by Gawain (lit)
Morgana’s brows lifted. “Can I not?”
“Please,” Aislyn whispered. “I was wrong, I know that now. I will tell him everything—”
“Too late,” Morgana said, rising to her feet and brushing the cat hair from her skirt. “That is the way of life, I fear. You know a thing should be done, yet you put it off, and then the chance is gone. You will not tell him anything of this. Oh, you can try, but you will find it impossible to speak the words. You are Dame Ragnelle and always have been.”
“Your Grace,” Aislyn said, “have mercy—”
“As you did when you forced my nephew to marry a hideous crone? No, don’t weep. It does not become one of your years.”
Outrage snapped Aislyn’s neck straight. “I am not weeping.”
“Better.” Morgana nodded her approval. “Perhaps there is something to you after all. Oh, very well, I will give you a chance to undo what I have done . . . in part. Should Gawain kiss you—a true kiss, offered with love and accepted in kind—then shall you revert to your true form for half of each day.”
“But that is impossible!” Aislyn cried. “He will never kiss me—not the sort of kiss you mean, not as I am now!”
“It doesn’t seem likely, does it? But love has a way of overcoming obstacles.”
“Love?” Aislyn laughed wildly. “He detests me!”
“I daresay. What do you feel for him?”
Aislyn opened her mouth to say she disliked him, but then she remembered the wild magic that had flared between them last night. “I don’t know.”
“Then you had better find out, hadn’t you?”
Chapter 11
“DO you have need of me today, madam?” Launfal asked.
“Why?” Morgause, seated at her writing table in her chamber at Lothian Castle, did not look up from the parchment she was reading.
“I had a mind to go down to the practice yard.”
“I don’t think that would be a good idea,” Morgause said absently, waving one hand in dismissal. For a moment the temptation to seize her wrist and snap it was so strong it frightened him. These impulses had been coming more frequently of late, a black tide that washed away all rational thought. He lived in fear that one day the tide would simply take him—and if it ever did, he would not stop until he’d killed her. He would be a dead man anyway, why should he go to hell alone?
But he had not yet abandoned all hope and sanity, so he deliberately relaxed his fists before he spoke again.
“The exercise would do me good. And if you have nothing else for me to do—”
“I didn’t say that.” She glanced up at him with an arch smile that chilled his blood. “I know I have been neglecting you of late,” she went on, “but I may have time for you when I am finished here.”
Her definition of neglect was not one he shared: a mere two days had passed since he had last been called upon to pleasure her. Other men might scorn him, believing he led an easy life, but none of them had experienced Morgause in bed.
“That would be wonderful!” he said warmly. “And if you do, you can send for me—”
She looked up at him directly then. “Send for you? Why should I? What is this about?”
“I need to get out,” he said, deciding that a touch of honesty would not come amiss. “To breathe the fresh air.”
“Do you?” She gazed at him thoughtfully, brushing the feather of her quill across her lips. “Well, Launfal, if my service is so wearisome, you could always return to the fields. There is plenty of fresh air there. And exercise.”
Yes, he thought, send me back. Anything but this! But once again, he bit back the words. If he went back among the varlets now, it would be over. He would never leave this place. Never become a knight. Even the faint hope of achieving that dream would be at an end, and without his dreams . . .
He could not bear to go back to the life he had known after Aislyn had vanished and he and his mother had fallen so abruptly from the queen’s favor. Between one day and the next, Launfal had found his status changed from that of guest to the meanest servant. His mother, the one time she had dared to speak to him, said only that they must both adjust to changed conditions. But she, at least, still dwelt among the queen’s women, while Launfal, with no place in the strict hierarchy of the castle servants, was the lowest of the low.
He was given the most difficult and noisome tasks, and his ignorance of how to perform them earned him frequent beatings. The friends he had made among the squires no longer knew him, and he could not even speak to his new peers, for their language was so unfamiliar that he might as well have landed in a foreign country. They understood him well enough—had, in some cases, served him in the past—but now took a vicious pleasure in pretending they did not.
Twice he had run off and twice been taken before the steward and whipped. “Try it again, lad,” the steward had growled the second time, “and you’ll be branded.”
That put an end to his attempts to escape. No man so marked could ever hope to become a knight.
Launfal learned to fight then—not the noble feats of arms he had dreamed of, but silent, deadly struggles over half an onion or a bit of cheese. Even when he won, it was never enough to fill his belly, and he lived for the moment he could crawl beneath a mound of straw and lose himself in dreams of the day this would all be over and he would be back where he belonged. If that hope was lost to him, he might as well be dead.
