THE WARRIOR QUEEN (The Guinevere Trilogy Book 1) (11 page)

Chapter Twelve

When Kay was well and whole he was back up to his old tricks again, with Gareth, fighting the boy with one hand, his strong left hand tied behind his back, and then trying to get Gareth to fight back hopping on one leg. I liked to watch them laugh and play together, and in the evenings we all sat together as I read to them, or sometimes Christine would sing. I thought often about Arthur, and the man who had saved my life. Especially when I was alone at night. I would dream of Arthur, dream of him inside me, his body hot on top of me, his mouth against mine in passion, and then I would wake gasping for breath, with the delicious illusion evaporating around me, before it was done. But sometimes I would lie in the dark and think of how he had sent me away. How the last thing he’d said was
Someone take her back to Britain
, as though I were a horse or a suit of armour to be shipped back. I was still angry, but as the days went on into weeks and months and a year was passed since I had seen him, my longing was greater than my anger, and I yearned to see him again.

It was on a morning, well into winter, when the air was crisp with frost and the grey walls of the castle, backed by a pale greyish sky, seemed harder and colder in the sharp winter air, that the men began to return. I was watching Gareth and Kay fighting together in the courtyard, with wooden swords and wooden shields. Kay kept trying to trip Gareth, but Gareth was learning fast how to leap out of the way and Kay’s old tricks were beginning to lose their effectiveness against him. Their breath steamed in the chill morning air and Christine and I stood close together, wrapped in furs, to watch.

After a while, I went to see the horses. I liked their little snorts and stamping feet, their warm, silent presences. The stables smelled of clean hay, and clean horses. There were few enough left with the men away at war, but mine was there – or the one that had become mine since I was back at Camelot. I took up a brush and began to brush her hair. The action was soothing and I became lost in thought, or rather beyond thought, in the movement of my hand up and down. I did not notice until another horse came to stop beside me that someone else had come into the stable. The horse snorted out a plume of steamy breath into the cold stable beside me and I looked up. A knight was sat upon it, clad in his platemail, but his helm off. Dark hair fell in soft, glossy waves down to his jaw and his face was pale and angular, cheekbones high and nose long and fine. I did not know him, but I felt looking at him as though I recognised him somehow. He swung off his horse, down beside me. I could not speak, I was so surprised. His horse bit hungrily into the hay in its feeder, which was close enough to that of my horse that when he swung down we were so close in the space between the two horses that we were almost touching. I opened my mouth to begin, but I did not know how. He was breathing hard from the ride. I could see the sweat on his face, and on his horse.

After a moment, he spoke through his ragged breaths, and when he spoke I realised why I felt I had seen him before.

“Arthur is returned,” he said, in a deep voice, musky with its tones of French.

I ran out into the courtyard, and there he was, face tanned brown from the Mediterranean sun, caked with the dirt and the sweat of riding, dressed in his platemail with his helm thrown from his head. He saw me as I saw him, and jumped from his horse, running over as I ran towards him to catch me up in his arms, lifting me into the air, then down, hard and fast into his embrace and a desperate, hungry kiss. It had been so long, and yet it felt like only yesterday that I had kissed him last. He took me by the hand and half led, half carried me up the winding stairs to his chamber, pushing the winter furs off my shoulders while we were still running up the stairs. He had scarcely closed the door behind him before he was pulling out the lacing at the back of my dress, pulling it away. Both of our hands fumbled on the leather straps of his platemail, hurrying to throw it off. I could feel my heart racing in my chest, and his own heart racing as I laid my hand on his, under his shirt as I lifted it away. His hands left marks of sweat and dirt from the journey on the white cotton of my underdress, but I didn’t care and neither did he. He kicked off his boots and breeches and drew me roughly against him, kissing me hard and hungry. The smell of him, sweat and leather, and the feeling of his arms around me, his mouth on mine, was intoxicating after so long. I wanted to put my hands all over him at once, feel his hot skin, the hard muscle underneath, the life beating inside him. I was afraid he would come back tired and weak, but the fighting had made him even stronger. With a deep groan of relief he threw us down on the bed and was inside me before he had finished pulling the underdress over my head, and I moaned loud with the feel of it, and relief to have him with me again, strong and alive. His love was rough and passionate, and he held me tight against him, pressing me close to him as he groaned with pleasure, and I with him, in soft ecstatic sighs, feeling the heat at the centre of myself. He sighed out my name at the end, and fell against me. I wrapped my legs around his back and held his head gently in my hands. At last he had come back to me. Our breaths slowing together, he kissed lightly the skin of my chest, and then up to the soft skin beneath my chin.

