THE WARRIOR QUEEN (The Guinevere Trilogy Book 1) (10 page)

“Do you pray to them when we are at Camelot?” Kay asked at last.

I shook my head.

“For the best, I suppose,” he said, thoughtfully. “It’s strange, though. Arthur believes in Avalon, in the magical lake there, in his magic sword, in your magic table, in the lands between life and death, but the only god he tolerates is the god of the Christians.” He turned round again, to face me, placing one of his hands either side of me on the lip of the deck. The moonlight shone in his eyes, in his dark hair. I felt again a sense of the Otherworld about him, magnetic and familiar. I found myself leaning, just slightly, away from him.

“I hope you are ready for war,” he said. I had not expected this. I thought he was about to begin some new game or jape, but he had trapped me there and locked me with his gaze out of concern.

“I am,” I replied evenly.

Then he left, walking away across the deck and disappearing into the darkness. I felt strange, unsettled. I was sure I was ready. I was sure I was ready for war.

Chapter Ten

When we arrived at Calais, a huge army was already amassed to meet us. We only had to ride a few miles from the docks to see, stretching across the fields, the huge pavilions of lords, and the small grubby tents of the footsoldiers. Waiting for Arthur and his knights was a small gathering of the largest and finest of the pavilions, raised in the centre of the camp. Inside the one Arthur took for his own was a table set with fruit and wine, and in the corner a bed laid with silks and filled with cushions.

“I did not have this the last time I fought a war,” he laughed, picking up a pear, weighing it in his hand. “I slept in the dirt with my men, under trees and in caves, and we ate only what we could find in the forest. The French know how to fight a war in comfort.”

This war is going to be different
, I thought, with rising panic.
What if Arthur doesn’t know what to do?

But he did know what to do. A few days later, when at last we rode out to meet with the enemy in the field I saw how he had won his wars as little more than a boy. He was a big man, but on the battlefield he appeared twice the size, lifting the huge longsword over his head as though it were light as a needle, and smashing it down. He and all his knights were platemailed head to foot with visored helms, but I could recognise the way he moved, swift and powerful, on his horse, through the crowds. On the back of his armour, enamelled bright blue, was the dragon of his father, the idea being that the men could recognise their king, but the enemy could not. It worked for Arthur, because he was always at the front of the battle line. I hung back with the other archers. I did not have the strength to fight hand-to-hand with men, but my aim was sure and I was swift to duck and dodge out of the way.

Each night Arthur would ride back from battle, side by side with me, snatch me from my horse and pull me into our pavilion. He was always hot and eager from the fighting, smelling of steel and sweat and blood, full of victory. He would pull the armour from me and toss it aside, and I would help him unbuckle his own huge set of platemail, then he would throw us down on the pillows and have me right away, with the sweat and dirt of battle still on us both, and the smell of leather clinging to my skin. I loved it when he was like that, full of need and hunger, and I cleaved to him those nights and his warm, living body. Every night together was another day alive. Then he would call for a bath and we would sit in the hot, steaming water and feel the day of fighting and death wash slowly away.

The toll was beginning to show. As we slowly moved south, into the lands taken from my father, we lost more and more men. We were not the small force of swift knights I had hoped for; we were a huge army, swelled from Arthur’s war-band by the vast armies of King Ban’s sons. Moving south like this could only be open war. We were winning, but our men were flesh and blood and died as easily, if not as frequently, as the enemy. Gawain’s young squire was killed in battle one day, and he roared like a bear and tore into the enemy lines with his mace, smashing them down as if they were saplings. He only just made it back alive and bore from that day a second scar on his face, down his right cheek. Others were lost, too. The young knights, in their first war. By the time we passed out of Brittany and down towards the south of France, Arthur started to want me by his side in battle, not with the other archers, whose numbers were dwindling and who were often forced to take a vulnerable position out in the open. Beside him in the thick of battle, I could not see what was going on, could not always draw my bow properly. I thought it was a mistake, to be so close by him, but he would not listen.

The fourth day I fought by his side, my spear splintered in one of the enemy, and as he went down his helm fell away and I saw he was just a boy, younger than I was. I stared down at the man I had killed. I could hear the battle continue to rage around me, the smash of iron on wood, and iron on iron. The shrieking of horses. I could still smell the acrid smells of blood, mud and death, but I felt as though it was all happening far away from me. I heard Arthur call my name and I turned to look for him through the thick of the battle. All the knights covered in their armour with their helm-visors down looked the same. He would be facing towards me, so I would not see the dragon on his back. I heard him shout again, and at last saw an armoured man with his arm in the air, and I knew it was him, but it was too late. Something thudded heavily into the centre of my breastplate, sending me flying from my horse and knocking the breath out of me. I hit the soft, muddy ground with a thud that stunned me for a moment, a moment too long to move out of the way of my horse, that reared over me with a screeching whinny. The mail cap had slipped from my head and I curled my arms over my head in inadequate protection as I thought
this is where I die
.

