"No!" Stunned, Guinevere clasped one of his large hands.
She realized that she knew almost nothing about her father. What had Leodegran really thought, what had he really loved? He had liked hunting and the food at his table, but was there more to him than that? Had he wondered whether she was happy, or just boasted that his daughter was High Queen? He had generally smiled at her, and he had brought a priest to teach her more than other girls knew. Perhaps he had been a good father to her, though not to Gwynhwyfach.
Guinevere had not seen Leodegran in years, but the knowledge that he was gone somehow made the world a lonelier place. Not weeping, she sat down on a bench and stared at Rhys's familiar face, which regarded her with sympathy. She gestured for him to sit beside her.
Arthur arrived soon and hugged her, but she remained aloof. He spoke of appointing a regent until her half-brother, Cadwallon, was grown.
Guinevere counted it part of the pain that she could not have Lancelot's comforting until the next night.
When she did see her warrior, Lancelot was of course as sympathetic as Guinevere could wish, but remembering the knock at the door made both of them nervous for weeks afterwards.
Sitting in the queen's room, Lancelot tried to ignore her sore muscles, aching from much sword practice, and to revive enough for long embraces. Unfortunately, she was sometimes too tired to make love, but they could sleep in each other’s arms nevertheless.
"Tomorrow, would you accompany a lady to the Convent of the Holy Mother?" Guinevere asked. Her voice indicated that she expected Lancelot to agree. "Ailsa has refused to remarry. She says she could never lie with anyone but Rhun. When he died, she was carrying his child, but in her grief she lost it. She has begged her family to let her stay in a convent instead of marrying again, and I have persuaded them to let her. If she wants to leave it after a while, she can do so. I think you would be the most appropriate escort for her."
Lancelot paused. She wanted to avoid going to that convent because it was difficult to keep any secrets from the wonderful old nun Mother Ninian, and Lancelot didn't want to admit that she was an adulterer.
"Perhaps Bors would be more suited to the task?"
Guinevere frowned slightly, which she rarely did in Lancelot's presence. "His wife will give birth to another child any day. You are the one who should go."
"If you wish it." Lancelot tried to conceal her reluctance.
"Poor Ailsa." Guinevere sighed. "Once I offered to teach her to read. Now she says she's sorry she declined, but I told her the nuns would gladly teach her. She needs to think of something besides her loss."
The next day was warm, as was to be expected in summer. Goldfinches chirped, but few other birds were conspicuous.
If Ailsa was grieving, she did not show it, but neither did she show much pleasure in the journey. Her face and voice lacked expression.
Lancelot tried to be courteous, but she did not burden Ailsa with unnecessary conversation.
The journey was uneventful.
After she had brought Ailsa to a plump sister porter who embraced the young woman as if she were kin, Lancelot asked to see Maire.
The sister porter told Lancelot to wait in the garden, where she admired the foxglove and herbs. The place was well-tended, as she would have expected a convent garden to be.
Maire entered from the kitchen door. Her hair was bound in a veil, but she wore dark blue, rather than the nuns' black. The circles under her eyes were gone, and she looked well fed. There were traces of flour on her hands.
"Greetings. Are you content here?" Lancelot asked, inclining her head.
"Indeed I am, thank you. I'd be happy to stay here forever." Maire smiled, but she did not look Lancelot in the eye.
Thinking that Maire wanted to forget the past, Lancelot merely said, "Very good."
"It's a feast day tomorrow, so I'm making honeycakes. Let me pack some for you." Maire hurried off on that errand.
But it was Mother Ninian who brought the basket of honeycakes. "I had hoped to see you sooner, Lancelot." The slight reproach was said in a warm tone. "Would you walk in the forest with me?"
"Of course." Lancelot pretended to study the herbs in great detail. It was strange for a nun to walk alone with a warrior, but perhaps this old woman was allowed more liberties than other nuns.
Lancelot was impressed by how quickly the nun strode, like a much younger woman. When they came to a sunlit clearing in the woods, Ninian rested against a tall yew and turned to her.
