Chapter 43
Forty-Three
I awoke the next morning to the murmur of birds. Gawain was asleep on the other pallet. I had tried to wait up for him, but exhaustion won out. He must have been with Arthur deep into the night.
What had they spoken about? What were they planning?
Even at the center of Arthur’s orbit I still felt, at times, like a rogue planet.
If Guinevere knew I could not be with a woman, did Arthur know this, too?
Is that why he pulled Gawain away? To tell him, to warn him?
Such relationships were once considered normal, but now, thanks to the new ways, they carried an air of deviance, even in Camelot. I feared how others might react.
I tossed on my clothes and opened the tent flap. A dense fog rolled through the pavilions. I’d not seen such weather since the Isle of Women, and it was a welcome sight, not just to me, but to everyone. The late-night revelry made for a slow morning, and no one was in the mood to keep hunting.
Before the journey back to Camelot, we ate a light breakfast. Gawain did not sit next to me. Instead, he wedged himself between his brothers, regaling them with stories of his most daring quests.
Riding back I experienced increasingly frantic thoughts. Since arriving at Camelot, I’d kept my grief a secret. I’d hardly mentioned Galehaut to anyone. Some men loved men—I was far from unique. But in the shadow of the new ways, I began to question how this truth might affect my friendships.
Old tracings of madness wrapped around me like ivy.
Guinevere, I realized, controlled the narrative.
If she wanted to make Arthur jealous, she could play into the rumors about our connection.
If she wanted to dispel them, she could reveal to Arthur my true nature.
My envied position at the Round Table hinged entirely on her.
Perhaps it was Guinevere from the beginning, I now considered.
More than Merlin or my link to Viviana, she was the one who’d convinced Arthur I was worthy.
She was the reason I’d received such desirable quests and assignments.
It had nothing to do with my prowess as a knight and everything to do with her.
She saw through the glaze of rumor and prophecy. She saw, in me, a ball of clay.
These thoughts rattled around my head, taking on hues of crimson.
Should I choose to believe the worst about Guinevere, and myself? Or should I take a friend at her word? Even if the truth lay somewhere in the middle, I preferred the latter. If only there was a way to glean her intentions.
I thought of Morgan and her short stint as Guinevere’s attendant.
What had she seen? What secrets did she possess?
I couldn’t shake the feeling that Morgan knew where the grail was, but wasn’t that just what she wanted?
To assert her place in the story. To use me as leverage.
Maybe she and Guinevere were the same in that regard, though I hated to think it.
And where was Merlin in all this? Wasn’t he supposed to be Arthur’s trusted advisor?
I hadn’t seen him since the day he delivered me to Camelot.
No one seemed to know where he was. Morgan had made a compelling case against him, her distrust echoing others.
I shuddered to consider what would’ve happened if the pair had successfully stolen the grail sword.
I pictured that sword now. The gold-hewn guard, the spiraled pommel, the grip that fit perfectly in my hands.
The sword was the reason that Camelot felt so dreamlike to me.
I had seen it all before, in bubbled glimpses.
Those visions were pointing me towards something.
But what? The grail? I needed to find it.
It was the only way to secure my place in Camelot.
Without it, I’d live in a state of constant vigilance and uncertainty, bracing to be shunned at any moment.
And as for my heart’s deepest desire? It felt so urgent I could not even speak it.
I rode on, trying to summon each sword vision, starting with my beachside birth. The sword in the stone. The news of the grail’s disappearance. Gawain, kneeling in the chapel with a sword over his neck, a vision which had faded to green.
Gawain’s prophecy. The grail will not be restored without the firstborn nephew of the king. The golden grail will be held by the green one.
The green one. Gawain, with his emerald eyes, must be the green one. Could there be any other meaning? I went through the visions again, even the quick flashes. No one was wearing green. Nothing green jumped out at me, beyond, I supposed, the flash of the woman riding through a verdant valley.
I had only seen her from the back, but I remember she had a petite frame and long auburn hair, a leather satchel and a sable horse…
Morgan. I’d seen Morgan.
The golden grail will be held by the green one.
What if the green one wasn’t a person? What if the green one was another grail?
A grail within a grail. A grail within a vale. A grail within a green valley.
I spotted Gawain atop Gringolet, near the front of the group. I coaxed my horse into a gallop. Hoofs churning through the fog.
I knew where the grail was. And I needed Gawain to bring it back.