But would her marriage be ill-omened, bathed in Malgaunt’s blood, if Arthur came to her bed with the life of her nearest kinsman on his hands?
In the Great Hall, the clock of life stood still.
Guenevere leaned down to Arthur. “What do you say, my lord?”
He shook his head, his eyes on Malgaunt. “You are Queen here. The word is yours.”
Still she hovered in an ecstasy of doubt. Yet Arthur had spared Lucan; he must want Malgaunt spared too. She raised her voice to sound all through the hall. “Let him live!”
“On your knees, then, Prince Malgaunt!” Arthur ordered. “Withdraw the charge you made against the Queen. Then let us hear you swear your oath to her.”
Malgaunt could not kneel or swear fast enough, as he jabbered out the words. Then he leaped to his feet and made for the dais to kiss Guenevere’s hand.
Too much, too much!
“Do not come near me, Malgaunt!” she exploded. “Your life is spared, but you are banished to your own estate till I send for you. If you stir from Dolorous Garde, your life and all are forfeit. Any defiance will be paid with death!”
For a second, the old Malgaunt flashed in his eyes. But he dropped his head, bowed in silence, and was gone. And gone indeed, she realized, trembling with relief. Malgaunt’s lands were far distant, by her mother’s deliberate choice. Guenevere had never been there, and now she knew she would never pass through those gates. Malgaunt was as good as dead to her from now on.
As he left, a silver mist rose before Guenevere’s eyes. Suddenly the whole hall filled with a faint sweet scent. She saw the castle of love fulfilled rising in the air. Arthur had defeated Malgaunt and overcome Lucan; he had triumphed over them all! Trembling and overwrought, she could feel the foolish tears pricking her eyes again. She reached out her hand. Nothing and no one could come between them now. “Come, my lord!” she called rapturously.
Arthur smiled. The torchlight glinted on his hair as he came toward her, turning to face the crowd. “The Queen stands before you without a stain on her name,” he called out. “And nothing now bars the marriage that we shall make.”
A roar of delight spread through the excited crowd. The one lone voice rising above them all strained to make itself heard.
“A king must look to the future. And the stars tell a different tale.”
A pale-faced Merlin stood before the dais. His robe flashed thunder and lightning, and his yew wand hissed in his hand.
“Merlin—what now?” Arthur looked stunned. A thin sheen of panic broke out on his forehead, and his grip on Guenevere’s hand tightened as he spoke.
“King Arthur, I must tell you that your will is no longer your own,” Merlin intoned. “This queen has already set contrary events in train.”
Arthur spoke with a great effort. “What do you mean?”
Merlin pointed his writhing wand at the open door. “You wanted to kill Prince Malgaunt. Instead the Queen has sent him away in peace.”
Guenevere looked at Arthur in horror. “Arthur, surely you would not have killed Malgaunt? I spared him only because I thought it was your wish!”
“You were wrong.” Arthur was very pale. “I would have killed him. He fought treacherously, and he deserved to die.”
“And you will live to regret this, Arthur,” Merlin went on, his voice growing shriller with every word. “For Malgaunt is fated to destroy your peace! He will rob you of your best jewel, and leave a gaudy imitation in its place. All this he will do because you spared his life!”
Arthur’s face gleamed with a strained and unnatural light. “On my head be it, then.”
“But there is more,” Merlin’s high voice sang on. “When you take her as your wife, you put your life at the mercy of this queen. And she will have no mercy.”
He was chanting now, both hands outstretched, his wicked wand quivering toward Guenevere.
“I could have found you another, a damsel of beauty and simple goodness, one who would please you and love you all her life. This queen is one of the fairest women alive, and you will not turn from her now your heart is set.” His eyes were flashing fire with every word. “But she will be faithless to the marriage bed. She will betray you with one of your own knights!”
CHAPTER 21
Merlin’s high-pitched cackle died away. The only sound was his harsh panting as he regained his breath.
Arthur gasped in pain, clutching the wound in his side. “Merlin, for the sake of the Great Ones, have a care what you say! I have sworn to marry Queen Guenevere, on the oath of a king. Would you have me dishonor my vow?”
“I have seen it!” hissed Merlin blindly. “I have seen it in the stars!”
