Chapter 39
The only jousting tournament Vera had attended was at the Glastonbury Abbey’s Medieval Faire, where there was also a man dressed as a jester who juggled one-handed while playing a plastic recorder through his nostrils.
Camelot’s festival was short a juggling nose musician, and the jousting was a far cry from the staged reenactments at the Faire.
Those entailed graceful unhorsings that ended up in choreographed sword fights on the ground.
Sitting on the sidelines with Arthur in the raised suite for royalty and nobility and watching bout after bout of real jousting had Vera alternately clenching her eyes shut or with them shocked wide, unable to look away.
Lances exploded into splinters, collisions sent riders flying from their horses, and there were plenty of injuries.
In Wyatt’s first bout, he took a lance right to the face shield of his helmet.
While there wouldn’t be any lasting damage, he was far worse for the wear.
Vera gripped the arms of her seat tightly as each run began, shrinking and cringing like she could sink through her chair if she pushed back hard enough.
Arthur noticed her tension and kept a firm hold on her hand. He distracted her with trivia and jokes. It was barely mid-morning when a server appeared at Vera’s side with a glass of wine. She took it out of politeness but was confused because she hadn’t asked for it.
“I thought it might help to take the edge off.” Arthur winked. The playful gesture was so handsome on his often-serious features.
There was no doubt to be had: Percival was the best jouster in the tournament. Barring an accident, he would win. He unhorsed his current opponent in one pass.
Tristan and Lionel fared well, too. Wyatt struggled after his unfortunate start to the day. He’d lost two matches now. Vera was sweating by the time Lancelot showed up near the lunch break.
“You aren’t jousting,” she said.
“No,” Lancelot said with distaste. “Jousting is stupid.”
“He’s not very good at it,” Arthur said. Lancelot rolled his eyes but otherwise ignored Arthur.
“I have an idea.” He drummed her chair’s arm with his fingertips, his eyes glinting. “An activity for all the folks who aren’t soldiers to do after the lunch break. Can you help?”
Vera grinned. What could he possibly have in mind?
She had none of Guinevere’s memories of Lancelot during the war, but Arthur had once said something that stuck with her.
“If it seems like I carry a heavy burden now, that’s how it was for Lancelot throughout the war.
He was a different man then. I wasn’t sure the person I grew up with would ever return. ”
But Lancelot’s appreciation for peace only served to bolster his spirit. When it wasn’t war, much of life was a game to him, from annoying Merlin to taking Vera to the pit after her first morning run to roping in a new knight to their party. So, Vera should have had some inkling of what to expect.
She and Lancelot set out to start the first ever rock, paper, scissors tournament in the history of the world.
They built a single-elimination bracket and spread the word that the people should gather.
Camelot liked games, evidenced by the pit’s popularity, and that was where they held their tournament.
It was conveniently close to the training-field-turned-jousting-stadium for the festival.
How often did the beloved king’s general, the war hero, Sir Lancelot, serve as emcee and referee for a brand-new tournament specifically for non-royals, non-nobility, and non-knights—a tournament for regular, ordinary villagers and travelers?
“Never,” Lancelot told Vera when she’d asked.
“We’ve never done anything like this, which, obviously, was madness.
” He gestured at the growing crowd. Nearly everyone not actively watching nor participating in the joust had gathered for the inaugural Tournament of the People (that’s what Lancelot called it).
He hopped up on the pit wall and shouted with impressive bravado.
“Gather ‘round, good people of Camelot and travelers from hill and valley of our great kingdom!”
“Ooh, very nice,” Vera murmured from his side.
He glanced down at her in satisfaction. “Good, right?” he said quietly.
“Hear ye, now! I present to you a game not for the likes of those skilled on a horse nor with a sword: a game for all. A game that will test the skill of your eye at reading the face in front of you, a game that will tire your hands and excite your hearts.” He lowered his voice dramatically.
“A game that, ultimately, can only be determined by fate.”
“All right, get on with it,” Vera said.
Obligingly, he did. In the same dramatic manner, he told the game’s rules: that they’d play “matches” of three games for each opponent, and he added rules that Vera hadn’t taught him.
“You must show your selection on the fourth slap of your hand. You’ll receive one in-good-faith warning, but after that,” he pointed emphatically in the air and paused for a breath, “your opponent wins that game.” As he wrapped up, he reviewed the rules with the crowd’s help.
“Is this paper?” Lancelot cried, holding his flat hand turned on its side with the fingers atop one another.
“No!” the crowd shouted in unison. Vera chortled into her hands.
“Is this paper?” He corrected his hand, flattening it out in front of him.
“Yes!” they cried.
Lancelot thrust his fist into the air and pronounced the tournament’s official start.
“Uh oh.” He hopped down from the wall.
“What?”
“Merlin,” he said, looking pointedly over Vera’s shoulder.
She heard him before she turned around to see him.
“What are you doing?” He held his face carefully taut, though a vein pulsed in his forehead.
“Playing a game,” Lancelot said, as if it were obvious. “Guinna taught me.”
