Chapter 55
Fifty-Five
Galehaut and Tristan were knighted the next day in a double ceremony.
Between my effusiveness and Isolde’s forthright entreaty, Arthur took little convincing.
In exchange for their fealty to the Round Table, their forces would receive a generous compensation in silver.
Arthur knew this would deepen the fracture between the two kingdoms. He didn’t care.
He was growing bolder, more receptive to belligerence.
If the near miss the day before was any indication, Camelot could not sit idly by while the old ways burned.
As Galehaut and Tristan knelt before Arthur, I kept searching the audience for Gawain, but he was not there.
It was unlike him to miss such a momentous knighting, and people were asking me where he was.
I told them I didn’t know, maybe he’d overslept, maybe he was under the weather.
Yes, his absence was worrisome, yes, he did push himself too hard, yes, someone should check on him after this.
I knew that someone should not be me.
As Arthur’s blade moved from shoulder to shoulder, I saw in Sir Tristan a bit of my own former wide-eyed bewilderment.
He was a young knight, an orphan like me, trained, at one point, by Merlin himself.
He would stay at the castle for the time being, along with Isolde, and it was good they had each other.
There would be days when the profusion would feel jagged and isolating, but in time they would absorb its rhythms, and one day they would wake up and their old lives would seem like the fragments of a dream.
They would be different people, maybe better people. And Camelot would feel like home.
The ceremony concluded and Galehaut found me through the swarming crowd.
His sudden surrender and Tristan’s capitulation made them instantly popular among the Round Table.
Everyone loved when a foe turned friend.
Everyone except for Galehaut’s uncle Dinadan, who stood at the platform’s edge.
When Galehaut greeted him, he refused to take his hand.
“Your father disgraced us,” said Dinadan. “I hope you won’t.” He looked us up and down, as if we were flecks of filth. I felt the urge to punch him in the face. Fortunately Sir Kay, observing the exchange, swooped in.
“Sir Dinadan, you’re needed in the stables.”
“Is it my colt?”
“A turn for the worse, I’m afraid.”
Kay ushered him off the dais and looked back with a grin that confirmed Dinadan’s horse had taken no such turn. Welcome to Camelot, he mouthed to Galehaut.
There were other knights for Galehaut to meet and measurements to be taken for armor and silks.
It hurt me to part with him, even for a moment, but the past two days had caught up with me, and I needed to lie down.
I was delirious, giddy—bordering, I worried, on madness.
I climbed the stairs to my tower and opened the heavy oak door.
Gawain was sitting in the chair by the window.
“How was the knighting?” His voice was neutral, inscrutable. The sight of him cinched my lungs.
“Very grand.”
“I would imagine. A double knighting is rare. Almost as rare as coming back from the dead.”
He was dressed finely, in his best samite, as if he had made it halfway to the ceremony but thought better of it.
“You didn’t come.”
“No.”
It was neither an apology nor an invective. I didn’t know if I should sit or remain standing, didn’t know how to hold my face or what to do with my hands. I felt like an intruder in my own room.
“I’m still in shock about all of this,” I said, taking a seat on the edge of the bed.
“It’s quite the turn of events.” He let out a little laugh, and for a moment I felt a flutter of hope. Maybe we could somehow work through this.
“How was last night?” he asked.
The question was a sharpened blade. I didn’t know how to respond. He pressed me with his silence.
“It was emotional,” I said.
“Because you still love him.”
He spoke without guile. He was simply stating the truth. I could only respond in kind.
“I never stopped.”
He looked down, said nothing for a moment. I could tell my words had shattered him. Finally, he looked up.
“I understand.”
I did not deserve Gawain’s magnanimity. Not after my kiss with Galehaut. The guilt tightened like an olive press.
“I still love you,” I said.
“I know you do.”
“So where does that leave us?”
“You are asking me as if I get to decide,” he said with a cutting laugh. “You loved him first. But you are not the person you were on the Isle of Women. If you ask me, you’ve lived too much to go back.”
I sat with his words. I could barely look at him. I tried to tell myself this was not my fault, that I had not asked for this, but that was not true. Even if I had not secured the grail to make it happen, Galehaut’s return was all I had asked for—my heart’s deepest desire.
“I am in an impossible position,” I said.
“Are you looking for my pity?”
“No.”
“Then tell me what I should do.”
