They could not speak of Merlin now.
“Good sir,” Arthur said, looking up at Lancelot, who was still on her horse. “How did you come upon our queen?”
“Lancelot slew the boar and saved me.” Guinevere released Arthur. He did not do the same, still holding her. “But there were more of the beasts. Lancelot had no more spears. We ran from them until we found Lancelot’s horse and could ride fast enough to escape them. We went too deep into the forest. We have only now found our way out.”
“Camelot owes you our most profound thanks, Lancelot.” Arthur’s hand was at the back of Guinevere’s head, stroking her hair.
“It was my honor, my lord king.” Lancelot dismounted and dropped to one knee, bowing her head. She pitched her voice low and soft, so that if Guinevere had not known the truth of her sex, she would have assumed Lancelot was a young man.
“You are the patchwork knight, are you not?”
“I am called that, yes.”
“Then I think it is high time you had your tournament. You have earned it.”
The knights around Arthur cheered, clapping Lancelot on the back as she stood. Guinevere smiled at her, pleased for Lancelot’s well-deserved good fortune. But she could not be happy, not truly. There was so much that needed to be done.
“Arthur,” she whispered. “We need to—”
“I know,” he answered. “We need to talk.”
“But Merlin—”
“Is not going anywhere.” Arthur released her, finally, putting a hand at the small of her back as he led her out of the trees. A huge bonfire had been built in the meadow. Brangien ran to them, nearly tripping in her haste. She dropped to her knees at Guinevere’s feet.
“My lady, I am so sorry. I thought you were behind me. I would never have run if—”
Guinevere reached down and lifted her, then pulled her close in an embrace. “I know. I know, dear Brangien. But seeing you safe is all I need. I could not have lived with it if you had been hurt.” She could not say that the boar had been after her alone, that if Brangien had been killed, it would have been Guinevere’s fault.
Brangien nodded, tears streaming down her face. She wiped them away. Then she took stock of Guinevere. “Here,” she said, taking off her own cloak and wrapping it around Guinevere. “Your sleeve! You have been hurt!” The shallow slice where Guinevere had taken the skin for Lancelot was already scabbed over. “And your wrists!” Brangien removed a length of cloth from her bag, wrapping it hastily around Guinevere’s arm down to her hand. As though exposed wrists were anything compared to the troubles they now faced. But Brangien could fix only the problems she saw, and Guinevere appreciated it.
Arthur took her directly to a tent, making it clear no one else was invited. He drew the tent shut. Guinevere paced in the tight confines.
“Between my magic and Excalibur, I am confident we will find a way to free Merlin. The Lady of the Lake wants the sword back. We may have to fight her.”
Arthur sighed. “Please sit down.”
“I am not tired! We need to move quickly. I felt something dark in the boar. I thought it was from Rhoslyn, but I was wrong. What if it was the Lady of the Lake? The lake at Camelot is dead. No magic. She must have pulled it all to herself to amass power. We need Merlin. I am no match for that kind of magic. I cannot protect you from this.”
“Please, listen,” Arthur said, his voice firm but pleading as he pulled her hands until she sat on a cushion. He knelt in front of her. “We cannot go save Merlin.”
“We can! I know we can.” She doubted herself, yes, but she had Arthur, and he had the sword. They could do it. They had to do it. They needed Merlin.
“He does not want us to.”
Guinevere shook her head. She looked down at her hands, where Merlin’s beard strands were still wound around two of her fingers. “How can you know that?”
“He told me.” Arthur reached into his tunic and pulled free a well-worn sheaf of papers. He unfolded it to reveal spidery handwriting that crawled up and down the pages, sometimes going left to right, sometimes top to bottom, sometimes writing over itself. “He knew it would happen.”
Guinevere stood, furious. Merlin saw time out of order. He had known this was coming? “If he knew it would happen, why did he not tell me? I broke his barrier myself, fool that I am! Why did he not run, or hide?”
