Guinevere rode alone in her favorite meadow, where the grass had not yet grown tall. Her horse enjoyed the activity far more than she did.
A rider came in sight. Guinevere kept on as usual, but didn't turn off to the woods. The man seemed to be gaining on her. She tensed, anxious for Lancelot and Gawaine to appear.
Two riders charged out of the forest in front of her and headed towards the pursuer.
He turned and fled, but before he could leave the meadow, the blunt end of Lancelot's spear had knocked him from his horse.
Guinevere hastened in their direction.
Lancelot and Gawaine were on the ground beside the pursuer. Gawaine held the man's arms.
"Take off your helmet, or I'll cut off your head first and find out who you are later," Lancelot demanded, her sword at the man's neck.
Gawaine let him pull off his helmet, revealing a face that was older but unmistakable.
"Melwas!" Guinevere cried.
"Yes, it's Melwas," the man said, cowering. His hair was graying, but that gave him no more dignity than he had before. "Melwas whose daughter you stole and whose land the king took."
"How dare you harry the queen!" Lancelot's eyes were bloodshot with rage.
"I'd have done more than that, but I feared the king's wrath if I abducted her. You can't punish me for just riding and doing nothing," Melwas whined.
"I can and will kill you." Lancelot apparently pressed the sword in a little more, for Melwas squealed. "But first, tell me who informed you when the queen was going riding."
"It was Budec," Melwas said, naming a stablehand. "He was in my service. But after the war, when the king's men were fewer, I told Budec to get a place at Camelot. That was why I had to wait years before I had a chance to follow the queen. But the first time I tried, you appeared and rode after me, so I fled and vowed to follow her only when you were away. Budec sent me a dove with a message when the queen went riding alone."
"Budec will meet the same fate you do," Lancelot exclaimed.
Guinevere let out a sigh of relief that Melwas knew nothing of what she and Lancelot had done that first day, or he would have flung accusations in their faces. She was surprised that Budec, a man whose face was so blank that he seemed innocuous, was the one who had helped her pursuer.
Melwas whimpered. "Is this King Arthur's justice? Take me to the king."
Gawaine grabbed Lancelot's arm. "Let's take him to Arthur. It will gain him only one more day of life."
"One day too many." Apparently unmoved, Lancelot did not withdraw her sword.
"No, don't kill him. Take him back to Camelot for punishment," Guinevere's voice cracked. She realized how much she did not want to see Lancelot kill a man, especially one who was already defeated. This Lancelot was different from the one she knew.
"If you say so." Lancelot spoke reluctantly. "But that's one execution I want to see."
Guinevere gasped. "Have you changed so much?" The difference in Lancelot shook her more than anything Melwas had done.
Lancelot looked away from her. While she was tying Melwas's hands behind his back, Lancelot said, "I shall accompany you to your quarters during the execution as usual, my lady."
Guinevere sighed with relief.
Guinevere entered the great hall first, followed by Lancelot and Gawaine, who had to drag Melwas, and guards dragging Budec. Melwas had soiled his breeches, and the smell was most unpleasant. Budec was panting like a dog.
Arthur rose from his chair.
"My Lord Arthur," said Gawaine. Guinevere had seldom heard him use such a formal address to his cousin. "Lancelot and I caught this man following Queen Guinevere. He admits that he has followed her for years, whenever she rode out alone, so that he might frighten her. He even admitted that he thought of abducting her, but he was too cowardly to do so, for which I thank all the gods."
Arthur's face reddened to the point that Guinevere wondered whether his heart might be strained. He yelled at Melwas. "How dare you!"
"My Lord Arthur, I meant no harm," Melwas whimpered. "I never hurt the queen."
"No harm! You have plotted against the queen, and against my honor. That is treason. You will be executed at dawn." Arthur shook his fist. He looked as if he wished he could strike down Melwas with his own hands.
Melwas burst out sobbing.
Lancelot's face was as purple as Arthur's. She regarded Melwas as if he were an insect she wanted to crush.
