THE WARRIOR QUEEN (The Guinevere Trilogy Book 1) (8 page)

“I had no idea my new queen would be so useful with a weapon.”

Arthur obviously had known no Breton women before he had met me.

He jumped off his horse to pick it up, and attached it to his saddle. I thought he would leap back up, but he smiled a little mischievous smile, taking me by the foot and with a little tug I did not expect, pulling me from my horse and into his arms. My horse did not seem surprised. Perhaps it was used to it. I imagined that this was a trick he had learned playing at boys games with Kay. But he was not playing games now. He let me drop to my feet, and gently pressed me against the tree beside us with a fierce kiss.

“You thought I would be some savage. Well, my lady, look at yourself, dressed as a man, with a bloodlust for pheasants.” He laughed, running a hand across my stomach under the jerkin. “All the ladies of Camelot were scandalised to see their queen going about dressed like that.” I supposed they did not like to see the bare skin of my arms, the flash of it at my back above the vest. I had thought that women in Logrys were covered from neck to ankle because it was cold here, but it must have been, also, from prudishness. He slid his hand up the back, pulling at the lacing.

I pushed him back, gently.

“Any one of your knights could come riding along.”

“Well, I don’t think it would bother Gawain;
he’s
a brute. And Kay has seen it before.”

I laughed unwillingly and gave him a half-hearted shove back. He did not give ground. He kissed me again and pressed himself tight against me. I could feel against my leg that he was hard. The feel of the skin of his hand on my back, bare beneath the shirt, was stirring longing for the touch of more of his skin on mine. He was strong, and insistent, and already I was relenting, when the sound of horses’ hooves tore him away from me. He stood back, looking around, waiting for the man and the horse, but none came. The sound came closer and closer until it seemed too loud to be natural, and then began to recede.

Arthur swung back up onto his horse and drew his sword in a second. He threw down his hunting horn to me.

“Stay here. If anyone you don’t know comes, blow twice.”

Then he was gone. I slung the horn around my neck and swung back up into the saddle. Arthur had pulled the straps of the jerkin loose and I could not reach to tie them up properly myself. It would have to do. I felt the tingling of frustrated anticipation all over me. I sighed deeply and looked up through the trees. The sun looked as though it was already dipping. Surely we had not been in the forest so long? We had left before midday. I waited for Arthur a while longer, and when it looked as though it was beginning to get dark, I blew the horn twice, but the forest swallowed up the sound. My only choice was to ride.

I took my horse slowly through the woods, looking out for light, or for men on horseback. I did not want to blow the horn again and risk scaring my horse, who was already beginning to seem wary and restive beneath me. I shushed her soothingly and patted her mane. She quietened a little. I tried calling out, for Arthur, Ector and Kay, but I only heard my voice echoing back. Eventually I came to a little clearing where I could see a figure lying by a little pool, asleep. I did not know the man, so I notched an arrow into my bow. I called out. There was no answer. I called again. I felt uneasy. The clearing gave me an awful feeling and in my panic I loosed the bow from the arrow. It hit the man – though I could not yet be sure he was a man since his face lay turned away from me, and he was curled in a lump – who howled with pain so loud I thought the trees shook. I jammed my hands over my ears, but I had to let them go to take the reins of my horse who was rearing and whinnying loud with distress. A harsh, sudden wind blew through the clearing, throwing debris from the ground up into my eyes. When the wind fell away and I opened them, the man was gone, and it was bright and before the pool stood, glorious, white and shining, the hart. It seemed to glow in sunlight that was suddenly bright as noon and it looked at me with an even stare. I was not going to kill the hart; I knew that as I saw it. Its presence seemed to calm my horse and I rode up to it. It let me stroke its soft, velvety muzzle for a moment, and then walked off. I watched it go, and wondered where the others were, if I had seemed to be caught in the dark because of the storm, or if the Otherworld was close to the surface in this wood and reaching out, gently, to warn me and reassure me all at once.

