Текст книги "The once and future queen"

Автор книги: Paula Laferty

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Текущая страница: 22 (всего у книги 33 страниц)

The story of Vera’s attack would not be publicly shared. They’d made some progress with the people of Camelot; they didn’t need news getting out of another attack on the queen. It would be a small circle who knew even a version of the truth: the king’s guard and the priest who’d already seen the carnage. The whole next day was spent crafting and sharing the narrative that Vera and Arthur together were attacked by a Saxon spy. That Arthur had been the one to kill him. No one would be informed of Vera’s injuries. It was the falsehood Arthur had told Merlin before he departed, too.

The lie felt wrong, especially when it came to Percival, who’d supported Arthur—and Vera, for that matter—with all his energy. But Gawain had been insistent. They couldn’t take a chance that word would get out and begin to unspool the story. One lie had born another. How had the queen healed so quickly from stab wounds that the mage shouldn’t have been able to heal?

Because she’d taken a preemptive healing potion.

Why had she taken it?

Because Merlin was doing dangerous magic on her mind.

Why?

Because she had no memory. Because of what Viviane had done.

One truth led to all the truths. They were too deeply entangled in lies.

Arthur hated it. “We should have trusted the people with the truth the day Viviane attacked,” he said, his face taut with regret as Percival headed back to the training field, having been told the latest fabrication.

“No,” Gawain said. “The high council of mages is suspicious of the queen’s entire story—as I was. Naiam is our leader, and she is well-known for being just, but the lower council listens to Ratamun more readily. I fear his lust for power would blind him. This magic is too tempting a force. For the council alone, you never could have been truthful.”

“Because they could learn to use that magic?” Vera turned to him.

He pursed his lips. “In a manner of speaking.”

“What does that mean?”

“There are some things about mages and magic that I could not tell you even if I wanted to.” He eyed her keenly. “You needn’t worry. Focus on your work with the king.”

Gawain was right. She and Arthur would continue what they’d started before Yule: being seen together through Camelot as a loving couple. This time, Vera was determined to do it right, determined to play the part of the proper queen. She would be serious at meals and reserve demure smiles only for when the men laughed. She wouldn’t make the mistake of avoiding conversation and appearing standoffish like before but would speak sparingly like a well-bred lady might. What she didn’t know about courtly customs, she’d learn. And she and Arthur would convince the people that they were soulmates. That the kingdom was everything the subjects dreamed of during the years of war, and the people could rest safe in their benevolent leader and his dutiful, loving queen.

It was the seventh century, and Vera had already allowed for too much selfish distraction. Her moment of clarity during Thomas’s attack rang true: she wasn’t just a vessel for Guinevere’s memories. Of course. She was a vessel for everyone else’s memory of Queen Guinevere as well.

She had to do better.

And she’d have her first opportunity later in the morning when she and Arthur were to meet in the town square and visit the market together. First, Lancelot was taking her to the armory to try out various swords and chain mail to ready her for training. He was rather giddy, but she couldn’t enjoy it for her laser focus on what was to come next.

It was at the forefront of her mind as he accompanied her back through Camelot, and a raucous cheer sliced through her anxious reverie. She and Lancelot simultaneously snapped their heads toward the sound: the keep-away pit, which was surrounded by the largest crowd Vera had seen there and was the source of the uproar.

“What in the Gods’ names … ?” Lancelot murmured. His feet seemed to drift of their own accord, the pit’s crowd drawing him in like a moth to the flame.

The crowd parted easily as he touched a shoulder here or gave his charming and crooked smile there, Vera merely riding his draft up to the front.

He laughed loudly as he reached the crowded wall. “I’ll be damned.”

Vera squeezed through a gap, edging around Lancelot’s shoulder so she could see what was happening. At first glance, nothing was strange aside from the considerable crowd. Then her eyes found him. How she could have missed his form, commanding and graceful, for even a second amongst the half-dozen players was beyond her. There were four men left in the game on one side of the pit, and on the other, there was a tiny girl who looked like she belonged in nursery school and who was hiding behind the last player.

Arthur.

“Has he ever played before?” Vera asked.

Lancelot smiled broadly without taking his eyes off Arthur. “Not to my knowledge.”

