She laughed instead. “Kill him,” she said. “Why don’t you kill him for me, Malgaunt? He killed Amir.”
Then there were hushing sounds and shocked apologies, but not from her mouth.
ONE DAY SHE traveled to Merlin in his cell. He lay on his dragon couch in the healing hollow of his crystal cave, and a million shafts of light lit his amber eyes. He raised his hand to welcome her spirit shape, and conversed with a gentleness she never knew before.
“So your body recovers, does it, Guenevere?” he said. “Give your heart time; it will take longer to make that well.”
Through his eyes she could see herself sleeping in her bed in her own cell, stretched out like an effigy on a tomb. She could look into her body and see her suffering heart oozing with pain, weeping the tears that her eyes would never shed. Merlin looked with her, and sighed. “Well, well,” he said. “Well, well.”
“It is not well.”
She did not know the broken voice that issued from her mouth. She knew only that she had to challenge him, force him to see the vast evil he had done, before she killed him to avenge Amir’s death.
“You killed Amir.”
Merlin smiled sadly. “I did not, Guenevere.”
She snorted with disgust. “Liar! And murderer!”
“So!” Merlin heaved a half-sigh. “I killed Amir?”
“You practiced against him with your evil art.”
Merlin nodded. “So!”
“You told the Saxons Arthur would bring his son.”
He nodded again. “It is true that they knew to lie in wait for him.”
“And they killed him. But you aimed their spears.”
Was it her madness, or the singing in her ears? But Merlin’s voice rang out low and true. “That is one story, Guenevere. But hear another before you depart.”
She could feel her spirit failing as his words rolled round her ears. Her body was drawing her back, as the white form on the bed felt its emptiness. Hold on! she ordered her spirit in desperation as Merlin spoke. You have challenged the old villain. He must not escape now!
And still Merlin’s voice tolled darkly like a passing bell.
“Think what you have known about me since you first knew Arthur’s name.” Inside the still chamber, dazzling fragments of light played around Merlin’s head. “One thing above all, I think men would say of me.” He paused, and a touch of the old Merlin flashed out in a crooked grin. “You never loved me, Guenevere. With good reason, since we fought for Arthur’s soul. And I fought without scruple, without mercy, I will confess. But one thing in my life has given it truth and dignity. I loved Arthur more than life itself.”
He loved Arthur—yes. Her fading spirit unwillingly acknowledged it. But hold on—hold on—there is more to come—
“And I love him still,” the singing hum went on. “I would never have schemed against the son he loved. I would have given my own life to spare him pain. I did not kill Amir.”
“You did! You did!”
“No, Guenevere. And I suffer too. My poor Arthur is now at the worst time of his young life. But no grief lasts forever. He has lands to conquer, hearts to win, and years to reign. I have seen his destiny, and he will be High King. He will recover, through me and my love.”
A whispering sigh filled the cave and echoed through the earth. “And when he does, I shall recover too. He will rise and come again, and so shall I. When the sleepers awake, Merlin will rise with them.”
She could feel his power soaring to the climax of his song. “Ask yourself then why I should kill Amir. The beloved son of the man I most love was a son again to me.”
She was fading now from his sight and her own, losing her senses as the world grew dim. But Merlin’s voice strengthened till it thundered through the cell. “Because you were sick with self-love, Guenevere, you thought that Amir was yours alone. And because I hated you, you thought I must hate him. But I love Arthur, and he was Arthur’s son.” His voice was hissing now. “Ask yourself then, why would I kill Amir?”
One fragile howl escaped her tortured lungs. “Then who did?”
“Ah!” Merlin’s golden eyes had shrunk to pinpoints of black. “Who indeed?”
WHEN SHE AWOKE she was lying in her bed. There was no sign that she had ever left it to visit Merlin in his crystal cave.
For a long time then she did not know if it was night or day. Around her, maidens came and went on silent feet. They gave her potions in a silver cup and fed her on sweet fumes when she could not eat. They gave her blessed oblivion from strange flasks, and then the voices in her head would sleep a little too. Yet all the time she knew that he was dead.
“Amir!”
They said she howled like a dog and knocked her head against the white stones of the wall. One day she awoke and her mouth was full of blood. Another time she found scratches on her face and breasts, and they told her she had been wailing in the night. But she had dreamed a black cat squatted on her chest, hissing and spitting, and its claws slashed her flesh. And still the pain went on.
SHE DREAMED OF Amir; he came to her every night. He stood by her bed in the cool pale cell with his clear gaze and Otherworldly air. She could see his warm sturdy little body, the sideways tilt of his head, his bright hair and loving smile. He would come to her, it would be as it was before, but as soon as she reached out to hold him in her arms, he would fade away.
AND ALWAYS THERE were the messengers at the door speaking in the voices of Gawain, Kay, Lucan, or Bedivere, and Ina answering them.
“No, no, she will not see you, she is not well enough to see anyone.”
“The King says—”
“The Queen has forbidden us to hear what he says.”
“He has sent a hundred messengers. How many more must he send?”
“The Queen says she will never hear from him again.”
“Would she want him to turn to the Christians? They are all round him now like flies around a corpse.”
