Guinevere Evermore (35 page)

As soon as he left, Guinevere unrolled the letter. It was written on a piece of lambskin, poorly scraped. Mark was not a frequent correspondent.

My dearest sister:

The news of our mother’s death only just reached me. I grieve for her, and now find I can forgive her for her bitterness toward my wife. I have no desire, however, to return to my birthplace. I will die and be buried here in my own land. Matthew has married and wishes to remain here also. If my parents did not request that I be denied my share of their lands, I would like to deed them to my second son, Allard. He has always been eager for tales of Cameliard and the old days of Britain. He is an able man, whom I have sent as my agent before to various parts of Britain. He speaks Saxon as well as British and reads a little. I have not told him of this plan. Let him stay with you awhile, and if he seems to want to remain, find him a fair portion to settle on. In this, I trust your sense of honor completely.

Mark

Guinevere read it over several times. It was the first she had heard from her misanthropic brother since she visited him fifteen years before. He must have struggled with his pride a long time before writing such a letter. Of course, Allard did have the right to part of his grandparents’ estate, but a Saxon! Even though he was only half, his bright blond hair and solid build were so obvious. And the fear and hatred of the Germanic invaders went deep throughout all Britain. If she gave him his patrimony, it was quite possible that the peasants on the land would revolt. Yet she couldn’t deny him his right.

The best thing to do was wait. Let Allard spend some weeks with them. Perhaps he would decide he would be happier with his mother’s people or back in the mountains. She could even hope that somehow the people of Cameliard would learn to accept him. But it was a fragile hope.

After washing and changing Allard returned, full of enthusiasm.

“Your baths are still working!” he said in amazement. “I thought most of the pipes north of Aquae Sulis had burst and never been repaired. This is just as my father told me. Do you have time to show me more?”

“Of course, Allard. Your Aunt Rhianna is away now, but she’ll be back this evening. Until then, we can explore wherever you like.”

“Well, if it’s not too much trouble, I’d like to see all of the house and the chapel and the tree one could climb from the stable roof and the cave where the wine is stored and the Round Table was hidden. Oh, I’ve been told all the old stories!”

“I would have thought my brother would never have mentioned any of that to you. He wanted to forget all of us.”

Allard shrugged. “I don’t know any of the reasons he left here, but he does love the place. He’s told me all about it. Now I almost feel I’m coming home.”

The look he gave Guinevere was so familiar and friendly that she made up her mind then that he must stay.

“I think, Allard, that it may be true. Welcome home!”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

“My mother says it doesn’t matter if he’s the Lady Guinevere’s kin; he’s still half Saxon and I’m to stay away from him,” Grisel said decidedly to her friend, Cafdd. The two girls were sitting in the anteroom, waiting for Guinevere to finish bathing.

“Well I don’t care what your mother says,” Cafdd retorted. “He’s friendly and handsome and I’ve heard it said he’s going to build his own villa over by the orchard. When the mistress dies, he’s likely to be lord here, and I’m not going to give him cause to want to turn me away.”

“We’ll be old women before she dies, Cafdd. She’s older than my grandmother, who’s white and toothless and wrinkled as a dried apple, but does she look it?”

Cafdd sighed. Her hands were already rough from the washing she did, and her skin was starting to line from the sun and wind.

“The aristocracy do seem to keep themselves up longer than folks like us.”

Grisel thought it was something more than birthright, but she didn’t have a chance to say, for Guinevere called them then to brush her hair.

Allard was not only clearly delighted with Cameliard and its surroundings, he was also very useful to it. He had grown up among his father’s sheepfolds and knew as well as anyone how to shear. He understood breeding techniques enough to hold his own with the old shepherds and showed them a new treatment for the summer coughing, which killed so many of the lambs. He won respect from them, despite his strange looks. Before June was well begun, Guinevere had decided to deed him a section of the property. She had proper legal decrees drawn up and notarized by the priest, sending them both to court and to the Bishop in London. Allard was given a copy for his own at a banquet in his honor. He held the thick document as if it were an eggshell, not quite believing that it made him officially part of this place he loved so much.

