Laurel

by Sarah Zettel

  He had said nothing more, and she had not asked any further. But those words had followed her into sleep and out again. They were with her now as she stood alone beside Tania’s father, and murderer.

  Laurel had hesitated to the last instant. It was a dire thing, seeking to speak with the dead. It was far beyond anything she had ever done, or ever thought to do. But each time she tried to turn away she felt again the force of the vision. Everywhere she went, she heard the endless hammering and shouting. She saw the men out upon the cliffs and the pass, working until they dropped from exhaustion, getting up and working more.

  The army was coming and Morgaine was already here, perhaps watching all their preparation, readying her own.

  No.

  So many dead. So much blood and destruction. No more. It stops here.

  Mindful of where she stood, as well as what she came to do, Laurel set the basin down. She crossed herself and bowed her head.

  ‘In nomine Patris, et Filii et Spiritus Sancti. Pater noster qui es en caelis …’ she prayed, letting the familiar syllables play softly across her tongue. Our Father who art in heaven … It seemed most appropriate.

  When she finished the pater noster, she looked again at the still figure beneath its white shroud. Even as she did, she felt the presence of her own father and brother at her shoulders, cold, expectant.

  Mother Mary look down on what I do and have mercy upon it. God forgive me for disturbing this rest that should be peaceful until your Judgment Day.

  Grandmother, let this work.

  With a glance back to make sure she had closed the chapel doors completely, Laurel stepped up to the bier.

  Since the ascension ceremony, the shroud had been wound securely around Lot’s corpse. Wrestling that wrapping from about the dead man’s head was an awkward and undignified process wholly unsuited to either the reverence due the remains of a king, or the atmosphere of a chapel. The only fortunate point was that as she had helped lay the corpse out she was ready for the surprising weight and chill of it. The stench was harsh, despite the careful washing they had given him and Laurel tartly cursed the priest for taking so long to come and lay Lot to his much-deserved rest. She held her breath as best she could, and tried to be gentle. It was difficult. Flesh and sinew, even bone, shifted alarmingly in her hands. Her fingers and hands shrank at the touch of the slack, too-soft clay flesh as they never had at the touch of offal or other rot.

  At last she bared Lot’s face and torso. The look of peace had left him and decay had set in. His skin was grey and mottled now and emitted foul air. Laurel’s stomach churned. The urge to flee prodded at the back of her mind.

  Laurel steeled herself. She needed what only Lot knew, if she was to keep her own vow to Agravain. She would have spoken to him in life if she could. Denied that, she must resort to older, darker means.

  But she could not do this while he remained guarded. Laurel reached beneath the bier’s withering greenery, searching impatiently until her hands closed around the silk-shrouded shape of the scabbard. As carefully as she could, she lifted it free, and laid it at the foot of the altar where the bier concealed it from immediate view.

  Then, Laurel picked up the basin and the cloth. Six days ago she had washed him to bring him comfort. Four days ago, it was to lay him to rest. Now she must wash him a third time to bring him back to life.

  A draught curled around her ankles, patient and inquiring. Laurel stepped through it, took up the cloth, dipped it in the sea water and wrung it out. The droplets made a sound like clean rain falling.

  Gingerly at first, and then with more confidence, she began to dab at the king’s face, washing his corrupted skin with the essence of the sea, the source of life and power, her essence, her root and protection, her channel to the world, her way. The draught stirred her hems, wrapping closer. Warning her? No warning could stop this. She needed to discover what knowledge Morgause had left with her husband.

  Lot. King Lot. Lot mach Lulach, Lot father of Tania, Gawain, Agravain, Geraint, Gareth. Lot husband to Morgause. Lot of Gododdin. I call you back. I call you here. You know my touch, King Lot, you know my voice. You called me daughter, now I call you back.

  Laurel stretched her thoughts out from herself. It was cold, so cold. The stench of death grew stronger. She breathed it in deeply, taking its essence into herself even as she laid her own salt essence upon the corpse. Death was a yielding thing. It waited just beyond the fine membrane that was Life. Death was not a king in a crown, nor a skeleton with a scythe, nor any other figure of man’s imagining. Death was a place, patient and waiting. Death was soft as the womb. It was the promised refuge. Empty and yearning, it waited to receive the weary and the weighted down.

