The ship moved out from the quay into the stream. Peredur waved from the deck, but Geraint climbed monkey-nimble into the rigging to hail me once again.

“Ah, she’s lovely, Arthur’. Lovely all!” I shouted back, “Who’s that?”

His arm wheeled out in a wide salute to all of God’s Severn valley. “Camelot!”

Marcus Conomori. Princeps Dumnonii, to Artorius, Imperator: greeting and long life.

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We are pleased to report complete victory against the host ofCerdic at Llongborth, costly as it was …

Among the nobles tost was our loyal tributary, Geraint ofDyfneint, who fell in the last charge …

Marcus’ report is long lost in the dusty limbo of old court records, but I still have Peredur’s letter from Astolat.

—so drunk with battle, he didn’t know how badly he was wounded, and always too far forward of the line for us to protect him. On the last charge, they surrounded and unhorsed him …

I curse my ignoble mind even as it compels me to look at dear Gerry-fach without tears—God’s eager assassin with neither the imagination to fear nor the intellect to doubt. We are shaped as the Lord needs, I suppose. Some men light an epoch. Geraint was for a moment. Rest him gentle.

They tell me kings should have majestic memories. Mine are smaller and wanner. There’s no more beautiful way to remember him: unfurling like a banner from the ship’s high mast, sword swinging about his legs, arm flung out to us, to life itself. She’s lovely all!

And yet they weigh on my heart, all the good-byes.

I went east with the combrogi and left Lancelot with Guenevere.

Lancelot and Guenevere. What is there about them mat makes bards reach for the harp and the prurient lick their lips? You’d think they dove into bed the moment I was gone or, kept apart, whinnied for each other like stallion and mare. It was never that simple. As Peredur did for Geraint, look at them fondly but without tears.

You can say that Lancelot loved Guenevere when he allowed himself to love anything at all. Never mistake him for a Trystan. There was nothing dark or complex about Ancellius Falco, only that he burdened his uncomplicated nature with complex absurdities too heavy to bear.

The most popular Christian philosophy in our youth was that

of the Anchorites, who believed the way to heaven led through

^denial and mortification of the flesh. Lancelot embraced it but

v thought himself too frail in spirit to persevere. In truth, he was

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too much a part of life, a fine soldier who needed to settle down with a wife and children. But Lancelot never in all his self-punishing days realized that. When he left the monastery, he saw it as personal lack of worth, as failure rather than incompatibility. All his life he remained a twig caught between opposing currents, whirling in futile circles.

He didn’t marry Eleyne, he allowed her to marry him but never rested content with the arrangement. Whatever the consequences, the healthiest act of his life was reaching for Guenevere, Of course he would be punished for it. He couldn’t bear not to

be.

Guenevere now—and a far greater complexity. Christian she was, but of the ancient Parisi, whose royal women were always associated with fertility goddesses in times not far removed. This attitude survived conversion. Bishops like Anscopius might mutter and warn, but if the princess’s bed was no longer an augur of fertility, it was at least her own business.

Promiscuous? Hardly. Grant to any affectionate, well-governed wife that she won’t commit adultery on sheer impulse alone, how much less likely for the most public of all women to succumb? If and when she does, it follows that more than one day prepared her for it. When Lancelot came back to court, Guenevere had worked at statecraft daily, girl and woman, for many years.

Daily, I said.

For a moment now, you are Queen of Britain. Try on the

crown.

You rise near dawn. While your women dress your hair, you’re already reading half of the day’s first dispatches while your husband reads the rest. You discuss the most urgent over breakfast while other business is already crowding in on you. The morning audiences: which are important, which not? You oversee all negotiations with Cador, who still uses the blood tie to further his own aims. Where do you bend, where draw the line?

You think on your feet, you listen and judge from waking to sleep again. Which of your household can be trusted, who are spies for Cerdic? Marcus Conomori? Your own father? Some must be. You maintain people to do the same for you, because the name fpr a trusting and uninformed ruler is corpse.

