Under Camelot's Banner (54 page)

He slipped away once more, moving carefully past Daere on her pallet beside the banked fire. He opened the door a bare crack, and slipped through, closing it soundlessly behind himself.

Daere snorted and turned over, and Lynet lay on her bed, her hand splayed across her belly, remembering.

Slowly, she drifted into sleep.

Gareth sat down on the corridor's stone floor. He rested his back against Lynet's door, and his arms on his knees. His sword lay on the floor beside him. It was going to be a long night. It didn't matter. All that mattered was that Lynet was alive and safe. That knowledge would keep him awake as long as needed.

What he'd do in the morning … well he would worry about that then. This time, Sir Lancelot was not going to forgive him.

Lynet had woken on her litter almost as soon as he pressed her mirror back into her hand. But she was so weak, so white, he could not leave her, not until he knew she had been laid safely to rest. That had been the only thought in him as he followed her litter as it was carried toward the hall. Gareth hadn't even seen his knight, until Sir Lancelot had put his horse directly in his path.

“That's enough, Squire,” he'd said. “You have caused enough embarrassment. There will be time enough later for you to play the love struck calf. There is work to be done.”

But Gareth could only see Lynet on the litter that could so easily have been her bier being carried away from him. He had looked directly into his knight's angry eyes, and he had stepped past him and walked away. A simple thing, done in front of the queen and all the court. He did not need to see the look on the great knight's face. No victory he'd brought now mattered. He had disobeyed an order. He had done it knowingly and in company. He had felt the blistering heat of Sir Lancelot's anger against his back as he walked away.

Oh, no. He had given away his second chance. Gareth scrubbed at his scalp. In the morning he would have to decide what to do next.

But Lynet had kissed him, and it had been achingly sweet, going straight to his heart. He had never known a touch like that, as he had never felt the lack of that final pure note of love in all the other caresses he had known. Lynet gave him of herself, freely and fully, and would have given much more, if she had been stronger and he had been but a little bit weaker. Even now his blood rushed at the thought of her lying just beyond the door in her woolen underdress, her hair in its single plait, her eyes wide in the darkness, straining to see …

The sound of a footfall reached him and Gareth scrambled to his feet, gripping his sword. The cold, narrow corridor here made a t-junction, and coming down the other way he could see a moving light. He held back, waiting to see who it was. He'd been laughed at already for his insistence at playing armed guard to Lynet while she was surrounded by Camelot's army and all the profoundly relieved and grateful inhabitants of Tintagel. He let them laugh. They did not understand the strength of what pursued her. The queen knew, and she had not laughed, nor forbidden him this post.

The light drew closer, and Gareth saw Queen Guinevere herself walking down the corridor. She wore a single garment of deep blue girdled with a simple silver chain. Her hair all unbound and uncovered, fell to her waist. For one wild moment he wondered if she came to check on her. Then he saw her feet were bare. The sight of them tightened his throat uncomfortably, and he wanted to look away. She was the queen. She was his aunt. He should not see her this way. Why would the queen come barefoot to see him? He looked mutely up into her face. She smiled at him, the heavy shadows turning her eyes black.

“Where is Sir Lancelot, Gareth?” she asked. Her voice was soft, musical. He had never heard her sound like this before, as he had never seen her barefoot with her head uncovered. He had never seen her so beautiful. The blood Lynet's kiss had set to rushing, surged through him that much faster.

Belatedly, he remembered to kneel. “I don't know … Majesty,” he stammered. “He is much angered with me.”

She chuckled, a low, throaty sound. “Then we must make amends between you. Come,” she held out her hand. “We will find him together.”

Utterly dazed, Gareth grasped the queen's hand, and she raised him up. She smelled of summer and a hundred other things he could not name. Her hand was as warm and soft as a kiss. His head swimming, Gareth walked in her light and could not remember to ask a single question.

From the darkness, Colan watched his lady in the queen's disguise lead Squire Gareth away. He wished the young man well, for he knew what it was like to be so snared.

