by Sarah Zettel
‘And as much as you, Agravain, and you, Laurel, have consented to enter into the sacrament of marriage one with the other, have you brought any token of the union sealed here before the eyes of God and Holy Christ and this royal company?’
Agravain turned towards his brother, and Gawain laid a ring in his palm. Even in the dim light of the chapel, Laurel could see it was a beautiful thing, an ornate band of gleaming gold surmounted by a square emerald the size of her fingernail that pulsed like a beating heart in the light of the tapers around them.
Agravain lifted her hand in his, and she felt again the determined gentleness of his touch. She watched him as he looked down at their hands lying together. For one moment, she saw the flicker of light behind his dark eyes, the fleeting warmth beneath the cold that lay like a private winter over his soul.
‘May God find me worthy of this blessing,’ he whispered, so softly she did not believe anyone else could have heard.
‘May we both be so,’ she whispered in return. Agravain made no answer except to slip the emerald band onto her thumb and fold her hand closed around it.
Hand-in-hand they walked from the dim chapel. Shafts of sunlight glittered upon the clean washed stones of the courtyard and all around the people of Camelot raised up a mighty cheer to greet the clearing day, and their place in it.
Laurel looked once more to her husband, who smiled a small smile that she alone was close enough to see.
FOUR
Had Agravain been able to work his will upon the world, the wedding feast would have been a simple meal held in private. Gawain had sobered in recent years and could be counted on to conduct himself with dignity. Risa, Gawain’s wife, understood propriety, and their uncle, of course, and the queen. Uncle Kai as well. But the rest … the rest would have been turned away.
But it could not be. The ways of courts and kings required he give the High King this opportunity to show himself generous, and the whole court turned out to take advantage of this. Only Merlin seemed to have absented himself from the throng, but he moved to his own rules and could not be counted on to observe the formalities of other men.
So, save for that one exception, around them swirled the pomp and luxury, and the increasingly raucous noise, of the court at feast, and Agravain felt himself stand in the midst of it all like a stone. The music was beautiful, and suited to a great celebration, with harps and pipes and drums pouring through the great hall for the dancers and jugglers to disport themselves to. Uncle Kai had omitted nothing from the feast. In all his years at Camelot, Agravain had never tasted the variety of spices that flavoured the array of meats; swan and peacock, lamb, venison and pigeon. The breads were white as snow and light as air, and the pastry melted the moment it touched the mouth. The wines came from all corners of the Christian world and ranged from a sweet gold to warm, rich red. Agravain held a goblet of that red wine now in his hand, untouched. In the midst of the pageantry and display, he could watch only one point, and that was the distant form of Laurel of Cambryn. Laurel of Gododdin, now. His wife.
My wife.
She was pale as ivory and dressed in clothing coloured as delicately as the first blossoms of spring. She stood beside Risa at this moment, accepting praise and congratulations from the various women of the court. She nearly glowed with pearlescent light beside Risa’s red-gold form. Another lady, garish in a gown of too many colours talked to her animatedly. Blessing her? Warning her? Agravain felt his frown deepen. Laurel listened with an interest he was sure she feigned. Eventually, she inclined her head with the dignity with which she had borne herself since she had entered Camelot.
‘Well, nephew?’
Agravain started abruptly, and turned to see Uncle Kai standing beside him, smiling his sharp and knowing smile. Agravain felt his brow furrow.
‘Well what, my uncle?’
‘What do you think of your bride?’
Agravain shrugged irritably. ‘And how am I to know?’ he snapped. ‘You have spent more time in conversation with her than I have.’
‘Yet there she stands.’ Kai gestured broadly, indicating the whole space of the crowded court. ‘While you, for some obscure reason, linger over here.’
Agravain felt himself scowling. He could not seem to help it. ‘This is no place for such talk.’
‘It is exactly the place. Here the whole court may see what a perfectly matched pair you are, and they will rejoice in it.’
‘Do not mock me, uncle,’ he muttered, more to the wine cup than to himself. ‘I am in a poor humour for it.’
