Chapter 41
Forty-One
Spring came, bright and mud-soaked. I packed away my furs and flung open the windows.
Camelot stood at the convergence of two rivers, and from the tower chambers I could hear their rushing hum.
The castle gardens were bursting with color, meadows ringing with birdsong.
For a summer child, the season was a wonder to behold.
Spring was a time for sowing and harrowing, and as I breathed in whorls of lily-scented air, the lengthening days felt like an extension of the expansiveness all around me.
I look back now with a pang. Our peace was short-lived.
I had not yet been knighted, but I had built a community, and beneath those bonds my grief grew quieter. For the first time since my training, I had true friends. Yvain and Morien, and to a lesser extent Bedivere and Kay. But also, to my constant chagrin, Sir Gawain.
“Come on now, Lancelot,” Gawain said, through gritted teeth. “Are you even trying to keep up?”
We were racing across the practice fields with massive hunks of granite. Gawain could lift more weight, but I had better endurance and our training sessions were always competitive.
“Shut your mouth, Gawain,” I strained.
“Never.”
“You are the worst,” I said.
“Not as long as you’re around.”
We crossed the line at the same time, our granite slabs shaking the earth. I wiped the sweat from my brow, bent and gasping.
“Another tie,” said Sir Kay. “Looks like the Knight of Maidens has met his match.”
The Knight of Maidens. That’s what they called him. Gawain was revered by women and a champion of women and he had courted quite a few. But he had yet to take anyone’s hand.
“Half the women I’ve courted were secretly plotting my murder,” he said.
“And the other half?”
“The other half I’ve yet to meet.”
Arthur passed by just then with a water gourd. He was not the strongest or fastest, but he never missed a practice. “Drink up, Gawain. And start your next station. No time to waste with idle chatter.”
“Lancelot is just as talkative.”
“No excuses, nephew.”
He took the gourd back and went on to the next group.
Gawain turned to me. “He has grown more serious. It worries me.”
“Because of Rome?”
He nodded. The mounting threat imbued our exercises with urgency. There were whispers of the legionaries working together, a mandate from Rome to find the grail within months. I could feel the shift as we practiced army formations, fearful of what an all-out war might look like.
“What’s worse, Arthur seems to favor you over me. I don’t understand it.”
He cracked a defiant smile, a clear attempt to goad me.
But his words rang true. Arthur trusted me to a fault, indulging my instincts when it came to the grail search.
But I was no Merlin. I had no powers of foresight, nor any unique skills.
I was good in tournaments, but so were others.
I did not believe I was special. I told this to Gawain.
“That’s why you’re his favorite. In that way, you are just like him.” Then, with a puckish smile, he added, “But it wouldn’t be the worst thing for you both to be more like me.”
Gawain was quick-witted, but beneath our banter bloomed a genuine connection. I had assumed his life was one of gilded ease, but his upbringing, it turned out, was far from conventional.
“I was abducted as an infant,” he’d explained.
“We were traveling by ship to my father’s kingdom in Orkney.
One of the crew took off with me in a small boat, presumably for ransom, but he died at sea.
A fisherman from Gaul found me and raised me as his own.
His name was Viamundus. On his deathbed he showed me the purple robe I was found in.
It bore the insignia of Camelot, and a precious ring.
I was twelve when I came here, and it took time to earn my place.
So you see, Lancelot, I was a boy with no name, too. ”
He sometimes wore the ruby ring on a chain around his neck, and I could see its contours now beneath his tunic.
I had unfairly lumped in Gawain with his brothers—Agravain, Gareth, Gaheris and Mordred.
Even as Gawain warmed up to me, those four continued to treat me with indifference, and, in the case of Mordred, flat-out disdain.
I tried to ignore them, but as the weather changed and our training intensified, our paths began to cross more frequently.
When we weren’t off on quests, we were all in the practice fields or the outdoor gymnasium, boxing, wrestling, running in armor, lifting granite boulders, building our bodies for war.
That afternoon, we were working through the stations. Wrestling was next.
“I’ll make a deal with you, Lancelot,” Gawain said. “If you win, I’ll show you something special.”
