Chattering, giggling, gathering in groups of two and three, they ran off, leaving the dropped spindles where they had fallen. Good-naturedly, Gwenhwyfar called one of the serving-women to put the room to rights and, at Morgause’s side, followed at a more dignified pace to the brow of the hill, where they could see the wide road leading up to Camelot.
“Look, there is the King—”
“And sir Mordred, riding at his side—”
“And there is the lord Lancelet—oh, look, he has a bandage round his head, and his arm is in a sling!”
“Let me see,” said Gwenhwyfar and pushed them aside, while the girls stared. Morgause could make out Gwydion, riding at Arthur’s side; he appeared unwounded, and she drew a sigh of relief. She could see Cormac back among the men, too—he had ridden to war with all the men, and he too seemed unhurt. Gareth was easy to find among them—he was the tallest man in Arthur’s whole company, and his fair hair blazed like a halo. Gawaine, too, at Arthur’s back as always, was upright in his saddle, but as they came nearer she could see a great bruise on his face, darkening his eyes, and his mouth swollen as if he had had a tooth or two knocked out.
“Look, sir Mordred is handsome—” one of the little girls said. “I have heard the Queen say that he looks exactly as Lancelet did when Lancelet was young,” and then she giggled and dug her neighbor in the ribs. They clung together, whispering, and Morgause watched, sighing. They seemed so young, all of them, so pretty with their hair silky-soft and bound in plaits and curls, brown or red or golden, their cheeks soft as petals and smooth as a baby’s, their waists so slim, their hands so smooth and white—she felt, suddenly, wild with jealousy; once she had been more beautiful than any of them. Now they were nudging one another, whispering about this knight and that.
“Look how the Saxon knights are all bearded—why do they want to look shaggy like dogs?”
“My mother says,” one of the maidens said impudently—she was the daughter of one of the Saxon noblemen, her name was something barbarian which Morgause could hardly pronounce, Alfreth or something of that sort—"that to kiss a man without a beard is like kissing another maiden, or your baby brother!”
“Yet sir Mordred shaves his face clean, and there is nothing maidenly about him,” said one of the girls, and turned laughing to Niniane, standing quietly among the women, “is there, lady Niniane?”
Niniane said, with a soft laugh, “All these bearded men seem old to me—when I was a little girl, only my father and the oldest Druids ever went bearded.”
“Even Bishop Patricius now wears his beard,” said one of the girls. “I heard him say that in heathen times men deformed their faces by cutting their beards and men should wear their beards as God made them. Maybe the Saxons think it so.”
“It is but a new fashion,” said Morgause. “They come and they go—when I was young, Christian and pagan alike shaved their faces clean, and now the fashion has changed—I think not it has anything to do with holiness either way. I doubt not, one day Gwydion will wear a beard—will you think less of him, Niniane?”
The younger woman laughed. “No, cousin. He is the same, bearded or shaven. Ah, look, there rides King Ceardig, and others—are they all to be guested here at Camelot? Madam, shall I go and tell the stewards?”
“Please do, my dear,” Gwenhwyfar said, and Niniane moved toward the hall. The girls were shoving one another to get a better view, and Gwenhwyfar said, “Come, come—all of you, back to your spinning. It is unseemly to stare at young men this way. Have none of you anything better to do than talk so immodestly about the men? All of you now, be off with you, you will see them this night in the great hall. There is to be feasting, which means work for all of you.”
They looked sulky, but they went obediently back to the hall, and Gwenhwyfar sighed and shook her head as she walked back at Morgause’s side. “In Heaven’s name, was there ever such a lot of unruly girls? And somehow I must keep them all chaste and under my guidance—it seems they spend all their time gossiping and giggling instead of minding their spinning. I am ashamed that my court should be so filled with empty-headed and immodest little hussies like this!”