“What have you seen, old man?”
It was Sir Gawain, his broad face burning with anger, his big body poised for a fight. “You accuse the Queen with one of the King’s knights? Then you accuse us of treachery to our lord!”
“It is written!”
“Written of me, or any of us here?” Furiously he indicated Kay and Bedivere. “Or these?” He jerked an angry thumb at the dumbfounded Griflet and Sagramore.
Merlin shook his head reluctantly. “No!”
“Who then?” demanded Gawain.
“My sight has not shown me! I do not see the face!”
Gawain laughed in relief. “Then your sight is not worth much!”
Merlin screamed in rage. “I can call spirits from the Otherworld!”
Gawain could not resist making sport of the old man. “But do they answer, when you call to them?”
An uneasy laugh ran through the crowd. Merlin turned on them, blind with fury. “I have seen it!” he shrilled. “A tall knight, with his visor down—a stranger to the Queen—coming to her aid—”
A strange shudder seized him, and his body convulsed. Thunder and lightning racked his skinny frame, and all the air grew dark. Now his eyes were as blind as the night of the Queen-making when he sang as a bard.
“—He comes to her aid against Malgaunt!” he gasped as his inner vision burst painfully to life. “Malgaunt will take her—force her—but her knight comes; he comes to save her now!”
A deep groan escaped him as another sight was born. “And in gratitude, she takes him to her bed!” He was shaking now as men do in a high plague-fever, when they know the end is near. Yet he would speak, or die in the travail. “All this I have seen! And I see the truth!”
“Dear lord, you do indeed!”
Arthur leaped toward Merlin and held him till the convulsions subsided and the old man grew calm. “Never have your visions failed you, Merlin,” Arthur said tenderly, “and they do not fail you now. But what you see has already come to pass!”
He threw back his head in a loud laugh of triumph. “You saw the story of the night I met the Queen! You saw her under threat from her kinsman Malgaunt, as she was in truth. And I was the stranger knight, coming to her aid—I myself, not one of my own men!”
He turned toward Guenevere with a sudden violent blush. “And now I hope to come to the lady’s bed. For I have wooed and won her, and I will marry her.”
Goddess, Mother, be thanked …
Guenevere could not hold back her tears.
So, Merlin, are you answered?
Yet Merlin still had one last card to play. “Why rush your nuptials, sire?” he wheezed, his voice creaking like the last leaf on the tree. “A queen like yours deserves a royal wedding, with all the honor we can give. Delay the ceremony till you have pacified your kingdom, and you can lay your victory at her feet. Then the Queen can come to Caerleon for a great wedding there.”
Guenevere gasped.
Delay the wedding? And marry in Caerleon, when every woman, let alone a queen, rightfully marries from her own hearth and home?
“Hear me, King Arthur!” The words broke from Guenevere before she was aware. “In a true marriage, a man comes to a woman and she takes him, body and soul. That is the sacrament of union, and so it has always been.”
She s
hook her head in pain. If Arthur did not understand this, there was no hope. “A man enters the circle of the Goddess when a woman admits him to her virgin body out of love. Men know this place only three times in their lives, once when they are born of their mothers, then when they take a woman in first union, and finally when the Mother folds them in the last embrace. A woman offers this love only once. And it is not to be delayed!”
“So!” Merlin gasped for breath, passing his hand over his eyes, but from beneath it watching Arthur like a snake.
Guenevere paused before Arthur, trembling from head to foot. “If you choose me, choose now. And if you choose to wait, then you must choose again. For I will not go to Caerleon to be married, and if you return for me, I will not be here!”
There was an endless pause. Then Arthur shook his tired head, and his clear gray eyes met hers. “My love, I have chosen!” he said with infinite sweetness. “And I ask you again, how soon may we be married?”
THAT NIGHT ALL CAMELOT slept a deep and dreamless sleep, and next day the work began.
For this must be the feast of a lifetime, Guenevere knew. It would be the start of her life with Arthur, and their first act as King and Queen. Not even her mother, entertaining six kings and queens at a banquet, had ever done as much.
