THE WARRIOR QUEEN (The Guinevere Trilogy Book 1) (9 page)

Chapter Nine

The days passed and I did not get up from my bed. I listened to the voices changing around me. Margery, Marie and Christine, always familiar. Christine and Marie chatting in Breton when Margery was off running errands. Arthur, Kay and Ector, even Nimue came for me, but for weeks I turned everyone away. I pressed my face into the feather pillow, but my tears were dry and I got no relief there. In the back of my mind, also, was the knowledge that Arthur might put me away. He needed a son. There were many other princesses, all of whom might give him one.

But he kept coming back. Arthur would sit by the side of my bed, and read to me slowly, in his halting English, from a gilded manuscript filled with stories of romance. First I lay still, then I began to rest my head on his leg. He would stroke my hair and tell me what had been happening at court. Another brother of Gawain had arrived, Gaheris, and more knights had flocked to join the men who were now calling themselves the Knights of the Round Table. He told me that the sword he had shattered trying to kill Merlin was not Excalibur, but a fake, swapped with his own, and now he had the true sword back, but Merlin was dead. Nimue had shut him beneath a rock at the edge of the sea. I was glad to hear this.

Then, one evening, Arthur sent my ladies away. They made disappointed noises, hoping to hear more stories and news. He stripped to his shirt and slid into bed beside me, as I lay on my side, wrapping his arms around me and softly kissing my neck. It had been a long time since I felt him this close, and when I felt him there I knew I had missed it.

“We can be whole again, my love,” he whispered into my neck. I turned over so that I was lying on my back and rested my hand lightly against his chest. I nodded. He threw the heavy covers off us and rolled onto me, gently drawing me under him.

“You do not want another queen? One who can –”

He hushed me then.

“No. I do not.”

His lips found mine, soft but intense, his hands sliding the nightdress up to my waist. I could feel him, hard and ready, against my leg. It reminded me how good, how vivid and alive I felt when our bodies came together. I wanted to feel whole again. But more than that, I wanted to forget, just for a moment, everything else that had happened. Nothing else had worked, but with his hands on me I thought then that, maybe, this might. I pushed his shirt up over his head, and looked at him for a moment in the soft glow of the fire. He still wanted me, he would keep me, he would be kind. He
was
handsome. He pulled away my nightdress as well, and pressed my body all over with hungry kisses. It felt as though his desire was bringing me back to life, and everywhere his lips touched the life in me flowed strong again. My body had missed him, though my mind had been elsewhere and noticed nothing, but there were parts of me that yearned for him and had needed more than him sat at my side. I felt that now, and I felt the pleasure and relief as I pulled him inside me, and once more we were one.

So things went back to how they had been, as if there had never been a child, though Arthur did not visit me every night, anymore, busy as he was with affairs of the realm. I was happy, though, when I did not remember the child, and when I did not remember home. I loved Arthur; I was sure of that by now. I loved his strength and his kindness, and I was happy whenever we were together. As time went by I thought less and less of the child I had imagined we would have. Just when I was beginning to forget the pain of it, just as the winter was breaking into spring, and a new year promised forgetting, and new things, the news came from France.

“King Leodegrance is dead, my liege.” The messenger bowed before Arthur’s throne.

My stomach did a sickening turn within me.
My father
. I forced myself to keep calm, and still, and stern. I had to show them the face of a queen, not a grieving daughter.

“He was killed by Emperor Lucius, my lord. Lucius says that because tributes have not been paid he will continue to take back his land. King Ban’s sons have managed to hold the south of France, but Carhais and Brittany with it are lost.”

I pressed my head back into the cool, dark wood of the chair that supported me and closed my eyes. I felt the room spin around me, just for a moment.
So, there is to be more war. And my father is dead
. The last time I saw him, he was putting me and a large wooden table onto a boat. My father. The wooden table where I had been sacrificed to Arthur’s destiny by Merlin was the only real reminder of him that I had left. I had left him angry and resentful, though I had said goodbye kindly. He would die without knowing I had found a fragile kind of happiness here at Camelot. I would live the rest of my life without going back to my father and my home, for Carhais would not be quite my home again without him.