Arthur’s expression was frustrated but resigned. “I do not know his reasons. Only that he had them. And I trust Merlin. If he says something must be done, then it must be done. We will understand someday.” He looked down at the letter and frowned. “Perhaps.”
“No! I refuse to accept this. He saw a threat coming for you. He sent me to Camelot because of it. I cannot face it alone!”
Arthur refolded the letter and tucked it away. He wiped a hand down his face as though he could physically push away the regret and guilt there. “Guinevere, I have lied to you. I have let you believe something that is not true. And I am so sorry.”
Guinevere took a step back, suddenly afraid. What else did Arthur know?
“The Lady of the Lake cannot get to me, I promise. Merlin did not send you to Camelot because of a threat to me. He sent you to Camelot because he knew what was coming for him. He did not need you to keep me safe. He asked me to keep you safe.”
She sat, stunned. Broken. All this time, they had let her think she had a purpose. A mission. That she was fighting on Merlin’s behalf, working for Camelot. That she had become Guinevere as a necessity to protect Arthur. Not herself.
It made no sense.
No. It made perfect sense. Every magical attack they had faced had been focused on her. Not Arthur. She had not seen it because she had never thought to look.
Merlin’s exact words came back. You are afraid of the wrong thing, he had said when she worried she could not protect Arthur. He let her go, knowing what she thought, deceiving her without lying to her. Knowing that she would have refused to leave if she had known the coming threat was to Merlin, not Arthur.
The truth left her hollow. She was neither queen nor sorceress, protector nor warrior.
She was a burden.
Guinevere walked through the next days as though in a dream. Arthur wanted to speak with her but she could not manage it. Not yet. He was called away to the border, which for once was a relief.
She let Brangien brush and braid her hair. She visited and was visited. She grew to depend on Dindrane to accompany her so the burden of conversing was lifted. Dindrane and Brangien formed an unspoken alliance, shielding her and prompting her when she had to act a certain way. They were, in a way, her own knights. Fighting her small battles, protecting her from gossip and censure.
Everyone assumed her altered manner was because of the trauma of the boar attack. They pitied her and spoke softly, walked carefully. But Lancelot had doubly rescued her. News of the patchwork knight’s heroics rippled through the city, all the focus on that part of the story, Lancelot’s name on every tongue. The tournament was fast approaching, and Camelot thrummed and hummed with anticipation.
One afternoon there was a light knock on Guinevere’s door. Brangien opened it, then bowed and moved to the side. Arthur stood, framed by the doorway.
“Guinevere, would you join me on a walk?”
She nodded mutely, taking his offered elbow and letting him lead her out of the castle onto one of the walkways that circled the many levels. The wind nipped teasingly at them. It was nearly midsummer. She had meant to do some protective magic on the solstice, but it had never mattered anyway.
Arthur stopped. He sat on the edge of the walkway, his legs dangling over the side as he gazed down on his city. The lake bordered everything, impassable, guarding. Waiting. “I returned last night. I sent word. I hoped you would come to my room so we could speak.”
“I do not wish to waste your time, my lord.
”
He flinched. “I am not your lord. Please do not call me that.”
Guinevere sat next to him. But she kept her legs tucked safely under her, staying back from the edge. “I have nothing to offer you. It would be selfish of me to demand any of your attention.”
“That is not selfish.”
“It is.” She shook her head. She had been thinking of it—thinking of little else. “Why did you marry me? If all Merlin asked was that I be safe in Camelot, why not declare me a distant cousin? Or, more fitting, a servant? If you did not need me to protect you, why make me queen?”
