Guinevere: The Legend in Autumn (19 page)

“Best sight I’ve seen in years,” my husband exclaimed, striding across the room to where Lance stood with the help of a cane. “I can’t tell you how splendid it is for all of us.”

“No less so for me, M’lord,” the lieutenant answered, trying to go down on one knee.

“No you don’t,” Arthur burst out, catching him midway. “Half-starved or not, you’re still too big for me to lift comfortably.” For a moment I thought he would clap his friend on the back, but the Breton’s evident weakness stayed his arm, so he slung it around Lance’s shoulders instead. “Now, come join me at the table and tell me where all you’ve been.”

It was a subject no one else had broached, and when I took my place beside Arthur, I was of two minds about it. Curiosity prodded me to find out what he’d done, where he’d gone, what he remembered. But the sheer pleasure of having him home, and the fear that he might recall I was to blame for his misadventures, made me hope he would keep silent.

As it was, Lance simply shook his head. “I started off in search of something—maybe my soul, maybe the meaning of life; after so long a time, I cannot remember clearly. Since I had no way to get to Egypt, where such a search can be conducted in the desert, I did the next best thing—went into the wildwood. It is almost as dangerous, and certainly as remote from humankind. But whatever spiritual lessons I set out to learn, before long the mere question of survival took precedence. Perhaps I grew sick, or crazed, or both. The very notion of coming face-to-face with another human terrified me, and I moved further into the forest, sleeping in caves and coming out only at night. From there on I don’t recall much, until the bear. She was a huge, angry sow who thought me too near her cubs and swiped me heavily along one side. Before I could recover my balance, she dragged me into an all but fatal embrace…” He shuddered and gave me a lopsided smile. “Definitely not as friendly as the dancing bear at Caerleon.”

A twinge of regret went through me, and I realized he had no way of knowing that poor animal was dead.

“I…I don’t remember much after that,” Lance concluded, “until I came to, here in Camelot, and thought at first I’d attained the heaven Christians tell about.”

“And well come you are, friend,” Arthur noted, raising his drinking horn in a toast. “To the pair of fine Companions who found their cousin when they went in search of adventure in the name of the Round Table. To the Fellowship, made whole again by the return of my lieutenant. To the peace in the south, with new administrators overseeing the Federates. And to the years ahead—may we all continue to grow and prosper.”

Everyone drank to that, though I quaffed water rather than the wine Cei was sharing all around. It was a fitting end to a long, harrowing ordeal, and a fine beginning to a new life, not only for Lance and me, but for the Fellowship as a whole.

Chapter XVI

Mosaic

I’ve never seen the famous glass mosaics that Palomides spoke of, never gaped at pictures floating in the air or shimmering with gold. But I have lived with rainbows, and gasped at the fire that leaps into being when a field of winter weeds turns from white frost to blazing prism as the sun touches it…and when I remember the years after Arthur’s return from France and Lance’s having been found alive, it is like standing in the heart of all those colors, and more.

In the spring after Arthur’s visit to Clovis, Bedivere left for the Continent to represent us at that Court and to keep an eye on the safety of Brittany’s borders.

“He’s always been my best diplomat,” Arthur noted as the one-handed Champion waved good-bye from the deck of the ship casting off from London’s busy wharf.

And outside of Merlin, your most trusted friend, I thought. Certainly we were in need of such an envoy, for Gawain’s set-to with the Roman ambassador had left us with a ragged reputation on the Continent.

“Mordred’s rather at loose ends since Bedivere left,” Lance commented a week or so later.

We were in the garden of the Imperial Palace, where I was trying to espalier a pear tree against the remnant of a south-facing wall. I had honored my promise to the Gods, letting Lance set the distance between us. He was quieter and even more thoughtful than before his disappearance, but the underlying trust and understanding between us was still there. I could not ask for a dearer friend or a more faithful Champion, and although the love still burned, we were careful not to let the fever rise.

“I thought maybe Arthur would take a hand in Mordred’s training,” Lance added.

“So did I.” I stepped back and squinted at our work, then sighed. “It’s an unlikely dream, you know…hoping that Arthur will ever accept the boy.”

“Maybe that’s understandable, given the circumstances.” As always, Lance spoke discreetly. Although Arthur had confided the secret of Mordred’s parentage to his lieutenant, the dark-haired Breton never mentioned it directly.

I nodded, remembering Arthur’s comment the first time I chided him about not taking a more active interest in his son: “Ah, lass, don’t ask me to be all things to all people, and I’ll not ask it of you.” To fault the finest King in the Western world for not being a good father might well be considered unreasonable.

“Perhaps I can fill the gap,” Lance suggested. “Since Gareth’s on his way to becoming a Champion, I’m in need of a new squire. Mordred has as much promise as his brother—maybe more—and it would be a pity to let his education slip to the point where he couldn’t stand at the High King’s side.”