“You may find, Allard, that it’s now a part of you,” Guinevere cautioned. “You shouldn’t thank me. This is your father’s portion you hold now.”

“I’ll care for it well. I promise, Aunt.” He could hardly finish his meal. He wanted to take a torch out and pace off his section, filling it already with flocks and fields and a villa like this one his many-times-great grandfather had built.

Guinevere was pleased. He would see that the old ways were kept up, as well as he understood them. The things her father worked to preserve were safe for another generation, at least. Arthur would have been happy, too. If only he could have known. Constantine was holding order in Dumnonia and even the other kings, though they had abandoned Arthur’s dream of unity, still called in need on his justice. Modred had destroyed Camelot, but not the dream. She wished Allard could have known Arthur. He would have been one who believed.

Allard threw himself into organizing and improving his land. He begged Caet to let him go along on the next trading journey.

Caet looked up sourly into Allard’s face. The lad was thirty years younger and a head taller than he was. He combined, both in looks and temperament, the best of both his races. Caet knew that, if he lived long enough, one day he would be taking orders from this man. He shook his head. There had never really been any hope. The day of the Celt was long over.

He made the best of it. “Yes, come along. I can tell you who to deal with and where to get the best price for your wool. They say that the Eastern Emperor, Justinian, is mad for British hunting dogs. Have you thought of raising them, too? And when we go to the tavern, keep your mouth shut. It’s better if they think you a dull wit at first. Later on you can dazzle them with your highborn dialect.”

They returned in the middle of July with fine cloth, wine, glass beads wrapped in thick cloth, peppercorns, and fever.

Caet fell ill on the road home and it was a panic-stricken Allard who carried him into the villa.

“He woke up one morning complaining that the light was too bright and that it kept moving; then he seemed better, but quiet. By noon the fever was on him. I don’t know how he kept his seat, but he wouldn’t let me stop. Then, last night, that swelling started in his neck; there’s another under his arm. What should I do?”

He looked like a bewildered sheepdog, holding his charge.

“Take him to his room and undress him for us,” Rhianna ordered. “Cafdd, send your brother for a bucket of cool water. Then come for Caet’s clothes and throw them in the midden. How do you feel, Allard?”

“Fine. I don’t understand it. There wasn’t any sickness in Portsmouth while we were there.”

“Well, go to the baths and be sure you wash yourself all over. Then send your clothes after Caet’s.”

Guinevere came in soon after.

“Is he very ill?” she asked. “I can’t remember him ever being sick, even when we were children. Flora wouldn’t have permitted it.”

“I wish she were here now,” Rhianna sighed. “I’ve never seen anything like this. These swellings are hard and hot as if some horrible creature is growing inside him. I’m going to try to bring the fever down. Sing to him, dear. If anyone will respond to that, it’s Caet.”

Guinevere leaned over the bed and placed her hands on either side of his head. Softly, she hummed the ancient words and from deep in her Christian heart, she prayed that his pagan goddess would spare him.

His eyes opened and she thought he knew her. “You’re home now, Caet. We’ll take care of you. Just rest and get well.”

He smiled at her in wonder, then looked over her shoulder with awe-stricken eyes. “I tell you, Lord Arthur,” he said loudly, “it’s not your Virgin, but the goddess Epona. There! Look! The celestial horse, her guardian, stands behind her!”

Startled, Guinevere turned around. But there was nothing there.

Caet had collapsed back onto the pillow.

They worked over him for three days, but nothing seemed to help. He began coughing blood, the first time spraying Rhianna, who was bending over him. On the last day, strange red blotches came out on his chest and face, and the next morning he died in Guinevere’s arms.

She held him a long time, not believing he was gone. He had always been like a shadow to her. Except for the years of her fostering and the early part of her marriage, he had always been there, quietly waiting, never intruding. When she had needed something special done, she had gone to Caet. He had taken the blame for her childhood pranks. His death made her feel that there was suddenly a cold wind blowing on her unprotected back.

