Lancelot and Guinevere

by Carol Anne Douglas

  Talwyn rapped on the door of her father's room, and Huw the serving man answered.

  Talwyn darted in past him. "Da!" she cried out.

  Her alarm roused Gryffyd. He leapt up from his chair. "Child! Are the Saxons pursuing you?" He flung an arm around her and looked about desperately for a sword.

  Talwyn pulled two swords from under her cloak and gave one to her father. Huw gasped and moved back into a corner.

  "No, the Saxons are going to burn Queen Guinevere! We must save her!" She gave Gryffyd the look of trust she had had as a child, long before war and madness.

  "We will save her," he replied, straightening his shoulders and looking like the formidable warrior he had once been.

  "My lord, you mustn't. The king has ordered it," Huw muttered in protest.

  "What, is the king a Saxon? I'll take no orders from a savage king," Gryffyd shouted, and he followed Talwyn out of the room.

  Gawaine had seen to it that Catwal was under a physician's care. As he left the physician's house, Bors ran up to him. "Arthur is going to burn Guinevere at the stake!"

  Gawaine froze. "Impossible. He'd never do that."

  Bors shook. "I fear he would. My wife and I begged him not to, but he turned us away. I have a letter that the queen put in my keeping, to give to Lancelot if any strange injury befell her. I've read it, and I think you should as well."

  Gawaine grabbed the vellum and read the words on it. He trembled with rage. "Arthur has threatened her before. She has feared for her life since then. Gods, what manner of man have we followed?"

  "We must plan, and Cai has said he will join our plan." Bors's countenance was as grim as it had been in the Saxon war. "My wife is sobbing her heart out, and I'm near doing that myself."

  Lancelot rode deeper and deeper into the forest, which for once had no charms for her. Red fox and red deer drifted among the trees, but she looked through them as if they were shadows. She had bound up the wound in her arm. The wound bled only a little, but she seemed to bleed everywhere. Her heart had caved in.

  Evening came, but despite her exhaustion she could not rest, except for her mare's sake. Bats fluttered past her, but she did not marvel at their flight. An owl hooted. It probably had a mate and was not as lonely as she would be forever.

  Perhaps she had not killed Gawaine, but she was not sure. Her only certainty was that she was too mad to be Guinevere’s lover-—or anyone’s. And now that she was known to be a woman, she could never return to Camelot.

  She heard sounds of weeping, the only thing that would have drawn her. She followed the sobs and came upon a copse where a young woman sat crumpled under an oak tree. As Lancelot drew close, she saw that the woman was Nimue.

  Lancelot had little desire to speak with Nimue, or with anyone, but she could not ignore such sorrow, despite her own heavy heart. She dismounted and went over to her. "Nimue, why are you crying?" Lancelot asked in a low voice so as not to startle her. "Are you still grieving for Merlin?"

  The tear-stained face turned up to her. "No, I was weeping for Queen Guinevere because the king is going to burn her. I have seen it. I was searching for you to save her, but it seemed that I would never find you."

  "No, it can't be! He couldn't!" Lancelot nearly fell over.

  "He will, at dawn." Nimue's hair was tangled and she had the wild look of a prophet.

  "No!" Lancelot stumbled back to her mare and flung herself over its black flanks. "Run as you never have before, Raven girl," she murmured.

  Riding furiously, Lancelot imagined flames turning Guinevere's legs to ashes, roasting her whole body, while she still defied all the laws of God and man.

  Leaving two lovers to their deaths was too much to bear. And as a child, she had been unable to rescue her mother. She seemed doomed to keep failing to save the women she loved.

  Flames burst in her head. She saw every fire that she had ever known, roasting hares, pigeons, sheep—fat dripping, the fire sizzling—Guinevere. Clothes igniting first, elegant gown, bringing fire to the rest of her body, hair in flames, singed with the dragon's fire.

  If Lancelot had to, she would slay the dragon. The man she had served all her life was far different than she had believed. Nothing, not even madness, not even guilt, must keep her from saving Guinevere.

  Guinevere sat watching her last moon and stars and thinking over her life. How lonely it would have been if she had never known Lancelot.

