Guinevere's Gamble

  “Come Christmas, when the child was ready to be born, Uther persuaded Ygraine that a son begotten before their marriage could never be accepted as King. He would give her other sons, he promised, whose birth no one would question. He told her to give the babe to Merlin for safekeeping, if it was a boy. And my lady obeyed.” She shook her head. “It cost her much, but Uther was her heart, her breath, her soul. She let the child go.”

  Silence fell between them until at last Guinevere ventured, “Why Merlin?”

  Marcia looked at her in some surprise. “Who else? He was the child’s closest male kinsman and a wise, well-traveled man whom no one would dare attack. He could keep the boy safe until Uther decided on his future. No one’s ever doubted Merlin’s powers of protection…. My lady wept for six weeks and mourned for years, until Morgan came along. Then she shut that grief away and gave herself to raising her daughter…. But in all the years of their marriage, they never had another son.”

  Guinevere heard only the first part of what she said. She waited until Marcia finished speaking and then blurted, “Merlin is King Arthur’s kinsman?”

  Marcia looked at her curiously. “Why, they are cousins, like you and Princess Elaine, only with twenty years between them. Perhaps it isn’t as widely known as it ought to be. No doubt Merlin keeps it dark. He’s a man who hates attention. In truth, Merlin is the natural son of Aurelius Ambrosius, Uther’s elder brother, who won our lands back from Vortigern the Wolf and began putting the Saxons to flight. If he’d been a warrior, he might have been High King instead of Uther, for Ambrosius acknowledged him. But he was blessed with different gifts.”

  Marcia wiped her eyes. “My, my, how I do go on. You’re a good listener, young Guinevere. You’re like my lady Ygraine in that.”

  Footsteps approached and a youngster in a page’s tunic peeked into Marcia’s chamber. “The hearing’s over, mistress. The men are back.”

  Marcia rose. “And my lady?”

  “Damon said the princess went to Sir Bedwyr’s tent.” He grinned mischievously. “In a temper, he said.”

  “That will do, Ralf.”

  Guinevere rose as the page departed. “I don’t want her to find me here.”

  Marcia gave her a considering look. “Leaving without the ruby? Suppose you tell me first why you think that stone can save your friend.”

  “It will prove to Sir Bedwyr that Princess Morgan had possession of the dagger. That means she could have buried it herself. I think she did. To make trouble for Llyr. Showing him the ruby will make Llyr’s innocence seem at least possible.”

  Marcia frowned, and Guinevere’s heart sank. “Stay here,” Marcia said, and disappeared into Morgan’s bedchamber. Guinevere returned to her stool and thought about what she had heard.

  Merlin a kinsman of the High King Arthur! She could not quite believe it. Yet Queen Ygraine’s inexplicable behavior in giving up her firstborn son made more sense if she had given him into the arms of a trusted kinsman. Merlin a royal kinsman! That was a disturbing thought. The memory of her own audacity in trying to refuse his power at the presentation set her trembling. If she had known at the time who he was, would she have dared?

  Her opinion of Morgan had subtly changed as well. She could easily imagine what a terrible blow it must have been to Morgan when her long-absent brother finally reappeared, followed shortly by her father’s death and Arthur’s ascendance to power. She couldn’t be blamed for mistrust and bitterness, could she? That cataclysm in Morgan’s life was only four years old: not time enough, perhaps, for so deep a wound to heal. For twelve years she had been her mother’s only child—pampered and beloved, no doubt—only to be eclipsed in everyone’s eyes when Arthur had burst onto the scene in a shower of glory, taking the sword that fell from his father’s hand, winning the battle for him, driving the Saxons back, and earning his election to Kingship by Uther’s nobles. It would be a difficult displacement for someone with Princess Morgan’s pride to accept.

  Marcia returned abruptly. Opening her fist, she dropped a dark red jewel the size of a thrush’s egg into Guinevere’s lap. “Take it to Sir Bedwyr.”

  Guinevere stared at her. “Marcia!”

  “Take it. My lady did you a wrong, and it must be made right.”

  Rising, Guinevere made her a reverence to the ground.

  “Enough of that,” said Marcia, flushing. “But it’s nearly dark, and the King’s men have lit the bonfire. It’s time to go.”

