“The King! They saved the King!”
Ina screamed in triumph, but Guenevere’s heart was numb. How long could they fight against such overwhelming odds?
NOW THE DEAD were everywhere, hampering every move, bringing down the living under the horses’ hooves. Men fought with split helmets and shattered shields, with hands and faces sliced and hacked away, with heads, necks, and bodies cut through to the bone. Above the soldiers’ cries and dying moans the horses were screaming too, kicking out in agony from slashed guts, gaping throats, and broken knees.
And still King Lot worked his way toward Arthur, nearer, ever nearer, his wedge of black knights carving a path of death. The sun glinted off his broadsword as he raised it in both hands and prepared for his moment to strike.
“King Lot!”
“Arthur, beware King Lot!”
“Hear me, Arthur, he is upon you now!”
Guenevere was choking on her screams, almost vomiting with dread. Where were the forces she had commanded to attack? Where were the men who would save Arthur’s life?
“Pendragon!”
“Benoic! À Benoic!”
On the edge of the melee, she could see Lucan’s troop wheeling to change the direction of their attack. At the same time, the French kings Ban and Bors and their sons burst out of ambush from the wood, a small but deadly force thundering across the plain. But they could not, would not, save Arthur now.
Lot’s hoarse bellow rose above the fray: “Die, bastard boy!” With a terrible slowness, his sword parted the air. Guenevere threw back her head and spread her arms to the skies. “Goddess, Mother!” she howled.
“Do not let this be!”
Then suddenly she saw him, one lone rider with a squire in his wake. A king, not a knight, for he bore a gold coronet around his helmet, and no other crest. The banner borne by the squire was fluttering so feverishly that she could hardly read its sign. But then Guenevere saw the white swan of Listinoise and knew who it was.
Welcome this king, Arthur had said, for he is a loyal friend to me.
The newcomer’s words rang again through her mind: I have done no more, lady, than any man would do.
Pellinore!
As Pellinore charged, he carried his lance light and low by his side, and did not raise it till the last. So King Lot never saw the silver spear that flashed through the air to pierce his open visor, shattering his coarse black beard and red, grinning face. He died laughing a laugh of triumph as his sword carved toward Arthur to split his skull. Then he fell like a mighty tree, toppling out of his saddle to plunge headfirst to the earth.
“Goddess, Mother, praise and thanks to your name!” Again Guenevere threw back her head, and a triumphant ululation burst from her throat.
Within moments the cry was resounding round the field.
“King Lot! King Lot is dead!”
“Death to the tyrant! King Lot is dead!”
“BENOIC! BENOIC! À moi!”
Now the assault of the French kings broke like a tidal wave upon the enemy host. And king by king, man by man, they began to lose heart. King Vause was the first to flee, trailing his golden banner in the mud. After him all the others were beaten back one by one, or followed Vause and took to their heels in flight.
And as their leaders quailed, the rank and file threw down their weapons and ran for their lives. The defeat turned into a bloody rout as the victors hunted down their beaten foes and chased them from the field.
At last the red dragon flew in solitary grandeur over every other flag. The harsh cawing of trumpets signaled the end of the fray. Guenevere brought her clasped hands to her forehead and bowed her head. Goddess, Mother, praise and thanks for this victory over those who would deal us death—
“Your Majesty!”
Guenevere opened her eyes. It was one of Arthur’s scouts, his face aglow. “The King is coming to lay his victory at your feet!”
She raised her head. And there he was, surrounded by his victorious kings and knights, picking his way toward her through the injured who lay groaning on the ground, and the bloody mounds of dead. Relief overwhelmed her, then a trembling joy. They had won the day, and Arthur was alive!
“BLESSINGS ON YOU, my lord!” she called ecstatically as he came within earshot of her call. But the man who drew near was a stranger to her now. The face in the shadow of the helmet was black with blood, baked by the heat to a fearsome sheen. The eyes were set in a strangely bright stare, the whites bloodshot, as if he were exalted by battle, drunk on blood and death.
