Yet he had spent almost no time with her. Indeed, during the early years, their nights of intimacy had been so few in number that neither of them even thought that the reason for their childlessness might be physical.
The worst of it was that it had never been his choice to neglect her. He had thought of it as a sacrifice, a sacrifice of his time, so that he might attend to more pressing matters. How ironic, then, that after all these years, the most pressing matter in the Kingdom appeared to be the lack of issue from their union!
Had she given herself to Launcelot? Could he blame her if she had?
In the end, he had sacrificed two of his three gifts. The first, the cup, he had relinquished willingly. Arthur had no wish to live forever, because to do so would diminish the precious time he had. The other was the love, which he had not considered precious enough to fight for. In every choice between the throne and the woman, he had chosen the throne.
That was, after all, what kings did. It had been the only choice possible.
And because of his choice, he had never had to give up the third gift. The sword had always been his. The sword, Excalibur the Voracious, and all the death it brought, was all that remained.
"Do you think we live more than once, Merlin?" the King asked suddenly.
The old man looked up with a start. Arthur suspected that the Merlin had dozed off. "I beg your pardon? Live... Oh. Oh, yes. At least that's what I was taught among the druids. I don't have any personal recollections of living before now, of course." He made an attempt at a laugh. "Why, Arthur? Are you thinking about coming back?"
Arthur smiled. "I was thinking about Guenevere," he said quietly. "We didn't really… Oh, I don't know, succeed might be the right word. I never wanted another woman in my life, and yet..." He shrugged miserably.
"That's only because she was barren," the Merlin said quickly, then instantly regretted it. "I meant that the queen—"
"It was more than that."
The old man looked abashed. "I'm sure it was."
"If I hadn't been King, things may have been different."
"No doubt," Merlin said. "But you are King."
"Yes," Arthur said abstractedly. He wondered if Guenevere's initial desire for him had ever blossomed into total abandon. She had always been beautiful, to be sure, lovely and accommodating. But there had also been something else in her manner, a certain pagan wildness that Arthur had perceived and even loved, but had never been able to tap. It was as if Guenevere were as constricted by their royalty as he was.
Had Launcelot known that wildness, touched the inner heart of the girl named for the Welsh goddess to whom the commoners still made secret sacrifice before sowing their fields? Had he tasted the salt of her armpits, felt the smooth, hard longing of her tongue between his legs?
The King's glass fell out of his hands and crashed onto the stone floor.
"Majesty!" the Merlin said, rushing to summon a servant.
Arthur waved him away. "It's nothing," he said irritably. His voice was hoarse.
In the early days of their marriage, Guenevere had hosted elaborate festivals at Beltane and Samhain, the biggest holidays in the Old Religion, at which time the miracles of birth and death were celebrated. For weeks before the feast of Beltane at the beginning of May, the peasant women would gather bunches of herbs and wildflowers and then bury them in the earth with a wish for the beautiful young queen to conceive a child. And at Samhain, when the spirits of the dead were summoned on the coming winter winds, those same women asked their departed ancestors to release the soul of the queen's babe so that it might at last be born.
But Guenevere never bore a child to the King, and in time the festivals stopped. The queen had become a Christian, the villagers heard. She had been converted by the handsome foreign knight named Launcelot.
And from then on, Arthur remembered, she had slowly withdrawn.
It had been nothing notable or obtrusive—just a bit less disappointment when Arthur had to leave, not quite as much effort to converse with him when he returned. She had always been willing to accept his lovemaking, of course, although that, too, changed with time. Along with her Christianity, Guenevere developed a sort of prudishness about her body. And once, when pressed, she had admitted to feeling shame at indulging in physical congress when it was unlikely to produce an heir.
Arthur had been furious with that, so furious that he'd thrown on his clothes and ridden to his hunting lodge, where he remained for the rest of the night. Now he wondered if he had been angry with her for her lack of enthusiasm, or for her words that so echoed the sentiments of the petty kings.
Or perhaps it was because he had known even then, in some inner, hidden way, about Launcelot.
The queen's champion left Camelot shortly after Guenevere's retirement to the abbey. He traveled to a wild place, to the northern lands of the Picts, or so the stories told, where he had lived as a hermit for the remainder of his life. A life that had ended in that most undesirable of Christian states, suicide.
Suicide! Arthur shifted his aching, thinly fleshed bones in the hard chair. It was as if Launcelot were consciously turning his back on his faith. Or else ejecting himself from it in shame.
The two of them had felt so much shame!
Yes, the queen and her champion must have loved each other, Arthur decided. And though it hurt him, he could feel no real bitterness toward Guenevere for it. After all, he had had his chance with her, and thrown it away. If, after a lifetime of disappointment and neglect, she had managed to find some small share of happiness with another man, then he would not begrudge her that.
But neither he nor Launcelot had ever touched the real Guenevere, the goddess from the sea. And she had withered away in the waiting.
The King wiped his eyes. Was he weeping, or only sick? He could no longer discern the difference.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
THE BROKEN SWORD
"Do you see, little bard?"
