Guinevere Evermore (3 page)

“King Arthur! Sir Cei! Save me! She’s going to catch me!” It dove under the table, scattering loose rolls as Guinevere entered the room. She was panting hard from running, and her face was red. Her hair had caught several cobwebs in it when she had crawled through a storage room seeking her prey. Now, with a whoop of delight, she pounced on the little foot sticking out from beneath the table.

“I’ve got you fairly now, Galahad. You’re going right down to the baths. You’re going to be cleaned from head to toe whether the other boys laugh or not. And, when you’ve done that, you can consider yourself promoted to dinner at the high table with me, your father, and Arthur. But only for tonight!”

She pulled him by the ankles out from under the table. As soon as she let go, he threw himself on her in a bear hug.

“At the high table! I’ll even wash between my toes for that!”

“Cheldric will be there to see that you do. I’ll race you there.”

With a wave to her husband, the spirit wiped her face with her sleeve and ran.

Chapter Two

The winter afternoon was already dark. Guinevere sat in her rooms, a codex in her lap, her mind on nothing at all.

“Guinevere?”

Her heart constricted at his voice, and as she reached out to him through the gloom, there was a radiance in her eyes.

“Lancelot! Why aren’t you down in the Hall with the others?”

“Arthur suggested you might be lonely up here by yourself. ”

“You are here because Arthur asked you?” She knew it wasn’t true, but the idea nettled her all the same.

For answer he caught her up from her chair and kissed her so fiercely that her breath went and her heart seemed to expand so that she could feel it pounding at her throat and wrists. She pressed against him.

“It’s been so long.” His breathing was ragged also.

“Sometimes I can’t remember that you love me,” she whispered. “We walk and talk and laugh like old friends and then you go away for months and we only hear rumors of your passing, as if you had gone beyond this world. And I sit in my rooms here or at Camelot and wonder if you’ve been enchanted by some nymph of the forest or your Lady of the Lake, or if you’ve simply learned to live without me.”

He pulled her down beside him to the pillows on the floor and settled her snugly against his shoulder, both his arms still circling her.

“Each time I go,” he told her, “I pray that you will forget me, that I may discover a charm or potion that will keep me from wanting you every moment. I don’t think such prayers rise at all; I never mean them. If you forgot me, I would not want to live. And if I stopped loving you, I would die all the same, because you are more a part of me than my soul.”

“I know that now, when I am with you,” she sighed. “But sometimes, when you are gone, it slips away from me. If only I were as free as you to leave when I wished. It would be nice to go someplace where no one ever heard of Arthur, where we could be together like this in the daylight.”

His hold on her tightened and he closed his eyes, imagining what it would be like to come to her every night instead of standing aside as Arthur entered her room and shut the door.

“We could not dishonor him so.” He kissed her again.

“Honor is something you men have invented because you can’t do the right thing just for love’s sake.” She pushed away from him, but only a fraction. “I have given Arthur no children. He could put me aside but for his sense of honor and pride. And so we stay on, all politely pretending and each one of us aching for love or sorrow. Is there more dignity in meeting like this than in running away?”

“I have no dignity left where my love for you is concerned, but I would not take Arthur’s also. Would you really want to run and hide somewhere, leaving him alone for his enemies to laugh at and his friends to pity?”

Guinevere wanted to scream, “Yes, of course! Anywhere, if we could be together!” But she involuntarily thought of Arthur. He was as strong as ever and ruled Britain with a firm hand. Everyone knew that he could still lead his knights and soldiers into battle if he had to. But she thought of the new lines on his forehead and the streaks of gray around his temples, and the nights he lay awake, half from worries of the day and half from the pain in his teeth. He dreaded losing them, especially the front ones, which would make his speech strange and less commanding.

She had no sense of honor; it was a word men played with when it suited them. But she had learned to love her husband, and she knew that somehow she was important to Arthur, even though she couldn’t give him the kind of love she should. Even through the happiness she felt whenever she was with Lancelot, the thought of leaving Arthur, hurt and alone, was more than she could face.

