woodland we Bretons would have won, but in open war I did not see how anyone could have stood against Arthur’s knights.
The two men were laying into each other hard, I thought. Perhaps it was because they were alone in the yard, but I felt as though I had not seen any two others fighting like that before. Gawain was giving ground fast. He was taller, broader, but he was also heavier on his feet, slower to block Lancelot’s blows, and he was being edged back into a corner. I glanced at Gareth. He had stopped sharpening his sword, and was watching.
“Look at the way he moves,” Gareth sighed in admiration. He must have meant Lancelot, because Gawain was shuffling backwards awkwardly. “He’s like a cat. Like a lion. I haven’t seen a lion, but Gawain saw one in Rome, and I expect a lion is just like Lancelot.”
He was right. Lancelot moved like a predator, soft, swift and fluid. Gawain yielded as, backed into a corner, Lancelot knocked the sword from his hands. He raised them over his head in a gesture of surrender. The thought flickered through me that Lancelot might have done that for me. But Gawain did not seem chastened. He laughed, and clapped Lancelot on the back.
Gareth jumped up, snatching up his practice sword and ran over, eager to try his strength against Lancelot. Lancelot smiled indulgently at the boy, and let him fight long enough to feel his opponent’s strength, letting him take ground, until more knights began to come out into the yard, and he made an excuse to leave. I watched him go, feeling it burn inside me. He did not glance towards me once.
Chapter Nineteen
That night Arthur called his council. I sat at his side at the Round Table. At first, when I had come to the councils, I had heard men whispering. Obviously, in Lothian women had not played a part in politics while their husbands lived, because it had come mainly from Gawain and his brothers, but they had got used to my presence, and they were not surprised when Nimue replaced Merlin at Arthur’s left side. They regarded her woaded face with suspicion, but they listened to her soft little voice with rapt attention the few times she did speak, because her voice was the voice of Avalon, and though they all suspected its power, they also feared it. I noticed that Lancelot sat as far as he could manage from me, across at the other side of table. The frustration burning within me made me determined to get him to speak to me. It wasn’t fair for him to be kind and then distant. I hadn’t asked him for anything inappropriate and he was the one who had kissed me.
The knights came in a variety of dress. Among them Gawain and his brothers Aggravain and Gaheris came dressed in armour, apart from their helms, and with their swords at their side; Ector and Bors came in light leather armour and with their swords, but Lancelot and Kay came only in their shirt and breeches. Lancelot had come with his hair wet, as though he had just stepped from the bath. I tried not to picture it. I was getting used to the other faces around the table, too. A quiet, serious man with short sandy-brown hair, cut close to his head, was called Percival, and I thought I remembered him from the party who had collected me at Dover, and another with fair hair, swept back from his face and a vain look about him was called Lamerocke. He had come in a velvet doublet. There was also a dark little man who moved with funny little quick darting motions who was called Dinadan. These had been with Arthur when he sacked Rome; these had been those who had led parts of his army, who had given their riches and lands and the lives of their people to him. The strongest men in Europe. And yet, all looked nervously on Nimue, who rarely spoke aloud to the group once it was gathered, but if she had something to say, would whisper it in Arthur’s ear. I wondered occasionally if Arthur had ever taken her to bed. I could not imagine it. Sometimes, too, Morgan would stand at the back of the room in the shadows, watching. She was not there today, and I was glad. Arthur himself was dressed in light armour, embossed on the front with a brass dragon across the chest and he had Excalibur by his side. He slept always with that sword at his side. I supposed he was afraid of losing it again, or perhaps he was still afraid for his life.
“I called you all here today because I have had news from Cornwall.” He had learned in his time as ruler, the voice of a king. It was steady and strong, and everyone fell quiet to hear it. “My lady mother Igraine has died, may the Lord rest her soul. She has been buried by her people and rests in Tintagel. Tintagel itself has been taken over by one of my vassal-kings Mark. Mark has written begging for a champion to defend him from a giant, he says.” A few men around the table laughed. I was sure, to them, the man would look like a normal man, but if Kay had come to Carhais looking for war, there were brothers of mine who would have written to other lords to complain of being besieged by a giant. “But I think we could spare someone. I have to be seen to defend my vassal kings; even Mark.” The men laughed. Clearly, they knew something about Mark that I didn’t. “But whoever I send must be able to behave himself.” I did not think I imagined the look that Arthur cast on Gawain. “Mark has married Isolde of Ireland, and he is a very jealous man, they say.”
“I hear the girl is simple,” Kay interjected, with a wicked smile.
I expected Arthur to admonish him, but he just inclined his head in unwilling agreement.
“I heard that she has taken Mark’s nephew as her lover,” Aggravain suggested. That man always had one piece of gossip or another.
“I heard it was a Saracen man,” Dinadan said. “A heathen.”
Arthur raised a hand for quiet and it fell.
“Nonetheless, we are not here to debate Mark’s wife’s intelligence or fidelity to her marriage-bed, we are here to decide who we will send to Cornwall.”
“Send Lancelot,” Kay suggested, flashing a look at him I could not read across the table. “Isolde won’t be in any danger from him.”
Arthur shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Clearly, he had his own ideas about exactly what Kay meant. Was Kay saying it because they were lovers? Or had Lancelot said something to Kay about me? Or about Morgan? The awful thought shimmered past that Kay might want Lancelot out of his way. I glanced at Lancelot; he was sitting back in his chair, fixing Kay with an even look, one knee drawn up to his chest and his arm resting forward on it. He was not giving anything away.
“What about you, Kay? Could you not go?” I asked.
“I’m Seneschal. I have to stay at court.” He gave me a knowing little smile. I was not sure what I was supposed to know.
“Lancelot is Queen’s Champion,” Lamerocke argued, running a hand over his smooth wave of hair, as though he was subconsciously smoothing it into place. “He should stay, too.”
“He can go if she lets him go,” Kay said pointedly. “He would finish it fastest. If we send someone who fails, or makes a mess of it, then Mark might see it as a sign of weakness, as an opportunity to rise against Arthur.”
The voices rose arguing around me, but Lancelot did not look towards me at all. They had gone past arguing about who should go, and the argument had passed to Mark. Gawain was now saying they should send a small garrison of men, set up an outpost in Cornwall to make sure that Mark didn’t try anything, and Kay was still arguing for sending a single knight. Dinadan was tapping his fingernails against the table, trying to interject but failing. Lamerocke was blustering on, offended because he thought Kay had suggested that he might make a mess of it if he was sent instead of Lancelot. By all accounts I had heard of him, he wouldn’t, but I thought Kay had said it to antagonise him. Percival leaned over and whispered something in Lancelot’s ear, and Lancelot nodded. I felt as though I was fading away, fading in the face of Lancelot’s refusal to look at me, and the shouting rising around me.
Before I knew what I was doing I was on my feet. The room fell silent around me. I felt Nimue’s cold blue eyes on me, considering, seeing everything. I felt myself blush lightly as they all turned to me. They were waiting for me to speak.
“If we send more than one knight, Mark might see that as an act of aggression, and ride against us anyw
ay. We send one knight to him, to kill this giant. And we invite Isolde to court.”
THE WARRIOR QUEEN (The Guinevere Trilogy Book 1) Page 14