Silent as a shadow himself, he slipped up to Lynet's unguarded door. He laid one hand on the wood, listening. When he was satisfied no one stirred within, he pushed it gently open. Its hinges creaked long and low, and he froze, but still, there was no stirring, no interruption in the deep and gentle breathing.

Your maid must be very tired, Lynet,
he thought as he stepped around the form of the sleeping woman on her pallet by the banked hearth.
You should not work her so hard.

Those last coals under their ash blanket gave him just enough light to see Lynet on her bed. Her hands were folded over her fur coverings, wrapped tight around her mirror.

Colan looked down on her and sighed. “We are like the children in the old stories, sister, are we not?” he breathed. “So long ago God had not yet finished the world, there were three children. The eldest could talk to the sea. The middle child could talk to the wind, and the youngest … what could the youngest do, Lynet?”

He laid his hand on her brow. She did not move. “We could have made good cause together, the two of us with our weakness, surrounded by so many with such terrible strength. We could have joined together, had you permitted it, and our weakness we might have brought them all down. But we hung separately, and now all either of us can do is serve.”

Gently, he eased his hand beneath hers. As soon as his fingers found the cool surface of the mirror, he snatched it away.

Lynet came awake at once. She held up her empty hands, staring at them in mute horror. She groped frantically among the furs. Colan lifted the mirror so it caught the faint firelight. Lynet's head jerked up. She saw the glass in his hand.

Then, she saw him.

“Peran?” she spat the word.

He smiled. “Look again, Lynet. You have good eyes. Look hard, my sister.”

She did, and her jaw slackened. “
Colan
?”

“The same. Now, Lynet, you will walk with me.”

She drew herself up, hugging the furs toward her in the habit of maiden's pride. “You're joking.”

He shrugged. “As you please. But if you do not come and quietly, I will crush this mirror you prize so much. I will be most interested to see what happens then.”

Hate and fury twisted Lynet's face. Colan shrugged it aside. He did as he must, as he had done before. Her blood was as any others. He would mourn her, but he could not let her continue to drag their lands out for Camelot to pick over. She had lied to him, used his guilt against him. He would not permit her to do so again. It was her turn to serve the needs of land and lady and to pay for her sins. To let her go would be to fall into the clutch of his guilt and sin with no victory to buoy him up. He had seen Peran fall that way and he would not permit it to happen to him.

“Come, Lynet.”

One deliberate movement at a time, she pushed back the bed coverings, put one foot, then the other, on the floor. She stood. Her eyes never left his. She would kill him with those eyes if she could, but she could not, not as she was, and she knew this, and so did he.

Holding the mirror out of her reach, Colan walked away. Through the darkness, Lynet followed.

The barefoot queen led Gareth out from the hall into the night air. The moon was near full and the heavy clouds scudded across its surface turning the night into a place of silver and shadows. Only the light of the queen's brazier was gold. It caught in her hair, making her shine.

“Let us try there,” she said, soft and merry, pointing toward a long, low building that had in other days been a barracks like the one at Camelot. A spark of light showed beneath one sagging shutter. “I do believe that is where were we will find him.”

Why would Sir Lancelot take himself there?
the thought swam slowly through Gareth's mind. “M … majesty, how could you know?”

She smiled. “Perhaps earlier he came to me. Perhaps words were exchanged that left him angered and wounded in his pride. Perhaps he did not wish other men to see him so.” The brazier's flame lit sparks in her night-blackened eyes. “We cannot have my lord Lancelot angry, can we Squire Gareth?”

Treading gracefully on her beautiful bare feet, she crossed the yard. The whole world was still around them. There was only the wind blowing back her unbound hair and brushing Gareth's burning skin.

As they reached the splintered door, the queen turned and winked broadly at Gareth. She handed him the brazier, and he took it. He would have done anything she said. Anything at all. At the same time, something struggled within him. Some small part of him tried to shout that this was wrong. The queen should not be here, not like this. But he could not remember why.

She reached out and rapped on the door.

“Who's there?” demanded Lancelot. His voice was slurred. He had been drinking.

