Chapter 23
There was never a more satisfying sound than when the court gasped at my declaration. For all my magic, the skills I possessed, the wisdom I had learned—I always felt at my most powerful when I was telling the truth.
The Queen didn’t move, a doe caught in a lioness’s sights. Arthur shifted on his throne, digesting my words like a heavy course at a banquet, surprised at the discomfort it brought. Too late for him now; he had eaten what I served him and must suffer the pain.
Gawain was the only one who could speak “What did you say?” he demanded. “Explain yourself, madam, and quickly.”
I tried to sound more afeared than I felt. “I beg your pardon, my lord. In his final confession, Sir Lancelot said he had no choice before God but to admit to his adultery with the High Queen of All Britain. I swore an oath to him that I would respect his last wishes.”
“This doesn’t make an ounce of sense,” my nephew muttered, then fell silent too, either in shock or because of his natural respect for oath-taking. I took it as a sign to embellish at my leisure.
“Sir Lancelot confessed that he loved the Queen from the moment he saw her, and has lived in mortal sin ever since,” I continued.
“That he has dishonoured his King, his King’s wife, the Crown, and himself, as a knight and a man.
I respected his bravery and godliness, so I promised I would bring his words exactly as he uttered them. ”
I returned my focus to Guinevere. She hadn’t spoken for a long time. In the hall, new whispers took up, multiplying until the air hissed with burgeoning scandal.
Arthur’s eyes flickered across his congregation, then came to rest on his wife, waiting for her next, impossible move.
In a sudden jolt, Guinevere stood, silencing the room at once.
She paced right up to the dais edge, and for a heartbeat I thought she was going to keep walking, off the raised platform and beyond—leaving the room, the palace, her entire life. But she stopped just short, gazing out at the court’s upturned faces as they waited for denial, or her own confession.
Instead, with a sudden cry, the High Queen of All Britain burst into tears.
Before us all, she put her head in her hands and wept, shocking, uncontrolled sobs, as if she wasn’t in public, much less revealing herself to the kingdom as an adulteress with her husband looking on.
Nevertheless, Arthur flew from his throne and put protective arms around his wife, drawing her away and against his shoulder. He leaned in, speaking softly into her ear, but my fairy senses captured every word.
“What is this?” he asked her. “Why do you lament in such a way?”
Guinevere raised bloodshot eyes to him. “Lancelot may be dead, or in so much despair he will never return. Can you truly hear such news and not feel your heart breaking?”
I expected disgust from Arthur, if not outright fury—the nerve of her to ask for sorrow in the face of his humiliation, when she should have already been chased from the Throne Room in shame and indignity.
Yet he took in her words with slow, indulgent nods, as if she spoke the very essence of truth.
“I know,” he said. “It is hard to hear. But—”
“And the rest, in their judgment,” she cut in. “They do not understand. No one ever could. Though God knows I deserve better than this.”
Arthur stepped back and gripped her elbows, making her meet his steady gaze.
“If you have something to say,” he told her, “then address them.”
His understanding seemed to bolster Guinevere; she raised her chin and drew up to her statuesque height.
By the time she turned again to the room, her shaking hands were still, her face flushed and eyes agleam, one of those rare and infuriating people who look beautiful when they cry.
Anyone who looked upon her would want to forgive.
Still, they could forgive, but Arthur’s entire reputation balanced on fair and equal justice—not a month ago, he had put his wife on public trial to prove the same. For the kingdom’s integrity, he would have to act. I let the air out of my lungs and waited.
With a poise well-honed, Guinevere gazed over my head to her court, her subjects, those waiting to see if she floated or sank.
This was different from the mild disapproval she had encountered over the years: whether she dressed too finely or spent too much; whether her easy talk with the King and his knights was charming or inappropriate; her continuing childlessness and who was to blame.
For her, adultery was treason, punishable by law, and the champion she relied upon for deliverance was locked in my Vale of No Return.
Despite all of this, the High Queen of All Britain was determined to speak.
“Whoever wishes to spread ugly tales,” she began, “you may go ahead and talk. You will hear no denial of the love I bear Sir Lancelot. He is the most beautiful man, and the best of us in his goodness. There is not a knight in our Seven Realms by whom he is outdone. I have loved him since I first knew him and will continue, with everything I possess.”
