Guinevere (20 page)

“Don’t let her in!” He called, “Geraldus, keep them out! Wait!”

They pushed past him. Someone had remembered to bring a torch. The fire made wild shadows and at first Geraldus couldn’t recognize the thing on the altar before him. A mass of filmy gold with patches of red and white showing here and there was all he could make out. Then he shuddered. He realized that one of the white patches hanging down the side of the altar was a human arm and suddenly the mass of abstract shapes came into focus.

“Oh, my God,” he murmured. He pulled off his cloak and went to wrap it about her, more to keep her parents from seeing than to preserve her modesty, for he was sure she was long past caring. As he did so, he noticed a faint movement of her lips. She was breathing!

“Someone, help me. She’s still alive. Quick!”

Guenlian rushed past everyone as they stood rigid with shock and confusion. She pushed the cloak off and brushed back the cascades of hair from Guinevere’s body, hunting for the wound, to staunch it. But she found nothing. She lifted her daughter and ran her hands over her limp back. There was not even a scratch. Finally, she showed Leodegrance.

“This is not her blood. I can find no mark upon her. Where did it come from? How did she get here? Is there a curse upon our house?”

Leodegrance examined her carefully, noting her still open, glazed eyes.

“She has been drugged by someone. She may not have any idea of where she is or what has happened. Quickly, someone, wrap her up and take her to the baths. Put her in a clean night dress and return her to her own room. She may awake never knowing of this night.”

“No, I will take her,” Guenlian insisted. “My last baby, my strange girlchild. No one shall touch you but me. Where is Flora?”

“What do you mean?” Leodegrance wondered if she had gone mad also. “Flora is bedridden.”

Pincerna then remembered the commotion in Flora’s room.

“She is missing. Rhianna found her bed empty. Do you think someone has captured her, too?”

Guenlian was busy covering Guinevere and pulling the strands of sticky hair from her face. She didn’t look up to speak, but her voice was low, clear and awful.

“Flora has done this thing. She always wanted Guinevere for her pagan sacrilege. I want her found and punished for this.”

She then lifted Guinevere alone, although the child was almost as tall as she. No one dared offer her help as she made her slow way to the baths.

Leodegrance stared about him, at the rippling fires in the fields and the carnage glowing in the torchlight. He had reached his limit of understanding. There was no more order in the world. Children died while their father yet lived and children were born when their father had died. A sacrifice of blood with no wound. And it was Midwinter night. The bonfires assaulted the sky as though they would be the sun and light the darkness of the heavens. It was a night for men to go mad. He noticed the thick oaken door, torn from its hinges and splintered on the tiles.

“Am I perhaps mad myself?” he wondered.

The altar was bare now, the room dark. People began edging away, remembering that they had left the cook stirring a spiced ale to take the chill off their souls. Geraldus stayed behind. He watched Leodegrance with concern, unsure of what to do next. And Caet stayed. He had glimpsed in the torchlight the corner of a red and gold cloth behind the altar in the dark alcove where no one had looked. He knew what it was.

Gently, he knelt by his great-grandmother’s body. He bent to kiss her one last time when he saw two eyes glittering at him. He inhaled with a rasp of terror too great for noise. Ever after he believed that Flora was no longer in her body then. He refused even to consider what spoke to him through her mouth.

“The sacrifice was desecrated,” the voice hissed. “She will not pay, but Britain will. And you. The child was mine. She was destined for me and no other fate. Now all who have her will reap only grief from her. She will come to wish she had gone with me this night.”

The glittering eyes darkened and the body went limp. Flora was gone and the Goddess with her. There was no one left in Britain who knew the rituals or had the power. A sudden light hit Caet’s eyes. Geraldus had thrust the torch where he was kneeling. His breath came back so quickly that he choked on it and started coughing. Leodegrance looked down at the body. No emotion showed in his voice.

“Guenlian was right, but we will have no need of vengeance now. Take her to her people and have her put on the fire. She would prefer it to a Christian burial and it is better that it be done now, before we begin to ponder this night.”

