Chapter 46
So many firsts were due to us, moments of everyday life often taken for granted.
Yvain and I spent the rest of the day and most of the night talking, until the blue aura of dawn illuminated the treetops.
The next day and those that followed, I showed him Belle Garde, the full scope of its beauty and all we had achieved there.
He met those who lived in the valley and was welcomed; he learned of the infirmary, the lodges, the thriving endeavours that made it a place worthy of renown. My Vale of No Return, as it truly was.
One day, without shame, he told me he was proud, and I could not speak for joy.
We ate our meals together, raised goblets of wine to one another’s health.
In the evenings, we retired to my study and kept talking.
First, I listened, eager to hear of Yvain’s every moment, each step, thought and breath he took through his life; his joys and disappointments, his wants and fears, his victories and defeats; who he was within.
With endless grace, my son spoke and answered and let me know him, the greatest gift he could ever bestow.
Eventually, in the lulls of his tale, his own questions came, and it was time for me to tell him my long and battle-worn story.
Yvain had always heard the worst of me, but now he had the opportunity to ask everything he had secretly wondered or been denied, and see what else his mother contained.
Though it ached, sometimes burned, I loved every word that passed between us, because from the scorched earth of truth grew shoots of trust.
Diligent as he was, however, Yvain would not forget his duty. Upon agreeing to stay, he immediately sent a fast rider to Arthur, bearing news of where he was and why.
“Tell the King if he needs me, I will come, as my oath demands,” he instructed the messenger. “But my choice would be to stay where I am for as long as I can.”
Soon, the answer came, handwritten and unexpectedly from the King himself.
Stay where you are, with your mother, Arthur said. It is long past due that you know one another.
“I’m glad,” Yvain said with a smile. “Now we have more time.”
This is what my brother had done, I realized.
Arthur had admitted his wrongs to Yvain, acknowledged Camelot’s truth was not the only version of what he had long been told, and sent him to find me.
Arthur said he would work for my forgiveness, whatever it took, and this was his miracle. He had given me back my son.
“There’s a postscript,” he added. “Tell my sister to remember the sea.”
*
Where there was more time, there was more to learn, more to give.
I did not notice the days passing, and could hardly believe a month had gone by when the messenger returned from Camelot with another missive—not from Arthur’s quill this time, but a letter with the Lord Seneschal’s seal, in Sir Kay’s own hand.
The story was briefly told, but dramatic.
The Queen had been put on trial for adultery, dragged out in her shift and bound to the burning stake.
Naturally, Lancelot had caught wind of the news and galloped in to rescue her just in time, leaving slaughter in his wake.
Lancelot had carried Guinevere off to his castle in the north, taking half of Camelot’s knights with him, along with any doubt that he and the Queen had been lovers for years.
“Oh God, no,” Yvain muttered. “Lancelot killed two more Orkney brothers in the melee—Sir Gaheris and Sir Gareth.” He lowered the letter and put a hand to his forehead. “When he killed Agravaine it was justified, but how could he do such a thing as this? He and Gawain have always been so close.”
I was still wary of my right to comfort him, but his grief overrode my caution.
Tentatively, I put my hand on his shoulder.
“It’s a terrible thing that sides are being taken, and I know you are torn between your love for them.
It’s natural to be hurt and confused, but know that it’s all right to let yourself feel it—every part. ”
It seemed so inadequate that when he looked down at me in gratitude I was astonished. I was even more surprised the next morning, when he arrived in my study and said only good morning, rather than telling me he was about to ride back to Camelot.
After that, when yet more news came, I trusted in my son’s will to stay.
“King Arthur has laid siege to Joyous Gard,” he reported a fortnight later. “Lancelot and the Queen are living within. Sir Kay says I should remain where I am—there is nothing for me to do there.”
Understandably, we had no word from my brother himself, but I visited the connection between us often, the sea around Tintagel’s cliffs and its mercurial wind. As long as I could feel him there, I knew he survived.
“It makes little sense,” Yvain concluded, handing me the letter to read, as he always did. “Joyous Gard is a steadfast castle, but my uncle has enough men to overcome its walls. Why does he sit outside and wait?”
“The same reason neither man has called a duel,” I replied. “There will be no battle, because Arthur and Lancelot cannot bear to kill one another.”
To hear of more chaos was hard for Yvain, but he was pleasantly distracted when Alys and Tressa returned from their travels and fell upon him with unfettered joy.
No one would have believed they had not laid eyes upon one another for a quarter century, or that Yvain had left us at far too young an age to have memories of them.
He accepted their attentions with ease, insisting he remembered his time in their care, and it thrilled them even though they knew it was impossible.
He let them dote upon him like the fondest of relations: Alys stitched him new shirts with intricately embroidered cuffs, while Tressa refused to allow him the strain of writing his own letters to Sir Kay, and became his faithful scribe.
I looked on in happiness, and tried not to think of what could have been.
We had several weeks of peace, then one afternoon, I returned from assisting Alys with a risky but successful childbirth in the northern valley to find my son out on my balcony, leaning on the balustrade with a new letter in his hand.
It was the strangest report we had received yet.
Guinevere and her lover had been exonerated by the Pope for their adultery, Arthur had accepted it, and his wife had returned to Camelot.
For his other treasons—the death of Gawain’s brothers at the trial—Lancelot had been banished from court and sent permanently to his lands in Benoic.
