The Camelot Betrayal

by Kiersten White

  “You said ‘either.’ ”

  Guinevere made a clumsy attempt to undo her tight plaits. The braids were tugging at her scalp, but her fingers struggled uselessly. “Either that, or she is pretending to recognize me because she has some reason to pretend. We have had enemies in fine clothes in the castle before.”

  Arthur reached out, taking one of Guinevere’s braids and slowly undoing it. “But how would she have known it was you arriving at the castle? You were not accompanied by heralds. And you were with Brangien. She did not assume Brangien was the queen.”

  “Brangien looks like no one else here.” Her father had walked across the world to change his fortunes. Brangien’s features favored him, with beautiful big eyes and a round face.

  “True. But if she truly could not remember her own sister’s appearance, she would have asked. Not flung herself at you.”

  “She did call out my name before I turned toward her. And I reacted. So maybe by the time she reached me, she convinced herself, or was too confused? But no. That is not right. She was comparing our heights to what they had been and talking about our freckles. She seemed confident.”

  Arthur paused. His fingers ran down the waves left behind in her hair. “Maybe Guinevach is not Guinevach. Magic can—magic can alter faces. Perhaps yours was not the one altered.”

  Guinevere knew exactly what event he was remembering. The betrayal of his mother. His father, Uther Pendragon, wearing the face of Lady Igraine’s husband through magic. Merlin’s magic.

  “True. But if that were the case, my knots at every doorway would undo the spell. Mordred is aware of those knots, though. And if whoever sent her knows I am not the real Guinevere, they would not need to change her face. I cannot recognize a sister I have never met, either. It would be easy to send someone pretending to be her.” Perhaps, after the fairy queen’s failure with the forest, Guinevach was another method of attack. If she had been sent here for Guinevere, that would explain how she knew exactly who to look for. She would have been prepared. “The Dark Queen cannot enter Camelot, so she created someone who we would never turn away.”

  “It is a possibility. But you said two options. What is the other option?”

  Guinevere tapped her chin, wondering. The second option made even less sense. “That Guinevach did in fact recognize me. There were only a few days between when I took the real Guinevere’s place at the convent and when I left with your men. Merlin changed the nuns’ memories. I cannot imagine him slowly walking south for a month just to change Guinevach’s memory. But then again, Merlin saw all of time at once. So he would have known Guinevach would come to the castle.”

  Arthur sounded dubious. “If Merlin walked—and he always walked, I never knew him to use a horse—or even if he had ridden, would he have had time to get to Guinevach and then come back before you saw him be sealed into the cave by the Lady of the Lake?”

  Guinevere did not think so. But she could not be sure. And even though she had memories of looking at her face—seeing it reflected back to her in water, trees overhead coloring both with greenish tinges, a black pool of…no, that one slipped from her and she let it—she knew better than to trust her own mind. “Merlin could have changed my face. It would be the simpler option for him.”

  “Would you know? Could you sense if he had?” Arthur put the backs of his fingers against her cheek, stroking softly down it. He looked sad, as though the idea that Guinevere’s face was not real hurt him.

  It hurt her, too. She could not claim her mind, or her memories, or now even her face.

  “Maybe. I doubt my knots could undo his work. But I am afraid if I actively tugged too hard at anything Merlin did, it might unravel. And then where would we be? Your wife would have a new face. That would be difficult to explain to the kingdom.”

  Arthur let out a dry laugh, joining her by lying back on the bed. “It would.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “I will assign Sir Gawain to her and have him watch her closely.”

  “Brangien can spy, as well.”

  There was a light knock on the door. Arthur sat up. Guinevere followed his lead. “Come in,” Arthur commanded, even though it was Guinevere’s room.

  Lancelot opened the door but did not enter. “Guinevach arrived in Camelot with three guards and two maids. One an older woman, one barely a woman at all. I have given her guards rooms on the far end of the castle and assigned guards to watch them. I put Guinevach on the sixth story and am locking the interior door. The exterior walkways will be guarded day and night, and her movements marked at all times.”

