THE WARRIOR QUEEN (The Guinevere Trilogy Book 1) (3 page)

Chapter Three

I did not sleep during the night. Instead I listened to my heart fluttering in my chest, trapped under my skin, under the useless hushing of my ribs. I didn’t know what I was afraid of, or even if I was afraid. I wasn’t afraid of what I knew would come after the wedding, like other girls I had known were, though I knew all about it. I had heard other women talking about it, and even seen it once as a child when I walked past a half-closed door and peeped in to see one of my brothers on top of a girl from the village. It had not looked so bad as it sounded when I’d heard it described. Besides, I was not going to let Arthur touch me. He was not going to think he was just going to demand me here and throw me down beneath him like a whore. No, I was not worried about
that
, because it was not going to happen. Perhaps if it had been a man like Kay, as I had wished when they had come to collect me, then I could have borne it, to have his hands on me, but not a man who hid from me, and who in turn tried to hide
me
beneath silks, and jewels.

I was anxious, though, that I had not seen yet the man I was to marry. Only his knights. Of them all, only Gawain was what I had expected; rough and quiet, with the ungentle hands of a killer. Sir Kay had been kind, and Ector. But what would Arthur be like? He was not a man who had been born and raised to his throne, so he would not be a spoiled fop, but he was a man who had killed for it, who had slaughtered his rivals for it, including my father’s own men, and done so relentlessly to get it, so he would not be a gentle man, a civilized man. Not that there had been so many of those at my father’s court, but we were wild people in a different way. Woodland hunters, proud fighters, but not warmongers, not battle-generals. We didn’t ride around on armoured horses, terrorising the peasants as Arthur’s men seemed to do. My father had sent our people because my mother’s people had owed King Lot allegiance, not because he was interested in wars. And now the war was over, and he found himself on the losing side. The knights of Carhais who would now come to Arthur were the last of my father’s forces, and though Carhais would be safe, it would also be empty. The glory of Carhais was all gone from it, seeping out into the big, bloody sponge that was Arthur’s Logrys, and the bloody beating heart at the centre, Camelot.

I must have slept, because Margery gently woke me with a hand on my shoulder. It was full light already, so late, but my head throbbed with an insistent weariness, that of a night of broken sleep. I think I had dreamed of home, and the dappled light of the forest, watching the leaves dance in the breeze, chasing a doe through the woodlands.

Marie and Christine came in with a bath and began to fill it with steaming water, and then lavender and rose oils. So Arthur even knew how he wanted me to
smell
. I slid out of bed, and out of my nightdress and into the water. It was too hot, and my pale skin blushed deep red at the heat of it, but I didn’t care. It felt as though it was burning the journey away, my past life away, preparing me to be the queen I was now going to have to be. Margery brushed out my hair with soft strokes as I lay soaking, and when I got out, wet and pink like a newborn, plaited it into the style the women wore in Logrys – not loose how I had always had it, but plaited into two thick ropes that she wound together into a bun at the base of my neck and pinned in place with the jewelled pins and net of gold that had been left by the husband I would acquire today. She placed the delicate golden circlet I had brought from home, made to look like an ivy-strand twining around, on my thick, red curls. The dress Arthur had chosen fitted well, its sleeves long and close down to the wrist where they ended with a point that reached almost to the knuckle of my middle finger, its bodice tight and embroidered all over with little gold leaves of ivy. He must have known the traditions of my father’s people. I was pleased with that, and with the swish and flow of the silk skirt around my legs. It was a well-made dress, truly. But, it was the dress of a princess, who stood still and was looked at. If I had wanted to run in it, I could not have done. When I was dressed in the green silk dress, and the emerald jewellery, they brought me before the mirror. I had been told, always, that I was beautiful, but all the young marriageable daughters of lords were told this every day, and I was not interested in being beautiful, so I had shrugged at it, and turned away, bored. I had been expecting the fairness of my youth, and the brightness of my hair, but dressed as I was I looked like the queen I was about to become. It was a fierce beauty I saw looking back at me, grand and aloof. I looked proud and cold, and I was pleased with it. I did not want this boy king to think that he had a defeated princess in his grasp. I was still strong, and proud even if my father’s people were defeated and gone.

