Knights of the Round Table 03 - Gawain Read online

  He sketched her a small bow. “God keep you,” he said, and turned to go.

  “Wait!” she cried, hurrying after him.

  “Yes?”

  “I—I—can I have a kiss?” Aislyn blurted out.

  Several people standing nearby laughed, and Aislyn’s face grew hot with mortification. Of course he would not kiss her. It was a wonder he could even bear to look upon her. Most men would not have endured the crone for even this long; why Gawain had was a mystery, and to ask for more was a risk she dared not take.

  Yesterday she had wanted nothing more but to see him lose control of his temper, but now, as he turned back, the grim set to his mouth filled her with fear. What if he sent her away to Orkney—or worse, to Lothian, where his mother dwelt? He could. It was well within his power, and no one would blame him in the slightest. The only thing preventing him was a promise.

  Men broke promises. They did it every day. Gawain had what he’d wanted from her: the king was safe. He’d have to be mad to keep her by him when he could be rid of her with just a word.

  He gazed down at her, then shook his head and sighed a little before bending to brush his lips across her brow.

  Aislyn looked down at the crone’s horny toes protruding from holes she’d cut in her slippers. She wiped her eyes across her sleeve as she retreated to the secluded turf bench where she had sat with Gawain. It was still in shadow at this hour and she sank down upon it, watching as the king and Gawain departed.

  It hadn’t worked. But then, it wasn’t exactly a loving kiss she’d had from Gawain. That he’d done it at all was a surprise—and a good sign, she told herself. She doubted he could have managed it the first day he’d met the crone.

  Me, she thought. I am the crone now.

  Don’t weep. It does not become one of your years.

  She had to act. And she would. She slumped against the back of the bench. As soon as she figured out what to do, she’d do it, but just now, she didn’t have even the beginning of a plan.

  The other knights lingered to talk to Guinevere’s ladies. The queen dismissed the two girls beside her as Lancelot approached. He nodded to them as they went, then cast himself on the grass at the queen’s feet.

  The light voices and laughter of the knights and ladies floated through the sun-splashed garden, mingling with the fountain’s song and the birdsong up among the branches of the trees. One merry group had gathered beneath the shade of a willow close beside the gate. Sir Dinadan was in the center, and between bursts of laughter, Aislyn caught the sound of his voice raised in song.

  —the clever wight,

  To guess the name of this noble knight,

  Who can talk the day into the night,

  Speaking only of himself, alas!

  He loves no one but himself.

  The queen bent over her tapestry frame and Lancelot closed his eyes, arms crossed beneath his head. Aislyn thought they looked like an illumination in a book: the lady and her knight.

  “What’s ado with King Aesc?” the queen asked. “I thought that was all settled long ago.”

  “It was, but now that Aesc has made peace with his kinsmen of Wessex, they are after him to repudiate his treaty with Arthur and join with them against the king.”

  “What, to turn traitor to my lord?” Guinevere said indignantly. “After all he has done for King Aesc!”

  “So far Aesc is standing firm,” Lancelot said, “and he is doing what he can to bring about an agreement between his kinsmen and the king. Still, Aesc is but one man, and you know how proud those Saxons are. There are many among his own people who are not entirely happy to be under Arthur’s rule.”

  “I’m sure my lord will sort it out,” Guinevere said vaguely.

  “I offered to go with him, but he would take Sir Gawain.”

  “Of course he took Sir Gawain. To get him away from . . . her.”

  “Have you found out why he married her?” Lancelot asked, lowering his voice.

  “Not a thing. And you?”

  “No one knows anything,” he said, and laughed. “Save that he must have done something awful to merit that. I wonder what it was . . .”

  “We are bound to find out,” Guinevere assured him. “Such a dark deed cannot be forever hidden.”

  “I suppose the king knows,” Lancelot mused. “And has forgiven him—of course.”

  “Of course. He would forgive Sir Gawain anything.”

  Lancelot turned over on his side and propped his head in his hand. “So that’s another tournament our first knight will miss.”

  Guinevere smiled down at him. “Poor Lance! Well, you’ll beat everyone else.”

  “I’ve already beaten everyone else.” He plucked at the grass. “And Sir Gawain refuses to fight me.”

  “It isn’t only you,” Guinevere said fairly. “He never accepts private challenges.”

  So he still held to that belief. Aislyn remembered him saying long ago that he thought them foolish. “A melee is one thing,” he had said then, “because that’s a chance to learn your strengths and weaknesses—and those of your companions. But these private jousts are all for show, and good men are sometimes injured—and that’s a wicked waste if they are called to battle.”

  She had thought it sensible then, though only now did she understand how unpopular an opinion that was to hold at court.

  Lancelot rolled over on his back. “Ah, well. He can’t avoid me forever.”

