“And where can a man go,” he shouted, “where it will not be the same? All of you, listen to me. Not a man on the Wall who does not know the service of Agrivaine meqq Lot. And I say this: Have I not seen it coming since Ambrosius? No more free and sovereign crowns, but mere magistrates again under the tyrant and the adaitrach. They are not for us, they only use us. Who has Arthur not juggled? Who has Guenevere not promised and lied to and used? Even each other.”

His men roared back, “We serve Guenevere no longer!”

“Nor Gawain!”

“No!”

“Then go your way!” Gawain howled at them. “My islands are small and no room for the like of you.”

“We follow Agrivaine!”

“Do so.” Guenevere accepted it. “But hear this. Hear, all of you, all the nobles of Britain.”

With a warm glance at me, Guenevere turned the horse and paced slowly along the ranks of the Parisi and Dyfneint.

“All men have a piece of truth, Agrivaine no less than others. Arthur the king has made mistakes. Arthur the man has here confessed them. Can I do less? We were both wrong. But his came out of love, while mine masked jealousy behind the good of Britain. But we have made composition, and mere will be peace.”

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345

I felt the general easing of tension in all the ranks and mar-| veled at the woman I married.

I “A king asks forgiveness. A queen grants it.” Guenevere I stepped down from the saddle and sank to her knees, arms outstretched to me. “And Guenevere asks her husband for like grace.”

I choked a little. “Stay here, my lords.”

She waited on her knees as I walked my horse to her, dismounted and pressed my face into her hands.

“God, I love you, Gwen.”

“We love us, darling. It was our dream.”

I felt suddenly light and happy. “It’s like our wedding day.”

Gwen winced. “Not quite. All this on and off a horse and this damned mail. I don’t bend as I used to. Help me up.”

I thrust out my arms, high and welcoming. “I see two armies here. Let’s have one. And celebration and music.”

Then the happy sound of men freed of a fight they never wanted, laughter and jingling harness as the sundered causes drew together, each greeting each. Only Agrivaine and his rebels stayed apart, retiring from die field toward the north. Only one man watched them go: Gawain, who helped his brother take the first limping steps but could never make him walk straight.

For me, it was the happiest moment of my life: Guenevere and I, arms linked as as the captains approached to attend us. And Gwen, of course, was always Gwen.

“You could smile a little, Bedtvere, I’m home. Sut mae’r mob, Gareth-fach! Have you caught up on your sleep? And Maelgwyn! Come, kiss me. Dear God, you’re a good-looking man. It’s been ages.”

Maelgwyn suffered her embrace awkwardly. “A long time, Lady.”

“Too long, and you’ll dine with us straight. And give me a man to see to this poor, disgusted horse who will not believe women should ride.”

The prince turned to search among his milling knights. “Ay, Davy-bach!”

The young man swung around, the bow and quiver slung over his shoulder. “Here, prince of the cats. What’s to do?”

“Come look to the queen’s horse.”

I should have known Maelgwyn wouldn’t travel without his harper. Dafydd saluted us in his cheery way and took the reins Guenevere gave him. “Bless you, Lady.”

346

Firelord

“And you, young man. Take—” Guenevere broke off as she took a good took at him.

Dafydd asked, “Something else, Lady?”

“No,” she murmured. “No, nothing.”

Dafydd led the horse away. Guenevere watched after him. “Arthur, for a moment, I thought—”

“I know.”

“The resemblance; it’s uncanny.”

“And wait till you hear his harp,” I said.

There on the moor we had a kind of holiday fair in the beautiful spring weather, all together, singing, hunting, making feasts put of simple food and happiness. Gwen and I found time to stroll alone in the hills. We found a secret little brook and stripped down to the skin like truant children, swam, played and made tentative love that turned suddenly deep and fierce with the need we always tried to deny. And walking back to camp, hailing this or that lord, Gwen swung along on my hand, radiant and young as Regan. The glorious weather, Gwen and I listening to Dafydd’s harp at sundown, the laughter of my men at peace, all of mis was like a new beginning.

But Bedivere went on watching the hills and stoning a keener edge to his sword. “My luck’s gone dry, and I want to go home.”

“Pessimist,” said Gwen and stuck a flower in his hair.

The holiday couldn’t last. Gawain departed for Solway, Maelgwyn saddled his weary hundred and came to us with a farewell gift from his heart. He pushed Dafydd forward.

“A harp to gladden the soul, and deserving of a king.”

So Davy came to me and, through me, to that service you might say he was born for. Say that I owed it to two old friends.

There was another good-bye, more final. When he stood before us, Lancelot, like Bors, had lived to see something less than his hopes and was bewildered.