Arthur was furious. I could hear it in his voice. Every syllable shook with rage, though he strove to control it. He would not lose Britain’s territories overseas. He would not leave his people to be murdered and pillaged by Lucius. He banged his fist on the arm of his throne and the whole dais shook. I heard the messenger scuttle back, but I kept my eyes closed. So, this was the fearsome king who had defeated King Lot in the War with Five Kings.

I thought he would want to be alone that evening, but instead he took me to his own chambers. His love was angry and fierce, but I welcomed it. He tore the dress from me as soon as the door was bolted and threw me down on the bed, casting off his own shirt and opening his breeches, he entered me right away, his hands tight around my thighs, until, with a low groan, he finished. He stood again, when he was done, pulling up his breeches and fastening his belt. His chest was still rising and falling heavily with deep breaths, and I was not sure if it was from his anger, or our union. My hair fell about my shoulders, in my face, long and free, wild, torn loose by the urgency of his lovemaking. I felt fragile, and shaken. I would have liked him to hold me, but he was lost in his thoughts. He poured himself a cup of wine and drank it in one gulp, then poured another. He stood, staring out of the open window. I rolled onto my front on the bed, staring out in the same direction. I liked the feel of the cool breeze from the window against my skin, its freshness.

“Another war,” he said, flatly.

“Another,” I agreed.

He turned back to me, and, suddenly distracted, smiled at the sight of my hair, tumbling down my back, before my face. He came over and buried his face in the deep red curls, his hands stroking the skin of my back lightly, cool against the air.

“Come with me,” he said. I was pleased. I knew how to fight, and I had no desire to wait in an empty castle for news. “The sight of you,” he took my face in his hands and kissed me lightly, “will make me brave.”

It was not long before the castle was ready to march for war. It had not been long since it fought one. Swords were still sharp, armour not yet rusting. Arthur brought me to his war councils and at first the other knights were reluctant and surprised, but when they saw that I could read the big, brown maps of Europe as well as Arthur’s witch had they ceased complaining. These were held in the room with the Round Table. The first time I went there, I knew, would be the worst time. To return. I could see, before the others arrived and Arthur rolled out the maps, faint and dark, the stain of blood in the centre of the table. I laid my hand against it and, again, wished for Arthur’s life. Arthur was all I had left. When the maps rolled out and it was gone from my sight I traced for the men around me a line down the spine of Europe, through my father’s lost lands, and to its heart, Rome. We could not hope, with our small force, to take back all of the lands we had lost there, but if we struck at Rome, Lucius would have to retreat to protect his own capital city. Logrys had the advantage of being across the sea, so Arthur didn’t have to worry about leaving his own capital undefended, and the small size of our army would allow us to slip past the invading forces more easily.

“Besides,” Arthur said, “I have friends in France. Sir Ector’s brothers and half-brothers, King Ban’s sons, have castles there, and I’ve had word from them that they will join us, and are already prepared.”

Sir Ector nodded, returned already from his peaceful lands to ride with his foster-son to war. Arthur would prefer open battle, I knew. I did not think we would survive an open battle. Not from Calais all the way to Rome.

At night Arthur often spoke of fighting, as we lay curled together in the darkness. He wanted it, I think. He wanted to fight again as much as he feared the losses of battle. It was who he was. A warrior-king. He didn’t know anything else. It made me wish I was a man and knew only the joy of victory, or the oblivion of defeat, not a woman who had to live on with the weight of loss. But I could go by his side, then my fate would be his fate. I was prepared to not go to Rome a prisoner.

I took Christine, Marie and Margery with me. They all knew the arts of healing to various degrees, and I did not want only the company of men. They had travelled ahead with the main part of Arthur’s army and the other assortment of women who provided healing services to the camp. Arthur wanted me with him and his best knights. I was pleased to be not far from his side.

