The Last Days of Camelot

[Tarq]

Background: I like Arthurian legend. But no novelization this side of The Once and Future King, now one of my favorite books ever, has been able to satisfy me. So, I wish to write my own.

Is this a lofty goal? God, yes. Will I forget about it after a couple weeks? Probably. Am I gonna write while I can anyway? You're fuckin A.

I'll use this first post for background Arthurian information when I get the chance to edit it in. The story begins about twenty years (note that I avoid using exact dates, to keep a certain sense of fantasy) into Arthur's reign, and the knights have come trickling back from their two-year quest for the Holy Grail. Nearly of them are confirmed dead, and there are still a handful missing - including the greatest of them all, Lancelot de Banuic...

[Tarq]

It was the black of morning, the air damp and heavy with fog, when the queen awoke and knew at once that there would be no returning to sleep. Of late, she had been sleeping no more than three or four hours a night, even less than her husband; unlike the monarch, Guinevere had little to occupy her time in the long dark before dawn. Her bed was empty again, in fact, Arthur at some important matter of state that could not wait until morning. Or perhaps it was a trifle, and like her, the Pendragon needed something to fill the sleepless hours.

For a few moments, she lay, trying to remember her dream. It had been some deep and heavy dream, she was sure of that, perhaps even portentuous. And it had been a good dream, that she was sure of, one she misliked waking from so soon. But for the life of her, the Queen of England could not recall what it had been. Her red lips curved in a smile. Of course, after all the petty nightmares and small imaginings that waken me in the night, when I have a dream that feels important it slips my mind entirely. It was likely just another inconsequence.

She rose quietly and stepped over her weary maid's cot, and retrieved a dressing gown and heavy cloak from the wall. It was a cold English spring if ever there was one, and while her own apartments were well insulated, the halls of Camelot would be less so. The queen downed gown and cloak and slipped out of her room. One of the Pellinores, of course, was sitting within the outer door to her apartments, his sword across his knees. It was Lamorak tonight, and she smiled to see him.

"Your Majesty," he said, returning the smile timorously. "How can I aid you?" His voice nearly cracked, though he was past twenty; the singers hailed him as one of the greatest of Arthur's knights, and rightly so, but before Guinevere he was a bashful, stammering boy. She did not mind that he was in love with her. It was the sort of love a boy of six feels for his pretty nursemaid, and it ensured his loyalty even more than his blood and his father's teachings. He alone of the Pellinores had surrendered the Grail to stay by her side as guard.

"Walk with me, Sir Lamorak," she replied. "I wish to take my exercise." Lamorak rose immediately and buckled on his sword. He was not so much taller than the queen, stocky and muscular, with old Lord Pellinore's jutting chin and a shock of curly brown hair that time would likely turn white long before it even fell out. The Beast Glatisant writhed in agony on his surcoat, pierced through by a broad-bladed spear. He saw the queen looking at him and blushed - blushed, the young man who had slain three Holy Roman knights at once in his fifteenth year. Again the schoolboy, the queen thought. So many of them are just boys - even the old ones have that feeling to them. Brave and brash and deadly boys.

Lamorak opened the door for Guinevere and followed her down the hall, to the left and two steps behind, eyes watchful. Camelot had lost something of that haunting emptiness that suffused it for most of the past year, with nearly all the knights gone on quest; there were muffled voices in the vast network of chambers again, and fires flickering behind doors. Here and there were others left sleepless - servants, functionaries, courtiers mostly, who all knelt as she passed and then carried on with whatever task or idle errand they were about.

Her steps, at first, led nowhere in particular, but gradually she became aware that she was heading to the Small Hall, where his husband conducted affairs that did not call for the pomp and ceremony of the Royal Hall. The corridors widened as they approached, and Guinevere could hear voices - not muffled by the thick doors of the Small Hall, but echoing in the rotunda outside. "Can you hear what they are saying, Sir Lamorak? An old woman's ears are none too keen." She watched Lamorak struggle out a half-formed compliment as to how she was far too lovely to be old, instantly blush red as an apple and apologize, and then try to explain he did not mean to say she was not lovely, before she laughed and put a hand on his arm. "I'm only teasing, Sir. You make it so easy. In truth, my hearing has never been the finest - can you make out what they are saying?"

