Lancelot (26 page)

Torre batted her hand away. “You’re mad.”

“Not anymore.” Brisen’s dark eyes shone briefly before she turned and walked away.

“Mistress Brisen seems upset,” Lord Pelleas remarked.

“She’s daft.” Torre laughed uncomfortably. “Raving.”

“She seemed sane enough to me,” Lavaine said. “Just angry. What have you been getting up to, Torre? Brisen is a good sort—I mean, she saved your life and all, wore herself to a shadow sitting up for weeks on end—and now, if you’ve been trifling with her—”

“Trifling? With
Brisen
? I’ve never even thought of it!”

Lavaine’s brows shot up. “You haven’t?” He shook his head, a grin quirking the corner of his mouth. “Well, that explains it.”

“Explains
what
?”

“Ask her yourself,” Lavaine said.

“I will.” Torre stood a moment, staring at the doorway, then abruptly resumed his seat. “Later. First we need to settle this, we’ve put it off too long already. I mean to speak to Sir Lancelot.”

Lavaine frowned at his nephew. “Elly, does Lancelot even know?”

She shook her head. “Not yet.”

“What difference does it make?” Torre said impatiently. “He must have known there was a chance this would happen, and he’s had well over a month to come and see—”

“He hasn’t,” Lavaine said. “He only returned to Camelot last night, with me.”

For one brief, terrible moment Elaine feared that she
might swoon. The hall seemed to darken, and a sound like rushing water filled her ears. She managed to drag in one gasping breath, and then another, and the rushing subsided in time for her to hear Torre say, “Well,
you’re
here, aren’t you? He could have come, as well.”

“Not this morning. He was meant to see the king.”

Elaine bent to put Galahad in his basket, taking her time adjusting his coverlet.
Not again,
she thought.
Please, God, I cannot do it all again.
Only in the past few days had she felt anything like herself, and now that hard-won peace had been demolished by a few words from Lavaine. Already she could feel it starting, the sickening jolt between exultation and despair.

At one moment she was certain Lancelot was on his way, utterly convinced of his love. In the next, she was equally certain she had lost him forever. Back and forth, up and down, going over every word they’d ever spoken, reliving each sigh and touch and kiss, replaying their last quarrel and trying to pinpoint the precise moment when it had all gone so wrong, searching for the words she could have used to make it come out differently.

When she was not dwelling in the past, her mind was racing toward the future, imagining how and when Lancelot would learn of Galahad’s existence. From Lavaine? Torre? Or would some stray bit of gossip reach him before her brothers did? What would he say? What would he feel? Remorse? Annoyance? Pity?

Holy Mother, I cannot,
she thought, I
cannot do that again.

And I will not.

She raised her head. “I am going to Camelot.”

“What?” Torre demanded.

“Oh, Elly, you can’t!” Lavaine cried.

“I can. I shall. Sir Lancelot deserves to know he has a son, and I will be the one to tell him.”

Torre slammed his fist upon the table. “I will not let you humble yourself to that—that—”

“I have no intention of doing so,” she answered coolly. “Galahad cannot be hidden forever. Sir Lancelot may acknowledge him or not—that will be his decision. But I refuse to sit here, hands folded, and wait for him to make it.”

“But Elly,” Lavaine protested, “don’t you see how it would look? You can’t expose yourself like that—you don’t know what it’s like at court!”

“He’s right,” Torre said. “I will go.”

“And I!” Lavaine cried.

“Yes,” Lord Pelleas said. His eyes met Elaine’s, and he smiled. “I think you should both accompany your sister.”

Elaine walked over to her father and kissed his brow. “Thank you. For . . .”

For loving me. For loving Galahad. For never treating either of us as though we had disgraced the family name.

“. . . for everything,” she finished.

“That’s quite all right, my dear,” he said, reaching up to pat her cheek. “I’m very proud of you. Always have been.”

Elaine turned to her brothers. “To Camelot, then. We leave at dawn.”

