What was it Llyr had told her Merlin the Enchanter had foreseen? Half against her will, she dredged up the words: Woe betide the dragon in his lair, the mage in his conceit, and the innocent in his womb. The dark time comes. He had been right. The dark time had come. A courier had arrived that very evening with the news.
After Princess Morgan’s wedding to Urien of Rheged, Merlin the Enchanter had vanished. At first, no one worried, for Merlin had a reputation for disappearing. This time he did not come back. Both Urien and Arthur sent troops to search for him, and in the end joined the search themselves, but no sign of him was found. Desperate with anxiety for the man who had been more than a father to him, King Arthur had only been called away by a more dire emergency at home. His young wife, pregnant with his heir, had begun to bleed.
For three long weeks, the courier said, the King had sat at her bedside and watched in a passion of helplessness her agonizing struggle for life. When the physicians could not stop the bleeding, he had thrown wide the doors of Caerleon to any seer, witch, or herbalist who volunteered to try. All had failed. On Christmas Day, Arthur’s nineteenth birthday, the young Queen died in her husband’s arms. Their tiny son died with her.
Arthur shut himself away. He would see no one. He fasted; he prayed; he mourned; he grew cantankerous in grief. He allowed no one to console him. If Merlin had been there, the courier said, he would have known how to deal with the King, but Merlin was gone. Arthur would let no one near him, not even his closest friends. The King was utterly alone for the first time in his life. No one knew what would come of it.
Standing silent in the snow, Guinevere recalled the prophecy of Morgan’s that had terrified her so when she thought it referred to Queen Alyse: The Queen shall die of what she carries in her. Now, alas, its meaning was all too clear. She grieved for the young girl who had given her life for the King’s heir, and she wished with all her heart that Elaine and Queen Alyse could share her grief.
Guinevere shivered. She had come up here into the dark, into the silence, to escape the secret celebration taking place below. Elaine’s betrothal to Trevor of Powys had come to an end with the courier’s news. Ambition had revived in both mother and daughter the instant they learned of the young Queen’s death. Never mind that there would be consequences to breaking the betrothal. Never mind that Powys might never be an ally. Never mind that King Arthur was sunk in grief and in no mind to marry again. He was unwed. To them, that was all that mattered.
Their joy had sickened her, and she had come up here to escape it. Here, in silence, she could grieve for the King in his tortured isolation. She could grieve for the unknown fate of Merlin the Enchanter, who had dealt fairly with her in the end. But most of all, she grieved for the girl who had died of her child, as Guinevere’s own mother had died of hers.
She gazed out at the veil of snow that blurred her view and wondered about the future. All her life she had been used to living in a safe and stable land. Horror stories of Saxon landings and people running for their lives into the hills, abandoning their babes, their sick, their slow—these were tales of the past, like stories of faeries and shape-shifters. She had become used to peace. She barely remembered anything else.
Now, for the first time, the future of the Britons seemed less certain. Not that Saxons were likely to land on their own shores any time soon, but they landed often enough in the south and east to keep the King fighting upwards of three campaigns a year. She could not imagine what it must take to maintain such a fierce pursuit. It was easier to imagine what might happen if the pursuit should fail. Sir Bedwyr had hinted that all their fortunes might depend on the marriage of Arthur’s sister. If the alliance of kingdoms was so fragile, what would happen to it if Arthur fell in battle? Or ceased to win? Or lost his closest advisor? His wife? His child? The Saxons were coming in floods. The Saxon tide, they called it. If King Arthur faltered, the future might be very different from the peaceful past she had known.
She had wondered about this often in the last two months. Things had been different since she’d come home. She had not been able to slip back into the routines of daily life with the same sense of comfort as before. Something had changed, inside and outside.
That afternoon, she had gone alone to Queen Alyse’s chamber to look at her image in the mirror of polished bronze. In the gray gloom of a room shuttered tight against the wind, a trio of flickering candles had provided the only light. Even so, her image had startled her. She had not recognized herself. Ten months ago, the last time she had been there—dragged by Elaine—she had been twelve years old. Now she was nearing fourteen. She told herself that change was to be expected.
But the change went deeper than physical transformation. She longed for different company. She missed her conversations with Trevor, Queen Esdora, and Sir Bedwyr. They had treated her like one of them. They had listened to her. They had wanted her opinion. They had made her feel adult. Here at home she was the queen’s ward again, and unquestioning obedience was her foremost duty. As difficult as it was to be back in this isolated corner of Wales with little news of the outside world, it was more difficult by far to be without companionship of mind.
Guinevere pulled the hood of her cloak tighter around her face. A little wind had sprung up, flinging the snowflakes side-ways as they fell. It was time to go in, but still she lingered. She felt her future close upon her but unseen, like the sea behind the blowing veil of snow. She was going to have to learn to come to terms with that young woman in the mirror, and that was going to take a deal of courage. For the face she had seen emerging in the shimmering surface of the bronze would soon be one people would not forget.
How she was to live with beauty, she did not yet know. It was part of the prophecy, but like the rest of the prophecy, it was too overwhelming to take in all at once. She would follow Llyr’s advice and face it a little every day—as the High King in his solitude faced the loss of his wife and child, and as Merlin the Enchanter, if he lived, faced whatever malevolent fate had come upon him.
