Chapter 58
Fifty-Eight
Back in Camelot, Guinevere looked out her oriel window one last time. She peered across the smoking chimneys, the rivers, the pastures and farmlands and distant bristles of forest, trying to etch the vision into her mind.
Soon it would be Yule, her favorite holiday.
Families across the kingdom outfitted their hearths with blocks of heavy oak.
They burned these blocks for twelve days, then their ashes were dusted across the fields and fed to cows and chickens.
The remains of the block were tucked beneath beds until the following Yule, when they were used to light the next.
She would miss Yule in Camelot, when mistletoe adorned each entryway and evergreen trees, baubled with gold moons and stars, graced the castle’s many halls.
There were other things she would miss as well.
The gowns and jewels, the Roman intaglio that reminded her of home.
She’d miss the wood-chipped scent of the mews, the silence that befell the castle at night, the banks of light that streamed into Arthur’s chapel, refracting tiny rainbows off the hanging votive crowns.
She’d miss the fountains, the gardens, the scent of cowslip.
She’d miss the dogs—oh dear, would she miss the dogs—the way Arthur let them run through the castle.
She’d miss Arthur. In truth she had missed him for a very long time and she always would.
With the pad of her finger she touched the sharp edge of a dagger.
She placed the back of the blade to her neck and pulled her hair taut against it, straining until the locks fell limp in her hand.
Then she tied them with a purple ribbon and set them aside.
The rest of her hair she sliced away and let flutter out the window.
Camelot could have it. But the first tethered locks, strangled as they were by the purple ribbon, she would leave for Arthur.
She prayed he would make it home to receive them.