Why was she sweating, why was the hall so hot? Her gorge rose, and she felt for her napkin to fan her face. Fever ran through her veins, and the sickness she had felt before was clawing at her guts.
Morgause called again. “Gaheris!”
The next of the brothers knelt by Agravain. Gaheris was a true redhead, with the milk-blue eyes of the North. As big as his brothers, he looked quieter and more reserved. Unlike Agravain, he bowed his head humbly as he fell to his knees.
“Gareth!”
The youngest of the Orkneyan princes was as fair as Agravain was dark. He had the same dusty blond hair as Arthur, and Arthur’s clear gray eyes. His honest face had never kept a secret, and his smile showed the sunny disposition of a mother’s youngest, best-loved child.
“King Arthur, I give you my sons!” Morgause’s deep voice rang out. “They are your nephews, and your own blood kin. Take them, and make them your knights, to serve you all your life. Keep them always by you, trust them and hold them to your heart, and they will die for you!”
Arthur, wait!
Arthur leaped to his feet. “Why, sister,” he cried joyfully, “I grant your wish with all my heart!”
He crossed toward the brothers, embracing them one by one as he raised them to their feet. “You are mine now, sirs! Follow me, and I will never part with you. And in time I will make you knights like your brother Gawain. I plan to build a fellowship of my own, to follow the example of Queen Guenevere’s renowned knights of the Round Table.”
At the knights’ table Lucan let out a whoop of joy and exchanged gleeful punches and handshakes with Bedivere and Kay. Happiness spread from table to table through the hall. There were rounds of cheerful cries, and the servants rushed to replenish the drinking glasses all around. With the wine flowing and the general merriment, the room was even hotter now, and the fires on the hearths were leaping up the walls.
King Ban nodded to Guenevere. “In time we hope that the King will knight our sons,” he said. “You know how in France we love chivalry. If you and King Arthur would visit us in Benoic, it would be a pleasure to show him how we do these things. And then you could meet Lancelot, and his cousins, my brother’s two boys.”
“Yes indeed!” His brother warmly backed him up.
On Guenevere’s right, there was a chill, as King Pellinore gripped his goblet and stared into the bloodred wine. Lamorak was looking at his father with foreboding in his eyes. A heavy question hung between them in the air.
“Yes, son,” said Pellinore absently, swirling his wine around in his glass. “I’m sure you’re right. But the King has found his kin. What can we say to that?”
“Say to what?” Guenevere cried, her nerves curling in the heat.
King Pellinore tried to smile. “Nothing, Your Majesty.”
“Nothing?”
Pellinore frowned again. “Forgive me, madam. But you are young, royal, and beautiful and should not be troubled with such things.”
“Ha!” King Ban shook his head. “The more beautiful a woman, the more she needs to understand.”
Pellinore’s eyes flared for a moment, then he dropped his head. “You may be right, sir.” He straightened his back and looked Guenevere in the eye. “Time for the truth, is it then? Take all this, madam, as the fears of an old fool. Say I have seen too much blood, and lost too many sons. But tonight the King has taken a nest of vipers to his heart. He has embraced a poison brood born to hate him, and hate all he loves.”
Guenevere leaned forward urgently. “Gawain is different. He is not one of them.”
King Ban laughed sadly and shook his head. “He has not seen his kin for fifteen years.” He looked at her, narrowed his bright brown eyes, and cocked his head to one side. “You do not understand, my Queen.” He nodded to his brother. “Explain to her.”
Bors leaned forward. “King Uther forced Queen Morgause to marry a man she did not choose. She lost her father, her mother, her kingdom, and her right to rule. These are insults to their mother, which any son would avenge.”
Why is it so hot in the hall? Guenevere fanned the air.
King Ban nodded somberly. “Then Arthur killed King Lot.” He shook his head and glanced down the table at the Orkneyan princes clustered around Morgause. “There is the death of the father, which any son would avenge.”
The insult to the mother, the death of the father … any son would avenge …
Guenevere could feel the heat rising as she spoke. “But Gawain?”
