Grail Prince

by Nancy McKenzie

  “That’s what Lancelot said,” Galahad muttered, “but there was more to it than that. He had always loved her, all his life. He wanted to take her home to Lanascol and wed her.”

  He heard her quick intake of breath and her hand stopped. “You can’t know that.”

  “I do know it.”

  “Did he say so?”

  “Not in so many words. I accused him of it, and in defense he said he doubted she would come with him.”

  “And did she?”

  “I have heard that she did not. But he asked her. Of that I am certain.”

  There was a long silence while tears welled in Galahad’s eyes, tears he could not keep back no matter how hard he tried. Her small hand stroked his brow and pushed the hair from his face.

  “I am so sorry, Joseph, that it should cause you pain.” Somehow, her very presence eased the hurt.

  “It was his one great weakness, his love for the Queen. It colored everything he ever did. Even if it was a passion sent to him by God and was not a thing he could help, it might have been bearable, but—”

  “But what?”

  “He cherished it over the other things he should have loved.”

  “What things?” She touched his brow and he closed his eyes. What a wonderful thing it was to bare his soul to such a loving heart! The aftermath of glorious confession engulfed him, and he sank deliciously toward sleep. He made one last effort to dredge up what lay, aching, at the bottom of his soul.

  “My mother,” he whispered, succumbing. “He never loved my mother.”

  Anna met him outside her door in the morning.

  “Anna, why are you frowning so? Pray tell me all is well with the Good Sister!”

  But she merely curtsied and said coolly, “Follow me, my lord, and I will take you to her.”

  He followed her, not noticing the new address, down corridors and through a portal to the gate of the women’s garden. There Anna left him. “I will come for her in an hour,” she said. “No one will disturb you until then.”

  Galahad looked around the garden. Trees stood at the corners, shading the walks, while wild lilies, daisies, mallow, lavender, and larkspur grew in colorful confusion against the enclosing whitewashed walls. The Good Sister sat on a shaded bench, upright and still. As he approached her, she rose and faced him. She was taller than he had expected and stronger than he would have believed a week ago.

  “My lady!” He knelt and kissed her hand. “How good to see you! You are certain you are well enough?”

  “Perfectly certain. And you? You were so unhappy yesterday and I fear I might have been the cause.”

  He smiled. It felt like the first time in months. “On the contrary, I am very well indeed. Nothing you could do to me could harm me.”

  “Mmm. I hope you will still think so at the end of this hour. I must speak with you, Joseph.” She patted the bench beside her and they sat down together. “Now, I am an old woman, past forty, and you must forgive me for what I am about to say. If I had not come to love you, I would not ask it.” She paused. “You are running from something. It is why you are here. Tell me, is it a woman?” She held his hands as she spoke and the desire to confess it tugged at his soul.

  “How could you know?” he blurted, reddening. “The world thinks I seek for holiness, or for a marvel. But what I seek is absolution . . . for an unpardonable sin.” He was breathing hard. Like a moth too near the desired flame, he shied away. “And indeed, I have dreamed more than once of a marvelous vessel and spear that, if I could only find them and retrieve them, could restore Britain to her former glory and bring back her King.”

  “Bring back her King?”

  “Yes. Restore King Arthur to us.”

  “What nonsense!”

  “Niniane said so. To me. She said he is waiting to return.”

  She bowed her veiled head and said evenly, “Galahad, did Niniane send you on this quest?”

  He leaped to his feet. “You know my name? Who told you?”

  She looked up and the tenderness in her voice melted all his anger.

  “My dear, you did, in a thousand little ways. Your voice, your eyes, your gestures—and your tales contained a hundred details only you could know. Do not fret, Galahad. I knew your name before I even saw you, as soon as I heard about your sword. It’s Lancelot’s sword. He would never have parted from it except to give it to his son.”

  “Does everyone know, then?”

