As Merlin blessed Lancelot and consecrated his sword, the Goddess departed from me, her purpose fulfilled. The tranquility and peace left me in a rush like an exhalation, and just as quickly, my usual worries flooded back in. I looked over the Combrogi, wondering how they were reacting to the news that Lancelot was now not only master of the horse but my champion as well. Part of me wished I could hear their thoughts, but I knew it was best I could not. They were no doubt filled with resentment. Every one of them hoped to be elevated to a higher position in Arthur’s court, and as far as they were concerned, its two highest honors had been given to an unworthy outsider. I hoped they would come to understand in time.
I couldn’t help but watch Aggrivane. Even as Merlin said the closing words, Aggrivane shifted from foot to foot, understandably uncomfortable. After Merlin’s final blessing, Aggrivane shot through the trees and out of sight just as he had the night he lost me to Arthur.
Merlin shooed everyone out of the grove so he could purify the site for its next use by the Druids. The men dispersed, some talking excitedly in groups, others striding off to the horses, anxious to begin the long ride back to Camelot. But Lancelot lingered at my side.
“Thank you for this honor, my lady. It is truly unexpected, and I will be forever grateful,” he said as we followed others to the horses.
I kicked up leaves like a child as I walked. “You are best suited to defend me in all things, and I trust you implicitly.”
As we passed Merlin, I expected him to ignore me, but to my surprise, he put out a hand to bar my path. He glanced up at Lancelot and then back to me.
“What is done is done,” he said without preamble. “I suggest you find Aggrivane and try to make him see reason. He stormed off in that direction.” He pointed east. “You are the only person he will listen to right now, and we cannot afford to make an enemy of him.”
Without another word, he entered the circle and began paying homage to each of the oak trees as though I did not exist.
I gave Lancelot an apologetic look. “He’s right. I should go and find him. Please wait for me here. I will not be long.”
Aggrivane had made no effort to cover his tracks. Following his footprints, deep and unmistakably stamped with rage into the muddy depths of the forest, I picked through clumps of mutilated leaves and swept past decapitated branches, the innocent victims of his anger, until I came to a small clearing at the edge of a stream.
His back was toward me as he faced the water. “You should not have come.”
“But you knew I would.” I couldn’t see his face, but I imagined how he would close his eyes and smile ruefully by way of answer. He was determined to ignore me, so I crossed the clearing in a few purposeful strides then tugged on his shoulder in a vain attempt to force him to face me. “What would you have me do, Aggrivane? Choose my former lover as my champion? How would that look to Arthur? To the court?” I was almost yelling, my voice raw.
He had to see reason. He had to know I’d had no other choice. Because I hadn’t, had I? I wrapped my arms protectively around myself. Suddenly I wasn’t so sure.
For a long while, Aggrivane said nothing, and sounds of the forest returned as the birds decided my outburst was not aimed at them. Then slowly he turned, his face a stony mask, but I saw pain reflected in his eyes.
“Yes,” he whispered. “That is exactly what you should have done—selected the one you wish to have always by your side, not a substitute to distract you from your true feelings.”
The candor of his words struck me to the core as surely as if he had buried an arrow deep inside my heart. Tears dampened my cheeks before I could find my voice, and I turned away. My mind was working feverishly to deny the truth of his words.
“I am no longer the girl you met in Avalon. My actions. . .” I took a deep breath. “Are watched by everyone.” I winced inwardly as I realized how close I had come to repeating Merlin’s words about my actions having consequences. “To have named you my champion would only have given my detractors something to use against me.”
“Did Lyonesse teach you that, how to make excuses for any subject?” Aggrivane spat, referring to the malicious woman I had lived with during the latter part of our courtship.
I whirled around, ready to retort, but he stopped me by holding up his hand.
“Everything you have said to me since I returned has been one gigantic justification.” His eyes narrowed, inspecting my face. Then he firmly gripped my shoulders, forcing me to look directly into his eyes. “Why do you refuse to acknowledge that you are still in love with me even to yourself?” His eyes searched mine so thoroughly I felt naked before him. “Do you know what I was about to say to you the day Camille interrupted us?”
I was about to reply, but he rushed on. “I was about to tell you that I was still in love with you. Married or no, neither of us can deny what flickers deep within no matter how hard we try to hide it or snuff it out.”
Aggrivane cradled my cheeks, and my heart cracked all over again, just as it had when my father separated us, just as it had when I futilely searched for his face in the moments after Arthur proposed. I closed my eyes, trying to deny what my heart so readily understood. My head spun with a million thoughts, the loudest being a voice shouting, No, this cannot be happening. He did not just say those words.
You are dreaming; this is not real, I kept repeating, but I knew it wasn’t true. I tried to force the feelings down, and I let out a strangled gasp as they nearly choked me. I did still love him, but to admit it, to say it out loud, would have been treason. And once I gave voice to those feelings, there would be no going back—no controlling the torrent that came with them.