“Oh, Gawain.” Pellinore waved a hand. “Arthur can count on Gawain to the death. He is not under the sway of his mother’s love, and he does not feel himself Lot’s son. He has bound himself to another allegiance now.” He downed the contents of his goblet in one desperate gulp. “But the other three are princes of the blood. They are the living sons of a dead king. If Gawain will not avenge both his parents and punish Arthur, it falls to Agravain. Agravain is the man.”
“Oh, the heat!”
The heat, the heat!
Flames leaped before Guenevere’s eyes. She was in a fire; she could smell burning flesh. She rose from her seat, gagging with terror, her whole being crying out to flee. But she was tied hand and foot; she could not move.
The flames, the heat … spare me, Goddess, Mother, spare my life!
Sickness overwhelmed her, and she sank back in her seat. What was this seeing? What did it portend? Women were burned in lands where the Christians held sway, but never in the kingdom of the Goddess. It could never happen to her. And how could she ever deserve to die by fire?
“Well, nephews, on with the revels!” Arthur cried from the far end of the hall. “Will you dance now, and gladden our ladies’ hearts? We must enjoy you all while you are here, for I shall miss you sadly when you go.”
Queen Igraine smiled her luminous smile. She turned to Morgan and fondly took her hand. “Morgause has made her request, and the King has answered it. Will you speak now,” she whispered to her daughter, “or shall I?”
Morgan blushed violently, shook her wimpled head, and covered her face with her hand. Igraine smiled and turned back to Arthur again. “Morgan craves a favor too. She wants to ask if she may stay here at court. She wants no more than to be quiet here with you.”
Arthur gasped. “Morgan here with us? Oh, nothing would give us greater joy! Morgan, you must stay with us as long as you like.”
Guenevere looked down the table in anguish and put her heart into her eyes. Nothing would give us greater joy? Do you know what you are saying, Arthur, “nothing”? I beg you: Think; ask me; I am your wife!
He heard her feverish thoughts and flashed her an anguished look: Did I do wrong? You wanted a sister, and she’ll be yours as well as mine.
Fretfully Guenevere shook her burning head.
Yes …
No …
Oh, do not ask me now …
Then it was darkness and sickness and a roaring in her ears.
And suddenly Ina was at her elbow, pressing a glass to her lips. “Drink this, my lady.”
Like a child she did as she was told. It was a heart-warming cordial, and it choked her back to life.
Ina whisked the glass away. “So, lady, you have a new sister, if the Princess Morgan stays here with us at court,” she whispered, as she fussed with Guenevere’s gown. She smiled. “And unless I am mistaken, the King’s sister will have new kin within the year.”
Deftly she eased the weight of the crown on Guenevere’s burning head. “Kin on her brother’s side—”
Guenevere gasped. “Ina!” she began in warning, grasping for the remains of her strength.
“—when Your Majesty is delivered of your child!” Ina breathed triumphantly. “So, madam!” Her sturdy fingers caressed Guenevere’s temples and gently rubbed her back. “We must pray for a girl. When will you tell the King?”
CHAPTER 29
She never knew if Ina was right or not, that first time she was sick. The days passed, and the sickness came and went, and so did
her moon-days, as they always had. Every month her body seemed to fill with spirit children, little laughing sprites who leaped into her womb and danced about till she was as sick as any woman breeding for twins or more. Then the moon would swell and grow big in the sky. And every time her pale face lit the earth, Guenevere lost what she was carrying, and her body did not swell.
But she did not tell Arthur—what was there to tell? And she did not grieve. None of these spirits spoke to her as her child. None of them called to her like a young Arthur ready to be born, or cried out to her in her own voice for the chance to live. Then her monthly times became disordered, and she stopped keeping count. When the time came, she told Ina, the Mother would let them know. Till then, they were happy, and they would take life as it came.
And they were happy. She was happy with Arthur, happier every day than the day before. Oh, Arthur might fret over Merlin and wonder where he was, for there had been no sign of the old enchanter since Queen Igraine and Morgan came, but she could always tease him out of these thoughts. Day after day, the time slipped sweetly by.
