Brangien’s plotting and magic, Sir Tristan’s bravery, both amounted to nothing. In the end, Isolde had saved them and condemned herself with her kindness.
Brangien wiped her eyes. “After that, we ran. Tristan knew King Mark’s forgiveness was only for show and that he would send men to kill us. Sir Tristan did not have to help me any more than he already had. I destroyed his life. But he stayed with me and we ended up in Camelot.”
Sir Tristan put an arm around Brangien. “You did not destroy my life. I was knight to a king I could neither respect nor trust. And now I am knight to the greatest king in Christendom. If anything, you saved me. I am only sorry we could not save Isolde.”
Guinevere understood why Brangien was ashamed to tell the story. It reminded her of Merlin. Taking another’s free will was an act of tremendous violence. Brangien had been motivated by love, but she was no better than the wizard had been, even if he had been motivated by the good of mankind.
But people are more than their worst impulses. And Guinevere herself was not innocent. She had manipulated Sir Bors’s memories to protect a dragon. She had killed the possessed wolves to save herself. And she had released herself to magic and killed Sir Maleagant and his men.
The memory of their bones snapping as the trees devoured them haunted her. She felt repulsion and horror now, but the worst part was at the time she had felt nothing. She would never again view human life as a means to an end, or as a price worth paying. That was what Merlin had done with Igraine, Arthur’s mother. There was always another way. There had to be. Even if they had ultimately failed, at least Brangien and Sir Tristan had tried to find that better way to protect Isolde.
Arthur’s brow was furrowed in a deep frown. “Brangien and Isolde love each other…as a man and a woman love each other?”
“Yes,” Brangien said. She held herself as an aspirant in the arena, braced for a blow.
It did not come. Arthur still looked vaguely confused, but there was no judgment in his expression. “I am sorry you lost her. And I am even sorrier for this news.”
No. Guinevere refused to allow this to happen. Isolde had done nothing wrong. She had lost everything to protect Brangien and Sir Tristan. She deserved to be protected in turn. And Guinevere would not see Brangien’s already broken heart irreparably damaged.
There was so much suffering in the world. So much that Guinevere had been involved in, directly or by association. Merlin’s deeds hung on her like chains. Daughter or not, she was linked to him, and therefore linked to the terrible things he had done. She could not go back in time and save Igraine, or protect anyone else he had hurt, or even prevent him from doing whatever he had to her mind that ripped away her past, her mother, her self. All Guinevere could do was move forward and do as much good in this world as she could manage.
“Did you ever get to go on a quest, Sir Tristan?” Guinevere asked. Brangien looked confused by the change in subject. Sir Tristan shook his head. Guinevere continued. “I know you have not, Lancelot.”
Lancelot turned sharply toward her, eyes narrowed. “Rescuing my queen from Sir Maleagant was not a quest worthy of note?”
Guinevere cringed. “I meant as an official knight.” She had not meant that. Quests were the things of stories. Fights against magic, against fairy knights, against wicked kings, dreamy and romantic and exciting. Her own rescue had been terrifying and terrible. “What if we rescue Isolde?”
Arthur sighed. “No.”
“What do you mean, no?”
“I mean that I cannot do this. Much as I want to—and I do want to. But King Mark is a powerful man. If I were to lead men into his country and steal his wife, Camelot would pay the price. He has allies among all the southern lords and kings. I would be creating a war.”
“You cannot fight a war over one woman,” Brangien whispered as silent tears streamed down her cheeks.
“You misunderstand,” Guinevere said. “I am not inviting you. This is not a quest for a king. It is a quest for two knights and two witches.”
Arthur’s expression was as swift and sharp as his sword. “No.”
“King Mark will never trace it back to Camelot. We will go in disguise.” Guinevere bit her lip, puzzling out the details. “We will need to get Isolde out without anyone knowing. And in a way that will prevent pursuit.” She laughed, clapping her hands. “Brangien already had the perfect idea! We will kill Isolde!”
