Chapter 42 #2
“Oh, he found it,” Gawain said grimly. “He just could not get close enough.”
So Lancelot had failed his great quest, and now he would be without godly glory and back between the thrones. Ninianne hadn’t kept him away for long.
My nephew took a cloth to dry his hands. “I was the one who suggested we all take part, thinking it a grand adventure. How wrong I was. There will be no more adventures after this. Now all I want is to get home and keep my brothers alive. Even Mordred.”
“Sir Mordred is your brother?” I said. “But he’s—”
“So much younger than me?” he supplied. “I hear that often. Apparently, I am not as young as I like to think.”
It wasn’t what I was going to say at all.
He is nothing like you, was my first response, then I remembered past gossip, and some of my eldest sister’s complications that Elaine and I had discussed in our recent letters.
Morgause’s fifth child had been the subject of some speculation—the other Orkney sons all favoured King Lot, but he lacked the resemblance, so the rumour was Sir Mordred’s father was another man.
I wondered if Gawain was aware, but I would not risk sullying my sister’s reputation further. She had been unfairly punished enough.
“How is my own nephew not known to me?” I said instead.
“We only came to rediscover our relation recently,” Gawain replied. “A long, complicated story. Nevertheless, I remember him being born. He is one of ours.”
“Then we should tell him his brother will live after all.”
He pulled a face. “I wouldn’t expect to find him wringing his hands.”
Upon reaching the reception room, we discovered Sir Mordred had strayed, spotted by a kitchen lad in a south wing hallway. We found my new nephew wandering a gallery near the painted courtyard.
“Where have you been?” Gawain said in gruff admonishment.
The fair-haired knight looked as satisfied as a cat recently fed. “I was restless, worried for Gaheris. Does he live? Do his guts reside within his body once more?”
The elder brother looked as if he wanted to cleave the younger’s chest open, but he held his temper. “He lives and will soon recover, God be thanked.”
“Lady Morgan be thanked, rather. Our infamous family sorceress has impressive skills.” Sir Mordred’s keen eyes flicked to me; I could see now they were grey. “I know what you’re thinking, dear aunt.”
His overfamiliarity did not endear or provoke me, though I sensed he was hoping for one of them. “What’s that?” I said.
“You are wondering why I do not resemble my brothers,” he replied, and his correct guess gave me a shiver of unease. “I’ve been told my grandmother, Queen Igraine, shared my same colouring.”
Indeed, his face bore shades of her and therefore my sister, but there was a furtiveness about his looks, an evasive quality that belied anything more definitive.
“That’s true,” I replied. “You also have her eyes.”
Gawain cleared his throat. “Yes, well—we owe our aunt a debt of gratitude and courtesy, which means you should not be wandering around her home uninvited.”
“Perhaps not,” Sir Mordred conceded. “Though your house certainly is interesting, my lady. Brother, there is something just yonder that I think would interest you.”
Gawain hesitated, but Sir Mordred strode off and we had no choice but to follow. What I was not expecting was to be led through the open door of mine and Accolon’s former bedchamber, into Lancelot’s once prison cell. The walls were still uncovered from my being pulled away in a hurry.
Sir Mordred gestured Gawain towards the paintings opposite the bed—Lancelot and Guinevere’s highly coloured treason.
“You have no right,” I began, but it was too late. My eldest nephew stepped closer, and it did not take long for him to understand what he was seeing.
He turned to me in alarm. “What is the meaning of this?”
Sir Mordred answered before I could. “You know what it is, brother. These paintings depict the deeds of the great Sir Lancelot du Lac. Signed by the knight himself.”
Gawain stared back at the paintings, blood rising up his neck. “Mordred, leave us,” he said in a low voice. “Now.”
His brother scoffed. “I discovered this. I have every right to hear it explained.”
There were no more words from Gawain; Orkney patience was famously short. With a quiet aggression, he strode definitively towards his brother, who attempted to hold his ground then thought better of it, scowling as he fled the room.
