Queen of the Summer Stars (2 page)

The Summons

I, Guinevere, wife of King Arthur and High Queen of Britain, dashed around the corner of the chicken coop, arms flying, war whoop filling my throat. The children of the Court were ranged behind me, shouting gleefully as a half-grown piglet skittered across the inner courtyard of the Mansion. The paving stones were slippery from a morning shower and the squealing shoat skidded into the kitchen doorstep before careening off toward the garden.

“Not again!” I howled, throwing myself on the creature just as a stranger stepped through the door.

With a flurry of bunched muscles and flailing trotters the porker squirted out of my grasp, leaving me red-faced and breathless. Brushing my hair out of my eyes, I looked up to find a small, mud-spattered priest staring down at me in astonishment.

“Your Highness?”

I grinned at the tentative greeting and scrambled back to my feet. Heaven knows what he expected of his High King’s wife, but I was what he got.

“What can I do for you, Father?” Beyond us the shoat had wiggled through a hole in the fence, followed by the jubilant youngsters who raced across the vegetable patch. I winced as an entire section of cabbages was demolished.

“I’ve come from the convent, M’lady…where the Queen Mother lies ill…”

Watching the mayhem in the garden, I was only half listening until I realized his message concerned Igraine. Turning to look at the holy man more closely, I saw for the first time the seriousness of his demeanor. “How ill?” I asked with alarm.

The man’s voice was husky. “She’s been bedridden for weeks, but it wasn’t until yesterday she agreed to notify you.”

It was so like Igraine not to make a fuss. Already frail and weak when Arthur and I had married, she’d gracefully declined my suggestion that she stay with us, preferring to return to the convent where she’d retired after Uther’s death. She promised to send word if she needed anything, but this was the first time such a message had arrived.

Wiping the mud from my hands, I squinted toward the gate. “Arthur’s off fighting the Irish in Wales. It’ll take days—maybe weeks—to get the news to him.”

“She didn’t ask for her son, M’lady. She asked for you.”

I paused at that, wondering if the whole world knew that Arthur and his mother avoided each other. If so, the people made no mention of it, for they loved Igraine in her own right and would say nothing to cause her embarrassment. It was part of the unspoken magic that surrounded her.

The priest pursed his lips and studied his hands primly. “There is something she wants to tell you and she refuses to confide it to anyone else. So the sooner you can come…”

“Of course,” I promised, untying my apron and wadding it into a ball. “I’ll leave immediately. Do you wish to stay here in Silchester, or come with me?”

“I’ve been on the Road for a day and a half, so the rest would be most welcome.”

I nodded and thrust the apron into his hands before heading for the stables.

Ulfin was the old warrior who had been left in charge of the houseguard during Arthur’s absence, and he chewed thoughtfully on his lower lip when I told him the news.

“I’ll see to everything,” he assured me, so I changed into traveling breeches and arranged for Brigit to run the household in my absence while Ulfin gathered a guard of four young men and readied Featherfoot for the journey.

“The lads I’ve picked are sharp and well trained, M’lady.” He frowned fiercely at the buckle as he secured my things behind the saddle. “But I should like to come with you—’twixt Saxon and Irish prowling the woods, there’s plenty who would be happy to take the High King’s wife hostage while he’s away.” He made the sign against evil before turning to face me. “I was Chamberlain to King Uther and have known Her Highness from the days before she and Uther were married, so I’d like to be there—in case there’s any final service I could provide.”

The catch in his voice brought home the realization my mother-in-law might be dying. My eyes brimmed with sudden tears and I turned to Uther’s Chamberlain in panic.

Ulfin put his arm around my shoulder and steadied me with a fatherly embrace.

“I feel so helpless.” The words squeezed around the lump in my throat. “If only Morgan were here—she’s the one versed in healing. Why, I can’t be of any use if…if…”

“Of course you can.” Ulfin’s voice was stern and confident, “The Queen Mother’s as fond of you as though you were her own daughter, and the chances are she doesn’t want to be healed, but eased into death with a loved one near. The sooner we get started, the sooner she’ll be comforted.”