Her confession thrilled in me, every word a victory for the anger and despair I had known since the day she guessed at my pregnancy and demanded I leave Camelot.
This was the peak of my hard-fought battles, like a great rock pushed up a hill at the moment of suspension, before it rolled easily down the other side.
However, the crowd didn’t seem to be absorbing the significance of her speech. Their faces were rapt, not scandalized. The High Queen had admitted her love for a man not her husband—it seemed impossible that outrage wasn’t written across the room.
With slow emphasis, Guinevere added, “As a Queen should.”
She glanced at her husband, and Arthur came immediately to her side. I had the sudden tilting sensation that I needed to wake up from a dream.
“We have all loved Sir Lancelot,” she said.
“For his prowess and deeds, his perfect heart and unwavering honour. Since he first joined this court, he has made us better and proven himself to be the greatest of men. If I, or my lord husband, had to recount all of the virtues he possesses, our tongues would fail before we had reached the end of the list. It is my duty—our duty—to love him for all he has given to this realm.”
To my utter disbelief, Arthur nodded in support. Fresh anger rippled through the glamour, a tremor across my disguise. The more out of control I felt, the more Morgan le Fay I became, and I couldn’t be her now. I couldn’t let her fight her way through.
Meanwhile, Guinevere kept talking; she couldn’t seem to stop.
“But within Sir Lancelot’s great virtue,” she went on, “we see a single flaw. He has shown himself to be the pinnacle of high-mindedness, and from this comes his one error—he is prone to overstatement.”
The crowd took up murmuring, but it was all nods and sounds of agreement. They were as used to Lancelot’s particular intensity as I had become.
“To him, as Queen’s Knight, the regard he holds for me is the greatest of loves, as his unmatched loyalty demands,” Guinevere said.
“Therefore, through his own goodness, of course Sir Lancelot would assume that his love for his beloved King’s wife must be forbidden.
What else would he do but confess it before God just in case we had fallen to such an unwitting sin?
His last heroic act was to ensure the salvation of our souls. ”
She thrust out a silken arm, and to my annoyance I jerked immediately to attention. “If he knew this woman had reported his courageous words as an unspeakable act of treason, he would throw himself upon his sword at once. You all know it to be true.”
It was a very pretty speech, made more convincing by the force in her voice, the growing presence of her beauty as righteousness took hold. The court immediately began to applaud, as if witnessing an incredible performance, which I supposed they had.
Perhaps she even believed what she said. Maybe she didn’t know that their sins had left Lancelot broken, so shattered that he gave up his safety from dangerous magic just to hold on to the emerald ring she had given him as a token of consolation.
The ring, my mind interrupted; of course.
I was losing, but I still had one piece left in play. I slipped the emerald off my thumb and into my palm.
“My lord, my lady,” I called above the clapping. The court quietened, eager to hear more. “Sir Lancelot had one last request concerning the High Queen.”
Guinevere’s face froze. I held out the ring.
“Sir Lancelot says you gave him this ring as a symbol of your love. He accepted it with feelings equally powerful, but it represents the adultery you committed with one another. He asked me to return it now, in the hope that you can both beg forgiveness for the betrayal you have wrought upon the High King, and the kingdom itself.”
The room sprung to life, courtiers and ladies surging forwards to see the object in my hand. Before anyone else could touch her precious trinket, the Queen took two long strides towards me and snatched the ring from my fingers.
As she did, the matching ring she wore caught the light, both emeralds shining in perfect harmony, like the true pair they were.
She turned away, but in a swift, surreptitious flourish, I summoned the air and sent a small jet through the gap in her hand.
The ring fell and skittered across the floor, coming to rest at Arthur’s feet.
Guinevere rushed across, but he scooped the ring up, holding it between his fingers.
Their eyes locked over the twinkling stone.
“Is it his?” he said. “Is it yours?”
They stared at one another for an endless moment, Guinevere’s expression pleading with him that she should not be made to say more. My brother held firm, armouring himself with the cold strength I knew so well.
The Queen lowered her eyes, breaking free of his scrutiny.
