Queen of Camelot

by Nancy McKenzie

  The guard let her in, not knowing who she was. She was old and bent, her hands were crippled and swollen, and my father’s hospitality to the poor and infirm was well known. But she would not stay to warm herself before the peat fire in the kitchen, where the cooks were heating water for the queen’s birthing. She made for the hall and the king. When the guard would have stopped her, she lifted her hood and glared at him. The very sight of her face froze him to the spot where he stood, and she passed by.

  Likewise, when she came into the hall, and the company turned to her in surprise and then protest, she silenced them all when she uncovered her head.

  “King Leodegrance!” she cried.

  My father faced her. He was always the bravest man among brave men. “I am he, witch. State your business and be gone. You come at a time of celebration, and we would not be interrupted! Know you not my young queen gives birth this night?” His companions cheered him, and he even smiled at the old witch. He was the father of five sons of fighting age and the new husband of the loveliest woman in Wales. He could afford to be magnanimous.

  But the witch stared at him, trancelike, until the room was quiet and all eyes were on her. “Beware, King! Laugh not until the night is over! It is a night of wonders! The queenstar in the east has fallen in a hail of light. And in its place burns a new star of wondrous brightness! The fairest in the heavens! These are portents of things to come. There is magic in the air this night. In this house.”

  My father was not a Christian, nor were the others in the room. He worshipped Mithra, the Bull-Slayer, when he was at war, along with all the other men who fought under the High King Uther Pendragon, and the Great Goddess when he was at peace. Yet he also believed in the ancient gods of his ancestors, the gods of roadways and rivers, of the storm winds, the low forests and the high hills, gods whom men had worshipped before ever the Romans came to Britain. To speak to him of magic was to touch him near the heart, and he was afraid.

  “What do you mean, woman?” he demanded, hiding his fear in anger. “Where in this house?”

  The witch grinned, showing black and broken teeth. Her voice fell into a low and vibrant monotone, and all strained to hear her words. “This night shall be born a daughter who shall rule the mightiest in the land.” Her words fell on silence. “She will be the fairest beauty the world has known and the highest lady in all the kingdoms of Britain. Her name will live on in the minds of men for ages to come. Through her will you reach glory.” Here she paused and passed her tongue over dry, cracked lips. Someone handed her a cup of spiced wine, and she drank. “But she will bring you pain, King, before ever she brings you joy. Beloved of kings, she shall betray a king and be herself betrayed. Hers will be a fate no one will envy. She will be the white shadow over the brightest glory of Britain.” Here she stopped, shook herself awake, and, doing my stunned father a low curtsy, hurried out of the house before any man had sense enough to stop her.

  The room was at once alive with voices. Each man asked his neighbor what she had meant. Each man thought he knew what the prophecy foretold. All of them took it as wonderful news for my father, except my father himself. He sat frowning in his great chair, saying over and over “the white shadow. White shadow.” He used the Celtic word the witch had spoken: gwenhwyfar.

  Just before dawn the weather broke and the wind softened. It was the first of May, a day sacred to the ancient Goddess, and the queen’s labors were over. My father, asleep over his wine like his fellows, awoke with a start of premonition to find his chamberlain trembling at his elbow. He was charged with a dolorous message. The good Queen Elen had brought forth a daughter, but had died thereof. With her last breath she had kissed me and named me: Guinevere.

  2 NORTHGALLIS

  My seventh year was my last one at home. It was not customary in those days for boys and girls of noble birth to spend their youth as pages and ladies-in-waiting in strangers’ castles. Those were troubled times. The land was not at peace, and men did not trust one another. The law lay in the strongest sword. Outlaws lived among the hills, making travel treacherous. Even warriors undertook journeys only upon necessity, and that usually meant war.

  And to tell truth, there were not many real castles in Wales. Our strongest buildings were fighting fortresses, where the king’s troops slept on straw strewn over dirt flooring, and the walls of dressed stone were unadorned by the tapestries and weavings that kept the wind from our cozy rooms at home in the king’s house. Caer Narfon, on our northern border, was the biggest fortress in Wales. It had been built by the Romans and then left to decay with the passing of centuries, but it was still in use as a fighting fortress and was our securest defense against the Irish raiders. With Y Wyddfa, the Snow Mountain, at its rear, and the Western Sea under its guarding eye, it was considered impregnable and was the pride of all Wales.

