Within the house a candle lighted their way. The door stood open as if to invite them in. Ulf’s eyes met Cunric’s and the leader nodded once. Then he began to lope across the midnight grass. On his heels ran a band of desperate men. The sleeping village would sleep no more that night.
GUENEVERE SAT IN the solarium watching the sunbeams playing hide-and-seek in Amir’s hair. It had been a golden November and she basked in the winter sun, curled up on a couch with her son. Her contentment was complete.
“Guenevere!” She looked up to see Arthur approaching with a frown on his face and a letter in his hand.
She looked up with a pang of guilt. She knew that she left more and more of the business of state to Arthur, because she wanted only to be with Amir. There was nothing she loved as much as watching him at his lessons or reading to him with his small body close to hers, as it was now.
“Father!” Amir lifted his dusty fair head in delight. But with the sure instinct of an only child, he knew at once that he was not wanted now. Without a word he slid from Guenevere’s knee and went to his nurse before Arthur could send him away.
Arthur scarcely seemed to see him go. “Bad news from the east coast, Guenevere,” he said abruptly. “A raiding party of Saxons has made land. They’ve taken one of the inland villages, and the word is they are digging in.”
“Digging in? What, now, with winter almost here?” She was horrified. “Gods above! If they’re making camp—”
Arthur nodded grimly and finished the thought. “—they mean to stay.”
Fingers of fear made their way around her heart. “That means there’s a terrible famine in their homeland, and only death awaits them if they return.”
“But if they stay, they become settlers, not summer raiders anymore,” Arthur said heavily. “Then more and more will come, and the coast will once again become the Saxon shore.”
He sighed, and his eyes wandered to Amir in the corner with his nurse. “Ha! Soon they’ll be taking our women to warm their beds and comfort their long cold nights. Then they’ll have children by them, and every son born here will be a reason to stay!”
He slapped the letter hard against his thigh. “We must root them out, like the vermin they are.” He lifted his head and snuffed the air like a hunting dog. “Well, so be it! The knights will welcome some action before winter sets in.”
A raw foreboding struck Guenevere’s heart. “Arthur, is this wise?”
“What do you mean?”
“The Saxons are desperate men. They won’t go easily.” She was shivering now, and fear made it hard to speak. “Winters are cruel on that eastern coast. They’ll find no sustenance, and they’ll get no help from the people there—indeed, the locals will pick them off as best they can. Why not let nature fight for us, and see how many are still alive next spring? If you go now—”
“Guenevere, Guenevere.” Arthur was shaking his head impatiently. “Leave this to me, will you? You are no soldier. I know what to do. We go now, and strike fast and hard, so they won’t have time to put up any resistance at all.”
“But Arthur—”
“No, Guenevere!” He frowned at her troubled face. “I’ve made the decision, and I’ve never taken an easier one in my life. It’s the right time. A child could do it, if we go now!” His face lit up with a strange and different light. “I’ll take Amir! It’ll be his first campaign!”
She could not believe it. “Arthur, I beg you, no!”
“Why not? I was around his age when I went to war for the first time,” Arthur retorted. “It was only a skirmish on the borders of Gore, but it was war enough for a lad. Kay and I went as pages to a couple of Sir Ector’s knights. We got nowhere near the fighting, but we came back as heroes in our own eyes just the same!”
Heroes …
Every boy longs to be a hero, and Amir will be the same.
She knew that the boy would be hearing every word. She lowered her voice and tried to speak calmly. “Arthur, this is not just a skirmish. The Saxons are only here because there is nothing for them at home. Men fighting for their lives will fight to the death.” Listen to me, Arthur! her eyes said to him. Can we discuss this alone?
But Arthur was not looking. He waved an impatient hand. “Amir won’t be fighting, don’t you see that, Guenevere?”
“He shouldn’t be there at all!” She could have killed Arthur. “He’s too young!”
“Nonsense!” cried Arthur breezily. “It’s time he left the house of women and learned to live with men.” He raised his hand. Amir was watching him steadily, his great eyes fixed on Arthur with the hope of things to come. “Amir, come to me. Tell me, would you like to go to war?”