Guenevere was shaken with an impulse of pure dread. Where was her Arthur, the loving husband, the gentle, generous man she thought she knew? This was the red ravager that the old folk talked of with bated breath, the dragon whose fury laid waste the land so that nothing would ever grow there again.
“My Queen!” Arthur cried in a strange high voice, waving a gauntleted fist encrusted with dried blood. “We have won the day. Give thanks to these kings who turned the tide for us!”
Under their fluttering banner of blue and white, the two French kings from Little Britain laughed and bowed as gaily as if they were reveling at Camelot in the Great Hall. Arthur looked at them and his red eyes lost their glare. His pent-up breath escaped him in a sigh. Slowly she could see him returning to himself again.
“We kiss your hands, Majesty, in joy to meet again!” cried the taller of the two. “I am Ban of Benoic, and this is my brother Bors. And we thank the King your husband for a good day’s sport!”
Guenevere looked at King Ban’s dark dancing eyes and had to smile too. “Good sirs, we are forever in your debt!”
“We would wish that you should also greet our sons,” spoke up King Bors in the same attractive accent as King Ban, “but you see the boys are otherwise engaged!” Merrily he gestured to the edge of the field.
Across the open grass before the wood, three racing figures were chasing the fleeing enemy, rounding up the stragglers as they ran. In the front the tallest rode standing up in his stirrups, with the two other youths spurring to keep up.
“My son Lancelot,” announced King Ban, proudly pointing out the leader, “with his cousins Lionel and Bors. He has a noble heart. He has fought well today. He will not rest till the evil are hunted down.”
“Lancelot, you say?”
Lancelot …
In the sultry heat, Guenevere felt a breath from far off, sighing like a wind from Avalon. In the soft heart of it came an echo of the Lady’s voice. Ah, Guenevere! You are not fated to be like other women. There are things you do not know, and cannot dream. One man alone cannot make all the music of the world. A woman may dance more than once in the course of her days …
“Yes!” she cried, not knowing what she did. She passed her hand over her eyes. “Excuse me, sirs,” she said feverishly. “We were talking of your son—Lancelot, I think you said?”
Ban paused, concealing his surprise. “Yes, madame,” he said politely. “That is his name.”
“He’s a fine fighter, Ban, I’ll give you that.” Arthur’s eyes followed the tall youth approvingly. “He’s young for such a battle, but that’s no bad thing these days.”
King Ban laughed ruefully, rolling his eyes. “Too young, his mother says. She begged me on her knees not to bring him here. She had a mother’s presentiment that here—how do you say?—he would meet his fate?”
Guenevere felt words coming from her that she did not know. “We all have a fate we must fulfill.”
“Nonsense!” Arthur declared, his voice unnaturally shrill. “Boys must go to war, whatever their mothers’ fears! And the son of a king must become a great warrior and a peerless knight.”
“Like you, my lord.”
King Ban’s gallantry raised a ragged cheer among the weary group. Guenevere looked around. King Pellinore was leaning on his sword beside King Ursien of Gore, with the faithful Bedivere behind. On Arthur’s right stood Sir Lucan and Sir Kay, with Kay’s old father, Sir Ector, beaming like a man possessed
. But where was—?
Arthur’s face clouded. “Gawain is with his father,” he said shortly. He paused, and gestured round his little band. “We must return to the field, before the scavengers descend. Will you go to him, Guenevere, to comfort him?”
HALF-HIDDEN IN THE outskirts of the forest was a hermit’s cell, its onetime owner now no more than a long green mound moldering in the nearby grass. Seen through the trees, the low stone chamber looked like part of the forest, encrusted with lichen and covered in hanging moss. Inside, a candle burned on a rough stone altar as the light began to fade, and in front of it on a makeshift bier lay the fallen king. Resplendent in his fine armor of red and black and gold, King Lot might have been resting before returning to the fray. Only the enclosed helmet with its visor down told of the bloody havoc of the face within.
Beside the altar Sir Gawain knelt on the cold stone floor, weeping over the bier.
“Gawain?”