So a sun-drenched autumn ripened into winter, winter roared in like a lion from the Welshlands, and she hugged her love to her heart and marveled what a year could bring. A year ago she was waiting for the word, the sign, the man who would fulfill her mother’s dying prophecy: Through the fires, he comes. Now he had come, and now when she thought of her mother, it was with soft tears like the mist of the Summer Country that made everything sweet and green again.
And Arthur—at the very thought of him she would slip into the same reverie, the same enchanted state of wonder and desire. Arthur, Arthur, my love, my only love …
Goddess, Mother, tell me, does he know, will he ever know, the love I have for him?
Hush, I see him now, candle in hand, stepping toward the bed. The light from the fire glances on his bright head and sets burning the thousand little torches in his eyes. But nothing shines like the smile he has for me, as he mounts the huge bed where I lie under the billowing canopy, and looses the curtain ties one by one, till we are enclosed in the warm womblike darkness, glowing bloodred.
Carefully he sets the candle in the holder on the bedpost, lighting our little space with its flickering light.
No, do not blow it out, he warns, as I lean up to quench it. You are my wife. I want to see you now.
Arthur, Arthur my love …
WHEN HE FIRST came to her, she never asked if he had taken his pleasure as a boy with a girl of Sir Ector’s household, or when he was soldiering, among the women of the camps. There could have been village girls in Gore for all she cared, even a woman of the world at King Ursien’s court who had taken him in hand, to his profit and her delight.
Yet Guenevere did not think so. Even when they had been lovers for a while, Arthur often came to her in tremulous hesitancy, though by now they knew each other well. His blazing purity seemed reserved for her alone. And his high concern for others would never have let him take a girl simply for his pleasure, and then cast her aside.
“I have been waiting for you all my life,” he whispered the first time he came into her, and she never doubted that.
But somewhere, somehow, blessed be the Goddess, he had learned how to love women’s bodies, or at least to love hers. He rejoiced in taking her to himself, slowly, slowly, and piece by piece shedding their outer gear. Naked, his great body, scarred and muscular, was like one of the heroes of the Old Ones from the days when they battled dragons and monsters to make the world. He was shy of her touch, but he loved to stroke her skin, to caress her long loins and rounded haunches, and turning her over, to play with her breasts and stroke her belly, till she cried for more.
And cry she did; she cried with a woman’s longing when she thinks her moment will not come—and cried even louder with the wonder of it, when at last it did. The first time it came, it swept over her like a wave, a wave of warm darkness that ebbed away, leaving her wet and weeping with delight. Then it grew stronger and harsher, gripping her like a great beast and shaking her in its jaws till she was weak with exhaustion, yet groaning to come again.
All this Arthur viewed with wonder and delight. And so they crept hand in hand to a glade in the woodland, to a cave in a hollow hill, or to the place of enchantment that was their great bed, any time and every time they could. And if she was often drowsy and flushed at noontime, or ready to retire straight after dinner when the night was young, why, they were newly married and in love, and all the world smiled on them then.
THOSE WERE THE DREAMS of the two of them alone. In between they dreamed a royal dream of the world outside and the changes they would bring. Arthur’s country had been like a child without parents since Uther died. It was time to show the Middle Kingdom that their King had come again.
So they called their knights together under Sir Gawain and Sir Kay, Sir Lucan and Sir Bedivere. Sir Griflet and Sir Sagramore, Sir Ladinas and Sir Dinant were in the forefront, together with all the rest of Arthur’s small band of companion knights. Arthur surveyed them, in the grip of feelings he could hardly name. Some of these men had marched with him from London when he was proclaimed, others had rallied to join him in Caerleon as the sons of Uther’s old lords. But all of them were men of faith and hope, ready to fight for a better world than this.
Now they were all to ride out of Caerleon, each in his full armor, each proudly displaying his chosen colors on his banner, war coat, and shield. White diamond on scarlet ground, blue stars in a silver sky: every knightly device should make any who saw them catch their breath and say, “There goes a knight of the court of King Arthur, and Sir Wondrous must be his name.”