"And Budec the stablehand sent Melwas signals to let him know when the queen was riding out alone." Lancelot's voice was so choked that the words were difficult to distinguish.
"Another traitor. He, too, will be executed tomorrow morning," Arthur proclaimed. "Take them away," he commanded with a sweeping gesture.
When Lancelot and Gawaine had dragged the men away, Arthur approached Guinevere. Only a little of the raging color had faded from his face. He took her arm, and guided her to her room. "Are you well, my dear?" he asked, but his voice was not warm.
"Yes, my lord." She knew she had incurred his wrath.
Arthur said no more until they were in her chamber, with only the cat to hear them. "You did not heed my request that you never ride alone." His tone was outraged, because no one ignored his requests. His hold on her arm was firm, though not tight enough to hurt her. "Now I command you never to ride alone again. If you disobey this order, you will never ride again with only one man to guard you. There will have to be several. And even now, if you have only one escort, you can ride no more than five miles from Camelot. Do you understand?"
"Yes, my lord." Guinevere did not let her face show her feelings. He threatened her with never being allowed to ride alone with Lancelot again. And he confined their rides to five miles from the caer. She swallowed her anger at being punished for Melwas's crime, as she had known she would be.
"You are the queen, and your honor is my honor. If anything happened to you, it would be a great blow against me."
Finally, her husband released her arm. But her life still seemed to be within his grasp. Once again, she was reminded that what she symbolized was more important to him than she was.
Lancelot asked Gawaine to speak with her out by the horse pasture. The horses looked to be calmly enjoying the spring day and the new grass, but she could not. Even the scent of the grass did not please her as much as usual.
"I told Arthur and our friends that I killed that girl in the war," she confessed, hardly daring to look at Gawaine's face.
"Arthur told me. Good of you, but you did not need to. It was years ago." His tone was subdued. "You have suffered for it more than I did."
"I cared too much about my reputation." Lancelot shook her head. "I liked being called the best of Arthur's warriors. That's all over now."
Gawaine smiled. "No, it's not. You've become a legend, and you'll stay one, lady warrior."
Her shame began to vanish. It was impossible to be solemn with Gawaine for long. "Cease mentioning that I am a woman."
"Of course, noble warrior. Watch out for the horseshit." He stepped around a clump of it, using a tone that hinted at the paternal, a tone he had never used when he thought she was a man.
Lancelot flared up.
"Don't give me any of yours. It was bad enough saying that I lay with Etaine though you're the one who did. Don't come up with any new tales about me."
"How little you appreciate me," Gawaine sighed as if in pain but grinned like a boy whose prank has just been discovered. "That was the best thing I've ever done for you."
"The best for whom? You?" Lancelot complained. "The stories say Etaine was a maiden. What maiden would have done such a thing?"
"A maiden who wanted to marry Lancelot. That part's not so hard to believe. Camelot is probably full of maidens who wish they'd tried it. And they all think, 'If I'd been the one, Lancelot would have married me.'" Gawaine whistled a few bars of a popular love tune.
"Maidens aren't like that," Lancelot protested. "Only a man would think so."
"A man who's had many maidens throw themselves at him. And don't tell me that maidens haven't thrown themselves at you, too, because I know they have." He picked a flower and began tearing off petals in imitation of a maiden seeking a lover.
"That whole episode makes me tired of pretending to be a man," Lancelot said, sighing.
"You could always tell everyone that you are a woman," Gawaine teased.
"And lead a life like most women's? Of course not." Lancelot raised her voice. "I don't want to be either like a woman or like a man."
"You are different, no doubt."
"Then I want to be just as I am." A yearling filly trotted up to them and Lancelot patted her. A blackbird warbled nearby. "Not many people know that I am a woman, so everything can be just as it was, and I can always live just as I want."
"Yes, just as you want. Always." Leaning against the pasture's fence, Gawaine smiled.
Lancelot was still in a serious mood. "Don't repeat stories that are untrue. What if they are all that people ever know about us?"
"What of it?" Gawaine offered a dried apple to the filly, which munched it eagerly. "If you don't like the stories about you, make up tales of your own."
