Queen of the Summer Stars (21 page)

The man from East Anglia stared at me in disbelief, then turned to Arthur, clearly expecting my invitation to be overruled.

“It is as the High Queen says,” my husband assured him. “In our Court women are given full voice and equal respect.”

“Such nonsense,” the barbarian muttered. “Surely the Romans didn’t teach you that.”

“No,” I retorted, “it has been the way in Britain since before the Legions came.”

There was much head shaking as his delegation went off with Cei, and Arthur gave me a sidewise glance. “I just hope he can get through it without a domestic insurrection.”

“I just hope we can get through it at all.” I grinned, wondering what insanity had made us take on such a venture.

The actual week sped by in snips and snatches of color—the kitchen was in superb form, serving up oysters and eels and fishes of all kinds from the river, birds and game and field greens from every garden and farm around. Each night there were different specialties—snails from a villa in Cirencester where the Romans once raised them just for such feasts, or fruits picked fresh from the royal garden—I did not see the Bishop’s expression when the cherries were served. Wine and cider, beer and ale were in abundance, and there was even a flask or two of the Irish waters of life, though that was not widely circulated. Altogether Cei had outdone himself.

Wehha’s wife was miserable, staring at her hands all evening long and barely looking up when I tried to welcome her in her own language. After the first night I told her she could stay home, for it was clear she was as upset at being included in a Feast as I had been at being excluded.

Elaine of Astolat caused a noticeable stir the first time she ambled across the inner circle of the Round Table to pour our wine. More than one appreciative male turned to follow her progress and even Arthur’s attention was caught.

A soft, inviting smile lingered on her lips as she filled our goblets, though she kept her eyes downcast and never actually looked at us.

Arthur turned to me with a low whistle. “Wherever did she come from?” he inquired, and when I told him, he shook his head slowly. “I just hope she doesn’t invite more trouble than she can handle.”

The girl moved on, quite oblivious to the stir she was causing. Lance had taken a lily from the bouquet near his plate but left off examining the curved petals in order to raise his glass when Elaine reached for it. Their fingers touched inadvertently.

The Maid looked up, startled as a dreamer suddenly waking. She stared at the Breton for a long minute, and a blush swept up her throat and across her face. Filling Lance’s goblet, she handed it back to him. He smiled and gave her the flower in return.

Without a word she put the lily into the neckline of her dress, fixing it carefully so that it was cradled between her breasts, then drifted on to the next trestle.

“I think you’ve just made a conquest,” I teased.

“Oh, Lord, I hope not.” The lieutenant sighed. “I certainly didn’t mean to.”

***

During the days Lance’s tournaments more than satisfied the military men, while Bedivere temporarily resumed his place at Arthur’s side, playing the diplomat to the nobles. Most were local magistrates and descendants of Roman tribunes who had risen to power when the Legions left. These were men better equipped for negotiation than confrontation, the remnants of the old bureaucracy that we were trying to woo into the fold. Arthur and Bedivere met with them singly or in groups, entertaining them as lavishly as possible and always coming round to discussing the Round Table. Many of them were flattered at the idea of being allied with us, and the Fellowship that once numbered barely two score threatened to grow to upward of a hundred.

Tristan spent most of his time in the Park, sleeping off too much wine or playing sad songs on his harp. I came across him toward the end of the week when I went to gather mint for the dinner that night. The gangly warrior was sitting on a broken column, staring into space. When I inquired how things were in Cornwall, he just gave me a doleful look.

“Is it that bad?” I asked Dinadan after Tris took up his harp and moved to a bench under the far willow where he was half-hidden from the rest of the world.

“Aye,” sighed his comrade. “And not just for him, I’m afraid, M’lady.” I lifted an eyebrow in silent inquiry, and Dinadan continued. “Perhaps if I’d gone to Ireland with him to fetch the lass, things might have been different. You know he’s not very…sophisticated, shall we say. And he’d never thought much about women before, except to pass the night with occasionally. Now he can’t seem to think of anything but that girl, and then it’s with grief and pain and stolen delight. I canna’ see how they can take pleasure in their meetings, considering what import the Christians put on fidelity.”

