Who loved, joined with, surrendered to whom? Clasped together, mirror to mirror, we sent reflections into infinity, though the faces blurred and changed. One was Morgana’s, and there must have been others for Guenevere over my shoulder. Part of what we are is whom we’ve loved, and we go to each new wedding bed with all our lovers in our eyes.

Agrivaine withdrew his challenge, choking on that less than a revelation of his infirmity. Blind with shame, he was close to pulling his squadron off the Wall and going home. Since he wouldn’t speak to me at all, I was grateful when Guenevere offered a solution.

“Arthur, didn’t you say he deserved praise for guessing Cerdic’s plan? Give it to him, heap it on him. One of those gold laurels would be very nice.”

Dear Gwen, she thought of the laurel as casually as a wedding gift. No use pointing out how rare they were or that Bedivere and I had not even received our own.

“And besides,” I argued, “only Ambrosius can give the laurel.”

Mere detail to Guenevere. “Well, he’s coming, and you’re his darting, and you could recommend it. Then one could give out to

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Agrivaine that you especially wanted him commended for valor, Frankly the idea does you credit, Arthur.”

Light began to break. She wasn’t Cador’s child for nothing. And just who would carry the news to seething Agrivaine?

“Why, myself, silly! We’ll award it with all the pomp and God knows what—how can it fail? If Agrivaine receives the laurel from my own hand, who dares slur his courage? Thus, you keep a hundred men at your side.”

She looked very much like her father then, adding lightly, “I was going to make a laurel for you, but you’d never wear it.”

“Of course 1 would.”

“Oh, you would not.” She wrinkled her nose against mine. “You’re such an old scruffy. You’ve gone quite tatty since you came from the south to disorder my life. Dear God, how you glittered the day I first saw you, shined and proper and standing so stiff you actually teetered. Now,” arms coiling about me, a gentle serpent offering her apple, “what about Agrivaine?”

The scheme worked. At least it kept Agrivaine from going home in a huff. He never forgave me, but wore his gold laurel on every possible occasion thereafter.

“A shrewd woman,” Bedivere commented, “but I have the feeling you’ve been somewhat managed, Artos.”

Perhaps, but it was this quality that earned Guenevere her title when we wore the crowns of Britain. Some kings have queens, others mere wives. Mark’s Yseult looked decorative on a royal progress, but she knew nothing of Britons and cared less. Outside of cattle tribute, the intricacies of royal finance eluded her. Diplomacy, to Yseult, was the bedroom and the ax.

Guenevere was raised on Latin. Its precision ordered her thoughts. She had her father’s undeniable gift for government, which Cador once defined as the gentle art of getting as much as you can for as little as you can pay and escaping without violence.

“Anyone can steal,” he maintained. “But to be loved for it

takes art.”

Gueneveie possessed the art. When I built a seat of power, she was the silken cord that bound the vital north to me. She knew command because she knew males. Princes might chafe under my yoke, but they were always salved by Guenevere’s frank appreciation and graceful praise. Not surprising that she quite often sensed better than myself which men could be trusted and which not.

Of our troubles later, some wise heads have wondered if we

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ever really loved each other. People like to think in those terms. Blacks and whites are simple, but we were never simple people.

A star rises and burns bright, and perhaps two stars, drawn close, will spin about each other and give light as one so that you forget they’re separate. Perhaps for a time the stars forget, too …

The hell with it: say love if you wish. We wouldn’t argue.

In love then, Cador acceding to what he considered his daughter’s passing fancy. A princess was privileged after all, though the question of marriage was beyond the pale. Good God, not Arthur Pendragon. His brother Caius, perhaps: crowned, close to the emperor. Or Gawain or even Geraint. The one might be crude and the other colorfully unbalanced, but they would both be kings someday, potential allies by marriage. But a mere soldier, emperor’s pet or no, a landless lord-by-courtesy? Thank you, but no.

As usual, no one reckoned on high-vaulting Ambrosius, or that he would lose his last battle in the south that winter, or how little time our weary master had to live.

Or how wisely and well he built his house to last.

