THE WARRIOR QUEEN (The Guinevere Trilogy Book 1) Read online

  THE WARRIOR QUEEN

  Book I of The Guinevere Trilogy

  Lavinia Collins

  Published by

  Not So Noble Books

  &

  The Book Folks

  London 2014

  © Lavinia Collins

  For my own Kay

  Lover, Inspiration, Friend

  “Certainly,” said Merlin, “as of her beauty and fairness she is one of the fairest living. But if you did not love her so well as you do, I would find you a damsel of beauty and goodness that you would like, and who would please you, if your heart was not set on Guinevere. But where a man’s heart is set, he will not change his mind.”

  “That’s true.” said King Arthur.

  But Merlin warned the King covertly that Guinevere was not good for him to take as his wife. For he warned him that Lancelot would love her, and she him, in return.

  Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte d’Arthur

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty One

  Chapter Twenty Two

  Chapter Twenty Three

  Chapter One

  The soft light filtered between my flickering eyelashes, the lovely golden rays dappling through the green spring leaves blinking and dancing. I could smell the grass beneath me, feel it on the bare skin at the base of my back, hear my heart beating in my ears, still fast. I had the adrenaline of the hunt still rushing in my blood, and I was thinking of the men coming home from war, the same bright victory in their veins. I was lost in the same daydream I dreamed every day, back then. It will be soon, I told myself, it will be soon. The air around me smelled of the coming summer, and the breeze on my face was light and lovely as a kiss. Contentment, deep and soft, was upon me.

  “Guinevere! Guinevere!”

  I sat up at the sound of my own name. One of my ladies was running towards me through the clearing, her dress torn from running through the woods. Through the thin silk tiny streams of blood, soft, white flesh showed. She must have been in a hurry, to run out here in her dress. I stood as she came towards me, pushing the thick, coarse red curls of my hair back from my face, running my fingers through them and twisting them back out of my way, tying them fast, and then I took up my bow.

  “What is it? Why are you out here?”

  I knew something was wrong. Badly wrong.

  She shook her head, gasping in breath, leaning down on her knees. I put a hand on her shoulder and shushed her until she had gathered herself.

  At last she steadied her breathing, and then she glanced up at me, and in those glassy eyes, brimming with the tears she had been choking back so long, I saw already the answer that she would give.

  “The war... the war is lost.”

  The great hall of Carhais was empty when I entered it. This was not so unusual. My father’s feasting-hall had lain empty these past two years and more, since Carhais had emptied out its armies onto the battlefields of Britain, across the sea. The last time it had been full, we had been sending our men – and our boys – off to war; my three brothers among them. And the man to whom I had been promised in marriage. I had been meant to become his wife that summer, and instead I stood at the gates of Carhais with the other women, the children, the old and the weak, and my father, and watched the men ride away to war, with my mother at their head. I had taken my brothers’ place; hunting, overseeing the organisation of what little of the household remained, and Carhais’ defences. That had been easy. I had been schooled for it all my life. It had not been easy watching the news of each new loss reach my father.

  When there had been someone to scold me for it, I would not have come into the great hall in my hunting leathers, but my mother was gone, and there was no one left who cared. For the enormous formal hall she would have had me in a dress of silk, a circlet of gold about my head, but today I came straight from the forest. My fine clothes were sold for iron, and horses, and there was no one left to note that I strode in without fanfare, without a bow to anyone. No one to be a proper princess for. No one who cared how I looked, or if I could sing, or read in Latin. What mattered now was that I was useful, that I could count the dwindling stores; that I could hunt. That was how I spent most of my days now; hunting in the forest. There was little else to do, and those of us left behind needed to eat.

  Or, I thought it was empty. A black shadow on the dais, on my father’s throne, unfolded itself as he lifted his head from its droop of despair.

  “Guinevere...” He breathed my name, and shook his head. I let the lady at my arm slip from my grasp, ran forward and knelt before him, taking up his hands in mine.

  “Father...”

  He put a hand on my head in the same fatherly benediction that I had experienced there since I was a child, but this time it was trembling. No, I thought. But he was already speaking.

  “Guinevere, they’re all dead. Your brothers are dead, our allies are dead.” He drew a breath in that rattled him at the core.

  “What happened, father?” I turned my face up to him, and he cupped my chin in his soft, aged hand. I was glad in that moment – deeply, deeply glad – that my father was too old to fight. My mother had not been. And she was not here.

  “No one thought Arthur capable of it, but he came, that child, with his army of brutes. They wiped us out. The way they tell it, he would not have done until all his enemies were dead. All those he could lay his hands on. Barely one in ten left alive. He’s returned to his court at Camelot. Like father like son – his father Uther was a brute, too. The men from our lands who made it back alive are... few. Mainly deserters who fled. Carhais will turn them away; this castle is no place for cowards.”

  “And...?” The name I wished to speak stuck in my throat, and my father nodded, and pressed his lips together. The man among them I was pledged to marry was dead, and he had been sweet and kind. I had hoped he would come back to me. He had been my safety. Marriage to him would have meant I could stay in my own home. Now, all of sudden, I was a defeated princess, heir to a proud and ancient kingdom, with no brothers. I felt the dread gathering around me. Some awful foreign man would come to claim me. I would be taken from my home.