"I have something to confess to you," Lancelot said, as she had known she would. Her voice faltered. "I am a woman."
"I knew that, dear." Mother Ninian looked as if she saw into Lancelot's soul, and apparently she did.
Lancelot gasped. "Truly? And you know how fearful I have been?"
The old nun nodded. "That's why I wish you had come to me earlier. Have you found love? I had thought you would." She sounded as if the answer was certain.
Lancelot felt her face become hot with blushing. "Yes, I have found a love and she loves me well." What would the nun think of the word "she"?
"And is there more that you want to tell me?" Ninian's voice was like that of kind confessor. She seemed not surprised in the least to hear that Lancelot's love was a woman.
"She is married," Lancelot admitted, scarcely daring to look at Mother Ninian.
The old nun's face did not show the dismay that Lancelot had expected, nor was there any censure in her voice. "And who is she?"
Lancelot forced herself to say the words "The queen. I am an adulterer."
Mother Ninian raised her eyebrows. "Do you think the king loves his wife?" she asked.
"Surely he must, but Guinevere says he doesn't," Lancelot said, though she remembered that the king hadn't contradicted Gawaine when he had said that Morgan was the only woman Arthur had ever loved. And Guinevere had insisted that Arthur didn't love her. But how could he fail to love such a beautiful, brilliant, desirable wife?
"He loved his sister, but he abandoned her." Ninian looked into Lancelot's eyes. "People are not always what they seem. I am a nun and not a nun; Queen Guinevere is a wife and not a wife."
"But this is adultery, and perhaps treason, too,” Lancelot said, appalled that a nun, even a partial one, would take sin so lightly.
Ninian shook her head. "Not loving her might be treason against yourself and Guinevere. You love her dearly." She reached out and patted Lancelot's arm. "You had fallen into the sin of despair, and Guinevere has saved you from it."
Could it be that, instead of sinning with her, Guinevere was saving her from greater sins? It was almost too good to be true. "You are too kind to me. Much more than I deserve." Lancelot choked on the words.
"If I am kind to you, it is because I have sympathy for you, living a life always in disguise." The old woman studied her face as if it were a book. "I know what it is to wear a disguise. I have not always been a Christian nun. Once I was a holy woman at Avalon."
Lancelot stared at the old woman as if she were a shape-shifter. Of course Lancelot had known other pagans, like Gawaine, but they were not especially holy. And Merlin was so remote that he seemed to live in another world.
Ninian sat down beside her and held her hand.
Lancelot wondered how she had looked when she had not worn the black and white habit of a nun. What color had Ninian's hair been when she was young?
"Avalon is gone now. The priests have claimed it," the old woman said, nevertheless smiling so that her wrinkles seemed like works of beauty.
"When I was young, I believed that the old ways would last forever, that people would always invoke the gods and goddesses under the names I knew." Ninian sighed. "My friend Merlin thought so, too."
"Merlin? You know him? I don't understand him at all," Lancelot said, trying not to show the fear she always felt when she thought of the king's old adviser.
"To be sure I know him. How not?" The nun's voice sounded far away, not unlike Merlin's. "We learned togethe
r – perhaps too much. We have lost our world. He has pledged himself to save Britain with Arthur, for Arthur is all we have. It is hard for those of us who grieve for the past, the present, and what is to come." She stared off into the trees as if she could see the future in them.
"You know the future?" Lancelot whispered, awed by one who had that gift. "What will happen to us all?"
"Do you think I would tell you?" cried the old nun, throwing up her hands. "No one can bear to know what will be. If you look at Merlin's face, you can see what a burden he bears. Do you imagine that mine is less? No, I shall tell you about the past, if you wish, but not a word about the future."
"That is very wise, no doubt," Lancelot admitted. What if Guinevere would stop loving her someday? It was better not to know now. She sat listening to the nun and shredding bits of bark that had fallen on the ground.
"Do you remember the feathers I gave you?" Ninian asked.
"Of course. I have kept them," Lancelot said. Her hand touched her chest where the hidden bag of her small treasures lay.
