Chapter 38
Thirty-Eight
A tournament was held in Taneburgh the second week of February.
It was my first time traveling to Scotland, and the journey took us through a network of Arthur’s outer kingdoms. I would never get over the expansiveness of the land, the height of the mountains, the sunken depths of the valleys.
The wind. The cold. The stretch of pines.
Villages, alive with people, happy to hear news from the road.
I vacillated between awe and diffidence, trying to find the center.
When we lodged at allied castles and inns, strangers would approach.
Men offered unsolicited advice, women suggestive compliments.
Often there were children, hoping for a greeting.
I patted them on the head, doled out little tokens—pins, laces, a broken link of chain mail.
I knew what it was like to cling to such pieces.
They reminded me, with a tug, of my whittled figurines.
As we traveled home, I contemplated my own future.
I had acquitted myself well in Taneburgh.
I was beginning to see my own courtly worth, but had yet to be knighted.
Arthur had not broached the subject again, and I felt uncomfortable asking.
A part of me wondered if my friendship with Guinevere gave him pause.
At the sound of hoofbeats I turned to see her astride her palfrey. She eased into a canter beside me.
“Hello, love.”
She was coated in furs, face obscured beneath a veiled mantle.
We spoke breezily of the tournament, the generous accommodations, the effusive townsfolk.
Guinevere was an adroit conversationalist. She sensed what topics to broach and which to avoid, when to share, when to hold back, when to dig just a bit more.
She was fascinated with my childhood on the Isle of Women and my complicated relationship to time, which we’d now discussed at length.
It was only fair that she tell me of her past, too.
“You know what they say about me,” she said. “Bad when little. Worse when great.”
“You made that up.”
She laughed her deep raspy laugh. “I wish I had. I was a conniving little thing, always on the move. Mother from Rome, father from Gaul, raised everywhere. No wonder I am so often abducted.”
I covered my mouth in a sputter.
“You laugh, but it is true. No harm has ever come to me and each kidnapping is a welcome break.”
“From what?”
“From Camelot. From being me.”
In recent weeks, as Guinevere guided me around the city, I sensed her deeply etched ambivalence.
She was no longer taken with the castle’s splendor.
In fact, she seemed to gravitate to its earthier corners.
The dog kennel, the falconry, the mouse-infested aisles of the crypt.
These were the spaces where Guinevere lit up, her voice pitched high with enthusiasm. Look here. See this. Watch that.
“Perhaps for you those abductions are a welcome respite,” I said. “But I’m sure Arthur holds a different view.”
“Maybe he would if I bore him a child.”
She said this so blithely that I looked around, wondering if anyone else had heard. Guinevere often alluded to troubles in her marriage, but only when we were entirely alone.
“No one can hear me,” she said. “The others are far ahead of us and the only one behind us is Mordred.”
I could see Arthur’s youngest nephew cresting the hill, cradling his wounded shoulder from a lost joust.
“I’m sure he is in no hurry to catch up,” I said.
Mordred’s beloved, the Lady of Astolat, was still making overtures towards me.
I deflected her advances as gently as possible, but she continued to approach with sleeves, sashes, kerchiefs, and once, a girdle.
It was not uncommon for knights to receive such tokens, but I did not know what to do with them.
Guinevere found the whole thing amusing.
“Mordred must not be happy,” she said.
“He is displeased, but I do not know what else to do. I saw the Lady of Astolat again last week, and I finally told her I did not see myself as a wedded man.”
“How did she take it?”
“She asked to be my paramour instead.”
Guinevere exploded with laughter. “Oh, but I feel for her, the poor dear!” She sighed. “There’s no pain like unrequited love.”
“Yes,” I said. “Like a death.”
“Does the White Knight have personal experience with this type of love?”
The White Knight. A nod to Viviana’s surcoat. Guinevere had popularized the moniker and now most of the kingdom seemed to use it.
“In a way.”
“Please share,” Guinevere pressed. “A good knight does.” Then she added, “You must know you are one of the most handsome knights in the realm. The people speak of your beauty.”
I felt myself blushing. Some topics were not safe, even with her. I did not like the bards singing of me at all.
“You could have your pick of anyone,” she continued. “You could take lovers. This is what knights do on their quests, no?”
“Perhaps others,” I said. “But not me.”