  Come back, come home, Lot of Gododdin, Lot of Din Eityn. Agravain needs you. Your kin below need you. There is danger here, Lot. You are needed.

  No. Confusion filled Laurel’s mind. She felt another presence fill the room, struggling, confused as a newborn babe. But this was not birth. This was not homecoming. This was too warm, too hard, too filled with blood and motion. It hurt, it hurt after the softness, the dark stillness. It burned too bright. It moved too fast.

  Come back, King Lot. Your son needs you. The people you sheltered so long need you. The place you protected with body and soul needs you.

  Death. Cool, soft, shapeless, completely yielding but completely binding. All encompassing, yet smaller than the eye of a needle. So much there, so many. Father here, drenched in red. Colan here, drowned and dissolved in salt that would have saved him had he but asked. Mother, mother swollen with her illness, slick with sweat, her head lolling against the pillows because she had no strength to lift it anymore. Agravain, slaughtered on the battlefield, herself lying on the shingle, half-in, half-out of the waves, reaching with one hand towards the shore …

  No!

  Lot’s eyes flew open. Laurel jerked her hand back, and the corpse turned its head to face her. ’

  No, it was not a corpse that lay before her now, but neither was it a living man. The eyes were occluded with a pearlescent sheen masking the warm brown that had been theirs in life. The jaw slipped and gaped, falling open to show the grey teeth and the slick, slack tongue.

  ‘Laurel,’ he rasped. ‘Laurel, why do you do this to me?’

  For a moment Laurel stood paralyzed in fear. The sound of death, for it was death, calling her seized her heart in an icy grip. Run, run, run! Panic thrummed through her sinews, but her own working held her in place. She had brought this soul here with her own hands. She was bound to it, and could no more leave before this thing was done than it could.

  ‘Forgive me, Your Majesty,’ she whispered. She could not have made a louder sound had she wished to. ‘I need answers that you only can give.’

  ‘I am dead, Laurel. I have neither questions nor answers.’

  ‘But you lived once,’ she reminded him, it, him. ‘You know what you did then.’

  ‘No. No more.’

  Laurel clenched her fist around the cold rag. Water dripped against her skin, like a handful of tears. ‘King Lot, you held for fifteen years against Morgaine the Sleepless. This is not gone from you, not yet.’

  Lot did not fit this skin any more. It had changed its shape, its nature, too much, as his soul had changed. The two were no longer kin, could not knit together anymore. But power and need held them tight for this moment, and in the dimming, rotting memory that was all that was left of life. The dead king smiled. ‘No, no. That remains.’

  ‘How, Lot? How did you stand against her?’

  Lot spoke again, but it was not only his harsh, breathless voice now. This time Laurel heard other voices, far older voices, dragged back from the darkness and bound up with him.

  ‘Strength of stone. This stone, this place, this is mine. Lived and died a thousand times here. Came crawling out of the valley to the burning tree. Held the fire until I died. Born again, I held the forge to heat the stone, and died to make the bronze, and died to make the ir
on, and died to see the army come and died to beat them back again. Life and death and life and death and over and over and Lot is dead and Agravain lives and the rock is beneath their feet, accepting life, accepting death and God watches over all …’

  Laurel’s mouth was dry. With each word she felt herself dragged deeper, sinking further into the soft, slack darkness. She could not see, could not feel anything but the current of years, of life and death, winding around her, separating her from herself, from her own power, sinking her beneath its infinitely giving weight.

  Lived and died here a thousand times … Strength of stone …

  And she remembered how she had taken Agravain’s hand and how all had become clear again as she faced Morgaine.

  Yes. Yes. Of course. So much sacrifice poured out on this great rock to keep and hold it. The rock had accepted it all and granted the ancient blessing that could come only from earth and life itself. That blessing was strength for the sons and daughters of this place. Bound up and bolstered by the blood of the greater sacrifice which she had brought here.