I realised as I swung up into the saddle in the great courtyard of Camelot and glanced back up at its huge grey stone towers, fluttering their silk banners of blue dragon on white, that I felt strongly, for the first time, that this was my home. And I might never see it again. I looked away; there was no use thinking about that now. The smell of leather and horses was welcome and comforting and I leaned down and patted my horse on the neck. Her coat was rough and bristly to the touch; a good horse for war, not a sleek prancing pony. Arthur had had made for me a proper suit of armour, with chainmail leggings, and a steel-plated leather jerkin embossed with the dragon of his house. I did not want a hot, heavy visored helm like the knights wore, so I had a long cap of chainmail that fell as far as my shoulders. Arthur had laughed and said without my hair showing I looked like a fierce little boy riding to his first battle. At my back I had my bow and arrows, though when one of the archers had taken my bow to check it and laughed at it, saying it was a toy, I had taken as well a light spear. I could not lift the kind of steel longsword Arthur and his knights fought with, nor a huge and ugly mace like the one I saw strapped to Gawain’s saddle, but I was fast and alert, and confident of my abilities in battle. I was not weighed down as the knights were by platemail, though my horse was armoured like theirs. They must have been a terrifying sight to the enemy, that band of huge men, already hardened by war. To me, they were a comfort.

We set off as one, and as we rode I felt the breeze brush my bare arms and closed my eyes for a moment, smelling the cool, fresh air of Logrys that I was leaving behind. I turned back to Camelot for a moment, and saw it as I had almost a year ago when I had come to be married. It felt like so much longer than that. So much had changed. I felt as though, like a snake, I had lost layers of skin and been made, in no small part by Arthur’s love as well as by Camelot, half-new.

We reached Dover by nightfall, but I could not sleep on the ship. It made me feel sick, to be belowdecks, with the rocking of the waves and the guttering of the candles. Arthur slept deeply, dreaming of conquering, but I slipped back up onto the deck in my nightdress. I walked to the edge and stared down into the black waves below. So beautiful. I liked, too, the cool sea air against my skin as it blew through the thin dress. Then I looked up at the stars and saw the night was clear. A swelling moon hung low in the sky and the sight of it made me sigh. It reminded me uncomfortably of the White Goddess.
Love and death
. I did not like that second part. I said a little prayer to the Mother, looking up at the moon, wishing she might turn its cold white face from me, and fumbled around for a piece of food to drop into the sea for the Drowned God.

I found a peach stone on the deck and thought that would have to do. With a whisper of words I dropped it in the sea. Arthur’s Hanged Christ hated him, but maybe my gods would protect us. I could not pray to them in Logrys, but perhaps they would take care of us here, and we were going into my country now, where people still believed in them and they were still strong.

“This is better.” A deep voice beside me made me jump. Kay was standing just behind me, and I had not noticed him. He held out in his hand a small piece of salted beef. With the other arm he leant lazily against the edge of the ship. I gave a wary smile and took the beef. I wondered if he thought I was looking for something to eat, but I did not want to eat it. I did not want to give it to the god in front of him. His looks were of the Otherworld – black hair, dark, dark, almost black eyes, fair skin, tall and nimble-footed – but that did not mean that he was not a Christian like his brother. I knew enough of the Christians from sitting in the Chapel to know that the Hanged Christ did not take kindly to other gods.

Kay gestured with a little nod of his head towards the sea.

“Go on,” he said gently.

I turned from him back towards the sea, and closed my eyes, said the words and dropped in the little piece of beef. When I opened my eyes, Kay was leaning on both elbows against the side of the ship, facing away from the sea, leaning his head back all the way to look up at all the stars. I turned around too, leaning back, looking up. The sound of the waves brushing against the boat at my back was gorgeous. I had missed the sea, sick as riding across it made me. The smell of salt in the air promised change and adventure, even if it did not promise safety, or a return home.