Amir lifted his bright head like a flower, and his eyes spoke for him. He was glowing with his Otherworldly light.
“You see?” Arthur crowed. “It’s all settled, then. We’ll leave at first light, in two days’ time.”
CHAPTER 39
Nothing she said could move Arthur now. Patiently he repeated that Amir would be nowhere near the action, not by several miles—that a whole troop of men would guard him day and night—that it would be no more than a fracas, and over in a day.
“If all this is true,” Guenevere forced out through clenched lips, “then what’s the point of taking him at all?”
Arthur’s eyes were alight with memories of old campfires and escapades of long ago. “To make a man of him!” He sighed in exasperation. “Oh, Guenevere, it would have had to come in time. How old would Amir be before you agreed he could go to war? Ten? Fifteen? Twenty?”
“Never!” she burst out.
Arthur gave a short laugh. “You’d never say that if he’d been born a girl! If Maire had come instead of Amir here, you’d have told her all the stories of Battle Raven to make her brave. You’d have taught her yourself all that your mother taught you. Maire would be practicing her swordplay now, not hanging around her nurse’s knee reading books like Amir.”
Guenevere caught her breath. If Maire had come. Oh, this was cruel! He must be angry, to throw that in her teeth. He knew how it grieved her that Maire had never come.
And there was no reason for it, all the midwives said. In Camelot, Taliesin and the Druids prayed every day for the increase of the Queen and the royal family. On Avalon, Nemue and the Lady had asked the Goddess to bless her moon-times and help her conceive.
Yet still Maire did not come.
And it was true, she would not hold back a girl from her destiny in war.
She bowed her head and tried to stem the tears. “Let me see to Amir’s things, then. When do you leave?”
ALL THE TIME they were away, Guenevere felt the darkness coming; she felt it all around. Yet she had no seeings, only racked and jumbled dreams that fled as soon as she awoke.
And the messages Arthur sent faithfully every day brought nothing but good news. Every day too came Ina’s reminder that she should trust the King. “Would King Arthur put his own son in danger?” she demanded with a laugh. “Would Sir Gawain, or any of them, risk the life of their Prince? They’d cut their arms off first!”
ONE LAST DEATH—one last blow for the Gods—then the Dark Ones could take his spirit home …
Rocking in the saddle, Ulf knew he was losing blood. They had been glad to find good horses in the village, but that would not help him now. His soul was singing through the hollows of his veins, and his eyes were growing dim. And above the din of battle, the old refrain still hammered through his head, wrong, wrong, all wrong.
Every step his brother took had given Ulf cause to doubt. “Why this village, Cunric?” he had demanded. “They never defended it and neither can we.” Every answer Cunric had given him had been proved false. “Pendragon will not set forth in winter to drive us out,” he’d bragged. “We have until the ice breaks to fatten ourselves here.” So when Arthur came, they were all unprepared.
But before that, Cunric had started muttering to himself and communing with spirits in the wood. One had come to him
and offered him a pact, he said. In return for a death service, she would bring them all safe home.
“Only one death, Ulf!” Cunric had urged. He laughed oddly. “And only a little one!”
Ulf laughed now to remember sharing that joke. The death of a child was nothing; he had killed hundreds for sport. And he had believed Cunric that if they killed this child, then his dark spirit would bring them home.
But he never knew men who would fight for a child the way these knights had done. And the Gods alone knew how Cunric was faring against the main force. His brother had underestimated Arthur Pendragon once before, when he said he would not come. Ulf knew in his soul that no man lived to do that twice.
He laughed again, feeling his wits grow light. How long he could stay in the saddle, he did not know. His war-hardened body had continued to grip and hold, to thrust and meet the resistance of screaming flesh, to know the triumph as a blow struck home. But still he could not get anywhere near the boy.
The boy …
There could never have been a child like this before, calm and unafraid in the midst of a battle, with men dying all around. What was he, Ulf wondered, a halfling, a changeling child? For truly he had a more than human air.