Each knight was to take a squire, Arthur decreed, a youth he could bring on, who would earn his own knighthood by brave and willing service to his lord. Gawain’s younger brothers, Agravain, Gaheris, and Gareth, should be made squires now, by their mother’s desire and their own. Guenevere looked at the great threesome, saw Arthur’s delight in them, and resolved to treat them royally. So the court tailors and armorers were set to work to make each a fine coat of mail and a smart new surcoat in the color of his choice. When they rode out, she promised Arthur, his nephews would be as splendid as the knights they served.
Some of Arthur’s knights would set out alone, some in pairs, some in threes, till each took his own way. At every castle, every manor house, every estate, they were to proclaim Arthur as King and require a pledge of loyalty in the King’s name. All who refused were to be told to bring their grievance to the court at Caerleon, to see Arthur and resolve the dispute.
And now all the knights knelt before Arthur and Guenevere to take their farewell.
“Proclaim the word to all, high or low,” Arthur urged, his eyes ablaze. “Tell everyone you meet that a new king rules here now. Make them understand that all shall have justice and a fair hearing at our court.”
“And do not fear to do justice as you go,” Guenevere added, “for you are knights of King Arthur, sworn to defend the weak against the strong. Above all you must help any woman in distress. Do not forget your oath!”
“Look out for Merlin, too” was Arthur’s last word. He swung a leather pouch clinking in the air. “D’you hear this? There’s a thousand crowns in gold for the man who finds my old friend and sends him back to me!”
The courtyard was loud with the jingling of harness and the clatter of hooves on cobbles as they rode away. Arthur stood in silence as he waved them off, and Guenevere felt his fear. They all went forth so bravely, but how many of these proud banners and bright swords would come back? They were going to cleanse the kingdom, and who knew what that meant?
For even after King Lot had been overthrown, the country was still burdened by the weight of his misrule. Madmen and beggars, wandering knights and landless men still thronged the roads to threaten travelers, invading lonely manors or seizing undefended estates. Many cruel barons and lesser kings had thrived on the disorder and relished being lords of their own destiny, answerab
le to none. Those who lived by preying on the poor would not think twice about taking another life or two. And Arthur’s knights all knew this as well as he did, as one by one they set forth under their bright banners in that shining dawn.
But one, new to their ranks, was given another task. Lamorak, the son of King Pellinore, had won his spurs, Arthur decreed, and should be knighted now. So Lamorak kept his vigil as a knight novice, his white night of prayer and wakefulness before the great day. Then at dawn he came before Arthur and was made a knight. He trembled all through his rawboned, well-muscled frame as he felt the gold blade of Excalibur buffet his shoulders with its high singing one, two, three. And Guenevere thought again that this man had a deep well of passion in reserve, waiting for the woman of his dream.
“Arise, Sir Lamorak, and hear your command!”
Arthur’s orders rolled through the still court. Queen Morgause was returning to her own lands in the farthest north. As she was leaving behind her three sons and protectors, Lamorak was to escort her on the long journey back to the Orkney Islands, and remain as her knight at her court for as long as she desired.
Guenevere listened in silence with a troubled heart.
But Lamorak and his father killed King Lot. He and King Pellinore made a widow of Queen Morgause.
King Pellinore’s voice came to her again. Blood will have blood. This is the vengeance no man can refuse.
“Think of it, Arthur!” Frantically Guenevere tried to tell him what she had heard from Pellinore on the night of the feast.
But Arthur would not hear a word against his plan.
“No, Guenevere, no!” he said angrily, shaking his head. “Of course we can’t forget that Lamorak and his father killed King Lot. But don’t you see that the way to heal it is for the son to make amends? Lamorak is a fine and noble young man. He will serve Morgause devotedly as her knight. He will atone for her husband’s death.”
“But think of Pellinore! Will he want his only son sent to the Orkneys, so many miles away?”
Guenevere, Queen of the Summer Country Page 24