Thus Lancelot became the mentor of my stepson. Watching him help the lad refine a stroke, hone his blade, or check the tack for his horse, I couldn’t help wondering if Lance dreamed of the day when his own son, Galahad, would be old enough for such instruction.

At the end of the Round Table meeting in London, Lynette and Gareth married. Nimue was there to perform the Bride’s Blessing, just as she had blessed me before my wedding to Arthur, and Cathbad, who was now part of our household, performed the ceremony. We threw the gates of the Imperial Palace open to all who would come, as the groom was a favorite among the Fellowship, and since Lynette’s father was the Grounds Keeper at the Palace, everyone in London fancied himself a friend of the bride. I stood by the fountain, greeting our guests and thinking with pride that under our rule London had gone from a decaying ruin to a thriving British center. Although Arthur refused to let Saxon boats use the harbor, fearing they would bring arms and sedition, the barbarians who lived in the City and nearby villages were peaceable enough. Many turned out for the wedding, and when the circle dance started, all joined in, regardless of their backgrounds. In the center the gamin bride ducked her head as Gareth bent to kiss her, and squealed with delight when he picked her up and carried her into their private chambers. Some things, it occurred to me, never change.

We wintered over in the City, in part because Arthur wanted to complete the repair work on Caesar’s Tower that tops a knoll in the far corner of the city walls. I had hoped he would let it be; once before, when he was shoring up the walls of the thing, a skull had been unearthed, and immediately the Druids claimed it was that of the Old God Bran. They still looked askance at what they considered a desecration of their relic, and chided us for the irreverence. But Arthur wanted to make the Tower secure, and considering that it commanded both the riverfront and the hinterlands beyond the fort’s wall, I couldn’t blame him.

With the coming of spring we decided to fulfill our promise to visit Wehha at his holdings in East Anglia. Lancelot was anxious to get back to Joyous Gard to see how it had fared during his time in the forests, so Arthur gave him a fine new stallion named Invictus, and we waved him on his way up Ermine Street, while we turned to ride east toward Colchester.

Mordred and Cynric came with us, and even though Arthur and I had mastered the rudiments of the Saxon tongue, we promoted the peace-hostage to the rank of interpreter.

Outside of Colchester we stopped at Gosbeck, where the yearly fair was in progress. Here in East Anglia the Saxons were able to land their goods, and the market was full of items from the Continent as well as those things from the Mediterranean which had been carted overland from the wharves at London.

Not only the goods but also the venders were of every description, which made for a colorful scene. The blond Swedes and fair-skinned Angles displayed their gorgeous goldwork pieces. A swarthy Greek touted his selection of olive oil and dried figs to northern residents who hadn’t the vaguest concept of the sunny lands they came from, while someone else presented a selection of Egyptian bronzeware decorated with blue enamel. We ourselves caused something of a stir as Palomides and his turbaned squire strolled by, the hooded falcon perched on the Companion’s gauntlet.

I watched Mordred and Cynric, the one so dark and the other so blond, moving among the stalls—now flirting with a wench, now joking between themselves. With any luck, I thought suddenly, this could be the face of the future, when Saxon and Celt put aside their fears and see each other as brothers.

Later we climbed the steep road to Colchester’s fort, marveling at the ruins of a huge Roman temple, and ate our oysters in the shadow of some Caesar’s statue.

“Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?” Arthur mused, staring at the weathered face. “Merlin once told me Claudius was a stammering, limping scholar who had little intention of becoming Emperor. Yet they made him a God in Colchester.”

I caught the wry look on my husband’s face. “I wouldn’t want to be an Empress if divinity came with it,” I allowed, and we both laughed.

Compared with Colchester, Wehha’s stronghold was small and primitive. Like most of the immigrants who came across the North Sea in shallow, open boats, his people brought little with them but their hopes for the future. And like other such leaders, Wehha had worked his way up a river till he found a place totally removed from both Roman city and British farm. I’ve noticed that whether they were carved from the clay lowlands in the south or set, as Wehha’s was, on a sandy heath smelling of salt marsh and tidal flat, the barbarian settlements were always wrapped in isolation and self-sufficiency. Perhaps there’s something in the Teutonic soul that needs such circumstances to make them feel at home.

The sentry atop the stockade had seen us coming from a distance, and when we arrived at the gate, it was Wuffa, Wehha’s arrogant son, who greeted us.

“My father is dying,” he announced once we were inside the heavy wooden wall. “It would please him to see you.”

Arthur nodded and swung down from his horse as Wuffa turned away, never even acknowledging my presence. For a moment I thought I would be forced to join the women in their separate quarters, but I slid my arm through Arthur’s and, holding my head high, accompanied him to the Hall in spite of Wuffa’s scowl. Wehha might relegate his women to the kitchen, but I was High Queen of Britain, and intended to pay the Swede the respect he was due on his deathbed.