Ulf could see him now through the defending wall of knights all frenziedly hacking to right and left as the boy remained pale but composed. What other child could sit his pony so, the still center at the eye of the raging storm?
Gods above, he’s a boy to fight for, Ulf grudgingly conceded to himself. A well-shaped head set on a slender frame, tall for his age, and beautiful as a girl. His mouth, his skin, his eyes, his thick mop of hair picking up every glint of gold in the moonlight: all would flatter any girl’s face, too. But the set of his back, the thrust of his jaw, and the fearless, unruffled stare were all male, and all royal prince. A noble child, Ulf nodded to himself. Pity he has to die.
But die he must, by Cunric’s orders and the Dark One’s besides. For in his last moments, Ulf had seen her, too. She was lean and white with great eyes as big as plates and a purple mouth. She rode naked through the air on a black chariot with black knives on its wheels. And she came straight to him, brandishing her whip to drive his horse back one more time into the seething fray.
“The Prince!” the dark spirit whispered, rolling her red-black eyes. He could see her angry nipples with their piercing glare, the lips of her furious sex speaking to him as she lashed him with words. “The Prince!” she commanded, leaning out of her chariot with one white breast dangling as long as her arm, and a red pointing finger as long as his own leg. And suddenly he knew what she had come to say.
Home.
Kill the boy, and I will bring you all safe home, she had promised Cunric, and Cunric had swallowed it. Ulf laughed long and hard for the last time.
Home.
She never meant the land that they had left.
But home to the world beneath all the worlds, to the last, lost land of their Gods of blood and bone. Home to the long hollow in the hill, to the burning ship, to the grave in the depths of the sea.
Home.
He was almost home now, almost there. Just one more blow, one death, a little death. The child’s life as the price of his right to walk the Otherworld in power until he came again.
So be it.
As the Dark Ones willed.
Ulf looked steadily at the boy with the last of his fading sight. His bloodless lips moved as he begged the Great Dark One to ride on the point of his spear. It seemed to him that her snaky head nodded yes. Gripping the long shaft with both hands, he fixed the boy in his final pinpoint of vision and thrust with all his force. He saw the glinting metal travel through the ring of knights, he saw the defender’s sword making straight for his heart, and he saw no more.
“OF COURSE THE King will bring the Prince safely home!” Ina whispered in Guenevere’s ear every day. And soon Guenevere knew how foolish she had been. She was in the solarium with a few of the lords and ladies, making the most of the winter sun, when there was a flurry of arrival at the door.
A soldier stood before her covered in mud, but grinning from ear to ear. “Word from the King, Your Majesty,” he announced, beaming. “The danger is over, and he is bringing the war force home. The attack on the Saxons went just as he planned. There was a small group, no more, who had invaded a village and put the people to death. Now they have met the fate that they deserved, and there are none left to trouble the eastern shore.”
“Goddess, Mother, thanks!” Guenevere sobbed, beside herself with relief. “And Prince Amir?”
“Safe and sound, far from the action, in the care of the King’s four knights and a picked troop of men. The King sends to say he will join forces with them, and they’ll all make their way gently home.” He laughed exultantly. “The Prince’s first expedition! And I served with him. Our Prince Amir!” His ruddy face creased with delight.
Guenevere nodded, giddy with relief.
Amir safe and sound …
Goddess, Mother, thanks and praises for saving my son …
AND SUDDENLY THERE was Arthur himself in the doorway, pale as the dead, gray as a living ghost. In the passageway beyond lurked Gawain, Kay, Lucan, and Bedivere, all white and staring too, like watchers at a death.
“He’s dead, Guenevere,” Arthur cried in a voice not his own. “Amir’s dead. They killed him after all.”
CHAPTER 40
“Where is he? Bring me to him. Let me see my son!”
“He’s dead, Guenevere, gone. We had to bury him.”
“Take me there! I want to see him—bury him myself …”
Arthur closed his eyes and turned his head away. “No man on earth would know the place again. We had to hide him from the Saxons before they could gather for another attack. So we buried him on the seashore, where his grave could never be found. Sometimes the sea covers it, then when the tide ebbs, his bed grows small again.”