The words were hanging on my tongue, each beat of my heart bringing them closer to my lips. I pulled away, head bowed and eyes on the grass slowly dying beneath my soles. I knew what I had to do, what had to be said, but every fiber of my being railed against it. I swallowed hard and forced myself to speak, my voice sounding foreign to my ears. “This has to end, Aggrivane. We can’t continue to live like this. I do not want to lose you, but there can be no illusions about what is or ever will be between us.”
Aggrivane cleared his throat and shuffled his feet. I didn’t dare look up. I knew by his silence that his expression would rend me beyond repair.
“If that is what you wish,” he said, clearly struggling to keep his voice steady. “But promise me one thing.”
I answered without hesitation, “Anything.”
I suddenly remembered how he had looked the night we first kissed, the way the wind rippled his black locks into shining waves and how his dark eyes twinkled like the stars in the midnight sky. I would have given anything to be able to go back to that moment, to start things over and live the life destiny had stolen from our grasp.
“Promise me no matter how much you love your husband or esteem your champion, no matter how many others you burn with passion for, you will reserve a small place in your heart only for us. It can be in the darkest depths of your soul, but I need to know there is some part of you no one else can touch, a place that is purely mine.”
I stared at him, wishing I could tell him such a place already existed, sealed from all others by wounds that would never fully heal, scars that marked me as his as clearly as if he had carved his name into my heart. But all I could do was nod and wipe away the tears as they fell. “I promise.”
His smile was as tender as his touch as he ran his fingertips down my cheek from my temple to jaw. “So do I.”
As he embraced me one last time and kissed my forehead, I knew my love for him would haunt me forever.
Chapter Seven
Winter 498
With one sharp stab, my entire world changed.
We were in the middle of a cordial dinner with Cador, lord of the western kingdom of Bernicia, when I felt the first sign of distress. At first I thought I’d just eaten too mu
ch venison or the leek soup had disagreed with me, so I continued my conversation with Cador’s wife, laughing heartily at her impression of an impudent servant.
But then a second twinge bit at my ballooning belly. I sucked in air and dropped my knife, hands instinctively fluttering to the sore spot in my side. I looked at Arthur in alarm, and he slowly ceased chewing as understanding dawned across his features. A moment later, I felt a soft trickle of warmth ooze down my thigh.
I grabbed Octavia’s arm as she leaned over my shoulder to refill my goblet and whispered in her ear, “I think my time has come.”
Ignoring the sudden silence and alarmed expressions of Cador and his wife, I allowed Octavia help me to my feet and usher me toward the door. I prayed my womb would hold the remainder of its waters until we were out of their presence.
“Lord Cador, it appears you and your wife may have the honor of being present at the birth of my first children . . .” Arthur’s voice held a mixture of astonishment and pride.
Halfway down the hall, I had to grip the wall near a window as another spasm caught me off guard, and the seal of my womb broke in a watery rush. I had just enough time to notice the large flakes of snow falling in the deepening shadows before another of my maids came running to support my other arm. She and Octavia helped me shuffle the rest of the way to the room prepared for the royal birth.
Chaos broke out all around as soon as I was safely ensconced in childbed. Octavia called for the servants and sent one to fetch Grainne, who, on Arthur’s orders, had been staying at Camelot for the last month so she could assist when my labor pains began. He had originally insisted that Viviane act as midwife, but she’d successfully argued that the High Priestess of Avalon could not be withheld from her duties to wait on the whim of unborn children, no matter how royal. Arthur’s expression of consternation that someone would dare disobey his orders had been so outrageous it made me smile even to remember it.
But my joy was short-lived. I grimaced and took a deep breath as another cramp began, though I willed myself through it. I had been present at enough births to know this was just the beginning. But I could already feel tiny fissures of fear breaching the calm I endeavored to maintain.
The pain rose and abated as the evening progressed. Servants flitted about me, preparing reams of cloth, heating water, and fussing over details real and imagined. Outside, the snow mirrored their frenzy, coating treetops and turrets in a thick white blanket as the sky hardened from lead to pitch. All the while, Octavia sat by my side, holding my hand and cooing encouragement as the pain rose along with my screams and my determination diminished.
As the birthing process took hold, everything became hazy, disjointed like when I’d had the fever in Pellinor’s house, except this time, instead of being numb, I was acutely aware of every nerve in my body. My throat was raw from screaming, my legs cramped from holding the muscles taut, and I could scarcely take a breath between the spasms in my womb.
I wasn’t sure when I began calling for my mother—it must have been sometime between when a servant told Octavia a crowd of townspeople had gathered to hold vigil in the courtyard and when Grainne said it was nearly time to push. Even though I cried out for her, the thought of my mother did little to calm me because with it came the memory of her many trials in childbed. I tried not to give in to the terror that threatened to consume me, but pain had weakened my resolve. Soon I lost all grip on reality.
I was oblivious to the world around me, lost in a thrumming buzz that was everywhere and nowhere all at once. Eventually Octavia’s voice cut through the din, commanding me with every ounce of her Roman authority to push. I took a deep breath, gritted my teeth, and bore down hard.
“The baby’s head is nearly out. Push again, my love,” Grainne encouraged.