At dawn, messengers were sent galloping far and wide. The list of wedding guests stretched throughout the kingdom and beyond. The fastest riders took the road west to the Middle Kingdom to summon Arthur’s knights and barons, while others went north toward Gore to King Ursien, who had sheltered Arthur as a child, and the foster parents, Sir Ector and Dame Arian, who had brought him up. Guenevere saw that a special envoy was sent to the Lady too, though she knew that the ruler of Avalon had ways of knowing faster than any horse.
In the palace Ina ran to and fro, ordering dressmakers and milliners, shoemakers and flower girls, to her heart’s content. “White and gold, lady, white and gold!” she breathed. “These are the colors you must marry in! And I know who must make your wedding gown!”
The next day she brought a withered old woman to the palace, a crone from the poorest end of the town, her crooked frame clad from head to foot in black. She might have been Ina’s kin, Guenevere thought, for she had the look of the Otherworld often seen on Ina’s catlike face. She examined all the silks in the palace chests and pronounced that they would not do. But in three days, she swore, the Queen would have a gown.
Three days would bring them to the feast of high midsummer and the night without dark, when the doors of the Otherworld stand open for love. Taliesin would marry them in the heart of the woodland, Guenevere told Arthur, close to the Mother and the source of life. Then they would feast all night in Camelot, till the last revelers crept to their beds in a rosy, laughing dawn.
And then—
In truth, she did not know what would happen then. Her mother had said, When love comes, you will know. And when you know, you will know what to do.
Well, love had come. Arthur would know what to do.
GODDESS, MOTHER, smile upon us now …
As the wedding day drew near, events took on a rhythm of their own, and the work proceeded with more than human aid. The maids came down at dawn to find the floors sanded, the pewter and copper shining, and all things sweet and clean. By day, all Camelot was in the grip of a flaming June. Around the castle, roses and honeysuckle bloomed as they had never bloomed before. And every evening Guenevere and Arthur would walk together entwined in each other’s arms, whispering softly through the purple twilight as night fell.
In all this time, Merlin was nowhere to be seen. He was resting, Arthur said tenderly, exhausted by the sight he had had. And he had to build up his strength for the ride to Caerleon as soon as the wedding was done.
Of course, said Guenevere, and was there anything she could do? Would Arthur give him her greetings, and assure him of her regard? And would the old meddler kindly keep to his bed? she found herself thinking, though the thought made her blush.
But in truth there was little time to think of Merlin now. Wavering between happiness and blind fear, Guenevere had to prepare for her new life as Arthur’s Queen. With only days before the wedding, suddenly half her gowns and jewels and cloaks and shoes, half her books, even half her mother’s face colors and pots and lotions, must go with her to Caerleon. What to take, and what to leave behind? Ina enrolled all the Queen’s women in the impossible task.
AND EVERY DAY now brought new arrivals to grace the wedding feast. Though time was short, Arthur was determined to be married like a king. So the crown of Pendragon was sent for posthaste from Caerleon, brought by the remainder of Arthur’s band of companion knights—fourteen all told, making their numbers up to twenty with those already there.
“Tor! Helin! Oh, it’s good to see you here!” Sagramore rushed forward, whooping like a boy, to greet his fellows, while Griflet and Ladinas ran up behind. “And Erec!” He hailed a brawny figure with a long fresh scar on his neck. “Where did you get that?”
Arthur watched ruefully as the newcomers rode clattering into the courtyard and dismounted to loud cheers and hurrahs. “You see why I envy your Order of the Round Table,” he said lightly to Guenevere, “when a hundred knights sit there under Lucan’s command. We are so few—may the Gods send us more!”
“My lord?” Guenevere pointed toward the castle gate. Riding in was the kingly figure of an older man. Beside him rode a fair youth, and with them a standard-bearer and a troop of knights. Arthur stared at the banner fluttering overhead. On an azure background, a white swan soared proudly through the air. He seized Guenevere’s hand in a painful grip. “Listinoise!”
“King Pellinore of Listinoise greets the Queen,” cried the standard-bearer with a courtly bow. “And he comes to lay his sword before the King!”