“My lady, you are lost.” I turned my horse to see who had spoken behind me, and saw standing there Nimue.

“Who was the man?” I asked.

Nimue shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. He was your future. The hart is your future. I am your future.”

“What do you mean?”

“And you,” she continued, as though she had not heard me, “Guinevere… the White Enchantress. What a name for a creature like you. The White Goddess of love and death. A destroyer of men. A bringer of greatness.”

I was shaken. She knew the meaning of my name and she seemed to know the same ancient gods my people knew. But nothing she said made any sense, and she spoke it all in a strange trance, as though she was not really there. I noticed only then that she was dressed in the clothes of a nun. I did not know what she meant, or if she were real, or just another hallucination of the forest.

“Blow your horn again,” she said.

I did, and at once I heard the hooves of horses. I expected Arthur, but out from the trees came Gawain. When I looked back to my side, Nimue was gone.

“I thought you were Arthur,” Gawain said gruffly.

“How disappointing for you, sir,” I replied curtly.

Gawain leant over and took my horse’s reins sharply in his hands, snatching them from mine. She whickered in protest. I considered docking one of my arrows. I held my hand. Since Arthur trusted Gawain I would trust him, but only for the moment. Besides, I had my dagger hidden at my side. Gawain drew my horse right up to his and grabbed my saddle at each end with each hand, the reins of both horses still held in the front hand. Like this he was leaning slightly over me, and I bent to lean away.

“You shouldn’t be riding about on your own,” he said. In his thick, angry voice I couldn’t tell if he was scolding or concerned. With the saddle he pulled my horse one step closer to his own, to him. I could smell him. He smelled of sweat, leather and blood. I could see rabbits hanging from his saddle. He had not chased just the noble white beast. I could not lean any further away from him without falling from my horse, and I did not want to lose her. Like this, my own face was just a hand’s breadth from his densely freckled one. I could see, standing away from his skin, the rawness of a rough white scar that ran across his jaw. My heart was beating fast inside me and I felt my whole body tense to fight. I would if I had to. Gawain slowly looked me up and down. “Well,” he said at last, letting go of my saddle and leaning fully back into his own, handing me back my reins, “you don’t look hurt.”

And he trotted off. He stopped at the edge of the clearing and turned back to me.

“
My lady
, you should not be riding about on your own.”

I had not understood. He meant for me to follow him. I suppose in his own strange way, he felt as though he was acting as my protector. We passed through the trees together in silence until we came to another clearing where Sir Kay, without his horse, was fighting three men on foot. He killed one as we arrived with a swift, hard blow across the neck, and when Gawain jumped from his horse, his own sword drawn, to help him, the other two were swiftly dead. The one Gawain killed died of a hard downward thrust to his head that split his skull. Kay stabbed the other in the stomach, then drew his blade across the man’s neck. They were all armoured in the same plain leather as Arthur’s knights, but wearing a strange badge of colours I did not recognise. Neither did Gawain or Kay. The men exchanged a few words together, Kay thanking Gawain for his assistance, before Kay swung up behind me on my horse. There was not room behind Gawain, though his horse was larger than my own. Kay put an arm around my waist, and took one side of the reins with the other hand. I did not really want to relinquish control of the horse, but half seemed as much as I could ask for. I was aware of the strength in his touch, too, though it was not the raw strength of Arthur, and beneath that the dark flavour of the Otherworld hung strong about him. I noticed that he and Gawain had come into the forest with their swords, too. Not just equipped for hunting. Neither of them seemed to be surprised that there were men in the woods who would want to attack them.

“Where is Arthur?” he asked Gawain.

Gawain shrugged.

“We can’t find him, and he seems to have left his queen behind.”

“Where did you leave Arthur?” Kay asked me, his breath hot against my ear.

“I don’t know – it seemed as though it was getting dark, and he thought he heard hooves, so he rode off. I blew the horn but he hasn’t come.”