  “Only Abbott Martin. No one here cares who you are. And if you choose to stay among us you may remain as Joseph. I will not tell a soul.”

  “Thank you for that.”

  “I have heard of this quest, Galahad.” She reached out for his hand and pulled him gently down upon the bench. “You must know . . . you must know that Arthur cannot return from the grave. Those dreams are phantoms. So what drives you? In the last four years the tales about you have grown into impossible legends. Galahad of the red-crossed shield is known to everyone in Britain. Up north in Battle Valley I believe you are worshiped as a saint. You said yourself you have spent the last year on your knees in holy houses. What are you atoning for?”

  He looked away. He could never tell her without the armor of anonymity.

  Her voice softened suddenly. “Shall I hazard a guess? There is no power on earth like love. You lost your heart to a woman.”

  He inhaled sharply, but still could not look at the shadowed face behind the veil.

  She continued very gently, “Deep love, honest love, forces one to decisions that perhaps one would rather not make.” He flashed her a wild look and instantly regretted it. He knew his face gave him away. “Marriage means burdens—a wife, a child, a return to Lanascol, reunion with your father—obligations that a young man on a glorious quest might consider to be entanglements. You chose another future, but every day of it you fight to keep the painful memory of your choice within bounds. The witch Niniane has given you the means.”

  He cried out in anguish. “By all that’s holy, I never meant it to come to love! One moment we were talking by the fire, and the next—” He gulped. “I’ve tried to convince myself that it was her fault for seducing me, just as my mother seduced Lancelot. But I . . . I know the fault was mine.” He fell to his knees, hands to his face.

  She bent forward and cradled his head in her arms. “I know,” she said softly. “It is an old, old choice. And you are right that women are seducers. At times we need to be. But what makes you think your mother was such a one?”

  “Everyone tells me so.” He choked on the words. “She seduced my father to take him from the Queen. Everyone says it was so.”

  “Lancelot never told you that.”

  “No, but Arthur did, once. And it explains so much about Lancelot, if it is true.” He found he could breathe again, now that she had led him away from the flame. “I never believed it could have been beyond his will—until it happened to me.” His whole body shuddered. “I was begotten as revenge upon the Queen.”

  “Nonsense.” She bent and kissed him. He could feel her lips through the fabric of the veil. “You don’t know how it was at all. Rise, Galahad, and walk with me awhile. I will tell you a little about your mother.”

  He rose and offered her his arm. Her weight against him was so light and unsteady, she relied on his strength even to stand. At first it pleased him to be her strong support, but as she spoke he realized he was trapped. He could not leave and let her fall; he could not speak while she was talking. For as long as she chose to walk about the garden, he must stay by her and listen.

  “I knew the Lady Elaine, Princess of Gwynedd. I knew her well. She was a beautiful girl, full of life and energy. You have her eyes. Every one of Arthur’s companions admired her, including Lancelot. They were standing in line to wed her. She was the most eligible maiden in the land, but she refused all her suitors. Do you know why? The truth should not surprise you. She loved Arthur.” The grip upon his forearm tightened. “Now, they say that all the world loved Arthur
, and that was true enough, but not as I mean it. She loved him as only a woman can love a man. She was drawn to him first by reputation and then, when she met him, by the sheer power of his presence. She was passionately devoted to him her entire life.” They came to a fork in the path. The Good Sister raised her face to the sky, and sighed. “Surely no one can blame her for such devotion. Her only problem was Guinevere. You know the story.”

  They started down a new path. The way was uneven and she went slowly, leaning on his arm. “When Elaine was still a girl, her mother, Alyse, your grandmother, took in her sister’s orphaned child and Elaine’s cousin, Guinevere. And although Elaine was the more energetic of the two, always full of plans and mischief, she was also beset by an abiding jealousy. She was just thirteen the summer Arthur’s Companions began searching for his wife. Alyse and Pellinore were sure that at last Elaine’s time had come. Even at thirteen she had blossomed into a beauty. I like to remember her the way of the sun. All her life she had been groomed to be a queen. All her life she had loved Arthur Pendragon. Now he was High King, nineteen, unwed, and looking for a bride.”