“I’ve already seen your new saddle for Gringolet,” I said. “And I don’t care.”
Gawain cracked a sideways smile. “Leave Gringolet out of this. He is a perfect creature. What I have to show you is something you have never seen.”
I was intrigued. Gawain was not one to play little games.
“And if I lose?”
“If you lose, you have to tell me what it is you and Guinevere are always talking about.”
Guinevere and I were spending more time together, and people, it seemed, were taking notice.
At night she would drop by my chambers, settle into the brocade chair and share whatever thoughts were on her mind.
Sometimes she spoke of surface things, the hunts and tournaments, the festivals, the dogs.
Other times she shared stories from her time in Rome.
It pained her to see her mother’s people pitted against the old ways.
Everyone wanted a part of her, but no one truly tried to know her. Not even Arthur, who had always been just out of reach. Yet his detachment, I believe, is why she loved him. As long as he kept her at a remove, she could construct a fantasy in the space between them.
In these visits, I spoke little. I listened. Our connection was entirely innocuous. I vowed to keep her words between us.
I also knew I’d beat Gawain in wrestling.
“Deal,” I said.
On the ground, pressed beneath him, I could feel the full force of his strength. Gawain was courteous in all things but wrestling. In the ring he became raw, unleashed, a blur of limbs. Now he nearly had me pinned.
I felt his knee digging into my thigh, his hands clamping my arms. He was hovering over me, face red, veins protruding from his temples, and I sensed the laughter in his gaze, an exchange of energy between us.
Was he allowing me to buck against him? To fight back just enough so we could press our bodies together?
Just as quickly, I thrashed away, flipping on top of him.
I caught him off guard and pushed him out of the circle. I won.
He reached for a towel, wiping the sweat from his whittled stomach.
He was wide-shouldered, muscular in a wiry way, with a long wingspan ideal for battle.
A body made for knighthood. I had not thought of another in this way since Galehaut, and I refused to dwell on it overlong.
I would settle for his friendship, the glow of his proximity.
Perhaps together we would find the grail.
Later that night he came to my room and sat in the same chair that Guinevere did.
“Nice chambers,” he said, looking around. “Not one but two crests?”
My room had been outfitted with the insignia of Benoic as well as a novel crest—a white shield with cerulean ripples. A nod to the lake.
“What do you want?” I asked. “Shouldn’t you be scrubbing your face or rinsing your hair or whatever it is you do each night?”
Through him I’d learned the language of backtalk, the connective power of barbs and wisecracks. No one did derision like Sir Kay, but Kay’s jeers could be mean-spirited. Gawain’s were little polished links in a chain.
“You won,” he said.
“The wrestling match? Are you still dwelling on that?”
“No, you idiot. I said if I lost, I’d show you something.”
I looked him up and down. His fingers drummed on the chair. He seemed, for the first time ever, slightly nervous.
“And you’re showing me… a washed-up knight?”
“The opposite actually.”
I raised an eyebrow. It was unlike him to come to my room, and even more unlike him to lord over a surprise.
He clapped the arms of the chair and stood abruptly. “It’s in the crypt,” he said. “Grab a lantern.”
A network of passageways stretched beneath Camelot, housing the many deceased knights, queens, kings, heroes and attendants who had populated the castle.
I had ventured down there just once before, with Guinevere.
She’d shown me the small ossuary of her favorite dog, Ginger.
I passed by it now, noting the fresh sprigs of rosemary surrounding the dog’s favorite bone.
“Why are you bringing me here?” I asked Gawain.
“Hush,” he said, putting his finger to his mouth. “We’re nearly there.”
Gawain guided us down the narrow hallways, torchlight glowing off the low-slung ceilings.
I breathed in the familiar scents of herbs and incense, aromas that whisked me back to the temple of the sisterhood.
We passed by jeweled reliquaries, a gold-leaf sarcophagus, various ornaments, statues and inscriptions. Finally, we stopped at a dark anteroom.
“It’s in here,” he said, extending his lamp through the archway.