“Is that—is that not what we are trying to prevent?” Sir Tristan looked at Guinevere as though she had lost her senses.
“We will not really kill her. We will use Brangien’s potion to make it appear as though she is dead. And then we will steal her before she wakes up and anyone is the wiser.”
Sir Tristan’s frown shifted into something more thoughtful. Something more hopeful. “King Mark inters his wives’ bodies in seaside cliffs. It would be simple to retrieve her once they placed her there.”
“You do not have enough time.” Arthur did not sound triumphant. If anything, he sounded regretful. “If King Mark has sent word that he will not be at the wedding, that means the trial is imminent. His kingdom is on the southern tip of the island. It is at least a week’s ride there. And if you were missing from Dindrane’s wedding, there would be talk. It is not unreasonable that he could connect you to Brangien and Sir Tristan and realize what had happened, leading him back to Camelot.”
Guinevere wanted to pull out her hair in frustration. There had to be a way. They could not let Isolde die.
“A ship,” Brangien said quietly. She looked at the ground instead of Guinevere. “If we struck east right now we could be at the coast this afternoon. A ship could get us to the southern tip within two days, and then back up the coast with enough time to make it to the wedding.”
“A ship,” Guinevere repeated, her voice hollow.
“Guinevere.” Arthur put a hand on her arm. “Imagine the lake, expanded until it swallows the horizon. Waves taller than you constantly crashing. Unknown fathoms beneath you. More water than you can comprehend. Water everywhere.”
“I can do it.” She met his eyes, forcing her voice to be steady. “We can do it.”
“But—”
“If you were not king, if this had happened three years ago, would you have hesitated to rescue an innocent woman in peril at the hands of an evil king?”
Arthur’s jaw twitched, then his shoulders dropped and he shook his head. “I would have gone in a heartbeat. I still would, if there were any way I could without hurting my people.”
“We have a way. Let us do this.” Guinevere did not want to ask permission. She did not need to. But she wanted to do this with Arthur’s blessing. If not for herself, then for Lancelot and Sir Tristan. Tension made their expressions wooden and their posture equally stiff. Because if their king said no, they could not do it. Not without breaking the sacred vows they had taken to obey him. Not without giving up the knighthoods they had both worked so hard for.
Arthur turned to the knights. “If anything happens to her…”
Lancelot bowed her head. “I will let no harm come to her.”
“You have our word.” Sir Tristan took a knee. “I swear it. If it gets too dangerous, we will get the queen out. She is our first priority.”
Resignation settled reluctantly over Arthur. “Very well, then. Your quest has my blessing.”
Brangien let out a sobbing gasp and dropped to her knees. “Thank you, thank you, thank you, my king.”
“I will cover for your absence,” Arthur said. “I will tell the guards I want to range wider and explore more of the land, so you four are going to wait for the bigger party. Then we can tell a story about how you missed the bigger party and so continued on your own. But you must be to Dindrane’s family estate on time.”
Lancelot and Sir Tristan hurried back to the group to retrieve their horses and some sup
plies. If this was going to work, they could lose no time.
“We will be there.” Guinevere threw her arms around Arthur’s neck, pulling him close. His cheek was warm against hers, only a hint of roughness where he had not shaved that morning. “Thank you.”
He put his hands on the small of her back, pressing her against him. “Be careful.”
She pressed a kiss to his cheek and then let him help her onto her horse. As they rode away, she looked over her shoulder. She only felt a little guilt over her thrill of pleasure at being the one leaving instead of the one left behind.
The roads east were in poor condition. Sir Tristan and Lancelot both rode warily through the scraggly farmlands and slumping villages, ever-braced for attack. They had ridden hard but not so fast it would put the horses at risk; they would be at the coast soon.
Though it was quite obvious they were not within Arthur’s borders anymore, Guinevere sensed no threat from the land itself. There was no indication of the Dark Queen or her magic. Just the threat of men, frightened and vicious with desperation, but she trusted in Sir Tristan and Lancelot.