Sir Ector came to fetch me to Arthur, when it was time that we were wed.

“My Lady Guinevere.” He took my hand and kissed it lightly. His manner was fatherly, and I was glad to see him. “You have the beauty of a true queen.”

“Thank you, Sir Ector.” I dipped in a slight curtsey.

“And your ladies, they are lovely little stars beside your radiant sun.”

The three ladies bobbed in thanks. It seemed to be all talk at Camelot. Perhaps I would get used to all of these little politenesses, or perhaps they would stop once people had got used to me. I could not say I liked them; they seemed artificial to me. My ladies were dressed in matching gowns of pale blue that I had had brought over with us, all embroidered in silver with little flowers. It best suited Christine, whose dark hair, ice-blue eyes and pale skin made her seem every bit the fairy-woman in her dress. There would be many eyes on her, too, this day, although she was the oldest of us.

Sir Ector offered me his steady arm and I took it, and he guided me down the stairs of the tower, and out across the open courtyard of Camelot’s keep, to its small chapel. I ought to have had my own father there, but I knew why he did not come. He was too old to leave his home. Too old to suffer the final grief of watching me be handed away. Outside the chapel stood a man dressed in a plain black habit whom I would have mistaken for a monk, were his shaven head and face not patterned with the ugly bruise-blue of woad in beautiful swirls and whorls like the depths of the sea. He measured me with black, beady eyes. I suppressed a shiver down my spine and turned my gaze away.

Inside, the chapel was decked with red roses, and white roses, and white wildflowers all through. But these paled beside the gilded decorations within, pictures of the god of the Christians emblazoned in gold all around; or rather, not their god, but the man who reminded me of our Hanged God, but who I knew was not, but who hung there all the same, made in gold and on a gold cross. I think, like the Hanged God, he too had come back from the dead. So I was to be wed in the sight of Arthur’s gods, not my own. I don’t know why I should have expected anything else. Arthur’s strange Hanged God would be my god now, too.

Everything in that chapel was red and gold and white, shining and overwhelming, so bright and ornate that it took me a while to notice that the chapel was filled with the lords and ladies of Logrys, men and women in ceremonial dress for my wedding, and some knights too, in their armour. I noticed Gawain in his, sat beside a woman with the same russet hair, who had a beautiful, gentle face, and clever, darting blue eyes that caught me with a swift look of appraisal as our gazes met. And in all this, I could scarcely see the golden-haired boy king waiting for me at the altar. All I knew of him was his name, that he had conquered all of Britain and that he was a few years my junior. But I was old for a bride at nineteen; his war had made me so. As I walked down the aisle with my ladies I realised with a sting of betrayal that he had been among the knights that had come to meet me at Dover.
He had wanted to look at me, to check I wasn’t ugly or old; he wanted to decide if he liked the look of me before he agreed we should wed
. That was the action of a child, a selfish child who wanted only what was good for himself. I felt my cheeks burn with anger. If I had not the thought of my father and my country in the back of my mind, I would have slapped him in the face, right there.

As I reached him at the altar and my ladies and Sir Ector stood back, Arthur took my hand and kissed it lightly. He had the smug, laughing face of a boy who had got everything he wanted. He was big and strong, clearly, but looked young, barely a man. I would have guessed seventeen years of age at most, from the look of him. Probably younger. Truly, a boy king.

“My apologies for yesterday, Lady Guinevere,” he said, quietly, as he turned from me to face the altar.

I gave only a small nod. I had to be obedient, I did not have to be kind.

The words of the ceremony were unfamiliar, and they rushed by me without my comprehending them. There was nothing about the sun, the moon, the stars, the cycles of the earth; it was all about this strange God of his. I said what I was bidden to say, and when Arthur took me in his arms to kiss me as his bride it was with all of the impetuous passion of a young man, new with women. But still I could feel his formidable strength as he held me to him. I was in the arms of a conqueror. I could not have slipped away.

There was more of the ceremony – we drank from a libation cup together, and ate a small piece of bread. I did not follow the meaning, but I hoped it was a ceremony about husbands and wives sharing their meat and wine. We had something like the same, and I would have liked to feel that our ways were not so utterly strange.