‘And for anything else, it seems.’
The sly edge in Kai’s voice cut neatly, and painfully, as Agravain was sure it was meant to. What a day it was when he could not even rely on his uncle to understand. ‘I do my duty by the king and my own land. She is of worthy rank and good understanding.’
Kai quirked up one eyebrow. ‘And nothing else?’
He looked across to Laurel again. Another gaggle of bright ladies surged up to her. She met this latest assault as she had met every other event of the day; with dignified grace and composed courtesy. If she felt at all fatigued, it did not show. She was tall, his wife, and the delicacy implied by her pale skin seemed deceptive. There was strength in her. He was sure of it. But what else was there?
‘I don’t know,’ Agravain said, half in answer to Kai’s question, but half to his own.
Kai clapped him on the shoulder. ‘That, nephew is a good sign. I hold out hope for you.’
If Sir Kai was not in the mood to extend mercy, neither was Agravain. ‘I will accept your guidance in all things, uncle, but not in the matter of women,’ he said flatly.
An abrupt and unexpected silence fell at that. ‘Perhaps you are right, Agravain,’ said Kai. ‘Very well. I leave you to your reflections.’ Bowing more in mockery than in courtesy, Kai left him there, returning, Agravain presumed, to his duties. The whole hall needed to be served, and would for many hours yet.
Alone, Agravain felt exposed. He was watched, but most especially by Lady Laurel. What should he do? It was growing late. Voices were being raised to compete with the musicians, showing that the lavish drink was beginning to have effect, but also that more than he were thinking on what was to come next. What did Laurel think? How was he to know? She made such a mask of propriety for her finely sculpted face, he could read nothing in her.
Was there any other lady who had eyes of such a colour? Almost as pale as the veil laid over her white-gold hair.
‘What, the bridegroom, all alone?’ said someone mildly.
He’d been caught again, staring. Angry with himself, Agravain turned, a sharp retort ready on his tongue, and found Gawain standing beside him.
‘Such feasts are far more to your liking than mine,’ muttered Agravain, taking a swallow of his wine. He did not like the way Gawain looked at him. There were few moments when he cared for his older brother’s scrutiny, and this moment was most certainly not one of them.
‘Is there any matter you would speak about, Agravain?’
So, there it is. Agravain’s jaw clenched. ‘I told Uncle Kai that I would not hear his guidance in the matter of women and he sends you to me. I must remember to thank him for it.’
‘God’s breath, Agravain, that is cold even for you.’ Agravain let it be. Perhaps the chiding was merited. It bothered him that he was not sure.
‘What is it of the lady that worries you so?’ asked Gawain quietly.
Agravain felt his spine stiffen and his free hand clenched reflexively. ‘Gawain,’ he muttered. ‘I swear upon the Cross, if you’ve come to make mockery, I will forget you are my brother and your blood will run on these stones.’
‘Nay, brother, never, and not at such a time.’ Gawain’s voice was mild, as was his expression. Any who came near them would think they were discussing nothing of import. ‘I know well your worth.’ The corner of Gawain’s mouth turned up in a small smile. ‘Whatever you may believe of me, I have never once forgotten the times you have
been right and I have been so sorely wrong.’
Agravain met his brother’s eyes and saw there none of Gawain’s pride, and very little of his hero’s certainty. For once, there was only his brother there.
Old habit warned Agravain to keep his own counsel. Old anger all but sealed that, but Agravain mustered his strength. Setting aside the heavy weights of the past and the future, he made himself speak.
‘I … I am ill-acquainted with the ways of a lady.’
There. He had said it, and to Gawain, of all men, whose deeds among women were still the stuff of legend six years after his marriage. Agravain waited for his brother to laugh, and make some wry jest. His anger pulled at its weakening tether, ready to charge forward in an instant. He almost hoped he could be angry. The boyish nervousness he felt now sickened him. Anything must be better than this.
But Gawain kept his countenance, not even smiling in the depths of his eyes.
