I was on a high, mossy upland, wide and free under the sky, standing beneath its blue dome with my arms held out like the crucifix I saw each day above the altar. Far away there was a tramping sound, at first a mere vibration that grew to thunder in my head. Eight abreast the warriors came, all unknowing that I lay beneath their feet, crying out like the earth herself against the death of her children. Only when the great auroch’s horns boomed, their deep voices moaning over the land, did I dissolve and fall onto the shadowy edges of the Plain…onto the known, familiar place of death I visited nightly now.
Here were the two armies drawn up, horses pawing impatiently, carrion crows and wolves waiting for the carnage to begin. Here the future—death and life—and in the center, locked in silent, ghostly combat, a pair of Champions struggled.
“No!” I screamed, hearing my own voice break away as I ran, dodged, flung myself toward them in a long, desperate effort to cross the rolling land.
My lungs were bursting and my muscles ached, as though I both dealt and received each blow, while slowly, with infinite grace, the two combatants went through their ghoulish dance. “Stop,” I cried, though the words carried no sound. “No more, I beg you, no more!”
Deaf to all but the beat of their moira, drawn to each other in deadly embrace, the warriors moved in and out of my sight as in the past. But this time the sky turned red, my vision blurred, a gale whipped my hair into my eyes—and when I shook it free, the ground was littered with bodies. Dead, dying, moaning with the pitiful voices of lost children, screaming against the savagery of their slaying, I saw the messy wake of war, the tangle of guts and limbs and twitching hands, the red drop of blood hanging from each mouth like a jewel.
The scene went slack, sliding into repose, and my sight narrowed to the two in the center. Bloodied, hacked, and weary to the point of blindness, one slumped morosely against the trunk of a nearby tree, the other on a pile of fallen friends.
“This time,” I cried, “this time it must be different!”
But even as I willed it otherwise, the warrior with the sword stirred and rose from the shelter of his dead comrades. Like a hound that has just found the scent, his aching body responded to the enemy presence, collecting all faculties, centering on the exhausted man beside the tree.
After a long moment’s scrutiny, the swordsman began the slow, inevitable advance toward his opponent.
“Leave be!” I cried, feeling the panic, knowing already the result, begging my love to turn aside from this last, fatal encounter. But there might as well have been a wall of glass between us, for he heard me not at all, and I was powerless to sway one little moment of the confrontation.
The warrior at the tree tensed, sensing danger, and straightened slowly. He moved his head from side to side, as if he could not see clearly, and without taking his eyes from the threat, reached for the spear shaft that stood upright not an arm’s distance away. Wrenching the spearhead free of the corpse, he hefted the weapon for balance and crouched as he faced his opponent.
It was then I knew, as I knew every night, there was only one ending to the tale; only one victor over us all, regardless of the many forms I saw him take.
Usually, in the past, the man with the spear had been Maelgwn, grinning at Arthur with the same cold triumph as when he had raped me. Sometimes he wore a masking helmet, such as Accolon had when he almost killed the High King for Morgan. Once I thought it was Lance standing there, poised to kill my husband, and I had sobbed hysterically at the thought.
This time both figures were in silhouette against the crimson sky, and I saw neither face, though the dance was horribly familiar.
Closer and closer the swordsman came, slashing and feinting with a growing vigor. The spearman, however, moved like a man worn thin, hoarding his energy, using the length of his weapon to keep the flashing blade of his foe at a distance. Yet in spite of the spearman’s longer reach, the swordsman would not be deterred. Risking all things mortal for the chance—the one last chance—of felling his nemesis, he made a ghastly dash toward the heart of the matter. I saw him leap forward and screamed as the cold iron spearhead plunged through armor and warm flesh.
The thrust I had seen so often before pierced my body as well as my dream, pinning me in helpless horror as I watched the warrior begin to die. But this was a new, a different dance, and I stared at the tableau, sickened to the soul, yet unable to look away.
Writhing in agony, shape against shadow, black against bloody heaven, I saw the impaled man lean forward and, using his free hand, pull himself along the ashwood spearshaft. His lungs gurgled; his hands were covered with sweat, and where it had come out his back, the spearhead took blood and entrails with it. Yet hand-hold by hand-hold, he drew his own death closer. The whole of his life’s purpose was brutally, horribly focused in that one act, and when he had sufficiently narrowed the space between himself and the slayer, he lifted his sword in both hands, high above his head.