“I knew I would not feel I had come home until I was with you again,” he murmured. I held his face close and kissed him fiercely. I could not speak. The relief that he was alive and whole, that he was here, returned to me, was too much to take in. I could not believe it was true. “Tonight we must have a feast,” he said, rolling gently away, and gathering me up to rest on his chest. I folded my hands together on his chest and balanced my chin on them, looking at him. Seeing him again, it was as though he had never gone. As though he had been in the next room. I did not know how I had survived without him for a whole, long year. More. He rubbed my back thoughtfully. “You could use a feast. You’re thin.” He could feel my ribs, too close to the surface, through the skin of my back.

“Things have been thin here, while you have been gone.”

“I know,” he said sadly. “But we have gold from Rome, and things will get better. The men are back, and we can buy everything we need.” He stroked my hair lightly. I pressed my head into his hand, relishing the feeling of him, close and real. “But tonight, we must feast and celebrate. The people of Camelot need that.”

He rose and called for a bath. They brought us two big iron tubs of steaming water and we slipped into them by the fire. I sank back into mine closing my eyes, though I did not want to close them for too long, in case when I opened them again, Arthur was gone. Arthur scrubbed his skin all over with a sponge in his, turning the clear water to grey. Beneath the dirt his skin still shone brown where the sun had touched it.

I thought again about the man who had saved my life. I felt the guilt clutch at the heart of me that I had not thanked him when I saw him in the stables. I should have said something. I could say it tonight. I should have asked Arthur who he was, but for that moment I wanted to pretend that there had been no war, no change, and only Arthur and I existed in the world.

Arthur had brought back silk and gold from his wars, as well as victory. He presented me with a dress made of lilac silk that left my pale arms bare, and tied around the waist with a little silk cord. It was loose and flowing, fine. I protested it was too cold for winter, and so he fetched my soft grey furs and placed them gently around my shoulders. He had also brought back a golden necklace hung with sapphires from the far east. I did not want to ask how he had got it, but he clipped it around my neck and smiled, so I did too. He offered me the mirror of hammered silver and I peered at myself. I could see, blurrily, that at last I looked like a queen again. Arthur dressed in his father’s old red brocade surcoat, sewn with the dragon winding in gold across it. He didn’t need anything new. Even in the coat, he looked a fearsome size, his warrior’s shape obvious beneath the thick brocade. He looked every bit the conqueror, even before he set his crown on his head. I did not want to wear my heavy crown, so I wore the circlet of golden ivy that I had worn on our wedding day, and it sat nestled among the curls I had woven up into a plaited bun at the nape of my neck. I felt a little better, less fragile, already, at the sight of myself appearing to be strong.

By the time we entered the hall, hand in hand, it was already full. I could see at the high table Nimue, who must have come from Avalon when she heard of Arthur’s return, was sat already, and Kay and Gareth and Gawain, and their other brothers, and in the place of honour on Arthur’s right sat the man who had saved my life. Our eyes met from the end of the hall, and he bowed his head gently. I felt my heart flutter nervously; I supposed I felt guilty for not thanking him. I wished I had spoken to him in the stables. He was dressed simply in a dark indigo doublet. When Arthur saw him, he grinned warmly.