  Guinevere shot her a quick look. “If you weren’t going to make me face Princess Morgan, you could have let me go before. Why did you keep me here so long?”

  Marcia met her eyes. “To spare my lady. Taking this stone to Sir Bedwyr in the privacy of his own tent is one thing. Displaying it before all those unruly Welshmen is quite another.” She took up her shawl. “Now we’d best get going.”

  “We?” Guinevere gulped. “You can’t come with me—you mustn’t! Princess Morgan will be so—so—”

  “Furious?” Marcia supplied with a wry smile. “All the more reason for me to be there. This will be a difficult trial for her.”

  Impulsively, Guinevere embraced her and kissed her cheek. “You have courage, Marcia, and a kind heart. I honor you for them.”

  Marcia colored. “Don’t speak to me of courage. You took quite a chance coming here alone to steal back that ruby. I might have called the guard and made no end of trouble for you.”

  “I know, but I had to risk it. It was your kind heart that saved me.”

  “Kind heart indeed,” Marcia murmured as she shooed Guinevere outside before her. “We’ll see how kind Mistress Morgan thinks it in an hour’s time.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  The Bonfire

  A great bonfire snapped and roared in the last of the evening breeze, shedding sparks into the sky. Scents of roasting goose and duckling filled the air, and the babble of three hundred voices raised in talk and laughter made public speech impossible.

  Sir Bedwyr was thankful for it. All his problems had been miraculously resolved, and he could sit on a bench to eat, drink, and make merry like anyone else. It was a pleasure to shed the cloak of leadership, if only for an evening. When the skin of neat wine the men were passing among themselves came round to him, he took a deep and thankful draft. Strong and sour, the wine lit a fire in his belly that warmed his heart and made him feel like singing.

  What a tale he would have to tell to Arthur! Failure in council, the murder of an Old One, the prospect of public denunciation of the High King’s sister, and the execution of a blameless man—all of it rescued at the last moment by the actions of four brave women. He shook his head at the wonder of it.

  Queen Esdora and Queen Alyse had solved the council impasse by persuading Mardoc of Guent to accept a bargain. In exchange for Mardoc’s ceding to the kingdom of Powys a bald hill called the Giant’s Seat, which lay on the border between Powys and Guent, the queens undertook to pay Banin’s compensation to the Strong Hearts for the death of Luath. Banin was a blood relative of King Mardoc’s and, like the king, steadfastly refused to recognize the Old Ones as worthy of a bloodprice. So great was his loathing of hillmen, Mardoc preferred to cede territory to Powys than to pay them a blood-price. Since Gwynedd was a wealthier kingdom than Powys, and since the two queens had become fast friends—and would soon be related by marriage, if camp gossip could be trusted—Queen Alyse had agreed to pay half of Banin’s bloodprice on Powys’s behalf.

  That was impressive diplomacy, Sir Bedwyr thought, receiving the wineskin a second time and taking another long swallow. In the aftermath of the hearing, the Welsh kings had quickly agreed to Arthur’s plan. With the placement of a signal tower on the Giant’s Seat, the network of defensive communications was complete. No matter where the Saxons landed, the signal could be sent from promontory to hilltop to mountaintop throughout Wales in the time it took to eat a meal. Now Welshmen knew that when a fire was lit on a hilltop, help would come. King Arthur would be pleased.

&nb
sp; More amazing still was the turn of events at the hearing. Never would Bedwyr forget the sight of Guinevere of Northgallis leaping upon the bench to fly to the defense of her friend. Even in her desperation, she had remembered his plea and had not openly accused Princess Morgan. He would always remember her standing valiantly against a sea of hostile faces and giving it her best. Arthur should have seen it. It would have warmed his heart.

  And who would have thought that Queen Alyse would be so eloquent an orator? She had laid bare her family’s debt to Llyr in no uncertain terms; she had moved the women to tears and made the men still calling for bloodshed ashamed of themselves. She had made it possible for Sir Bedwyr to let Llyr go. But the mystery of the dagger remained. The people had left the hearing dissatisfied. Was there a thief or not? If yes, who was it? If no, how had the dagger come to be buried where Sir Bedwyr found it?