“Take the Grail to Eleyne,” I urged him. “Summer comes early on Neth. She’ll have the hall full of flowers.”

Yet he hovered. “Guenevere?”

“Yes, dear?”

“Must I?” A little shaking of his head. “Must I go?”

“You’ve heard the king.”

Stubbornly, “I will hear it from you.”

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Gwen made an impulsive movement toward him, then checked it—not because of me, because she was Guenevere and knew it. “You must go, then. What was before is no longer.”

“Not so,” Lancelot choked.

“Truth, Lancelot.”

He stabbed her with an anguished look. “You know I have nothing then.”

Full of compassion, she said, “You have everything.”

“No. I should have died before this. To reach for one perfection all my life and be given tin. To find another and be sent off like this. Nothing.”

“Everything.” Gwen wrapped him in tender arms. “Dear man, will you never be happy? You have a wife who’d never be false like me. Who bore a son I couldn’t. You can close your eyes in peace at night white Arthur and I lie down with serpents. Everything.”

“I’d give it up. All of it.”

“But I wouldn’t,” Gwen said. “And that’s me difference. Everything Agrivaine said of me is true. I use people. I know my price and I give away nothing without a profit. I’m what he called me, a whore.”

The frankness startled that upright, honorable man. “You were never that.”

“The shoe fits,” Gwen said with a wry glance at me. “I was bom to it, but at our rank they call us kings. Go home, Lancelot.”

Lancelot couldn’t accept it. He backed away a few steps, then it tore out of him.

“Is there no place left for honor?”

“If there is,” I charged him, “find it. Peredur found one Grail. I know in your heart it isn’t yours. Find your own.”

He rode away toward the waiting Dyfneint knights, out of our lives.

“Find it,” 1 called after him as something swelled in my heart. “For all of us.”

Guenevere slipped an arm through mine. “What a bitch ! am. He was quite a man when he managed to get the saints off his back. Loving, eager, grateful as a boy. I shocked him sometimes.” My queen considered her wish with cool hope. “When you and I go to hell, Arthur, will they please leave us together?”

I couldn’t imagine them not. If they have any feel for government, they’ll put us in charge.

348

Firelord

Modred and a Grail

349

I was preparing to depart with the combrogi early next morning when Bors galloped in from picket duty on our north to report: one man on foot leading a horse with what looked like a body strapped across its back, apparently making for us.

With Gareth and Bedivere, I followed Bors back to the picket hill to have a look at the still-distant figure. Gareth noted that the man was in mail.

“And hurt,” he concluded after a closer scrutiny. “Not badly, but he feels it.”

Man and horse inched toward us over the moor. “I make out his shield.” Bedivere narrowed his eyes. “But I don’t know the blazon. White horse head on a black field.”

“That’s Tara,” said Gareth, who knew them all. “Cumaill of Tara, one of Gawain’s men.”

“That is a body on the horse,” I said. “See how the crows stay overhead? Let’s go down.”

Seeing us come, Cumaill stopped and waited, one arm over the body protectively. And Irish lord, he took service in Orkney a few years before Badon and went through every day of that muddy hell. A huge, burly man, he glowered at us from under beetling brows and told his tale in a Gaelic accent twice as dense as Gareth’s.

“The finest king I yet laid eyes on,” he glowered. “That I should have to put him so to horse.”

We gave him water. Cumaill brooded murderously while Bors washed the wound on his scalp. The moor shimmered with heat barely relieved by a light southern breeze. Not a man among us without respect for Gawain. No one had much to say.

“I have seen treachery in my time, King of Britain. But this of a cut to shame Judas.”

The body of Gawain was battered to a pulp as if he’d been trampled to’death three times over. I wished we had something to cover it with.

Cumaill told the bald, ugly tale. It was Gawain’s intention to make straight for Solway where his boats were moored. They expected no trouble and camped in a happy mood, glad of peace, eager to be going home.

“Good, loyal men,” Cumaill mourned, “and every one behind you at Badon, is that less than truth?”

The horsemen hit them at first light when they were scarce out of their blankets. Cumaill fell next to a gored friend and was left for dead. All his squadron were.

Gareth queried in Irish; “Daone sidhe?”

“No Faerie, not them.” Cumaill growled in disgust. “Agrivaine, it was. And pray for the Orkney Isles. There’s not a lord old enough for a beard left to support Gawain’s son-regent. Will they not have to accept Agrivaine, and that on their knees? May God regret the day He gave Gawain a brother.”

I stroked the lank black hair hanging down from the crushed skull. Gawain had been my most impoverished chief and perhaps the most honest. Against me when I played him false, but at my side again when his heart found me right and putting his life in the scale to attest it. I looked at the glowering, eloquent faces of my lords. They knew something was owed to Gawain.