Lancelot- Her Story

by Carol Anne Douglas

  Her nurse brought her warm possets to drink and tried to tempt her to eat. Anna picked at the food, but still she did not speak.

  "Don't you want to get up, Lamb?" Rathtyen said. "It's a bright day. You've always been so fond of walking about. I'll go out with you, if you'd like."

  Anna shook her head. The world would never be as it had been. The rivers and lakes would be dry. The trees would lose all their leaves and never grow new ones. There would be no flowers in the world without her mother, no birds to sing her home.

  Then her father was there again. "You must speak, Anna. I see that you don't want to live, but you must. God has given you life, and you must accept his gift.

  "I have sworn to be pure for the rest of my life to thank God for saving you. No doubt you want to be pure, too, after this horror, my little one. I cannot bear to send you away to a convent but I can raise you as a boy, so you will be safe forever. And it will be easier for you to inherit my property, for I shall have no other child. You're the one who put out the murderer's eye, aren't you?"

  Anna nodded. She didn't want to go away to a convent.

  Pretending to be a boy sounded far better.

  "Brave girl." He patted her hand. "I'll train you to fight to protect yourself. Do you want to learn?"

  She nodded again. She never wanted anyone to do to her what the murderer had done to her mother.

  Marcus sighed, apparently in relief. "You will be Antonius, as if reborn. I'll tell everyone that my Anna died, and that you are my brother's son come to live with me. Only Rathtyen and Father Matthew will know. Is that well, Antonius?"

  There was so much anxiety in his voice that she had to speak. "Yes, Father. It is well."

  He embraced her. "In front of others, you must call me Uncle Marcus now, but I shall always be your father."

  It wouldn't be so bad being a boy, she thought. She wouldn't have a nurse following her around and she wouldn't have to sew. And when she was older, she could have a fast horse, like father's.

  Not marrying didn't matter. She had never thought about what a husband would be like, except that he should live near her parents. Babies were strange, crying things, and she wouldn't mind not having any.

  Rathtyen brought her a boy's breeches and tunic, and helped her dress. She cut Antonius's black hair off at the shoulders. Rathtyen sniffed while she cut the hair, but Antonius did not.

  "Poor Lamb, won't you mind giving up your pretty gowns?"

  "No, Rathtyen," she said honestly. She hadn't given the gowns a thought. "Anna must be reborn. I'm Antonius now."

  "You're such a beautiful girl, too, even more so than your poor mother. I never said much because I didn't want to turn your head, but what a shame it is to try to make such a beauty into a boy."

  "I don't care," Antonius said. She knew she had brown eyes like her mother and a long face and Roman nose like her father, but she didn't think she was beautiful.

  Rathtyen shed a few tears. "This is the last time I can dress you, Lamb, but I'll be near whenever you need me. Poor thing, you've become so much thinner that people will believe you're a different child. You must eat now and be strong so you can learn to use weapons as your father wants."

  "I shall." Instead of being like her mother, she would learn how to be like her father.

  In a few days, Antonius's father brought her and Rathtyen back to his villa. Antonius rode in a cart with Rathtyen and took little interest in the hills and trees they passed. They arrived late at night. Antonius looked away from the gate because she knew the murderer's head would be there.

  Rathtyen took Antonius to a room that had been arranged for her. It was much like her old room, with a warm brazier in the corner and fur coverings on the bed. The straw mattress was just as comfortable as the old one and the down-filled cushions were just as fine. But there was a wolfskin rug on the floor instead of the sheepskin rugs in her old room.

  "I must leave you now, Lamb," Rathtyen told her. "I can't sleep in your room anymore. Pretending to be a boy means that you'll always have to sleep alone."

  Anna said nothing, but she lay awake for a long time. She felt as if she were in a cavern all by herself, for the rest of her life.

  The next morning, Rathtyen knocked at the door. She escorted Antonius through the villa as if showing it to her for the first time. Antonius pretended not to know where anything was because she was supposed to be new to it all.