She lifted her veil, taking me in beneath the swoop of her eyelashes.
I remembered my lake vision, the choking press of her hidden pain—and maybe it was not just her.
Maybe everyone carried around a slab of loneliness, cold inside them like ice-melt.
Some had bigger pieces than others and all were trying to melt theirs away.
A village poured into view over the hillside. I could see our party dismounting by a tavern.
“Tauroc,” she said. “A Camelot stronghold. An old fort still stands in the forest from long ago.”
“And here we are, just in time for the midday meal,” I said.
Guinevere dropped her veil. “I am never very hungry.”
Tauroc was a small town with a big, boisterous tavern. It was the perfect place to spend a cold afternoon. We warmed our hands by the fire and merged with the lively crowd, clinking mugs of ale and downing hearty bowls of stew.
In moments like this I surprised myself.
I was settling in to the life of the Round Table.
I was finding my way among a matrix of friends.
While I lacked the social grace of Morien or Gawain, I found that I liked being in big groups of people.
When I finally stepped outside for air, a vault of stars blinked cold in the dark.
The knights of the Round Table liked their wine, but I learned early on I could not keep up.
After two or three cups, my thoughts turned grim, and I woke the next day with a frenzied heart.
But now, outside the tavern, I welcomed the wine’s abiding flush.
The air was frosty—I could see my breath.
But the wind carried hints of thawing, and soon, my first real spring.
I strolled down the empty road, taking in the shops and homes.
How I wished Galehaut were here, walking by my side.
He was better suited to all this, more comfortable with the grandeur and ritual, the competing social layers.
Even snotty Kay (whose ribbing I now secretly appreciated) would be eating from his hand.
I had the prophecy, but Galehaut had the grace.
If I could only find the grail, maybe—
No. Merlin had dispelled such a fantasy. The grail cannot bring him back.
But what if Merlin was wrong? I was determined to find the grail so that the Roman legionaries would never know its power. Yet I also knew my heart’s deepest desire was to be with Galehaut. The mysteries of the grail were beyond even the sisterhood.
I clutched the opal ring, mind slipping back to the Isle. I could touch the fog, taste the salt, feel the grains of sand in my bed. The forest scents filled my lungs, aromas inseparable from Viviana. I longed for our walks, the slant of light just before sunset.
These thoughts had ferried me to the edge of the village, and now I stood before the last house on the path. Emboldened by the wine, I borrowed a lantern hanging from a peg and ventured into the forest.
I wandered, I do not know how long. When it came to excursions and quests, I had taken to following my intuition, trusting that the prophecy might work through me if I let it.
Sometimes I veered off on my own, chasing portents: a white hart, a fox, the sudden glow of a water nymph.
But they were creatures, nothing more. The nymphs? A trick of the light.
I was deep in the woods now. No sign of the road. A realization hit me. I was lost.
I removed my dagger, marked a tree, and walked steadily for ten minutes in one direction until the brush grew too thick to navigate.
I turned around and tried other directions, but felt like I was now hemmed in.
The warm flush of the wine was wearing off, and I shivered in my thin cloak.
Why had I not grabbed my furs? I thought, as my mouth grew parched.
I scanned for a stream, but the forest floor was hard and dry.
Should I build a shelter, wait for daybreak? I turned back yet again, but now even the marked tree was nowhere to be seen.
I looked about in flares of panic. I began to call out.
My cries were answered almost immediately.
“Are you lost?”
I spun around. A woman stood before me. In one hand she held the reins of a sable horse.
In the other a lantern, which illuminated her arched brows, gaunt cheeks, a clenched jaw both striking and severe.
She seemed neither old nor young, and in the windy twist of the lantern, her features kept shifting, beautiful from some angles, frightening from others.
“Yes,” I managed. “I am looking for Tauroc.”
“It is very late and you are far from there.” Her voice was somber, a dirge. I could feel it in my spine. “Who are you?”
“I am Lancelot of the Lake. I ride for Camelot.”
My name elicited no reaction, just a frightening stillness. Instinct told me to run, but I did not know where to go.
“I mean no harm,” I added. “If you could point me towards Tauroc, I will be going.”
“It is that way.” She lifted her arm. “But you would be foolish to navigate these woods at such an hour. Take a pallet by my hearth.”