I grunted and pushed harder, again and again, until an odd sense of relief and release washed over me, and the child slipped out from between my thighs.
“You have a son,” Grainne shouted jubilantly.
But just as quickly, her face fell. Instead of a lusty cry, there was silence. No one spoke as I searched each face, each one more concerned than the last. I knew something was terribly wrong.
“What is it? What is wrong with my baby?” I croaked.
Grainne only shook her head and handed the child to the young priestess acting as her assistant. She clutched my son, patting his back and holding him as near to the fire as she dared. It was then I noticed there was no rise and fall in his chest. My baby was not breathing.
Before I had a chance to protest, to beg my child to draw breath, a new wave of pain rocked my weakened frame, and I cried out.
“Guinevere, you have another baby who seeks the light of life. You must find the strength to push again.”
My mind was in tatters, hardly able to comprehend what she was saying, torn between my silent son and his sibling waiting to be born. I gave a mighty heave that felt as though it broke me entirely.
“Very good, Guinevere,” Octavia coached. “I know you are tired, but this little one cannot be born without your help. Try just one more time.”
I tried to focus on what she was saying, but my mind kept wandering to the hearth, trying to understand what was happening to my son. Somewhere in the lucid recesses of my mind, I recognized what the young priestess was doing. My child had been born dead, and she was cleaning him, swaddling him not for his first hours of life but for the grave.
I hardly noticed as another convulsion shook my deflating belly. All around me, Octavia, Grainne, and the other women urged me on. I pushed one final time. Then there was nothing left to give.
Grainne was cursing at me in several languages as she struggled to pull my second child free. I shook my head weakly, tangled black locks whipping the sides of my face, and sank into the sweat-soaked sheets, utterly defeated.
I was numb, and my spirit was slowly detaching from my body. Soon I swam in a sea of darkness as soft as gosling down. Higher and higher I flew until nothing remained of my former life.
The last sound I heard was the fragile, mewling cry of my daughter.
Where I was was utterly silent, calm and peaceful like the quiet of a soft winter snowfall when the whole world is at rest. But I was not in the world; that much I knew. I was somewhere in-between and outside, not unlike the ethereal borderland of mists shrouding Avalon. But I was not there either. This place had none of the humming vibration that was felt rather than heard as the boat slipped through the mists. No, this place was somewhere else entirely.
I was moving forward yet standing still at the same time. I had no sensation of walking or even thinking that I wanted to move, yet there was motion all around me. I tried to close my eyes and reopen them to balance myself and refocus, but it made no difference. I looked down to find I had no arms to guide me, no legs supporting me.
I had the vague sense I had been somewhere similar to this before, perhaps in one of my many meditative journeys as part of my training in Avalon. Slowly, like a babe opening its eyes for the first time, I realized this was the land of the spirit, where no corporeal body could follow. If I’d still had lungs to fill with air, I would have sighed in relief. Never before had I realized what a burden it was to carry around a body or retain a lifetime of thoughts and memories. Gone were the worries and anxieties of life, the expectations, misplaced priorities, anger, and grudges. All that was left was the true essence of myself.
I had always expected to come face-to-face with the dark aspect of the Goddess when my soul departed this life, to have a terrible moment of reckoning before meeting the mighty Ceridwen and her cauldron of death and rebirth where I would either be granted access to the eternal joy of the Otherworld with my ancestors or plunged into the depths of her cauldron to be reborn again.
When I heard my name called, it was as though the sound came from both outside myself and within my mind at once. Still following my human instinc
ts, I turned, expecting to behold the Goddess. But there was no one there.
Like a dreamer gradually waking from slumber, I began to sense dull colors and formless shapes, though I could make no sense of them. It was as though my inner eyes were adjusting after the transition from the physical world. Slowly, the world formed around me, or rather, revealed itself to me one sparkling grain of light at a time.
As the jumble of hues and wild figures coalesced, I found myself in a grassy sunlit meadow dappled with bashful violets, stately poppies, and clusters of tiny golden wildflowers. Their colors were so much more intense than anything I had seen on earth, their scent more heavily perfumed.
And suddenly I was no longer alone. The presence I had sensed from the first moment of darkness but had not dared to name took form before me. A woman with glistening raven hair, slightly lined pale skin, and gentle green eyes that were straight out of my memories stood before me. After all of my tears and pleading, she had come at last—too late to save my body but perfectly timed to soothe my bewildered soul.
“Mother,” I breathed, instinctively rushing toward her, wanting to embrace her.
“My sweet daughter,” she crooned just as she had when I was babe. I was certain she would have embraced me if it was within her power in this incorporeal state.
“Mother, I missed you so much. Where am I? Is this the Otherworld? Where is the Goddess?” The words tumbled out in a rush.
My mother smiled, a lovely, luminous gesture that filled my whole being with the sunshine of loving acceptance. “She is here. She is everywhere.” She regarded me with appraising eyes. “But you are asking the wrong questions. It matters not whether your heart still beats. What you should be asking is do you wish it to? Are you ready to leave your life behind and stay with me?”
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