“Oh, come, my dear,” said Morgause lazily, “surely you too were fifteen once? Surely you were not such a model maiden as all that—did you never steal a look at a handsome young man and think and gossip about how it would be to kiss him, bearded or shaven?”
“I do not know what you did when you were fifteen,” Gwenhwyfar flared at her, “but I was behind convent walls! It seems to me that would be a good place for these unmannerly maids!”
Morgause laughed. “When I was fourteen, I had an eye for everything that wore breeches. I recall that I used to sit in Gorlois’s lap—he that was married to Igraine before Uther’s eyes fell on her—and Igraine knew it well, for when she married Uther, her first act was to pack me off to be married to Lot, which was about as far from Uther’s court as she could send me without crossing the ocean! Come, Gwenhwyfar, even behind your convent walls can you swear you never peeped out at any handsome young man who came to break your father’s horses, or the crimson cloak of any young knight?”
Gwenhwyfar looked down at her sandals. “It seems so very long ago—” and then, recollecting herself, spoke briskly. “The hunters brought in a deer last night—I shall give orders that it be cut up and roasted for dinner, and perhaps we should have a pig killed too, if all these Saxons are to be guested here. And fresh straw must be spread in the rooms where they will sleep, there will never be enough beds for all these people!”
“Send the maidens to see to that too,” said Morgause. “They must learn to manage guests in a great hall—for what other reason are they in your care, Gwenhwyfar? And it is the duty of a queen to welcome her lord when he returns from war.”
“You are right.” Gwenhwyfar sent her page to give the orders, and they walked toward the great gates of Camelot together. Morgause thought, Why, it is exactly as if we had been friends all our lives. And she thought, there were so few of them who had been young together.
She had much the same feeling when she sat that night in the great hall that was hung with decorations and brilliant with the fine clothes of the ladies and the knights. Almost it was like the great days of Camelot. Yet so many of the old Companions were gone in war, or on the Grail quest, and would never return. Morgause did not remember often that she was old, and it frightened her. Half the seats of the Round Table, it seemed, were filled now with hairy Saxons with their great beards and their rough cloaks, or with young men who seemed hardly old enough to hold weapons. Even her baby, Gareth, was one of the older knights of the Round Table, and the newer ones deferred to him amazingly, calling him sir, and asking his advice, or hesitating to argue with him if they differed. As for Gwydion—most of them called him sir Mordred—he seemed quite a leader among the younger men, new knights and the Saxons whom Arthur had chosen as his Companions.
Gwenhwyfar’s ladies and stewards had done their task well; there was roast and boiled meat in plenty, and great meat pies with gravy, platters of early apples and grapes, hot bread and lentil porridge. At the high table, when the feasting was done and the Saxons were drinking and at their favorite game of asking riddles, Arthur called Niniane to sing for them. Gwenhwyfar had Lancelet at her side, his head bandaged and his arm in a sling—he had been wounded by a Northman’s battle-axe. He could not use his arm, and Gwenhwyfar was cutting his meat for him. No one, Morgause thought, paid it the slightest attention.
Gareth and Gawaine were seated further down the table, and Gwydion close to them, sharing a dish with Niniane. Morgause went to greet them. Gwydion had bathed and combed his hair into curls, but one of his legs was bandaged, propped on a stool.
“Are you hurt, my son?”
“It does well enough,” he said. “I am too big now, Mother, to run and climb into your lap when I stub my toe!”
“It looks worse than that,” she said, looking at the bandage and the crusted blood at t
he edges, “but I will leave you alone, if you wish. Is that tunic new?”
It was made in a fashion she had seen many of the Saxons wearing, with sleeves so long that they came down past the wrist and half covered the knuckles of the hand. Gwydion’s was of blue-dyed cloth, embroidered with crimson stitchery.
“It was a gift from Ceardig. He told me it was a good fashion for a Christian court, for it conceals the serpents of Avalon.” His mouth twisted. “Perhaps I should give my lord Arthur such a tunic for a New Year’s gift this winter!”
