Chapter 30
The scene was exactly as they had described: a knight pacing his horse back and forth on the road, his own restlessness writ in his mount’s jagged strides.
The famous lion—a lioness in fact—was more sanguine.
She had retired to the grass, lying along a strip of sun and licking one giant, honey-coloured paw.
I had never seen an animal of her like before; not even Camelot’s menagerie contained such a dangerous wonder.
But her huge maneless head, leonine insouciance and the underlying violence in her flexing claws could not compare in fascination to the one who rode beside her.
It was him, strong and handsome in light mail and a fine green tunic, his dark-gold head bowed. So deep was his pensiveness that he didn’t notice my approach. Nor could he know that the sight of him left me blinded, like seeing the sunrise after half a decade of night.
“Yvain,” I said.
His head flew up, deep-blue eyes and quizzical brow arresting my heart. He halted his horse and regarded me with a wince.
“You know me?” His voice was almost plaintive. Five years ago, he had merely escorted an unknown damsel. To his mind, I hadn’t seen him since he was eight years old.
“You’re my son,” I replied. “I’d know you anywhere.”
He glanced up at the sky, as if it was not the moment. It would never be the moment, I realized, not for him. At best, I was a stranger; at worst, the absent mother whose poisonous reputation had snapped at his gold-spurred heels for his entire life.
“Oh God,” he said to the heavens. “It is you, isn’t it?”
The bitterness in his voice speared me, but I stepped closer. The lion paused in her ablutions, fixing me with a stare. I saw her natural possessiveness and felt a flare of the same.
“Yes,” I said. “It’s me.” Your mother, I wanted to add, but such a declaration might just make him turn and flee.
“You look exactly the same as when I last saw you,” he said. “Sixteen years. How can that be?”
He assumed me conceited, probably, obsessed with my own youth, but what could I say?
What patience would my distant son have for my pact with fairy magic, or the efforts I made in grief, keeping my appearance the same as the day I last saw my slain lover in case I could magically raise him from death?
Some things were rightfully beyond explanation.
“I have my ways” was the only reply I could make.
My evasion made him flinch, and I regretted it. “So this is where you live,” he said. “Your famous Vale of No Return.”
His dismissive tone held a hint of his father, which I weathered as a blow to the gut. “Those of us who reside here call it Belle Garde. Would you like to come in?”
“No,” he said sharply, then sighed. “I—I don’t know. I shouldn’t, and yet… ”
“You will not be kept longer than you wish,” I said. “I give you my word.”
The look he gave me was incredulous. “How could I ever trust your word?”
Again I was winded, but could not argue.
Despite the fairer view of me he had given the damsel, he had been raised hearing dark stories of his mother, and my actions told no better tale.
The last time Yvain had seen me, I was standing over his father with a sword, ready to cut off my husband’s head.
I had pushed the memory from his child’s mind with magic, but who knew how long such a rushed, imperfect charm had lasted.
“You travelled all this way,” I said. “Take a rest, some refreshment. We can discuss why you have come.”
“I don’t know,” he muttered, walking his horse in another restless circle.
As he paced, I noticed his left leg dangling free of the stirrup, breeches torn and a wound still bleeding—the injury the huntsman had mentioned.
Infection would be a concern if he didn’t get it cleaned up, but the leg radiated a deeper issue.
Something broken, I sensed, and complex, but I couldn’t be sure without laying hands.
“You are injured,” I reasoned. “At least let me look at it.”
He paused his mount again, glancing down at his leg then back at me.
“Please,” I said. “Just get off your horse.”
Something within him seemed to give. With a sigh, he dismounted onto his good leg and limped to the low wall that surrounded the chapel. I followed, sitting down beside him. The lioness raised her head, seemed to decide he was safe and went back to dozing.
“So this is your lion,” I said. “She that you saved.”
He regarded me in surprise. “You know about that?”
“I admit, over the years, I have sought to hear news of you.”
“Aunt Elaine,” he said matter-of-factly.
I nodded. “She was being a good sister, as she always has been. Do not think ill of her because of her love for me.”
“I could never do that,” he replied. “She has been exceedingly good to me too. Nor do I regret anything I learned from her.”
He was speaking of me, and my heart leapt, but too much hope must have shown on my face because he looked away at once. In no circumstances was he going any further.
“Your leg,” I said softly. “Let me see.”