The Pellinore was relieved to be of some service that did not involve a courtly compliment to which he was horridly unsuited. "Ah, it is an argument, Majesty, that I can be sure of. Three? Four men, perhaps? And it has something to do with war." He cocked his head. "Saxony, I believe I heard. Cedric of Saxony, mayhap."

"It will the MacLudhs, then," Guinevere said with a weary smile. "The younger ones, at least, quarrelling in the antechamber while Gawaine and perhaps Mordred meet with the king inside his hall. Come, let us catch them at their favorite sport. With a tiny smile, Lamorak took several steps ahead of her and held aside the tapestry which covered the entrance to the Small Hall's rotunda. It was the MacLudhs, of course, all of the younger four and Egraine MacIdres to boot. Only Mordred was looking in her direction; the rest had their backs to the tapestry, and Agravaine was holding forth. Mordred nearly hailed Lamorak, but when he saw the queen, he smiled faintly and stayed quiet.

"–will have no choice, of course! It is base rebellion - treason, do I name it? Aye, I do. A strong King must needs answer treason with strength. No man can doubt Cedric's intentions." He raised a flagon of wine to his lips, and during the pause Gareth jumped in.

"Agravaine," he said patiently, "No one is doubting the Saxon's intentions. He is treacherous, all men know, and this has the stink of faint excuse. But the king can not flout his own law - Cedric has a grievance, and until His Majesty has cause to declare the grievance a bad one, Cedric can hold the boy as long as he is safe and treated due his station. It is the way of things under the king's law."

"Bah!" spat Agravaine. "The king's law is the king's law, to do as he will!" Mordred caught the queen's gaze and rolled his eyes, and she laughed. The MacLudhs and their cousin spun as one - or at least, began their spin as one, with Gareth arriving well before any of the others and Gaheris lumbering around last. She made a gesture in the direction of a curtsey, still smiling.

"Pardon, good sirs. I had no wish to interrupt your conversation; I only laughed at something Sir Lamorak had said to me as we approached." The queen felt their eyes on her, that stare particular to the MacLudhs - not insolent, only weighing and waiting while the connection established itself between their minds. It was Lyonel de Gaulles who had provided the widely-quoted epigram, years ago before Mordred came to court, that the brothers from Orkney had one giant-sized brain in four bodies. Later, Lancelot had told the queen in seriousness that he thought them the four elements of the body divided - Gaheris the body, Agravaine the mind, Gawaine the heart, and Gareth the soul.

She stood under their scrutiny, her own black eyes matching their inscrutable cornflower ones, aware of Sir Lamorak straightening his spine beside her. Guinevere de Grance had the beauty of a woman in the full flush of maturity, with none of the marks of motherhood on her body; a woman's shape, curved and supple but not plump, and suited to her height. Her hair was as jet black as it had ever been (and if she had white hairs plucked now and then as soon as they appeared, what did it matter?), her lips as full and red, her skin as fair.

The four MacLudhs went to their knees together, with Egraine a moment behind. Gareth spoke for them. "Tis we who must beg pardon, Majesty, for not noticing your approach. We pray the evening finds you well."

"It finds me well enough, though you had as well call it morning by this hour," she replied with a hint of a grin. "Rise, sirs." Gareth smiled at her as they did so. He was the youngest but for Mordred, and sometimes seemed even younger, with his freckles and unruly hair. When Guinevere had first seen them on the day of her wedding, all present for Gawaine's knighting, the four princelings of Lothian had been as alike as the thistles of their emblem; even Gareth, a boy of thirteen at the time, seemed merely a smaller copy of his siblings. Now they had grown distinct - all tall men with red hair and faded blue eyes, but where Gareth was lean and boyish, Agravaine was shaped like a barrel, with the receding hair and florid, broken-veined face of a man ten years older. Plain-faced Gaheris overtopped both of them by a head and had a muscular bulk to match, while Gawaine...

