Lancelot and Guinevere by Carol Anne Douglas

Author:Carol Anne Douglas [Douglas, Carol Anne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780996772228
Google: fTz2MAAACAAJ
Goodreads: 32981192
Publisher: Hermione Books
Published: 2016-11-14T03:00:00+00:00

Lancelot had gone off angry for many reasons. Truly, fighting with her lover was more painful than combat with men.

Perhaps she had been wrong to imagine that Guinevere might have plotted to murder Gawaine, but Guinevere might want her to kill Arthur. That was horrible to contemplate. And worse, Lancelot sometimes wanted to do it.

In many places mud, not snow, covered the land. Everything seemed desolate, barren of beauty.

She passed a frozen pond and stared at the leaves and logs trapped beneath its dark surface. No waterfowl lingered near it. She wondered whether she, too, could freeze, if she stayed forever caught in this half-hidden love, lived out in the husband's shadow. A winter light showed bare trees reflected pale on one corner of the pond, like a ghostly world in which only saints could dwell. Such a world would have drawn her once, but it no longer did. Trying to be a celibate saint was not enough for one who had known love.

Feeling weary, Lancelot camped early for the night. She attempted to eat some of the food that Catwal had packed for her, but she could barely swallow. Nothing tasted as it should, and indeed she did not want food at all.

She wanted to sleep and escape from her troubles, but she could not. Her body was rigid. She couldn't remember long it had been since she had slept much. Not since the Christ Mass, but perhaps longer.

The next day her eyes were bleary, and all she wanted was to lie down again. But when night came, again she was so filled with fear that she had lost Guinevere that she could not sleep.

It did not seem that she ever slept, but she opened her eyes long after dawn had come. A man stood beside her. She reached for her sword, then saw he was Bellangere. She sighed with relief.

"Bellangere, good day. Why do you stand so strangely quiet before me?" Rising, she extended her hand to him.

He did not accept it. "I am calling you out to fight," he said, regarding her as if she wore scales instead of chain mail.

Stunned, Lancelot stared at him. "Fight another warrior of King Arthur's? For what cause? If you want a contest, can't we settle this next Pentecost?"

Bellangere shook his fist and exclaimed in anger, "Contests be damned! I'm fighting to avenge my cousin Sangremore, because you killed him for trifling with a Saxon wench. You gave him no chance to fight, but killed him like a dog."

All of her muscles tensed. Her heart beat faster. "It's true that I killed him, though I would have fought him if he had not fled from me. He did not trifle, as you said, but raped her."

His face almost purple, Bellangere shook with rage. "And you cut off his head and gave it to the Saxons! That's no way to treat a brother warrior."

"I did that," she admitted, trying to face him as calmly as possible. "But the Saxons would have killed Gawaine if I didn’t have proof that Sangremore was dead.

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