Under Camelot's Banner (21 page)

“You fool!” Sir Lancelot shouted. “Imbecile! Did I teach you nothing? Are you a babe playing with a stick? He laid a trap for you and you ran straight into it. One of the oldest and feeblest tricks there is, and you fell for it without thinking!”

“My lord,” began Gareth feebly. The cut he'd taken burned badly as he tried to talk. “I …”

“You are useless!” bellowed Lancelot. “How dare you enter into a challenge that shames me before the king and the whole court!”

For one wild moment Gareth wanted to shout back at his knight, to say that it was not Lancelot who had been kicked to the ground in front of the king, his brothers, and every woman in the court. But of course it was. Gareth was Lancelot's man. His loss was Lancelot's, and Lionel's and even Brendon's.

“You are more fit for wielding a broom than a sword on the battlefield!” Now Gareth wished Lancelot would hit him. The blow would be easier to take than the furious tirade. “You will get to the scullery where I don't have to look at you, and you will take orders from the lowest maid there until you can prove you are fit to take orders from a man!”

Gareth's head snapped up. “My lord, if you …” he pleaded, pain and blood filling his mouth, flavoring his shame.

“You dare question me, sirrah!” Sir Lancelot roared. “You shame me before all the world and then you have the gall to play dumb?”

“No, my lord,” whispered Gareth. Hanging his head, he turned away. Lionel reached a hand toward him, and Gareth brushed it off. His sword and shield still lay on the ground. He did not dare stop to collect them. Alone, Squire Gareth, son of King Lot, wounded and without help, angled his path toward Camelot's great hall, and the kitchen gardens behind it, swearing with each halting step that he would accept this last and harshest punishment, and that no man would see him cry.

Over the next few days, Gareth more than once considered taking his own life. Surely God's damnation would be easier than Sir Lancelot's. Word of his punishment was swiftly communicated to the kitchens, and those who served there were more than happy to become his guards and masters. No task was too mean, too long or too dirty to be given him. No taunt was too coarse when the hands he had thought well hardened by sword and leather began to bleed from scrubbing great iron kettles or bleaching yards of linens. He saw Rosy once in the yard as he staggered under a yoke of slop buckets of slop to the pig sty. She turned swiftly away from him. He did not have the strength to pretend he did not see her smirk as she did.

Geraint and Gawain came to sigh over him, and Agravain to scold and to remind him he had been warned. Lionel came once, to say he had Gareth's arms in his keeping. He also told how both Gawain and Geraint had been to Sir Lancelot, and the king, to try to lift Gareth's punishment, or at least set a limit on it, but it was to no avail. Sir Lancelot was within his right, and the king would never violate that.

So, Gareth worked himself until exhaustion smothered thought. He curled up on his hard pallet in the corner of the great hall — creeping in only after all the others had settled themselves to sleep — and tried not to wish himself dead. He had earned this. He would bear it. He would find a way to prove himself. He must.

It was the morning of the sixth day of his exile. Gareth trudged out from the keep in the frigid damp of dawn, a birch switch clutched in his hand. Pol, the scullions's master, had woken him while it was still dark. Grinning, Pol told Gareth that the pig-keeper's boy was down, his leg having been torn by one of his own charges, and it was for Gareth to take his place.

So, Gareth walked through the town behind the heard of tan and pink swine, breathing in their stench, which matched the stench of their keeper, a mottled brown man named Tiegh. At first, it was a bright relief to get away from the stink of the midden and the laundry kettles and out into the fresh air. Tiegh was a silent man, disinclined to taunt or shout. The pigs themselves seemed to know where they were going and as soon as they reached the wood's edge, they scattered eagerly among the trees, grunting with delight and rooting about for any of the previous year's acorns that the squirrels might have hidden.

Tiegh seemed unconcerned that his charges had galloped off. He sat down between the roots of one broad and crooked tree. “Keep watch,” he said, pulling his filthy hood over his filthy face. With no more than that, the man leaned against the tree trunk and promptly fell asleep.

Gareth sat on a cold stone, and dug the butt of his birch rod into the mud. The dappled sun was pleasant and the birds sang loudly overhead, proclaiming love and challenge. It was the most peace he'd known in days, and of course, his heavy thoughts thronged to fill the quiet.