  The Good Sister stopped and slowly turned toward him. “Can you imagine how she must have felt the day Pellinore came home and told his daughter that it was her cousin Guinevere who had been chosen? No one had gone to Camelot to propose Guinevere. It all happened by accident and at the last minute. And to make matters worse, Guinevere had never wanted to be chosen. Like everyone else in Gwynedd, she had hoped and expected Elaine would be King Arthur’s queen. She cared nothing for Arthur. In fact, she wept to learn she must leave her home to marry a man she had never even seen. The two of them wept together at the unfairness of it all. But what was there to do? Neither of them could protest the choice without shaming Gwynedd, Wales, even Arthur himself, who had taken no part in the choosing, but was willing to abide by the decision of his Companions.

  “When the time came for Arthur to come to Wales to take his bride away, Elaine had mastered her jealousy, even if Guinevere had not quite mastered her fear. But Arthur did not come. The Saxons landed in the north that spring and he was called away. In his place he sent three of his closest Companions: Bedwyr, Kay, and Lancelot. You know already what happened. Imagine, then, how Elaine must have felt. First, her foolish cousin is given a gift she cares nothing for, but for which Elaine would gladly sacrifice a limb. Then her cousin falls in love with the best friend of the man she is promised to. Is there a sadder story in all the world? Elaine’s heart broke. She felt unjustly treated, even betrayed, by the girl her mother had taken in as an orphan. Had Guinevere stayed in Northgallis, Elaine might very well have been High Queen. Instead, once they came to Camelot, Guinevere was first in everything and Elaine second. It was not a role she cherished. That first summer was a torture to her. Every day she saw the man she adored but he never looked at her, having eyes only for his bride. Yet the bride suffered secretly for love of Lancelot. Truly, it was laughable.”

  Galahad stopped. His mind was numb. He knew his arm was trembling, but he could not stop it. The voice he had not recognized continued. “Guinevere grew to love her husband, which was inevitable, I think, given the man he was. Elaine approved this. She felt it was no more than Arthur’s due. But Elaine could see clearly what others were only beginning to guess: that Guinevere still loved Lancelot with the passion of first love, a love that was returned, though never openly displayed, never allowed to blaze, but kept at a painful, steady burn. Imagine how Elaine, faithful to her single, enduring passion, resented her cousin’s plight! Imagine how desperate it time went on and the fire between them did not cool, she grew more anxious. It angered her that Arthur himself accepted it and trusted his friend and his wife not to betray him. But Elaine could not trust them. However honorable their intentions, she did not believe they had the strength to hold out forever. Sooner or later they must yield to each other and betray the King. So Elaine did the only thing within her power: She married Lancelot. You may call it a seduction if you like, but no man was ever yet seduced without willing it just a little in his innermost soul. Who is to say it was revenge? She might have done it for Arthur’s sake. Perhaps she did it for Lancelot’s sake as well. He was five-and-twenty, without children, without prospect of a wife. Other men his age had sons training to be warriors. For love of Guinevere he was letting the fullness of life pass him by. Elaine gave him new horizons and stopped the gossips’ tongues. When she bore him sons, the focus of his life, which had been in Britain, then shifted to Lanascol. That was where his future lay. You, Galahad, are that future.”

  Galahad trembled from head to toe. He could not look at her. “If all that is true, then why did the High King banish her from Britain?”

  “He did not. The Queen did. If you have ever faced a woman’s wrath, you will know the truth of that.” Galahad’s face burned. “When one is in the midst of events, one does not see them clearly. Guinevere saw only personal betrayal. She accused Elaine of seducing Lancelot, whom she did not love, just to hurt her. She could see no further than that she did not want Lancelot to leave. And she, who was childless, did not want another woman to bear Lancelot’s sons.” She paused, and exhaled slowly. “It is all so long ago, so far away, like a tale told in a tapestry. Such violent emotions have lost their force and are now toned down to softer hues. Yet here you are, Galahad, living proof of the past, reliving those old wounds and bleeding anew. You must not blame your mother. If it is anyone’s fault, it is Guinevere’s.”