"And I suspect that someone gave you a similar feather earlier."
Lancelot gasped. "Indeed. A crone who taught me much about the forest gave me such a feather when I left Lesser Britain."
"They are the feathers of ravens." Ninian's voice was low and solemn, as if she spoke of the holy saints. "The raven is the one who bears us away in death. When you carry these raven feathers that have been blessed, it knows you for one of its own and will not take you too soon. That may be why you have not found death in battle, even when you hoped to find it."
Lancelot shuddered. "That sounds like a gift from the devil."
Ninian grasped her wrist, hard.
Lancelot's hand shook under her grasp.
"I do not traffic with devils, and indeed there are no such beings, as far as I know. These are gifts of life, for you must live. You have much work to do."
"I have come to you with the sin of adultery on my soul. Must I add to it the sin of heresy?" Lancelot shook her head. She loved the old nun and wanted to believe her every word, yet she was unsure.
Ninian put an arm around her with more open affection than might be expected from a nun. "Do not let me hurt your conscience. I do not want to tell you more than you can hear. Be easy in your heart."
Lancelot returned the old woman's embrace.
She wondered whether she could ever be easy in her heart again. "I'm not sure I want to know about the past or the future," she said. "The present is difficult enough for me."
The old woman looked in her eyes. "I want to give you the gift of understanding, though it is a difficult gift to receive. Blessed are they who can understand life and do not reject it."
"I shall ponder your words," Lancelot said, puzzling over them.
As they walked away, she heard the song of a wren. Like Guinevere's love, it warmed her.
She accompanied the old nun back to the convent, thinking how difficult it must be to be shut in those four walls.
What would it be like to think only of divine love, not human?
Still thinking of Lancelot, Ninian made her way through the convent gate, but she was deterred on her way past the vegetable garden by her good friend, Sister Darerca. Ninian smiled at tall Darerca and admired her bright blue eyes, framed by thick eyebrows.
"So, what witch medicines were you out gathering today, my pretty pagan? Or were you communing with one of your animal deities?" said the tall nun, shaking her head.
"I was meeting Lancelot properly. We scarcely had a chance to talk when I met her before."
"The one who delivered our good housekeeper from the army? No doubt she's worth your trouble. A good thing it is that I came from across the sea to save you from spending your whole life worrying about people." Sister Darerca wagged her finger, as if in mild scolding.
"You did nothing of the sort, Darerca." Ninian laughed and wagged her finger in imitation of her friend.
"Don't mock me. You believe only in your pagan visions. But didn't I picture you from far across the sea, and leave Ireland, the fairest land that ever was, just to gladden your heart?" Darerca gave her a look that was much fonder than nuns generally gave one another.
"You did no such thing." Ninian chortled, nevertheless moving closer to her. "You came to this convent years before I did."
"And didn't I know that you were in the future? And didn't you call me from there? And didn't I leave the holy land where I learned all I know at the knees of the great Saint Brigid of Kildare, when I had been just a wild girl, scarcely more pious than you are, and the darling of both the great warrior Cuchulain and the great Queen Maeve whom he fought?"
This boast was too much for Ninian, who sank down onto the turnip patch in a fit of giggles. "Perhaps you weren’t so fond of Brigid’s convent, and she hasn’t been canonized yet. You are many years too late for Maeve and Cuchulain. But no doubt they would have wanted to know you if they could have."
"You with all your lies about the future, with your tales about poor Britain someday conquering all of Ireland, you dare object to my true stories about the past!" cried Darerca, scowling in an exaggerated way. A bell summoned them to prayer.
Breathless from racing her horse against Lancelot's, Guinevere clasped her beloved's hand. A pity they could do no more when they were in the open air. It would be foolhardy to risk another lovemaking in the sunlight like their first embraces. Lancelot's horse had won, which was good, because Guinevere had feared that her handsome warrior sometimes held Raven back.
Lancelot's usually sun-browned cheeks were red and her dark hair was ruffled by the wind. Her dear brown eyes regarded Guinevere as if she were the only woman in the world.