  When Bedwyr returned to his tent after releasing Llyr into the custody of the Strong Hearts, questions about the dagger still weighed heavily on his mind. He was dismayed to find Princess Morgan waiting for him in the great tent, livid with fury and demanding to know what he meant by releasing the thief without punishment. She accused him of rank injustice and threatened again to refuse to marry Urien as long as Llyr went free. He argued and even pleaded with her, but it was like shooting arrows at a wall. She was impervious to reason.

  It was Guinevere of Northgallis who had rescued him from this dilemma. The moment she had appeared with the ruby in her hand and Morgan’s own woman in tow—another brave woman—the princess had retreated into frosty silence. The ruby, which fit perfectly into the damaged sheath, and Marcia’s admission that Lord Riall had, in her own presence, given Morgan his dagger as a wedding gift, along with Marcia’s confession that she had never seen an Old One near their tent, had put an end to Morgan’s power over him. Bedwyr knew that Morgan knew that he would tell Arthur the entire tale if she refused to marry Urien. Arthur controlled her future. He had the power to prevent her marriage to anyone of importance and consign her to a future of anonymity. Bedwyr had not the slightest doubt now that Morgan would behave. He had seen her defeat in her eyes.

  To his surprise, Guinevere suggested that since people had seen the sheath only without the gem, the stone ought not to be put back. Surely, she said, Arthur would value his ancestor’s dagger with or without the sheath, and no doubt he had rubies enough. The gem itself—of Pendragon red—might be trusted to Princess Morgan to give to King Urien of Rheged, who might even gift it back to his bride of Pendragon blood.

  Sir Bedwyr grinned as he recalled the frozen look on Morgan’s face. To accept this gift from a girl she despised was an insult she could barely support. But she had said nothing. She wanted the ruby more.

  Marcia had solved the problem of what to tell the people about the dagger. She had volunteered to act as scapegoat. Like Sir Bedwyr, she had said in front of Morgan, she found it unthinkable that King Arthur’s sister should be publicly portrayed as a liar or a thief. She would prefer to be blamed for the theft herself.

  Over Guinevere’s wild objections, Marcia had explained. Having served Queen Ygraine from girlhood, she had grown up in the presence of beautiful objects and had developed an appreciation for them. Morgan’s mutilation of the dagger had shocked her deeply. She despised Lord Riall for using the dagger as a bribe and calling it a gift, just as she despised Morgan for making a promise to him, and through him to his mother, that she had no intention of keeping. Learning from Guinevere that the Old Ones could make friendships “just like real people,” she had thought it manifestly unfair that Llyr should be blamed for theft because the dagger had been found beneath the beech tree.

  Marcia suggested that Sir Bedwyr blame her for the dagger’s theft. After all, she was the one who was supposed to have seen the Old One near Morgan’s tent. While in reality she had seen nothing, the people would believe that she had lied to cover her tracks, and they would accept her story. Folk were much more apt to believe a servant guilty of theft than someone of high, let alone royal, birth.

  Guinevere had objected that Marcia had no reason for burying the dagger, and also that she had no way of knowing that the beech tree was frequented by Llyr. That she would unknowingly choose the very tree he often inhabited was too much of a coincidence for anyone to believe.

  Marcia had calmly replied that once Morgan had reported the dagger stolen, any servant of hers might have expected that their quarters would be searched by Sir Bedwyr’s men. She would naturally look for some place outside their tents to hide the dagger. Why not bury it in the forest near a tree that was easy to find when the search was over and she wanted to dig it up? Guinevere herself had shown her the beech tree and the cairn beneath it that very evening, as they hurried from Morgan’s tent to Sir Bedwyr’s. Had she spent more time walking about the encampment and its environs, she might have noticed the cairn herself. A beech tree of that size, with its pale, distinctive bark, was noticeable enough, but a beech tree with a cairn beneath it would be easy to find again. Given those circumstances, Marcia reasoned, the coincidence was not so difficult to believe. She might have done a poor job of burying the dagger, but that could be attributed to inexperience. She was a queen’s handmaiden, not a gardener, and she was unused to digging in soil.

  Bedwyr had been satisfied, but Guinevere had objected. Would anyone, she said with a worried glance at the frozen figure of Morgan in a corner of the tent, believe that Princess Morgan’s own serving woman would betray her? And if they believed it, wouldn’t they expect Princess Morgan to dismiss Marcia from her service? What excuse could be given for Marcia’s continuing on to Rheged in Princess Morgan’s train?