  Lot had never left this place, never slept a night anywhere else since Morgaine first came. He barricaded himself in here to wait for her, and so trap her though she did not know herself to be trapped. She thought she was tormenting him, torturing him for the sins of her sister, but he was the one who lured her back time and again. Distracting her.

  Weakening her.

  It was truth, but it did Laurel little good. Her blood was not of this place, not of this unyielding rock. Her thoughts struggled, floating and sinking again in the darkness of death.

  ‘She has a weakness? What is it?’

  ‘Not my place. Let me go. Let me rest.’

  Desperation crowded into Laurel’s mind. The dark was so close, so thick. There was nothing beyond the darkness, but she must find her way out. ‘She threatens your son. She is coming here now. Help me. How can she be defeated?’

  ‘No.’

  Anger stiffened Laurel, broadened her, lent her shape to hold steady. The softness curdled, slipped, rippled around her. ‘You cannot leave your son to her mercy. Must he live in death for all these years as you did?’

  ‘Never knew. Couldn’t learn. Could only hold. Trapped. Alone.’

  ‘You are not alone now. Eternity is with you. I am the one your wife told you would come. Speak, Lot. Tell me.’

  ‘She did not … she never … she never …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Never spoke. Never left. Never died. Not really.’

  She knew those words. She had heard them before, but it seemed a long time ago, at some impossible distance, where there had been light and warmth and her eyes could see, when she was not sinking into this sick, slick, cold pool of nothingness, back beyond the thin membrane. Back when she walked in life.

  ‘The answer is here, Lot.’ The words fell clumsily from Laurel. They were wrong. Her insistence was wrong. She had the truth, it swirled around her like the wind once had. Yet it was nothing, another nothingness, so much emptiness. ‘Tell me …’

  ‘WHAT IN THE NAME OF GOD HAVE YOU DONE?’

  The shout was like a bolt of lightning blazing into darkness. It tore through her, ripping apart death’s stillness, letting all the harsh, frenetic movement of life pour in. Lot cried out once in gladness, and fell back into darkness, swallowed up, drowned, gone.

  Laurel screamed, hurled suddenly backwards. Stone slammed against her back and skull. Her legs buckled under her and she slid to the cold floor, blinking in her confusion.

  She was herself again. Her head spun. Her lungs heaved. She was in the chapel at Din Eityn, sprawled ridiculously on the floor. Pain blossomed at the back of her head.

  Agravain, swollen in rage, stood over her.

  Agravain had seized her and thrown her away from the bier, against the wall, so that she fell in this ridiculous, crumpled heap.

  Why are you here? She could not speak. She did not have enough breath in her.

  ‘I ask again,’ Agravain said through his clenched teeth. ‘What were you doing?’

  Threw her across the room, shattered her working, sent Lot back to death, left nothing but the corpse and no answer. The corpse with its eyes sunken shut once more.

  Never spoke. Never left. Never died. Not really.

  Anger surged through her and brought her to her feet again. You surely have not forgotten the part you hoped I would take in this war?

  ‘I have, my lord, done neither more nor less than I was bid.’ Laurel instantly regretted the words. She must reason now, not accuse. What he saw … what she had done, was difficult to comprehend, especially when his feelings were still so raw.

  Agravain seemed stunned by how straight she stood and how calmly she answered him. He walked past her to the bier. His hands shook as he reached out and clumsily, but carefully, attempted to replace the shroud. Without thinking, Laurel moved to help him.

  ‘Stay back,’ he snarled.

  Laurel froze. The pain at the back of her skull throbbed sharply.

  As gently as he could, Agravain smoothed down the fine linen. There was no mistaking it, however, the shroud had been disturbed. The king, his father, had been disturbed, disordered, desecrated. He stood there, leaning over the bunched and wrinkled shroud, his breathing so loud and so harsh, Laurel’s own breath caught in her throat in sympathy.