  “He, too, Guinevere. He was brave, at the front, and so he died first.” I choked back the tears, then, for the first time. I hated to cry, I hated to seem weak. I would not mourn. I would carry on. Gather my fighting women, and the few men who were left, and defend my lands. When I had three brothers older than me, it had not mattered much to whom I would be given, but now whoever had me would have Carhais, and Brittany with it. If I wanted to stay in my home, if I wanted to keep possession of myself now, I would have to fight for it.

  “It may yet be for the best, Guinevere.” He drew in a deep breath, and gently turned my face up towards him to look him in the eyes. Those old eyes, the wrinkles drooping sad at the sides, the deep lines of care. I knew what was coming. “Arthur has sent messengers. They wish to bring you back to Camelot. To be his bride.”

  “No!” I jumped back, and I was on my feet before I realised what I had done, t
he anger pumping hot through my veins. I had not thought it would be so soon. I had not thought it would be him. I was not ready to leave my own lands, nor was I prepared to go into the hands of the boy-king Arthur, the savage who had slaughtered my people. Never. I was shouting already. “Father, he’s a brute. He’s a child. No. I won’t do it.”

  I had not even thought to fear it. What could have convinced my father that the only way was to send me to him? I had been betrothed to a man, and everyone said that Arthur was nothing more than a boy, and a foreign conqueror besides. I didn’t want a boy. I wanted a man, and I wanted one of my own people. I wanted someone who would stand by my side and fight for Brittany’s independence from Arthur, not for it to be handed over to him, and me with it. I thought at least I would be married to a prince from our own side. I could not imagine my father would agree to this if there were any other choice. The losses had been that heavy, then. But I would not go. I would not marry Arthur. I had not given up.

  “Guinevere...” My name fell like a sigh from his lips and it clutched me in the pit of my stomach. He did not have to say the words, I knew there was no other way, not really. We could not refuse Arthur, and I could not refuse my sad, old father. He has lost everyone else. Perhaps, since I am not a parent, I cannot know the desire to have a child in slavery, rather than dead. I inclined my head in a nod. Arthur had conquered Britain, and if we wanted the remains of Carhais to stay alive, we did not have a choice. I did not have a choice.

  My father took me by the hand and led me through the empty halls of our home. Before, this emptiness was expectant, tingling with the possibility of our people about to return from war. And the return of one man I already knew I would never speak of again, could never speak of again. Especially if I was to wed Arthur, to keep myself alive for my father’s sake, and to keep the people of my lands from his ravaging wars. My father led me up to his tower and into the room that I had not been into since I was a child. Before my first bleeding, I was allowed in there all of the time. After that, my mother always said, a woman’s blood is too potent. I didn’t know why, or what she meant, but I knew she was right. She was afraid that I was not ready, that the old magic of that room was too much for a new-made woman. Not too much for a girl, not for a child, but once my age had come she was afraid. She had always avoided that room herself. And my father, my father the witch, would laugh indulgently at my superstitious but magicless mother, who had not a drop of Otherworld blood in her veins. Still, he did not let me in, and I knew there was some wondrous secret within, for I had felt it, in my blood. I knew myself to be my father’s daughter.

  The room was as I remembered it, the shelves stuffed with leather-bound books, and animal parts in jars, and drying herbs – that acrid smell of plants with secrets. Plants I remembered the names of, and the uses. But these things were small and whispering nothings compared to the table. Gorgeous dark wood, smooth, smelling of the ancient powers of the woodlands, the Round Table of Carhais. Fashioned by my ancestors, the witches. Before I even stepped in the room I could feel its powerful presence.

  As I did when I was young, I climbed onto the table and lay on my back across its breadth. It always smelled the same. That lovely, intense smell of old wood. Of old magic.

  “Last wishes, Guinevere. Last wishes.”

  I closed my eyes, I breathed in deep of the air of my home. I would come back here.

  I wish for Arthur’s death.

  “I’m sending the table to Arthur, Guinevere,” my father said softly, after a long pause.

  I sat up.

  “No, no, father. It belongs here, in Carhais. Not with him.”

  “Guinevere, I am an old man. You may yet have a son. The Round Table belongs with you.” He took my hands. His hands were dry as parchment and trembling. I wanted to beg him again not to send me, but I knew that this was as hard for him as it would be for me. I was the heir to Carhais now the others were all dead, and I had to act to protect my people. I didn’t want it, I could hardly bear it, but I would have to do it. For him. For them. “Just keep it close by you. Don’t forget your old father. Don’t forget your ancient blood.”

  I kissed his wrinkled forehead.

  Last wishes. The last day of my life as a free woman.