But it was not. Strong arms snatched me up from the ground, onto a horse, as though I weighed nothing. I was dimly aware that I had lost my bow and arrows, although these seemed little now in comparison with my life. A platemailed arm held me tight about the waist on a horse that seemed to be galloping though a brown and grey blur. My head span. I tried to turn my head to see who it was who had saved my life, but all I could see was the iron helm, the visor shut. I sank back against the platemailed chest. I could feel my arms shaking, my hands quivering where they grasped the arm that held me tight; I was afraid to fall again. My vision blurred before me.

The knight leaned closer to speak to me.

“My queen, are you hurt?” The voice was soft and low,
French.
It reminded me, suddenly and painfully, of home. I feared for a second that this might be a knight from the other side, since not all the Frenchmen were fighting with Arthur, but his horse before me was draped in colours that I was sure I had seen in Arthur’s camp.

“I don’t think so.”

The knight put his reins in the hand of the arm around me and pulled the leather glove off his other hand. I was afraid again for a moment when he thrust his bare hand up under my breastplate, against my skin, but he drew it out again swiftly to hold it in front of my face. Through my foggy vision I could see that his fingers were red with blood.
My blood.

“I think you
are
hurt, my lady.”

He turned his horse suddenly and I felt a wave of nausea break over me. Now I had seen the blood I could feel my side throbbing. The movement of the horse beneath me was comforting, though, and I thought
he is taking me home.
I was not sure which home I thought he was taking me to. My vision was getting darker and though I tried to hold my eyes open, to look out for Arthur, I could not. The knight pulled me tighter against his iron-clad chest and I could feel the heat of it, warmed by the sun, on my back, and the back of my head as I slumped against him. As I finally drifted off into the darkness I wondered who this man was who had saved my life.

I woke hearing voices around me, hovering below consciousness, not wanting to open my eyes to the harsh light I knew would be beyond my eyelids.

I heard a low, soft voice speak beside me in the gentle accent of the French, the voice of the man who had saved my life.

“How is she?”

Marie answered, and I could feel her press the back of a cool hand on my brow, and gave a little sigh. “The wound isn’t from a weapon, thankfully. It looks like the crossbow bolt hit her, shattering the breastplate but not wounding her, and the broken armour cut her when she fell from her horse. It’s not deep, and it’s clean, so she should be well soon enough.”

I struggled to wake fully as I heard the sound of footsteps leaving. I wanted to look at the face of the man who had saved my life, but as I blinked myself to wakefulness, I saw that he had gone, slipped away from me before I could see him, or thank him. Arthur sat beside my bed, the ragged beard of weeks of war making him look haggard, older than his years. Or perhaps it was his eyes in which I could see both anger and weariness. Kay stood in the doorway of the tent, his arms crossed over his chest, looking apprehensive, hovering as if waiting for permission to come in or leave. I felt Marie recede silently from my side.

Arthur put his huge hand on my head and gently stroked back my hair.

“It was a mistake to bring you here,” he said softly, but firmly.

“Arthur, I’m alright.”

“We should send you home.”

“Arthur.” I pushed myself up onto my elbows, feeling the wound at my side spasm with pain. He saw it on my face. I wished I knew how to hide it better. I did not
want
to go back to Camelot, to sit and wait in a castle to hear if he was alive or dead, to wait for Emperor Lucius’ men to take the castle and kill me, or rape me. I didn’t want to wonder what was happening, I wanted to be there in the thick of it. “My place is here with you. I will be whole again soon. My mother rode to war before me, and before her Maev was always at war at the side of her consorts –”

“
Enough
.” Arthur jumped to his feet, his face flushed with sudden anger. “I should remind you that your mother
died
riding to war with King Lot, and you are
not
Queen Maev herself, you are
my
queen.” I opened my mouth to protest but he carried on. “For God’s sake, Guinevere, I saw you today snatched away, seconds from your death. I was too far away to save you. I thought having you here would make me fight more bravely, but having you here makes me a coward, always watching my back, always looking for you and not the enemy in the battlefield. You’re not invincible, Guinevere. None of us are. And you’re a
woman
. I should never had brought you here.”