T
HE feast was a success, Guinevere thought, trying very hard to care. She forced herself to smile at Arthur, to sip from the cup they shared, and chat lightly of the latest gossip. But all the while she was conscious of the dull ache beneath her girdle. This afternoon she had woken to the knowledge that there was no baby after all, no new life growing within her. There never had been, she told herself. I was late, that’s all, it means nothing. Next month, perhaps . . .

Having consumed every morsel amid a babble of excited talk and laughter, her guests had reached the state of satiety. Guinevere, judging the moment right, caught Sir Tristan’s eye and nodded.

Tristan bowed to Guinevere and smiled, which did nothing to dispel his air of melancholy, for though his lips curved charmingly, his eyes remained as they ever were, large dark pools of sorrow. Two pages hurried over with his harp and a cushion, and he sank down with a heavy sigh. Tristan did not
merely sit, he drooped—and most becomingly, Guinevere noted cynically, before she dismissed the thought as unworthy. With an awareness sharpened by her own loss—which had been no loss at all, she told herself fiercely, but merely a mistake—she knew Tristan innocent of artifice.

It was almost impossible to reconcile his fine-drawn features and slender form with the stories of his ferocity in battle, yet Arthur had assured her that the tales were not exaggerated.

“Well, you’ve seen him joust,” Arthur had said. “Granted, he seems to do it in his sleep, but you’ll note he stands third in the ranking. ’Tis the same in battle. Right up until the action starts, he seems only half awake, but once it begins, there is no one—save Lance and Gawain, of course—I’d rather have beside me. It’s good to have them all back again, isn’t it?”

Lancelot had returned two days before and still looked weary from the journey. He sat across the hall with his fellow knights while a steady stream of pages approached him. Guinevere amused herself by identifying the ladies who had sent them, watching their faces fall as the pages returned, still bearing the rejected glove or ring.

Once Lance would have laughed, reveling in the attention, but today he scarcely seemed to notice. Dinadan, sitting beside him, was smiling as he leaned on Lance’s shoulder, no doubt providing one of his acidly amusing commentaries on the offerings. Gawain, seated nearby, watched the procession with stony disapproval. Yet it was said that Gawain had received scores of such invitations—and accepted a good many of them, too, before his adventure with the Green Knight turned him priggish as a monk.

Dinadan managed to win the occasional smile from Lancelot, but for the most part, he looked miserable in the midst of what should have been his triumph. This feast was
in his honor, after all, as he had missed the king’s homecoming celebrations.

When Arthur had stood and raised his goblet, praising Lancelot’s courage on the field, the entire company rose to their feet, crying out, “Du Lac! Du Lac!” until the very rafters echoed with his praise. Lancelot had bowed and smiled, yet even then his eyes darted from door to window, like an animal caught fast in a trap.

What could be the matter with him?
Guinevere wondered yet again, bending forward to look past Arthur, vainly trying to catch his eye. No one loved a feast as much as Lance, particularly when he was the center of attention. He should be laughing now, not slouching in his seat as though ashamed. He finally glanced at her, but only fleetingly, with a quick smile and half shrug meant to reassure her, then he fixed his eyes on Tristan as though willing the entire company to do the same.

The ladies, at least, obliged, temporarily diverted by the rare spectacle of Tristan preparing to give them a song. Watching their faces, Guinevere knew just what they were thinking, for she’d often heard them ask aloud: What could make such a fair young man so very sad? She knew, as well, what they thought but did not say: Given half a chance,
I
could make him happy.

That much, she doubted. Tristan’s heart was set upon Isolde of Cornwall, wed to his own uncle. Once Guinevere would have thought him ridiculous to persist in an impossible love when so many perfectly good ladies wanted nothing but to console him, but now she understood a heart once fixed could not be moved by such a puny tool as reason.

Arthur looked over the assembled company, enjoying their anticipation, for he liked nothing better than for those
around him to be happy. He was pleased, too, that Tristan—who seldom sang publicly—was making such an effort to rouse Lancelot from whatever ill humor had him in its grip.