Caet nodded. He went to fetch some of the field workers and others who followed the cult. They would know what to do for her. When he had done that he returned to the stables. There amid the smell of horses and hay, he shivered and cried until dawn.

Guenlian put Guinevere in her bed and smoothed the covers around her. She was sleeping naturally now, but who could tell what she might remember or how this could affect her. Leodegrance waited for her out in the hallway.

“Will she recover?” he asked.

“Sooner than we will, I believe. But I have thought it out. The time has come for us to give her up for fostering. This is not a place for her. There are too many memories and too many horrors. Our cousin Cador has a large castle on the Saxon shore. It is filled with people of her own age and rank. And it is not so far away that we cannot see her sometimes. Oh, my dear, we must get her away from here. Who knows what may happen next?”

“You are tired and frayed by what has happened. Let us think it over and decide tomorrow.”

“Yes, tomorrow, but there is no other choice.”

They left a guard at the door and returned to their own room. Slowly, the others of the house drifted back to their rooms and, if they didn’t sleep, at least all was quiet.

Geraldus had stayed behind to see that Flora was taken care of and to examine the chapel. He had ordered the bronze knife burned with its priestess. Over and over, he paced the short distance from the door to the altar. Under all the marks of many feet there were those of an animal, one with a cloven hoof. He had seen those marks before, but still had no answer for them. Something made him carefully scrape them away with the heel of his boot. Only then did he return to his room. The air around him was strangely empty of voices. “They must all be splashing in the baths again.”

Geraldus felt lonely and sick, forsaken by everyone.

“Lord, why did you do this to me? I am an island, surrounded by voices, cut off from almost everyone on earth. The only people who ever made me feel one of them have been tortured and struck down. There is nothing left. I have nothing to hold on to. I can’t live like this!”

He fell on his bed, too tired even to remove his boots, and sank at once into sleep.

He awoke in the hour before dawn. Only one voice was singing, an alto, soothing and low. He smiled without thinking. He felt the pressure of a hand on his cheek and a whispered, “Don’t open your eyes. You still can’t see me. I was supposed to wait for this, to lure you to our country, but I must have lived with you for too long for I find I can’t bear to see you suffering like this. There is little comfort I can offer, but what I have is yours.”

Geraldus’ heart throbbed in his throat. He opened his eyes but there was no one there. She laughed.

“I told you you could not see me, but I am here.”

There was a rustle of blankets and a warmth beside him.

“Do you always sleep in your boots?”

“Are you . . . will you . . . run away again?”

“Not this time. I believe you have made me almost human!”

“What are you? What do you look like?”

“I am just as Guinevere described me, black hair, a straight nose, and pointed chin,” she guided his finger down her face. “Long fingers,” her hand clasped his. “There is only one thing different.”

“What is that?”

“I’m not wearing my green dress.”

His hand moved across her shoulder and down.

“No, you’re not.”

Conversation was becoming more difficult for him; a fierce drumming in his ears drowned everything else out. Fortunately, his alto seemed to feel that she had said enough.

Sometime later it occurred to him that if hearing voices had made him a saint, this would surely reduce his stature to that of lunatic. But he prayed more fervently than he ever had before.

“Lord, if I am mad, please, please, never let me again be sane.”

Chapter Eleven

The sublime Lady Guinevere sneezed again. Her eyes were red, her nose was swollen, and her throat was so sore that she could only croak. It was her third cold this winter and she was completely miserable. Unkind people at the castle implied that it was all her own fault. If she insisted upon bathing and washing her hair every week, she couldn’t expect to remain healthy all winter.

Guinevere was at the castle of Cador, a gloomy stone fortress built on the coastline known as the Saxon Watch. Its main purpose was to warn those inland of any new invasion forces. It was not intended for the comfort of its inhabitants. Guinevere had been there three years and was finally resigned to it. She had protested bitterly at leaving her beautiful home and entering a totally different world. But who can fight against fate and the visions of a unicorn? So Guinevere had submitted to the request that she go to her father’s cousin for fostering.