I felt Kay nod behind me.

“It seemed to me that it was getting dark a while ago, also. What
is
this forest? How long have we been here?”

“It’s the fault of that little witch girl,” Gawain growled.

We rode on, in silence. I was conscious of my body pressed against Kay’s, wary of it, but his touch was light and gentle and I preferred him to Gawain.

Eventually, we broke from the forest, and it was sudden that we were thrust into bright noonday sunlight. I raised a hand and blinked against the brightness after the shade of the forest. There stood Camelot, grey and immovable before us, made in stone. Not like the living trees and living dreams of the forest. At the gates stood Arthur, holding his horse by the reins. When I saw him, I slipped from my saddle, leaving the horse to Kay, and ran into his arms. He gathered me up and kissed me furiously, burying his hands in my hair, holding me close against him. He held my face in his hands and I looked into his deep grey eyes. He had been afraid. He was breathing fast.

“I feared you were lost forever,” he said. I shook my head.

“I feared
you
were.”

He looked up and smiled, beamed out at Kay and Gawain.

“I thank God you two are both safe. That means we are all back, except Pellinore.”

I remembered Pellinore as a kindly older knight who everyone called ‘King Pellinore’, though he could hardly have been a king anymore.

The little Nimue slipped out from behind Arthur like a ghost and said in her sweet, reedy little voice: “You found your futures in that forest, your destinies. And Pellinore found his. His fate is to look always for the white hart. He will not come back.”

Then she was gone.

Chapter Eight

At dinner that evening, the knights all spoke the words of the oath, but the mood was sombre and thoughtful where it ought to have been joyous. They each laid a hand on my father’s wishing table and swore to be honest and true to Arthur, and to be protectors of women. Then we sat down around it to eat, though no one seemed very hungry except Gawain, who ate like a man who had been starved. Nimue, who had returned without a word, sat beside Merlin like a white shadow, nibbling at her food neatly, as though she had not just plunged us all into a forest of shadows and futures. I was angry; I wanted to shout. She had done something strange to all of us, and one of us was lost. No one spoke of Pellinore. They were afraid to under the steady gaze of her ice-blue eyes.

I did not ask what Arthur had seen in the forest, because I did not want to tell him what I had seen. I was afraid that the man I had killed at the pool was him, with my evil wish. I think what he saw was not good either, because that night he took me into his arms with a wordless urgency, and had me with the desperate passion of a man who has seen his own end. Afterwards, he lay still and thoughtful, gazing up at the canopy of the bed above. It was red as blood. I wondered if he was thinking of his Hanged Christ, and if this Christ would save him. He wrapped one arm around me, and I laid my head on his shoulder. I laid a hand on his chest and rubbed there, lightly. He looked down from his thoughts at me.

I reached up to touch his cheek. He looked weary and worried. Not like a youth of seventeen. He let me draw him down into a kiss. He looked at me as though he was about to say something, and then did not.

The next morning dawned a bright new day, and Arthur and the others seemed to have forgotten, or at least no longer be unsettled by, the magical hunt. Arthur rolled onto me in the morning with a smile, and at his kiss, and his touch, I slowly forgot the fears of the night and my dreams of the dark forest and the wounded man. By the time he was inside me, I had forgotten, and all I could think of were his muscular hands holding me, deep in my hair, behind my back, him going deeper into me. I sighed with him and as he rolled away, the day before seemed distant and already meaningless.