  “No, he can’t.”

  Aislyn sighed and began to lift herself from the bench, but she dreaded walking through the knights and ladies beneath the willow. Dinadan was still on his feet, and to judge by the laughter, his song was going over well.

  A shield that gives you strength tenfold,

  Presented by a maid in gold,

  Who did his beauty once behold

  And promptly fell down dead and cold.

  For he would not return her love, oh, fie!

  He loves no one but himself.

  Guinevere looked over at them, frowning, and Lancelot lifted himself on his elbows. “Why, that damned impudent—” he began.

  “Sir Gudrun is here,” Guinevere interrupted him.

  Lancelot waved a hand, beckoning to the tall, light-haired Saxon who had sat beside Sir Dinadan at Aislyn’s wedding feast.

  “Oh, Lance, must you?” Guinevere said. “He is so tiresome.”

  “Weren’t you listening to anything I said before?” Lancelot said as he scrambled to his feet. “He is King Aesc’s brother; now be—good day, Sir Gudrun!”

  Guinevere looked up at the Saxon, smiling. “We were just discussing the tournament. Will you compete?”

  “Oh, yes, lady,” Gudrun said. “I am to ride on Sir Lancelot’s side. Is that not so?” He nudged Lancelot in the ribs and they turned to look across the garden.

  He’s off to battle like a shot,

  With a sword, a shield, a lance, a—what?

  Oh, come good people, you must wot

  His noble name by now; that knight

  Who loves no one but himself—not he!

  He loves no one but himself.

  One look at Lancelot’s face was enough to prove that he, at least, wotted well the subject of Dinadan’s song. He and Gudrun exchanged a glance, then burst out laughing.

  “What?” Guinevere said, gazing perplexed from one to the other. “Do you find Sir Dinadan amusing?”

  “Oh, very,” Lancelot said. “Good day, lady, we’ve much to do before the tournament.”

  “Yes, indeed, we do,” Gudrun agreed, and the two of them went off together, smiling.

  Chapter 14

  It was a small company that set out for Kent to meet with King Aesc, chief among Arthur’s Saxon allies. A mere dozen men-at-arms followed the king and Gawain through the gate and down into the village. People lined the road as they went by, cheering and calling out greetings, which Arthur returned with somewhat less cheer than was his wont. As they passed into the wood, the king gestured for Gawain to r
ide ahead with him.

  “Is aught amiss?” Gawain asked when they were out of earshot of the others.

  “You tell me,” Arthur answered, looking at him closely.

  “Then no, there is naught amiss at all,” Gawain answered with a smile.

  “How you bore Dame Ragnelle yesterday was more than I could fathom,” Arthur said. “I think you must have the patience of a saint!”

  “She is a trial,” Gawain admitted, “but I think she has lived a hard life. It’s rather sad, really, that she finally has the things she’s longed for and is too old to enjoy them properly. I daresay I’d be ill-humored myself if I were her.”

  “That’s taking a very charitable view of the situation.”

  Gawain shrugged. “What else is there to do?”

  They rode in silence for a time, while Gawain tried to find some way to cheer the king. But there seemed no more to be said upon the subject of Dame Ragnelle, and though he attempted to turn the talk to King Aesc and the growing problem of his Wessex kin, Arthur was oddly subdued. At last the king made an excuse to ride back to the men-at-arms.

  Gawain was sorry to see him go, but at the same time, he was relieved. This was exactly why he had asked Arthur not to reveal the reason he had married Dame Ragnelle. The last thing he wanted was anyone else looking at him with that furtive pity and concern.

  Ah, well, he comforted himself, Arthur is a sensible fellow; sooner or later, he will accept what cannot be changed. Now that Gawain knew that Dame Ragnelle wasn’t about to press her marriage rights, he did not much mind her. Oh, she was still as ugly as the day was long, but even now he didn’t view her with the same revulsion as he had on their first meeting. And if she embarrassed him from time to time . . . well, at least she wouldn’t put horns on his head, as so many young brides had done to their besotted knights. If a bit of awkwardness was the worst she had to offer, he could live with it without too much distress.

  The forest gave way to neatly tilled fields, and the scents of leaf and mold to that of fresh-turned earth. A light rain began to fall, though the sun still shone to the east. For a moment a dazzling rainbow arced over the fields before the clouds parted and the sun once more beat down upon Gawain’s head. In the next field over, fat raindrops splashed upon brown soil, and the rainbow shone palely to the west before vanishing once again, only to blaze forth in the eastern sky.

  It was on just such a changeable spring day that Gawain had first ridden to Camelot, his heart filled with all manner of terrible forebodings.

