Chapter 34
Thirty-Four
I stepped into the frozen arena, my breath forming clouds. A packed audience, music and shouting, bright banners fluttering against iron-gray skies. As my boots crunched through the frost-clung grass, I knew I should have been enthralled. I was about to live out a lifelong dream. But I felt dread.
I’m afraid I have some terrible news.
A herald announced my name, and to my surprise the crowd cheered.
As I walked my horse to the royal box, following the formal protocol I’d been taught, I felt the urge to lay down my arms. Bagotta had shown me how to channel my rage.
But what to do with emptiness? How to channel lack?
I was so entwined with Galehaut, I could hardly fathom that she was gone now, too.
Sir Gawain entered the field and the crowd erupted again, even louder. They knew me, but they loved him.
I hope he kills me. I hope I die.
Next to Arthur, in a high-backed chair, sat his sister Anna.
By all accounts, she was a kind and caring woman, beloved by her many grandchildren.
She was not in fact a Pendragon, but Arthur’s half sister.
They shared a mother, but Anna’s father was King Gorlois.
Galehaut used to pepper me with questions of Arthur’s lineage, a family tree I knew from A History of Camelot.
I’m afraid I have some terrible news. The memory clouded my vision, transported me.
Giant’s Island has been seized.
The words, I recalled, had barely reached my ears. I was too bewildered by the fox becoming Merlin to comprehend what was happening.
Bagotta and Galehaut are—
No. I willed myself not to hear it. If I didn’t hear it, it would not be real. Viviana’s grip had tightened around my arm. She would protect me from this. She would make these words not be true.
And the other sister? Galehaut would ask of Arthur’s relations. Curious, ever curious. Tell me of her.
Her name was Morgan, also begotten of Gorlois.
Stories of her were plentiful, even in the Distant Isles.
Morgan le Fay, they called her. The Fairy.
She was known for her special skills in astronomy and maths, as well as medicine.
She too was a descendant, I now realized.
Had she derived her powers from the Isle of Women?
None of the sisterhood ever spoke of her.
Perhaps she had obtained her skills in other ways.
But how? Morgan did not live in Camelot, but I was surprised she had not come for an event such as this.
Viviana had let out the howl, not me. I was silent. I did not cry. I had to focus on Galehaut’s arrival. At any moment he would round the cove.
Shouting. The tossing of blame.
It was not Lancelot’s destiny, said Merlin.
What do you know of destiny! Viviana screamed.
He must go to Camelot before more damage occurs.
Queen Guinevere rose from her favored seat and flowed down the stairs.
The cheer that accompanied her walk across the field eclipsed even Gawain’s.
Camelot loved Arthur, they loved Gawain, but their adoration for Guinevere was unparalleled.
Bards sang of her beauty, but scribes wrote of her intelligence, and I could tell, from the sharpness in her eyes, that she saw everything.
She kissed Gawain on both cheeks and affixed a gold brooch to his surcoat. Then she came up to me and my throat went dry.
“I’m afraid I have no such token for you,” she said.
Her voice was full-bodied yet gauzy, like bark coated in moss. She leaned in to kiss me on the cheek, her mouth carrying a sweet almondine scent. I felt a tickle at my ear.
“His hip is weak,” she whispered. “Go for his left side.”
They are dead, Viviana. Brunor, Bagotta, Galehaut and his sister… all of them.
The shouting had escalated. Emergent threads of a much older argument. Even still my eyes strained to the horizon, looking for his boat.
I led my horse to the starting point. Some of the spectators were calling out my name, cheering me on.
Their voices were water. I braced against the memory of that night on the beach, but it kept pummeling me in obliterating waves.
I had no desire to joust. I was already nursing what felt like a fatal wound.
And it was my fault. I had tried to defy the prophecy and look what happened. I was the reason Galehaut was dead.
Across the tilt, Gawain was holding two lances, judging which to use. He was tall and lean astride his horse. Let him kill me, I thought, as a squire handed me my own blunted lance. I leveled my shield and felt like a fool. I hated this. I hated it here. I hated the fact that I ever existed.
Go ahead and use it.
I looked over my shoulder, the words crisp in my ear. Bagotta’s voice.
Use your grief, Lancelot. Try it.
Use my grief? Impossible. It was too dark and heavy, too diffuse to grab.
Go further then. What else is there?
I almost laughed. What else? There was nothing else. Only guilt and emptiness. There would only ever be guilt and emptiness. And I despised it. The wrongness, my wrongness.
Is that anger?
Of course it was. I was angry at myself for trying to evade the prophecy. For believing I could be happy. I was angry Galehaut was dead and I was alive.
I stared across the tilt through my eye slit. When had I lowered my visor? I closed my eyes. I could feel the glowing red wedge inside me. Furiously, I began to pull it apart.
A horn sounded, and suddenly I was moving.
Gawain got out faster than me, a full charge, but I was building speed, and could feel the tension glowing through my body, igniting me.
I leveled my lance and braced my shield.
I let out a primal scream. The wound was open; it would not close.
It would never close. I would live in this pain forever and my life would not be the same.
The crowd blurred, the field thudded beneath me.
A rushing river of guilt and grief poured forth, drowning the arena.
My horse’s hooves were pounding in my ears, and I missed Blake.
We had not said goodbye, but I felt his energy now, pulsing through this horse, reaching across seas to carry me beyond the tilt.
As Gawain hurtled towards me, I aimed for his weak left hip. With all my strength I reared back and thrust towards him.
A metallic clatter, the ring of his lance near my shoulder. He’d missed. I had not.
I looked back and saw Gawain on the ground, a pile of armor and splintered wood. He was completely motionless.
I just killed Sir Gawain. A passing thought, a thought that floated.
Then the redness went to black.