“Then his love is not one-sided?”

“Would that it were, M’lady! The little minx eggs him on, until he’s half-crazy with desire and jealousy.”

“Oh, dear,” I murmured, beginning to understand why Tristan was so downcast.

“The girl comes from Pagan royalty.” Dinadan shrugged woefully. “The rights of a Celtic queen are natural to her thinking, and though she pays lip service to her husband’s White Christ, she doesn’t understand why the idea of her bedding Tris should make the old King so upset.”

“Mark knows?”

“Not exactly; he’s so happy with his pretty little toy, he doesn’t want to see what’s going on. But if he should catch them together…I canna’ say where this trouble could end.” The wiry fellow shook his head despondently and heaved a big sigh, then took his leave as I went back to picking mint.

But Tristan was not the only one pining for love, it seemed. Lance found himself followed everywhere by the soft, inviting shadow of Elaine. She went through the garden daily, looking for lily blossoms, and when she found one she’d tuck it between her breasts and stroll down to the tournament grounds in search of the Breton.

If he was there, she’d settle herself near his things, like a faithful dog guarding its master’s possessions. When he came, hot and sweaty from the field, she waited patiently until he gathered up his equipment and came back to the Palace. Each day she offered to carry something, and each day he thanked her kindly but declined the invitation, at which point she would fall in behind him and whoever else he was with, trailing along silently in the wake of her idol.

If she didn’t find Lance at the tournaments, Elaine would move slowly and methodically through the town, searching doggedly among the vendors’ stalls or scanning the tables of the temporary
biergartens
the Saxons had set up. As far as anyone knew, she never uttered a word.

“Frankly, she makes me uncomfortable,” Lance said one evening. “The child’s so unwitting, she shouldn’t be wandering about alone that way. Catcalls and invitations follow her everywhere, and if I were you, Gwen, I’d have Lavinia keep a tighter rein on her for her own sake.”

I nodded, thinking no doubt the Breton was right—as soon as the Round Table was over, I’d sit down with Vinnie and we’d decide what to do.

But trouble came on the last day of festivities, before I had a chance to talk with the matron. Suddenly Elaine’s father was standing before me, wringing his hands in despair.

“Raped,” Bernard howled. “If it wasn’t for Lancelot, my daughter would have been raped, right here in King Arthur’s Court. Surely that is no way for the Companions to behave; I can’t imagine that the King would countenance such a thing!”

I hastened to agree, though Bernard wasn’t listening.

“She’s always been a good girl. A devout child, faithful about going to Mass. Only shy…very, very shy. And trusting.”

Lance and Arthur arrived, and my husband came immediately to the distraught father. “They were drifters, sir, not men of the Round Table after all. The one Lance captured says they’d come into London hoping to cadge some food and work. I assume,” he added, turning to me, “that the girl is recovering?”

I nodded, assuring him that Vinnie had found her more frightened than hurt. “But”—I looked firmly at Bernard—“I suggest you get a chaperone for the girl.”

“I’ll do more than that.” Bernard was pounding one hand into the palm of the other. “I’ll take her back to Astolat and put her in the tower on my island until a wedding is arranged.”

“That sounds like punishment instead of protection,” I blurted out, shocked by his reaction.

“Not at all. I love my daughter and want to see that she’s safe. Elaine is used to spending long hours alone; I don’t think she’ll mind. Certainly”—he cast a sidewise look at Lancelot—“it’s better than having her trail after a man who doesn’t appreciate her. I won’t have her made fun of, or worse yet, used like a trollop for a bit of sport. She’s a good girl, a devout girl…just shy.” His jaw snapped shut and he glared around the room pugnaciously, as though daring anyone to say otherwise.

