Camelot's Blood (4 page)

Sir Agravain watched Sir Kai, his eyes narrowed, and his whole body tensed and ready. But ready for what? Challenge? Flight? No, not flight. There was none of that about him. Sir Agravain was holding himself ready in case he must act, while at the same time judging how to act, acutely aware of where he was and who he was. She felt certain of this, as she was certain of the stone floor beneath her feet. Then, Gawain and the king shifted their positions to converse with each other, and Laurel could see nothing but that lean, brown hand, still on the tablecloth, still curled into its fist. Still waiting.

Kai, evidently pleased by his success, had opened his mouth again.

“Enough, Kai,” announced the king firmly, and he raised his cup to the musicians who waited attentively near the hearths. They struck up a merry tune at once, and now the servants did come forward to clear away cloths and tables to make room for the brightly clad dancers to assemble in the centre of the hall. King Arthur gave his hand to the queen to raise her to her feet while their thrones were moved forward a little so they could better view the entertainment. The great crowd of the court stood as well, shuffling, murmuring, reassembling themselves into new, smaller gatherings for enjoyment and conversation. Risa touched Laurel's hand and gestured for her to come a few steps down the dais to where she could stand amid the other ladies.

“May I ask what your impression is?” Laurel did not need Risa's nod to know she meant her impression of Sir Agravain.

“I do not know,” murmured Laurel, but this was only partly the truth. “You have lived beside him. What manner of man is he?”

Lady Risa hesitated a long moment.
For my sake or for the sakes of all these listening ears?
Women pressed close. They were surrounded by rustling skirts and light ladies' whispers.

“He is an honourable man,” said Risa at last. “He will not give much demonstration when he is pleased, and that can make him seem hard.”

Laurel frowned. This was very near what Gareth had said, and she could see that like Gareth, Risa held something back.

She could see Sir Agravain easily now. He stood on the edge of the dais in stern conversation with Sir Kai, who still had his crooked smile on his face. Gawain was there too, saying something, but whatever his brother was telling him, it did not effect Sir Agravain's wary and disapproving countenance.

What is it? What about you has everyone so careful of their words?

As this thought formed in her mind, Sir Agravain turned, and saw her watching him.

A flush instantly burned Laurel's cheeks, but she forced herself to hold steady. Sir Agravain's brows drew together, slightly puzzled. Displeased? She could not tell. She inclined her head towards him, and he did the same to her.

Risa touched Laurel's arm, giving her a valid excuse to turn away. Two heavily carved wooden chairs with blue cushions had been set on the dais, two steps below the thrones. Sir Agravain caught her eye again, and somehow Laurel felt the slightest air of challenge from him as he walked down the dais steps to stand beside one. Head held high, Laurel allowed Risa escort her down the steps. She curtsied gravely to the knight, aware of the queen's eyes, the king's, the whole of the court's watching her every move. She took her seat, investing each movement with a lifetime's worth of practice at dignity. Although his expression did not appear to change, Laurel felt an air of amusement brimming just below the surface, and the corners of her mouth turned up in a tentative smile. Sir Agravain saw this, and bowed deeply, holding her gaze as he made the courtesy. Only then did he sit down beside her.

Once more Laurel found her heart quickening and a faint feeling, almost too tentative to truly be called hope, fluttered within her.

A clap sounded overhead, probably made by the king, and the musicians struck up a jaunty air and the assembled entertainers began their dance. They were a large troupe, six men in blue tunics and six women in cream gowns. They skipped and slipped through their formal patterns with merry grace, now bowing, now turning, all to the happy accompaniment of bells and tambours, cymbals, pipe and harp.

Beside her, Sir Agravain sat rigid, formal and correct. Now that the first tentative exchange had been made between them, Laurel found herself restless. Sitting still felt increasingly impossible. She should say something, do something, and yet she could not. Gathered about them was every listening ear and watching eye that could possibly be crammed into this suddenly too gaudy, too warm, too bright hall. All of them potential gossip-mongers with nothing better to do than to note how she and Sir Agravain sat together and did not speak, did not even look at each other.