I nodded mutely, hoping he was right. Birth and death are as much a part of life’s tapestry as singing and dancing and gathering up after war, and to avoid them is to avoid being human. But the idea of losing Igraine opened a terrible, sad ache inside me.

***

We rode silently through the town, past half-ruined houses and empty shops. Like most Roman things, they were only partially used, for the years of decay since the Time of Troubles had taken their toll. I’d never been as comfortable in the stiff, square buildings of the Empire as I was in the thatched roundhouses and wooden halls of my youth, and now the half-deserted town added to the bleakness of my mood. When we passed the outer earthworks and headed down the Road to Bath, I pulled my cape tighter around my shoulders and concentrated on the dearest memories of my mother-in-law.

When we’d first met, she was beautiful and serene—the very embodiment of queenly dignity. I’d stood awestruck before her, a rough northern girl, plain of face and awkward in manner, with no idea what was expected of me.

Used as I was to the freedom of Rheged’s mountains and valleys, this marriage was none of my doing. I’d had no desire to learn Latin, or wear dresses, or go south to marry that new High King. Angry, rebellious, foiled in an attempt to run away, I had not gone willingly to my fate. But personal desires are rarely considered in political marriages, and no one seemed to care how I felt about the matter. No one, except Igraine.

She’d come out of retirement to greet her son’s bride and shape my future as surely as Merlin shaped Arthur’s. I was—and sometimes still am—too outspoken to please most nobles, and my life at the High Court could have been a misery if the Queen Mother hadn’t taken me under her wing. During the months after the wedding, when Arthur was off at war, she smoothed my tomboy ways into some semblance of grace, and taught me to look beneath the surface of the people around me. It was then we had become close, and she’d told me any number of stories of her early life. She did not, however, talk about Arthur’s origins, or how she herself came to be High Queen, and I lacked the courage—or rudeness—to ask about it.

The common folk claimed Arthur’s birth was the result of magic—that Merlin created him to fulfill the prophesy that a great king would rise out of Cornwall and lead the Britons to victory against the Saxon invaders. There were stories of dragons and comets, and mighty spells cast over the fortress at Tintagel. I was sure there was more to the story than legend allowed, and hoped I might understand Arthur better if I could figure out the riddle of his parents.

Igraine was regal and dignified, and always thought of the needs of others, while Uther—by all accounts—had been harsh and abrasive, and was as much feared as Igraine was loved. Indeed, the very fact that they’d become a couple at all seemed a puzzle to many, including me.

Born of the royal line of Cunedda in southern Wales, Igraine would have known a life of ease and luxury but for the shadow of Vortigern, the Wolf; even the established families of the Empire walked cautiously in the days of the tyrant.

Like most British children, I’d listened to the elders tell the stories of Vortigern, who rose to power following the Time of Troubles, after the Legions were taken back to the Continent to support Constantine’s bid to become emperor. Seeing Britain left defenseless, our barbaric neighbors—Pict and Irish, Angles and Saxons—rushed to plunder the rich Roman province. But though we begged Rome for help, the reply was an admonition to look to our own defenses because the whole of the Empire was crumbling and there were no legions to spare.

In the chaos that followed, Vortigern had clawed and schemed and murdered his way to supremacy over the other warlords who were carving out kingdoms for themselves. Once in power, he offered to make the Saxons Federates, giving them both land and money if they’d help us fight off the rest of our enemies.

“Invited the sea wolves right into the sheep-fold, he did,” my childhood nurse used to say. “Anyone could see they’d revolt against him sooner or later. By then he’d fallen in love with the Saxon chief’s daughter, Rowena…stupid old man put aside his British wife to marry the pretty lass with the flaxen hair, and gave her father the kingdom of Kent to seal the bargain! One wonders how he slept at night, knowing the people cursed him for the turncoat lie was!”