  Nowadays, every petty king has a wonderful castle of quarried stone and plenty of tapestries and fine silks and cushions and carpets to adorn it, for the land has been at peace for twenty years and we have all had time, blessed time, to devote to the arts of peace. But in my childhood the king’s house was a simple enough dwelling. Welshmen have a devilish pride, and even the king’s house could not outshine his soldiers’ homes by much, else he have trouble on his hands.

  My father’s house at Cameliard was of wood and wattle, with a large meeting and drinking hall that had a hole cut in the roof to let out the firesmoke. Beautiful hangings adorned the walls, keeping out the winter winds, and beneath the fresh rushes on the floor were real Roman tiles. Cracked and faded as they were, the designs were still discernible. I remember a crouching panther, birds with bright feathers and long necks, and a golden lion, seated and serene, which was just in front of my chair, next to my father on the dais. He kept me by him all the time; I believe he was very lonely. During long audiences and even meetings with his men, I was beside him and amused myself by watching the animals on the floor and imagining that they moved and spoke. The men never bothered about me. They assumed I could understand nothing of their schemes and worries, and I never undeceived them.

  Indeed, growing up without a mother had a few definite advantages. Instead of spending all my time with the queen’s women, learning needlework and the weaving of war cloaks, I was allowed to go where I would, with either my nurse Ailsa or some page of the king’s as companion. I rode everywhere. In my youth horses gave me freedom and independence; later, they were my comfort and solace. I have taken this to be a sign from God, that I should live in close harmony with these most honored of his creatures. With sturdy Welsh mountain ponies as my friends and teachers in childhood, I grew bold and free and as wild, they said, as any boy. Which is how, in the autumn of my seventh year, I caused trouble, lost my best friend, and learned an important lesson about friendship and power.

  The king my father and all his sons and all their attendants were away on a boar hunt. Every year at the change in seasons the king took his sport, and the men brought back venison and boar to be salted away for palace feasts all winter.

  In the village women gathered the harvest of their gardens and small plots, foraged for berries and late herbs, prepared flax for winter’s weaving and dyes for winter dyeing. Men went hunting, from the king and his courtiers down to the lowliest peasant; all the animals of the forests throughout Wales took heed; waterfowl fell to men’s nets in the marshes, and fish to nets in the lakes and hill ponds. Everyone was busy, even the children. But as royal children, my cousins and I had it easier than most. We collected windfalls from the palace orchards, and when the gardeners were done with their other duties, we scrambled into the trees and shook off the ripening fruit into their woven baskets.

  I speak of my cousins, who were my playmates in these early days, but actually they were my nephews. My father’s sons by his first wife, Gwella, were grown men with children of their own. My eldest brother, Gwarthgydd, was seven and twenty, a thick, powerful man with a thatch of black hair on his head and a mat of hair nearly as thi
ck on his body. Most children feared him for his temper, but he had a ready smile and kind heart and was always good to me. His youngest son, Gwillim, was only a year older than me and was my best friend. There were not many girls in our family, and none of them was kind to me, for I did not look much like them, but took after my mother. Gwill’s two older sisters were my chief tormenters. They insulted the memory of my mother, the affection of my father, whom I adored, the frailty of my body, which was not thick and dark and sturdy like their own, even the pale color of my hair, as if I could change it of my will. In my innocence, I did not understand it.

  On a fine autumn day in the month of the Raven, Gwillim and I could not resist the chance to sneak away from work, to play in the wooded hills that encircled our valley. We pretended we were hunters, tracking our prey along the winding banks of a brook that led up through the hills to a spring in a mossy clearing. There we would flop on our stomachs to rest, drinking the clear water and pouring a small libation for the god of the place, for everyone knew that springs were holy. We could see the white shoulders of Y Wyddfa, the highest mountain in Wales, from that clearing. Its peak was always shrouded in mist, for gods lived there.