“This is a great deal to take in,” I said. “How do you feel?”
Yvain attempted a shrug, though his shoulders were heavy. “I will miss Lancelot dearly at court, but he’s not too far from where my wife and I reside. It is not as though I’ll never see him again. And the rest is good news, at least. Perhaps now my uncle will see Camelot somewhat settled.”
He did not sound convinced; we both knew that what had been released into the world was too great to ever put back in its cage. The real question hovering between us was how long any such peace could hold.
But Yvain carried his own particular stubbornness. He stood upright and said, “We must not dwell on it. What shall we do instead?”
His good nature never failed to make my heart grow. “Anything you wish.”
He pondered it briefly, then looked at me with charming epiphany, as if knowing he was about to say the words I most wanted to hear.
“Let’s go fly a bird together,” he said.
*
We took my best falcon to the meadow beyond the tilt field, a peregrine descended from a gorgeous, imperious bird Accolon had won for me in a tournament.
This one had refined her ancestral traits to a knife edge: she was twice as beautiful, and twice as difficult.
Still, she was my favourite. In honour of Alys’s tapestries and the witch goddess herself, I had named her Hecate.
I had sent her up and brought her back a few times, testing her recall. Twice she refused my first whistle, and Yvain admired her the more for it.
“Clearly she is an empress of the skies,” he said appreciatively.
“She’s not the easiest,” I agreed. “Sometimes I think she will simply fly off and never come back. She seems to want the wilderness.”
He nodded thoughtfully. “Some birds are only ever meant to be free.”
His wisdom struck me, articulating the feeling I always sensed in this falcon. She wore her existence like a beautiful but heavy mantle—with style but not contentment.
“Here,” I said, gesturing to the spare glove he carried. “Take her.”
“Are you sure?” he said.
“You are my son, as I was my father’s daughter. Falcons are in your blood.”
I lifted my hand to his and trailed her leash through his palm. The peregrine assessed him, then stepped onto his waiting fist and let him stroke her breast feathers. Mutual respect established, I watched him walk deeper into the grass and send her up into the sky.
For him, she was ready for her steepest climb, circling high above the long grass, waiting for the evening’s prey to emerge.
A movement caught her eye and she tilted her path, gliding off over the silver birches.
We followed, ducking through some shrubbery and out onto the joust meadow, now overgrown with long grass and wildflowers.
The blue-and-white tilt barrier glowed violet in the sunset, almost swallowed by nature.
At the field’s edge, Robin’s carnedd still stood, unmoved by weather or time.
“This looks like a tiltyard,” Yvain commented.
“It was, once,” I replied. One day I would tell him the rest, of this place and the carnedd and what it all meant, but for now, this time was ours alone.
When we reached the bridge, he leaned against its stone side and I did the same, watching the falcon hover high above the shimmering river.
“I still cannot believe it,” he said suddenly. “Lancelot and Guinevere were adulterous, betraying the King, yet things will just return to how they were? Impossible.”
I knew the letter had been on his mind, that Camelot’s claims of normality had not persuaded him. “What do you think will happen?”
He regarded me with puzzlement, as if no one had ever asked him his opinion before. “I am no sage,” he said dismissively.
It saddened me, his lack of faith in his own perception, his mind left unappreciated amidst knightly popularity and an easy nature.
As I mulled our silence, Yvain made a swift movement at his side, then held up his gauntleted arm and whistled—two short and one long, as I had.
The peregrine landed on his fist in a rustling swoop, snatching at the strip of meat he held.
I hadn’t even noticed how close she was hovering.
“You have your instincts,” I pointed out. “Trust them.”
He watched the bird tear at the flesh and grimaced. “There will be war. Maybe not immediately, but it is coming.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Too much has happened—something will have to be done.” He looked from the bird to me.
“More than that, how it occurred doesn’t feel right.
Agravaine was no master of intelligence.
What he did was too meticulous, too faultlessly executed, to have come from his mind alone.
He had little to gain from it, unless conspiring with another.
Exposing Lancelot’s sin wasn’t accident or impulse—it was calculated. ”
“You mean an act of strategy?” I asked. “Some sort of jealous revolt?”
“I don’t know. To act against Lancelot isn’t wise, but to weaken his power in Camelot, severing his bond with King Arthur would be the one necessary move.”
Yvain took a few steps and launched Hecate back into flight. We watched her go, dark wings cutting against the sky like swinging swords.
“A kingdom divided is a kingdom in danger,” I murmured.
He turned to me, wide-eyed, and for a moment I saw the child he had been, who I had held for too little time. “Can’t you help him?” he said plaintively. “My uncle. The wonders you’re capable of—there must be something you can do.”
I wanted to say of course I could help, that I would stop the world for him and lay my hands to Fate’s wounds until everything was healed. But I had sworn long ago, when he had looked at me through a glamour and I felt myself scrape the depths of my abyss, that I would never lie to my son again.
“You know as well as I, not a soul in the world can stop your uncle when he is set to a course of action. However, that means one important thing: we can choose what we do next. Be that for King Arthur, some other cause or ourselves. All we can do is listen to our honour, and answer with a true heart.”
Yvain smiled and I felt my words settle across him as comfort. Finally, I had been his mother at the right moment, and gave the honesty he wanted, when he most needed me.
Hope, in itself, was never a lie.