Arthur bodily shielded the girl, his arms spread, sleeves rolled to the elbow, and pants scuffed with dirt. Sweat beaded on his brow despite the chilly morning. He was fighting tooth and nail to keep both himself and his little shadow in the game. She shouted orders from behind Arthur, to both his and the crowd’s delight.

“King, get him! Get HIM!” she shrieked, pointing at the man who’d pelted the ball in their direction. She addressed him that way every time. “Smack it, King!” or “Not like that, King. Kick it better.”

Arthur made a great effort to keep his face serious and focused, but his smile broke through frequently. The crowd roared with laughter as Arthur’s teammate chided him to play tougher.

Somehow, either by the other players laughing too hard to carry on or perhaps by their generosity, it was soon only Arthur and the child left. He crossed the pit to make space between them and turned to face her, the ball sitting directly between them. The girl’s eyes were the size of saucers.

“What do I do?” she asked Arthur.

“Kick it, Flora,” he said. “Go on—see if you can get me!”

Flora licked her lips and tossed her golden hair behind her shoulders. She ran her fastest at the ball and gave it a clumsy kick that Arthur made no effort to dodge. It bounced along the ground and rolled slowly into his foot. As soon as it made contact, he dropped to the dirt as if knocked unconscious. Flora screamed her glee while the crowd erupted. Arthur grinned from his place on the ground before he got to his feet and was all but tackled by Flora as she threw her arms around his neck, yelling, “We won! We won!”

“You won!” He gave her a jubilant spin, letting his gaze land on Vera. Arthur’s eyes glimmered as he spoke quietly to the child. She glanced at Vera, too, then gave a beaming smile before he set her on the ground.

Flora wasted no time in dashing over to Vera, pulling Arthur with her with one hand and grabbing Vera’s hand with the other. “Come on!” she said. “It’s your turn!”

Vera looked from Flora’s sweet face with her big, pleading eyes up to Arthur and the others preparing for the game.

“Go on.” Lancelot nudged her with his elbow.

“I—” This was not a part of Vera’s plan. “I shouldn’t …”

“I insist,” Arthur said. “Let’s play.”

So she played, and that was merely the beginning of it. As often as weather permitted, dinners with performers were moved into the town square. There was dancing, initiated by Arthur, no less, on more than one occasion. Vera didn’t have to become more formal because Arthur became less so, and all of Camelot seemed to fall in stride.

In the midst of it all, her training with the king’s guard had begun in earnest. It was grueling and absolutely humbling, but it was something of a treat, too. She often stayed after to watch their faster, much more intense sparring that left her slack-jawed at their prowess. But today, Randall was helping Percival into full, plated armor and helmet while Lancelot set up the strangest rig on the far end of the field, a pole with a wooden arm extending from it and a chest plate dangling beneath. He gave it a smack, and the arm spun about the pole. Lancelot caught it on its way back around and nodded, satisfied.

At the other end of the field, Percival was on horseback, and Randall passed him a hefty spear at least two meters long. Her jaw went slack. Surely not …

Percival tucked the lance beneath his arm and set his horse galloping toward the dangling chest plate. The tip of his lance slammed into it, sending the hinged arm spinning about the pole.

“Is he … jousting?” Vera asked. “You lot have jousting?”

Arthur nodded. “We have a tournament in Camelot every spring. It’s the only time of the year all the knights gather in one place. Largest tourney in the kingdom,” he said with no small measure of pride.

“That …” Percival looped back around to make another pass. “I’m a poor historian, but I am almost certain this should not exist yet. Not for several hundred years.” Plenty of Camelot had advancements beyond what she expected, all owing to magic. But things like having the orb lights and magically heated water made sense. Of all things, why would magic advance the advent of jousting?

Arthur nodded to Randall in the distance, who raised his hand and gave a stiff wave. “It came about during the wars. I think it was a soldier from the Frankish Kingdom who introduced us to it … but we started playing at it between battles to ease the tension, and it became rather popular.”

Maybe that explained it, and jousting had some earlier origin in France.

Percival dropped the shattered remnants of one lance, rode close to Randall to take a fresh one from him, and started his next charge.

“Just watching him practice is rather thrilling,” she said.

Arthur leaned against the fence next to her and eyed her.

“What?” she asked defensively, but Vera lived for moments like this. Tiny, private gestures that proved his promise of friendship wasn’t merely for show.

He grinned. “Do you want to try it?”