A familiar madness was rising from a long-dormant place. I went to the window, looked down at the converging rivers, wondering what it would be like to fall from here, to jump.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I can’t tell you what to do. And if you care about me, you will… you will give me time.”
He joined me at the window, placed a hand on my shoulder. In the light of day, I now wondered how I could ever go back to Galehaut. But the night before it had felt so easy.
“Time is the one thing we may not have.”
He kept his gaze fixed forward. My panic burbled to the surface.
“What does that mean!”
He jumped back, startled. “Get a hold of yourself.”
“What does that mean?” I repeated more softly.
His lips parted, but before he could answer, a knock at the door stopped him.
“Lancelot? Is this your room?”
The door creaked open and Galehaut gingerly stepped through the threshold. It took him a moment to see us by the window, and another to realize the full weight of the scene.
“Oh,” he said. “I have interrupted… I’m sorry.”
He turned to go, but already it was too late. He was too observant, he knew me too well. The nature of my connection with Gawain was written all over my face.
My vision began to tilt and waver. I could feel the sweat gathering on the back of my neck, sense the hairs on my arms sticking up. I grabbed the side of the window to keep from collapsing.
Noticing my distress, Gawain did what I could not. He called out to Galehaut.
“Don’t go yet, Sir Galehaut. Lancelot said you were coming up. I’ve been waiting for you.” He cut across the room. “I’m Sir Gawain.”
He pulled him in for a handshake and two kisses, and suddenly he was the Knight of Maidens again, the courtly Gawain the bards sang about. His alacrity caught Galehaut off guard.
“Forgive me for missing your ceremony,” he continued. “I took my mother to the temple of Danu.”
“Of course,” said Galehaut.
“May I make it up to you? I can show you the grounds later today. Do you hawk?”
“I… yes.”
“Our mews are the finest. I prefer the gyrfalcons, but we have goshawks and a rare aquila eagle.”
“I see,” he said, obviously wary of Gawain’s intentions. “Yes, I should like that.”
Could they actually be friends? I pictured Gawain escorting Galehaut around Camelot, taking him under his wing, showering him with every kindness.
Gawain would go out of his way to choose Galehaut for a questing partner, to prove that they could coexist without issue, to confirm that he was not Galehaut’s rival, nor his enemy, that he was his jovial competitor in everything except the hearts of men.
In time, Galehaut would open up to him, and as they drew closer, their connection would deepen, and then and then and then.
I let the nightmare play out. It didn’t matter who I chose.
I would lose them both in the end, because I had never been worthy of either.
I’d spent this time fooling myself, indulging in the prophetic whispers of a madman.
But no. I was the madman. I was always the madman.
I had been since the day I broke the harp.
I could never have two hearts. I was always destined to be alone.
“Lancelot, are you unwell?” asked Gawain.
I clutched my chest, straining to breathe. I was a boy again, on the Isle of Women, gripped by a loneliness that felt like drowning. This was wrong, everything was wrong. I began to panic.
“Lancelot?”
“Please,” I said, as they crowded me. “Stand back.”
Their faces began to blur, until I suddenly wasn’t sure who was who.
“Lancelot.”
I leaned out the window, sucking in air.
“Lancelot, get away from the window.”
I looked down. The fall would kill me, but as I pictured myself careening through the sky, I felt a momentary relief.
“Lancelot, please. You’re scaring us.”
I slammed the window shut and scrambled to my trunk.
I donned a fur hat and swung my cloak over my shoulders.
I knew this feeling—a sustained scream in my body.
I had to outpace it. I sprinted out of my room and raced to the stairwell.
I needed to get out. Out of the castle, out of the city, out of the kingdom.
I could not stand to be in Camelot for another second.
I feared what I might destroy if I stayed.
As I flew down the stairs, I could hear them behind me, calling my name.
“Lancelot, what are you doing! We must get someone. A healer. Quickly.”
I ignored them. I was doing them a favor. I’d protect them by leaving. Morgan thought Merlin traded in mayhem, but the true agent of chaos had always been me.
I cut through the great hall and broke into a sprint, accidentally knocking over two attendants carrying a fully roasted swan.
The silver tray crashed to the floor, splashing me with gravy and verjuice.
As I stumbled away, the swan no longer seemed a thing to be eaten, but alive again, just barely, and calling out my name.