As his king, it was his duty to censure Tristan, Arthur mused. By all accounts, the lad had gotten himself into the devil of a mess in Cornwall. But Tristan was in many ways so innocent, and possessed such a sweet generosity of spirit, that Arthur could find no room in his heart for anything but pity.
It is so hard to be young,
Arthur reflected with a sigh, feeling as though an age separated his own thirty-two years from Tristan’s twenty.

When all eyes were riveted upon Tristan, Arthur spied a slender, auburn-haired woman slip though the doorway and sink unobtrusively into an empty seat. She glanced around and met Arthur’s gaze.

Morgause. What was
she
doing here? It must be three years or more since Arthur’s half sister had come to court, and Gawain had given no hint that she planned a visit. Likely Gawain hadn’t known; if he had, he would have made some excuse to absent himself before his mother arrived. The two were barely on speaking terms these days. Arthur wrested his gaze from hers and turned determinedly to the front of the hall as Tristan’s long, pale fingers struck the first chord on his harp. A moment later he had forgotten Morgause completely.

When Tristan began to sing, the hall fell silent. Not a single person spoke or even moved. From the lowest scullion who had crept into some shadowed corner of the hall to the king himself, all were transfixed.

His song was a simple one. It told of green meadows and birds upon the wing, butterflies among the blossoms on the wold. He sang of summer’s end, when chill winds sent bright petals dancing over stubbled harvest fields.
Youth and hope and innocence—gone, all gone, fled like springtime’s promise before an autumn gale.

Arthur stared straight ahead, no longer seeing Tristan but the long spring of his childhood, when the world was new and each day a marvelous adventure. He thought of running bare-legged in the fields, the hounds jumping and barking all around him. He thought of Sir Ector, dead this past spring, red-faced and laughing in the first snowfall of the year, while his lady, Orma, scolded her husband and sons to come in from the cold before they took an ague. Ector had seized her around her solid waist and whirled her into the courtyard, planting a smacking kiss upon her rosy cheek. How they had all laughed! Even Merlin, leaning in the doorway, had been smiling his rare sweet smile as he watched them dancing in the snow.

Could I have really been so happy?
Arthur wondered.
Yes,
his heart cried,
I wanted nothing but to be Kay’s squire and steward of his lands. Never, never did I think to leave the home and fields and family that I loved. But then Kay forgot his sword, and I ran off to fetch it . . .

Sometimes, even now, all that had happened since seemed like a dream. The wars and deaths and treaties and betrayals, the kingdom under his command and the thousand weighty matters awaiting his decision were insubstantial as a puff of thistledown. At such times, Arthur was certain he would wake to find himself curled up beside the fire in Sir Ector’s hall with half a dozen hounds beside him, Kay arguing good-naturedly with Merlin over some lesson he had skimped, while Dame Orma sewed their shirts and threatened to make them do their own mending if they couldn’t be more careful of her handiwork.

But now I am a king,
he thought.
A great king—or so they tell me. I have a dozen shirts and no one dares to scold
me when I tear one. Britain is secure, the people safe to till their fields. We make music in my beautiful castle, filled with the bravest knights in all the world, presided over by the loveliest queen who ever graced a table. I lack nothing for perfect happiness. Therefore, as Merlin would have said, logic dictates that I must be happy.

Muttering a quick excuse, Arthur stood and left the hall, half blinded by the illogical tears welling in his eyes.

Guinevere was dry-eyed as Tristan’s song faded into silence, one hand resting lightly on her girdle.
Spring will come again,
she thought,
but not this spring. Never this moment, this month, this . . .

Tomorrow she would remember how desperately she needed an heir. Now she only thought of the spark of life of which she’d dreamed so vividly the night before—the son with Arthur’s light blue eyes and sunny smile who called her “Mother” and brought her crumpled flowers—snuffed out before he ever had the chance to live.