“The Queen will not care.”
“But she has no idea how he suffers, without his wife, without his son. Gods above, he’s going mad!”
“Sir …”
She could hear Ina choosing her words with care. “The Queen my lady is already mad—as any woman would be, whose husband killed her son.”
ONE DAY SHE awoke to a scent she thought she knew. One of the maidens of the Lady was setting a posy of pale mauve sweet-faced flowers beside her bed. She touched them wonderingly. “Violets? In December?”
The maiden shook her head. “Oh, my lady, it’s not December anymore. You have been here longer than you think. The snowdrops have come and gone, and the violets are in bloom.”
Nemue entered as she spoke. “Spring is here, Guenevere. The Lady will see you now.”
CHAPTER 41
They carried her in a chair down the steps of the little white guesthouse, over the greening grass. Daisies and buttercups nodded along the way, and boughs of silver-pink apple blossoms arched above her head. She could hear the drowsy coo of doves and see their white wings fluttering in every tree. Had Amir gone with them? Had his white soul taken wing and fled to the sky?
The Lady’s house was warm, and her dragon lamps were glowing with golden fire. As the attendants brought Guenevere in, the dogs howled mournfully and the leader padded forward to lay his heavy red head on her lap. As soon as they were alone the Lady put back her veil and spoke, leaning forward on her throne. “There are no words for your sorrow, Guenevere. But try to accept our love.”
Guenevere bowed her head.
“And first you must know how Amir died.”
“No! I—”
The Lady’s voice was like the storm on the mountaintop. “You must know. The first troop of Saxons was only a decoy. While Arthur attacked them, the whole war band fell on the group he had left to guard Amir.” She paused and seemed to be choosing her words with care. “It was as if they knew that the King’s son would be there.”
Guenevere moaned with pain
. “But still he should have lived! Gawain and the others were there to defend him to the death—”
The Lady sighed. “Oh, they tried. You did not see their wounds. But they did not see the Saxon spear that took Amir’s life.” She drew a harsh breath. “The dog who killed him died the next second, transfixed by all their spears. Then their greatest fight was to save Amir’s body and bring him safe away for burial.”
Guenevere nodded, wild with pain. She knew how the horned men loved to spread-eagle the bodies of monks on their own church roofs, play football with babies cut from their mothers’ wombs, and make cups out of captives’ heads. And her child lay in the cold sand where she could never hold him, never make him warm again. “But Amir—”
“—rests in the arms of the Mother, washed by the sea, just as he slept in the waters of life when he grew inside your womb.”
There was a long pause. Somewhere in the silence Guenevere heard herself weeping, and could not stop.
She tried to draw a breath. “Lady, can I stay here on Avalon with you? My other life is over.” A fleeting vision blinded her eyes: Amir’s tower room in the palace, with his painted wooden horse, his scattered toys, and his trundle bed. “I can never go back to Camelot again.”
The Lady nodded. “You have had this dream since your girlhood, I think? To live the life of joy and prayer and peace here on Avalon, attended only by maidens and by the men we choose?”
“Yes!” Guenevere cried. “And to serve the Goddess!” She was sobbing hopelessly now. “And who better to serve the Mother than a woman who will never be a mother again?”
“Never is too long a word to say.”
“Never!” she wept. “My life with Arthur is over. Let me join you here!”
The Lady paused. “Is that your only question? You have something else to ask of me, I think.”
Guenevere could hardly speak. “I must see Amir—one last time, if no more. When my mother died, I heard her and saw her, walking between the worlds. But Amir—”
The Lady raised her hand. The inner door opened, and four maidens appeared carrying a great bowl made of oak. Gnarled and black with age, it was filled with water that seemed to tremble with a life of its own. Guenevere rose from her chair, took a few weak paces forward, and fell to her knees.
As the maidens set the bowl down, the black water became as still as a mirror. The oak whispered to itself in its shining depths. The Lady stood across from Guenevere, staring intently into the shimmering water, touching her clasped hands to her forehead, then to her lips, and last to her breast.
“Come!” she called softly. “Amir, hear us, come!”
Half singing, half chanting, she began the words of power. The light in the dragon lamps flickered and grew dim, and the fire sank down on the hearth. Even the dogs stretched out and did not stir, cast into a twilight sleep. Guenevere watched the oak bowl with her heart in her eyes, reaching out, craving a sign. The water was clear now, and as black as the heart of the marsh, where the bog waits to drag down the unwary to their deaths.
Blackness and silence, still water, emptiness. She could not bear it. “There is nothing there!”
“Patience!”
The Lady raised her hand and cast something into the bowl. The water hissed and gurgled, and began to seethe in shades of black and green. When it settled again, there was a film on the surface, and shapes moving across it as if on the landscape of the moon.
“Amir, come!” the Lady crooned again. She leaned toward Guenevere. “What do you see?”
Guenevere strained till she felt that her eyeballs would burst. “Nothing!” she wept.
“Look again.”
This time as she looked, she saw the mists swirling through the world between the worlds. A host of white stars shone brightly in the skies, all the children of the Goddess taken home before their time. But which was Amir?
“Amir!”