“You know it is,” she said.
I wish I could say that I felt the slightest remorse, but I was far beyond such a virtue where Guinevere was concerned.
Mine and Accolon’s lost child, my place in Camelot, the belief that my brother and I should be kept apart—it all began with her.
There were many at fault for how my life had ended up, but she had cut the first stitch of my unravelling.
Arthur made no move. This is your doing, his expression said to her. You must be the one to undo it.
It took Guinevere less time than me to decipher her husband’s silence. She reached out and plucked the ring from his fingers.
“It’s true,” she declared to the Throne Room. “I gave Lancelot the ring and will deny nothing about it. I gave my Queen’s Knight a token of my affection and gratitude. For his service, his presence by my side and his loyalty when I needed it most.”
It was a swipe, gentle in tone but deeply meant—her husband had abandoned her for a year, and his right to question her was still in flux. Arthur looked away, but this time she did not let him yield.
“Indeed, I have shown favouritism, and reproach me if you will, but I feel no shame.” She slipped the second emerald ring back on her finger and pointed her bejewelled hand at the court.
“Let God and everyone in this room know, there has never been a guilty love between myself and Sir Lancelot du Lac.”
Still my brother said nothing, but I could read the discomfort twisting within his body, the thorned vines of keeping a nation’s peace.
“Well?” his adulteress Queen demanded of him now. “Can you profess to love Lancelot any less than me?”
The look between them held for an age. Then Arthur moved, as he so often did: quickly, decisively. The stability of his Crown depended on what he said next, and how he chose to say it.
He turned to the room, smoothing over his demeanour to reassuring authority. “My wife speaks her true heart,” he said. “And I commend her for it.”
Though I had expected his saving face, I still felt the world shudder, my old quake of panic.
“This maiden does not know Sir Lancelot, or his honour, as we do,” Arthur said. “Nothing the Queen has said perturbs me, nor should it any of you.”
Reaching out, he took Guinevere’s hand in his and lay the other over his heart. “As God is my witness, I regard Sir Lancelot with such respect and great love that I would gladly see my lady wife marry him if it meant he remained my own companion for life.”
The oddness of the comment struck like an ill-tuned bell, bringing me back to clarity.
In truth, it was not the damsel who was the stranger here, but me.
I had lost track of this world—Arthur’s court had become a tangle of love and hate, oaths and jealousies, honour and dishonour, a labyrinth navigable only by those who had stayed within.
All at once, I realized how deep my exile had cut, how far away I felt from my own brother.
To what end had I even come to this place? I claimed I did not fear anyone here, yet I could not even appear before them as myself. Was this what Morgan le Fay’s heart stood for, or had my purpose been lost, adrift somewhere behind the mist of glamour?
Whatever the truth, for now, for me, this was over. The game was forfeit; all I could do was return to Belle Garde and decide where my next move lay.
Wordlessly, I turned and retreated from the dais. Three steps were all I managed before Sir Gawain called out. Wearily, I looked back.
“You haven’t taken leave of the King,” he said, not unkindly.
I almost scoffed, unable to remember the last time I had imagined obeying arbitrary court rules, or asking permission of a king for anything.
“Forgive me,” I said. “But I have a long ride back to my mistress’s house. I beg Your Highness’s leave.”
“By all means,” Arthur said graciously. “Do you have an escort?”
“I came alone, my lord. I do not need one.”
“I insist,” he replied. “It took much courage to come here. You will be protected on your journey back by one of my finest knights. My conscience will have it no other way.”
I knew from experience that doing battle with Arthur’s conscience was a futile endeavour. Whoever it was, I would wait until we reached the forest, then give them the slip.
I bowed my head in tired acceptance. By the time I looked up, Arthur had beckoned a knight forth, now standing before the thrones, but turning to face me.
A shaft of sun caught on his dark-gold hair, the light on his profile rising in my chest like a wave cresting towards the sky. His eyes were the deep blue of a Cornish sea, like mine, and my father’s before me.
“A pleasure to meet you, my lady,” he said with natural good humour.
“With no knight in my service will you have safer travels,” Arthur said. “By the grace of my Crown, I give you into the care of Sir Yvain.”