  She must act like a boy, she thought. Would a boy be more excited than she was by the weapons and shields hanging on the walls? Would a boy notice the stitches in a wall hanging? She used to think she might make one someday, but now she knew she would not, and the thought relieved her. No need to spend years stitching. Would a boy speak in a louder voice to the serving people? Would he be less careful about not bringing mud inside? Could she ever be exactly a like a boy? And did she want to be?

  Rathtyen told her the servants’ names, as if she had not known them all her life. She must act like a boy, she reminded herself again and again.

  They passed through the kitchen, where a haunch of mutton was roasting on a spit. The smell nauseated Antonius, though it never had before, and the blood dripping from the meat made her turn away. She looked without recognition at Gwella, the old cook.

  "Give young Antonius a bit of wheaten bread," Rathtyen ordered.

  Staring at Antonius, Gwella cut a slice and handed it to her.

  "Thanks," Antonius muttered, in a voice that she hoped sounded different than it had when she was Anna. She chewed the bread, but it had less flavor now that her mother was dead.

  When Anna walked out of the villa, the first thing she saw was the head stuck on a pike near the gate. Though the head had shriveled and been picked at by birds, she recognized it all too well. Shuddering, she averted her eyes. A wave of nausea made her feel that perhaps the bread had been too much to eat. Her legs threatened to buckle under her, but she forced herself to keep standing because she must be Antonius, who had not witnessed the murder. Now that she knew where the head was, she could avoid looking in that direction, but she felt that the killer had invaded her life. The thought that the man was burning in hell gave her little comfort.

  She would go to see her horse. That would soothe her.

  Entering the stable, she enjoyed the mingled smells of horse sweat and hay. Even the smell of horseshit was not unpleasant after her long confinement in bed, too far away from horses.

  "I am the Lord Marcus's nephew, Antonius," she announced to Duach, a stablehand who walked with a limp.

  She tried to make her voice slightly haughty, so she would not be questioned. He nodded. "I heard you were coming."

  "My uncle says I am to have a horse called Shadow," she said, naming her own horse. "Where is this horse?

  "She's in that stall." Duach pointed to Shadow's stall.

  "Where are the brushes for grooming?" Antonius asked, though she knew very well.

  He pointed to the brushes hanging on the wall. She selected one and approached her mare, who was such a dark brown that she was nearly black.

  Shadow whinnied in greeting. The mare was not fooled by seeing her with short hair and breeches. Looking about, Antonius hoped that Duach did not hear and did not guess that she had been Anna. She did not see him, so perhaps he was not near.

  She patted Shadow's neck, and the mare nuzzled her shoulder.

  While Antonius was grooming Shadow, she heard low voices.

  "The boy's the lord's bastard, I'm sure of it, brought here now the lady's dead and can't object," said Macon, a serving man of middle age.

  Antonius crouched down in the straw in her horse's stall and listened.

  Duach pitched in. "He's a bastard, all right, but I'd say he's King Ban's son, and our lord has brought him here to curry favor with the king," he said. "A clever man, Lord Marcus."

  "King Ban's son, my ass! He's Lord Marcus's own by-blow!" Macon insisted. Both he and Duach laughed.

  Pressing her cheek against her horse's
flank, Antonius was only a little dismayed. She did not want to be thought of as a bastard, but there was nothing to be done about that. She would not tell her father because he might have the men whipped.

  When they had gone, Antonius led her horse out of the stable and mounted her. She could ride out alone! That was what it meant to be a boy. The villa no longer confined her.

  She rode into the woods and found that the lake was still there. Traitorous waters! How dare they still ripple, though her mother was gone. She threw herself on the ground and wept, angry at the lake. But as she lay there, the cool and still earth seemed to welcome her. Perhaps her mother's spirit had passed with her blood into the land. This was the closest she could come to lying at her mother's bosom. The thought comforted her.

  Father Matthew, the balding old priest of Marcus's chapel, sat with Antonius in the library, where Marcus kept his many books. One had a sewn leather cover and the rest were scrolls.