  Sometimes, when I beat Gwill to the clearing, he would complain that I was cheating, for I was a girl and shouldn’t have been there at all. Instead of a gown, I wore soft doeskin leggings better than his own, and as I was taller and my legs were longer than his, I ran faster and was more adept. He didn’t really hold these things against me—he liked the challenge. But he disliked being taunted by his brothers and cousins that he played with girls and would grow up to be one. I don’t blame him; they were cruel taunts, and I loved him more because he defended me and took abuse for my sake.

  This day he reached the clearing first and was already on his knees pouring the libation when I arrived. We knelt together, mumbled our thanks to the god, and drank. Then we sat side by side and gazed at the distant heights of Y Wyddfa, which sparkled in the afternoon sun.

  “Gwen, do you think anybody has ever seen a god?” he asked suddenly.

  “Of course,” I replied in surprise. “Holy men talk with them. Magicians and witches command them. They are everywhere, all about.”

  “Yes,” he said slowly, his eyes on the mountain. “So men say. But if they are everywhere, why can’t we see them?”

  I was puzzled by his obtuseness. “Because you need special powers to see them,” I patiently explained. “That’s what makes holy men holy.”

  “Exactly,” he said, turning to me eagerly. “What makes them holy is that they can see and talk to gods. But they can’t see and talk to gods unless they are holy. You see?”

  “See what?”

  “Who’s to prove or disprove it? It’s their claim to be holy that makes them so. If I claim to be a wizard, it’s my claim that makes me powerful, for no one can disprove that I talk to spirits.”

  “Gwill, do you mean that you don’t—you don’t believe in gods?”

  “No. Of course not. Didn’t we just pray to one? I mean, well—my mother fears a witch’s curse because she believes the witch has power, and it’s her believing that the witch has power that gives her the power she fears. Do you see?”

  I was very impressed with his reasoning. But I had a more practical mind. “What witch has cursed her? What did she say?”

  He looked a little embarrassed, and I guessed that he was not supposed to tell anyone.

  “Swear by Mithra the foul fates,” he commanded, and I solemnly swore by Mithra to bring devastation upon myself and my family and my descendants if ever a word that Gwill confided to me should pass my lips.

  “Well,” he said more easily, “Haggar of the Hills came by in the guise of a beggar as my mother and sisters were washing at the brook. She begged a drink of honey mead that they carried in their flask, for she was thirsty and dusty. Mother pointed out that the brook water was good enough for such as she, and that common folk would fall ill drinking the mead of the royal house.”

  I grinned. Gwillim thought his mother insufferably snobbish about her connection to the royal house. Glynis had been the daughter of one of my father’s minor nobles and not a good match for Gwarthgydd, but she had been lovely when young, and he had stood by her and married her when she got with child. In return for his kindness, she lorded her position over everyone around her and made everyone’s life miserable if she could. Someday, no doubt, if Gwarth lived, she would be queen, and she let no one forget it. But for all that, Gwill was devoted to her, and often rose well before dawn to fish the stream for speckled trout, which she adored.

  “Then Haggar revealed herself and called upon the powers of the air. My sisters say the sky darkened, but I do not believe this. I was not far away that day, and I saw nothing. She cursed my mother’s vanity, saying that the highest shall be brought low and the least valued made high; that all my mother’s hopes should come to naught, and her line should dwindle. That her home should be destroyed, and her husband die in a far-off land.” He gulped and continued. “And that the Kingdom of Northgallis should be swallowed by a great dragon and disappear from the face of the earth forever.”

  I stared at him in horror. “Northgallis disappear?” I whispered. “Oh, Gwillim, no! What does it mean? Saxons?”

  He shook his head. He was clearly more worried about the fate of his family than about the Kingdom of Northgallis. “Don’t you see what my mother has done? She made the old woman mad, and now she believes every word she said. But what if the old woman isn’t really a witch? I mean, what if everybody just thinks she is? Nothing need come to pass unless we make it so by believing it will.”