“I can fight, you
know
I can fight...” I was angry too, now. I had waited before, waited in my castle like a good girl for the men to come home. They had
not
come home. I wanted to be where I could do something. I wanted to be here where I could die in battle if Arthur did.

“Guinevere – haven’t I lost enough men in this? Haven’t enough people died? You’re not just another knight, you’re
my wife
–”

“Arthur, let her rest –” Kay tried to cut in gently, and Arthur rounded on him.

“This is
not your
concern
, Kay. She is not
your
wife.” Kay fell silent and stepped away and Arthur turned back to me. “My men are fighting and dying out there for me and I can’t be the leader I need to be with you here. You are not one of my men. You do not have to fight.”

“Arthur –” I tried again.

“
No
. Guinevere, there will be no discussion on this matter. I am your king, and you do as I command.” He relented for a second, his shoulders sagging under the weight of his anger, but then he continued. “I’ve lost enough already.
We’ve
lost enough. The child, I... I’m not going to lose you as well. Just do as I say.” And without waiting for me to reply he left, the tent door flapping behind him from his furious exit. As he left he shouted, “Someone take her back to Britain.”

I closed my eyes as hot, angry tears pricked them and lay back against the little bed. I heard Marie move back to my side and felt her lift the sheet to look at the wound beneath my ribs. Kay moved softly to the chair at my side and took my hand, but didn’t say anything. There was nothing to be said. I was not foolish enough to think that Arthur would forget his rage.

Chapter Eleven

So the war, for me, was over, and they took me back to Camelot in a palanquin, when I had ridden away on a charger. Christine alone came with me. They needed the other women to heal the injured and tend to the sick. She told me I ought to be glad I was leaving. I was not glad. To sit by and wait when I knew how to fight? But then I thought of the man who had saved my life. I was lucky to be alive. And Arthur might yet live. That man might yet live, and I would see him again, perhaps. Hear the voice. I heard it, at night, when I slept. The soft, French tones close by. I didn’t know why I could not get that voice out of my head. It must have been the shock of the injury, or my restless sleep on the journey, because by the time I arrived back in Camelot, I did not dream of it any longer.

It was already full summer when I returned, so the war had been going longer than I thought. When I was healed, it was the height of the summer heat. I lay out in the sun in the little walled garden beneath my rooms. It had bloomed since the spring when we left and all the air in that space smelled headily of roses. I liked to feel the grass at my back and the sunlight against my eyelids. I would lie there in the summer heat and doze, dreaming of return.

One day a messenger came to me to tell me one of Gawain’s brothers had arrived at court and I should go out to greet him. I stood and brushed the grass and petals off the dress I wore, plain blue silk and simple. I had sold my finest dresses and the richest jewels to the lands on the borders in return for grain and fruits. With many of the men away, the fields were falling fallow and there was not always enough food in Camelot for every mouth.

Out in the courtyard stood Morgawse. She was dressed finely enough, with a gold circlet in her russet hair, braided up into a thick twist of plait at the nape of her neck. Her broad, freckled face was haughty and proud, and that lent her a certain handsomeness. I had heard men speak of it before, often. It always bristled with me, just a little. I had thought her kind, I knew, when I had first met her, but knowing that Arthur had lain with her I found it hard to like her now. I tried to put the thought from my mind. Beside her stood a boy with her same broad, handsome looks. I thought from the look of him that he was about sixteen.

“My lady queen,” Morgawse greeted me formally and kissed me on each cheek. She was friendly and courteous, but I could feel no warmth towards her. “This is my son, Gareth. I’ve brought him to you to be trained as a knight. There may be need of men in this war,” she added with a sigh.

I nodded. Gareth bowed and moved off towards the stables to look at the horses and Morgawse linked an arm into mine and pulled me close.

“Tell me honestly, Guinevere, are you well? Has there been news?” My heart sank within me. Morgawse had lost her king in battle. She knew what I might have to feel, what I might have to suffer. I heard tales of Lothian, of her attempts to rule it with her sons, of the fighting barons calling her a whore, always resisting the rule of a woman.

“I’m well. There has been nothing new. They are doing well, I think. The last I heard, they had reached the south of France, and the Emperor Lucius was in retreat. I pray every day that it will be over soon.” I did. I did not pray in the gloomy chapel, though, but beneath the winding arms of the rosebush, to the Hanged God, to the White Goddess, and out there at night, under the stars, to the Mother. There was no one left in Camelot who cared what I did now.