  ‘Fifteen years, he dwelt in madness and torment. For ten years he held his ground alone in hell so that his sons might live. He sacrificed all he was, all he had, hoping only that he might have some peace in the end, that at the last God’s mercy would not be denied him.’

  Agravain turned slowly, and Laurel’s heart constricted hard to see the naked fury in his face. ‘And you dragged him back! You forced him to serve your need. You confounded the will of God, and you denied him the only peace he could know!’

  ‘My lord …’ Laurel faltered.

  Agravain was closed, shuttered not behind the old, bitter mistrustful walls of his self. He had gone still further, behind a wall of anger and hard righteousness.

  ‘There was knowledge that only he had,’ said Laurel, forcing herself to speak. ‘Things he could tell about Morgaine that no one else could. It was the only way I could aid your victory.’

  ‘There is no victory from such knowledge!’ Agravain’s voice was level, and utterly certain. ‘There is only damnation and death and confusion. How could you do this?’

  In the face of that furious, plaintive question Laurel had no choice but to hold her ground. ‘You said you trusted me.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I trusted you.’ Agravain ran his hand through his hair. ‘God forgive me.’

  ‘Then trust me now.’ Laurel took one step forward. ‘Let me have but a little time …’

  He looked at her again, and the blood ran from Laurel’s heart. His face was not merely stern, but contemptuous.

  ‘Time, my lady?’ he inquired, the sneer in his voice making a mockery of the polite words. ‘Time for what? To torment my father’s soul further? Do you next wish to quiz my sister’s bones with your ceaseless riddles? Or just my mother’s? Is it your father’s head you carry in those great trunks you have guarded so jealously? Perhaps I do not suit you alive as I am, and you need time to take my head, to make use of what wisdom death can bring such a fool.’

  ‘Agravain, this is beneath you.’

  ‘You, you witch, you necromancer, you have the gall to lecture me on right conduct!’ His fists knotted and she remembered the raw strength of his lean arms. For a moment, Laurel was purely, physically afraid. If he struck her … if he beat her … if he killed her …

  But he only stood there for a moment, anger drawing his face tight and sharp, his eyes as shining and hard as amber. Then, resolved, he whirled around and flung wide the chapel doors.

  Outside, the harried activity of the courtyard seemed almost comic compared to what was happening within the chapel’s walls.

  ‘You! You!’ Agravain shouted at two men in leather
corselets.

  They halted their conversation at once and came forward to kneel in front of him.

  What are you doing? What do you mean by this?

  ‘You will take Her Majesty to the gates,’ said Agravain. ‘And you will throw her out.’

  They stared. Laurel stared, unable to comprehend what she heard.

  One of the two soldiers, the younger and bolder of the pair licked his lips. ‘But, Sire …’

  ‘You will do as you are commanded or you will bear the whip for your insubordination.’

  The soldiers bowed their heads, and rose.

  ‘Will you come out, Majesty?’ asked the one who had spoken before. He was very young, scarcely more than a youth, for all his gangly height. ‘We cannot bring arms into the holy place.’

  Laurel looked to Agravain. He met her gaze without hesitation, without change of his stance or expression.

  ‘Agravain …’ she began again. She must try. She must explain. He had to hear her.

  ‘Go with them, or I will drag you from here myself.’

  His shuttered eyes had sunken deep into the recesses of his skull, turning them black. The bones of his face pressed hard against his skin. The people outside, coming and going, had stopped, and turned to stare. At her, at him.

  She could make a scene. She could shout and scream and throw herself to the floor. She could lay her hands on the altar and claim sanctuary.

  But there was no protest she could make, no word or movement that would reach him and crack open those walls. She would only serve to make herself ridiculous, and that she would not do.

  Laurel’s hands shook. Her blood had turned to ice. Good. She needed the strength of ice to prevent her bones and sinews from collapsing under her. Her feet still seemed able to move, and they directed themselves to the chapel door without her intervention. This too was just as well, for she needed all her concentration to keep her gaze pointed ahead of her. She could not turn and look at Agravain. She did not want to see the burning hatred levelled at her.

  Go with them or I will drag you from here myself.