THE WARRIOR QUEEN (The Guinevere Trilogy Book 1) (2 page)

“Do I have the honour of addressing the lady Guinevere?”

I and my ladies curtsied. It rankled with me. In my country, as a princess, I bowed like a man, and only to my father. Margery had come to me from Logrys, Arthur’s country, and instructed me on their customs. She, too, was sorry to return to them.

“Lady Guinevere, I am Sir Kay, King Arthur’s Seneschal,” he took his horse by the bridle, “may I help you onto a horse?”

Arthur had sent his
Seneschal
to collect me. Oh, we had one of those in Carhais, but we were not so grand about it. We called ours the keeper of the household. Arthur had sent his
housekeeper
to collect me, as though I were a sack of corn that needed to be checked for quality before it was accepted. Sure enough this man was the keeper of the whole of Britain, but I did not think much of it, nonetheless.

I strode forward, and took the bridle from him. I was aware of his eyes flicker across the taut silk of my dress, glancing for a second where my nipples, hard from the cold, were just visible. I was not afraid. I had been looked at like that many times before. As he reached forward to try to help me onto the horse, I grasped the saddle and swung myself up, pulling my dress up to my knees to sit astride it like a man. I hated that dress. Too thin for Britain’s cold, too small, since it had been a long time since I had been required to wear such a thing, and I had grown taller, more muscular since, though Arthur’s war had made me thinner.

“Do you think we do not have horses in Carhais, Sir Kay?”

He laughed. I noticed that, behind him, a knight dressed in green armour with thick stubble, and wild orange-brown hair did not laugh with the others. His face was heavily freckled, and scarred. From the look of him, he was one of King Lot’s sons. It was King Lot who began the war we all lost so badly against Arthur, my king and captor. Another half-prisoner, then, brought here to be another one of Arthur’s servants. Another old enemy. He noticed me looking at him and met my gaze. His grey eyes were steady and cold. I did not sense an ally there. I felt a cold shiver at the base of my spine, and I wished that I had more about me that made me feel safe.

Three of the other knights took my ladies on the back of their horses, and Sir Kay leapt up behind the knight on the remaining horse, and we turned away from Dover, and I turned my back on the sea, and my home beyond it, as though it were nothing at all to me. Nothing at all.

The ride to Arthur’s new-made court, the city of Camelot, felt unbearably long, even though it took less than a day. I could feel my heart heavy within me, heavy and slow with the thought of my home receding farther and farther away behind me. The land we rode through was ravaged and bare. In the villages we passed though, the people cowered from the knights, lowering their grubby faces and retreating into the shadows of their doorways, as the huge men with shining armour on themselves and on their horses thundered by. This is not how it had been in Carhais. I had walked barefoot through the woodlands to the villages nearby and no one had known who I was. I had listened in on the conversations of my father’s subjects, smelled their food cooking, seen them crying. Perhaps if Arthur had walked among his people he would not be such a warlike king; perhaps he would be gentle and prudent instead, like my own father, who would rather have sent his daughter to a stranger, and a brute, and a conqueror, with no more protection than an enchanted table, than risk his people’s lives.

I was glad to be ahead of the rest of the party – my horse was strong and fast, and bearing less of a load than the others was happy to prance ahead. I could see the landscape opening before me, softer and less wild than my own country, but full of deep, lush-looking woodlands and wide, proud hilltops. Perhaps I could be happy here in my time alone, as long as I was far from the war-hollowed villages or Arthur’s brutish court. If I could ride through the land, smelling the earth and the warm, homely scent of the horse beneath me. He was a handsome horse, the one I was riding, a bay with a glossy mane and velvety nostrils. I had left my own dear horse at home. I tried to put these thoughts from my mind. If I were to have any chance of happiness I had to be resolved to my new life, and try to forget about the past. My childhood stubbornness still lingered with me, determined to go home, but another part of me – I supposed what I had inherited from my father – knew I needed to be practical. That I might never go home.

