“Morgan, don’t be afraid. There is a guard of arms outside your door. He cannot hurt you now. And he will never threaten you again.”
Whimpering in her throat, Morgan clung to Guenevere like a child.
“He is gone,” Guenevere said firmly, raising her voice. “Gone forever. No man will ever force you again.”
The bruised damson mouth opened in a tight cry of woe.
“Tell me, Morgan!” Guenevere pressed her hand. “Did Merlin ravish you? Did he try?”
“Aah—!”
A tide of grief and fear gushed from her lips. Guenevere could not understand a word she said. Clasping Morgan in her arms, she tried to calm her down. At last the poor sufferer grew quieter, and there was no mistaking what she wanted now. “Arthur!” she wept piteously. “Arthur, Arthur!”
Arthur, Arthur, always Arthur …
Does Morgan have no other thought in her head?
Yet how could she be jealous? Guenevere was suddenly, sharply ashamed. Arthur was the one good man Morgan had known. Her need of him was greater than Guenevere’s, or even Merlin’s, now. With an inward sigh, Guenevere sent for Arthur and set herself to wait.
AND IT WAS a long sore wait all through that endless summer, that golden autumn, that long wintertime. Arthur rode with Nemue to take Merlin to Avalon, guiding the enclosed litter with its sleeping burden every step of the way. Only as they led him into the underground chamber did Merlin seem to collect his wandering wits. “So, the old hawk goes to his molting house!” he cried. “Old Merlin goes to his long lost home!”
“Only till you are well again,” Nemue gravely replied.
Merlin looked straight at them, Arthur said, and for the first time seemed to know who they were. Gravely he shook his head. “Till the King comes again,” he said, “I shall be here. For the King that is and shall be, he will return. And when he comes again, I will be here.”
NOW THE SUMMER held no hope that Morgan might go to her new home at Le Val Sans Retour. The great estate that Arthur had gifted to her had to be managed by stewards, for Morgan could not travel, could not sit a horse. She was worse now than when she first left the convent, and the doctors had no idea when she would be herself again.
Other woes crowded in to torment them too.
“We were happy to think that all the world loved us, because we only wanted to love them,” Arthur commented grimly as they sat in the Audience Chamber hearing reports of the land. “When our knights rode out in glory, they won many hearts to our cause. But the country as a whole has not yet been won.”
Guenevere nodded soberly. After the first response to Arthur’s call, many petty kings and lords were sitting on their hands, waiting to see which way fate would fall. They fobbed off his overtures with empty words, and could not be trusted or counted on as friends.
And other rogue knights and evil lords, whether lurking in hidden hideouts or flaunting themselves in great castles, had grown so strong that one or two knights riding by themselves could not challenge them. The wisest course, confessed Sir Ladinas and Sir Dinant, who had seen such men, had been to turn their backs on these dark places and ride on. It would take Arthur himself with a whole band of knights and a troop of good men to deal with them.
YET WHEN THEY all rode out next time, there would be a far worse enemy to face. Sir Tor had ridden due east from Caerleon, passing through London to the flatlands beyond. Now he stood before them, clutching his helmet, still covered with the grime of the roads. His young face was worn with hard riding, and there was something about him that Guenevere had not seen before.
“News from the Eastlands, Your Majesties,” he said bleakly. His eyes were very dark. “The Saxons are raiding the coast again, and their bands of warriors are settling the eastern shore. All the invaders have rallied under one flag, hungry and desperate men fleeing famine in their own lands.”
“What of the local people?” Arthur leaned forward, gripping the arm of his throne. “How goes the resistance there?”
Sir Tor’s young eyes showed what he had seen. “The Saxons impale the women and crucify the men. Only a handful of old ones and children flee into the woods.” Tears stood in his eyes. “There is no resistance, sire!”
Arthur turned color and bunched his massive fists. “There will be!” he cried. “As soon as they feel our swords!”