She buried her face in Lancelot’s shoulder. “I wish I had been his sister and your wife.”

She got up and lit the candles from the little oil lamp by the window.

“You have been here long enough to coax me to come down. Tell Arthur that I would rather eat alone tonight, but that I will wait up for him. I will join the others tomorrow.”

She took his hands, conscious that now their outline could be seen through the window.

“Someday, I would like to be able to love you without wondering who is watching us.”

When he had gone, she sat down again upon her couch and hugged a pillow to her breast, brushing her cheek against the wool. Some days it was too much to be near him and feel everyone averting their eyes so they would not witness anything. It was better to be alone; or with Galahad. She thought of Galahad; her child, as much as if she had borne him. Didn’t everyone comment on how alike they looked? Elaine could not have been his true mother, only a vessel used to carry him until he could reach her. Morgause’s sorcery had arranged it all, whatever her intentions had been. Morgause had let Lancelot think he was making love to Guinevere; therefore the child conceived was Guinevere’s. She believed that with all her heart. Her face softened as she imagined him, asleep now in his corner in the pile of fosterling boys. His face would be dirty no matter how often she had had him clean it. He had finally explained to her, very gently, that it just didn’t do for him to look so cared for when none of the other boys did.

“Some of them are awfully homesick,” he said. “And Lydia just can’t love each one of them, not the way you love me. So I don’t want to remind them about it by being too clean.”

Arthur had laughed when she told him about it. “He’s got round you again, love!” But Guinevere wasn’t so sure. Galahad seemed to have been born with the sensitivity that Guinevere was only beginning to know existed. He knew who was sad and who was angry and who was surly because of shyness. He knew who needed kindness and he gave it to them, not from a sense of duty or religion, the way Lancelot did, but just because he could do nothing else. Sometimes Guinevere feared that he would learn of her love for his father and hate her for his mother’s sake, but that was only her own guilt speaking. Galahad judged people by their hearts.

Lancelot walked slowly through the torch-lit corridors of the old fortress. He needed time to arrange his expression. Despite the years he had had to make a hole in his conscience for his love for Guinevere, he still had not learned to look at Arthur with unclouded eyes. Even when they had not been to bed, the intimacy they shared alone was adultery enough.

When he got to the hall, Durriken, the poet, was regaling the audience with the tale of Gawain’s adventures with the Green Knight. It had happened about five years ago, and Gawain had been furious about the whole thing.

“There I was, thinking I was nobly risking my life for the honor of Camelot, laying my neck on the block, when all the time the whole thing was just another stupid allegory!” But he had told the story and endured the laughter with a shrug. Durriken was already introducing some heroic elements into the tale, and it was just as well that Gawain could never be awake at night to hear them.

Lancelot skirted the room quietly and reached Arthur.

“She’d rather wait in her rooms for you,” he whispered. Arthur merely nodded, his face turned toward the poet, but Lancelot could see the release of tension in his arms. Another dart shot into his conscience. Lancelot sat down next to his friend, wishing he had never left his home under the Lake. He waited until Durriken finished and then excused himself to lie awake in his bed, wrestling with demons until dawn.

• • •

Percival was not in the hall that night. He was in his room, practicing manners with his tutor. Palomides had taken the request seriously and had moved the boy into his own room to take on his education. Percival was sorry for anything that tore him away from Lancelot, but Arthur had taken him aside and explained to him kindly that Palomides would make a far better teacher, having a greater knowledge of the world. Percival agreed. He had noticed the touch of awe in everyone’s attitude toward the man who had been born in Constantine’s city.

Just now, there was awe in Palomides’ eyes as he studied the boy before him. How could anyone have reached the age of reason and still be so woefully dense about interacting with his fellow human beings? He would give a great deal to meet the mother about whom Percival was so rhapsodic.

“All right, boy, once again,” he said wearily. “You are traveling alone in strange lands. It is growing dark. In the distance you see a great house, with many small farms around. What would you do?”

Percival scowled in hard thought.

“Is it summer or winter?”

“What difference does that make?”

