Guenevere, Queen of the Summer Country by Rosalind Miles

Author:Rosalind Miles [Miles, Rosalind]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-42082-4
Publisher: Crown/Archetype
Published: 2011-08-16T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 32

But it was long before Arthur could make his boast come true. In vain did Guenevere urge that either he or she should set forth. A sudden attack, she argued, could burn the invaders from their camps, and Arthur listened so far as to order Sir Tor back to the Eastlands to prepare the way. Yet winter came down on the eastern shore, and Arthur had not stirred himself to act. Day and night he brooded alone in his chamber, and Guenevere hated his sorrowing, because he turned away from her.

Now she saw what it had meant to him to be Merlin’s boy. Growing up without a father, in Merlin he had found father, friend, and mentor all in one. With the old man gone, he had lost his sense of his destiny as High King.

So he turned to Guenevere. Now every day it was “What do you think, Guenevere?,” and to the servants, “Do not ask me, the Queen will deal with this.” Kings and lords came and went, as did those seeking justice, and the poor and needy too, and Arthur sat by Guenevere’s side to receive them, a noble shell.

The worst of all came now when they were alone. Then he would clasp Guenevere in their bed not with the boyish sweetness he used to show, but with a fearful hunger, like a starving beast. He would sometimes hurt her in his harsh lovemaking as he tried to lose himself in her. Yet when she tried to tell him, suddenly she became the one hurting him. His eyes turned dark with horror and he had to restrain his tears.

Often he spent hours alone with Morgan in her chamber, sending word that Guenevere was to dine by herself that night. She never knew if they talked about Merlin while she kept the high table alone in the Great Hall, or even if they talked at all. Perhaps they sat in silence, each locked in terrible pain. But afterward he came to her in her bed and took her fast and brutally, without speaking, and, it seemed to her, without love.

Afterward he wept like a beaten child. Then she would find herself weeping too as she tried to comfort him. “Oh, my love, take heart—Merlin is not lost, he will come back to you, he will recover his mind—”

In the dark she felt his hard hand on her mouth. “It will not happen, Guenevere. Merlin will not return. I have seen the future, and it cannot be. And I must learn to live with what the Great Ones have decreed.”

THIS SICKNESS GRIPPED his heart all winter long. And it came to her what would make Arthur whole. A man who loses his father lives again in making a new life. She must give him a child.

Yet for no reason, her monthly times were becoming weaker and farther apart. Now all the tears she had shed over Arthur seemed to have dried up the wellsprings of life itself in her.

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