As Arthur led me by the hand out of the chapel, the lords and ladies around us cheered and clapped, and threw flower petals over us. I liked their cool soft kisses against the bare skin of my neck and the top of my chest. I closed my eyes against them, for a moment. As we walked out, Arthur leant down and spoke softly in my ear,

“I am pleased to have you as my wife, my Lady Guinevere. I hope you are pleased, as well.”

I gave only a little nod. He would not have more from me until he had deserved it.

He slid an arm around my waist and again I felt how strong he was. Even in that light touch I felt it, the power that was held back. He had earned his throne with war, for sure, and at least this man, who was my king now, was not a king who needed others to fight for him. But it was possessive, too. He put his arm around me as though I were already his. As though he owned me. But then again, I supposed that he did. In the eyes of his law and his god, I was his possession now.

He led me to Camelot’s great feasting hall. This was more familiar to me than the chapel, though grander than the one I knew from home. There was a long table on a raised dais at one end, where Arthur and I would sit with those he favoured, and down the hall long trestle tables for the other lords, ladies and knights. The high-ceilinged hall was hung with tapestries, embroidered in dark green, red and gold, with scenes of hunting a white hart, or knights riding through the forest. There was a wonderful savoury smell of some kind of meat stew that reminded my stomach that I had not eaten properly since news came to my father’s kingdom of a lost war.

Arthur pointed to the high table. “My lady, I will put your Round Table there, so that I and my knights may feast around it as equals. I won this kingdom with war, and in war, a king is no different from a knight. These knights are my brothers and my friends, and it is an honour to me that you bring me this table where we might eat as equals with them.”

He shouted an order, and servants spilled out from the shadows to take away the high table, and brought from behind us through the crowd at the main door of the hall – it was the only place where it would fit – my father’s enchanted Round Table. I felt sick inside once more. It wasn’t an eating table, to be smeared with wine and mead and meat grease. It was a sacred table. I closed my eyes for a moment, and breathed in and out slowly. He was using it for what was sacred to him – his fellowship of knights, his war-band. I had to try, to try to understand his ways, their ways. There was, after all, no going back. The servants set down the Round Table and threw over it a rich tablecloth of crimson embroidered with Arthur’s heraldry, the twisting, roaring dragon of the Pendragon line, bright in gold, and around the border, a little gold row of ivy leaves. Glorious enough for a king and a queen, that simple wood table, when it was thrown over with that. If only its magic could fill the empty seats they were placing around it with the men that had been lost as Arthur forged this glorious new kingdom of Britain from its heart, Logrys, outwards, swallowing up the kingdoms like the dragon swallows its prey. No hesitation. No mercy. A beast has no need for mercy.

When the table was ready, Arthur led me down through the hall and we sat side by side. He had spoken of equality, but our chairs were gilded and larger than the others, and we had crimson velvet cushions beneath us. Sat round with his men, but still a king. The crown on his head was the crown of his father, Uther Pendragon, who had ruled Logrys before him. It was a war-king’s crown, truly. Made of gold, yes, but wrought with the sharp shapes of crosses and set boldly with sapphires, it looked proud and brave. It shone bright against his golden hair, but it did not look gaudy. It was thick-made and strong set. I no longer wore the slender wreath of ivy leaves brought from my home that I had worn into the chapel. My head was bare – the priest had lifted the little circlet off me when we wed.

Now approached Arthur’s mother, the Queen Igraine of Cornwall. She was a beautiful woman, still, though she looked as though she must be nearly forty years of age. Long, dark, glossy brown hair flowed down her back, pulled back simply at the front. On it had been a crown like Arthur’s but smaller, the crosses slimmer and more delicate, the gold hammered thinner, and set with little sapphires at the centre of each cross. Now she held that crown in her hands. She moved with grace and around her eyes were the soft lines of kind smiles and gentle wisdom. If Arthur had a mother like the Lady Igraine, then perhaps, perhaps I could be happy. Though I remembered she had not raised him. The Lady Igraine placed the crown gently on my head, and kissed my cheek. I felt the weight of it, pressing down on me.