The Chessboard Queen (6 page)

There was complete silence, not even a hum. Alswytha laughed again.

“They all just disappeared! I think you insulted them. Oh, Geraldus, it would be so much fun to have you with us this winter. Will you not change your mind?”

“I really can’t. I promised Arthur and Guinevere that I would stay with them. And, I admit, I’m curious to know what has been happening to everyone while I’ve been here. Don’t you ever wonder?”

“Sometimes I would like to know how Guinevere is and dear Lady Sidra, but otherwise, no. We never found much joy down there.”

They were interrupted by a flurry of small bodies covered with an amazing variety of grime.

“Mama, you’re awake now,” Eadwynna announced. “Why didn’t you call us? We’ve been waiting for you. Matthew pushed Allard in the mud and pulled my hair and Allard cried, but I didn’t. I got mad. And Father won’t Jet us play with the sheep anymore because one stepped on Allard and he cried again and we were supposed to watch him, but I’m tired of watching him. Will you tell us a story?”

They piled onto the bed and over Alswytha, shoving each other to get to the favored spot in the circle of her left arm. Over the commotion, she caught Geraldus’ eye and grinned. The new baby woke and began wailing. Soon she had joined the tangle on the bed. All of them were talking, wiggling, crying at once when Mark came in. He surveyed the scene with his hands on his hips and then waded in, tossing Matthew up and catching him until Allard began tugging at his robe to be thrown, too.

Geraldus watched them all: dirty, rumpled, somewhat patched, and indelibly loving. Suddenly he felt that he must be with Arthur and Guinevere. They needed him infinitely more than this so-complete family could.

All the same, it was hard to leave them and the wind had begun to chill and the frost to touch the morning leaves before he actually departed. Once he was on his way, his only desire was to reach Caerleon before he was buried in ice and snow. Although they never seemed to be affected by the weather in his world, the singers with him tended to get little comfort from the cold and to be as happy as he when they were indoors again.

It was early on a gray and biting afternoon when Geraldus rounded the bend in the road and saw the lights of Caerleon above him. He spurred his long-enduring horse, Plotinus, to something resembling a trot. The chorus must have noticed the lights, too, for they suddenly broke into a powerful hymn of thanksgiving. The music, itself, was warming and Geraldus thought with justified annoyance that they might have started sooner, before he was half frozen.

• • •

After the cold of the air outside, the warmth of the main hall nearly overwhelmed him. This was the time of year when Caerleon was most populated. Men who had small holdings throughout the west of Britain came there with their harvest to share both food and friendship. They brought their entire households and moved into the old officers’ quarters. For these people who spent ten months out of twelve in continual back-breaking work, interrupted only by attacks from Saxon invaders and greedy neighbors, winter was a joyous time. The seas were too stormy to cross and the ground was mire or ice upon which no man, Saxon or Briton, would dare set an army. In the warm conviviality of Caerleon these people were more than ready for a few weeks of stories and singing; of mending harness, armor, and plows; of drinking and dicing at night and teaching, scolding, and spoiling their children by day.

For Caerleon in winter was bursting with children. The prosperity Arthur’s victory had brought was so new that there was still a serious shortage of citizens to repopulate his reborn society, but those who were there were trying mightily to make up the deficit. They joked that the best summer crop was that planted in the dark at winter court. It was true that the majority of babies of the last five years had been born at summer’s end. In spite of his anguish at having none of his own, Arthur welcomed them with delight, planning a Britain twenty years in the future, when those grubby, cacophonous, beautiful beings would carry on with his dream.

Geraidus had to walk carefully to avoid stepping on Britain’s future and facing its mothers’ wrath. It took him some time to cross the hall to the corner by the fire, where Guinevere and Arthur were seated. Arthur stood to greet him and cupped his hands, yelling over the din.

“Geraidus! What took you so long to climb down the mountain? And what is the new one, a niece or a nephew?”

“A girl, Arthur, wrinkled, screaming, and bald. They wanted to name her Arthura, but I convinced them that it would be a mistake. She is sure to become better-looking later.”

Having reached them, Geraidus lowered his voice.