With a pained expression, Taliesin looked around at the bland clouds surrounding him. He had been immersed in the agonies of the King in his castle. On his lap the Amazonian infant spoke animatedly. "How they all suffered and struggled, the High King whose sense of duty had cost him everything, the banished queen, driven by guilt to become a desiccated shell..."
"And the evil magician who orchestrated everyone's downfall," Taliesin said flatly. "I say, you're not going to wet on me or anything like that, are you?"
"That depends on how annoyed I become with you." Laughing heartily, the baby grabbed his long beard. "Actually, you don't come off half bad. You were only following your reason."
He felt himself warming to her, despite himself.
"That's the point, you see. You were all three following scripts that you'd written for yourselves. Guenevere could have run off with Launcelot and become his puritanical mistress. Or she could have embraced paganism entirely, and made herself into the wild woman of the wood."
"The queen?" Taliesin asked, incredulous.
"Well, I know that seems odd, but only because she didn't make those choices. All the great queens after her were influenced by her reticence and powerlessness."
"Hmmph," the old man said. "And the King?"
"Good heavens, the King might have done all manner of things. He could have kept Guenevere, and told the chiefs to go hang themselves."
"But he wouldn't have been a good King if he'd done that!"
"What difference would it have made? The Saxons would have invaded again, anyway, and eventually conquered Britain, as they did."
"He was obligated to please the chiefs," Taliesin explained. "That was his unspoken pact with them."
"Which sealed his doom right from the beginning," the baby said. "Actually, the only really good idea he had during those dreadful days was to talk with the Saxons."
"How can you say that?" Taliesin answered, his body twitching defensively. "The Saxons couldn't have been stopped at that stage. Perhaps earlier—"
"I
didn't say the idea was effective. I said it was good. It was good because it was outside the King-mold he had forced himself to conform to in every other area of his life. He was creating a new destiny for himself."
"Hell's bells, Innocent, that's what got him killed! Because he couldn't get the petty kings to support him, he ended up on the losing end of a civil war! Don't you see, that was what went wrong! That was what should never have happened!"
"But it did," she said, waving her fat little arms in the air. "It happened because he wanted it to." She squirmed. "How uncomfortable your bony knees are becoming!"
The Innocent vanished from his lap and reappeared a moment later as an elderly blind woman seated demurely beside him. She was dressed in finely woven white silk, with a diadem of clear stones in her wispy white hair.
"Oh," Taliesin said. "You're lovely."
"Thank you," she answered with an ethereal nod of her head. In the next instant she was standing in front of him, dressed in a filthy gown and corset, her hair streaming long and wild behind her. She was wearing an eye patch and scratched her belly with gusto. "Do you see, you motherless blighter?" she roared. "Do you see we can do anything we want?"
"Good gods," the old man said, his nostrils flaring. "You smell abominable."
"Arrgh," she roared.
"Innocent, please..."
"But we don't!" she shouted, hitting her chest and belching. "We almost never do what we want, because we're afraid that what happened to Arthur will happen to us, that we'll be thrust out of the great scheme of destiny and go floating about—"
"Innocent, I must protest in the strongest terms—"
"Shut your flap, arsewipe, and show me your ball."
Taliesin's mouth formed an outraged O. "I say, I have never—" The glass globe struck him in the head. Moaning, he staggered backward. "Why, you horrid old beast!"
"Back at ya." She farted. "Take another look, matey, and tell me if I'm not right."
"I need to speak with the Saxon king," Arthur announced.
The Merlin whirled around to face him. "What? Surely you're not going to try for a treaty again. Not after what happened to the forest settlers."
"That's why I have to do it. They're angry, and justified in their anger. Even now the Saxons are massing along their shores, with dozens of good ships at the ready. We'll have another invasion before long."
"Then call the chiefs—"
"For another round of battles," Arthur said flatly.
"By Mithras, yes!" The old man moved toward him with a speed he had not exhibited in months. "Don't you see, this could be your chance to consolidate your power among the petty kings. Unite them once more against a familiar enemy—"
"And meanwhile marry the daughter of the strongest among them—"
"The strongest is Lot, of course, but—"
"To save my reign at the expense of all Britain."
"Actually, Cornwall has a daughter… What?" Merlin frowned at the King, puzzled. "What are you talking about?"
"How much longer do you think we can keep the Saxons at bay?"
"Why, indefinitely, I should think. They haven't attacked us for nearly ten years."
"That was before the slaughter of the forest Saxons."
The Merlin was silent.
"So. Ten years, then? Is that what we'll get if we trounce them again? And that's a big if, Merlin. You see, while we've been using up men and weapons killing unarmed men hiding in the forests, the warriors of Saxony have been busy training and building ships. They may win this time."
The old man sputtered. "Pfft... Saxons defeat Britain! Sometimes you talk like a madman, Arthur."
"Really? I don't find the possibility at all mad. There are more of them, they've got more weapons, and since we haven't been willing to consider any alternative to all-out warfare, we're virtually inviting them to invade us." He shrugged. "If I were the Saxon king under those circumstances, I'd attack, too."
Merlin crossed his arms over his chest. "I suppose you're going to tell that to the chiefs."
"Why not?"