“In summer, I would sleep in the fields.”

“And wake up naked with your horse gone, if you woke up at all. Try again.”

Percival sighed. He had spent many nights in the fields. The worst that had ever happened was being awakened by a goat who thought his hair was fodder. He concentrated. What had Lancelot done on their short trip to Camelot?

“I would go to the big house and announce myself to the lord and ask for lodging.” There. That sounded good.

“A strange lord? In an unknown country? Percival!”

“Well, what then? I can’t think of anything else.”

“You would go to a farmer’s hut, or, even better, a herdsman’s. You would let him think you were a poor stranger, perhaps in the service of a great king, but not very important. He is the one you would ask about a place to stay and the temper of the lord; what neighbors he has and how he deals with them. About some men, you won’t even need to ask. Look at the condition of the huts and then the width of the castle walls.”

Percival only looked blank. Palomides gave up. With any luck, no one would allow the boy out on the roads alone.

“Well, then. How are you coming in making conversation with the ladies?”

Percival looked even more glum.

“I’ve been trying to remember everything you said, Sir, but they never seem to answer the way I expect them to. I was talking with the Queen the other day and I was doing fine, I thought. I told her about meeting Sir Lancelot and about my mother and our horses at home. Then she suddenly started laughing and couldn’t seem to stop. Gawain had to pound her on the back.”

“What were you telling her about the horses?”

“Only about Glisten, my favorite. He’s beautiful, but a little skittish, especially around mares. Anyway, it suddenly struck me that her hair was the exact color of his coat. So I told her. You said to compliment ladies whenever I could!”

This was given in a tone of anguish as Palomides’ face twisted. What could he say? Percival always gave the highest compliments he could, and he meant them. Could he help it if most women did not want to be compared to his mother or his horse?

“Sir Palomides?”

“Yes, boy.”

“How did you learn what to say and do? Is it true that you’ve even seen the Emperor?”

“I’ve seen greater than that, young Percival.”

“Tell me.” The boy sat cross-legged on the floor, his eyes begging for a story. Palomides composed himself to recite his history, as he had done his first evening at Camelot.

“I was born in Constantinople, in the shadow of the Emperor’s palace. My father was a member of the Nubian guard and my mother a Thracian slave of the Empress’s household. He saved his earnings for seven years to buy her freedom. But the Empress would not release her, so he stole her away—and, with her, myself, a child of five. He fled with us to Jerusalem, where they were married in the church as good Christians should be.

“Throughout my childhood we traveled, to Syria and Egypt and south to the land of my father’s fathers. I have been to Hippo, where the blessed Augustine lived, and to sorrowful Rome. I have been to Dalmatia and the lands north, where men still worship stones and trees. As I grew, I began to feel a calling within my spirit, a need that I could not ignore. My parents found a home at last in Thrace, but I could not stay with them. I wandered farther, to Babylon and to the mountains that hold the sky away from the world. Finally, I returned to Jerusalem. I knelt one dawn before the very place of Our Lord’s sepulchre. And, as the gray night was pierced by the first rays, I thought I heard such a voice as Mary Magdalene heard: ‘He whom you seek is not here; you must seek him among the sons of men.’

“It was there that I first heard the tale that old Joseph, whose tomb it should have been, did not remain in Jerusalem, but sailed away, through the Lake of Rome, past the gates and out into the endless ocean. And he did not die there but came to a wondrous land, unknown to Rome. There he built himself a small house and planted seeds from the trees of his garden. And there he left a great treasure to those of our faith.”

He stopped. Percival’s eyes were big and his breath came fast.

“And then?”

Palomides smiled. “He died. That is all the stories tell. They do not say what the treasure was, only that it had been touched by Our Lord, Jesus. So I sailed through the gates and out to an island that was unknown to Rome in those long-ago days. I found other stories there, about a man who was creating a better land than Rome had known since the days of the Republic. The closer I came the more I learned about him, and it seemed to me that if someone in these hideous times was succeeding in building a society based on honor, it could only be with the help of some strong power. And what power could be stronger than this?”