  He was shaking so hard he staggered and put out a hand to brace himself against a tree. The Good Sister stood perfectly straight, alone, unaided. It took all the courage he possessed to force himself to face her.

  “There is only one person you can be,” he whispered. He reached out and slowly lifted the veil from her face.

  Her hair, so fair it was almost white, framed a face that time had hardly touched. But for the tiny lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth, she was the same astounding beauty the world had worshiped for over twenty years. And her magnificent eyes, dark sapphire blue, direct as any man’s, beguiled him against his will, as they had done that first day in the High King’s garden so long ago. Slowly, he bent both knees to the ground.

  “It can’t be. Queen Guinevere.”

  “Rise, Galahad.” She plucked at his arm to raise him. “Don’t kneel to me. There is no need. Not between us. I am not Queen any longer.”

  But Galahad knelt. “How can it be you? You . . . you have always been my enemy, my father’s doom—”

  “I have never been your enemy. You never knew what passed, or did not pass, between me and Lancelot. You only knew the pain it caused you.”

  “But I saw you—that first day in Camelot—I saw you together. He embraced you, he kissed you—”

  “Ah, so that was it. I was always glad to see him when he had been gone from me.”

  “Arthur told me—he found me weeping—he told me to keep a little mercy in my heart.”

  Her voice fell to a whisper and tears filled her eyes. “He was ever the most merciful of men.”

  “But I have hated you, and feared you, for the power you held over my father. And over my mother, too.”

  “It was not a power I sought, Galahad. And I wielded it only once, when I banished Elaine. I ask you to forgive me for that.”

  “She deserved it if she is the one who betrayed you to Melwas. Did she? Was she as false as that?”

  Pain flickered in the sapphire eyes and she took time to frame a reply. “It was never proved against her. I am sorry to know such tales are gossiped abroad. She does not deserve slander.”

  Galahad drew a deep breath and rose, taking her hands and pressing them to his lips. “I forgive you everything. You have given me back my father and my mother, if what you said is true.”

  “It is not the way I saw it then, but it is the way I see it now.”

  “When I was a boy she was all that I adored. I thought my father betrayed her. With you.”

 
“He never did.”

  “And later, when I saw how he was revered, I thought that if he were blameless, then she must be guilty. I thought she must have been a demon, who seduced him and turned me against him for her own ends.”

  “Once, I thought her a demon, too. But she was only a woman who suffered greatly. Lead me to the bench, I pray you. What we have left to say, we can say sitting.”

  He lifted her in his arms and carried her to the bench. She weighed almost nothing and felt frail as a bird. What it must have cost her, that walk around the garden!

  “Do all women suffer so for men they love?” he asked when they were seated.

  Her reply was a smile of infinite sadness.

  His voice sank to a whisper. “I have done something so far beneath me it is unforgivable. I wanted so much to be unlike my father—all my life I strove for it—that I did what he never would have done. I ran. You were right. I ran away.”

  “Galahad.”

  The tenderness in her voice brought an ache to his throat. He gritted his teeth against it. “I have dishonored the only woman I will ever . . . the woman who lives”—he struck his chest with his fist—“here. In my soul. Every day, every night, she haunts my dreams and waking hours. I cannot sleep; I cannot pray.”

  “Praise God,” she whispered, taking his hand. “You have confessed it. God will forgive you if you repent.”

  A strangled cry escaped his lips. “How repent? I have tried every day these last three years and more! There is nothing to be done—it is all too late.”

  “You think little of our Lord if you think He has not forgiven worse sins than this. Only ask Him.”