She understood her companions’ tension, but she was almost elated. Arthur was always ranging out to save people, to rescue towns, to protect the innocent. Guinevere was not made to sit in a castle, to ride to and from celebrations in comfort, to be protected. Perhaps this was a bad idea, but it felt right, like reclaiming missing parts of herself. If she could not remember more than a glimpse of her past, she could fill in her present with whoever, whatever she chose to be.
Lancelot had her eyes on the horizon. “There are many Saxon settlements along the eastern coast. They are a fishing people, so we should be able to find a ship without too much trouble. If it takes us more than a day to secure passage, though, we will have to turn around.”
“We will find a ship.” Guinevere sounded confident. This was their quest. They would not fail. She would use her magic for good. To help people she loved, people who deserved her help. She would be better than Merlin in every way.
“And if we do not?” Brangien asked. She looked more troubled than hopeful. “I should go alone. This is too much to ask of you.”
“You did not ask. We chose this. Because we can. We have the freedom to decide what we want to do with our lives and our skills. Igraine had that taken from her.”
“Isolde,” Brangien interjected softly.
“Yes, that’s what I said.”
“You said Igraine.”
Guinevere froze. Her tongue had betrayed her. This was about more than Isolde, even if she did not want to face it. But did it make her quest less noble, if part of it was motivated by anger at Merlin? He had taken and taken and taken. Lives and innocence and memories. She would not take. She would give.
Sir Tristan straightened in his saddle. “Do you smell that?”
Guinevere breathed in deeply. He was right. Something had changed, but she could not say what. Dust and heat and drying green were now overlaid by something else. It smelled like…life. Sharp and bright and cold, with a hint of decay.
“The sea.” Brangien hurried her horse forward. It was another league before they saw it. At last they came over a rise and the horizon disappeared.
“Oh.” Guinevere could think of nothing else to say. The blue stretched as far as she could see, to the end of the world. There was land, and then there was water. And nothing else.
A hand at the small of her back made her realize she had been lost, frozen, staring at the water. Lancelot had dismounted and was right next to her. She half expected to see judgment in her face.
Instead, she found sympathy and support. “Are you well, my queen?” Lancelot asked.
Guinevere nodded, still dazed but at least able to focus. She kept her eyes on Lancelot to avoid looking at the sea again.
“Ships,” Brangien said, breathless.
If Guinevere was going to do this, she would have to face it. She turned toward the water and took it in, bracing herself. While she still felt overwhelmed, it edged toward awe. Maybe the Lady held no sway over the sea. Even if she did, how could she find Guinevere on something so infinite? Guinevere laughed, closer to hysteria than delight, but at least she could move. Whether the sea really was not the same as the rivers and lakes or whether her body simply did not have enough space to contain that much fear, Guinevere steeled herself. Along the shoreline was a series of wooden buildings, and bobbing in the water like a sad copse of lost trees was a series of masts attached to boats.
“Ships indeed. Shall we go find one?” Guinevere grasped her reins.
Brangien burst into tears. Lancelot looked at Guinevere, alarmed. Guinevere nudged her horse next to Brangien’s and reached out to take her friend’s hand.
“Thank you,” Brangien said.
“We will save her.”
Brangien nodded, taking her hand back and wiping under her eyes. To give her time to compose herself, Guinevere turned toward Lancelot, who was remounting her horse. Sir Tristan rode ahead to scout the road.
“Are you at least a little excited for a quest, Lancelot?”
Lancelot did not smile. “I am not here to rescue Isolde. I am here to protect you. I will do whatever that requires, even if you do not like it. Even if it means this quest fails.”
“Come on!” Sir Tristan called, guiding their pack horse. “We can hire a ship and be on our way before nightfall.”
Lancelot clicked her tongue and her horse followed the command. Guinevere watched Lancelot’s back as she rode, worry tight in her chest. Nothing was allowed to go wrong. Lancelot would not have to make the choice to save Guinevere over anyone and anything else.