When princes struggle for power, it doesn’t matter at all to the peasant, to the Morganas and Nectans and Craddas whose lives don’t change a whit. But when Ambrosius unleashed my men to range to the four winds in Britain’s defense, we became a symbol to the farmers of the isolated villages, who knew very little of princes or powers beyond the next hil!. Speed put us everywhere, made us known to everyone. Already the army couriers, the bards of the west, the travelers from north to south were spreading the tale of Cerdic’s defeat at Eburacum—“Hundreds of horsemen with lances and longswords, and at their head a man called Arthur”—through the far corners of Britain. The common folk of the Catuvellauni, the Coritani, the Silures might not know a prince from a partridge outside of their own, but they remembered the faces and names of men who could dash across the width of Britain to protect them.

They remembered Bedivere and Lancelot, Gareth, Gawain, Trystan and the rather busy young man who led them. Who cared where we came from? We were there, a bright new candle against the dark.

And they began to say, “Send us Arthur.”

To Wear the Crown

Ambrosius’ terse dispatches told us his visit to Eburacum that winter would be one of grave importance. His messenger also brought letters from Kay and my stepmother.

The emperor’s train is short these days. The Council turn from him and call for a new king, one who can win for us.

In some vault of memory, the dust of Vortigern stirred and cackled.

The situation is bad here, choked with refugees from Verulamium and the midlands. My chiefs coniplain daily . . - Mother is fine and asks of you whenever couriers stop. It’s been so long …

Ravia’s letter hummed and fluttered with the busy trivia of our home on the Severn: it was necessary to manumit some of the older slaves. Replacements, when they could be found at all, were layabouts and slatterns who refused to speak Latin. Such used to know their place, she didn’t know what the world was coming to. Please tell Bedivere a certain female relation wondered when her fair cousin would come home.

and yourself as well, though you have never gone from our hearts. Kay said your wounds at Neth were slight, and that relieved me much. Still, you have the

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breadth and height for campaigning, though it defeats me where you got them. Uther was hardly tall and your mother Ygerna never larger than a child …

Odd. This was the first time anyone had ever described Ygerna to me beyond her name. Flavia never mentioned knowing her before, and only through gossip had I learned she was Ambrosius’ niece.

“Ask him when he comes,” Bedivere advised. “Now read again that dear bit about my cousin Myfanwy.”

Suddenly we both realized how long ago it was that two very young men rode away from Severn.

Bedivere said with a dying fall, “When will we go home, Artos?”

He married his cousin Myfanwy, but home for me was a harder place to find.

The streets of Eburacum were already lined with soldiers and citizens when the emperor’s bucinas sounded beyond the gates. Watching from the ramparts, Bedivere and I saw that our lord rode in a litter.

“Then it was a bad wound he took,” Bedivere murmured. “You’d nigh have to kill Ambrosius to put him on a cart like that.”

Ahead of the procession rode the royal ensigns with their leopard headdresses and the imperial eagles flaring on their standards Over the bronze-graven SPQR. Men have called Ambrosius the last of the Romans. Certainly that was the last time I ever saw the eagles carried in state.

When Ambrosius entered the city, I waited in the cold with Cador, Guenevere and the other officers of high rank. Fur-cloaked Gwen held a welcoming cup of hot wine for our emperor, and all around the > marketplace the people of Eburacum strained to see him from behind the guard of honor. On two sides of the square, my third and fifth squadrons dipped their lances on command. The rest of the cohort was long departed for the Wall. This small force had stayed behind, slated for the coastal defense Cador needed.

We had no idea that Ambrosius came to change it all and my life as well.

When his slaves set down the litter, we wondered why no one

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helped him out, not knowing that proud man forbade it. I ran down the palace steps to kneel before Ambrosius.

My breath caught at sight of him.

Before me lay an aging, sick remnant, the vitality gone out of him like juice squeezed from a pear, the face gray paste, eyes sunken into puffy pouches of flesh. Always spare, he was now frail. Between the folds of his heavy cloak, the gold-bordered purple of his garment was stained where his wound bled through its bandages.

My eyes stung with tears. My lord was dying.

“Ave, Imperator.”

“We hear what service you did Eburacum, Our thanks.” His voice was dry and lacking the old resonance. “Damned young scamp, you look like a peddler. Where’s your ceremonials?”

“I’m afraid—” Painful to look at him. “I’m afraid I have

none, sir.”

“Oh, I see. And pity we have no more to send you. Just a moment while I climb down—no, don’t help me, damn it, I’m not crippled.”

Still I offered my arm. “Will my lord not honor me?”