A light suffused his face, as cold as marsh-fire, as burning as lightning. It leapt eerily between the two men, casting first one and then the other in relief, and I gasped in that terrible heartbeat when I realized that this time the man on the spear was not my husband.
Arthur crouched beside the tree, his face twisted with anguish and disbelief as he gaped at the opponent who had clawed his way close enough to strike.
“Say it, damn you!” the skewered man begged, his upraised blade wavering as his life ebbed. He was glaring at the High King with every passion known to humankind, but Arthur was struck dumb by knowledge and despair.
“The word is son,” the dying man sobbed, bringing the blade crashing down on his father.
“Mordred! Oh, Mordred!” I screamed, flinging myself upright on the pallet. I was drenched with sweat and horror and nausea.
“There, there now,” Enid cried, rushing to my bedside from her room across the hall. “It’s all right, M’lady, it’s all right. It’s only a bad dream.”
“No,” I whimpered as she wrapped her arms around me. “Not this time. This time it was real.” And I began to shake uncontrollably with the sad, miserable certainty of it.
***
So we played out our eternal dance—fathers and sons, mothers and daughters. There was no way I could have changed the patterns of those fates any more than I could undo Camelot, or will the Breton to never cross my path, or keep from loving Igraine, or make Morgan less needful of power and revenge.
It took a while to realize that, but by the time Bedivere requested permission to see me at the convent, I was beginning to come to terms with it.
I met him in a private room, away from the discreet but curious eyes of the nuns, and when the door was closed behind us, he immediately came to my side.
“Ah, Gwen, I do not know how to tell you…” His voice broke, and he took my hand and put it to his cheek. I felt the tears against my skin, and gently raised the other hand so as to hold his face between my palms.
“I saw it, Bedivere—I saw them kill each other in my dream.”
The craggy lieutenant stared down at me, his face furrowed with sorrow.
“And I heard of Gawain’s death at Dover,” I added, leading Arthur’s foster brother to the bench beneath the window. “Was it from Lance’s blow?”
“Aye, I’m afraid it was.” Bedivere sighed heavily. “But at the end the Prince of Orkney regretted all the trouble he’d caused. When it was clear that Mordred was close to claiming the whole of Britain for his own, and the Orcadian knew he was dying, he dictated a letter to Lancelot, begging the Breton’s forgiveness and asking him to come to Arthur’s aid.”
How like Gawain—impetuous, hotheaded, quick to love and hate, laugh and cry. I remembered the gap-toothed redhead and smiled.
“Who else, Bedivere? Who else was lost?”
“Almost everyone, M’lady. It looked to be working out well enough at first, when the armies were drawn up. Morgan le Fey and several of the Druids stepped into the space between the men
and demanded, in the Old Way, that there be no fighting until the matter had been negotiated. Many of the warriors were uncertain—Saxons don’t have a tradition of priests who can stop wars, and the Christians weren’t sure they could trust the Lady. But she and Nimue convinced Mordred and Arthur to meet in the middle, so the armies stood down, with the warning that if a single sword was drawn, the battle would commence.”
Bedivere paused, as though reliving the scene in his mind. “I was at Arthur’s side, just as I had been when he won his first battle, and again when he was crowned. And yet I cannot tell you what was said. He and Mordred stared at each other, neither blinking, neither giving way. Morgan tried to talk with them, tried to find some common ground, but they only sat there, still as stone. Perhaps she could have softened them if there had been more time. But the day grew warm, as autumn days occasionally do, and somewhere in the grasses an adder stretched and crawled across a warrior’s boot. Without thinking the man drew his weapon to cut its head off—and all other warriors drew as well. So it began…and ended…that wicked, wicked day!”
“And Cei?” I asked, seeing the lopsided grin the Seneschal had favored me with during our last meeting in the Tower. “Where is he?”
“Long dead and buried in Brittany, lost in a melee with Lance’s men. But Griflet still lived at Camlann, M’lady. It was he and Lucan the Gatekeeper who helped me carry Arthur from the field.”
