Guenevere, Queen of the Summer Country

by Rosalind Miles

  Lucan did not move.

  “Lucan!”

  Why was Kay looking at her as if she was mad? His hand was twitching as if he wanted to slap her face. “You forget, madam,” he cut in harshly, “that he serves the King now too.”

  Guenevere flinched under Kay’s jaundiced glare. Her will collapsed. “Gods above, is there no man I can trust?”

  The silence was the silence of a tomb. Morgan straightened herself up, drew her robe together, and slid toward the door.

  “I am sorry you were troubled, gentlemen,” she said huskily, lowering her eyes. “I am only here for the King, you all know that. I would not have had this happen for the world.”

  And suddenly she was leaving with soft words and false apologies, flaunting her injured innocence to the world, as if the whole thing were no fault of hers at all. Guenevere stared. Here with my husband, rutting in my bed? It was all too much to bear.

  “Morgan!” she howled. “I know you, Morgan. I know all you have done!”

  “Oh, not all, Lady Guenevere, not all.”

  Lucan was pacing toward Morgan, gripping his sword. “In the King’s bed, traitress?” he shouted in a voice thick with pain. “You were my lady, and I honored you! I wore your favor in the tournament, and loved you only, all these weary months. And all the time …”

  Morgan bit her lip and tried to hold him in her gaze. “Lucan—”

  But he was blind and deaf to her now. “You told me the King would be angry that I dared to love his sister! You lay in my arms and swore our time would come—”

  Morgan’s white face gleamed in the darkness like one of the undead. “Hold your tongue, fool!”

  Lucan was in agony. “I thought you were mine! I gave you all I had, body and soul!”

  “What?” Arthur stirred like a man awakening from a dream. He looked at Morgan in wild disbelief. “You told me I was the only one you ever loved. You said I was the first man in your bed. You said our love was more than life itself—”

  “—‘fairer than the morning and the evening star’?” Lucan’s eyes glittered with unshed tears.

  Arthur gaped. “She said that to you?”

  Morgan passed her tongue over her lips, casting around like a wildcat in a trap.

  Guenevere grabbed at Arthur again. “Remember Merlin!” she cried out to him. “She made us think he raped her! Do you still think that now?”

  Arthur looked at her in horror. “What?”

  “Ask her!”

  “It’s a lie!” Morgan rasped, huddled by the door. “Guenevere hates me—she’s making it up!”

  Lucan gave a savage laugh in Arthur’s face. “Do you believe that?”

  Arthur clutched his head and howled like a dog. “She destroyed Merlin! What else has she done?”

  “More than you know, my lord.”

  Lucan was sweating, his face covered in a thin sheen like rain. “Remember the tournament? The sword of Sir Griflet flying through the air, that almost killed you, till I turned it away?” He raised his own sword and pointed it at Morgan’s throat. “My guess is that your power, lady, sent it on its way—unless I am mad too?”

  Morgan gave a scornful laugh, her eyes glittering with black fire. Guenevere watched the pinpoints round Morgan’s pupils flashing to and fro. Then she seemed to be watching one point above all, deadlier than all the rest.

  It was the tip of a blade sliding through the dark, the point of a spear. And now she saw it slipping unnoticed through a ring of swords all clustered around her son. She saw it pierce his chest and find his heart. She heard him scream, and then she watched him die. She saw the blow that killed Amir in Morgan’s eyes.

  “Amir!”

  Guenevere ran to Arthur and clutched him by the arm. “Arthur, she killed Amir!” she babbled. “You said it was as if the Saxons knew you would be there!”

  Arthur looked at her, and she saw his eyes take fire. Madly she ran on. “She foresaw Amir’s death!”

  Her mind whirled back to the scene in the nursery when Amir was born. What was it Morgan had said then? The husky voice wove back to her through the mists of time. He is one of the spirit children, she had said with a strange laugh. And she had seemed pleased. He will be among the stars, the Mother will take him to her—

  And she, Amir’s mother, had been thrilled to hear this? She had taken Morgan’s words as a compliment to her son?