“My poor friend,” she wept. “I never knew you as I should have.”

Because it was summer, they buried him at once, with little preparation. With him went the small leather bag he had carried all his life. It held only a pagan charm and three strands of golden hair. Allard looked down on the small coffin and shook his head.

“It seems a man like that would need a bigger piece of earth to hold him.”

They burned the bedclothes and washed themselves thoroughly that night. After dinner, they sat out in the atrium and watched the stars. They spoke very little, still numb from the strange and ugly thing that had struck Caet. Rhianna got up to go first.

“How sweet the air is tonight,” she said. “There must be some flower in bloom I never noticed before.”

Guinevere took a deep breath. “I smell nothing different. Perhaps it’s just the change from being in the sickroom so long. You wore yourself out, my dear.”

“Yes, I do feel tired. But the scent is so strong. How odd that you don’t notice it. Good night, everyone. Tomorrow, I must start on the making of the brine to preserve the vegetables. Everything is ripening at once and we are sadly behind.”

By the next morning Rhianna was delirious, calling for her mother and Guinevere’s long-dead brother Matthew. In rare lucid moments, she complained that her head ached dreadfully and begged for water. They gave her potions steeped with herbs and applied cool cloths to her burning limbs. Nothing helped. By the end of the day, her nose began to bleed and they couldn’t stop it. In the hour before dawn, she died. When they uncovered her, they found the same small red blotches on her as on Caet.

Guinevere looked at Risa; her hands were shaking.

“What is this thing that has come down on us?” she asked in a dazed whisper.

Rhianna was buried in the family section, next to Guinevere’s parents. Father Antonius was away, so Guinevere read from the Gospels over the grave.

“Rhianna should have had more honor than this,” she worried. “We must have a stone made as soon as possible.”

But that was to be a long time. That afternoon the serving girl, Grisel, fell ill, and then two of the stable boys. Guinevere found herself too busy to feel anything but fear and frustration. She did all Rhianna had taught her and used the pagan chants as well as Christian prayers, but nothing made any difference. One after the other, they died.

“We must send someone to Constantine,” she told Allard. “He has to know what’s going on here. Perhaps someone at the court knows what this is and how to treat it.”

“I don’t know the way, but if you make me a map, I’ll go,” he offered.

“I don’t know. You seem healthy. I would think that if you were going to get this, you would have by now. I don’t want to send this horror anywhere else. Yes, you should go.”

But before he could, the poet Durriken arrived. When he got to the gate, the guard called down.

“You don’t want to come in here! We have a plague upon us! Deliver your message and go!” he warned.

“Dear God, no!” Durriken cried. “You may as well let me in, man. It can’t be any worse than what I just left.”

Guinevere greeted him sadly. “You shouldn't be here. Every day someone dies of this hideous illness. There is nothing in my books about it, nothing in the lore. It seems we can only wait and bury. What news do you have of the court?”

Wearily, Durriken sat in the chair she brought and sipped some ale. He took a long time about it. Finally, with a deep breath, he gave his information.

“This evil plague has swept through Britain, my Lady. They say it is the same Black Death that was in Constantinople four years ago. The trading ships may have carried it here from Iberia. No one knows what causes it or how to stop it. The sorrow is great in Dumnonia. Hundreds have died, including the King’s first-born son.”

“Little Arthur!” Guinevere cried. “Poor Letitia! How does she endure it?”

“Not well. She is concerned for the two younger children and wanted them sent to you, but it seems that there is no place safe now.” Durriken took another deep drink. “People are saying that this is a judgment on Britain for our contentiousness and sin, as was foretold in Gildas’ book.”

“I can’t believe that,” Guinevere retorted. “What sins could that little boy have had on his soul?”

“Not his, Constantine’s. Like the son of Pharaoh in Exodus. Since the child’s death, the King has locked himself in the church. He prays and fasts and weeps constantly. No one can convince him to put aside his grief and resume the government. He is even talking of renouncing the throne and entering a monastery.”

“That’s insane! What will happen to the country?”