‘Were I to counsel a man on such a matter,’ said Gawain, clearly choosing his words with the utmost care, ‘I would tell him to have patience, with the lady and with himself. I would tell him that it is a time when many men turn to brutes, and it is brutishness that many a woman braces herself for. I would say to look well upon her beauty, for she is a beauty, Agravain.’ His voice dropped to the barest whisper. ‘Study that beauty. Treat it as wisdom to be learned, understood and deeply cherished. There, you will find you will know all you need to of the ways of a lady.’
Gawain laid his hand on Agravain’s shoulder, a touch of friendship such as he rarely suffered. Then, Gawain drifted away, leaving Agravain his private thoughts rather than risk drawing this moment out to become something either of them might regret. Agravain found himself looking after Gawain in some little wonder, thinking that things might have changed within his older brother without his seeing them. That in itself was a sobering thought.
Agravain straightened his shoulders. Laurel stood with Queen Guinevere now, the pair of them encircled by Guinevere’s giggling ladies. Laurel’s pale green eyes shone with the light of the candles, a clear and golden light that seemed to come as much from within her as without.
In the next moment, she looked up at him, and those eyes widened just a little in surprise. Had she somehow felt his gaze? She felt it now. A blush rose in her then, turning her pale skin shell pink. Agravain’s throat constricted. Gawain was right. She was a beauty. Not just in face and form, but in all her bearing, in the mystery she carried within her. The sight of all that beauty seemed to root him to the ground, and in that instant he knew something new was taking hold within him.
Queen Guinevere spoke some word that sent peals of laughter up among the ladies. The gaudy flock pressed closer to Laurel, deliberately hiding her from him as they joined hands in a ring to herd her away to the hall’s main doors. The move was highly visible, and meant to be so. Bawdy cheers went up from all the men present. And, as if that weren’t enough, the flock began to sing:
‘To me a feast is a bore!’ they piped shrilly over the jangling of tambourines and cymbals.
‘I favour a love-gossip more!
I’m cool to a mere plentitude,
But the face-to-face, ah, that’s good!’
The whole court erupted into shouts of laughter and long, lascivious whistles. Agravain felt he could have easily killed them all. Laurel glanced over her shoulder at him, and even at this distance, he could see her expression twisted into embarrassment and awkwardness. His own face burned. Without thinking, he made to stride after her.
A hand closed on his shoulder. Uncle Kai again, leaning lightly on his crutch, his eyes gleaming mischief.
‘Not so fast, nephew,’ Kai said cheerfully, but softly, Agravain noted. This was no jibe for the court to make sport of. ‘Give the lady a moment to prepare.’ With the barest twitch of his chin, he indicated the whole of the watching crowd, knights and lords and ladies, servitors, laughing and eyeing Agravain, some openly, some surreptitiously.
Agravain struggled to keep his countenance. ‘I should go thank my uncle the king for the pains he has taken on our behalf.’
Kai nodded and backed away so he could pass. Agravain pulled the cloak of indifference that had served him so well for so many years into place. Under its shelter the sniggering and the ribald jests passed over him like a summer’s breeze and he was able to let go of the foolishness surrounding him more easily.
But he could not let go of the memory of Laurel’s cheeks so brightly flushed when she found him watching her. That was modesty, surely, injured dignity at the jibes that had been flying. Surprise. Anticipation.
It was not fear. It could not be fear.
Don’t let it be fear. Please.
But this prayer, Agravain kept between himself and God.
‘Come, sweetest, to you hear me call!
‘To you, loved by one and by all!
‘You’re the light of my eye and a part …’
‘Yes, but which part?’
‘There’s only one that interests her tonight!’
The song dissolved into shrieks of laughter as Guinevere’s ladies hearded Laurel into her bed chamber. They’d been busy in here. They must have stripped every rose bush within a ten-mile square. White and pink flowers twined with ivy around the posts of the bed. Heaps of them decked every chest and stick of furniture and framed the window. The perfume was dizzying, as was the heat. The fire had been built up high and all four braziers blazed. Candles burned in bronze stands worked like leaves and branches. It was too warm. Perhaps it was just that she was too warm, with all these women filling the chamber, making lewd and intimate insinuations that she wouldn’t have suffered from her sister.