CHAPTER 32
But it was long before Arthur could make his boast come true. In vain did Guenevere urge that either he or she should set forth. A sudden attack, she argued, could burn the invaders from their camps, and Arthur listened so far as to order Sir Tor back to the Eastlands to prepare the way. Yet winter came down on the eastern shore, and Arthur had not stirred himself to act. Day and night he brooded alone in his chamber, and Guenevere hated his sorrowing, because he turned away from her.
Now she saw what it had meant to him to be Merlin’s boy. Growing up without a father, in Merlin he had found father, friend, and mentor all in one. With the old man gone, he had lost his sense of his destiny as High King.
So he turned to Guenevere. Now every day it was “What do you think, Guenevere?,” and to the servants, “Do not ask me, the Queen will deal with this.” Kings and lords came and went, as did those seeking justice, and the poor and needy too, and Arthur sat by Guenevere’s side to receive them, a noble shell.
The worst of all came now when they were alone. Then he would clasp Guenevere in their bed not with the boyish sweetness he used to show, but with a fearful hunger, like a starving beast. He would sometimes hurt her in his harsh lovemaking as he tried to lose himself in her. Yet when she tried to tell him, suddenly she became the one hurting him. His eyes turned dark with horror and he had to restrain his tears.
Often he spent hours alone with Morgan in her chamber, sending word that Guenevere was to dine by herself that night. She never knew if they talked about Merlin while she kept the high table alone in the Great Hall, or even if they talked at all. Perhaps they sat in silence, each locked in terrible pain. But afterward he came to her in her bed and took her fast and brutally, without speaking, and, it seemed to her, without love.
Afterward he wept like a beaten child. Then she would find herself weeping too as she tried to comfort him. “Oh, my love, take heart—Merlin is not lost, he will come back to you, he will recover his mind—”
In the dark she felt his hard hand on her mouth. “It will not happen, Guenevere. Merlin will not return. I have seen the future, and it cannot be. And I must learn to live with what the Great Ones have decreed.”
THIS SICKNESS GRIPPED his heart all winter long. And it came to her what would make Arthur whole. A man who loses his father lives again in making a new life. She must give him a child.
Yet for no reason, her monthly times were becoming weaker and farther apart. Now all the tears she had shed over Arthur seemed to have dried up the wellsprings of life itself in her. She was a husk of the woman she had been before. She had nothing left to flow.
She was in agony, weeping to Ina, “Why can I not conceive?”
Ina brooded for a while. Then she sent in secret to her kinswoman in Camelot who had woven Guenevere’s wedding gown, because she knew about such things.
“Take your grief to the Goddess,” the word came back. “She will give you the daughter you desire.” So Guenevere prayed to the Goddess morning and night. But all the prayers in the world were of no avail without a man. Now Guenevere sought Arthur’s love to get what only he could put into her womb. Yet try as she might, there was no sign of motherhood for her.
And now Arthur was to go away from her, and leave her nursing her hunger in a cold, empty bed. For when the rivers thawed and the spring rains covered the land, Sir Tor stood before them again, back from the Eastlands once more. In his hand he held a hank of pale gold hair, and he stared as though he had seen into hell.
“They have returned!” he ground out. “And they are killing the children the length and breadth of what they dare to call the Saxon shore.” He bran
dished the hank of hair and wept aloud. “She was seven years old. They cut her hair off and speared her to a tree.”
Arthur sat like a figure carved in stone. “She will be avenged,” he said quietly.
And a week later he was gone.
THAT WAS THE first time Arthur went to war without her, and the first time she was alone.
Alone but for Morgan, and Morgan was different now. When spring began she could still be found lying on her bed and staring at the wall. At other times she would throw herself into feverish activity, walking for hours with a strange jerky gait. But when Arthur had given the call to war and the trysting horn sounded far and wide, Morgan had been spurred into sudden action. Up with the dawn every day, she rode tirelessly at Arthur’s side as he called in his troops and selected the best of them to make up the war band he had in mind.
Guenevere could not bear the thought of his leaving. It had made her moody, shivery, often in tears.