Indeed, both Vortigern’s waking and sleeping were troubled, for there were rumors that Ambrosius Aurelius and Uther Pendragon, the sons of the rightful ruler, were building an army in Brittany, and would one day return to claim their throne. So Vortigern sent his spies everywhere, until fear begot constant suspicion, and tyranny replaced leadership.

“I was eleven when the tyrant’s men swept through my father’s villa, murdering them all,” Igraine had once told me. “If my parents hadn’t sent me away with their old friend the Duke of Cornwall the night before, I would have been killed as well, for the tyrant’s men spared no one. But instead I grew up in Gorlois’s stronghold at Tintagel, as the Duke’s ward.”

Igraine was very happy there, playing in the meadows at the top of the cliffs while the surf crashed and pounded on all three sides of the headland, and rainbows hung in splendor over the ocean.

I could easily imagine her—a shy, quiet girl, quite unaware of her own startling beauty, who preferred to spend her time with the wild creatures of field and air rather than in the Hall. She soon developed great skill with wild things—rescuing fledglings that fell from nests, and once even healing a fox kit with a badly gashed paw.

“But best of all,” she’d confided, “I liked standing beneath the Sacred Oak, safe and secure while the wild wind whipped around me. There was an excitement in it that made my blood sing…”

Gorlois was as magnificently rough-hewn as his fortress, and when she was fifteen, his beautiful young charge agreed to marry the widowed Duke. So they made their vows under the branches of the Sacred Oak, and when their daughters Morgause and Morgan were born, they too were brought there, barely dry from birthing, to be offered to the Old Gods.

And it was at the Oak that Igraine left votive gifts of flowers and bright ribbon when Gorlois went off to join Uther and Ambrosius in their battle to depose Vortigern. By then Igraine had become a young matron, bringing the same care and devotion to the raising of her lively children that she used to lavish on the small wild animals she’d nurtured as a girl.

“I had no interest in going beyond the narrow path that connected Tintagel with the rest of the world,” she’d said with a twinkle of wry amusement. “I clung to the safety Gorlois provided, content with the moira the fates had given me—and would have run in terror if anyone had told me someday I would become a queen.”

Even after Ambrosius overcame Vortigern and Gorlois returned to Tintagel with wonderful tales of the new High King, Igraine listened with little curiosity. And when her husband tried to get her to go to the High Court with him, she begged to stay in Cornwall, for the idea of leaving Tintagel filled her with dread.

But what was put off that summer became a necessity several winters later when Ambrosius died and his brother Uther Pendragon became High King. There was no escaping the summons to Winchester to swear fealty to the new overlord, and though Igraine tried to persuade her husband to go without her, it was to no avail.

“I served under Uther in battle,” Gorlois announced, “and know how volatile his moods can be. I’ll not risk calling down the Pendragon’s wrath on this house, so we’ll go to the King Making despite weather and calendar and the fact that you’ve no desire to travel.”

And that was that. When they departed for the High Court Igraine rode beside her husband, as calm and valiant a partner as anyone could wish, with no outward sign of her inner turmoil.

“It comes,” she’d noted, “of being born to a long line of Celtic queens.”

***

I smiled at the memory of her words, for I too had been raised in the tradition of brave and competent women, and knew the litany by heart; it was one of the things that the Queen Mother and I used to joke about.

But I was not sure I could have coped with a man like Uther, and sometimes wondered how much like his father Arthur might turn out to be.

Ulfin was leading us across the broad sweep of the Berkshire downs by now, and the morning showers had turned into real rain as Uther’s Chamberlain dropped back to ride next to me.

“There’s an inn by the ford, not far ahead. I know the man who runs it, and it’s a good place to spend the night,” he announced, and I nodded my agreement.

“Tell me, Sir Ulfin—were you with Uther in Brittany, before the invasion?”

“Aye, M’lady. I was raised in their military camp on the Breton shore. My father was a Master Armorer, helping to outfit both warriors and nobles for the invasion to come…it took years to ready the army, and by that time I was grown myself. As was Merlin, the young druid who came to join our cause. So I guess you could say I’ve known them all, from early days on.”