“You cannot guess?” she replied, her voice deep and smooth as silk. “I should be insulted, my lord Lancelot.”

Boots slapped against stone and in another minute the door flew open. His face was flushed. Gareth had been right. The knight had been drinking as he did sometimes when anger or other strong feeling overtook him. His cheeks were flushed and he leaned one hand against the stone wall to steady himself as he took in the sight of the queen standing before him.

“Will you not invite me in, my lord?” she inquired. “It is not safe that I should be abroad here with only this young man for company.”

The firelight that poured past the knight showed the woman afresh. It picked out every deep curve of her form and every line of her face. Desire, so strong as to shock him, roared into Gareth's veins. It was wrong. It was horribly, perversely, sinfully wrong that he should be looking on the queen, his aunt in this way, as wrong as the way she was looking at Sir Lancelot now.

“I thought you ordered me from you,” the knight was saying. “You spoke of treason and how you would never betray such a man as your lord with such as me.”

She laughed, a light musical sound filled with so many promises. Lady Fiona had laughed at him like that. “You should have persisted, Lancelot. I expected a man such as you to know a woman likes her lover best when he has proved himself in adversity.” She smiled up at him, and Gareth thought he would burst open from the horror and the wonder of it. He wanted to cut out his eyes before he had to see her face for one second longer.

He wanted with every fiber in his soul for her to turn and look that way at him.

“Gareth, leave us,” said Sir Lancelot abruptly.

This is wrong. It is treason. It is sin.
“Mm…. my lord …” His mouth was dry. He could barely hear his own voice over the ringing in his ears.

“Leave us, Gareth.” Sir Lancelot took the queen's slim white hand and drew her through the door. She went lightly, easily on her bare feet, and her black eyes turned toward Gareth once before the door swung shut between them.

Gareth stared at the blank wood. Slowly, his mind reeling, he backed away until he stumbled against a stone. Then, he turned and ran.

He ran into the night, he ran without seeing where he was going or caring who saw him. He ran away from what was happening behind him, and from the lust that pounded at him.

Oh, God. Oh, God! No! It is not happening! It cannot be!

But the knight had come to her before, and she had met him in the darkness. He had gone every night to her pavilion to sit beside her, and they had exchanged so many looks, so many glances, and she had been so long beside him before she left to winkle Mark from his hole.

He scrambled up hills and slipped and stumbled down the other side, only vaguely aware that he was heading for the sea cliffs. He could hear the noise of the waves like the pounding of his blood and his heart. He ran as he had run as a child when he had heard of Talia's death. Run out into the hills. Get away. Get away from the truth. Get away from the madness and death and disappearing. Get away, get away, get away …

Gareth's toe slammed against yet another stone. He went flying and sprawled hard against the ground. He pushed himself to his knees, and all he could see before him was the queen's beauty, her unbound hair, her bare feet and her smile, and her black eyes turned toward him, so filled with obscene promise.

Gareth froze.

Black eyes. Black eyes?
His breath heaved, shuddering his shoulders, rasping against his throat.
Shadows of the fire, I did not see right. No, I saw. I saw black eyes. The queen's eyes are grey.

His fingers dug into the hard packed dirt under him. The pain dragged up another memory, one that had been buried deep under his lust, under his amazement. It was ancient history, from when he was a boy. It was Geraint, kneeling beside him, trying so patiently to explain what had driven their father out of his mind.

It was not mother, nor was it her shade,
Geraint told him from memory.
It was Morgaine. I promise you, Gareth. I saw her. It's the eyes, that's how you know, Gareth. Be she ever so powerful, she cannot disguise her eyes.

But as he lifted his head, filled with this new understanding, motion caught his eyes. On the last rise before the cliff's edge, he saw two figures in the moonlight. Lynet. Lynet walking on the rise with another man. His teeth bit down hard on his tongue to silence his scream. It could not be! Not her, not with someone else! His still-dazed mind could think of nothing else, but then the moonlight flashed, and Gareth looked again.