“Take heart, my lady,” Gawain had urged in bluff embarrassment. “We will make mincemeat of the Saxons and any who dare to withstand our King!” He had shifted his great feet. “And never fear, the King’s knights will see that he comes safe home. Don’t think you’ll lose him—they’d have to kill every one of us first!”
Gawain had meant well, Guenevere knew, but he did not understand. Arthur would go into battle armed with the scabbard of her mother, her wedding gift, which would protect him at all times. While he wore this, Arthur could shed no blood. No, that was not her fear.
And she had weeks to endure it, weeks when her only lifeline was the thought of Arthur and the memory of his love. It was Morgan who drew it from her, the morning they heard that Arthur’s work was done and he would soon return. The only sound was the soft hissing of the fire they had burning in the chamber, for the old castle was still cold in March. Morgan sat in silence beside the fire, plying her needle industriously at her embroidery frame, a habit of the convent she never seemed to break.
Guenevere was striding up and down, a habit of her own when in distress. She did not know she had her arms clasped tight across her stomach till Morgan spoke.
Her voice was as husky and dry as a snake shedding its skin. “You are grieving that nothing grew in there while Arthur was away.”
To Guenevere’s surprise, hot tears welled up and threatened to flood her eyes. “Oh, Morgan, I fear nothing will grow there at all!”
Morgan could ask a question without words. Why? said her long pale face.
“My mother had only one child in all her life. Yet she changed her chosen one every seven years and made much good earth magic. I think I come from poor breeding stock!”
Morgan’s back hunched and she spat like a cat. “Women are not breeding stock!”
“I know, I know,” Guenevere said weakly. “But Morgan, pity me! I want a daughter, and I want to give Arthur a son. Yet I am barren! I cannot conceive!” She could not stop the tears.
Morgan pushed aside her embroidery and sat deep in thought, her dark, enclosed face marked with a bitter frown. “You need a seeing, to give you a sight of what is to come,” she said at last. “Or a casting. The runes do not lie.” She stared into the fire. “Choose.”
“Not a seeing!” Guenevere cried with a shudder. “When the sight possesses me, it makes me sad afterward, and sick as a dog again. But Morgan, what do you know about these old ways? In the convent, surely you never had the sight, or learned to cast the runes—”
“Ina knows.”
“Ina?”
Morgan cocked her head and listened with her inner ear. “Ina,” she said. “Listen.”
A moment later Ina slipped in, her eyes glowing like a mermaid’s, bright with sea-fire. Guenevere stared. How did Morgan—? Come to that, how did Ina—?
Do not ask, said an inner voice. Let things take their course. Ina had a pouch of velvet on a cord around her neck. “From my kinswoman in Camelot, madam, who made your wedding dress,” she whispered as she lifted it over her head. Without a word all three of them drew together in a circle around the fire.
Guenevere was torn between fear and desire. The flickering flames lit the two faces beside her with an Otherworldly light. “Cast your runes!” She nodded to Ina. “Begin!”
Ina knelt before the fire, closed her eyes tightly, and began to hum. A high throbbing rhythm filled the air. Blindly she groped in the pouch, and cast what she drew out onto the fire.
There was a low rushing sound, and a mist arose from the glowing logs. The air grew dark, with odd flashes of pale light. A rich smell filled the room. It seemed to feed the hunger of Guenevere’s very soul, and she found herself gulping it down. She did not care that her head was reeling and her wits were beginning to swim.
“The runes!” she cried to Ina. “Cast your runes!”
Was it still Ina humming, or had Morgan joined in the low pulsing chant? Guenevere’s ears caught odd words of strong magic, the forbidden words only the most powerful dared say. But who had said them? Had she said them herself?
“The runes—”
“The runes …”
A great whispering filled the room. Ina opened the neck of the velvet bag and deftly tossed the remaining contents into the air.
Out of the pouch flew a handful of downy feathers, a rain of bright shining stones, and a clutch of little bones. Stark white and fragile, they could have come from the body of a weasel, a young rabbit, or an elver from some silent hidden pool. But this ancient magic could work only with the bones of babies that never were, everyone knew. Only one unborn could call to another across the world between the worlds and the dark chasm of time.