Day by day, step by step, life would go forward. Eventually, the veil would lift, the cold would yield to the sun’s warmth, and the world would be reborn. This dark time would pass.
As she turned away from the parapet and headed for the stairs, she spared a thought for Merlin the Enchanter. What would come, would come, he had told her as he left her. And when it came, she would accept it. She had outgrown girlhood. She was ready for something else.
Let it be so.
A Note to Readers
This is the story of the girl who grew up to be King Arthur’s queen. It is important to remember that this book is a work of fiction. If King Arthur existed—and this is still a matter of debate among scholars—he lived in late-fifth-century to early-sixth-century Britain (somewhere between 485 and 526 CE), not in the Middle Ages. This is the beginning of the Dark Ages, so called because we know relatively little about them. There is only one contemporaneous account of Arthur’s time, as far as we know, and it does not mention him.
If Arthur lived, he lived around a hundred years after the last Roman legions pulled out of Britain, leaving the Britons to defend themselves against the invading Saxons, Picts (from Scotland), and Scots (from Ireland). Legend holds that for a short time, the invaders were held at bay by a strong war leader who united the Britons and gave them perhaps two or three decades of peace. He was called Pendragon, or “High King.” Arthur’s parentage, marriages, offspring, friends, and fortresses are not matters of fact but of legend.
Archaeologists have discovered that there was a brisk trade between Roman Britain and the Mediterranean, which continued even after the Romans left. I have therefore assumed that any objects used in a Roman household might have been used in a Briton one as well.
Names of characters are drawn from historical tradition (Arthur, Guinevere, Merlin, etc.), other authors of the Arthurian legend (from Sir Thomas Malory to Mary Stewart), Ronan Coghlan’s excellent Encyclopaedia of Arthurian Legends, and my ow
n imagination. The genealogy of “Descendants of Magnus Maximus” is entirely invented.
I am not a speaker of Welsh or Gaelic and can give you only one clue to the pronunciation of the names and place-names in the book. I am indebted to Mary Stewart (author of The Crystal Cave, The Hollow Hills, The Last Enchantment, and The Wicked Day) for the advice that the dd in Gwynedd and Gwarthgydd is pronounced like the th in them (not like the th in breath).
Whether you are new to the Arthurian legend or an established fan, I hope you enjoy this journey into the days of King Arthur.
Acknowledgments
This is my chance to thank publicly all the people who have helped me with this book. For their patience, tolerance, and emotional support throughout, I thank my husband, Bruce; my sister, Meg; my daughters, Elizabeth, Katie, and Caroline; my friends Marian Borden, Joellen Finnie, Margie Cohen, Sheri Gipson, and Kate Delaney. They have kept me connected to the outside world while I’ve been living in the fifth century.
Special thanks are due to Karen Kramer, friend, writer, and teacher, for keeping me sane during periods of intense pressure, and to Deborah Hogan, friend and professional editor, for giving me invaluable feedback when Guinevere’s Gamble was in its embryonic stages.
The transition from embryo to term was a collaborative effort. I am indebted to my excellent editors at Alfred A. Knopf, Michelle Frey and Michele Burke, for taking such care of the story and working so hard to get it right. Their critiques were precise and fair, their courtesy unfailing, and their dedication inspiring. I am extremely grateful to have such talented editors.
My thanks to the entire production staff for creating such a beautiful book. Tristan Elwell’s gorgeous cover is outstanding. When I was a teen, I’d have bought any book with this cover, no matter what was inside. Thanks also to Stephanie Moss for the graceful book design. In the hands of these artists, book, cover, and story become a seamless whole.
Thanks also to Jean Naggar and her excellent team at the Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency for their support, their attention to detail, and their help with the particulars of publishing that tend to slip beneath my radar. Without them, this book would not exist.
I’d also like to thank my readers for taking an interest in Guinevere and caring what happens to her, for e-mailing me their questions and opinions, and for posting comments on the Internet. Thank you all.
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2009 by Nancy McKenzie
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House
Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
McKenzie, Nancy.
Guinevere’s gamble / Nancy McKenzie.—1st ed.
p. cm. (The Chrysalis Queen quartet; bk. 2)
Summary: Thirteen-year-old Guinevere learns more about her destiny when she accompanies her aunt and uncle to an important council of Welsh kings and finds that she has a powerful enemy in the High King’s sister Morgan.
eISBN: 978-0-375-85360-9
1. Guenevere, Queen (Legendary character)—Childhood and youth—Juvenile fiction. [1. Guenevere, Queen (Legendary character)—Childhood and youth—Fiction. 2. Fate and fatalism—Fiction. 3. Morgan le Fay (Legendary character)—Childhood and youth— Fiction. 4. Merlin (Legendary character)—Fiction. 5. Arthur, King—Fiction. 6. Great Britain—History—Anglo-Saxon period, 449–1066—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.M198632Gam 2009
[Fic]—dc22
2008050617
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Nancy McKenzie, Guinevere's Gamble
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