The yellow autumn leaves made the forest very fine to look upon. Guinevere thought she would be happy to remain forever in the glade where they rested.
A motion in the trees caught her attention. There was a man on horseback nearby. It was Arthur. He stared at them and then, to Guinevere's astonishment, he laughed.
Guinevere continued smiling. She did not let Lancelot know what she had seen. Since Arthur looked so calm, it seemed best not to alarm Lancelot and to avoid a confrontation. Turning her horse towards a trail that led away from Arthur, she said, "Let us ride a little further," and Lancelot readily agreed.
Guinevere tried not to think on what might happen. Arthur's holding back in the shadows and laughing suggested that he realized that Lancelot was not simply escorting the queen as a guard. Guinevere was sure that it would be fatal to act frightened, and worse to flee.
If Lancelot and Arthur fought, Lancelot would surely be pursued and face death. And if Arthur found the love affair amusing, Lancelot would be offended, even humiliated.
Arthur did not attempt to follow them.
When dark clouds appeared in the sky, Guinevere suggested that they return to Camelot.
That afternoon, rain poured past Guinevere's window, splashed across the cobbled courtyard, and ran into the ditches. Gently touching the scroll she was reading, she wondered whether the damp air would damage her fragile books. She tried to keep her mind off more serious worries.
Fencha was mending a hem that Guinevere had torn. The gray cat played with a stylus that Guinevere had dropped on the floor.
The door creaked. Guinevere looked up and saw Arthur enter her room. He gestured to Fencha to leave.
Of course Guinevere had to smile at him, but she was careful not to smile too warmly. He grinned, slightly boyish but insinuating. "My dear, I have an idea. Don't say no too hastily. I know that you are a devoted wife, but I can see that Lancelot is exceedingly fond of you. I have never seen such a look on his face as I saw this morning. Would you consider encouraging him? That way, you might have a child, and he is a fine man, whose son I wouldn't mind calling my own. You wouldn't hear of doing anything with Gawaine, but I think you like Lancelot much better."
Guinevere's mouth dropped open. She let her scroll fall to the table. A thunder clap sounded
in the sky beyond the window, but it was no more startling than Arthur's words. The cat ran under the bed.
Patting Guinevere on the shoulder, Arthur spoke as calmly as if he were discussing the fare at supper. "You know how fond I am of Lance. And how could I be jealous of an innocent like him?"
Lightning blazed in the distance, but it did not betoken danger. Guinevere didn't know whether to be angry or amused that Arthur was so certain he was a better lover than Lancelot. Appalled as she was that he would again ask her to lie with someone else, she was even more astonished that he hadn't guessed that she and Lancelot already were lovers. She was speechless.
"You don't reject the idea? Good." He gave her what was no doubt supposed to be a reassuring smile. "You will consider what I have said, Gwen dear?" Arthur asked her solicitously.
"I will." Guinevere was careful not to say more. She found his cynicism disgusting, but of course he did not love her.
"I thought you'd be sensible." He kissed her lightly on the cheek. "If only the child doesn't look too much like Lancelot. Well, if it did it could be fostered somewhere and people could be told that it had not survived. I still dream that a son of mine would slay me, but I cannot imagine that a child of Lancelot's would."
Guinevere turned away, as if in embarrassment, so he departed discreetly. The thought that Arthur imagined he could arrange her intimacy with Lancelot nauseated Guinevere, but perhaps it was better that he knew. She had no mind to have him come knocking at the door while Lancelot was there. Lancelot would be so horrified that she might never come back.
It was absurd that her husband thought her adultery was his idea and did not realize that the love affair had already gone on for months, but Guinevere did not laugh. It was like one of Gawaine's stories, and she did not want to be a character in such a tale.
Must she tell Lancelot? Would Lancelot be more distressed about their love than ever? Would it be harder than ever for her to face the king?
Guinevere struggled with herself and decided it was more important to keep Lancelot from fearing a knock at the door than to save her from embarrassment. But there was no need to tell that Arthur was so base as to actually be pleased about their love.
Lancelot- Her Story Page 33