“Me?” Vera laughed, though Arthur didn’t. “I—oh God, I could never. I’d be a wreck … If I didn’t fall or die, I’d probably lose control and kill someone.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” Arthur said in his quiet way. “You should give it a go.”

“And pray tell, who’s going to teach me?”

“I can,” he said.

Not two days later, Grady saddled their horses, and Vera and Arthur rode into the woods where she and Lancelot often ran. She followed him to a clearing, fully outfitted the same as the jousting practice arena in town.

He’d thought of everything and prepared accordingly, having at the ready armor that was likely made for a teenage boy, her running clothing to wear under, and three sizes of lances. After turning away to give her privacy as she changed from her gown to trousers and top, he helped her dress in the armor. First, a thicker pair of breeches to go over her own. On top, a long-sleeve padded shirt.

“This is called a gambeson,” Arthur said helpfully as he held it aloft, ready for her to dive her head and arms into it, followed by chest plate with metal skirting that hung down over the tops of each of her legs, then shoulder and arm pieces strapped on somewhat like a harness.

He knelt down to secure the full leg pieces, each one tying at the back just beneath her bottom. Her skin tingled as the backs of his fingers brushed against her thighs. She needed it over immediately—and wanted it to never end.

He armored up as well. They started by working on simply riding a horse in armor, which was challenging enough. She practiced with the lightest lance next, and he took her through the motions with the practice plate at an absolute snail’s pace. She still missed twice. But this was their first of a handful of sessions over the following weeks. Session by session, Arthur added more elements of the joust.

All along, he told her how well she was doing and how quickly she was learning. Vera gave a perfectly adequate performance, but he treated her like God’s gift to medieval sport. And she charged into practice runs shouting quotes from films that would be pure nonsense to Arthur, but it made him laugh, which was a lovely sound, so she kept at it.

He made the other part of their act, the feigning love, easy … far too easy.

He needed only to catch her eye while his face was bright with laughter for Vera’s insides to dance. When he took her hand, when his arm casually snaked around her waist at the market, or, worse, when they shared even a quick, chaste kiss in public for show, any notion of pretense evaporated. Her mind was utterly addled for him. The potion had done its work well, and it hurt every time Vera remembered the truth: that her feelings weren’t really hers.

But she didn’t want it to stop—and it was effective. The more affectionately Arthur behaved toward her, the more people sought her attention nearly as much as his. And he was either a practiced diplomat aware of the impacts of their act, or he was still magic-addled into adoring her, too.

Perhaps both, because he behaved that way when it was just the two of them as well. Before Arthur retreated to the side chamber to sleep, they spent most evenings together. They’d sat down to finish the last chapter of The Hobbit when a knock came at the door. It was a letter for Arthur. A shadow passed over his expression as he read it.

“What is it?” Vera asked from where she sat on the bed with her legs crossed beneath her.

“The Northern Lords.” He sighed as he tossed the letter on the desk. “They’re threatening to secede from the kingdom.”

Hearing it was like being punched in the stomach. Vera pressed her hands to her face. “It’s my fault. Guinevere’s father. Wulfstan … they were fine until I showed up.”

Arthur began shaking his head before she finished speaking. He sat down in the chair next to the bed. “They’ve had different notions of how to structure a kingdom all along. There wouldn’t even be an alliance without this marriage. The lords were hesitant about how unification diminished their power, but with the threat of invasion and the need for protection so high, they had little choice.” He chuckled ruefully as he leaned forward in his seat and rested his elbows on his knees. “But their people want to be a part of Britain. How do we capitalize on that? Come to that, how do we help the whole nation remember that we’re trying to build something different?”

“By doing it,” Vera said without thinking. “You have to actually build something different and not just say you’re different.”

The corners of his lips ticked upward.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “That was—”

“No. You’re right.” He rubbed at his chin as his other hand tapped one finger against his knee. “I can’t simply say that I want a governance that shares power while the lords remain the only ones with meaningful say. But how do we build that without power being stretched so thin that it collapses in on itself?”

Vera waited for Arthur to continue. He didn’t.

“Sorry, are you wanting me to answer?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Arthur, I’m not—” She huffed a laugh. “The entire purpose of my existence is recovering Guinevere’s memories. If you don’t need them, the best I can do until the kingdom can break the curse on its own is to not cause any more harm. I’m not anybody. I’m a vessel for a woman who is … gone.” They were words she’d said before. Words she believed. She’d never said them to Arthur, though. It felt a little more like a recitation and less like the truth than it once had.