“From the field?” For a moment the smallest of hopes flickered before me. “Then he wasn’t killed by Mordred’s stroke?”
“Not outright.” Bedivere swallowed hard and looked away. “When the day was done and there was nothing left but broken bodies strewn about, I wandered through them, trying to find the King. I came upon him, propped against a tree, his hand resting on Mordred’s forehead as though in blessing, or maybe apology. But already he had grown weak, Gwen—pale and clammy with loss of blood, unable even to stand. I was trying to make some kind of litter when Lucan stumbled up, and Griflet as well.
“Together the three of us moved Arthur away from that awful place, taking him, at his request, down to the river-bank. Griflet wasn’t able to complete the trip; he staggered and fell before we reached the water. His tunic was hanging in shreds, and only after he collapsed did I realize his belly had been slit open. The wound was bad enough, but the exertion of carrying his King killed him. Before he died, he asked to be remembered to you.”
Tears filled my eyes for the Kennel Master. A quiet, self-effacing man, he’d been but a boy sent to accompany me south to marry Arthur, a boy who fell in love with a Saxon maid, and gave us all a lifetime of service, a full measure of devotion. It was men like him who had made Camelot possible.
“But Arthur—where is he now?”
“Gone, Gwen. Taken away by the Lady of the Lake. He sent me to hide Excalibur, not wanting it to fall into Saxon hands, and when I returned, I saw a small boat riding on the river current. The King was lying in the prow, with his head in Morgan’s lap, and it seemed they were drifting off toward Glastonbury—to Avalon, or the Isle of Glass. Whether he was dead or still living, I couldn’t tell, but his sister has care of him now, and if anyone can heal him, she can.”
So she kept her promise, and somewhere Arthur may or may not be alive. I smiled bleakly in the face of such uncertainty while Bedivere stood up and moved stiffly toward a table by the door. For the first time I realized he was limping, no doubt from wounds he himself had taken at Camlann.
“I have two reasons to come see you,” he said, reaching for a package that lay on the table. “Although Mordred died, the Saxons were swarming all over the area, and I was afraid they might find Excalibur. Nothing proves the death of a leader so much as having his sword captured by the enemy, so I retrieved it from its hiding place.”
He opened the oiled leather coverings of the bundle and lifted the sword and scabbard from the folds. Even in the dim light of the convent room it shone like a treasure from legend. Going down on one knee, he held it out to me, the hilt on his good hand, the tip supported by the hook on his gauntlet.
“There are some few of us left. Constantine of Cornwall survived, as did Gwyn of Neath, for all that he went coursing everywhere over that battlefield, like his namesake God who escorts the war-dead off to glory! He’d be willing to lead the Welsh, of that I’m sure. And Uwain in Northumbria, who refrained from coming to Camlann, would surely make common cause with us against the Saxons. If you would sanction such a coalition, and raise Excalibur as Arthur’s Queen…”
His voice trailed off when I shook my head, slowly and sadly. “Even if I wanted to pursue the warpath, I cannot, my friend. Arthur’s life, if he lives, is forfeit to my remaining in the convent. I dare not take the risk, unless it was absolutely certain he was dead. And even then, I have it on good authority I have too soft a heart to be a ‘great’ monarch…”
I reached out and ran my fingers along the sheathed sword, beginning at the chape. The designs on the scabbard were as elegant and mysterious as when Morgan first embroidered them, back before she turned against us. The gold-and-silver hilt was as bright as the first day I’d seen it, and I traced the intricate patterns with love and respect. Only the fire of the amethyst was gone; it lay cradled in its mounting like any other lump of stone, as though the spirit that had suffused its owner had now departed from it as well.
Knowing this was as close as I might come to saying farewell to my husband, I bent slowly and placed a kiss on the hilt so often held in his hand.
“If Arthur lives, he will need it again,” I said slowly. “If he doesn’t…I think you should cast it into a lake, as an offering to the Goddess who gave it to him to begin with. There is a kind of symmetry in that, since Morgan raised it for him by the waters of the Black Lake.”
Bedivere nodded silently and rose with a sigh to return Excalibur to its coverings. Then he came back to the bench, and sitting beside me again, he took my hand in his.