He had relived the moment of his defeat a thousand times. He should have known, should have seen Sir Kai's trick for what it was. He was a fool, and it did not matter if the whole of the court thought so, it was that Sir Lancelot thought this that burned as freshly as it had when he had been ordered from the field.

The other thing that haunted him was the news that had come with Lionel. Gawain and Geraint had failed to get Sir Lancelot to set a limit on his penance. What if the knight did not mean for the punishment to end? What if the humiliation had been too great and he did not intend to recall Gareth to his service?

Leave now,
despair whispered to Gareth as he sat in the forest shadows with the pig's distant grunting and Tiegh's matching snores.
Do not beg, or force your brother's to beg for you. Go back to Gododdin, and let that be an end.

For an end it would be, an exile shorter than death, but no less certain. He would never be admitted to the court of Camelot again if he left it so ignobly.

But what would he be returning to if he went back to the great keep at Gododdin? For him, the place of his birth was a place of vanishings. His mother had gone away when he could barely walk, and had never returned. When he was still a boy, his sister, Talia, had met the most violent of deaths, and she was but a day in her grave when Gawain had set out on the road down to Camelot. It had felt like a miracle when Geraint had shaken him awake in the cold light of dawn a few months later and told him that they were disappearing too, going down south to Camelot to join Gawain. Before that moment, his boy's heart had assumed that like mother and sister, Gawain was gone forever.

Until now, it had always been easier to put memory of his days in Gododdin aside, to look forward to a brave future. He was the city man, and Lancelot's man. But that had vanished now as surely as his mother and sister, and unlike his elder brother, he might not see it again. But could he make himself walk back into the nightmare that was his only other home?

Hoofbeats drumming hard startled Gareth out of his grim reverie. A company galloped fast from the north, growing nearer every heartbeat. Before he could stop himself, Gareth ran out through the bracken to see who rode so fast.

They were a battered mud-stained cadre. Five men, he counted reflexively, pelting hard up the track as if the devil was at their heels. To his surprise, he saw they were led by a woman as pale, battered and mud-stained as any of them. Foam flew from the mouths of their unkempt ponies and for a moment, Gareth thought they would tear straight past him.

But no. “You there!” the woman cried as she reined up sharply beside him.

Gareth bridled at the rough greeting, before he remembered how he must seem standing there reeking of pig with his villain's tunic flapping loose about his knees. But this lady could not throw stones. Her dress was so muddy and salt-stained, he was hard-pressed to tell what its color had once been. Her hair tumbled in elf-locks around her shoulders and the hands that gripped the nag's reins were swollen and cut by some recent hardship. It was only the gold at her throat and wrists that told him she
was
a lady.

“We are come from Cambryn to Queen Guinevere,” the lady declared. Her voice was harsh with weariness. “Can any nearby take us to her?”

Cambryn?
The heavy accent on her words reminded Gareth of the lilt in the queen's voice. She could well be of the same country.
What news is this?

Gareth collected himself, and bowed. “I am of Camelot, my lady,” he said.
Let Tiegh gather in his own pigs.
“I can take you.”

“Quickly then,” she ordered. “We cannot be delayed another moment!”

Gareth bowed again. “Of course, my lady. This way, my lady.” He gestured up the track.

She bit her lip, the skinny pony under her dancing even as it blew hard from its run. “Can you ride at all?”

Gareth wasn't sure whether to laugh or hurl the question back at her. “Some, my lady.”

“Up behind Captain Hale then. You can guide us from there.”

Would ‘twer you'd have me behind you, I might guide you well from there,
he thought, stung pride and bitter humor making him lewd. But he reminded himself with one glance that something was badly wrong here and did as he was ordered. He swung himself easily onto the prickling blanket that was this Captain Hale's only saddle. Hale saw how practiced Gareth's movement was and frowned. But the lady's attention was already on the way ahead. She dug her heels into the pony's side. The beast gave a high wicker of protest, then he too obeyed her.