He got to his feet. His great face, so like his father’s, was blotched with tears, and his hurt eyes were like a child’s. Guenevere took his hand. “This is a cruel blow for you to bear.”
“He died before I knew him.” Gawain gulped and shook his head. “And now I never will.” He raised his great hand to cover a fresh burst of tears. “I was sent away as a page when I was seven, and I’ve never been back since then.”
“So you haven’t seen your family in all that time?”
Gawain shrugged. “I saw my brothers. My mother used to bring them south to visit me.”
“I never knew you had brothers,” Guenevere said with a sick sense of uncertainty. Gods above, how many more unknown kin are there left to pop up like this out of Arthur’s past?
“Three all told,” Gawain said fondly. “Agravain, Gaheris, and Gareth. I’m the eldest, so they all do what I say. Gareth is the baby; he’s only fifteen. He’s still not old enough to fight, my mother says, not even as a squire.”
Guenevere’s heart burned for the child Gawain had been. “You weren’t old enough to leave home when you were only seven!”
Gawain shook his head. “Many boys are fostered out much younger, as the King was himself. And the lord who took me in was good to me.”
“So it was he who brought you to London when Merlin called all the lords and kings together to proclaim the King?”
Gawain nodded. “He did. And he gave me his blessing when I left to follow Arthur, after I saw him draw the sword from the stone.” His sad face lit up. “Oh, lady, you should have been there!”
“That was the first time you met Arthur?”
“The first time I saw him, or even heard of him. My mother was married before Arthur was born. She—” He glanced back at the body of King Lot lying on the bier. “Well, lady, you can speak to her yourself. You will meet her and all my kin at the funeral.”
CHAPTER 26
“Goddess, Mother, forgive me, forgive us all.”
The air was sick with incense and monkish sweat. The low roof pressed down upon their heads, damp breathed from the very walls, and the flagstones of the floor wept their own tears. The drone of dirges buzzed around their ears. Guenevere threw a glance at Arthur, and the thought came again: What are we doing in a Christian church?
She had asked Arthur in tears why this had to be. Before the high altar lay the only reason he could give. In a magnificent gold and bronze coffin, larger than that of any common man, reposed the body of King Lot.
Now as he lay at peace in his last sleep, King Lot’s resting place was finer than anything else in the wretched church. A moth-eaten cloth of faded purple covered the altar, and cheap tallow candles guttered and stank in the alcoves in the walls. For the chapel of St. Stephen in Caerleon was as run-down and neglected as everything else in this once-great city where the Roman legions had made their home.
When Guenevere had first seen it in daylight, she had been awed by the mighty castle high on its huge bluff, its back to an ancient forest, its moat fed by the Severn Water, the whole site garlanded with green groves and meadows bright with flowers. In the palace itself, four great towers and high white walls rose above countless gilded domes and roofs, the castle itself having grown almost into a town, even without the jumbled dwellings of the townsfolk huddled below.
But on closer inspection, the great town buildings of the Romans lay in ruins, and the rest of the city had been abandoned to its fate. She hated the cracked roadways, the wild dogs howling from abandoned hovels, and the weeds climbing up the columns everywhere. When the Romans came, they had called Caerleon the City of Light. “We must make a vow,” she had breathed to Arthur, “that we will bring it back to the beauty it had then.”
Arthur had frowned. With a war to settle and a hard peace to enforce, didn’t Guenevere know what was important now? “After the funeral,” he had said.
AFTER THE FUNERAL.
Goddess, Mother, when would that be?
Already weeks had passed since King Lot was killed. To guard against decay in the summer heat, his body had been wrapped in spices, oils, and wax, and sealed in a sheet of lead while they debated his resting place.
It had to be a Christian burial, it seemed.
“How else can we mark Lot’s passing,” Arthur demanded as they sat in the Council the day after the battle, “and give him the respect any fallen knight deserves?”
Through the door of the tent a low red sun loomed over the battlefield. Though the bearers were hard at work, the scene was still black with corpses, and the smell of death hung over them like a pall.