When I took my bath, Arthur went down to train with the other knights. That became the routine of our days. I saw him again in the evening for a meal, and then he would accompany me back to my rooms. The meals were smaller now that the wedding-guests who had come from the edge of Britain had gone back to their homes: the lady Igraine to her castle in Cornwall; Sir Ector to his lands in the west of the country; Morgawse and her youngest two sons, who I had not met, and one of whom must have been the ill-fated Mordred, to Lothian; Morgan to the lands of her husband Uriens; and many others that I never saw or knew. The Round Table was moved to Arthur’s council chamber, so that he could meet with his knights without all of those who ate at the low tables in the great hall overhearing. I was pleased, too, for I wanted to be alone sometimes with the table. It made me feel a little braver, a little stronger than I had before. It was a warm, early summer day when I found the room where it sat empty and walked around it, trailing my fingertips over the smooth wood. I closed my eyes, and thought of home, and it was not painful anymore. Home was a distant, happy memory in Carhais, but it was also here in Camelot, too. Here with Arthur.

I heard my name, softly, and turned around to see he was there. He looked handsome, having just walked in from training at fighting in the yard, a little flushed, his hair ruffled through, his sword by his side, the power of his muscular body visible beneath the light armour. I felt a flutter of daring within me at the sight of him. I stepped towards him and when he opened his mouth to speak again I rested my fingertips lightly against his lips. I felt a strange flutter of nervousness, for I had not yet been daring enough – nor needed to, from his eagerness. I could feel them soften under my touch as he smiled and, sliding an arm around my waist, drew me towards him. With his other hand, I heard him slide the bolt on the door shut behind us. I let my fingers fall away from his lips, and kissed him, soft and tender. I felt him sigh against me, and a yearning for the warm, sweet familiarity of our love grew inside me. I took hold of the buckle of his belt and drew him with me as I stepped back towards the table. I heard him laugh under his breath, soft with excitement. I ran my hands through his hair, feeling the softness of his lips against mine grow into a demanding kiss, full of desire, in response. He pushed me gently up on to the table, and I felt my limbs spread through with a light, tingling excitement as he pushed back the skirts of my dress. I flicked open his belt buckle and heard his sword clatter to the ground. He made a low noise of longing as I leaned back flat against the table, feeling the cool wood against the backs of my hands as I stretched my arms over my head. I closed my eyes, sighing back against the table, against the feel of Arthur’s hands running gentle but firm with desire up my legs. I whispered his name and he went into me, with a low groan, and I wrapped my legs around him, holding him closer. He leaned down and I felt his lips brush soft against the sensitive tops of my breasts where they swelled from the neck of my dress. I could hear him murmuring my name. I wound my hands into his hair and I felt myself grow light and bright and sigh with the bliss of our being together. Afterwards, we lay side by side on the table and I told him about my wicked wish, and unwished it out loud, right there, pressing my palms hard into the table. He did not seem upset, or surprised. I still dreamed of my home, but it felt distant now, and I had found something very like happiness with Arthur that I did not think I would have given up to go back to Carhais. Not now.

Just as the last leaves were falling from the trees, and the cool smell of winter filled the air, on the very edge of autumn, Marie reached into the bath and laid a hand on my stomach.

“What do you think?” I asked.

Marie shrugged, and Christine, who knew better about these things and had delivered children in her time, pushed her out the way. She pushed up her sleeve and thrust her own hand in. She made a noise of uncertainty, but she sounded less doubtful than I thought she would have done.

By the time the snows were beginning to fall, a light dusting of white over the land, there was no doubt. There was the definite little swell of a child. I was pleased that it was winter and I was dressed in many layers. I was afraid of losing it, and I did not want anyone to know too soon, except my women, and Arthur. He laid his head gently on the small mound, his ear to my navel, and swore he could hear the sound of a new king on the approach. He wanted a son, but I imagined a little girl, with his lovely grey eyes, who would be wild and wicked as I was when I was small. I could see how happy he was, the smile he could not keep from his face. I was sure he had told Kay, because when I saw Kay, he gave me a new, warm smile. Arthur and I could not keep ourselves from already spending the end of our nights, when we were both warm and sated and sleepy, and all of the candles had been put out, from staring up into the darkness and imagining what the child would be like.

Every nerve of my body felt filled with a wonderful, electric excitement. I could feel the sweet tingle of new life growing in me, and something else I dared not recognise too strongly – a dark sense of promise of the Otherworld.