So the balding widower took his ripe and luscious daughter home. I felt immensely sorry for the poor girl, shut up in the narrow confines of an island tower, and hoped she was too dull-witted to understand what was happening to her.

The Round Table concluded that day, having achieved everything Arthur wanted, and afterward Urien invited us to visit him in York.

“As I recall,” Arthur said casually when the last of the guests were gone and it was just the two of us alone foraging for a supper of leftovers in the kitchen, “I promised you a trip through Britain as a wedding present. Seems to me this is a good time to do it, now that the southern Federates are in hand. What do you think?” He cocked an eyebrow in my direction and I flew into his arms, thrilled that he hadn’t forgotten. “Nothing fancy,” he cautioned, “but a swing up through the north, and then perhaps a visit with your father.”

“An adventure of our own, without the whole household?” I queried, and he looked down at me with a grin.

“All our very own.”

***

There was nothing else he could have suggested that would make me happier. Next day I packed all the fancy clothes away and sent them with Vinnie and the young women to the villa at Cunetio—after the experience with Elaine, I wasn’t about to take a flock of girls I didn’t even know into strange territory.

Arthur had Palomides take the new recruits to Silchester for training, and by the time we moved out through Bishopgate I was once more back to breeches and tunic, with only Enid and Frieda in attendance and a heart full of romantic hopes.

The Attack

We traveled at a good clip. I would rather have had Featherfoot under me, as Shadow was prone to being skittish, but this northern expedition hadn’t been planned when we left Caerleon. At least the beautiful white mare had a smooth and easy gait.

The forest beyond London was dark and primitive, full of ancient hornbeams and giant oaks that were threatening to engulf even the wide Roman Road.

Arthur gestured toward it. “The Legions used to cut the brush as far back as a bowshot on either side so no one could lay an ambush. If we’re going to make it safe for trade and travel and the royal messengers, we’ll have to find some way to keep the verges clear.”

Lance agreed, and we were shortly into a discussion of other matters of state as well—the progress of building beacons from Somerset through the Welsh Marches, the question of Aelle’s willingness to stay within the borders of Sussex in the south, and what was happening among the barbarians north of London.

“The camps to the east have reported little activity,” Arthur noted. “But this would be a good time to check with them.”

So we moved up the valleys of the Lea River and the Stour, staying at the outposts Ambrosius had set up in the buffer strip after he drove the Saxons back into East Anglia.

It was my first encounter with the frontier soldiers—neither hero nor Champion, these were the men whose daily presence made our kingdom safer. Sharing gruel from a leather cooking bag suspended over the coals of an open pit, I watched my husband talk with them. Men and boys, young and ambitious or worn and weathered, sometimes wise and often scarred, they were all delighted to have a leader who could hunker down with them beside the campfire, asking about horses, supplies, and the activities of the locals who had pledged themselves as Federates. So far the reports indicated nothing unusual.

From Cambridge we followed the Roman Road along the Fens, skirting that flat, misty world of water and silt ridge, reed bed and sedge grass. By day it shimmered green and silver, with here and there a glimpse of moss and marsh fern beneath scrub oak and willow, and occasionally I caught sight of tall purple loosestrife spires or the blue flash of a kingfisher where the water ran clear in its twisting, shifting channels.

But at sunset the Fens presented another face—gray and flat as winter, mournfully drained of color, they lay wet and waiting under the huge sky as the dying sun colored the clouds, reddened to the shade of blood, and rushed downward in a crimson flood until the flat, endless marsh spread beneath reeking heaven like a great, gouted wound that would not stop bleeding.

I shivered at the omen and made the sign against evil.

Thankfully Lincoln lies beyond the waterland, and the men of the garrison greeted us with high spirits and glad cheers.

“Anything out of the ordinary? Large influx of barbarians, for instance?” Arthur inquired over dinner that night.