CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN #4
“To Galahad?” he almost growled. “How do you figure?”
I shrugged. “You weren’t shy about pointing to the fact that he attempted to fuck her. Or was your meaning different, and I made a mistake?”
He shook his head. “No, I believe he tried to... force himself on her which is why her magic burst through Mordred’s binding. She was only defending herself.” His hands fisted at his sides when he said the words, and the dragon within me began to blaze with heat.
“I’m suspending your champion’s rank. Temporarily.” I took a breath.
“Arthur—”
“—I have no other choice. You’ve forced my hand here.”
The silence stretched between us until he finally nodded. “I understand.”
He said the words the way he said everything that was difficult to say: flatly, like he was biting through rope.
“You attacked a man of the Table over a woman in my custody,” I said, feeling the need to explain why I’d made the decision I had. “The others need to see that no one is beyond accountability. Not even you... especially not you.”
“And Galahad?”
I looked outside the window at the courtyard with no one in it.
“Galahad,” I said, “is a problem.”
“He tried to fucking rape her when she was under your protection, Arthur. That alone should be enough.”
Destroy Galahad! Burn what he is. Let nothing remain.
The dragon’s voice was a low, continuous pressure behind my eyes that I’d had since dawn, since I’d come awake in the dark a day or so ago with the smell of char in my nose and the knowledge, bone-deep and sourceless, that something had been done to her.
“He says he didn’t try to fuck her.”
There was anger in Lance’s gaze and anger in the dragon. “And you believe him.” The flatness in Lance’s voice now had edges.
“I believe that I don’t have proof,” I let the silence stretch a moment. “There’s a difference.”
“Not much of one.”
“Quite a lot of one, actually, when you’re the man who has to make the decision.” I held his gaze. “If I could banish him tomorrow, I would. But the fact is that I can’t.”
Lance’s brow shifted. Barely. “You’re afraid of his following.”
“I’m aware of his following. There’s a difference there too.” I started to pace the room, feeling the agitation within me starting to get the better of me. “Have you been to Galahad’s chapel, the oratory, recently?”
“Not if I can avoid it.”
I nodded. “If you had been, then you would be aware of Galahad’s growing congregation.”
“What do you mean, his growing congregation?”
“I mean forty men at his morning hours, up from only a handful three weeks ago. I’ve had two guards miss Royal Chapel observances to attend. Such was when I realized Galahad is slowly becoming a problem.”
I moved to the eastern window that overlooked the training yard: it was completely empty now, the morning light going yellow.
“And did you notice that a handful of the guards were fasting at the last meal in the Great Hall?”
“I admit I didn’t.”
“Because you aren’t in the business of noticing. I am.”
“Regardless, Galahad should be stripped of his title and banished from Camelot.”
I shook my head. “If I banish him, those forty men don’t scatter. They organize, and they do so underground, where I can’t see them, can’t monitor them, and can’t control the narrative.”
I turned back. “Don’t you find it strange that Galahad didn’t use his magic against you when you were reducing him to a pulp?”
Lance swallowed. “I admit, I did find it odd.”
“He knew he was being watched, and he knew the situation would be spun numerous times at numerous tables. He didn’t fight you because he was making a martyr of himself.”
Lance nodded, and I assumed he’d reached that same answer himself. “A fanatic at court is a manageable problem,” I continued. “But a fanatic with a martyr’s story and a grievance against the crown is something else entirely.”
“So he simply walks free.” Lance’s voice was very quiet. “After what he did to her?”
“What exactly did he do to her?”
He narrowed his eyes. “You saw what he did to her.”
I nodded. “He abused her physically. It’s the same thing that happens to all our prisoners in the dungeon, Lance, you know that. What’s more, no one else will care. They’ll say she deserved it.”
“You said, in front of the court, that she would be protected. She wasn’t protected. What’s more, he tried to force himself on her.”
“We don’t know that for certain. She certainly hasn’t admitted it.”
“She didn’t have to admit it.”
“Yes, she does.”
He swallowed hard and paused. “And if she did?”
I cocked my head to the side before I sighed. “I don’t see that it would make much of a difference, honestly. I’m still constrained, no matter what.”
“I don’t believe you’re as constrained as you imagine you are. Putting aside the question of whether or not he attempted to fuck her, you still have enough to go on, simply because he defied your orders by harming her.”
“That is true,” I answered as I further considered it.
“Then what will you do about it?”
I paused as I considered the truth of the situation. “I punish the order violation explicitly, publicly, in terms that don’t give Galahad’s followers a martyrdom narrative.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means Galahad is formally rebuked and his autonomous authority is stripped. He is punished just as you are punished.” That way I could present the situation as being about the king’s authority, not about what Galahad did to the prisoner.
Lance’s hands fisted at his sides. “That seems hardly fair—”
“—I’m stuck, Lance.” I took a deep breath.
“With every decision I make, I always have to think in terms of what message does this send?
How I handle this moment sets the terms for every future incident of its kind.
The specific precedent here is that a Round Table knight defied the king’s explicit orders regarding the treatment of his prisoner.
“And that he attempted to commit sexual assault inside the king’s own keep,” Lance added.
“Or so you believe,” I said, raising one eyebrow because this point had not yet been proven.
“Let us take the order violation first. I explicitly told the court that no one was to harm the prisoner. Galahad harmed her for weeks under the guise of religious custody. This is an actual violation of my stated authority... and as you know, my authority is the one thing I protect above all else.
If it gets out that a knight can openly defy a king’s direct order about a prisoner for weeks and face no meaningful consequence, that’s an erosion of the crown’s power that I can’t afford.”
“And the other point?”
I shook my head. “I don’t have proof, Lance. Guinevere hasn’t formally stated it. Galahad denies it and frames it as demonic possession. Thus, I can’t act on an unproven accusation against one of my most publicly pious knights without looking either credulous or agenda-driven.”
“If Guinevere confirms that Galahad attempted to rape her,” Lance started, and I could see his jaw clenching with the effort it took to say the words. “Then what?”
“I don’t believe she would confirm it even if it were true.”
Lance frowned. “Why—”
“—she’s... complicated and... she doesn’t trust me. In fact, I daresay she despises me.”
“Then get her to admit the truth to Tristan or Percival, but get the truth out of her one way or another.”
I shook my head because he didn’t understand the parameters of what he was asking me to do.