If the smell of the sea from far away was invigorating, this close it was invasive. Guinevere raised a sleeve to her nose to filter out the riot of rotting fish, wet wood, and refuse assaulting her.
“That one.” Sir Tristan pointed. The ship he had picked was not the largest, but it looked big enough to transport the horses. The horses could not be left behind. Besides being more valuable than anything else they carried, Lancelot’s horse was her most important possession. Guinevere knew there was no way they would continue without it. She did worry about the faithful blind steed and how it would handle something as unfamiliar as a sea voyage, though.
They had decided Sir Tristan should do the bargaining. He was the least remarkable of their company. Lancelot could be mistaken for a man in her clothing and with her short, unadorned hair, but when she spoke at length it made the mistake less likely. Guinevere and Brangien unfortunately looked nothing like each other or either of their companions—Sir Tristan was the darkest complected, his family having been brought here by the Romans and then settling, and Brangien’s features favored those of her father, who had walked across the world from the farthest east of it to make his fortune. Guinevere was paler than Lancelot, and none of their faces spoke to relations. There was no pretending that any of them were siblings.
Guinevere hoped that there would be no questions when payment was offered, but if there were, Sir Tristan was a traveling knight, Guinevere his wife, Brangien her maid, and Lancelot Sir Tristan’s…well, they had not figured that part out yet. Squire? Fellow knight? Very distant cousin?
Sir Tristan flagged down a young man hauling a tangle of nets out of the bottom of a small boat. “Who does that ship belong to?” He pointed to the one they wanted. It seemed absurd to Guinevere to trust a few planks nailed together against the might of this endless expanse of water. She had to turn her back on it before she began thinking about it too much. She could still hear it, though. Waiting. Waves lapping against the shore, stretching out toward her.
“Wilfred.” The young man wiped his nose along the sleeve of his much-patched tunic.
“Where can I find him?”
The fisherman shook his head, then pointed toward a shack clinging precariously
to the rocks on the shore.
The group exchanged confused glances. Shaking his head and then pointing seemed contradictory, but there was a language barrier. Sir Tristan shrugged, then picked his way across the rocks to the indicated shack while the rest waited with the horses.
“I will try not to speak,” Lancelot said. “It is best if they assume I am a man.” Lancelot’s voice was low, but not as low as a man her height should have. “Once we are on the ship, we are at their mercy to a certain extent. We will hope this Wilfred is honorable, but if he proves otherwise…” Lancelot’s hand tightened on her sword pommel. “I will allow no harm to come to either of you.”
“We are not without defenses, too.” Brangien had pulled out a strip of cloth and was industriously sewing. Guinevere could not see the knots, but she doubted the piece was decorative.
“I would not wish to cross any of us.” Guinevere said it with joking enthusiasm, but she felt formidable.
Sir Tristan emerged from the shack and hurried toward them. The rocks along the shore were gray, nearly black with the clinging moisture and littered with items deposited by the incessant waves. Guinevere tried not to imagine that the saltwater-soaked hunks of wood were from other ships.
Sir Tristan had an odd expression when he reached them. “Wilfred is not home. But his sister, Hild, will take us. She can transport the horses, as well. I have retained her services for the next seven days.”
“How much will it cost us?” Lancelot asked. They had a handful of Guinevere’s jewels to bargain with, safe in her bag alongside her brush and her dragon’s tooth.
Sir Tristan looked flushed. He scratched the side of his neck in a nervous gesture, staring back at the shack. “Less than it should, I think? She was excited by the prospect.”
“Intending to kill us and take the horses?” The matter-of-fact way Lancelot stated it made Guinevere stare in shock, but Sir Tristan took it as understood and shook his head. Did they really have to anticipate this level of violence whenever they left Camelot? How were men any worse than the Dark Queen? Her violence was random, at least. In a way, that felt kinder than men preying on each other for profit.
The Camelot Betrayal Page 11