  There was a gentle knock on her door. For an instant, she let herself imagine it might be Lancelot.

  The door creaked open. She had not expected any more visitors—ever. Had Mordred bribed a guard to let him in?

  Father Donatus entered. "My lady, I have come to shrive you. I demanded that the king allow me to do so." His voice was hoarse, as if he had the ague. Could he have been weeping? Even in the candlelight she could see his frown. Did he frown more at her sin, or her death sentence?

  Guinevere shook her head. "Thank you, good father, but I cannot be shriven, for I shall never repent loving Lancelot."

  The pallor on his face increased. "My lady! Consider! You will burn in the fires of hell!"

  "Perhaps. And perhaps not." He looked so distressed that she wanted to comfort him. "Don't grieve, Father. There are things in this world, and I hope in the next, that you cannot understand. I believe there is mercy for those who love."

  “I am not saying that you should not love Lancelot, my lady, but only that you should confess that you sinned,” he pleaded.

  Guinevere shook her head. “No, I have no regrets about loving. I must hold fast to my love for Lancelot and think about Lancelot to keep myself from hating the king, which I acknowledge is a sin.”

  “Yes, Lady Guinevere, you must purge hatred from your soul.”

  He argued further, but she resisted.

  Finally, the priest pulled a small vial from the sleeve of his cassock.

  "At least take this, my lady. It may help ease the pain of the flames in this world, if not the next."

  "How kind of you!" Guinevere accepted the vial and was so moved that she almost consented to be shriven, just to ease his worries. But she still refused.

  Gawaine burst into Arthur's room. "Don't tell me you're going to burn Guinevere!" he cried out.

  The king remained seated and spoke coolly. "I'm afraid I must. It's a pity. This was treason, after all."

  "Horseshit!" Gawaine yelled, shaking with anger. Rank meant nothing to him at the moment. "You practically ordered her to lie with me years ago, so you'd have an heir. Then you let her be with Lance. You didn't mind, as long as you thought Lance was a man."

  The king retained his composure. A wolfhound pup nuzzled his knees, and he patted it. "Of course I gave her leave to lie with another man, but only so that she could bear a child. This perversion could never lead to that, so it was wrong."

  Arthur seemed like a man of ice, quite unlike his usual hearty self. But then, how was a man who was going to burn his wife supposed to look? Gawaine felt a wave of revulsion. He wanted to be out in the forest looking for Lancelot, yet he knew that he had to save Guinevere first. He had to do what Lancelot would want him to do. But he was impatient at the delay.

  “You care only because they were discovered. Exile Guinevere; don't kill her.”

  “What do you care about Guinevere?" Arthur twisted his ring. "You’ve always disliked her.”

  “What does it matter whether I dislike her? Do you think that because a woman doesn’t smile at me, I’d let her be murdered?” He glared at Arthur.

  “This isn’t murder. She would be executed for her crimes.”

  “If everyone who committed adultery was executed, few of us would be left alive,” Gawaine argued.

  "I would pardon Lancelot, because of all the service she has done for me, but never Guinevere. Did you know that Lancelot was a woman?" Arthur added, in a conversational tone, beckoning for Gawaine to be seated and have some wine.

  Gawaine remained standing. If Arthur was going to mainta
in this calm pose, he would have to try to do so, too. Reining himself in, he managed not to shout. "I've known it for a couple of years. What does that matter?"

  The king's eyes widened and his jaw dropped open. "Did she tell you?" He scrutinized Gawaine's face.

  Knowing that the king was really asking whether he was Lancelot's lover, Gawaine answered, "Not because she wanted to." It seemed mad to be chatting and storytelling at the moment, but perhaps a story might distract Arthur from his rage at Guinevere. "It is a simple tale. One evening, we were riding in the forest, and we came upon a young woman who was great with child and moaning in pain.

  "Lance exclaimed, 'Are you about to give birth, my lady?' and the woman said, 'I am.'

  "'You cannot do that alone in the forest, my lady,' Lancelot said, but the woman replied, 'I must. I couldn't stay where they know me.'