Gawain watched him leave, hard-jawed, then went to the first painting and methodically examined every one. When he returned to me, he looked more battle-worn than when he had begged me to save his dying brother.
“He’s right—this is Lancelot’s life,” he said. “But some of it I…I don’t understand. He and I are closer than brothers—he keeps nothing from me.”
“It seems he has not told you everything,” I said.
Briefly, he closed his eyes, then lifted a hand to his neck, pulling out a bronze chain from beneath his tunic. A large silver pendant emerged, embossed with Gawain’s five-pointed star. He opened the box to reveal a small, grubby scrap of cloth.
“This is part of Christ’s shroud,” he said. “One of the holiest relics there is. Swear upon it that whatever you are about to tell me is the truth before God.”
I shrugged and curled my hand around the pendant. “I have nothing to hide, and don’t need God to witness that. But if it makes you feel better, I swear to be honest.”
I released the relic, but Gawain shook his head and placed it back in my hand. My entire explanation was to be a holy oath.
“Very well,” I said. “As I’m sure he’s told you, Sir Lancelot was imprisoned here for eighteen months. He didn’t know who held him. These paintings are what he did with his time. They prove that he and Queen Guinevere are lovers in adultery.”
Gawain pulled the pendant from my hand. “N-no, it cannot be. Markings on a wall do not mean anything. There’s nothing here to definitively prove he painted these.”
I was about argue, when I saw his face—stunned and sickly, but lacking in surprise. A man caught by a punch he had seen coming.
“But you have heard it said,” I countered. “You have seen things yourself that bring fuel to this fire. It doesn’t strike you as wild or impossible.”
“Of course I’ve heard it,” he said. “Lancelot has been pursued by rumours his entire life. Any knight as great as he will have unsavoury things whispered about him as he writes his name into legend. There is profound love between the three of them—it does not mean he’s known the Queen carnally or they have been treasonous. ”
“Don’t act the fool, Gawain,” I warned. “Your mother taught you to be cleverer than that. And your father raised you to be braver than this ignorance and cowardice.”
He stiffened at my invoking his long-dead father. “What is your purpose here, Aunt Morgan?” he said curtly.
I was about to retort I hadn’t intended him to see the paintings at all, but when he had, what I had felt was relief.
First, he had come across them naturally, without my involvement.
What’s more, Gawain was Arthur’s nephew, by his side since the beginning of his reign.
Apart from Kay, there was no one my brother had trusted as much, for as long.
If the truth came from Gawain, Arthur would listen.
Perhaps this was the way it must be done.
“There isn’t one,” I said. “I didn’t bring you to this house, or into this room.
But Lancelot is sleeping with Queen Guinevere.
If you cared for your honour, and your uncle’s, you would gallop back to Camelot to tell him of this.
By your admission, you have sworn to tell Arthur every detail of your adventures, and that now includes what’s on these walls. ”
Gawain’s face darkened with guilt. “I will never interfere in it. How can I speak of what I have not seen with my own eyes?”
“What about Sir Mordred?” I asked. “Will he not speak of it if you don’t?”
“Mordred will do as he’s told,” he growled. “He will not breathe a word of it in Camelot while I still walk God’s earth. That I can guarantee.”
“Then the duty lies with you.”
“This is Lancelot you’re asking me to ruin,” he replied. “I love no man more than he. How do I begin to choose between my greatest friend and my King—my own blood?”
“I’m not asking you to do anything, but your knightly code should,” I said. “This is the problem with Camelot and its lofty tenets—you all preach your virtues, declare you are bound to your oaths, until it does not suit you.”
He said nothing but looked wretched, so I softened my voice.
“Can you honestly say Arthur does not deserve to know, and it isn’t best coming from you? Because he will find out, Gawain. One day, he will see something he cannot unsee and the shock will destroy him. Where will he—and the kingdom—be then?”
I had done all I could, had gone beyond my doubts and courage to put forth what I could not express to my brother directly. If Gawain carried the truth where I was forbidden, perhaps it would be a step towards something; an ending to a long, painful odyssey.
My nephew only regarded me helplessly.
“I can’t,” he said.