“I doubt if anyone would know the difference,” said Gawaine. “No one, now, thinks of Avalon, and Arthur’s wrists are so faded no one sees or would criticize if they did.”
Morgause looked at Gawaine’s bruised face and eyes. He had in truth lost more than one tooth, and his hands, too, looked cut and bruised.
“And you too are wounded, my son?”
“Not from the enemy,” Gawaine growled. “This I got from our Saxon friends—one of the men in Ceardig’s army. Damn them all, those unmannerly bastards! I think I liked it better when they were all our foes!”
“You fought him, then?”
“Aye, and will do so again, should he dare to open his clacking jaw about my king,” Gawaine said angrily. “Nor did I need Gareth to come to my rescue, as if I were not big enough to fight my own battles without my little brother coming to my aid—”
“He was twice your size,” said Gareth, putting down his spoon, “and he had you on the ground, and I thought he would break your back or crack your ribs—I am not sure yet that he did not. Was I to sit aside while that foul-tongued fellow beat my brother and slandered my kinsman? He will think twice and then thrice before he opens his evil mouth again with such words.”
“Still,” said Gwydion quietly, “you cannot silence the whole Saxon army, Gareth, especially when what they say is true. There’s a name, and not a pretty one, for a man, even when that man’s a king, who sits back and says nothing while another man does his husband’s duty in his wife’s bed—”
“You dare!” Gareth half rose, turning on Gwydion and gripping the Saxon tunic at the neck. Gwydion put up his hands to loosen Gareth’s hold.
“Easy, foster-brother!” He looked like a child in the giant Gareth’s grip. “Will you treat me as you treated yonder Saxon because here among kinsmen I speak truth, or am I too to keep to the pleasant lie of the court, when all men see the Queen with her paramour and say nothing?”
Gareth slowly relaxed his grip and eased Gwydion back to his seat. “If Arthur has nothing to complain of in the lady’s conduct, who am I to speak?”
Gawaine muttered, “Damn the woman! Damn her anyhow! Would that Arthur had put her away while there was still time! I have no great love for so Christian a court as this has become, and filled with Saxons. When I was first knight at Arthur’s side, there was not a Saxon in all this land with more of religion than a pig in his sty!”
Gwydion made a deprecating sound, and Gawaine turned on him. “I know them better than you. I was fighting Saxons while you were wetting your swaddling bands! Are we now to run Arthur’s court by what these hairy grunters think of us?”
“You do not know the Saxons half so well as I do,” Gwydion said. “You do not get to know a man at the business end of a battle-axe. I have lived in their courts and drunk with them and courted their women, and I venture to say that I know them well, which you do not. And this much is true: they call Arthur and his court corrupt, too pagan.”
“That comes well from them,” Gawaine snorted.
“Still,” said Gwydion, “it is no laughing matter, that these men, unrebuked, can call Arthur corrupt—”
“Unrebuked, say you?” Gareth grumbled. “I think Gawaine and I did some rebuking!”
“Will you fight your way through the Saxon court? Better to amend the cause of slander,” said Gwydion. “Cannot Arthur rule his wife better than this?”
Gawaine said, “It would take a braver man than I to speak ill of Gwenhwyfar to Arthur’s face.”
“Yet it must be done,” said Gwydion. “If Arthur is to be High King over all these men, he cannot be a laughingstock. When they call him cuckold, will they take oath to follow him in peace and in war? Somehow he must heal the corruption in this court—send the woman to a nunnery perhaps, or banish Lancelet—”
Gawaine looked anxiously around. “For God’s sake, lower your voice,” he said. “Such things should not even be whispered in this place!”
“It is better that we should whisper them than that they should be whispered all the length and breadth of the land,” Gwydion said. “In God’s name, there they sit close by him, and he smiles on them both! Is Camelot to become a joke, and the Round Table a bawdy house?”