Laurel had to stop herself from grinding her teeth in her frustration.

At last, Sir Agravain broke the silence, “I trust that your journey was not overly difficult.”

“No, an' I thank you.” Laurel replied smoothly, ruthlessly smothering the frustration that churned inside of her. “We had good seas, and your brother was well prepared to escort us from the port.”

“Yes.” Sir Agravain's glance slipped to where his brother stood at the side of the dais looking over their heads, probably at Risa. “Gawain is famed for his preparations.”

Silence fell once more. The dancers on the floor came together, palm to palm, turned towards the dais and skipped two steps forward and two back. Turned again, clapping merrily as they did.

Say something!
Laurel ordered herself. “I have brought with me a letter from your brother Gareth.”

Agravain's brows rose a hair's breadth. “A minor miracle, for Gareth to take pen in hand. The estate of marriage has made a man of him.”

“Say rather he feared what you would think if he did not write so manfully,” replied Laurel, unable to keep the tartness out of her rejoinder, even as she instantly wished she could take it back.

Whatever other effect they may have had, her words did make Sir Agravain look directly at her. This time she thought she saw a new expression there, a change in the set of his shoulders and the way creases met at the corners of his eyes.

“You will forgive me, my lady,” he said softly. “I am not … I am not practiced in the ways of courtship.”

“There is no need to make apology, my lord,” she said, lifting her chin to hide the unexpected relief she felt at these gently serious words. “I fear I have never been able to master those arts of glancing and smiling that are considered necessary when responding to the attentions of gallants.”

“Good. Above all things, I feared to disappoint on the field of light flirtation.”

This was spoken with a humour so dry it might have crumbled to dust, but there was something underneath it, something tentative that might have been a crack in Agravain's shuttered self.

“I am in no way disappointed, my lord,” answered Laurel.

Sir Agravain remained silent for a moment at this, gazing down at her, his face set as stone.

“Thank you,” he said, at last.

Then, he turned back to the dancers, weaving an elaborate figure-eight pattern on the floor. He fixed his attention unwaveringly on them, looking neither left nor right, his mouth tightly closed. Sir Kai's image of the oyster flitted through Laurel's mind and she felt the breath of gossip curling around her neck like a cold draft. She gripped the chair arm tightly.

Mother Mary, why did I agree to this?

Memory overwhelmed her, in a single great flood, and suddenly she was in her home, in her private room, standing by the fire with Lynet at her back, flushed with her own frustration.

“Laurel, why are you doing this?”

Laurel just looked at her and said nothing. The blood drained slowly from Lynet's face. “Oh, Laurel, not because I married Gareth.”

“No, sister, but because you married him under the aegis of a bargain with the sea. There is a spirit watching over you now, and if that spirit decides the bargain is not kept …” Laurel turned away. “What then, sister? You will not even know you have broken faith until disaster falls.”

“I trust Gareth's heart, Laurel.” Lynet opened her arms. “Do you not trust mine?”

Laurel did not move. Lynet wanted her embrace, to be told all was well. But Laurel could not give her that, not without her understanding. “I trust you as I trust myself, Sister. It is the sea I do not trust. It is the blood we come from.” She watched Lynet's eyes dart eastward, towards the distant ocean. “You see? You fear even now we are overheard by the unseen. No. If we are to hold this land we've been given, we must have more earthly guardians, and we must have legitimate heirs who belong fully to the land, and we must have them soon.”

“Who belong fully to the land. What do you mean by that, Laurel?”

Laurel had not been able to answer, and Lynet had stepped forward. “It's not me you're afraid of, Laurel is it? It's not anything I've done. You're afraid of yourself, that you might … that you might go back to our grandmother.”

For this was the secret between them, the truth that hovered just beneath the surface in their family. Their mother, the beautiful Lady Morwenna, was no mortal woman. Morwenna had been the daughter of the
bucca-gwidden
, the White Spirit of the Sea. The ocean itself was their lineage, and the power and the compulsion of it sang in each of them.

But most strongly in Laurel, for she was first born. It was the sea's lineage that gave her hair the colour of sea foam and eyes of pale agate green. It was the sea's heritage that allowed her to speak to the wind and to work upon the invisible world with a word and a gesture.