Every waking moment has some strain on it, speaking in one breath Latin to one ambassador, British to another. How realistic must you be with your father? How idealistic with Dyfneint or shrewd with Cornwall? You command where your husband can’t

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because he’s somewhere else just as important. You sign documents that grant or deny, bring life or death, the dirty laundry and the housekeeping of kingship.

And when you wake one day to find yourself pregnant, the world doesn’t stop to coo over your fecundity, nor can you. You go on riding, writing, judging, listening, commanding, working to exhaustion, charming this or that ambassador at table and not drinking half as much as you’d like because your ears must be open and your mind working.

For a few minutes before sleep perhaps you can share with your husband whatever is personal between you, this child in your body often forgotten completely through the hurtling day. And that day doesn’t wash off at night but leaves a residue, the thickening grime of state that comes to bed with you, lies in your arms and your dreams.

The child, the one thing that was yours, is torn from you in a last effort to save your life, and with it any hope of another.

The sadness and the state lie between you and your husband in the big bed. Not that you love each other less, but so much lies with you now. As a queen, you know the first bright dream of a golden state will never be—your best will be a compromise with barbarity. Better than nothing; you’re no longer an optimist.

Or that young, says the mirror. If some part of you is wanton, it’s only that renegade / that wants something, some little thing for itself alone. Somewhere. Something always put off and denied for lack of time. Not petting or flattery, that was distrusted and bred out almost before it seeded, and you’re too ironic for vanity. Still, something is drowning in your mirror with a silent scream.

And as you sink, a hand is held out to you.

It might have been anything else—a different life, healthy children, less of a talent for rule, more for love. It might have been Trystan, who could have handled the whole bloody mess better.

But it’s Lancelot, whom you once called wretched and honorable. Uncomplicated, undemanding. Where do the strong go to be weak? Perhaps a moment comes when must is too damned tired to fight and want breaks free to cry / am just once before the sun goes down.

Not who came, but when.

Perhaps after years, you realize that what drew you to Lancelot has aged along with you. But the habit outlives the pleasure.

And then your husband—not the most comprehensible of men— shames you like a common criminal before all Camelot, and for

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another woman. For a Faerie slut, half devil and all dirt, everything you hate. But she gave him the one thing you couldn’t.

Queen of Britain, what would you have done?

Thus the triangle. The aging queen, the adulterer, the royal husband wounded to the heart by betrayal—God, it looks mawkish on paper alone. Do people actually think that way?

I guess so. It’s a simple picture, but not what we meant at all.

The Ghost Dancers

Cador died finally, or rather gave in and allowed God to take him, no doubt scheming for a new kingdom on his way up. Peredur was crowned by the Parisi and Brigantes, and we breathed easier that our back door was still securely locked. Good to know one of them was. Feeble and near death, Marcus yet hoped to make a separate alliance with Rome, still tottered to the Council on Yseult’s arm. The aging queen was more nurse than consort now, fussing over Marcus’ meals and medicines, seeing to his soiled linen, matching her step to his faltering walk, no longer bothering to conceal her weight. Guenevere rejoiced that age didn’t thicken her own delicate frame, but even as she chortled over Yseult’s corpulence, the lines deepened and (he flesh wrinkled about her own mouth.

And I was forty-five. Vanity tempted me to think I looked younger, though the illusion needed a little charity now and then. My hair dulled from yellow to whitish sand, my sword belt let out a reluctant notch or two. 1 tended to weary earlier in the evening after a hard day. Grain by grain, time sifted down the glass until, one autumn day, even I noticed it passing. Standing on the parapet with Bedivere, I watched a procession of young people along the riyerbank, singing as they went to gather late flowers for Samhain night.

They were all young enough to be beautiful with youth alone, but their leader was a dazzling girl. She rode a white horse led with great ceremony by two youths in green, her hair unbound and shining in the sunlight. And as she passed under us, she looked up and blew a kiss.

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“Why, the little flirt’s waving. Hallo! Love and long life to my lady of the new year! Bedwyr, look. She’snot half beautiful.”

“She’s my love,” he said wistfully, gazing down at the girl. “Myfanwy’s some old-religion ways yet. And the lass would know the fun of Samhain night.”

It struck then, a treacherous hammer called Time. “My God, is that—?”

“Aye, Rhonda.”