  I was loaded onto the boat along with the Round Table and three of my ladies, Marie, Christine and Margery. I was not supposed to take my hunting gear, my bow and arrows, my sword, but I hid them among the rest of my things, the fine dresses of silk, the books and jewels. What was left of them. Almost everything had been sold, as the war went on, but I had at least saved all my books. I had to leave behind my fighting women, and I had to go dressed like the kind of princess Arthur desired. No longer with the trappings of a celtic warrior princess – the iron and leather and sweat – I felt vulnerable and naked. Arthur did not want a warrior queen. I was bought and sold, and if my people were going to be safe, Arthur had to get what he wanted.

  The journey was long, and the sea made me sick. I had never wanted to leave Brittany. The air was cold when I stepped off at Dover. The wind blew right through the pale green silk – chosen by my women to emphasise my porcelain skin, my dark red hair – and I felt my skin turn to goosebumps already. The country was as hostile to me as I was to it. I had never had to be a thing of beauty before. It was enough to be strong, enough to be swift and deft. But I had to, now. For my people. For my father back in Carhais. I wondered how young this boy king was; he could not have been such a child to tear through Britain as he had done, but I knew he was younger than me. I hoped he would be small and weak, and that I might be able to bully him into sending me back home. But those were not the tales that came back to us at Carhais.

  I could see far away the party of knights approaching. Hardly a greeting for a new queen. But then I had heard that this was what Arthur was like – not so much like the French kings with their showy courts and fine things, but a killer with a small war-band of knights, swift and violent. I steeled myself for it. I could be a good queen. I would bide my time. I would have my revenge on him for killing my people, for leaving my father alone, without a wife or sons. For, after all of that, demanding me from him.

  They came closer fast, a band of five of them. I could not tell which one was Arthur. Some of them were dressed for war, in platemail from the neck down. Hostile, unwelcoming. Perhaps he had not even come himself, but had sent his servants to collect me, like cargo. I did not like the look of a band of heavily armoured men coming to fetch me. I supposed the land was still recovering from its wars. In that case, I should have liked better to come armed myself.

  The knight at the front of the party jumped deftly from his horse. He was not armed, but dressed in a beautiful surcoat of black and gold, though he had a sword at his side. Handsome, dark features, tall and broad, with an easy smile. A flicker inside me betrayed my hope that this was Arthur.

  “Do I have the honour of addressing the lady Guinevere?”

  I and my ladies curtsied. It rankled with me. In my country, as a princess, I bowed like a man, and only to my father. Margery had come to me from Logrys, Arthur’s country, and instructed me on their customs. She, too, was sorry to return to them.

  “Lady Guinevere, I am Sir Kay, King Arthur’s Seneschal,” he took his horse by the bridle, “may I help you onto a horse?”

  Arthur had sent his Seneschal to collect me. Oh, we had one of those in Carhais, but we were not so grand about it. We called ours the keeper of the household. Arthur had sent his housekeeper to collect me, as though I were a sack of corn that needed to be checked for quality before it was accepted. Sure enough this man was the keeper of the whole of Britain, but I did not think much of it, nonetheless.

  I strode forward, and took the bridle from him. I was aware of his eyes flicker across the taut silk of my dress, glancing for a second where my nipples, hard from the cold, were just visible. I was not afraid. I had been looked at like that many times before. As he reached forward to try to help me onto the hor
se, I grasped the saddle and swung myself up, pulling my dress up to my knees to sit astride it like a man. I hated that dress. Too thin for Britain’s cold, too small, since it had been a long time since I had been required to wear such a thing, and I had grown taller, more muscular since, though Arthur’s war had made me thinner.

  “Do you think we do not have horses in Carhais, Sir Kay?”

  He laughed. I noticed that, behind him, a knight dressed in green armour with thick stubble, and wild orange-brown hair did not laugh with the others. His face was heavily freckled, and scarred. From the look of him, he was one of King Lot’s sons. It was King Lot who began the war we all lost so badly against Arthur, my king and captor. Another half-prisoner, then, brought here to be another one of Arthur’s servants. Another old enemy. He noticed me looking at him and met my gaze. His grey eyes were steady and cold. I did not sense an ally there. I felt a cold shiver at the base of my spine, and I wished that I had more about me that made me feel safe.

  Three of the other knights took my ladies on the back of their horses, and Sir Kay leapt up behind the knight on the remaining horse, and we turned away from Dover, and I turned my back on the sea, and my home beyond it, as though it were nothing at all to me. Nothing at all.

  The ride to Arthur’s new-made court, the city of Camelot, felt unbearably long, even though it took less than a day. I could feel my heart heavy within me, heavy and slow with the thought of my home receding farther and farther away behind me. The land we rode through was ravaged and bare. In the villages we passed though, the people cowered from the knights, lowering their grubby faces and retreating into the shadows of their doorways, as the huge men with shining armour on themselves and on their horses thundered by. This is not how it had been in Carhais. I had walked barefoot through the woodlands to the villages nearby and no one had known who I was. I had listened in on the conversations of my father’s subjects, smelled their food cooking, seen them crying. Perhaps if Arthur had walked among his people he would not be such a warlike king; perhaps he would be gentle and prudent instead, like my own father, who would rather have sent his daughter to a stranger, and a brute, and a conqueror, with no more protection than an enchanted table, than risk his people’s lives.