Unexpectedly, he did, extending his leg straight. Hesitantly, I placed my fingertips on either side of his knee, seeking the more complicated damage I had sensed beyond the torn skin and blood. With the barest touch, the affliction leapt out to me: his kneecap was broken.
I didn’t want to alarm him with such a sudden and serious diagnosis, so instead I asked, “What happened to you?”
“I answered a joust challenge,” he replied. “A few hours ago, just off the forest road. It wasn’t fair, it… ” He pulled away from my touch and shook his head in exasperation. “Why am I telling you this? You don’t care.”
I resisted my impulse to argue that of course I cared. Part of being in his company, I realized, was learning when his emotions superseded my own.
“Above all things, your leg needs healing,” I said pragmatically. “I will stop the bleeding, eliminate any infection, then fix the knee itself. If you come to the house—”
“No,” he said quickly. “It wouldn’t be right.”
“Forget what’s right, or the rules you have been taught,” I said. “This is your health, your future. I can fix this.”
The look he gave me was glassy, angry. “You of all people cannot fix this.”
The pain of his rejection was so immediate, so great, that part of me wanted to bolt back within my veil of protection and pretend this had never happened; to imagine my son at a distance again, reconsidering his mother in a kinder light, rather than facing his justified disdain.
But my child was hurting, and this one small thing I could make better.
“I can repair your leg, in a moment’s work,” I insisted. “You needn’t come to the house—I can heal you here just as well. This is serious damage—let me help you.”
It was too much. Yvain reared up in offence, staggering away from the wall.
“That’s not why I’m here!” he cried. “Good God, I shouldn’t be speaking to you at all. If they knew I had come… ” He stopped and pulled in a steadying breath. “I don’t need your help, or healing. I don’t care about the blood or the pain. I just have to tell you… ”
His voice cracked and he put his head in his hands, shoulders heaving but no sounds coming forth. I jumped up after him, assaulted by a rush of shame: grown man or not, if my child was crying I should have felt it in every inch of my marrow.
“Yvain,” I said, but could think of nothing fit to soothe him. I had lost the chance of truly knowing him long ago. “What’s wrong?” I asked.
He looked up at me, skin flushed but scrubbed of any tears. His beautiful face looked as though it might collapse again. “My father,” he replied. “He is dead.”
It hit me with white-hot shock. “Urien, dead?” I exclaimed. “When? How?”
He stared at me wretchedly, as if it couldn’t possibly matter. His father was gone—what difference did it make? “An accident,” he managed. “He was hunting near Caerleon and took a violent fall.”
I could marry Accolon now came the thought: natural, selfish, followed by a futility that seared in my blood like fire. Another freedom gained when it was worth nothing. I looked away, seething, preoccupied, until I felt my son’s gaze on the side of my face.
Gathering myself, I met his frowning scrutiny. “He fell from his horse?” I said, in lieu of anything better. “That doesn’t sound like him.”
“It wasn’t,” Yvain said. “They say a flock of wild birds swooped at his face. He was fending them off when his horse spooked and… ”
He trailed off in anguish, but I had to know. “How did he die?”
My son squeezed his eyes shut. “He broke his neck.”
There were a hundred things I had imagined I would feel hearing of my estranged husband’s inglorious death, but the sight of Yvain’s grief rendered it all impossible.
When I looked at his tired, devastated face, the late King Urien of Gore became the proud and diligent father my son had lost, not the vain, self-centred brute who had made my life hell.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “A father is an immense loss.”
Again I had got it wrong. “How dare you say you are sorry,” he spat. “You hated my father. He told me you burned his face. Do not insult me by pretending otherwise.”
His viciousness cut through me, though his voice shook as if he had never used such a tone. I wondered when Urien had spoken of my setting him on fire, if he had savoured telling our son of such an intimate horror. The smouldering fury in my gut lit like tinder.
“That’s not how it was!” I cried. “None of it’s true—what others claim, what your father said about me. No one has ever admitted the wrongs I have endured. You are my son and should know better.”
At my escalating reaction, the lioness got to her feet with deceptive speed, a rumble emitting from her throat. Suddenly, I understood that her decisions were her own, and she would protect Yvain how she saw fit unless he told her otherwise.
I did not fear her. If she sprung at me I could turn her to ice without drawing breath—but then my son would hate me more than he did already.