His face had gone rigid as she spoke. Vera tensed at the thought that he might go distant from her again. But he got up and knelt on the bed next to her, looking her squarely in the eyes. “You don’t see it, do you?”

“See what?”

“We are better because you are here. You don’t have to be Guinevere to matter. You, Vera, matter very much to this kingdom.”

She dropped her chin to her chest and squeezed her eyes shut. “Yes, I have brought it to the brink of war—”

She felt his hand on her shoulder and the other gently lifting her chin. His lips were so close to hers. She yearned to close the gap. “You matter to me. I don’t want to do this without you. I want to know what you think.”

She wished she could have fallen into him. Instead, she scooted over to make room for him to properly sit next to her. They wouldn’t solve all the kingdom’s problems that night, but it was the beginning of something. The weight they each bore, with no secrets left between them, became a shared burden.

And with a quiet voice in Vera whispering that perhaps she could do something good here—something good with him—they put ruling to bed for the night to finish the final chapter of The Hobbit.

“It’s a wonderful story, isn’t it?” Arthur laid the book aside. “Going on a life-changing adventure and then coming back home? Maybe you’ll have your own There and Back Again to write soon.”

“Maybe,” she said, hoping he couldn’t hear her uncertainty. It was only January, after all. The end of spring was a long way off. There was no sense in worrying about that now. “This book is actually the story’s beginning.”

“Really? Does Bilbo have more adventures?”

Vera listed her head to the side. “Hm, not exactly. It’s more about the ring he found. It turns out to be, like, the most powerful thing in Middle Earth made by this dark lord Sauron to rule the world or what-have-you.” She sat up more in her excitement. “Anyway, Bilbo’s nephew has to go on a quest to destroy it. That one’s a trilogy called The Lord of the Rings. It’s amazing. They even made them into these fantastic films.”

Arthur’s smile warmed as he listened. “Do you know them well enough to tell me the story?”

“No!” Vera said, scandalized. “I mean, yes, I know them well enough, but I can’t do that. I don’t want to spoil them for you!”

He laughed. “How would it—” His expression softened. “Vera, I’m never going to read those books in my lifetime. And I’m certainly never going to watch those films.”

He was right, of course. She knew that, but still. “I can’t,” she insisted. “What if we can convince Merlin to bring them back …”

When he takes me home.

She couldn’t finish the sentence. She didn’t need to. Arthur understood.

“I’d like that,” he said, his eyes glinting. He seemed happy. Vera wished she could join in his joy. Arthur belonged in another world, and there were some things—many things—they would never share. It didn’t matter that her feelings for him were magic’s fabrication; she decided she would not waste a moment of it.

He stood to leave, as he always did when they finished reading.

“Will you stay?” Vera asked before she had time to change her mind.

When he hesitated and looked back at her with a flicker of longing, it urged her on.

“I know you slept in the chair a few nights. And that you come in during the night to make sure I’m all right.” She’d been awake a few of the times, though she pretended not to be. “You’re running a young country that’s in a bit of a shitstorm. Good sleep is the least of what you need right now.” She tried to smile reassuringly, but it did nothing to unknit the furrow of his brow.

“I don’t want you to feel …”

“I feel safe with you,” she said.

Vera saw it again: a flicker of shame as brief as a spark’s life. “All right,” he said.

She scooted to the side that she’d been sleeping on, and Arthur settled in on the other side.

They did not touch that night, but he never went back to sleeping in the chair or even the other chamber, and it was not long before the guise of sleep became a refuge for what they would not allow in the light of day.

Under the cover of unconsciousness, Vera and Arthur’s arms found one another. It started innocently when she rolled over in the space inches before sleep, and her hand landed on his chest. A reflex from a love that was gone—it was how she’d slept with Vincent almost nightly, but she froze as she realized where she was and who her arm was draped across. His eyes didn’t open, but his breathing changed. He was awake. He didn’t pull away. He covered her hand with his and held it.

But she always instigated it. One night, when she was determined not to indulge her need for his touch, Vera lay on her side facing away from Arthur. It surprised her when he rolled close behind her, slid his arm around her torso, and held her, gently rubbing his thumb back and forth across her collarbone.

It elated and frightened her in equal measure to realize that, in his arms, Vera felt like she was home.