  He had been weaned upon the tale of Uther Pendragon, who had murdered Gawain’s grandfather, the duke of Cornwall and Uther’s loyal subject. On that same night, Uther ravished the duke’s wife, Igraine, after having himself magicked into the duke’s likeness so Igraine believed it was her own husband she lay with. Nine months later, Arthur had been born.

  That Uther had truly loved Igraine, had married her, and made her queen of Britain might have absolved him of some measure of his treachery in the eyes of the world— but not in the eyes of Igraine’s eldest daughter, Morgause.

  Morgause claimed to have loved her father, the murdered duke. Whether she had or not, Gawain never knew, for he had known little of loving-kindness at his mother’s hands. It was hatred that defined Morgause, hatred first of Uther and later of the son he had gotten on Igraine. That hatred shaped the fate of Morgause’s husband, whom she urged to rebel against the newly crowned King Arthur. It had shaped Gawain’s, as well, when at fourteen he was wrested from his home and sent as hostage to Arthur’s court when the rebellion failed.

  Gawain had expected his wicked uncle to be malformed, no doubt as a result of hearing him constantly referred to as “that misbegotten brat.” But even if Arthur appeared to be a genial young man, he was still the son of the Pendragon, that personification of all evil. And Gawain was the grandson of the duke of Cornwall and Igraine.

  There was that between him and Arthur that could never be forgotten: the blood of a loyal man, the rape of a good woman, a stain of dishonor that could only be washed away by death. So let Arthur call him “nephew” and treat him with all outward courtesy, as though he were a guest rather than a hostage. Gawain was far too canny to be so easily deceived. They had been born to be enemies.

  Only . . . Arthur did not seem to understand that.

  It is a trick, Gawain had thought that lonely first year, as he held himself proudly aloof from Arthur’s overtures of friendship. He acts out of political necessity, he told himself the second year, when Arthur named him as heir and took him on progress. He is a fool, Gawain decided soon after his sixteenth birthday, when Arthur began to lesson him in battle tactics, though once he grasped the essence of Arthur’s strategies, he could not call him fool for long. And when he understood that, to Arthur, military victory was not an end, but only the beginning of his vision for Britain, he no longer knew what to think.

  That was the worst year of all.

  Gawain knew what he should think. Given their shared history, the odds were good that one day he would become Arthur’s rival for the throne. As he, Gawain, was neither halt nor witless, but a warrior of undeniable promise, Arthur had but two choices: have him killed or make of him an ally.

  Gawain supposed he should be grateful Arthur had not chosen the first path, though there were times during that terrible year when he almost wished Arthur had. Better to die than to betray his kin and clan.

  That Arthur was a kind and admirable man would have been bad enough—but not an insurmountable obstacle. There was no shame in respecting an enemy or even liking him. But Arthur was more than a man—he was a king like those of the old tales, as wise as he was strong.

  “We must put aside the old ways,” Arthur said to him one night, when they sat alone in his chamber over a game of chess, “the old blood feuds and hatreds handed down from one generation to the next. You have Sir Whatsis who argues with his neighbor over a disputed boundary—oftimes a matter of a few acres!—and so they come to blows, and before you know it, Whatsis’s son is at daggers drawn with his neighbor’s son, and so on and on. Of course, the argument is not always trivial . . .”

  Their eyes met over the board. Met and held for a long, long moment.

  “But the point remains the same. Why should we—why should any man,” Arthur went on deliberately, “waste his life in avenging wrongs that happened long before he was born? What purpose does it serve to compound an error into infinity? And who really suffers for it? The poor lads who go off to die over some stale quarrel they do not even understand—and the farmers whose lands are trampled, so come winter all go hungry. And when Sir Whatsis is needed to fight the Saxons, he doesn’t give his mind or heart to the real threat. No, he whinges on about how his neighbor got the better encampment—or that his men cannot possibly be stationed beside those men. Oh, it might sound like a mere annoyance, but when you have a dozen Sir Whatsises—a hundred—it can grind an army to a halt. And what, I ask you, is the point?”

  Before Gawain could answer that the point was honor, Arthur hurried on. “And then you have that Bruce Sans Pitié who feels free to help himself to any maiden who catches his eye—and no one dares to say him nay because he is a noble! Where is the justice in that?”

  Gawain opened his mouth to protest that every lord must hold sway over his own demesne, but Arthur gave him no chance to reply.

  “Don’t you see, we have it in us to create something entirely new—a Britain united under a single set of laws. And those laws won’t be based on some old man’s bile, but on justice—and not only for the knights and lords. Indeed,” he added with a wry smile, “I often think that if it comes about at all, it will be despite them. These old men with their old grudges—they cannot see beyond the ends of their own noses or grasp that anything is more important than their petty quarrels. But the future doesn’t belong to those old men, Gawain, it belongs to us, and together we can make of it anything we will.”