  Arthur nodded. “Very good. You may go.” He turned back to Guinevere. “We leave for Sir Bors’s wedding in three days. You can be ill and take to your bed until then.”

  “And I will do what I can to sense whether there is magic at play.” Guinevere bitterly regretted rendering her hands worthless for the time being. She could not even grasp Guinevach’s hands to feel whether there were any currents of threat or anger. “But if she is here to catch me, I will have to be careful. I cannot give her evidence that I use magic.”

  Arthur’s shoulders were squared, his face determined but not worried. “Tonight I will visit the dining hall while she is there and unsheathe Excalibur. We can rule out whether she has fairy magic.”

  “Mordred could be around Excalibur, and his father was a fairy knight.”

  They both sat in silence for a moment. Mordred had explained to Guinevere how much pain he bore all the time living here. How patient and determined he must have been to endure it, to endure Excalibur. Guinevere saw the hurt on Arthur’s face and regretted bringing Mordred up. “But that is a good idea. If she reacts to it, we will have an answer.”

  Arthur recovered, looking more confident. “Magic or not, we can handle this.”

  They could and they would handle it, together. If Guinevach was a threat, Guinevere pitied her. And if she really was just a girl trying to visit her sister, everything they were doing was cruel and Guinevere pitied her all the more.

  But sending Guinevach away was no crueler than letting her know her sister was in a hole in the ground, her grave unmarked, her name stolen. Maybe even her face stolen.

  Was nothing truly Guinevere’s?

  “Well?” Guinevere asked, looking up at the cliff face. They had come nearly to the top of the castle, carved from the mountain in levels. “Do you think you can climb it?”

  Lancelot squinted in the darkening light, considering. Guinevere hated sitting in her room, stewing, waiting for more information about Guinevach—she wanted to do something. And she realized that in her search for magic, she had not looked east. The mountain behind them felt like safety. And it was—safety from men. No army could stage an attack from that direction. But a Dark Queen, fueled by magic? Guinevere could picture it, vines bursting overhead and spilling down the castle like the waterfalls on either side, creeping and choking.

  She had used blood to knot magic onto a rock. It would link to her other sentinel rocks and tell her if any threat came from this direction. But she needed to get it up there.

  “I think so.” Lancelot held out her hand. Guinevere gave her the rock, and Lancelot tucked it into a pouch at her waist. She had stripped down to her tunic and breeches, removing even her boots. She wore a coiled length of rope across her body, from right shoulder to left hip.

  “I saw you climb, once. Straight down to the lake, to get to your boat.”

  “My boat?” Lancelot stared upward and considered her path. “I have never had a boat.”

  This was surprising. “How did you get back and forth for the trials, then, without using the ferry?”

  “There is a cave. I spent many years there as a child, when—” Lancelot stopped. Guinevere wished she would continue. She wanted to know more. How Lancelot had survived as an orphan. What it had been like. Guinev
ere was ravenous for details of other childhoods to tuck in around the blank spaces of her own.

  Lancelot cleared her throat. “Well, and I can swim.”

  “Across the whole lake?” Guinevere asked, horrified.

  Lancelot laughed. “It is not so far if you start on the cliff sides. Now, we are losing the light.”

  Before Guinevere could counsel caution, Lancelot had begun to climb. Her speed was breathtaking. While Guinevere did not particularly fear heights—preferring, apparently, to divert all her terror to water—her heart beat faster watching. There was one breathlessly infinite moment when Lancelot’s fingers slipped and she dangled by one hand, but she quickly recovered and finished the ascent, disappearing over the top of the cliff face.

  Then the rope cascaded down, reminding Guinevere of her imagined vines. But this rope brought no threats, only protectors.