And there stood the queen, smiling benignly on it all, so Laurel couldn’t even say anything, let alone throw them all out the door.
One of them said tartly, ‘My lord Agravain is more likely to have an icicle between his legs than anything fleshly.’
Another gave out a bark of laughter in reply. ‘So speaks the woman who’s found out what’s between the legs of half the men-at-arms of Camelot. Were I to guess, I’d say you only curse my lord Agravain because he did not rise to your lures.’
‘Stop it, you hens,’ admonished Lady Risa, waving them all back. ‘You’re terrifying the bride.’
Laurel could abide in silence no longer. ‘The bride is quite composed, thank you,’ she said frostily.
This drew another chorus of knowing oh-hos, accompanied by raised brows and widened eyes. Laurel clenched her teeth, remembering this was all to be expected, and that it was but a part of this final act. She glanced over the heads of the laughing women to see the queen, standing behind, neither participating in this, nor making any move to ameliorate their actions.
‘You’re the light of eye and a part …’ Someone began the song again. ‘The far better part of my heart!’
They all circled around her, a cluster of eyes and hands and laughter. They pulled at her laces and clasps, stripping her of sleeves and overdress and jewels. She could not even see the queen. It was heat and damp, wine-soaked breath and constant jostling. Her veil was taken and her braid undone, so her hair tumbled free in a white wave. They were breathing all the air, and she couldn’t tell who was who. They plucked at her laces, her sleeves, her jewels and skirts. Just as she thought she would have to scream, they moved back, leaving her standing alone in only in her white linen underdress and, to her shame, gasping for breath, and trying not to clap her hands over herself to hide what already felt like nakedness.
It was no comfort at all that now she could hear the ragged, weaving chorus of voices teetering up the corridor outside.
‘ … Since on error bent,
I’ve earned grave punishment,
Please, O seize the penitent
And lock him in your chamber!’
On this last exclamation, the door flew open so violently, Laurel could only assume it had been kicked. A flood of men spilled in, along with a reek of sweat and wine so
pungent it threatened to overwhelm the rose perfume. Laughing, they seized the waiting ladies, pleading for kisses, pinching, and chasing them around the bed, receiving shrieks and slaps and curses in return. Only the queen and Laurel went untouched while the bacchanal current raged around them.
Swamped by the laughing rampage, it took Laurel a moment to realize that Agravain was not with these men. He still stood in the doorway, distaste stamped plain on every feature.
‘Out!’ he roared suddenly.
The single command rang through the room, freezing the whole riot in place for a single heartbeat, whether halfsmothered in embraces, or ducking a slap, or leaning into a kiss.
‘All of you!’ cried Agravain, taking one step into the room, his fists clenched at his sides. ‘Get out!'
The whole of the assemblage shifted their gaze from the red rage of the bridegroom, to the queen, whom he had presumably just ordered from the nuptial chamber along with all the rest of them.
But Queen Guinevere only drew herself up straight.
‘Enough,’ she announced to the gathering. ‘My ladies, you will come with me.’
She swept from the room. Her ladies at once extricated themselves from the game and ran behind her, not without a few regretful backward glances. Agravain stayed where he was, facing the whole crowd of drunken men. At last, one of the lords gave a moan of disappointment and slouched out into the corridor. The others followed suit, groaning or chuckling however their mood took them. Not one met Agravain’s gaze for more than an instant as they passed, and it was not until they were well out of the room that the songs and laughter started up again.
Agravain turned and closed the door, settling the latch firmly into place.
Agravain also had been relieved of a large measure of his clothing. He had on only his white under-tunic and a pair of hose. When he turned once more to face her, Laurel saw he was attempting to muster what dignity such a state of undress would allow.
There they were, the two of them, alone for the first time. Beside them waited the bed, its coverings folded back, and its posts hung with roses and ivy.