  Fool! Guenevere screamed to herself as the force of her seeing hit home. If Morgan had foreseen Amir’s death, had she created it too? Had she found a way to use the Saxon hordes as her instrument of revenge? Guenevere reeled. Of course she did. Why else should he die?

  She turned back to Arthur, flooded by certainty. Her transcendental calm was more deadly now than any anger could have been. “She told the Saxons that you were coming with your son. She led them to you; she bribed them to kill Amir. And she used her magic to make their spears strike home.”

  A deathly silence settled on the room. Now for the first time Morgan looked afraid. “Lies!” she screeched. “All lies!”

  “Look at her!” Guenevere could not help herself. She wanted to tear Morgan open and eat her heart. “Her guilt is in her face! It was her black art guiding the Saxons there. Her power riding on the point of that spear!”

  She killed Amir.

  The thought burst like a thunderclap through the small room. Morgan shrank into herself, pitifully shaking her head. “Arthur,” she appealed, “listen to me!” She held out her arms to him. “Remember what we have done! We are the royal kin, brother, born to reign.”

  “Born to die, she-wolf!”

  Arthur leaped forward, tore Gawain’s sword from his hand, and made for Morgan, swinging the weapon round his head. “You killed Amir!”

  Lucan was behind him, his sword outstretched too. “Die, Morgan!” he screamed, tears pouring from his eyes. “Before you betray more men!”

  Gawain surged into the fray, pulling his dagger from his belt. “Kill the witch!” he bawled.

  Gods above, they had all gone mad now! Kay hurled himself forward and tore at Arthur’s arm. “Sire, hold your sword!”

  “My lord!” Bedivere leaped between Morgan and her assailants, barring their way. “You may not kill a woman! This is wrong!”

  Arthur fell back, sweating, his face alight with a sickly gleam. He dropped his head and covered his eyes with his hand. “Get her out of here!”

  “And take her to imprisonment?” Gawain’s voice was as harsh as Guenevere could desire. Arthur nodded, his back turned and shoulders bowed.

  Gawain strode forward and gripped Morgan by the arm. “This way, Princess,” he said with savage satisfaction as he hustled her out. “Guards, ho! Form an escort there!”

  THE SOUND OF tramping feet died away. Lucan had fallen to his knees and buried his face in his hands. Kay threw an uneasy glance after Morgan and Gawain. A son of the Orkneys was not the man to remember his chivalry where women were concerned. “What are your orders, sire? What’s to be done?”

  Arthur shook his head. “She has done cruel wrongs!” he mourned hopelessly.

  “She’s a witch,” Kay said shortly, “a queen of the blackest arts known in hell!”

  “Then she must face the course of law,” Bedivere came in.

  “And if she’s guilty, she’ll pay the price.” Kay nodded. “She’ll go to the fire.”

  “The fire?”

  Guenevere’s flesh crawled. Suddenly she saw a black stake outlined against the sun, and flames licking round it, leaping to the sky. A female figure was writhing in the heart of the torment, burning to death. She heard the woman’s screams as her hair caught fire and her skin crackled and burst. The smell of burning flesh choked the air, and now Guenevere was scorching too. Why was she suffering this sight? “No!” she screamed. “Whatever she’s done, no woman deserves that death!”

  “If she’s wronged the King, bewitched him to her bed, killed Amir—” Kay began hotly.

  “Then the King will take counsel,
when he has come to himself again.” Bedivere’s voice was firm. “And the King will know what to do.”

  Arthur shuddered wildly. “The King?” he said. “Ahh—the King.” He looked at Guenevere with a wild childish air. “Will he, Guenevere? Will he know what to do?”

  CHAPTER 44

  In the throne room of Caerleon, the air was heavy with the heat of the August sun. Every flagstone was filmed with sweat, and the knights’ banners drooped from the black beams of the roof. High on the dais Guenevere sat enthroned beside Arthur as he glared down the hall. Her soul gasped for a breath of woodland air, a sweet green space, clean and unprofaned. And a clear call fell softly through her mind: Come—come away …

  At the foot of the dais, King Ursien of Gore stood his ground and returned Arthur’s gaze unabashed. “A strange request, Your Majesty.”