“There is one more thing you should know. Lancelot did come to Arthur’s aid, though he arrived too late. There were a few minor battles with various bands of Federates, but most of his warriors have gone back to Brittany without him. He is with me now—waiting in the courtyard—in the hope that you’ll see him.”
I heard the words as from a long way away, like the echo of the wind across the grassy hills, and my response was a bare whisper. “How is he, Bedivere? Is he whole? Sane? As shattered by this as the rest of us?”
Bedivere ducked his head and swallowed hard. “Aye, all of that. Some days he blames himself unmercifully for what has happened. Other days he spends in prayer, lapsing into the kind of trance the mystics seek. Arthur may have found his end, but Lance is still questing. I think that’s why he’s sought you out.”
Sitting very still, remembering the days and nights and years we’d shared, I reached out and covered Bedivere’s hand with my free one.
“Tell him,” I said softly, “that I can never take the place of God. I will always love him, as I have always loved Arthur. But he must find his Grail, just as I must honor my bargain with Morgan.” A single tear slid down my cheek and fell on the back of my hand. “Say I will not see him, but release him from all past promises.”
And so it came to an end, that fine, free dream of love that had raced against the clouds and leapt the rivers of time. Neither one of us, I knew, would cease to care, but each must stay apart from the other for the rest of our lives.
I said good-bye to Bedivere, but not before asking if he wished to see Brigit, whom he had loved as a girl, before she chose the holy life.
“I’ve already spoken to her, when I first arrived. She’s a fine lass, still—and I’m glad she’s by your side again.”
With a last craggy smile Arthur’s foster brother gathered up Excalibur and opened the door. Behind him the quiet of the convent stretched away down the corridors, and he turned to give me a last, final salute.
Only after the door closed behind him did I turn my face to the wall
and begin to cry.
Epilogue
How many years ago that was! Hard to believe that I, Sister Gwenhwyvaer of Rheged, have spent as many years in this holy house as I did on the High Throne of Britain! It is as puzzling as the fact that I, who used to run through the morning of my life, am now grown old and frail, content to shuffle quietly from the crones’ bench in the garden to the back pew in the chapel. And where I once railed at the fate that shattered Camelot and limited my world to these four walls, I now look back and smile. My horizons may have grown smaller, but not my heart.
Over the years bits and snippets of news fell by, winging their way through the beechwood like the hedge sparrows that return to the garden every spring. Arthur was said to have been buried at Glastonbury; to be sleeping in a cave; to be living in Avalon with Morgan. Everyone and no one knew where he was, or even if he was still alive. But if he lives, I dare not leave the convent, for I’m sure Morgan will never forget my promise.
It’s odd how, in the first half of my life, I always knew where Arthur was, and it was Lance who was off wandering. Now it is Arthur I pray for and wonder about, while Lance lives quietly at the hermitage in Glastonbury, with Bors and Bedivere.
They seem to have settled in there, telling their beads at the base of the Tor, in the shadow of Gwyn’s pagan fortlet. Someone said that Palomides was with them for a while, before setting off for the Holy Land in search of Perceval, with whom he plans to pursue the Grail. It is not as unlikely an alliance as one might think—the worldly philosopher and the holy fool. Between the two of them, they ought to apprehend some kind of deity.
There has been other news as well, of Saxon victories and British loss. When London fell, both of Lynette’s daughters made their way here, though only Lora stayed. Megan was too full of life and the deeds of heroes to take the veil, so she left to join her brother, Lancelot, who had gone to fight at the side of Duke Constantine in Cornwall.
In the years after Father Baldwin came to live with us, we passed more than one wintery evening remembering the days of glory…laughing over this adventure, smiling gently at that. Sometimes I tried to make sense of it, to find the shadow of a God’s hand, or trace the moira through it all: Gawain pursuing honor until it became an all-consuming obsession; Lancelot questing for a God forever beyond reach; Galahad dedicated to his Grail while Arthur was salvaging some semblance of civilization from the dark threat of chaos and anarchy. And me—busy from dawn to dusk, living and laughing and loving every moment of it.
Guinevere: The Legend in Autumn Page 47