The loud whispering was now humming inside Guenevere’s head. The sound of the spell seemed to hold the runes suspended, keep them floating in the air.
“Why?” she cried, weeping as they drifted to the floor. She grabbed Ina’s hand. “Why can’t I bear a child to the man I love? Where is the daughter I dreamed I would have?”
Ina spoke to the runes in a song without words. Delicately they settled to their places on the floor. Guenevere covered her eyes with her hand. “Tell me!” she whispered. “Tell me! What do they say?”
From her left there came a sharp hissing breath. She thought she heard Morgan give a cry of pain, but Ina’s voice drowned her out. “Look, madam—look!”
Guenevere opened her eyes. Ina was twisting the empty bag in her hands, staring wide-eyed at the shape on the floor. Morgan was hunched forward, coiled like a snake about to strike.
“See, my lady, see!” Ina cried ecstatically. “Now we have something to tell the King when he comes back! Oh, madam, at last!” She burst into tears.
Outlined on the rug before the fire, the stones had settled in a circle, making a full round shape like the body of a woman with child. Inside the ring of stones, one bone lay like a spine, and the others had fallen at angles to the right and left, like half-formed arms and legs. At the top where the head should be, the feathers lay clustered in a downy heap.
“The Goddess be thanked!” Guenevere wept, afraid to believe her eyes. “The sign of a baby! I will have a child!”
“Yes, madam!” Ina laughed and wept at the same time. “And just think how delighted the King and we all will be!”
“Ina, with the King away, when will I start this baby? When do you think it will come?”
“Fools!”
Morgan’s face was twisted with an anger Guenevere could not comprehend. “This is not a child to come!” she muttered madly. “Do you not see? You are carrying this baby now!”
CHAPTER 33
“By all the blessed Gods!”
Arthur listened speechless to Guenevere’s trembling disclosure, then terrified her with a wild joyous roar. Afterward he held her in his arms and wept aloud. “I knew it, Guenevere,” he said, laughing and crying with joy. “I dreamed this would be.”
Guenevere did not know whether to be pleased or put out. “And did you also dream what sex our child will be?”
&nb
sp; He nodded in all seriousness. “A girl for Guenevere, I dreamed, not a boy for me this time.”
He seized her hands excitedly and pressed them to his lips. “We’ll call her after your mother, Maire Macha, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.” Guenevere was near to tears. “It means ‘Battle Raven’ in the old tongue.”
Arthur’s face glowed. “That’s wonderful. I’ll teach her to ride as soon as she can walk, and we’ll take her through all the skills of war and make another Battle Raven out of her!”
They spent hour after happy hour in talk like this. Next time, he promised joyfully, he would try to dream a son. For the Middle Kingdom would want a king when they were gone, just as much as the Summer Country would need a queen. And they would have many children, he swore, hugging her in his arms, lovely boys and gorgeous girls, all as beautiful as their mother, as she was now.
And meanwhile he had great news of his own. He and his knights had swept down on the Saxon shore without mercy, raging like a storm from the sea, to punish the invaders and put them to flight. One by one he had destroyed their camps, burned their ships, and avenged their cruel deeds. Those lucky enough to escape with their lives would be in no hurry to return.
Afterward he had seized what the Saxons had plundered from churches and castles far and wide. Chests of gold and silver, sacks of jewels and plate, great gilded crosses and altar ornaments, had all been returned to their rightful owners when they could be found. But many had been killed, and some had died of grief. So the remainder would be given out among his followers to reward their loyalty.
But the lion’s share, Arthur vowed, must go to the daughter who was to come. For there was nothing more important in the world.
“WE MUST GO to Camelot for the birth,” Guenevere breathed to Arthur, lying in his arms on the first morning of his return. “A Queen of the Summer Country must be born in her own land.”
Arthur tensed almost imperceptibly and did not speak. “Morgan will not like it,” he said at last. “I don’t know if we can move her now, the way she is.”
Guenevere, Queen of the Summer Country Page 27