  Arthur laughed. “It’s not like you to play the coward, man!” he said unpleasantly. “What are you saying, too rich for your blood?”

  Goddess, Mother, what is he doing? Was he trying to give King Ursien offense? Guenevere turned her head away. She no longer knew what Arthur did, or why. But they were still King and Queen, and there was no way out of that.

  “Whatever you say, sire.”

  Shrewd as ever, King Ursien would not be rushed. He had hurried south as soon as Arthur summoned him, traveling from Gore with all his sons and a train of knights and men. Like a loyal vassal, he was ready to do whatever his lord required. But even Ursien could not have known beforehand what Arthur would ask of him now.

  To the left of Arthur’s throne, caught in a slanting shaft of sun, Morgan waited under heavy guard. On either side of her, two of Arthur’s younger knights stood nervously at attention, overawed by the occasion and the breathless scrutiny of the silent, watchful court. Impassively Morgan stared through them all, a black cloak clasped tightly around her in spite of the heat.

  “You’ll not find me ungenerous,” Arthur resumed. He glanced at Ursien’s sons standing in his father’s train. “Your oldest son is soon to be knighted, is he not? I’ll see they all do well.”

  Ursien stroked his grizzled beard and bowed. “Your Majesty is the most generous lord alive.”

  And that is not the question, his keen glance said. The question is, Why do you seek this service of me now?

  HE WOULD HAVE heard the gossip, Guenevere knew. Within minutes it was all around the court—the King’s sister, the Princess Morgan, was in the King’s bed when the Queen came back!

  It did not matter how the tale spread, who whispered it where, who hastened to pass it on. But by the next morning, all Caerleon knew. And by the next day, every ear in the kingdom had heard of her misery and Arthur’s shame.

  And they would know that no matter how the King begged and wept, the Queen would not hear him, would not speak to him, would not return to his bed, but took to her own apartments that same night. In the weeks that had followed, all the court had had to deal with two separate households, the Queen’s and the King’s. For nothing could reconcile her to Arthur now.

  She had listened calmly enough as Gawain told her that Arthur was not to blame.

  “You’re wasting your time, man!” Kay snapped furiously as soon as he knew that Gawain would speak to the Queen. God’s blood, couldn’t the great fool see that the Queen was not a woman to take an injury like this?

  But Gawain had pressed on. It had all been his idea, he swore on his knees in the Queen’s chamber, his and the other knights’, to bring Morgan to Arthur while she was away. How were they to know she would turn out to be a witch?

  “On the honor of a knight, I beg you to think again, madam,” Gawain said angrily. “You must forgive the King!”

  Kay gritted his teeth. That was not the way to win a woman like Guenevere, and must was not a word a queen would obey. But for Arthur’s sake, he could only hope that Gawain might be right. Against all his inclinations, Kay stepped in to back him up. “Remember, madam, you never saw the King in his despair.”

  His sharp tone left Guenevere no doubt whom he blamed for that. “When you abandoned him, we feared for his mind.” He eyed her sourly. “He beat himself, and tore his flesh till it bled. We had to get whatever help we could.”

  “What Sir Kay says is true, my lady.”

  Eagerly Lucan and Bedivere added their pleas too. Bedivere wept to remember their fears for Arthur when they rode through the storm to Le Val Sans Retour— “It took us so long to find the King’s sister in the hidden valley that we thought he’d be dead by the time we got back.”

  Lucan knelt to her too, just as Gawain had. Guenevere looked at him and marveled coldly at what she saw. Lucan? The Queen’s champion, on his knees for Arthur now? God, how these men loved him! Arthur had deceived his own wife and Lucan’s queen, and had taken Lucan’s lady for himself. Yet Lucan still set aside his own hurt and loss in the service of a king who had betrayed them both. “Lady, forgive!” he implored.

  But she would not.

  She had watched their whole journey in the Lady’s seeing bowl, and she knew they told the truth. But it made no difference, she told them, and she sent them away.

  THEN ARTHUR HAD come, as bleak as a mountain crag, and told her that he would take his life, if she wanted that. But all she wanted was to know how she had lost him to Morgan.