  "'I know nothing about these things, but let me try to help you,' said Lance.

  "'Go away!' the woman cried. 'I won't let any man touch me.'

  "'I'm a woman,' Lance said, and I nearly fell off my horse. She swung down from her horse and told me, 'Gawaine, don't stop there staring. I have heard that midwives use hot water, so go fetch some water, build a fire, and then leave us.'

  "I did as she bade me. Many hours later, when I returned, the mother was sleeping with her babe in her arms, and Lance looked weary. 'Thank the Holy Mother I don't have to do that,' she said. 'It looks more difficult than a battle.'

  "And that's all there is to the story."

  Arthur frowned. "That's the cleanest story I've ever heard you tell. Are you sure it's the true one?"

  "Of course it is." Gawaine was pleased with the story because it was just what Lancelot would have said and done if such a thing had happened. He had no intention of telling about how he actually found out, because Lancelot refused to share a bed at an inn with him, a story that might have appealed to the king much more.

  "Why, if you knew she was a woman, didn't you try to..."

  "No, of course not, she's just an old friend," Gawaine said brusquely.

  "But a very handsome one," Arthur insisted, sighing almost imperceptibly. "I suppose she's a virgin, then?"

  "She surely is." Discussing Lancelot's body with another man, even to say that, was distasteful to him.

  "Didn't you mind that she has defeated you in fighting contests?"

  "Her skill has saved my life many times. How could I object to that? It doesn't matter now. You cannot burn Guinevere." He tried to keep from yelling. "That's all that matters."

  "Why didn't you tell me about Lancelot?" The royal tone was aggrieved. Arthur frowned at him. "I have never harmed any woman."

  "And so you must not harm Guinevere." Gawaine clenched and unclenched his fists. "Do you no longer want to be known as Arthur the Just? How can a king famed for his kindness and justice burn his wife?"

  When Gawaine had mentioned Guinevere's name, Arthur's eyes had briefly held the look of a bear about to attack, but the king took a drink of wine and patted the dog again, as if to show his benevolence.

  "I must burn her for justice sake, of course. It is the law that for a wife to commit adultery is treason against her husband, and how much greater is that treason if her husband is the king? It would be unjust if I did not apply the law to my own wife." He spoke almost solemnly, as if from his throne.

  "You want to kill her!" Gawaine shook his fist in his cousin's royal face. "You hate the woman, I know you do. I won't follow a man who'd kill his wife, and if I go, I'll take others with me."

  Arthur stared at him. He grabbed Gawaine's arm in a restraining manner. Gawaine did not resist. "Calm yourself, Gawaine. You don't know what you're saying. You are sworn to follow me. But I'll forgive you," the king added magnanimously.

  Arthur turned to look out of the window, towards the dark farms and the town full of people who loved him. The rain had ended, leaving a cloudless, star-studded sky. "Strange about Lancelot. I'm a trifle sorry for her. The poor thing must never have had a man, but of course that was what she really wanted."

  Gawaine grunted. "Lancelot loves Guinevere. Stop changing the subject."

  Arthur shook his head. "Nonsense, they are only two women."

  Gawaine thought not only of Lancelot and Guinevere, but of Galahad. So would men dismiss any love that his daughter would have. He couldn't help retorting, "What of it? Do you know so much less about lying with women than I thought you did?"

  Arthur shook his head. "It seems that even the women we believe we know are strangers. What do women want?"

  Exhaling, Gawaine tried to cool his temper and answer shrewdly. "I think I know, but do you?"

  "Different women want different things, to be sure," Arthur said, throwing a stick for the dog, which bounded across the room.

  "So far, so good," Gawaine said. Arthur's pose of playing with the dog angered him.

  "Most of them want a good man to lie with, the best ones want children, and the worst ones want to rule over men," Arthur pronounced, pouring himself more wine. The dog returned the stick to him, and he threw it again.

  Gawaine sighed with exasperation. "What women want is to be able to decide what they want."

  Frowning, Arthur grumbled. "That's a foolish answer. To want to be able to decide what to want. That amounts to nothing. They just want their own way, all the time, whether it makes sense or not."