"How can I?" Lancelot asked, knowing there was no good answer. "If I tell about my life, I must give it up. I cannot both have it and tell about it."
Gawaine shrugged his shoulders. "Well, then, in all the tales I'll have the last word."
Lancelot grimaced.
But Gawaine said, "Come along, let's go for a ride in the woods."
Lancelot smiled. "Of cour..." Then she saw the queen walking to the stables.
"Of course not." Gawaine rolled his eyes. "You’ll go riding with her, Lance."
Nodding to Gawaine, Lancelot went off to greet her beloved. She was certain that, for her, the first and last words always would be "Guinevere."
The End
SNEAK PREVIEW – Volume II
Lancelot and Guinevere
1 Camelot
The great hall at Camelot blazed with torches and fires in its huge firepits. Lancelot felt her face blaze even more as Gawaine said, "So, Lancelot, how is Etaine? Why don't you visit her before she gives birth? I look forward to drinking a toast to your son or daughter. What did she say she was going to name a boy? Galahad, was it?"
Lancelot cast an angry look at red-bearded Gawaine, who was clearly the tallest man in the hall even when they were all seated at the spokes of the round table. The gold torque around Gawaine's neck showed that he was high-born, son of the late King Lot of Lothian and Orkney and Queen Morgause, who had succeeded her husband. The torque was only a little less grand than the one King Arthur wore, but the difference was enough to be noticeable.
"I have no intention of seeing Etaine, now or ever." Lancelot thumped her goblet on the table. As Gawaine knew well, Etaine had pretended to be Guinevere so she could lie with Lancelot and claim that Lancelot was the father of the child she was carrying. Gawaine had lain with the lady instead, and guessed that she was already with child, but had persuaded Lancelot to refrain from denying paternity. That was his idea of protecting Lancelot, now that he had discovered she was a woman. She had been right not to tell Guinevere that Gawaine knew, for Guinevere would have cringed at his jests even more than Lancelot did.
"As you won't marry the lady and have no wife to fatten you up, I must do what I can to keep you from starving." Gawaine cut off a shank of mutton and threw it onto Lancelot’s plate.
Lancelot was almost angry enough to fight Gawaine if he kept talking about her supposed fatherhood. Would Gawaine's love for teasing and jesting lead him to reveal her secret unwittingly?
Lancelot shuddered inwardly, remembering how recently the king's exiled sister, Morgan, had threatened to reveal her sex. The thought of losing her place at Camelot made Lancelot so upset that she did not want to eat the meat that Gawaine had tossed to her, but it smelled so appealing that she began to slice it.
Some warriors laughed with disbelief at Lancelot's denial of attachment to Etaine.
"No doubt Lancelot has good reasons for refusing to see the lady," King Arthur said. The slightly graying red-haired king, who knew that Lancelot had not lain with Etaine but not that Lancelot was a woman, cast a sympathetic look at his queen.
If only Guinevere were not Arthur's wife, Lancelot wished, as she had wished every day for many years, for Guinevere was her own true love. It pained them every day that they could not acknowledge the fact.
The king was not the only one looking at Guinevere. Half the hall was staring at Lancelot, while the other half watched the queen, to see her reaction to the talk of Lancelot being the father of another woman's child. Although almost no one knew that Guinevere and Lancelot were lovers, people constantly watched them for signs of love for each other. How difficult it was to try to hide their affection.
At least Guinevere knew that Lancelot never looked at any other women. She didn’t need to be reassured, especially not in public.
Then Bedwyr, a thin-lipped man with a left arm that had lacked its hand since the Saxon War, chimed in, "Lancelot says that he has no call for congratulations, but Bors does. His wife just gave birth to their twelfth child, the eighth boy! Let's toast him." The warriors bellowed their congratulations and swilled their mead in Bors's honor.
The gray-mustached warrior who was their object beamed, nodded his thanks, and said, "Another gift from God."
Gawaine added, "You helped, Bors," and the hall was filled with such loud laughter that the harper, who was playing a song about Arthur's defeat of the Saxons, paused.