The room appeared to be a mausoleum of sorts, older perhaps than the other crypts and tombs.
“On the back wall,” he said, matter-of-fact. Then he grabbed my hand and led me in.
What were we doing? What did he have to show me? I had never seen this side of Gawain before—eager, spontaneous, openly earnest. In the squeeze of his hand, I sensed a self-consciousness that mirrored my own.
At the far wall he wiped the dust from a stone inscription.
“Look,” he said, illuminating the words with the lantern. The etchings were faded. I struggled to parse through them.
“Sir Lancelot… of the White Earth?”
He looked at me expectantly, as if seeing my name might unlock a connection.
“I… is this…”
He wiped away a lower portion of the stone.
“Descendant of Nascien. Husband of Elinor. Father of Elaine,” Gawain read. “Your grandfather.”
I clutched my chest in shock. My grandfather had been resting beneath the very ground I trod.
“How did you find this?”
“I come down to the crypt from time to time,” he said. “I thought you’d appreciate.” He averted his gaze. “But it is too morbid.”
“No! Not at all. I’m honored to know my kin is here. I feel as if I am where I need to be.”
“You are where you need to be.” He gave me a quick, uncertain look, as if trying to assess how I’d handle a compliment. Then, just as quickly, his voice grew sonorous. “Well, I’ve fulfilled my promise. Time to head back.”
“Wait,” I said, grabbing his arm. “Show me what else is down here.”
“Oh, you mostly saw it. Reliquaries, sarcophagi, the like.”
“Your father,” I tried. “King Lot. Is he here?”
“He is.” Then, with a hopeful look, he said, “Would you like to see?”
He led me to a copper sarcophagus bearing the stone figure of a king at rest. King Lot’s ancestors were listed in a lengthy inscription.
“You have an even larger family than I thought,” I said.
“Imagine my shock,” he said.
“Did you know Lot?” I asked.
“No. He died before I arrived in Camelot. Arthur is more of a father to me.”
“And your mother, Anna. You are close with her, no?”
“Exceptionally close. In Gaul I did not have a mother, just a father in Viamundus. All those years, Anna had assumed me for dead. But when I arrived, she knew me right away.”
I had not interacted much with Gawain’s mother, Arthur’s elder sister, Anna, but from everything I’d heard she was sweet-natured and loving. I envied Gawain’s connection.
“I wonder if my birth mother would know me,” I said.
“Of course she would,” Gawain said without hesitation.
“Viviana was like a mother to me,” I went on. “And I had Elinor, my grandmother. But I did not know any other kin until my cousins Bors and Lionel came.”
“And they are back in Benoic now?”
“Yes. We’ve exchanged a few letters. King Claudas has seized Gannes. They worry what he will do next.”
“I’m sure they are fighting valiantly,” he said. “And if they are in danger, Camelot can help.”
“Can she, though?” I asked. “Arthur seems wary of confronting Roman allies like Claudas.”
Gawain pondered this for a moment. Then he said, “Arthur will act when the time is right.”
“But isn’t that time now?”
“Listen to you.” He laughed. “You freeze up at the sight of one rogue knight. Now you’re calling for war?”
He was right. The reality of violence was different from the idea of it. But I was growing restless. I wanted the legionaries to pay. With each passing day they went free, I felt like I was letting Galehaut down.
“I just want to keep my kin safe,” I said.
“So do I.”
Gawain looked to the inscription on Lot’s tomb, the lines of children and grandchildren, each with their date of birth. I spotted Gawain’s name, and my jaw dropped.
“Gawain!” I said. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Tell you what?”
“Today is May Eve. Today is your birthday.”
He flushed. “So it is.”
“You did not say a thing.”
“I do not much care for my birthday. And tomorrow is Maytide. That is the bigger celebration. And it’s Mordred’s birthday.”
“Well, happy birthday, Gawain,” I said.
“Thank you. We’ve thrown a nice party among the ghosts.”
His mouth formed a half smile, and a strange ache gathered in my ribs. We returned to the keep and said goodnight. I clutched my opal ring as I went to my tower.
Back in my chambers, I collapsed against the door and cried.