Chapter 45
I slept well, which was a rarity, and quite late, which was even rarer.
Dressing in riding clothes, I left my turret bedchamber and went briskly to my brother’s room.
We would ride the boundaries of Belle Garde that day, as I promised, to start off our new association with a pleasant, uncontroversial pursuit.
Thereafter, more talk; I had many questions, and we were both seeking answers.
The door to the long chamber was ajar. “Arthur?” I said softly. No answer.
Cautiously, I entered. The shutters had been flung wide, letting in great shafts of morning sun. Perhaps he had ordered a bath and was in the dressing room above, though I could not sense any water on the air.
It was then that I saw the mess: piles of fabric, heaped on the floor. The tapestries that had covered the walls, torn down in haste, exposing what lay beneath.
Lancelot’s paintings blazed with colour and detail, beautiful and terrible, telling of his life, his love, his shame: observing Guinevere, rescuing her, begging her. Lying in bed with her in adultery, committing the ultimate betrayal. His signature beneath every image, red as knife wounds.
“Brother?” I called again, my voice cracking. “Where are you?”
Only silence replied. Arthur had seen the paintings and gone.
*
The stables confirmed what I already knew: the High King of All Britain had appeared there at first light, demanding a swift, strong horse. Naturally, no one dared question this, and as soon as they brought his mount, he leapt astride and galloped away.
Arthur had several hours head start on me, but I couldn’t let him leave in this reckless way. He would have to pause somewhere; I would take the fleetest courser in the stables, catch up to him. I would explain everything and make him calm.
I had barely gone beyond the hawthorn grove when a hooded figure appeared before me on the road, riding an enormous chestnut horse.
My protective charms hung across the boundary in silver-white wisps; fairy magic, fast coming apart.
The rider turned his large mount sideways, blocking my path.
I could not see his face, but his heel bore a golden spur.
My courser skidded to a halt. “You have no right to block my own road, Sir Knight. Let me pass.”
“I cannot,” he replied. “I am here to stop you.”
His voice was tired, almost gruff, but still known to me. The knight pushed his hood down, revealing his dark-gold head.
“Yvain,” I gasped, and leapt from my horse.
He nodded and followed my lead, swinging out of the saddle. We approached one another with caution, like two knights facing down a duel.
“How are you here?” I asked.
“I was with a few others, seeking the King,” he said. “We found him riding the road, a few miles away. He knew you would come after him and sent me to your valley to find you. He told me to tell you not to pursue him.”
“Respectfully, I must disobey,” I replied. “Both him and you. There are urgent matters I need to explain.”
I turned and went towards my horse. As ever, to walk away from my son was the hardest thing to do, but he had his duty and I had mine.
“You cannot!” he called out.
I looked back and saw Yvain almost upon me, arm outstretched as if about to catch hold of my sleeve.
“It is too late,” he said. “The King already knows about Lancelot and Guinevere.”
The simple way he named them caught my attention. I could not imagine Arthur stopping on his flight back to Camelot to explain the paintings—it was embarrassing, raw, and he was far too proud.
“What do you mean?” I said cautiously.
“Don’t pretend you are unaware,” he said. “Everyone knows you have been singing this particular tune for years.”
“Indeed,” I said. “Not a soul ever took it seriously.”
“Perhaps they should have,” Yvain replied, and the conviction in his tone washed away my burgeoning offence. I moved towards him and he sighed again, his tall frame deflating so much I thought he might sit down in the muddy road.
“What’s happened?” I asked.
“Camelot is falling apart,” he said. “Every rumour, every suspicion held by those with a grudge, has turned out to be true. Queen Guinevere and Lancelot… ”
His voice caught, the notion of his friend’s dishonour difficult for him to even utter. He cleared his throat. “They have been caught together in adultery and treasonous betrayal of my uncle.”
“Caught?” I exclaimed. “How?” After all these years it seemed impossible they would suddenly be so careless.
“I don’t know, only that it involves damned Agravaine and his allies,” Yvain said.
“I was going to stay and deal with them, ensure Lancelot was all right, but he’s gone and I couldn’t let my uncle ride back into chaos and humiliation.
But when I found King Arthur, he already knew.
I assume you told him and he finally believed you. ”
“Not…exactly,” I said. “But the result is the same.”
Yvain nodded and set his jaw, warding against bad feelings just as he had done as a child. I wanted to reach out, brush it all away, before I remembered where we stood.