  “I placed the rock away from the edge, so it should warn you before anything reaches the cliff face,” Lancelot called, dangling casually from the rope by one hand as she looked down over Camelot. She dropped neatly to the walkway, then gave the rope a sharp tug. It slithered free and fell to a pile at her feet. Lancelot gathered it back up. “I did not see anything amiss, and I could see for a fair distance.”

  “Good. Thank you. Tomorrow I would like to ride out and scout the eastern borders just to be certain.”

  “We can find an excuse for that. You look tired. Shall we return you to your rooms?”

  Guinevere sighed, sitting and putting her back against the rock. She looked out over Camelot as candlelight began to flicker in windows and along the streets. From up here it was so simple, so tidy. She knew that running a city was anything but simple and tidy. Still, it was a pretty picture with the gray shops and homes, the slate and thatch roofs, the organic pathways of the streets running through everything like seams. If she closed her eyes, she could imagine pulling the whole city over herself like a blanket.

  She turned to Lancelot, annoyed to see that Lancelot looked as Lancelot ever did: ready. “You should look tired, too. I need to sleep, but I am afraid of what I will dream.”

  “Tell me about the dream that frightened you.”

  Guinevere had told Brangien some of it, but she went into more detail now. “It felt like I was experiencing someone else’s dream, or memory,” she said, after explaining it. “It was foreign.”

  “But it does not sound like the Dark Queen.”

  “No, I agree. I have felt her magic, tasted her power. This was different.”

  “The Lady.” Lancelot said it matter-of-factly. Hearing her state it like that made it feel more real. Guinevere doubted herself less. “Did the dream seem threatening?”

  “Yes!” Guinevere stopped herself, putting one hand against the stone. She could feel nothing now, which was both a comfort and an annoyance. Had the dream been threatening? During it, she had not been frightened. Even the plunge into the abyss had seemed necessary and welcome. All her terror had been upon waking. “Maybe. I do not know. But why would she invade my dreams? Because Merlin hid me too well?”

  “I wonder if…” Lancelot trailed off, hesitant.

  “Go on.”

  “We heard her, when she trapped Merlin. She accused him of stealing something precious, and she wanted it back.”

  “Yes. The sword.”

  “That is what we assumed. But what if we were wrong?” Lancelot stared out at the twilight. The lake reflected the sky, luminous with the last, lingering moments of daylight. Guinevere could almost love the way it held on to the light. She wished the lake were the mirror it appeared to be, so she could look into it and discover her own face. Map it like she could map this city. Label and understand and claim it as her own.

  “Why would we be wrong about that?” she asked. In the approaching night, her skin looked bled of color, the same shade as the lake. She stared at the lavender veins of her hands, so like the natural channels of a river, feeding the landscape of her body.

  “Why would she attack Merlin over the sword, when Arthur is the one who has it? Why would Merlin be afraid she would come after you to get it back?” Lancelot said.

  “Well, because…to punish Merlin. He let himself be sealed in the cave so she would not find me and come after me to hurt him.”

  “If an ancient power like the Lady of the Lake wanted Excalibur back, she would have it. She allied herself with Arthur. Took his side against the Dark Queen. It does not seem like her.”

  “What does she seem like?” Guinevere asked, genuinely puzzled. The light was quickly failing, and she could not see Lancelot’s expression anymore, only an impression of her face, as though viewing her through thick, warped glass.

  “I mean, she has no reputation for capriciousness or cruelty.”

  “Other than entombing Merlin alive,” Guinevere added wryly.

  “Well. Yes. She was devastated over what he stole. But she has never come after Arthur. And you have nothing to do with the sword. You cannot even be around it. Is there another reason Merlin would work so hard to keep you from the Lady?”

  Merlin had begged Lancelot to hide Guinevere that day when the Lady attacked him. And he had sent Guinevere to Arthur for protection. Guinevere was also nearly certain that Merlin had put the debilitating fear of water into her so she would not go where the Lady could get to her.