Morgawse stayed a few days, but then had to return to her kingdom. I was bored and lonely, so I decided that I would take some of the instruction of Gareth myself. He was a sweet child, of fourteen he said, though I was not surprised that I thought him older to see the size of his brothers. I had him sit with me in my little walled garden and taught him to read the love poems of Ovid, written into French, and I rode with him around the fields that encircled the castle. We took bows and arrows into the woods to look for game, but they were almost bare and the few rabbits I saw I did not want to shoot, afraid I would kill off the last of them. He was quick to learn, and eager, though I sensed he preferred the only lessons I could not offer him – those in the courtyard with the longsword. The weeks passed and I began to feel as though this boy had been brought to me by the gods in recompense for the child that Merlin had taken. He was gentle and kind, quick to laugh and smile.

One lazy day at the very end of summer, where the sun hung low and orange in the sky, fat against the horizon, I sat against the thick base of the rose vine reading to him in French, and he lay on his stomach, picking at the grass. I could feel the lovely warmth of the early-autumn sun on my face, and I could smell the warm, soft end of summer all around me in the air. Petals fell onto the open book as I read, and their lovely smell reached me too. I picked some of them up and tucked them into my plaited hair. When I stopped reading, Gareth looked up attentively with his lively green eyes.

“Arthur is lucky,” he said, with all the innocence of a young boy, “to have a queen as beautiful as you.”

I laughed lightly. Perhaps I should have been wary that this day would come. I had seen him as a son, but he had a mother of his own already, and I did not seem so very much older to him as he seemed younger to me.

“There are many more beautiful women than me, Gareth. There is a woman in Ireland called Isolde who is so beautiful that any man who looks on her instantly dies of love.”

Gareth picked at the grass more concertedly and replied, sulkily.

“That sounds like she’s
too
beautiful.”

I laughed again, and shut the book heavily in my lap, closing my eyes and stretching my face up to the sun and breathing the air in deep.

“Will you kiss me?” Gareth asked suddenly.

“Of course,” I replied, coming forwards on my hands and knees to place a little kiss on his cheek. He looked disappointed, but said nothing.

He did not ask again, and we continued spending our days together, reading and riding and lying in the garden until it became too cold, and then I would read to him in the library at the back of the chapel. I decided that it would not be sensible to invite him to read with me in my bedchamber. I supposed I had not thought hard enough about the impressionability of a teenage boy when I had decided to give him my attention to keep myself occupied.

We were reading there one day when one of Arthur’s messengers came in. There was fear on his face, along with the sweat and dirt of the journey, and my heart raced within me.
Is it Arthur?
I jumped to my feet, the book sliding from my fingers.

“My lady queen,” he bowed before me, “Sir Kay has been brought back to Camelot. He is… he is injured.”

I took Gareth’s hand in mine and pulled him behind me from the library. I think I wanted his hand in mine for my comfort as much as his own, and I wanted him by my side. He made me feel calm, as though I was caring for something. Caring for the boy made me feel that there was one small part of my life that I had some control over.

Out in the courtyard Kay lay on a stretcher of wood. One arm was limp at his side; the other he had curled around his head to keep the sunlight from his eyes. It was not so bright. He must have been feverish. From across the courtyard I could see the yawn of a spear-wound in his side. It looked days old. As I came closer, I could smell it, too.

“Who brought him over?” I demanded. “Why hasn’t anyone seen to this?”

The messenger shook his head. “He was far from the camp, my lady. Arthur sent him back to check we still held your father’s old castle safely, but when he arrived it was filled again with Lucius’ men. Sir Kay and his knights broke into the castle and killed them all, and took it back, but Kay was wounded in the fight. The choice was, take him south to Arthur’s camp at Marseilles, or bring him back here, and they thought here was better. There were no healing women with them in Carhais, my lady.”

I knelt down beside Kay and pressed my hands gently either side of the wound. Kay groaned, and the wound leaked a foreboding yellow pus.

“Fetch Christine,” I said to Gareth, and he swiftly ran away.

“I need men to help me carry him.” The messenger nodded and the stretcher-bearers lifted him up again. I led the way up to Arthur’s chamber and they laid him down on Arthur’s bed. Christine came in with Gareth and she looked at the wound, clicking her tongue softly.