Guenlian knew how difficult it would be for her pampered child to adapt to this life, so she had insisted from the first on some special considerations. She told Sidra, Cador’s wife, that Guinevere needed a private room, instead of sleeping in the great hall with everyone else in the household. She also needed a personal maid. Therefore Risa, one of the maids at the villa, had gone with Guinevere to the castle; she prepared her bath, combed her hair, and brought her food when she was ill. In all other ways, Guinevere had been forced to adjust. She coughed repeatedly and cursed each one of the moss-covered walls about her with a newly acquired fluency.

“Guinevere?” a voice called from outside the door. “May I come in?”

“Gawain?” Guinevere tried to sit up and push the pillows and blankets into better order. “Yes, please do, I’m so lonely.”

He pushed aside the curtain; there were no doors in the tower rooms. “How are you feeling today?”

“About the same. But I’m becoming used to it, so it doesn’t bother me as much. Tell me the news.”

Gawain smiled at her. He knew she had refused to go to the hall or to see anyone while the cold made her so ugly, but she never minded him. It should have hurt his ego, but he rather liked it. He and Guinevere were so much the same.

“They say that Arthur is coming to visit before spring. He is looking for men for some special new group he is planning. This time, I’m determined to make him notice me.”

“How could/he avoid it?” she laughed. Even in the late afternoon sun, Gawain’s hair glowed with a crimson light all its own. He was the only person she had ever met whose hair could rival her own. It curled forth from his head in a series of living coils and gleamed in the daylight like a nimbus about him. Apart from that, Gawain was a head taller than most people and so vibrantly handsome that respectable matrons had been known to walk into closed doors while staring at him.

Gawain was not amused by her teasing. “This is serious, Guinevere,” he insisted. “I’ve trained for the last five years in hope that Arthur would notice me and ask me to join him. Every time he has come here, though, I’ve been away. He never comes to Cornwall, where my family lives. I just can’t understand my luck!”

Guinevere nodded. “I have never met him, either, for all I have heard of him. Each time he has been here, I have been at home, or visiting somewhere. Every time he visits my parents, I seem to be here. It does seem bad fortune that neither of us can come face to face with the one man the entire island depends upon.”

“I won’t let it happen again. Nothing will get me away from this castle until I’ve shown what I can do and have had my opportunity to join him.”

They were interrupted by Risa, Guinevere’s maid. She spoke to Guinevere, but her eyes were always on Gawain.

“Are you feeling well enough to come to dinner, my lady? I will help you dress if you wish to go down.”

“No, thank you. I’m not hungry. If you will bring me some soup and spiced wine when you finish your meal, that will be enough.”

“Yes, my lady,” she curtsied and stumbled out, still staring at Gawain.

He sighed. “If only they would be willing to do more than just look.”

“We were talking about Arthur.”

“Yes, well. I was only saying that I won’t be passed over this time. I could be a great help to Arthur if he would only overlook my affliction.”

“I know that. But it is hard for those who don’t know you well to understand. I’ve never known of anyone with such a curious problem before. We have all seen how, at noon, in the bright sunlight, you can defeat any warrior, on horseback or afoot. You can uproot trees and destroy stone walls. But Gawain, what if an enemy attacked by night? By twilight you are so weak that you need to lean on someone just to reach your bed, and once you’re asleep, we can’t even wake you! A whole battle could be fought around your tent and you would never know it!”

“Even so, there must be some way I could serve. I can’t stand the way people look at me as if I were some kind of coward. Here I am, as strong as an ox in the daytime, and I spend all my days here at the castle or hiding at home. There are times when I wish I had never been born!”

His despair was so genuine that Guinevere forebore teasing him any more.

“Gawain, isn’t there some way you could be cured? You have never mentioned how this happened to you. Is it a curse or something that runs in your family?”

He stared at her a moment and then started to laugh.

“Guinevere, I’ve been here all this time and you still don’t know about my family?”

“No, no one told me and it seemed impolite to ask. Do they all have this problem?”

“Not this problem, but . . . well, I don’t mind your knowing. Certainly there is no secret about it. My mother is not the type to be subtle or discreet in her actions.”