That they had missed the main road somehow did not give Gareth any good opinion of their skills at direction, but his guidance, shouted into the captain's ear as he took the lead, brought them to it soon enough. The roads' stones were laid in the Roman times. They were now cracked and uneven, but they served well enough to bring the ragged troop up to the town's wide-open gates.

Many from the country gaped when they first came to Camelot's city. They stared at the great warehouses and straight streets, and the boisterous crowds of people that filled them. Gareth himself had once, clinging then to the back of a horse Geraint had given his silver arm ring to buy. But neither Captain Hale nor his lady seemed to see anything but the way forward. The city turned to field and orchard, and at last the great keep's gates loomed before them.

“God be praised!” The captain breathed. These were the first words he had spoken that were not Gareth's directions.

“Amen,” answered back the lady as she kicked her horse again, trying to urge a little more speed from it. Her eyes were nearly as wild as the beast's by now.

“If my lady permits, I can take you through!” bawled Gareth over the captain's head. “I am known here.”

The lady reined her pony back just a little, clearly considering whether he was just bragging, and whether it would cause more delay to believe him or doubt him. In the end, she nodded. Gareth slipped off the captain's pony with his own prayer of gratitude. His pride was not so far gone that he wanted to be seen coming back to the hall jolting along behind an outland man-at-arms, whatever the emergency.

Striding briskly, Gareth led them up to the iron-banded gates of Camelot's keep.

“The lady of Cambryn to see the queen,” he announced to Shahen and Rafe who stood guard at this hour, helms on their heads and spears in their hands. They gaped at him, and the bedraggled crowd behind him. But for all his recent humiliations, Gareth still was the king's blood. They raised their spears to salute those who accompanied him and let them all pass.

Gareth and the newcomers crossed the yard, which was alive with folk going about their morning tasks; drawing water, carrying baskets of food and linens to and from the hall's outbuildings. It was another city within these walls, and just as lively as the one outside. Many heads turned to see him back early and in such company.

“Joss!” he shouted to a small boy scattering a pan of crumbs to the chickens. “Run and find Sir Kai! There are …”

But word had flown ahead, and Sir Kai emerged from the great hall. He came down the marble steps, dressed in his customary black, his golden chain gleaming in the midday sun. That Gareth brought these people had clearly not been assurance enough for his uncle, because in addition to the pair of serving boys who followed at his heels, Marcus and Lud came close behind, and they both wore their swords.

“God be with you, my lady, an' you come in peace,” Sir Kai said stiffly. “I am Kai ap Cynyr, Seneschal to Arthur the High King.”

Gareth, in his servile role, held the drooping head of the lady's over-weary pony so that she might dismount beside her captain.

Gareth wondered if this lady, so tired and so strained, would try her commanding tongue against Sir Kai. But confronted by with his dignity and signs of rank on conspicuous display, the lady's manner changed at once.

“My Lord Seneschal,” she said, dropping a deep curtsey. “I am Lynet Carnbrea, daughter of Lord Kenan, steward of Cambryn. I and mine have travelled hard these past days to reach the high queen, Guinevere. We have grave news from her home lands and we beg to be granted audience at once. We have been delayed too long on road and sea already.”

Kai's keen eyes swept over the ragged company, including Gareth standing there and holding the halter of a trembling pony. He nodded. “Huldan, Joss, take these horses and their masters to the stables. See that Carrog is summoned at once that they may be made comfortable. Gareth.” It was no accident that Sir Kai had left off his rank. Gareth opened his mouth to correct it, but his uncle gave him no time. “As you have brought them this far, will you conduct this lady o the queen's court? I will go at once to her majesty. Please.” Sir Kai swept his free hand back, indicating the entrance to the hall, and bowing as far as his crutch permitted. “Enter and be welcome to Camelot.”

Captain Hale hesitated, saying something softly to the lady. She shook her head and touched his arm making an equally soft reply. He glowered at the hall's entrance, as if promising that he would tear it apart with his bare hands should any wrong thing be done there. Only then did he turn and follow the rest of his men as they were led to the stables along with the overwrought horses, Lady Lynet visibly gathered her own dignity around her. She lifted her torn hems and walked up the steps. Gareth caught Sir Kai's eye as he hurried beside her, and saw there both mischief and warning.