“However, they really did want to do you some honor. For your friendship and their love of you both, they have decided to name her Igraine, after your mother. Alswytha hoped you would not be offended.”

Igraine! Poor sad queen whom Arthur never saw, who was told he had not survived his birth. He realized that Mark had met her several times when he was a child and could have told him about her. How like them it was to remember her, who had no other namesakes.

“Tell Alswytha that I am not offended, but proud. But tell them also, the next time you climb to their aerie, that I am offended that they will never visit us. Can’t you make my brother-in-law understand that I need him? Geraidus, of ail my lieutenants, Mark was the one who was most my friend. For the love that Guinevere and I have for him, if for nothing else, we would want him with us. No one will shrink from the scars on his face. They were honorably received. We would not ask him about the past. There is too much planning for the future that must be done to care about old sorrows.”

Geraidus noticed with a sudden clear vision how much Arthur had aged in the past five years. There was gray in his moustache and his forehead was beginning to be crossed by lines.

“My God!” Geraldus thought. “He’s past thirty now. I know men his age who are grandfathers. The task he has taken on will kill him if he doesn’t have some help. There is still so much to be done. What could we do without him?”

This passed through his mind so quickly that Arthur didn’t notice the brief look of shock that he gave.

“Do you think you can convince him to come down and advise me?” Arthur finished.

Geraldus sat down wearily. “No, Arthur. You know how often I have tried. They will never leave their home again. Each time I visit, I find it harder to leave, too. There is such peace there and they found so little here. But you could come to them, both of you. It would be good for you, Arthur. Don’t you agree, Guinevere?”

Guinevere stretched out her arms to him. “First,” she said, “I think you should kiss me nicely, because you have been away so long and I have missed you.”

As she embraced him, Guinevere whispered, “We can’t make him rest. He won’t. Don’t try to convince him now. Ask him about Camelot.”

But Arthur did not wait to be asked. Camelot was all he wanted to talk about. He gestured broadly as he described it, sweeping cups and plates from the table as he tried to make diagrams in the air. And his face had the look of a man who sees visions.

“There are problems. Always. Thousands of problems. No one remembers how things were done in the old days. No one wants to try to find a new way. Sometimes we have been reduced to studying pictures on the walls in the old forts to see if they show how the stones were laid or the land cleared. But it is growing, taking shape at last. We sweat and curse and fall in the mud, dragging the walls with us. I begin to think it will never work, that I must be content with a lesser dream, that I will have to be satisfied with clumsy, unsure work. J ust when I despair, something happens. Someone appears who knows how to fire the tile, to make the floors lie even. Someone has an idea for building a hall that will be a fit place for the Round Table. And it’s working! Geraldus, as soon as the roads are clear again, you must come with me. The Hall is almost finished—a great open room supported by enormous pillars and beams of wood. I have walked through it, sat on the floor where my chair will one day be, and imagined it all.”

Geraldus was aware that Arthur
could
see it all and wished that he himself were not so blind. “When will it be ready?” he asked.

“What? Ready? I don’t know. It may never be exactly the way I have planned it. But I do know that I intend to spend the next summer there and properly begin the Round Table. We have waited far too long to set that in motion.”

Guinevere’s heart sank. She had hoped to spend the summer with her parents again while Arthur went from one place to another, busy with mustering soldiers for defense and recruiting knights for his government. “Perhaps,” she thought, brightening, “Arthur will not be able to get that awful table from the cave on my parents’ estate. Then he will have to forget the whole idea and settle here in Caerleon.”

She rose from the table. “I am going to my rooms, to rest. Geraldus, will you come and dine with us tonight? Constantine, Cador’s son, has just returned from Armorica. He has brought back his sister, Lydia. She was fostered for years at the home of Hoel, Arthur’s cousin. Constantine is leaving again soon. But she is going to stay with me. Do you remember them?”

“I know Constantine well, but Lydia was gone before I ever visited Cador and Sidra. I will be delighted to meet her.”