"Our brither," explained Gaheris, in his half-civilized brogue, "is at meeting with the King. There is a trouble on them, by reason of the happenings at Saxony."

"And those happenings are?" she prompted. The big knight's eyebrows knit together, and he looked a little relieved when Agravaine cleared his throat and raised a finger. Gaheris had always been uncomfortable speaking for his brothers, and a little dim besides. Guinevere seated herself as Agravaine began to speak, and the other Lothians took that as their cue to relax.

"Your Majesty knows Cedric of Saxony of old, I believe," the stout man said a bit pompously, "For his rebellion against your royal husband at the onset of his reign. Swiftly put down, of course." Mordred, leaning against the wall in back, caught the queen's eye again and made clear they were both thinking the same: as swiftly as your father, Sir Agravaine, the figurehead of that same rebellion? "But he has never rested easily under the King's lawful reign."

Sir Lamorak, standing behind the queen's chair, spoke up. "A few days past, my brother Dornar rode to Saxony to speak with Baron Cedric regarding his taxes to His Majesty, well past due." His voice was remarkably uninflected, considering how little love lost there was between the Pellinores and the MacLudhs. "Has he sent word?"

"Of a sort, sir," Agravaine replied coolly. "Or rather, Cedric has sent word - that young Dornar has dishonored his maiden daughter, and is at imprisonment in his keep until justice can be served."

Lamorak paled, his fingers clutching at empty air. "Dornar!" he gasped, and Guinevere felt a rush of sympathy. The Pellinores were nearly as close as the MacLudhs, even closer after the slaying of old Lord Pellinore and the following death of his wife. The past year had seen Lamorak's sister dead in a religious fervor, and it was rumored that Percival, the third son, had been slain on quest for the Grail. Certainly the kindly, simple-minded knight had not returned, one of only a handful unaccounted for one way or the other; now for honest young Dornar to be endangered too was a heavy blow to his brothers.

"By justice, of course," Agravaine went on blithely, "He means until that odious son of his–" the northman paused and glanced around.

"Cynric," supplied Egraine MacIdres, an unremarkable man who much resembled his cousins, and whose sudden ascension to the Earlship of Cornwall had surprised him as much as everyone else, most of all his brother Uwaine.

"Aye, that one. Until he returns, with the greater part of Cedric's spears, to strike off young Dornar's head for defiling his sister." Agravaine shrugged. "Or so I would wager."

"Dornar did no such thing!" Lamorak stated loudly.

"I should hope not," snorted Agravaine. "The girl is said to resemble her father; a horrid fate to wish on anyone, to be sure."

"And he lad is no' the type to be at seducing young lasses," added Gaheris ponderously. "It is the grudge that is on Cedric, for yir old Lord Pellinore did kill his father, Morgant, in the Unification. It is an unhealthy habit to be at killing fathers." The huge man chuckled at his own tactless joke, and Agravaine smirked.

Lamorak's face paled further. "I take your meaning, sir. Do you oft jest on the murder of fathers? You have had ample opportunity." Gareth, at least, had the grace to look ashamed, but his older brothers scowled. Egraine just looked like he wished to be somewhere else.

"A fine one you are to talk, Pellinore!" snapped Agravaine. "We all saw your father, feasting and drinking at the Cornwall tourney, with Lothian blood scarely washed from his hands." Gaheris moved up to tower beside his brother, while Egraine and Gareth reluctantly flanked them.

Lamorak took a step forward himself, hand sliding towards his sword hilt. "Is that when you marked him for murder?" he snarled. "How slow you move, Agravaine."

Before anyone else could speak or act, Guinevere rose from her chair. "You forget yourselves, sirs!" she said, in the voice that had made her the terror of the de Grance castle, and quelled even the mighty Lancelot. "You are under the King's peace, and you will put your quarrel aside and cease such unworthy accusations!"

[Tarq]

The second half of this first chapter is due in tomorrow, along with some edits to the Lothians' dialogue (it is WAY too stilted when they're alone.)