With the warriors' attention focused on Bors, Guinevere and Lancelot looked at each other with relief. They knew that no taunts or jeers could ever come between them.
The sage Merlin, whose once-gray beard had turned white, did not join in the warriors' laughter. Instead, he sighed. "Such a show of merriment," he said to the king. "I hope it will last."
"Why, of course it will last. Let the hall be filled with joy," Arthur replied heartily, then took a swig of mead.
"Have some mead, Merlin. You've been looking a little pale."
The old man took only a sip.
One of the king's wolfhounds, padding about in the rushes on the floor, approached and thrust her head in Lancelot's lap.
Lancelot cut off a bit of the mutton and gave it to her.
Later in the night, Lancelot went as usual to the queen's bed chamber. In spite of Gawaine’s silly teasing, Guinevere thrilled at the sight of her warrior. Being alone with Lancelot was always a celebration.
Guinevere enjoyed the warm fire in the brazier and the scent of her beeswax candles. But she scarcely noticed her cat, Grayse, sleeping on a chair heaped with cushions, or the tapestries on the wall that depicted women picking apples and gathering wheat.
Lancelot's beauty outshone everything else, for Guinevere. Lancelot's long, angular face framed by wavy black hair led many of the ladies to cast eyes her way, for Lancelot was just as appealing for those who believed she was a man. Her large brown eyes, touched as ever with a hint of sadness, looked at Guinevere as if she were the fairest woman in the world.
Lancelot's movements when she first entered Guinevere's room were always tense, as if she feared being sent away, though she never had been. After a while, she seemed to relax.
"I’m tired of this tale about your being the father of a child." Guinevere sighed. She also disliked the way Arthur had looked at her when everyone talked about Lancelot fathering a child.
Must she worry about keeping her husband at bay? She had stopped lying with Arthur before she began with Lancelot, and she liked her husband much better now than when she had been required to go to his bed. Arthur knew that she and Lancelot loved each other, and did not mind overmuch. He imagined that it had been his idea, so Guinevere would conceive a child, but Lancelot had been her lover well before Arthur had suggested the affair.
"Gawaine's just jesting, as he likes to do. What does it matter? I love none bu
t you," Lancelot said soothingly. "Be not angry, my queen, for you are my forest as well as my love. Let me comb your hair and visit my trees," she said, brushing a stray strand of Guinevere's black hair from her forehead.
"If I may visit your water-meadow later," Guinevere teased, removing from her neck the golden torque that showed she was queen.
"Water-meadow? Is that a swamp? Oh, lovely. How sweet are your compliments, my lady!"
Lancelot laughed, undoing Guinevere's black braids, which were dark as her own hair.
"Fair, indeed. A water-meadow in which an orchid grows. I prefer moors to mountains."
Lancelot kissed her neck. "What, do you think of mountains as men? No, they surely are breasts. And here is my forest."
She pressed her face into Guinevere's hair. "Here are the oaks, the alders, the hazel, and the rowan. I am jealous of anyone else who has ever combed your hair."
Guinevere laughed slightly. That, at least, Arthur had never done. "Including my old nurse Macha, who always complained about the tangles?"
"Including her, of course. I wish I had seen you as a child."
Guinevere swished her head back and forth so the hair flopped across her warrior's face. "You would have seen many tempers if you had."
"Stay still, or I cannot comb your hair," Lancelot complained, trying to pull a silver comb gently through the long strands.
"I can't enjoy it while your poor breasts are bound." Evading the comb, Guinevere turned to her. "Let me unbind them."
Surrendering the comb, Lancelot pulled off her crimson tunic, then stood while Guinevere unwound the thick cloth that held down her breasts. Guinevere pressed her lips to that beloved chest as Lancelot held her tightly.
"Bind me to your bosom," Guinevere teased, and Lancelot, who was much taller, kissed the top of her head.
"Would that I could. How soft your cheeks are. If only mine could be soft for you." As Guinevere knew, Lancelot rubbed them with pumice every morning so it would look as if she had shaved.
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