The newcomer dismounted, attended by the young man at his side. Together they approached Arthur and knelt before him on the cobblestones. The king lifted his head. “Sire, I was the first to swear for your father King Uther, when he made himself High King. I was at his side through every battle, and with him when he died.” A hard hand passed briefly over his eyes. “When I heard you had returned—that Pendragon had come home to Caerleon again—” His eyes flared, and he scrambled to his feet. “I would have rallied to you then, sire, had I known, to help you drive those weevils from your father’s lands! And when they come again, my sword is yours!”
Arthur fell forward and folded him in a bearlike hug. Then he turned to Guenevere, tears in his eyes. “My lady, bid this good king welcome, for he promises to be a dear friend to me!”
But King Pellinore would not hear Arthur’s praise. His gray eyes sought Guenevere with painful honesty. “Your Majesty, this is no more than any man would do.” He gestured to the young man standing tensely at his side. “I and my son, Lamorak, will only be the first. Countless others will stand for King Arthur, as soon as they hear of his struggle against King Lot. The memory of Uther will draw thousands to your side. The name of Pendragon is greater than all of us.”
Guenevere eyed him carefully. Lean, gray, and reserved, King Pellinore would never take credit simply for doing right. Wherever he placed his faith, he would be loyal all his life. The same would be true of the fair young man by his side, who blushed and trembled as he kissed her hand. Lucky the woman who won the love of Pellinore’s son, she thought smiling, for young Lamorak’s chosen one would have it till she died.
Guenevere favored both father and son with her best smile. “Welcome, sirs, you are welcome, in the King’s name and my own!”
SHE MUST HAVE said these words a hundred times as the guests poured in. For the first time in years she saw again chuckling old men from her childhood, and bright-eyed dames with tales of her mother when she and they were girls. With Arthur at her side she welcomed lords from the mountains, and yeomen from the valleys, and the short shy chiefs of the land kin she had first seen at the Queen-making. They had to be encouraged to draw near to Arthur to kiss his hand
, and they bowed and squinted before him as if he were the golden God Bel indeed.
All had the warmest welcome. But to Arthur, one group meant more than all the rest. As the trumpets sounded and the heralds cried, “Give welcome to King Ursien of Gore!” Guenevere saw great tears standing in his eyes.
“See, Guenevere!” was all that he could say.
First to dismount was the king himself, a bluff old soldier who clapped Arthur on the shoulder and forbade him to kneel or bow. “We are brother monarchs now, boy, not king and knight anymore!” He threw a glance around. “And if your Druid Merlin’s dreams come true, the time will come when I will kneel to you!”
Arthur laughed in confusion. “If you say so, sire!”
“I do!” He waved a hand. “But High King or no, you must honor your foster mother Dame Arian here!”
Blushing and bobbing in King Ursien’s shadow was a small neat woman fondly shaking her wimpled head. She looked at Arthur, chuckling with delight. “Gods above, to see you here, a king! Still, I always knew that you would come to good. And you were always as dear to me as my own son!” Then her head turned sharply, like a hen seeking her chick. “Where’s Kay? What have you done with him?”
With a knightly flourish, Kay stepped forward to take his mother’s hand. “The King has done nothing with me, madam, I’m here! I might as well ask you where’s my father, what have you done with him?”
“Kay!” Careless of his dignity, Dame Arian reached up with a cry of joy to smack a kiss on both his cheeks. “Your father was delayed as we came through. He stayed on in Caerleon, to bring dispatches for the King.” She dropped a curtsy to Arthur. “So he sent me on with King Ursien here. But he will be with us for the wedding, sire, have no fear of that.”
“I have no fear of Sir Ector’s loyalty!” Already Arthur was laughing fondly at her busy, bustling ways. “And all shall be as you say, Dame Arian, as it always was!”
THE NIGHT BEFORE the wedding an army of men and maids scoured the Great Hall, then decked the roof and beams with green boughs, ferns, and flowers, like a woodland bower. The high table on the dais was draped in white damask and laden with bowls of white lilies for the bride and red poppies for the groom. A hundred places were set with silver knives, and cups and plates of gold. In the center of the hall stood the Round Table, where the knights alone would dine. And up and down the length of the hall ran rows of stout wooden trestle tables for the guests.
Guenevere, Queen of the Summer Country Page 17