Guenevere stifled the anger that rose to her lips. Arthur was right; what else could they do with Lot? They could not bury him by the Mother-rites, for the Mother would never take to herself a man who ravished girls and put babes in arms to death. Lot had had his own dark Gods and worshiped at the altar of their savage will. But she and Arthur could not honor those idols of blood and bone. Only the Christians, it seemed, were prepared to have Lot now.
And he must be buried in Caerleon, Merlin insisted, not on the battlefield where he fell. “Your people missed your wedding, sire, and a royal spectacle speaks to every soul. A great funeral for King Lot would bring kings and queens to Caerleon, and afterward we will hold a great banquet for all the people of the land. There all your folk will meet Queen Guenevere, just as when you married, the people of the Summer Country had a chance to meet their new King.”
Arthur looked uneasy. “But surely Queen Morgause will think us cruel if we bury her husband here in Caerleon, instead of sending him back to his own country to rest in peace?”
“The vanquished do not choose where they will lie,” Merlin said crisply. “Queen Morgause knows the rules of war. And if King Lot is buried in Caerleon, the Queen of Cornwall can attend the funeral too. Queen Morgause has not seen her mother since she was sent to the Orkneys to be married, before your birth. At her age, the Queen of Cornwall could never travel from Tintagel to be with Queen Morgause now.”
Arthur gasped. “The Queen of Cornwall?”
“The mother of Queen Morgause. Your mother, too, of course,” said Merlin, his eyes glittering.
“I did not know that she was still alive.” Arthur tried to speak lightly, but his eyes gave him away.
Guenevere clasped her hands. Oh, Merlin, Merlin—see what you do? But this was not her quarrel. She looked away.
Merlin heaved a dramatic sigh and ran a withered hand over his eyes. “Forgive me, sire, that time has not allowed us to speak of this before. Ever since you drew the sword out of the stone, we have not had a moment without war or the threat of war. The Queen of Cornwall your mother is aged now, but she lives. So does her second daughter, the Lady Morgan. Your half-sister, my lord.”
“My half-sister.” Arthur’s face was white. “The other one I never knew I had. Well, let her come too. It’s time I got to know my vanished kin.”
“Then will you send to order her release?”
“Her release?” Arthur’s face looked dangerously strained. “
Whose?”
Guenevere could bear it no longer. “Merlin, don’t beat about the bush! Tell us what you mean!”
How dared she? Merlin bowed his head, concealing the spurt of anger coursing through his veins. “Your Majesties know that when King Uther married the Queen of Cornwall, she had two grown daughters, of an age to leave their home. The elder, Morgause, was fourteen then and ripe for the marriage bed. But Morgan, the younger, was eleven, and too young to wed. So the King gave her to a convent to be a nun.”
Guenevere gasped. “Sent to the Christians—to a nunnery—for the rest of her life?”
Merlin glittered at her. “It is a holy life. And the place had a fine reputation for the rule of its abbess.”
Arthur closed his eyes. “Release her at once—whatever it takes. Send her to her mother, and order them a guard of honor to attend Lot’s funeral.” He looked at Guenevere and tried to smile. “Do not weep, sweetheart. Merlin will take care of it all.”
Merlin, always Merlin …
Guenevere forced a smile in answer and tried to hold back the rage blooming in her heart.
Merlin knew that Arthur’s mother was still alive and said nothing about her till the death of Lot forced him to show his hand. He knew that the girl Morgan had been buried alive for over twenty years, and kept silent about that too.
What other secrets lie hidden under that wild gray hair? What else has gone on without Arthur’s knowledge and consent?
AND THEN MERLIN had vanished, and not a soul knew where. Guenevere smiled mirthlessly. The old man was away with the Fair Ones, while she and Arthur had had the grim task of bringing King Lot’s body all the way south from Gore down to Caerleon for the burial.
For this cursed burial …
Inside the church the chanting monks droned on. Guenevere stirred resentfully. Why were they waiting? Queen Morgause, she knew, was already here. She had come south with her three sons, pitched her tents outside Caerleon, and sent word that she would attend the ceremony and see her husband buried before she paid her respects to her brother and his queen.
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