"Because they'll turn against you!" the old man shouted. "You said it yourself, Arthur—the Celts are a fighting people—"
"They've got to stop fighting," Arthur said quietly. "If we are ever to establish ourselves as a nation—as a civilization—we have to look beyond the costly thrill of bloodshed and toward a lasting peace."
"Yes, yes." Merlin tried not to sound exasperated at the King's adolescent idealism. "Those are fine sentiments, and I agree with them. But your problem right now is not to achieve a lasting peace with the Saxons. Your problem is to keep the petty kings in line."
"So that I can go on being High King?" Arthur said stridently. "Is that all it's about?"
"Yes, yes, it is!" The Merlin's eyes blazed. "Because you are Britain, Arthur. Don't you understand? If you aren't King, someone else will be. Why, already Mordred is courting the chiefs. And some of them are taking him seriously."
"That's Lot's doing," Arthur said dismissively.
"Of course it is. And the chiefs know it. Lot's power and wealth, behind a legitimate male heir—"
"Mordred is not legitimate!" the King railed. "There is not even a possibility that he can be my son!"
"His mother says otherwise."
“To gain the crown for him!"
Merlin held out his hands in a calming gesture. "A King is what the chiefs need," he said softly. "That is all I am saying. A King who can provide an heir—"
At that, Arthur stood up and walked out of the room.
Arthur called upon the petty kings to meet outdoors, so that they would see him mounted upon a stallion, rather than sitting like an invalid in a too-warm room. But the day was wet and dark, and his voice barely carried in the cold drizzle. He began to shiver with fever even before he finished his speech.
"And so," he said, trying to stifle the cough that threatened to wrack his chest with pain, "you must see that the only way to a lasting peace is through treaties of trade and homesteading—"
"Am I also to let the bastards tup my daughter?" shouted the king of Cornwall.
"And your wife as well," someone else chimed in.
Lot of Rheged stepped forward. The crowd parted deferentially to let him pass. Always a threat to the other chiefs, Lot had been kept in line solely through the laws created and enforced by King Arthur, which ensured equality among them all. But after his invasion of Dumnonia and subsequent marriage to Morgause, who still effectively controlled Orkney, Lot's power slowly swelled. It had all been perfectly legal. Much of it, in fact, was purely psychological: Lot was a strong man who would be a fearsome adversary. But the result was the same. Any balance that may have once existed among the petty kings had been destroyed long ago.
It left the chiefs with a difficult choice: to remain faithful to a weakened, childless King in ill health, or to side with Lot, who would surely wipe them all out, one by one, to rule Britain as a tyrant.
"With respect to my High King, Sire," Lot snapped, "and to the oath of loyalty I have taken as one of ten kings, to defend my country against all who would harm her…" He paused and looked around, lest anyone miss the intention of his words. "I swear by all that is holy that I shall not suffer a Saxon invasion upon Britain's shores without a fight!"
The petty chiefs hesitated for only the briefest moment, then cheered in support.
"We'll not have the blood of Saxon dogs running through the veins of our families!" someone chimed in.
"The only Saxon blood on my land will be what's spilled in battle!"
"And good riddance to them!" Lot finished.
More cheers.
Arthur put up his hands for silence, but he had already lost his audience. Inadvertently, today's meeting had made the chiefs' choice easier. Arthur had not only grown weak himself, many of them felt, but was actually willing to give the country over to the Saxons. Lot, on the other hand, had begun to make it clear that he would not claim the crown for himself, as the chie
fs had once feared, or even give it to one of his own sons. Rather, his petition was for Mordred, a young man whom his own mother—Lot's new wife—proclaimed to be the bastard son of the High King himself.
Mordred was, it seemed, the perfect compromise between the great but failing Arthur and the powerful, ambitious Lot.
He appeared now, as if on cue, riding a magnificent black stallion, and came to a halt a short distance away from the crowd. In the chill October air, the horse stamped impatiently, steam rising from its flared nostrils. Its rider, too, dark and close-faced, was a picture of restrained strength. The contrast between the two men was stunning: The chiefs looked from the battle-ready young man seated high on his virile mount to the sickened, gray-faced King shivering beneath a cloak that looked too heavy for his shoulders to support.
Almost imperceptibly, the group shuffled away from Arthur to assemble loosely around Mordred.
Lot did not make a move to stand beside him. He did not have to.
Far away, it seemed, isolated and alone, the King doubled over in a paroxysm of coughing.
Lot cocked his head, like a vulture observing a lion in its death throes. Take your time, his eyes seemed to say. I can wait. I can wait.
Even Arthur's own men were embarrassed.
By the time the King dismissed the meeting, almost no one was even listening. Only the Knights of the Round Table were still gathered about him.
"It was a failure," he said quietly to Merlin. The shame and despair in his heart felt like an actual, physical weight in his chest.
"Of course it was!" the old man rasped. He wanted to add that the debacle on the moor could not have been more damaging if Lot had planned it himself, but he restrained himself from rubbing salt into Arthur's wound. "The idea of getting the chiefs to consider peaceful negotiation with a longstanding enemy was perhaps too bold," he said diplomatically.
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