The smell of spring was strong in the air, and the gentle breeze that lifted my hair lightly off my forehead was soothing. It was when the sky began to redden at the edges, when the first edge of the sun dipped below the horizon and threw its fire onto the underside of the clouds above it, that I first saw Camelot. Black and sharp against the horizon, high on a broad hill, I could count eight round turreted towers reaching up high into the sky, and around them the castle walls. Silk banners whose colours I could not see fluttered in silhouette in the breeze above it. It was everything I had refused to believe it would be. The boy king’s city was a thing of beauty with its delicate towers fluttering with flags and banners, but also a siege weapon – oh, I could see that, too, from where I was already. Word of Camelot had come to Carhais years ago when it had been the mighty fortress of the warlord Uther Pendragon, the man they said was Arthur’s father, and people had associated its name with a shiver of the spine. I had imagined iron, and steel. The smell of blood. It looked a different place from that, now. Welcoming, though I only saw it black against the red sky, and far-off, with its fluttering banners. It was a place of celebration. Of course it was. Arthur had the victory. It was as though all the joy in the world had poured out of Carhais, and into this place. Of course it had. Joy followed victory. The sight of that city, my future home, black against the setting sun, filled me with a tentative, fluttering hope, but it also filled me with dread.

Chapter Two

By the time our party rode through Camelot’s gates and arrived in its great courtyard, night was almost fallen, and at the edges of the sky I could see the little white stars peeping out, and the ghost of the moon in a sky that was still indigo with night.
This is the last moon I will see as a free woman
, I thought. I slid down off my horse and handed Sir Kay the reins. Our hands brushed as I passed them and our eyes met, but this time I saw that I had been mistaken in what I had seen in him before. The look he gave me was not one of lust – as I had thought before – but something more complex, softer. A look of kind interest, but also of strange affinity, as though he knew me already, and as he brushed past me to take the horse by the nose and lead it away I felt a power that I recognised, and I understood that Kay was one of the Otherworld, and he had seen it in me too. My father had told me that I would meet others like us at Arthur’s court, and this giant of a man – for Kay stood head and shoulders above me, and I was tall for a woman – left some strange vibration in the air that was at once unexpected and deeply familiar to me. I felt I would be pleased to have him around.

The other knights had not introduced themselves. Lot’s son had jumped down from his horse, leaving Margery stranded on the back of the charger, clinging on to the saddle, unable to get down, terrified and unable to ride or jump down safely from a horse so large. I made to walk to her and help her down, and Kay put a gentle hand on my arm to hold me back. I felt it then for sure, the warmth of knowing, of the same Otherworld blood in our veins. I wished harder that it was he, not Arthur, that I would wed. One of my own. What would a man with no magic in his blood do with my father’s Round Table?

“Gawain, help her down,” Kay scolded patiently. Now I had a name for Lot’s son, and it was the one whose reputation on the battlefield had already reached me. The second of them, I thought. I wondered if the other sons, too, were at Arthur’s court. He strode back over and plucked Margery down from the saddle, his hands around her waist, and placed her lightly on the floor. He didn’t look at her or say anything, and he disappeared down a stone hallway into the night.

“Don’t mind Gawain,” Kay said, his gaze following where Gawain had gone, his tone distracted for a moment, before he turned to me. “He is not usually so uncourteous. His mother blames him for bringing his brothers to Arthur’s court. She thinks he should have stayed in Lothian. She’s worried that all his brothers will follow him here. They probably will.” Kay turned back with a smile, less serious, and I was glad. “He usually wouldn’t pass up a chance to put his hands on a fair lady, such as your Margery.”

Kay gave Margery a gentle little nod of a bow, and she seemed to relax. He had an easy charm about him; another gift from the Otherworld, I supposed.

The knight Kay had shared his horse with trotted over. He was a large man, muscle-bound like an ox. I could see it in the way he moved, with an easy, muscular grace. He had a tanned, handsome face and a ready smile, and his golden hair was scruffy from the ride. He looked like an overgrown boy, flushed with excitement, and eager to get off to some game or other. I wondered if he were Kay’s squire. He jumped down from the horse and handed the reins to Kay.

“Sir Kay, I hope you don’t mind taking the horses.” He turned to me and inclined his head. “My lady, Princess Guinevere.”