“Now shut your filthy mouth or I will shut it for you,” Gawaine snarled, gripping Gwydion’s shoulder in his iron fingers.
“If I were speaking lies, Gawaine, you might well try to shut my mouth, but can you stop the truth with your fists? Or do you still maintain that Gwenhwyfar and Lancelet are innocent? You, Gareth, who have all your life been his pet and minion, I might well believe that you will think no evil of your friend—”
Gareth said, gritting his teeth, “It is true I wish the woman at the bottom of the sea, or behind the walls of the safest convent in Cornwall. But while Arthur does not speak, I will hold my tongue. And they are old enough to be discreet. All men have known for years that he has been her champion lifelong—”
“If I only had some proof, Arthur might listen to me,” Gwydion said.
“Damn you, I am certain Arthur knows what there is to know. But it is for him to allow it or to interfere . . . and he will hear no word against either of them.” Gawaine swallowed and went on. “Lancelet is my kinsman, and my friend too. But—damn you—do you think I have not tried?”
“And what said Arthur?”
“He said that the Queen was above my criticism, and whatever she chose to do was well done. He was courteous, but I could tell that he knew what I was saying and was warning me not to interfere.”
“But if it were drawn to his attention in a way he could not choose to ignore,” Gwydion said quietly, considering, then raised his hand and beckoned. Niniane, seated at Arthur’s feet, her hands still touching the strings of her harp, softly asked leave of Arthur, then rose and came to him.
“My lady,” Gwydion said, “is it not true that she"—he inclined his head very slightly in Gwenhwyfar’s direction—"often sends her women away for the night?”
Niniane said quietly, “She has not done so while the legion was away from Camelot.”
“So at least we know the lady is loyal,” said Gwydion cynically, “and does not distribute her favors wholesale.”
“No one has ever accused her of common lechery,” said Gareth angrily, “and at their ages—they are both older than you, Gawaine—whatever they are about cannot be much harm to anyone, I should think.”
“No, I am serious,” said Gwydion with equal heat. “If Arthur is to remain High King—”
“Mean you not,” said Gareth angrily, “if you are to be High King after him—”
“What would you, brother? That when Arthur is gone I should turn over all this land to the Saxons?” Their heads were close together, and they were talking in furious whispers. Morgause knew they had forgotten not only her presence but her very existence.
“Why, I thought you loved the Saxons well,” said Gareth, in angry scorn. “Would you not be content to have them rule, then?”
“No, hear me,” said Gwydion in a rage, but Gareth grabbed at him again and said, “The whole of the court will hear you if you do not moderate your voices—look, Arthur is staring at you, he watched when Niniane came over here! Maybe Arthur is not the only one who should look to his lady, or—”
“Be silent!” Gwydion said, wrestling himself free of Gareth’s hands.
Arthur called out to him, “What, do my loyal cousins of Lothian quarrel among themselves? I will
have peace in my hall, kinsmen! Come, Gawaine, here’s King Ceardig asking if you will have a game of riddles with him!”
Gawaine rose, but Gwydion said softly, “Here’s a riddle for you—when a man will not mind his property, what’s to be done by those who have an interest in it?”
Gawaine stalked away, pretending he did not hear, and Niniane bent over Gwydion and said, “Leave it for now. There are too many ears and eyes. You have planted the seed. Now speak to some of the other knights. Do you think you are the only one who saw—that?” and she moved her elbow just a little. Morgause, following the slight gesture, saw that Gwenhwyfar was bending with Lancelet over a game board on their laps; their heads were close together.
“I think there are many who think it touches the honor of Arthur’s Camelot,” Niniane murmured. “You need only find some who are less—biased—than your brothers of Lothian, Gwydion.”
But Gwydion was looking angrily at Gareth. “Lancelet,” he muttered, “always Lancelet!” And Morgause, looking from Gwydion to her youngest son, thought of a small child prattling to a red-and-blue carved knight which he called Lancelet.