I decided to go and wish for a healthy child – I would not wish for a son, for truly if Arthur wanted a child like Queen Maev then he would be better with a girl – on the Round Table. The stairs seemed endless, and more tiring than I had ever remembered, though all the other times I had been whisked along by Arthur, half leading, half carrying me to bed, and the child growing inside me made me feel more tired than I wanted to admit. I came to the room, Merlin’s room, half-way up. The door was ajar and I could see the repellent witch moving around inside. I moved on, pushing aside my uneasy thoughts of Merlin, up another flight to Arthur’s council chamber. It was empty. Good. I bolted the door shut behind me and climbed onto the table, then turned over to lie on my back. I stretched out my arms and felt the wood against the back of my hands, cool, smooth and old. I smelled it all around me. The smell of home. Of comfort, magic and Carhais.

I wish for a healthy child
,
I thought.
I wish for a strong child
.

When I went to sit up, I could not move.

I heard the sound of iron scraping on wood, and realised that someone was moving the bolt aside from the outside. My heart fluttered in panic beneath me. I tried to rise again, but I could not move my body; all I could do was open my eyes. I could see the door hanging open, but only the top part of the frame. Then, freezing me to the bone with horror, upside-down above me, leaning over me, the grinning face of Merlin. I tried again and again to move, but it felt as though all the power to move had been drained from my body. I wanted to scream, but there was no breath in my lungs. They too were still. I wondered if I would die. If he would kill me there.

“I’m sorry, my queen,” Merlin said, pushing back the black sleeves of his strange habit, revealing white arms, slack-skinned, but tattooed with the blue-green woad. His eyes above me peered wide and black, unnatural and irisless. His teeth unnaturally white against the blue patterns of his face. “I’m sorry, but this is Arthur’s destiny.”

He laid his hand slightly on my swollen stomach and I felt a pain blossom, hot and sharp, from there, into the core of my being. It was unbearable, and I could not even scream. My blood pounded in my ears, and I could feel a deathly wetness between my legs, making the heavy silk of the dress stick against my skin. Against the rushing and pounding of blood in my ears I heard a voice shouting. Through the pain I forced my eyes open and in the doorway I saw Arthur, his sword drawn in his hand. He swung it at the witch, and the man dissolved into the air as the blade cut through him, and against the cold of his disappearing being, Excalibur shattered into pieces.

Arthur lifted me in his arms and carried me up to his rooms. Through the pain I could barely see; I could barely move. I could feel the life and hope draining out; I could smell the acrid iron scent of blood. Someone stripped the dress from me and lifted me into a bath, but the bath filled with blood and I had to be lifted into a second. Christine was there, and Arthur. Those were the voices I recognised. There might have been others, or I might have imagined them. Dark shapes moved in front of my eyes, and I was limp and weak. I heard the cold, cruel voice of a woman who I could only think of as Queen Maev, though I knew it could not be she, and the little soft voice of the druid Nimue, and the voice of my father, as if from far away, although that in my head was indistinguishable from a voice I could only think of as the voice of the Round Table. It said
I’m sorry, I’m sorry
.

I woke in Arthur’s bed when it was, he told me afterwards, days later.

“Was it a dream?” I asked him.

He shook his head. His eyes were red, he had grown a beard that looked to be more than just a few days, and he did not look as if he had slept.

He leaned down and kissed my cheek softly.

“I am glad, at least, that you survived,” he said.

I only wept.

Arthur carried me back to my own chambers, and Marie and Christine wrapped me in my bed, while Margery made a cold cloth for my head. I only wanted to sleep again until I was no longer myself. I tried to tell myself that it was just a single child, that I would have many more, but I knew, and I knew Arthur knew from the look on his face when I woke, that the grip of that witch on my stomach had squeezed the life from my womb and closed it shut and we would never have hope of a child. From that day, I never bled again.