Arthur shifted so he was turned away from Camelot. Toward her. “You speak of selfishness. That was the root of my decision. Merlin wanted you by my side, and I leapt at the chance. I have been hounded since the day I took the crown, besieged not only by armies, but by politics. I did not lie when I said any marital alliance would only have made my life more difficult. If I married a Pict, my southern neighbors would feel threatened. If I married someone from Camelot, my knights would be insulted that I did not marry their sister or daughter or cousin. And after Elaine—” His voice broke; then he continued firmly. “After that, how could I trust anyone to love me for anything but my power? The idea of adding another complication to my life—another person to be treatied with, a stranger in my home who would treat me like a king—was so wearying I could not face it. Ever since I claimed Excalibur, I ceased being Arthur and became king. I love my men, but they are my men. Even my family is complicated. Sir Ector and Sir Kay. Mordred. I did not want a wife like that. Merlin has been the only constant in my life. And you are part of him. I hoped that if I brought you here and filled the role of queen so no one else could demand it, I would have peace. More than that…I would have a friend.” He dropped his head, staring down at his hands. “It was unfair to you. And I hated the deception. And I hated that you did not view yourself as my queen. Not really. Please…please do not go. Do not leave me.”
He finally looked up, his face now as familiar to her as Camelot. And she realized that Camelot was beloved to her. So was Arthur. She did not want to leave. And she did not have it in her to hurt him. She reached out and took his hand.
He squeezed her fingers, trailing his thumb down hers. His hope was almost palpable. Guinevere smiled, wiping at her face. She had not meant to let the tears escape. “I like it here.”
His face relaxed. His strong features held tension well, but when it was gone, the boy he had so recently been was revealed. His shoulders slouched, the sharp lines of his tunic suddenly a bit softer, too big for an unkingly posture. Something in her released, too. Arthur still wanted her. He still needed her. It was not the way she had been led to believe, but with nothing else in her future claiming her, she would cling to it.
It broke her heart, though. She had become someone new for him, but even those deceptions were lies. How could she explain to him how lost she was, still, without hurting him? How being his friend, even being his wife, was not enough to make her feel real?
She could not tell him. Maybe someday, when she had grown into whoever she would be next. Until then, she would stay. Because it was easy. Because it was safe. And because she wanted to be needed. Arthur needed a friend. She would be that friend.
How often had she wondered what life would be like if she could simply be his queen, or even just a girl? Now she had that, and she did not know what to do with it. But she would try.
“Do you want to know a secret?” she asked.
“Yes.”
Guinevere grinned wickedly. “Sir Bors did not kill the dragon.”
“What?”
Guinevere told Arthur the story. She left out how wrong it had felt to push out real memories in favor of false. How she had wanted to wash herself as she had filled Sir Bors’s clothes with rocks and then thrown them in the stream. She did not tell him how she had understood the dragon, how the weight and melancholy of loss clung to her still.
Instead, she gave the dragon words. Made the narrative funny, herself the hero. It sounded like a children’s story. Gone was the infinite sadness of the ending of great things. In its place, a knight, a dragon, and a clever maiden.
Arthur leaned back, laughing. His face was bathed in golden light by the lowering sun. She wanted to trace his profile, to rest her fingers on his throat and feel the way his laughter moved through it.
She understood why everyone loved Arthur. Why they looked to him. Why they always wanted more from him. How could they not?
How could she not?
* * *
They walked for hours. She told him the truth of the boar attack, how Lancelot had saved her, Rhoslyn’s village removed the poison, and then she and Lancelot went on their ill-fated visit to Merlin. But she did not tell him Lancelot’s secret. She had promised not to. Though she suspected Arthur would still let Lancelot compete in the tournament, she could not risk taking away that opportunity. Besides, it was not her secret to reveal.
“Why do you think the boar and the spider went after me? Do you think it was the Lady of the Lake? The wolves in the forest, too, attacked me over anyone else.”
Arthur frowned. “It does not seem like her magic. But it could be. Or it could be just the lingering remnants we are stamping out. They could not come for me, so they chose you. To be safe, we should keep you out of wild areas.”
Another loss. Guinevere changed the subject rather than dwell on it. “How are the border issues?”
“Maleagant is nibbling away to the northeast. I am afraid he is making deals with the Picts. Trading away rights he does not have.”