I inclined my head in return, and the knight strode away. Marie and Christine had been helped from their mounts and were looking anxiously to me, uneasy about what we should do. I did not know either. It was not my country. They were not even speaking my native language. My head hurt already from the effort of speaking it, of understanding, and I just wanted to go to sleep. I had no idea what I was meant to do, did not know the customs of the court. No one had offered to show us to any rooms or offered us any refreshment. The man who had demanded me as his bride had not even come to greet me. The wedding was due to take place the next day, but what would be done with us until then was unclear. And I was prepared to protect myself. Beneath my silk dress I had concealed a small but highly effective dagger, in case the need might call for it. I was not so young and naive that I had not thought that some trick at my expense might be played. I had to submit to a lawful marriage, but not to anything else.

“Sir Ector, my father, will take you to your chambers, my ladies,” Kay said, leading the horses away, all together. And they were calm for him, of course, and quieted their whinnying when he put his hand gently on their flank.
Otherworld
.
How could I have not seen it at once?

A knight, older than the others, the one who had shared his horse with Christine, came over. He had a kind face, and I could see instantly the family resemblance to Kay. This must be his father. He led us up to a set of rooms perfumed with spices and oils I had never smelled before, and decked in silks. Our Breton court in Carhais was more of a gathering of warriors, and I had silks only because they were gifts from courtiers coming to pledge their faith to my father. We did not value such things. Our rooms smelled of leather and straw. Our riches were in the arts of medicine, of poetry. We valued our ancient blood; we did not gather such things. I had never seen riches like this. How could this warrior king have also such a rich and decadent court already? I suppose it was the plenty of victory. The beds were heaped with rich coverlets and more candles than I could count at a glance filled the room with a soft, enticing light. The value of the luxuries in my room could have bought my father’s court. And now Arthur had bought me. Perhaps he had sent my father silks from the east, and gold and candles. But my father would have no use for them; these were not our ways.

Sir Ector bowed goodnight as he made to leave.

“My lord King Arthur sends his greetings to the beautiful Princess Guinevere and wishes you to have as a gift for your wedding tomorrow the dress and the jewels laid out upon the bed for you. He asks that you forgive his absence.”

And he shut the door.

The dress on the bed – he obviously had thought me too much of a savage to have fine clothes of my own – was nonetheless beautiful. Marie gasped as she lifted its soft fabric in her tiny bird-like hands and gently laid it against her cheek. It was a deep emerald green. It would be a beautiful colour for me. I could see as I looked at it that Margery was only being kind when she told me the dress that she had chosen for my being brought here – the finest of my dresses – was as fine as the dresses women wore in Logrys. No. It was old, and plain, the silk thin but coarse. I brushed my fingers lightly against the fabric of the dress that had been left for me. It was like a whisper, like a kiss. I sighed.
Arthur sends gifts, but will not see me himself. I am truly something he has bought, a token of a distant kingdom
. Otherwise he would care if his wife-to-be were beautiful or clever. He could have bought a cripple or a simpleton; he didn’t seem to care. I suppose it was not really me that he wanted; it was Brittany, and the table, and the last knights of Carhais who would gather for him now in Camelot, now that he had me.

The jewels sparkled with gold in the candlelight, a gold net set with emeralds for my hair, and thick gold bangles, and a necklace set with an emerald the size of Marie’s little fist and hundreds of tiny diamonds. I supposed that, compared to these, what I had brought with me could hardly have been called jewels. I had gold – my gold circlet, the circlet of my ancient people, and a bangle of beaten gold that had been my mother’s, made to be worn high on the arm, no good for cold Britain, but nothing set with jewels like this. I would be covered in gems when I went to my marriage tomorrow. No one would see me. They would see a thousand dazzling gems and I would be a display of the riches and grandeur of the great King Arthur’s court. Or perhaps he was worried I would be plain. I knew I was not plain, at least. I had seen many of the women of Logrys and found them plainer, smaller, quieter than our own Breton women, many of whom like me were touched with fire, red in the hair and the soul, passionate and quick with life. What would Arthur make of me? I knew what I made of him already.