  "Your father wants to raise you to be a nobleman, so you must learn more than a girl would have had to," the priest said, nodding as if teaching a girl to be a boy was something he did every day. "You must learn a little history and even some theology. You may go to a court someday and hear men discuss religion, so you must know enough to be safe from heresy."

  "Yes, Father. Just tell me what to believe. I don't want to be a heretic," Antonius said. She vowed to be holy, as her mother had wanted her to be.

  "Good child." The priest smiled paternally and picked up a scroll. "We shall read The Acts of St. Paul and Thecla, for the holy Thecla dressed as a man, the better to serve Almighty God as a virgin."

  Anna squirmed as she tried to read the scroll, for she was not fond of book learning and wished that Latin words did not have so many different endings. The library's musty smell was not pleasing to her.

  Later, Antonius knelt in the villa's chapel, repeating every prayer her mother had taught her, until the words seemed almost magical, a link that bound her to her mother, and a way that her mother's voice could speak through her lips. Could her mother hear her? If the saints could, why not her own mother?

  Marcus brought Antonius to the practice room, which was empty of furniture but had weapons hanging on the walls. She wondered whether swords and spears, blades marked from use, might tell of her father's and grandfather's battles if she listened hard enough.

  "Here is where I practiced when I was young, before I crossed the sea to Britain to help King Uther Pendragon fight the Saxons," her father said. "I was retracing the journey of my own father, who left Britain to come here to Lesser Britain."

  Antonius remembered her father's tales of how her grandfather had married the daughter of their villa's owner and become the overlord.

  The practice room was the one room in the villa that did not seemed filled with her mother's spirit, and that was a relief.

  Her father showed her a wooden sword, a steel sword, some small throwing spears, and a long thrusting spear.

  "This is the room where my father taught me to fight. You must become a fighting man in order to be safe," he told her. "You no longer look like a girl, so you will not incite any man's lust." His face was unsmiling, grimmer than it had been when her mother was alive. "Nevertheless, you must always be prepared for an attack. First, you will learn how to use this wooden sword, which is weighted with lead. Then we'll move on to the steel sword, and finally the spears. Try holding each of them."

  The wooden sword felt good in her hand. The two-edged steel slashing sword felt even better, though it was heavy. She was proud to touch it, for she never had been allowed to when she was a girl. She ran her finger along the edge to learn how sharp it was. A small cut gave her the answer.

  Then she took hold of the thrusting spear, which was wooden with a metal head. It was awkward to hold such a long weapon. She wondered whether she could ever fight with it.

  "Any lad of ten summers would have such difficulties," Marcus assured her. "Just keep trying to lift the spear into a fighting position, while you learn agility with the wooden sword and good aim with the throwing spears."

  She took up the wooden sword again, and he put his hands over hers to show her how to hold it properly.

  "I've had some chain mail made for you, also," her father said, handing her a heavy coat of interlocking rings sewn on leather.

  Antonius fingered it curiously, enjoying its roughness compared with the soft gowns she had worn. This would be her new skin, which would save her life someday, no doubt.

  "It won't keep out the fiercest slash of a sword or throw of a spear, but it will be a good barrier," Marcus told her. "It's best if you can put on your own chain mail, so I had the armorer make the kind that ties on the side, rather than going over your head."

  He showed her how to put it on and she almost fainted from the weight of it. She staggered and grabbed hold of a window ledge to steady herself.

  "You'll learn to wear it in time," her father assured her. "Just have patience."

  Each day they practiced fighting with the wooden sword and throwing the shorter spears at a straw-stuffed target, and each day she tried to hold the long spear in fighting position.

  Her father was gentle with her, but he never smiled. Sometimes she heard him sigh.

  The seasons came and went. Snow covered the ground where her mother's body had lain, and, though Christmas at her father's holding was subdued, they did roast some geese. Violets appeared in the spring. Antonius felt no desire to pick them. Birds returned and sang, but her mother was not there to hear them. Not even the summer sun could warm the chill in her heart.