Geraldus noticed with amusement that Guinevere had directed her explanation of the relationships not at him, but at something apparently hovering over his left shoulder. Being around people who could see what he could only hear was a great comfort to him. They kept him from continually doubting his sanity.

• • •

Guinevere was relieved to be away from the noise of the Hall. Though Arthur had set up a school for the older children, the little ones were still enough to cover the floor on a winter afternoon. The babble of their playing was augmented by the gossiping of their mothers, conversations from which Guinevere was excluded, not because of her rank, but because she lacked the vital credential to join them: there was no warm, sticky toddler pulling at her skirts. She returned to the serenity of her private apartment gratefully.

Risa, her maid, was waiting for her. She helped Guinevere into a less formal robe and brought her the codex she had been studying the night before. Guinevere settled down with relief, but Risa continued to move about the room, closing curtains, folding linens, and moving things about on the tables, none of which needed to be done. Guinevere looked up from the book.

“What is it, Risa?”

Risa dropped the jewelry casket back on the table.

“I wanted to let you know that I would like to visit my father again next month, if that is convenient.”

“Oh, Risa, not again! Winter has barely begun. Who is it this time?”

Risa crossed the room and sat on the furred rug next to Guinevere’s couch. Her dark head rested against it and Guinevere reached down and took her hand to soften the abruptness of her question.

“It’s Cheldric, Guinevere.”

“Cheldric? I had no idea you. . . . But, Risa, he has only one arm!”

“One is quite enough, my Lady. Perhaps you have forgotten how he lost the other?”

“Of course not. He will want for nothing while I am alive. I simply didn’t realize that he attracted you.”

“I am very fond of him. He is willing to spend time in talking to me. He tells the most wonderful stories!”

Guinevere sighed. Risa’s taste was very strange to her. It was true that Cheldric had lost his arm in trying to protect her, but she hadn’t cared for him much before then. He did seem to have become much nicer now that his dreams of military glory were over.

“I don’t suppose you’d marry him?” she asked.

“Would it matter if I didn’t? I didn’t marry the other two.”

Guinevere was uncomfortable with the conversation. Risa had always been more of a friend than a maid, but this was one subject that they generally avoided.

“No, it will make no difference to me. I thought you might want to. Cheldric would be a suitable match for you.”

Risa smiled. “And the others were either too high or too low?”

“That’s not it exactly. I only thought that you might still be interested in Gawain.”

Risa’s smile became laughter. “Gawain? To marry? My dearest Mistress, Gawain makes love better than any man I’ve ever known, but no woman in her right mind would marry a man who sleeps from sunset to dawn, and even one who is totally insane wouldn’t have a child by him. My Lady Guinevere, no one knows what his father was and everyone knows what his mother is. Would you want your baby to be part witch and part incubus?”

She stopped suddenly. She knew she had gone too far.

“Oh, my dear, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say that. I do like him, anyway, but. . . .”

She scrambled up again and went back to rearranging the bottles and boxes on the table.

Guinevere was very tired. She wanted to lie on her couch, read her
Life of St. Martin
, and forget all about other people’s children. She had a wild impulse to let Risa stay at Caerleon and go herself to some quiet little farm away from the clatter and the prying.

“Never mind, Risa,” she sighed. “It doesn’t matter. Whatever you decide, I will always be happy to have you back or let you go if you wish it. But now I would simply like to be alone.”

“Of course, my Lady.” Risa was glad to be able to leave.

Guinevere tried to read and then to rest, but she was too tense. She lay rigidly awhile on the couch, trying to make herself relax. She thought of the view from her parents’ estate, of summer forests, of almost empty skies, but her nervousness increased. She rose and began to pace the floor. It was not Risa that bothered her, or the chaos in the Hall. Something was wrong or missing in her life, something vital, but she could not discover what. Merlin might have been able to tell her, but she would rather suffer than ask him anything. It could not be that she was bored. She had more than she had ever wanted: friends, comfort, security. She could travel when and where she wished. Arthur gave her clothes and trinkets without her even asking and he still loved her devotedly. So what could it be? She kicked a pillow out of her way. A gust of wind rattled the shutters. She sighed again. Perhaps it was the weather.