Laurel bowed her head, biting her lip. “I will try, Lynet. I swear I will. But it has been hard.” She trembled. “Since Morgaine the Sleepless forced me to draw on the legacy of our blood last year, the sea has pulled more even strongly.”

Last year Morgaine had attempted to overthrow the rule of Cambryn. She had succeeded in causing their father's death. She had almost brought open war to their country. It was their mother's legacy, and Laurel's workings, that had prevented that.

But it was a struggle to live in the mortal world while feeling the power of the immortal and the invisible. That struggle had weakened their mother, causing her to die after the birth of her third child. It was the struggle Laurel had felt in some form every day since then.

If that struggle was to end her life as well, it would not be before she had done all she could to secure their kingdom for Lynet and her heirs.

Laurel could not stand apart from her sister any longer. She moved close to Lynet, taking her outstretched hands and folding them closed. “Lynet,” she spoke to those hands. She did not have the strength to meet her sister's eyes. “Let me do what I must do, and let me face myself and my fate, as you must now face yours.”

“Not alone, Laurel.”

Now Laurel was able to look up, to show Lynet the tears shining in her eyes. “No, not alone, my sister. Not while you live. But on my own nonetheless.”

Lynet embraced her, long and tightly, as if it was for the last time. When she straightened, Laurel saw in Lynet the queen she must now become. “Make your contract, sister,” Lynet said firmly. “I will stand by you.”

Now Lynet was scores of miles away, and Laurel sat amid strangers. The dancers had joined hands, women on one side, men on the other, to trip down the hall. Here beside her was the man she must depend upon to impart the safety she sought for her sister and her home, and she couldn't find a way to talk with him. Laurel was ready to curse each one of the dancers, and the whole of the court into the bargain. What way was this to begin? Surrounded by hawks, ravens and hounds in their gaudy clothes, waiting for any tit-bit they could snatch up to worry over and tear to pieces. How was she to understand anything of this man? How could he speak for himself, let alone have anyone speak about him? Tomorrow she would be married, married, before God and the law, and she knew nothing, nothing at all of the man!

The dance finished with a great ringing of cymbals and patter of drums, and all the dancers made their courtesies to the dais. Laurel was jolted out of her thoughts and her applause was tardy. Was Sir Agravain looking at her? She didn't dare look at him. She had already given the court so much to talk about …

“Now, my lord king, with your permission, I believe we should excuse Lady Laurel. It has been a long day, and she should be allowed to rest before the morrow.”

The queen. This was Queen Guinevere speaking and Queen Guinevere was excusing her. Laurel stood and turned, and for a moment, she met the queen's calm, empathetic gaze. Risa stood beside her. Laurel had not even seen her move. She hoped both women could see the mute gratitude in her own expression before she knelt. She could go back to her room, to the company of her own women, back where she could think clearly again.

“Of course,” King Arthur was saying. “I look forward to your attendance on the morrow. Sir Kai, escort the ladies back to their chambers.”

Sir Kai bowed as well as his crutch permitted and Laurel's fists tightened again.
What are you doing, Your Majesty?
There was something meaningful in the king's countenance, but she could not study it. She must curtsey to Sir Agravain, who remained correct and impassive, watching her with his narrow eyes.

Laurel made herself move. Lift hems. Watch the steps. Don't stumble.

Walk the whole, interminable length of the hall, feel the eyes, the endless eyes, watching and watching. Behind her, the order was given for more music, which muffled the murmurs, but they were there like a current of air, incomprehensible and inescapable. She breathed them in, they brushed her skin. She kept her gaze ahead. The doors got closer with every step. She felt, rather than saw, Meg and her handmaids walking behind. Loyal, intelligent Meg, guarding her back, and before her, moving briskly despite his crutch, walked the seneschal. His keen gaze slid this way and that, taking note of who was speaking, who was listening, and who was pretending to do neither. There was power in the seneschal's gaze. Wherever it lit, curious eyes turned away. Ladies ducked behind their lords, and lords behind their friends.