Merlin pointed stiffly at the match playing out behind them. “That is not a game from our time, and you’ve taught everyone. You cannot do that. You can’t make up your own rules!”
“Oh, I see,” Vera said. “You’re the only one allowed to do that.”
He glowered at her as Lancelot, without so much as a glance in her direction, held his hand up to the side for a high five. Vera grinned and slapped it. Merlin visibly seethed.
“Aw, come now, Merlin. There’s no harm in it.” Lancelot gave Merlin’s shoulder a companionable squeeze. “I’ve actually got you slotted to play in the tournament, and you get a pass this round. What do you say? Automatically compete in round two?”
He huffed, fixing Vera with a disappointed shake of his head, but he gave up on arguing.
“Poor Merlin.” Lancelot sighed as the mage strode away. “Between the two of us, we’ll be the death of him. I’m sure of it.”
Vera might have felt guilty that they’d ganged up on him if she hadn’t just learned of his damn potions.
He deserved more than a little social discomfort.
But Merlin surprised her and actually showed up to play his round.
When he won the first two games of three, taking the match, Vera thought she saw the flicker of a smile as the spectators cheered their mage on with pride.
Lancelot intervened during match disputes when someone threw their pick at the wrong time or hesitated too long. He kept it light and kept Vera laughing.
“Now, now, now, wait a minute!” He charged in as some folks in the crowd grew heated at perceived cheating. “We, the convened, have a duty, nay—a responsibility to uphold the honor of this prestigious tournament. Are we without compassion?”
They all chorused a resounding no.
“Nay! We are not. As was discussed, we will give one warning.” Lancelot turned to the accused party. “All right, a reminder, lad: rock, paper, scissors, and then show your choice.”
The jousting finished before the rock, paper, scissors tournament, and all the knights and soldiers came to cheer on whoever remained in the game, throwing their support behind who was most local to their towns. They cheered loudly at victory and groaned when defeat came.
Merlin was the clear crowd favorite and progressed all the way to the final match before he was beaten in the third bout by a sweet elderly woman from out of town.
He laughed, something Vera had never seen, and hugged the woman in congratulations.
Percival, the joust’s winner, rushed to Vera’s side and pushed his prize, a golden peacock statue, into her hands with a glance at the woman.
“Are you sure?” she had to yell to be heard over the roar of the crowd. He nodded.
Lancelot announced the winner as she presented the woman with her prize.
Vera caught Arthur’s eye in the crowd, clapping with the rest. She saw pure, untarnished joy—certainly, for the day’s goodness, for the sense of community among his people—but this, what she saw right now, she knew to her core it came because of her.
Vera had never been happier in her entire life than she was right now, staring at Arthur through the crowd. He started toward her, and she tore her eyes away to congratulate the woman once more before turning back to him.
Vera knew what she wanted to say and felt a thrill of nerves course through her. “Arthur, I—” she said as he got close enough to hear, but he didn’t stop. Without breaking his stride, Arthur slid one hand around her waist, pulling Vera to him and kissing her without hesitation.
Her hands went to his chest, grabbing his shirt and clutching him to her as if afraid he might change his mind at any second.
When Vera felt the tip of his tongue tease a caress across her own, she gasped only to keep herself from moaning in pleasure.
She pulled back from him and pressed her lips together.
“I don’t know how I’m going to leave,” she said as soon as she trusted her voice, letting her selfish thoughts win out and feeling the heavy sting of guilt that followed. She had to get home to her parents—to her father. And she wasn’t Guinevere; she didn’t belong here.
Arthur was a master of his emotions, and Vera had become nearly as masterful at reading him.
She saw him try to tamp down his elation with a heavy swallow.
“I don’t want you to leave,” was all he said.
Her heart would have leapt were it not all fouled by magic’s intervention and Vera’s inevitable, necessary departure.
He kissed her—tenderly this time. Slowly. As he pulled away, he thought better of it, instead resting his forehead against hers. Such untamed desire in his eyes—ah, of course. The potion to make him want her. Arthur didn’t know he’d been drinking it. She had to tell him.
They had not even broken their embrace when a sound echoed through Camelot.
It was the multi-toned dissonance, its quality the contrast of rich and shrill, and its unnaturally loud volume planted a sense of dread in all who heard it.
It was a horn’s blast, but different from the one the day the boar got loose.
Arthur had told her of this horn, that it was made to be a siren.
That was the purpose of it, never to be blown except under the gravest of circumstances.
When it blared its torturous call, it was met with more terror than it would have received had it not come at a time when it could crush such brazen bliss. The cries were more panicked. Many people ducked as if the horn was a dragon in the sky, swooping down to set them aflame. Frenzy erupted.
Arthur tensed, but he did not immediately let go of Vera. He held her a fraction of a second into the turmoil, a frozen pool in the roiling waters, and kissed her once more—for Arthur knew what the horn meant. Whatever was coming, whatever reason the alarm was raised, it all came back to one thing.
Camelot … life, as they knew it, had ended.