A hush fell as we crossed the compound. Stablehands and sculleries stared at me as though I were a ghost. Even the guards standing at attention beside the Hall’s main door blinked at the notion of a woman walking next to the High King. But when we stood before Wehha, the dying Swede turned his tired eyes on me, and I caught the echo of a smile in them.

“The British Queen honors me,” he whispered before turning his attention to Arthur.

The robust figure was barely discernible under a heap of furs and blankets. His once-florid face now looked like a death’s-head skull, for it was the wasting sickness that was claiming him. When he reached out a palsied hand, the fingers were little more than knobby sticks. Yet his presence was still commanding, and for all that he was surrounded by servants and doctors plying him with possets and fussing at his pillows, one still knew he was a powerful leader.

“I have told Wuffa he must always support the Pendragon,” the dying man affirmed. Arthur had to lean close to hear his words, and while they spoke, I looked about the Hall.

The wooden walls were hung with banners and shields, a large bearskin and numerous pelts of wolves. Firelight gleamed off the fine wood and glinted on the spears that were stacked neatly by the door, being ready to hand if the warriors had need. The hounds that slept around the hearth were sleek and healthy, and another, probably Wehha’s favorite, lay near his bed, head resting on paws, eyes never moving from his master’s face. In all the steading this was the creature which would grieve the most when the man’s spirit left him behind.

Near the bed, on a stand where it served as a tabletop, was the large silver tray from Constantinople that Arthur had given Wehha in recognition of his loyalty to us. I was glad that, if he couldn’t die in battle, at least the Swede was surrounded by the warmth of caring retainers and the treasures he’d collected.

Wehha’s energy was ebbing so we didn’t stay long, and after leaving the compound, rode along the river path in subdued silence. As the Deben flows toward its estuary, it runs beneath a bluff, and Arthur gestured to the windswept height. “That’s where he wants to be buried. They will lay him out in the ship that brought him across the North Sea and build a barrow over it so that future generations will remember that he founded his dynasty here.”

Even now I find it a touching thought, though Wehha’s ridge was a bleak place from which to confront eternity. At the time it made me glad I was born a Briton and would not he buried on a lonely shore in a land not even my own. No matter where they scatter my ashes, I will be home in Albion.

We spent a summer with Mark and Isolde of Cornwall, staying at Castle Dore, which nestles above one of those jewellike bays along the Cornish coast.

Isolde of Cornwall, daughter of the Queen of Ireland and wife to the jealous, aging King Mark. Beautiful, willful—she and her lover, Tristan, had turned their kingdom upside down with their grand romance. It would not have mattered had Mark not been a fanatical Christian, unwilling to allow his child-bride the freedom to her bed that any other Celtic queen was given.

Yet for all that I once thought her nothing more than a spoiled darling, I had grown to like Isolde when she and Tristan fled Cornwall and sought sanctuary with Arthur and me in Logres. During that time we’d become close friends and exchanged many confidences. Eventually, when Mark threatened to make war on Arthur if she didn’t return, Isolde had ended the relationship with Tristan and returned to her duties as Queen of Cornwall. Over the years any number of warriors—including Palomides—had developed hopeless passions for her, but after she gave up Tristan, she never looked at another man. Whether it was out of loyalty to Mark or Tris, I never asked.

“It’s passable,” she said, referring to her life at present. “I’ve been studying the healing arts for some time now—Mark grows cranky as his years add up, and this gives me something to do that doesn’t make him jealous. Then, too, there’s plenty of trade with my people in Ireland, which means visitors and envoys of all kinds. And sometimes travelers bring me news from the Continent.” Her lovely violet eyes returned my gaze with candor. “I have heard that Tristan married a Breton girl who is also named Isolde. If so, I wish them well and hope they have many children.”

It was a gentle comment, made by a woman grown wise in her years, and I smiled at my friend.

“But what of you and Lancelot?” she asked, smiling in return. “How does the other famous pair of the day?”

“The same as ever. Close, without touching. He’s been gone recently, acting as envoy for us among the northern tribes. The chieftains beyond the Wall respect him; they call him the Man of Honor.”

One dark brow lifted gracefully, and Isolde shook her head. “I have never really understood what all this fuss over honor is about…which was, no doubt, part of the problem with Tris.”

“No doubt,” I concurred. It was their lack of honor that had so shocked the world. Swept up in a “fated love,” they had stooped to all forms of lying and duplicity in order to continue meeting, never honestly admitting the affair that everyone else tittered over. Until they ran away together, that is.

“No two people should love each other the way we did,” she said softly. “And it’s good that he’s in Brittany. I’m not sure I could go on being Cornwall’s Queen if he were closer.”