  The lake beneath them was dead, devoid of any magic or life. What if Merlin had done that? Had somehow made it inhospitable to the Lady of the Lake as further protection? Guinevere wondered if perhaps Arthur had helped, using Excalibur.

  The stars began to pierce the fabric of the sky like tiny needle points. Guinevere did not remember the stars so much as she knew them down to her soul. She had stared up at them for so long they were written on her mind where no one—not even Merlin—could erase them. “What else could he have taken from her, though? And why does it involve me? I— Oh. Oh no.”

  Who took care of you when Merlin was with me all those years?

  Merlin is not your father. You cannot even say it without stumbling on the words.

  Magic runs through your veins.

  You have stolen something precious from me.

  She had so few memories. Everything else—her childhood, her life, her mother—had been wiped away like fog from a window. Someone had taken them from her so she would not know. So she would not ask.

  Guinevere put her face in her hands, hiding from the stars and from the lake beneath them. “Lancelot. I think the Lady of the Lake is my mother.”

  * * *

  “Say nothing to Arthur.” Guinevere sat on the edge of her bed, taking deep breaths and imagining her face like her mind: easily wiped clean of everything inconvenient or painful or dangerous. “Until we know more, I do not want to trouble him with this.”

  “But if she is your mother—”

  “All I know—all I know in the altered landscape of my mind, damn that wizard—is that I believe in Arthur. That I chose him. I have known it from the start.” Not in the way she “knew” Merlin was her father—a fact that she knew but that never felt or settled right. Her belief in Arthur was part of her. Nothing could have placed it there, and nothing could take it away. “Right now, that is enough for me. There is the threat of the Dark Queen out there, and there is the threat of Guinevach right here. Those are the threats I am ready for. Those are the questions I can answer. And until we have answered them, I can let questions about myself lie.” She looked up, desperate for reassurance.

  Lancelot offered her none. Her knight’s face was clouded with worry and something else. She seemed on the verge of speaking, but the door opened. Arthur entered, followed by Brangien. Lancelot gave a quick bow. “I will be outside if you need me.”

  Guinevere did not want her to leave, but she did not have a chance to call her back.

  “No reaction to the sword
.” Arthur gestured to his belt out of habit, but he had thoughtfully left the sword somewhere else before coming to Guinevere’s room.

  It took several seconds for Guinevere to understand what he meant. Guinevach had not reacted badly to Excalibur. “How was she at dinner?”

  Arthur seemed hesitant to answer. Guinevere waited for the bad news. If only Guinevach were a cursed forest. A possessed wolf. A magically venomous spider. All those Guinevere could fight.

  “Charming,” Brangien said, rummaging through the chests in the corner. She was already planning and packing for their trip to Dindrane’s family estate.

  “And by charming, you mean…”

  Brangien frowned at a yellow tunic as though it had done something to personally offend her. “Excellent manners. Back as straight as a sapling, swaying gently toward whoever was speaking. Mouth like a rosebud and a laugh as pretty and sweet. Sir Gawain certainly seemed to agree. Even Sir Bors spoke with her.” Sir Bors had never had a conversation with Guinevere. At least, not one that was more than absolutely required to give or receive necessary information. “Why are we spying on her?”

  “It is…complicated.”

  “There is a chance she is in league with the Dark Queen,” Arthur said. It was the truth, or at least a sliver of it.

  Brangien directed her frown toward Guinevere, holding up the yellow tunic thoughtfully. “She hardly seems the type. She wears a lot of pink.”

  “Because she wears pink she cannot be in league with evil?”

  “No, sorry. That was a separate thought. I like her in pink. It is flattering. But I do not think it would suit you.”

  Guinevere turned back to Arthur, giving up on Brangien’s assessments. “And the sword did nothing? How did you unsheathe it? How close were you?”

  Arthur watched Brangien’s actions with a furrowed brow. “Guinevere would look very nice in pink.”