  I gazed at him with wonder and respect. “You are the bravest boy I know! To think you can save Northgallis simply by believing you can—it’s wonderful. Does this mean that the witch has no power over you?”

  He flushed with pleasure and smiled. “She doesn’t determine my future, Gwen, unless I believe that she does. That’s what I think.”

  “And—and is this true also of other witches? And enchanters? What about the High King’s enchanter? What about Merlin?”

  He shivered at the name of the great wizard, but bravely stuck to his belief. “Yes, it is also true of Merlin. But—but perhaps I might believe Merlin,” he admitted, frowning. “He is wise as well as powerful. He is not afraid of kings.”

  The air around us had gone very still. Fleecy clouds hung motionless in the sky, and the birds fell silent in the trees. I realized suddenly that we were talking in whispers, and a thrill of foreboding ran up my spine.

  “And the gods?” I breathed, wide-eyed. “Are they the same? Have they power only over those who worship them, so that Mithra has power over warriors, and the Elder spirits over the common people and the hill people, and the new Kyrios Christos over the Christians?”

  He stared at me. We hardly dared to breathe in the awful silence.

  “You understand me,” he whispered, and we were filled with terror at our sacrilege.

  Suddenly we were not alone in the clearing; we felt the new presence before we heard or saw anything. For an instant time stood still, and we saw in each other’s eyes the everlasting terror of perdition. Then I saw behind him, at the edge of the clearing, the soft brown eyes and pink nose of a wild mountain pony, and I exhaled with relief. We were not to be claimed by spirits after all! A small band of ponies had come to the spring to drink, that was all. Gwill turned slowly, flushing scarlet when he saw them, four of them, edging daintily toward the spring pool. We sat still, and they gathered courage and came forward, three of them lowering their pretty heads to drink, while the fourth eyed us warily.

  Gwill was ashamed of his terror and needed to feel brave.

  “They’re very fine,” he said softly. “And the leader is black. That’s very rare. Let’s see if we can catch two.”

  I was entranced. Ever since my father had placed me himself on a fat little pony at the age of three, I had loved horses. They spoke a language I somehow
understood, and riding came effortlessly to me. At seven, I was already as good a rider as boys of eleven and twelve, who were ready for war training. And while Gwill was only slightly less skilled than I, catching wild ponies was a very different thing from riding trained ones and was a job for a group of mounted men and not for two children.

  Nevertheless, I assented immediately and drew from my belt the windfalls I had brought along for our hunter’s meal. Keeping movement to a minimum, I approached the nearest pony, a white one, offering the apple. While the other ponies scented danger and backed away, this one was overcome by curiosity. I fed him the apple and stroked his neck, lifting the heavy mane and scratching his withers. His eyes closed with pleasure, and Gwill whispered “Now!” In a single leap I was astride. The pony snorted in fear, spun around, and tore off through the woods. I buried my fists in his mane and clung to him for dear life, lying low on his back as we crashed through the brush, and branches whipped at my face and hair. I had a vague picture of Gwill grappling with the black one, his belt around its neck, but I could hear nothing behind me. The other ponies had bolted, too, but whether Gwill was with them I had no idea. I spoke to the terrified pony in a low singsong, hoping he could hear me over the clatter of his hooves. Eventually he slowed, either calmed by the song or tired from his fruitless efforts. He cantered, then trotted, then came to a trembling halt. I stroked and comforted him but did not dismount. I let him feel my legs against his sides, gently, and then I sat up. As he got over his fear he seemed to understand the messages my legs and body sent him. It is magic of a sort, speaking to horses, and a thrill I have never outgrown. We walked along a woodland track until he was calm and had got his breath back. Then, crooning to him all the while, I headed him back the way we had come, as well as I could judge. He was lathered with fear and sweat, his sides were slippery. So when, as we neared the spring, I heard my name suddenly shouted from the top of the ridge and the pony reared in fright, I slipped off as quickly as a raindrop from a downspout and fell hard against a tree. The last thing I remembered was the cry “Guinevere!” echoing among the hills, and then the world went black.