“Why not stop him?”
“If I go against him and he has made treaties with the Picts, they are obligated to come to his aid. Right now he is a nuisance, not a threat. But that could change at any moment.”
Arthur paused to run his fingers fondly along the image of a wolf carved into the stone. The exterior of the castle was covered with such details. Wolves, trees, dragons. Deer and fish and flowers. Whoever had dug the castle free from the mountain had not stopped there. They had spent an equal amount of time making it wondrous. Guinevere wanted to go up to the alcove, but that was Mordred’s private spot, and she was loath to take Arthur there. She felt it would be betraying Mordred.
Arthur dropped his hand from the wall, staring down at it as it clenched into a fist. “I should have known better than to ever trust a man who fought at Uther Pendragon’s side. No one but the most brutal, the most cruel, could have kept a place there. Maleagant saw us as lords of the land, not stewards. If the people were ours, everything they had—everything they were—was ours, as well. There was a settlement on the far borders of Camelot. Small. Unimportant. He took—” Arthur stopped, rubbing his face. Guinevere recognized a memory that did not want to be looked at. She expected him to turn away, as she always did from those types of memories. Instead, he opened his eyes and lifted his chin. “He took two of their daughters. Agnes and Alba. And when he was finished, he discarded them.”
Arthur shook his head. “I would have executed him. But according to my own laws, I needed proof. And Maleagant was so feared, no one would offer any. It was two peasant girls’ word against a knight of the king. Elaine begged for mercy on her brother’s behalf. And I listened. I sent her away, and I let him go. He took those most loyal to him. I did not expect him to find hold in a kingdom so quickly. But fear and violence are powerful weapons; people are so accustomed to them that they respond instantly. Camelot is a work in progress. It will be years—decades—before I can shape it to what I hope it will be. Burning down villages, slaughtering their lord, and declaring yourself the new king? That takes very little time.”
Guinevere shuddered, remembering the way Maleagant had watched her. She could not pull a clear picture of him up in her mind because of the dimness of her vision that night. She was grateful for it, now.
; Arthur’s problems were very big indeed. There was no knot to fix this. “What can I do?” she asked.
He took her arm and led her through a door back into the castle. “The problems of my borders are my own. You are doing enough simply by being here.”
“I want to help, though. I need to.”
“You are helping. If you could—” Arthur paused. They were outside her door. He looked at it, at the wall, at anything but her. “If you could be my queen, that would be enough. You did not have a real choice before. I am giving you that choice now. Will you? Still be my queen?”
Guinevere’s heart raced. It felt like a far more intimate question than their wedding vows had been. Then, they had known she was not his queen. Not really. What was he asking now?
“I will,” she said, feeling as tender and hopeful as a spring bud.
Arthur’s face broke into a smile. “I—”
“Uncle king,” Mordred said, standing politely several feet away. “The Pictish envoy is here. And the stewards have questions about the tournament.”
Arthur turned toward Mordred. It felt colder when his eyes were directed elsewhere. “Good. Good. Actually, Guinevere should be involved in the planning. Will you take her with you to the stewards, Mordred? I trust her to take care of this on my behalf. It is an excellent queenly duty.” He beamed at her, then strode away.
That had not been quite the duty she had wondered if he was asking her to participate in.
Determined to make an effort, she fetched Brangien. They met with the stewards to discuss seating, flag colors, how many would be at the feast and where to put them, whether food and wine should be provided for the common spectators, and a hundred other decisions too small for a king but right for a queen.
Mordred leaned by the door, yawning exaggeratedly whenever she caught his eye. After several hours, with only a fraction of the plans settled and a meeting scheduled for the next morning as well, Guinevere was released. Mordred walked her to the dining hall. She looked hopefully for Arthur, but he was not there. Unless it was a scheduled feast, attendance at meals was unpredictable. The knights with wives ate with their families. Those who were single were usually found at mealtimes, but not always.
The Guinevere Deception Page 23