“It’s of no consequence now,” he said brusquely. “The King told me to find you, and I have done my duty.”
I felt my heart sink back into its rightful, heavy place. “So you have, and now I must find him anyway.”
This time, I didn’t hesitate, going to my horse and gathering the reins. Yvain moved to stop me, but in his haste his leg buckled as if it could not bear him up. He gave a yelp of pain and clutched at his left knee.
I flew to his side, catching hold of his elbows so he didn’t fall. We regarded one another for a long, aching moment. “The knee injury,” I said. “It still bothers you.”
A wave of amazement crossed his face. “You remember?”
“Of course I do,” I replied. “I’ve never stopped thinking about the day you came here. What I could have done better. That I should have convinced you to let me fix it.”
“Nothing you could have said on that day would have changed my mind,” he said. “I wasn’t myself.”
“You were grieving,” I said. “I understand.”
He flinched at the memory and righted himself, so I let him go.
“The injury is old, but feels newly sore,” I said. “You jarred it when you dismounted, but have hurt it worse recently.”
He regarded me with a sort of wonder. “Yes. I was chasing quarry on a hunt a few days ago. My horse rightfully objected to jumping a stream too fast and threw me. I landed hard and twisted it. How did you…?”
“When I caught your arms just then, I could not help but sense it. Your knee was broken before and healed badly, and the scarring is inflamed from your fall.”
I said it without thinking, and he gave me an enquiring look. “The barber-surgeon who strapped it claimed it wasn’t broken, but I can still feel it when the winter takes hold,” he said. “Of course, you knew all along.”
My instinct was to tell him he should have let me explain as much all those years ago and heal it in the first place, but maternal scolding was hardly my right. Yvain sighed as if I had said it regardless, his brow creasing, still so evocative of my own father.
“So you are what they say you are,” he said.
“Some of it,” I replied. “Not everything.”
“I know,” he said quietly. “Earlier, my uncle told me that maybe you are not entirely what I have been told. But part of me has always felt…that there was more.”
He regarded me again and I held his searching gaze. I could hardly fathom that my son was looking upon me as who I was, without his anger turning him away.
“Yvain… ” I began, but he shook his head.
“Don’t follow King Arthur,” he said. “It isn’t safe.”
The note of concern in his voice moved me—how could it not?—but after what Arthur had seen on the bedchamber walls, I was still loath to let it be.
“I have to,” I said. “One truth about me is that I fear nothing in this world. You won’t wish to hear this, but your uncle doesn’t always know what’s best for him, and—”
“Maybe he doesn’t now,” Yvain said, finishing my sentence with wry accuracy. “He told me you would say those exact words. He also said to tell you that you must stay in your valley. So when he needs you, he will know where to find you.”
It struck me anew, a declaration of faith from my brother that I never thought I would hear again, and still could not quite obey.
“But I cannot just sit here,” I protested. “If I could at least speak to him—”
“Mother,” Yvain said.
The word rang through the air, striking every word from my lips. That I had lived without hearing him speak it all these years, or that he would be willing to say it now, seemed impossible, yet he had, so naturally.
I stood stunned, and an immediate flush crept across his beautiful face. He knew how much it meant.
“Trust him,” my son said. “Trust me.”
Then he smiled at me, hopeful, quietly genuine, and it was worth any sacrifice.
“I do,” I said. “I won’t go.”
Tentatively, I reached up, and when he didn’t recoil, I put my hand to his face, his man’s jaw, his bronze-stubbled cheek.
Yvain didn’t shy away, letting me gaze at him as I absorbed the changes he had weathered since I first held him in my arms. I couldn’t bear knowing his next move would be to leave.
“You have done your duty,” I said desperately. “Yet I would not be doing mine if I didn’t offer the help you need. Let me heal your knee before you go.”
“Why would you do that?” he asked.
I wanted to say it was a tiny, insignificant teardrop in the ocean I needed to fill to atone; the one paltry thing that I could do for the son I had been forced to leave behind. That it would never be enough, but to save him from one pain was something.
Because I love you, I wanted to say, and I always will.
None of those words could I speak. “With all that’s happening, you should be at full strength,” I told him. “It needs to be fixed, and I’m the only one who can.”
Yvain paused, and cast shining blue eyes upon me, a mirror of my own. Too soon, he stepped away and gestured to my horse.
“We should go,” he said, and it was over.