“No!” Guenevere screamed. She ran at the knight companions, clawing at Gawain’s chest. “Gawain, say this isn’t true. Bedivere, Kay, I beg of you—Lucan, you wouldn’t lie to me …”
Gawain and Lucan exchanged looks of anguish, and Bedivere wept softly to himself. No one moved or breathed. There was no sound, but a silence like death.
“Guenevere.”
Arthur came to her, and tried to take her in his arms. But she fought off his grasp and struck him in the face, and ran away without a backward glance.
SHE WAS CALM then. All around her there were screams and sighs and tears, but she was quiet and she knew what to do. And what to say to the voices in her mind.
Why? screamed a voice within. Why him, why Amir? But she knew why. It came to her in odd snatches above all the other sounds, the piteous howls and screams inside her head, as she went to the stables, took a horse and an old cloak hanging there, and rode away.
IT WAS THE tainted legacy; she knew that now. Slowly she puzzled it out, piece by piece. It was the blood of Arthur on his only son.
For Arthur was born of the evil of two men, when Merlin and Uther plotted to take Igraine. He came into being through a forbidden sin, a sin against the Mother, a man’s lust that wronged a woman and destroyed four blameless lives. Yet for all their schemes, Uther and Merlin had made Arthur an unknown bastard, and left him with a twisted claim to the throne.
And Merlin was a bastard too, sung the voices in her head, did you know that? He was a by-blow of the Pendragons in the female line.
Of course.
It all came back to her now, all the old rumors she had heard about Merlin when she was a child. His mother was a princess betrayed by the man she loved, who proved to be a devil in disguise. So Merlin was the son of a fiend, and his life was twisted too.
Guenevere laughed, rocking and smiling to herself.
Of course.
That is why Merlin did not think it was evil to bring King Uther to Queen Igraine’s bed. Or to kill her husband, Duke Gorlois, so that Uther could have Igraine. But it was c
ruel, it was wicked beyond belief. Igraine had been hoodwinked, blinded, betrayed, to lie with Uther, who had murdered her chosen one only hours before. Uther gave her only thirteen suffering hours between the time he killed her husband and the day he married her.
Arthur was born of this, the voices sang. No wonder Amir died. She pondered hard, her slow thoughts struggling to keep pace with the steady onward trudging of the horse’s hooves. Could a man like Arthur, ill-starred from birth with adultery, rape, and death, hope to make a good marriage, or keep safe a child of sin?
A child of sin, yes, his father’s sin that he could not escape. But how was Amir sinful in himself?
Why did he die?
Why?
Why did he have to die?
“I DIDN’T HEAR YOU, madam. What did you say?”
It was Ina, her face swollen and tear-stained, riding beside Guenevere huddled in a cloak. Guenevere stared at her. What was Ina doing here with this guard of men? And why was she looking at her like that? “I didn’t say anything, Ina. Did you hear a voice? What did it say?”
Ina bit her lip. “I thought you were speaking to me, madam. You were crying and singing a little while ago. I must have been mistaken. Forgive me.”
“Forgive him? No, tell the King, I never will forgive. I will not look upon his face again. Your face is wet; is it raining? You’re shivering; why has it gone so cold? Do you know where we are? Are we far from home?”
IT WAS COLD on the boat, and the night was very dark. But she knew the call of the marsh fowl on the lake, and the silver glow of the sky. Now she could smell the apple blossoms as they breathed from the orchards above the lake. She could see the stone jetty beckoning, and the small figure holding aloft the lantern as it shone through the night.
“Can you manage, lady?” Ina breathed as she took Guenevere’s arm.
Guenevere laughed like a simpleton. “Manage? Of course I can manage! D’you think I don’t know my own way home?”
AVALON, AVALON, HOME …
She was in a narrow bed in a white cell, just as she had been as a girl so long ago. They all came to her there as she lay in her waking sleep: King Leogrance her father, Taliesin, even Malgaunt, standing by her bed with eyes of burning hate. She knew she should tell Malgaunt not to hate Arthur, but she did not think she would.
Guenevere, Queen of the Summer Country Page 32