“This is bad,” she said in Breton, casting a wary eye on Gareth. She, as I, did not think the boy had to see death already. Kay groaned again. I sat beside him on the bed and took his hand, as he had taken mine. He was feverish and did not seem to know me, and his eyes flickered open then shut. On his skin a grey pallor sat, and as I pressed my hand against his brow I felt the sweat, clammy and cold.

“Help me carry him,” I said to Gareth and Christine. Christine nodded, and Gareth looked confused, but he obediently stepped towards the bed. Kay was huge and heavy, and I could barely lift his densely muscled shoulder onto my own. Gareth took the other side, and Christine lifted him by the legs. As we lifted him from the bed, he gave a deep moan of pain. I did not want anyone else to know what we were going to do. Christine had known my thoughts, though, and she led the way down the single flight of stairs to the room of the Round Table. We laid him out upon it, and I climbed on beside, kneeling next to his chest. Christine and Gareth stood back, she solemn, he wide-eyed. I took Kay’s face in my hands and leaned close, whispering in my own language, and then his.

“Wish for life, Kay. Wish for life.”

Then I lay beside him on the table, one of his arms behind my neck as though in some kind of grim half-dead embrace, and I pressed the backs of my hands against the table, and the back of my head and I wished for Kay’s life.

You took one life from me; I want Kay’s life in return
.

I let the moment fill me, the feeling of power from the lands between life and death, from the Otherworld that I could sense at once, far away, and then close by me, nestled within Kay. When I finally opened my eyes and sat up, a sunset light was filtering through a single window, though I was sure I had lain down, purposely, at midday. The light was the golden orange of new hope, and the red of blood. Christine and Gareth sat in chairs at the edge of the room, talking in hushed whispers. When they saw me sit up they stood. I turned to Kay and pressed my hand against his brow. Still feverish. I lifted up the shirt, and then lifted off the dressing of the wound, to which Christine had applied a poultice. There was no longer a smell of infection, and when I pressed it gently, Kay groaned with pain, but no pus came out. I did not know if it had worked.

We carried him back up to Arthur’s bed, and laid him there. I said goodnight to Gareth and Christine. I wanted to stay by Kay’s side. Somehow I felt responsible for his wounding. It had been at my father’s castle, and he had worried for me in battle. I had not worried for him. I had thought of him, quick and lively and sly, as invincible. Immortal. I drew a chair up to the open window and looked out at the crisp autumn night. The air was cold with coming winter. I forced myself to feel hopeful anyway. The moon was filling out, and I thought of Kay and prayed to the Mother, and then I thought of Arthur and prayed to his Hanged Christ of new life. Someone had to be listening. Perhaps in Arthur’s country, Arthur’s god would listen.

I must have slept, though I did not remember falling asleep, because I woke with my cheek on my hand in the open window, aching from sleeping in the chair, to the sound of Kay’s voice.

“Guinevere?”

I turned. He was sitting up in the bed, his shirt thrown off showing a fair chest, almost hairless and more lightly muscled than Arthur’s. I tried not to look. He was twisting around to look at the spear-wound in his side, peeling away the bandage. It had healed fast overnight; the raw wound looked already to be closing, darkening from angry red to purple. He pressed his hand against it warily to test the pain, and seemed pleased. He looked around himself again then, and seemed to notice me for a second time. He was disorientated, like a man waking from a deep sleep. It had been a strong fever I had felt on him.

“I’m in Camelot.” He nodded slowly, as he remembered. “I was wounded. I –” He looked up at me again. I could feel the print of my knuckles on my cheek where I had slept, the heavy stickiness of having slept in my clothes. My head ached with tiredness and my eyes still hung heavy and half-closed, but the look he gave me touched me to the core. It was the look of someone who knows their life has been saved. It reminded me that there was a man to whom I owed that look. “You lay with me on the Round Table. I mean, beside me, I... I didn’t dream that.”

“You didn’t.”

“And you wished for my life.”

“I did.”

He nodded slowly, taking it in. I knew how it felt to go suddenly from being sure of one’s death, to life. I wondered what he had dreamed on the Round Table. I had not dreamed, but perhaps he had seen things as I lay there and wished for his life.

“I’ll have someone fetch you a hot bath,” I said, sliding from my chair. As I moved to go past the bed, he darted forward and grabbed my wrist. I saw the pain flicker across his face. I could tell that Kay never made a good invalid; he ignored his pain.

“Guinevere... thank you,” he said softly. It was strange to see the imp of a man who I had seen so often with a mischievous smile, dancing lightly through life, with solemnity in his eyes. I took his head in my hands and kissed him softly on the crown of his head, like a blessing, and left.