She called his name again and again. The stars twinkled on.
“Amir, Amir!” she cried. He was not there.
Now dark clouds were boiling up through the pale wraiths of mist, great swollen billows, yellow and purple and black.
“It is coming,” the Lady murmured, watching the bowl intently as the storm within it gathered and darkness filled the sky. Now a high wind was bending the tops of the trees, and lightning split the night. Then the skies opened, and rain fell in torrents from the threatening sky. And through the dark came a small figure, weeping and alone.
HE WAS FAR away, and she could not see his face. His head was bent into the wind and rain, and his shoulders shook with sobs. But he was worlds away, and she could not comfort him.
“Amir!”
The Lady held up her hand: “Watch, and see!”
The surface of the water shivered, and he was gone. Now four other figures galloped into view through the storm-tossed clouds, all muffled against the weather but riding for their lives.
Guenevere stared in disbelief. “It’s Arthur’s knights!” she cried. “Gawain, Kay, Lucan, and Bedivere! But where are they going? And why are they so small?”
“Watch!” The Lady laid her finger on her lips.
The four horsemen galloped on through the dark. She watched them pass through petrified forests and over dead mountains where undead things escaped from their graves and lived. They crossed the old Roman roads still carved into the landscape centuries after those who made them marched away and died. From there they took to the lanes, then to the greenways, and then to the single tracks. And at last they came to a valley where the road ended in a place of no return.
A dark castle stood there, deep in the valley’s end. As they raced toward it, one lone horseman, a solitary figure as heavily muffled as they were, rode out of the castle to meet them, one upraised arm pointing back the way they had come. All four pulled their horses round at once and fell into place behind the solitary rider. And now all five were galloping back, riding furiously into the mist until the darkness swallowed them up.
Then came a crying without words, and the first small figure was there again, walking and weeping and hiding his eyes. Now he was wandering in a living forest, and the rain beat down through its leafless branches as he moved sobbing through the trees. As he passed by, some of them tried to catch him, leaning down to enfold him in their grasp. One in particular wound its slender long black limbs around the small helpless form, and Guenevere thought it smiled to itself with a woman’s secret smile.
She opened her mouth in dread. The Lady shook her head.
“For the third time, watch!” she warned.
The dark forest and the small figure dissolved. The water in the oak bowl rolled over sluggishly and settled back to an oily, sullen sheen. Guenevere’s soul seethed with anger in her breast. It was all over, and she had seen nothing. It was a fraud. She had been deceived!
But the water quivered again, and seemed to sculpt itself now into more powerful shapes. She saw Arthur’s city on the hilltop, then the castle of Caerleon itself. She saw the five riders gallop into the courtyard, and a moment later, all five tiny figures were racing into the palace, hot on some quest.
Four of them ran to the King’s private quarters, where Arthur would surely be. But the fifth, the muffled rider from the hidden valley, turned another way and made for the chapel where the kings of Caerleon had kept their devotions since turning to Christ.
Now Guenevere was inside the chapel, looking down on an altar lit by two great candles in tall stands of brass. The choir stalls were filled with black-robed monks, their heads bent in prayer, and a solitary priest knelt at the altar praying too. Below the altar, the small figure she had looked for so hard lay facedown on the floor, arms and legs stretched out in the shape of a cross.
“Amir!” she screamed.
What was he doing there? He had died in the east, he had been buried on the Saxon shore.
Inside the chapel, the candle flames leaped up shivering. The newcomer approached Amir as he lay on the ground, but as in a dr
eam, both figures were the same size now. The stranger leaned down and placed a hand on Amir’s shoulder as if to comfort him, less like a knight now than a monkish figure muffled up in black. And the prostrate figure started and came to life, and it was not Amir but Arthur after all.
Arthur … oh, my love …
Arthur but not Arthur, a gray-faced stranger, gaunt and raving wild.
“You!” he cried to the stranger with a mad laugh. “What are you doing here?”
Against Arthur the knight was short and slightly built. But the voice was harsh and strong, and Guenevere knew it as in a dream.
“What am I doing here? I am here for you.”
“God bless you!”
Arthur folded the newcomer in his arms and crushed him to his chest. Then he burst out weeping and pushed him away. “You know”—a fit of passion shook him—“you know what I have done?”
“Oh, my good brother, hear the word of God. In the midst of life, you know we are in death.”
“Goddess, Mother, no!” Guenevere clutched at the Lady’s hand. “Is Arthur to be tormented by Christians at a time like this?”
The Lady’s voice chimed like a death knell. “Watch and see!”
“Is this their Christian consolation,” Guenevere raged, “this ranting talk of death? I know my child is born to live again! The crown of life is life again, not death! Why do they say that?”
She heard the stranger speak to Arthur as if in answer to her words. “The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away.”
Arthur reached out and tenderly put back the newcomer’s hood. “Bless you, Morgan. Oh, thank God you’ve come!”
CHAPTER 42
There was a silence in the Lady’s house. The water hissed sullenly as a green flame flickered around the bowl and died. Even the walls seemed to be holding their breath. Guenevere was dumb.
Guenevere, Queen of the Summer Country Page 33