  “Did she work on you with spells, with potions, what?” Guenevere had begged in anguish. “Tell me the enchantments she used!”

  He set his jaw like a trap. “I have sworn an oath never to speak of her.”

  “Go then!” she screamed. “And never speak to me till you can!”

  So he kept to his apartments, and she to hers.

  THEN ONE NIGHT very late he came again, calmer and more himself, ready to break his oath. For her, for their marriage, to set his mind at rest, he would tell her all he knew. Morgan had found him in the chapel, he said, as cold as the stones he was lying on, praying to die.

  She had taken him to her chamber, warmed him and stroked his head, and listened while he talked about Amir. She lit a fire there that burned all by itself and gave off a fume that made his pain seem less. She ordered food to help him to eat again, and fed him with her own hand. She made a potion from wine and rare herbs, and together they drank to the brother and sister Gods.

  “And there was more,” he said dully. “Things she could do. Skills she had—words of power—”

  Guenevere could not help herself. “The skills of the whorehouse!”

  Arthur flinched.

  Skills and words …

  Her skills and words must have been better than mine.

  WHAT CAN I DO, Arthur implored, weeping, on his knees, to make you forgive me and love me again?

  And she dismissed him with one word: “Nothing!”

  But his nature would not let him live by that. So he came to her doggedly, day in, day out, to do what he could. The least hint would suffice. “Tell me what to do!”

  She could not tell him. Morgan came between them every day. If she was proved a traitor to the King, Kay had said, she would burn. She would burn twice over if she proved to be a witch. But who would send a princess to the fire?

  And it came to Guenevere—She will never be tried for the evil she has done. Morgan would never be brought to account for her plots against Merlin, against Arthur, against her, against Amir. Arthur was blind with shame at what he had done. He would not have his humiliation dragged out in open court, even though it meant that Morgan would go scot-free.

  Guenevere laughed at him then like a witch herself.

  “You offer me your life, which is nothing to me,” she shouted in his face, “and you spare hers, when she killed Amir!” A murderous fury seethed inside her now. “If she lives, what will you do with her? Have her living here as the King’s sister, just as before?”

  “No! Things can never be as they were before!”

  “Oh, you see that now, do you?”

  The eternal cry of the unfaithful man—too late, too la
te!

  Gods above, why could she not talk to him without floods of tears? “If you don’t know what to do with her, give her to me! She killed Amir! I’ll kill her for you. I know what to do!”

  “No!” Now it was Arthur’s turn to weep. “I will dispose of her!”

  “You won’t! You still love her!”

  “I never loved her! But I will take care of my own flesh and blood!”

  THE BITTER ARGUMENTS went to and fro. Then one night he came with a strange look on his face. “If Morgan could be married,” he said slowly, “into a faraway country, given to a good man, one strong enough to keep her down—” He paused. “There are young knights here I could spare to go with her, to guard her for him—Sir Geras, Sir Accolon—”

  Guenevere could not believe it. “Who would take her on terms like these?”

  “King Ursien of Gore,” said Arthur, expelling a heavy sigh. “He is a widower, and free to marry again. He has growing sons, so he will be looking for ways and means to bring them on. The dowry of a princess would do well for him now. He is an old soldier, and he knows the world. So he will not be tricked into taking Morgan’s poison as easily—”

  —as you did! Guenevere’s heart cried.

  Arthur swallowed hard. “And Ursien will be loyal to me, come what may. He has no fear of threats or hot words, so he will know how to keep down a witch. She’ll be forced to behave.”

  Forced to live in a marriage like a prison? Guenevere thought in horror. Yet what was she doing herself, if not just that? And again and again the call of the woodland sounded in her head: Come away …

  FOR THE VERY SIGHT of Arthur tormented her now. She was married to a man she could not leave, forced to endure a husband she could not bear.

  Yet Arthur himself presented no threat to her. As man and King, the Arthur she knew had died. It was the ghost of Arthur who stalked the corridors of Caerleon and sat beside her on the dais in the Great Hall. And as they played their roles as Caerleon’s Queen and King, it was cold and hollow pageantry now that love had fled.

  And still Morgan haunted her every waking hour with the everlasting how and why.