Now he forced himself to laugh as though Morgause had made a joke, though he knew her to be serious. “Wearisome? Oh, madam, you shouldn’t say such things! ’Tis only that you’ve been so occupied of late . . .”
“And do you think to find companionship in the practice yard?” she asked, still regarding him with that unsettling intensity. “I seem to recall that the knights have been unkind to you in the past.”
They despised him to a man, called him the queen’s whore and worse—not troubling to lower their voices, either, for they had learned he would not fight back, though they did not know what held his hand.
Morgause had forbidden him to fight. She did not want his face marred, nor for him to be incapacitated when she had need of him. “I ask very little of you,” she had said the one time he disobeyed her, “but if it is too much, you need only say so.”
That had been a mere two years ago, though it seemed an age. He had still retained some innocence then, enough to believe her capable of human emotion. “Oh, no, madam, I am pleased to serve you,” he had said earnestly, “it is only that I would like to serve you as a knight.”
Morgause had laughed. “A knight? You? Oh, no, Launfal, you are quite unsuited to that role! If your service to me irks you, then you shall return to your place among the varlets.”
He still remembered the shock of that, as though she had struck him across the face. “But—but you said that was a mistake!” he had stammered in bewilderment. “You said you never meant for me, a knight’s son, to—”
“I?” She raised her brows, looking at him as though he had gone mad.
Had he known her better, he would have stopped right there. But he had not yet realized that to Morgause, truth was not an absolute, but a weapon she wielded according to her whim.
“It was the night you first brought me to your chamber, do you not remember?” that innocent, ignorant boy had protested, as though she could be moved by reason. “You must! You sat just there—surely you recall—and said you were sorry, that you hadn’t known I was sent to live among the servants, that—”
“Lower your voice,” she said coldly.
“But you must listen—”
“Must? How dare you speak to me like that? Your disobedience—your gross ingratitude and impertinence— have wounded me deeply. I am queen of this demesne, and I shall set the terms of your service. If I say you are a varlet, then so you are. Do you understand me?”
And then, at last, Launfal did understand. Her soft words and apologies that first night had all been lies. Now that those lies no longer
suited her, she had changed them for a different set. There was but one grain of truth in what she’d told him: she was indeed the queen, and her word was quite literally the law.
Two years had passed since that realization and Launfal was still alive, a victory won at the cost of a thousand betrayals of himself. Did one more really matter?
Yes, he thought, looking at her sitting at her writing table. Yes, it does matter.
Morgause smiled indulgently, and throwing down her quill, she stood. “Oh, very well,” she said. “I can see I have neglected you, but I shall make amends.”
The black tide swept over him again, and again he beat it back as she approached him slowly, no longer the queen but a woman bent upon seduction. How could she not know how she revolted him? In the days since their return from Inglewood Forest, it had become almost impossible to hide.
His anger died, leaving the familiar bewilderment in its place. He had always tried to be a good son, a good brother—even a good servant when such had been his lot. Yet despite all his efforts, God had been blind to his plight and deaf to his prayers.
There is no God, he thought. Heaven holds only stars and empty air. There is nothing but ourselves.
Morgause was close enough that he could smell the scent she favored, one that had once delighted him and now made his stomach twist. I cannot do this, he thought, or no, I could. I have before.
I will not.
He straightened, and for a moment she hesitated, a flicker of uneasiness passing across her face.
“Madam,” he began, and was interrupted by a knock upon the door.
“A messenger from Camelot,” the serving girl said, and Morgause forgot him instantly as she swept from the room. Launfal waited only long enough for her footsteps to vanish down the passageway before he slipped after her and out a side door, not bothering to take even his cloak.
HE made it only as far as the orchard before he was halted by a squire from the queen. He thought briefly of making a run for it, but now that he had determined to leave at any cost, his mind was working with cool precision.
Wait, it said. Your chance will come.
“The queen is in a rare mood,” the squire said as they walked back to the castle. “It seems Sir Gawain has wed without her leave—they’re saying there’s something odd about his marriage.”
Morgause was pacing her chamber, two knights standing by the window and eyeing her warily. Her face was mottled with hectic color, her eyes narrowed into slits. Launfal had once told her she was beautiful in a temper, but like most of what he said to her, it was a lie.