  "It's not nothing, it's everything. No caers or jewels or even caresses are worth anything if you can't say who or what you want," Gawaine observed, speaking as if to a child. "You would be miserable if you didn't have that, and so would I, and so are they." He had learned something from Lancelot and Galahad, he reckoned.

  Arthur just shook his head and said, "Some women might know what they want. But virgins can't." The dog brought him the stick, but he ignored it.

  Gawaine seethed, his temples throbbing. His daughter did indeed know what she wanted. "Lancelot will know that she doesn't want Guinevere to burn. If Guinevere is burned, Lancelot will go so deep into madness that she'll never recover."

  "Nonsense. She was so ashamed at what she did with Guinevere that she ran off without her. She never wants to see her again."

  "That can't be true. Lancelot ran off because she had a fit of madness." Gawaine groaned. He couldn't bear to think that it was because she thought she had killed him.

  Arthur looked out of the window at the contest field where men working as hastily as they could in the dark had just finished erecting the scaffold for the queen's incineration and the pile of sticks under it. The structure's outline was barely visible by the light of their torches.

  The dog went off to lie in a corner.

  "You don't understand all the wrong Guinevere has done to me," Arthur said, his face reddening. "Remember Enid? Before she because Gereint's wife, she was my mistress. She became with child, but Guinevere had her fiendish old woman end the pregnancy."

  Gawaine stared at him. "Did Enid ask her to?"

  "Yes, but that does not excuse it." His voice rising to a frenzied pitch, Arthur proclaimed, "Guinevere murdered my child. She claims she did not know it was mine, but she must have."

  "I don't believe Guinevere would do that deliberately." So this was the source of Arthur's anger. Gawaine tried to calm him. "You've never gotten any woman with child. Sometimes women think they are with child when they are not. No doubt that happened with Enid. She fretted, and went to Guinevere's woman, who gave her something to bring on her courses. But there never was a child, Arthur."

  "I think there was, and I will be avenged on Guinevere."

  Gawaine's hands were curled fists but he forced himself to unclench them. He wanted to strike the face that was like his own.

  "Even if you hate Guinevere, spare her for the sake of Lancelot, who has saved all our lives many times and has always served you well."

  "Hah! Nothing could be more debauched, more degraded than what she and my wife have done." Arthur spat on the floor. "It's like something whores
might do if there were no men around."

  Gawaine's shook with rage. "Nothing Lancelot could do would ever be degraded or debauched. Nor Guinevere either."

  "Defend Lancelot if you like." Arthur said magnanimously. "But leave Guinevere to me. She's my wife, and I have the right to do anything I want with her." Arthur pounded the table.

  "No, you don't. You can't kill her." Gawaine pounded back at him.

  "I am your sovereign. I have let you speak to me in a way I would never allow anyone else to speak. I have heard your arguments, but my mind is unchanged. If you have nothing more constructive to say, you can leave." Arthur nodded towards the door.

  A rosy light was starting to appear in the sky.

  "It's dawn," Arthur said, yawning. "I should see whether the guards have finished the pyre. They are nervous about executing the queen." A hint of cruelty stole into his eyes and his voice.

  Gawaine had never seen a cruel look on Arthur's face before this night. Determination to fight, yes. Anger, yes. Implacability, yes. But not cruelty. Gawaine held back from shuddering.

  "You have been trying to distract me, but I have distracted you." Arthur gave him a most unpleasant smile.

  "I've always been cleverer than you are. If you had understood how unshakable my determination to execute Guinevere was, you might have broken into her room and rescued her."

  Sickened, Gawaine pulled back. "Why, that's true, I would have."

  "It is time," Arthur said, again looking out of the window. "They have already brought Guinevere out on the field. We must go down."

  They saw Guinevere, dressed in a plain black gown, her hands bound, led by guards.

  Where was Bors? He was supposed to come to the field and take Guinevere away. For Gawaine had not relied entirely on his powers of persuasion. As the better fighter, he should have been the one to save Guinevere—though perhaps she'd rather die—but Bors could not have been the one to try to convince or at least detain the king. He would only have tried prayer, and Arthur would have sent him away.