We sat to eat, and I had not seen so much food in a long time. Arthur’s men had brought back game they had hunted on the way, so there was pigeon and pheasant and boar, and bowls piled high with oranges and peaches from the Mediterranean. There were bowls of olives, which I had not seen since I had left home, and only then when the traders from Rome came through Carhais, and fat loaves of bread. I took the cup of wine in my hand and drank. The wine, too, had come from the Mediterranean. I could taste the sun in it. There had not been wine all the time Arthur had been gone, only ale, the bitter taste of which I disliked.

“Have you told your queen the news?” Aggravain cried across the table to Arthur. He was already drunk, whether with wine or the excitement of victory I could not tell. All of the men looked excited, full of their victory. They all suddenly looked like boys.

Arthur turned to me with a smile.

“You’re no longer only a queen. You are now also an empress. Empress of Rome.”

I smiled, because I knew I must, but my blood ran cold. Arthur the Conqueror had not stopped at taking back the lands that he had already won, but he had marched on Rome.
He could have been killed. They all could have been killed
.
And what was it worth, the endless desire for more? The other knights around the table cheered, apart from the man who had saved my life. His eyes met mine, as he hid his face behind a cup of wine, to drink. I felt it go through me like a knife. He had seen into me. No, no, I was imagining it. I looked down into my cup of wine. It was already half-drunk and I had not eaten much that day. I must have been imagining things, and I should be happy. Arthur was back with me, alive and victorious. I had to try to let that overshadow everything else.

“You should have seen it, my lady,” Gawain bellowed across the table. His broad face was almost entirely covered in freckles from the sun apart from the white lines of the scars, and he was flushed with wine, already drunk. “By the time we reached Rome, Lucius was cowering in his castle on the Palatine. We rode up to it, the rest of that damned city smoking behind us, and Arthur threw off his helm, and his breastplate and greaves, and his shirt, and scaled the wall of Lucius’ palace with his bare hands. When he reached the top and climbed inside, he dragged the bald old man out to the Palatine steps by his grey beard and sliced off his head in front of us all with his sword. You should have seen him, my lady, climbing up the walls of the Palace, all alone, gleaming in the sun. He was
magnificent
.
Then we dragged out Lucius’ sons and killed them, too. His daughter killed herself, but not before I’d –”

Arthur made a noise of disapproval deep in his throat and Gawain stopped mid sentence, but not before I’d seen the look pass between Arthur and Gawain, or Arthur’s glance towards me. My stomach churned and I felt sick. I was glad, then, that I had not been there.

“Then,” Gawain picked up his story again, in the same garrulous drunken tone, “we drank Rome dry. We pulled up the barrels of wine from the cellars and feasted in the ruined senate-house. This wine you’re drinking is what we brought back from the cellars of Rome. Hail Arthur the Conqueror, King of Britain and Emperor of Rome!” He shouted. The other knights around the table echoed and Arthur gave a modest smile, raising his hand. I thought he ought to have been more than modest. He ought to have been ashamed, if not of himself, then of his men.

“I did what I had to to protect my people. Gawain, you give me too high praise.”

“He was like a god.
A god
. Like Mars himself,” Gawain persisted. “Those bloody pagans probably thought you
were
Mars. They ran from you like children.” Now those sat beside Gawain were trying to shush him. Kay was pushing his cup of wine towards him, hoping he would drink and be quiet. “And
you
.” He pointed a wavering finger at the man beside Arthur, the man who had saved me. “I thought all you Frenchmen would be perfumed fools, but you sliced through those Romans like they were made of cloth. This is the beginning of an age of greatness, my friends.”

He raised his glass and the knights drank again. Kay cleared his throat to change the subject. For a moment, I was relieved.

“Gareth has come to court, Arthur,” he said.

Arthur raised his cup to the boy. “And I am glad to see you,” he said. Gareth smiled and inclined his head.

“I should warn you, though,” Kay continued, “that he has fallen in love with your wife.” Gareth blushed, dark. I gave Kay a cold look, but he did not see me. Gawain slammed his cup down on the table and wine spilled over the rim as he turned to Kay, looking ready for a fight.