“I leave for court tomorrow,” she declared.
And I? Launfal wondered, his heartbeat quickening. If once he reached Camelot, he would be free. King Arthur was said to be both just and merciful; hearing Launfal’s tale, surely the king would take pity on him. And if he was left behind, he would be free, as well. Who would bother with the queen’s whore when the queen was gone away?
Perhaps there was someone up in heaven after all.
“Be sure to have them pack the amber gown,” he said casually, sprawling in a chair and plucking a handful of cherries from a dish. “It is wasted here.”
“The amber—?” She whirled to face him, and the fine hairs on his arms lifted when she burst out laughing. “Oh, you are good.”
“Am I?” He tried to smile, but his face was oddly stiff. She sat down on the arm of his chair and drew a finger down his cheek.
“You’ll never guess what the messenger told me,” she said teasingly.
“That Sir Gawain is wed?”
“Mmm, yes, but there was more.” Her hand slipped beneath his chin and she lifted his face to her. “It was about Somer Gromer Jour—do you remember him? Apparently when the king gave him the answer, he said something very curious. Can you tell me what it was?”
Launfal’s heart began to thunder in his chest, but he forced himself to hold her eye. “No, madam. I cannot recall having said anything—well, perhaps I cursed a bit, but—”
“He said”—Morgause leaned close—“now, what were the words? Oh, yes, I remember. He said, ‘my sister told you that.’ ”
Launfal swallowed audibly. He had said those words— blurted them out in shock—though he hadn’t known he had been overheard. His mind raced, trying to find some explanation that would not sound too ridiculous, but he could only shake his head, attempting to look puzzled. “No,” he said, “I don’t recall—”
He saw the blow coming and turned his head to the right, so Morgause’s palm merely brushed his cheek. “You lied to me that day. How many other times have you lied?”
“Never! Oh, very well, I did think it might be Aislyn, and I didn’t tell you because it would only have upset you.”
“And yet you knew full well I was looking for her.”
“I did, but—I mean to say, she is my sister, and—”
This time he failed to anticipate the slap. It snapped his head back with such force that his skull hit the wall behind him with an audible crack. One of the knights—whose presence now seemed ominous—laughed.
“After all that I have done for you, this is how you repay me! I took you from the stables and gave you all any man could desire.” She stood abruptly. “But it is finished. I have been growing weary of you for some time now, and this is the final straw. I am through with you.”
Launfal stood, as well. His cheek throbbed and his skull was tender, but if that was the worst of it, he’d gotten off lightly. “I—I am sorry that I no longer please you,” he said, nearly gagging on the words. “But I hope—that is, if I ever—” Gritting his teeth, he went to his knees. “For the sake of what we once had, I pray you give me leave to go to—”
“Go? You are not going anywhere! Oh, Launfal, and here I thought you were only pretending to be witless! You do not honestly think I will allow you to leave here?”
Hot blood rushed to his face and pounded in his temples. “Why should I not?” he said, rising. “God knows I have earned some reward from you.”
She made to strike him and he grasped her wrist, pulling her hard against him. Desire flared in her eyes, and later he thought that one kiss might have melted her—at least long enough for him to consider his options. But his blood was up and he could only think how ridiculous she looked gazing up at him like a moonstruck calf—and in the next moment it was too late, for he had made his fatal mistake.
He laughed.
Morgause wrenched away from him. “Sir Ewan, Sir Col,” she said coldly, “seize this man. He has laid hands upon the queen.”
“Is that a crime?” Launfal said, still laughing. “Then I should have plenty of company in the dungeons!”
His arms were taken and pinned behind him, but he ducked away as Morgause aimed a blow at his face. “You find this amusing?” she hissed.
“No,” he said, his chest still heaving with something that had gone beyond laughter. “I find it pathetic—almost as pathetic as I find you.”
“Hark the churl who dreamed of knighthood! But you are mine, Launfal, my property to do with as I will. Lest you forget it again, I will put my mark on you. Hold him down,” she ordered curtly, and turned to thrust a poker—or no, dear God, it was a branding iron—into the heart of the fire.
Launfal fought, but the two knights were both large and strong. When they had forced him to his knees, Morgause wound her fingers through his hair and jerked his head up. “Such a pretty lad,” she mocked, “such a pity.” She fumbled one-handed for the iron and Launfal let himself sag in the grip of his captors. They shifted, fumbling for a better grip, relaxing their hold on his hands as they hauled him upright.