  Marcia had smiled at Guinevere’s innocence. Life was full of such betrayals, she had told the girl in a gentle voice, especially where money or objects of value were involved. Sir Bedwyr might as well tell the people the truth: Marcia served Queen Ygraine, not Princess Morgan, and Queen Ygraine had asked her to accompany Morgan to Rheged and stay with her until her marriage. Ygraine had also asked Marcia to keep an eye out for trouble and do what she could to protect her daughter from it. Thus, Marcia’s interference with the dagger could be construed as obedience to Queen Ygraine.

  Finally, Marcia had pointed out that as soon as they left for Rheged, it was very unlikely that anyone now present in Deva would ever lay eyes on her again. She would soon be forgotten, and the entire incident would be forgotten with her.

  When Guinevere had objected that Marcia was risking too much, that she might expose herself to criticism and perhaps even violence by accepting the blame for Morgan’s acts, Marcia had smiled and replied, “I am risking too much? My risk is nothing beside yours. My future, you see, is secured by Queen Ygraine. By taking the blame for Morgan’s misdeeds I am only obeying my lady’s orders. Your future, I’m afraid, is in the hands of Queen Alyse. A most capable woman, to be sure, but not a merciful one, by all accounts. I shudder to think what she might have done had you been caught stealing Mistress Morgan’s ruby.”

  “But I was caught,” the girl had objected. “You caught me.”

  Marcia smiled. “You hadn’t come near the ruby, my dear. And you told me outright why you had come when I asked you. I saw at once that you were no thief. But, my dear, you took a monstrous risk. You gambled the reputation of Gwynedd, the honor of King Pellinore, his close alliance to King Arthur, any chance for you or your cousin to make an honorable marriage, and your own condition in life, all for the chance to save your friend. I’ve never seen such courage in a grown woman, never mind a child your age. I risk a beating, perhaps; you risked everything.”

  Marcia had made the girl a reverence, and so had Bedwyr. Princess Morgan had stalked out.

  Now Bedwyr took another gulp as the wineskin came round again. Things could not have worked out better. The people had accepted Marcia’s tale readily enough when he told them at the lighting of the bonfire. Morgan had retired to her tent to sulk, taking Marcia with her. If he saw bruises on that
brave woman tomorrow, he would not be surprised.

  He was beginning to think that Guinevere of Northgallis was quite an unusual girl—brave, intelligent, loyal to a fault, and a very good friend to have, especially in a tight spot. If she were a boy, he’d speak to her parents about sending her to Arthur for warrior training. She had the makings of a first-rate Companion. He wondered what Queen Alyse had in mind for her future.

  The girl was certainly popular with the crowd around the bonfire tonight. They had greeted her with shouts of appreciation when she reappeared at dinner, and later, when the singing started—the Welsh were always singing; even the most stonehearted among them were blessed with voices—they had persuaded her to join them. Sir Bedwyr had never heard singing that pleased him more. She was better than good—even the men quieted to hear her.

  “Haven’t you heard the Lark of Gwynedd before?” he had overheard one man ask his neighbor. “Why, she sang for me when I got back from the battle of Caer Eden with my leg still festering. Cured me, she did, in a single day, just by the sound of her voice.” The battle of Caer Eden had been fought four years ago. And still that Welshman remembered her.

  “Sir Bedwyr.”

  A hand came down on Sir Bedwyr’s shoulder and he jumped. “My lord Merlin! You’re back.”

  “Apparently,” said the wizard. “I beg pardon for intruding on the celebrations, but I must speak to you a moment.”

  Sir Bedwyr waved an arm. “At your service, m’lord. Where’ve you been?”

  “With the Old Ones. Has the council concluded?”

  “All wrapped up. Everything agreed upon. I’ve got everyone’s mark to prove it. We break camp tomorrow,” he added with satisfaction. “In three days we’ll be in Rheged.”

  “Good man. That’s excellent news.”

  “Got the dagger, too, just as you predicted. Do you want to take it to Arthur, m’lord, or shall I?”

  A shadow passed across Merlin’s face. “You take it to him.”