  She visited the forest at times, but she no longer saw it as a place where squirrels might speak and magic might happen. Beams of light among the trees still wove a spell around her, but the rotting leaves reminded her – the forest was a place of death.

  Antonius woke at first light, stretched, and flexed her muscles. The spring breeze blew through the window. She was proud of how strong she had become. Her body pleased her, except for her chest, which wasn't flat anymore. She had hoped it would stay that way.

  Rathtyen came to Antonius's room and closed the door. The nurse's brown hair, which was graying slightly, strayed out of her braid. Before Antonius's mother had died, Rathtyen had always taken greater care of her appearance.

  "You've grown very tall for a woman, but you'll need this to bind your breasts, if you persist in pretending to be a boy," the nurse said, presenting Antonius with a long cloth of white linen.

  Antonius looked at the wolfskin rug on the floor. She was glad that she was slim and straight, with buds smaller than other girls', but still they were growing. At least they didn't interfere with her fighting practice, which now seemed to tire her father more than it did her.

  "Of course I shall continue," Antonius replied. "Will you show me how to wrap the cloth?"

  So she took off her woolen bedgown and Rathtyen, sighing, wrapped the cloth tightly around her.

  "What if this prevents your milk from coming when you have a child?" Rathtyen asked, shaking her head and making a disapproving sound with her tongue.

  "I never will have a child," Antonius assured her.

  Rathtyen groaned. "I hope your father knows what he's doing."

  "Don't worry yourself," Antonius insisted. The cloth pressing down her breasts was uncomfortable, but she would not say so.

  "What would your mother say about this pretending to be a boy?" Rathtyen mumbled, tying the cloth.

  Antonius bit her lip. "Surely she would understand, wouldn't she? I wouldn't want to displease her."

  "Of course, of course." Rathtyen looked sorry she had spoken.

  Antonius put on her tunic, which was crimson. Though she did not wear gowns any more, she still cared about colors, and preferred to wear any shade of red, which Rathtyen said best suited her. She prayed to be forgiven for that vanity.

  Antonius went to the practice room, where she found a strange man standing beside her father. He was an aging man with
powerful muscles and numerous scars that his sweeping moustaches could not hide. His hair was brown, with a trace of gray.

  "Here is my nephew, Antonius." Marcus's voice was full of pride. "Antonius, this is Dinias, a warrior of great reputation. You have learned all of fighting that I can teach you, but you have the promise to be a better fighter than I, so I have engaged Dinias to train you."

  "Many thanks, Uncle." Antonius apprehensively surveyed the stranger. Surely her father would not have engaged him if he were not a good man. The prospect of more lessons excited her, though being around a strange man sounded less pleasing.

  Dinias eyed Antonius skeptically, as though teaching a boy was not what he most wanted to do.

  "Let's see what you can do, boy," he said wearily, picking up a wooden sword and a shield. "Come at me and make me defend myself."

  Antonius picked up her wooden sword and advanced on him. She struck his shield even before he had fully raised his sword.

  "How did you do that?" Dinias exclaimed.

  "Pardon me, did I move too fast?" Antonius feared that she had done something wrong.

  Dinias chuckled. "No, I moved too slowly. Let's try it again."

  Again Antonius struck his shield before he could parry the blow.

  "Swift, isn't he?" Dinias said to her father. "I don't think I've ever seen anyone faster. And agile, too, aren't you, lad?"

  "I'll wait and give you time to get into position," Antonius said, deferring to him.

  "Hmpf." Dinias did not sound so pleased at her words, but he raised his sword and moved on Antonius.

  She moved away before his blow could strike, then leapt into position and dealt a blow to his shield.

  Dinias smiled. "What have we here? Your father was right. You could be a fine fighter. I shall teach you everything I know."

  The weather grew hot, and she learned how to fight, sweating in her chain mail. As well as swordplay, she learned how to charge on horseback, thrusting the blunted long spear at her instructor's shield and avoiding his weapon.

  After many a fall, she was able to sit well enough on her horse to keep from plunging off when her own shield was struck. She also learned the use of a bow and arrow.