Under Camelot's Banner (3 page)

Mesek grunted his assent and gestured to two of his men who took charge of the beasts. Peran did the same. Men and horses followed the stooped and openly curious Darney to the muddy yard and thatched stables. Colon eyes narrowed.
That much is done,
Lynet could all but hear him think. Four men separated. The threat, if there was one, had been reduced by that much.

Once inside the second ring of earthworks, Lynet could not help but feel a little more at ease. Cambryn's high house had in its time been home to kings of legend, to Roman traders, and to the lesser kings and greater kings that came in the four generations after the Romans left, and finally to Lynet and her family. This was their place and their people. There was only so much mischief ten strangers could work here.

Colan led the remaining party around to the old hall pushed back the great, black-timbered door. The hall echoed in its emptiness. Only Ross, Dai and Bram, three graybeard brothers, sat around the central fire. The old men all rose stiffly to their feet and made their bows, their dim eyes and deeply-lined faces frankly stunned to see strangers today. Still, Lynet could understand why Colan had brought them all here. This place was the seat of law in Cambryn, empty or full. The dais stood in the middle of one long wall, with the empty throne waiting on its top stair, and the steward's seat only one step below.

While Laurel directed the brothers to bring extra chairs and benches for their guests, Lynet checked the kettle hanging over the second fire and found there was enough of the milk posset left to share around as a decent warming drink for the men. She sent Bram shuffling off at his best speed to fetch cups, and one of the women who were still at the ovens to help serve.

Peran, however, was in no mood to wait for formalities, or comfort.

“When will the steward return?” he asked bluntly, folding his arms across his chest and nodding toward the dais.

“I cannot tell you,” replied Colan. “Lord Kenan hoped he would only be gone a week, but it is going on ten days since he left. His last message said he did not know when he would return.”

Mesek shrugged. “I don't know why you dragged us here, Peran. If Kenan's at Tintagel, then that's where we should go.”

Peran only looked blackly at him. “Tintagel would suit you well, Mesek, with King Mark's mind so distracted he hasn't spoken sense in a year or more.”

That was not entirely true. Lynet ducked her head to hide her thought, pretending to be engrossed in stirring the kettle. “So, you'd you have us wait here on our steward's pleasure?” Mesek spat into the fire and wiped his moustache. “I have cattle to tend, Peran, and cannot be wasting the spring holed up here with you.”

Peran's face darkened, his body stiffened and his hands clenched, not over his sword but near enough. Behind him, his men gathered, and every one of them still had their pikes in their hands. Mesek's men moved too, though their master did not. Suddenly, the guesting laws seemed no more than idle fancy and Lynet found she could not breathe.

Colan held up his hands. “Masters, as I told you, I stand here for my father,” he said, a forced calm in his voice. “If judgment is required, I will hear you.”

At this, Mesek though smiled, a long, thoughtful, unpleasant grin. “Lord Kenan's son to judge,” he said, drawing the phrase out, giving weight and consideration to each word. “One hears stories of the sound judgment of the Steward's children.” Mesek looked directly at Lynet, making no pretense of his gaze.

Lynet froze, rooted to the spot as the blood drained away from her face. Her heart squeezed in painfully and she felt the old, sick tremors begin.

“Of what do you speak, Master?” Colan inquired. He held himself too still and too carefully. His hands remained loose and ready. It was a fighting posture, although he had made no observable move.

Mesek eyed Colan appraisingly, judging the seriousness, and the strength of the younger man. Shame twisted itself deeply into Lynet's belly.

“I beg your pardon, Lord Colan,” he said, although his tone made it plain he did no such thing. “I misspoke. It was nothing.”

“No. Nor was it,” answered Colan pleasantly, relaxing so far as to sit on the nearest chair, gazing up expectantly at his guests. One by one, reluctantly and without any sign of relaxing, they also took their seats. Laurel walked between them to add fuel to the fire, without turning a hair.

Lynet, though, could not move. Mesek was looked at her, his eye twinkling with knowledge and mischief. Footsteps sounded against stone. Lynet forced her head to turn. Bram came through the tower door, with Jen behind him carrying a tray of wooden noggins. Lynet's hands shook as she filled the cups with the milk posset. She bit her lip and made herself attend to her task. If she could not have pride, at least she could find dignity for her family's sake.

But the ladle slipped from her fingers and fell clattering to the floor, splattering milk across her hems. Shame burned her as she stooped to retrieve it. When she straightened Laurel was beside her. “My sister, we still have the midday meals and tonight's feast to attend to. Will you go see how the women get on?”

Lynet knew her cheeks were as red as fire, and as ashamed as she was of her inability to govern herself, she was grateful to Laurel. She left the hall and fled through the inner door to the old round tower. The great, curving chamber was hung with tapestries and shields. A mosaic of fish and the
morverch
, the mermaids, had replaced the old flagstone floor in an attempt to bring the tower into better harmony with the other, newer wing. She did not, however, go out toward the garden and the ovens. She strode into that newer wing where the chapel waited.

It was a small chamber, but lovingly painted and above the altar hung a wooden crucifix was a breathtaking work of art. It had been made by Yestin the Joiner, whose hands had also crafted the Round Table for King Arthur. It showed the Son of Man with his eyes turned toward heaven, his mother kneeling at his feet. His anguish and hers had been made to look exactly alike and both were so real Lynet sometimes thought she could hear the distant sound of their breathing when she knelt in prayer.

Now Lynet knelt before them at the rail and folded her hands over her breast.

Grant me strength. Grant me strength. Oh, Mary Mother of God, steady my hand …

She had hoped after so much time her transgression might have meant less to her family and to the people of Cambryn. But Mesek's sneer told her it was not so, and never would be.

Five years earlier, when Lynet was just thirteen years old, she had been sent to the court of King Mark for fostering. There, she was put into the care of Mark's wife, Iseult.

Lynet could still remember the first time she laid eyes on Queen Iseult. She'd heard so many contradictory stories about the red-haired lady from across the water that she'd trembled like a leaf as she was conducted to the solarium. Lynet knew the bones of her history of course. Iseult was part of the peace treaty made between the kings of Eire and those of the Dumonii. King Mark had wrested the Dumonii lands from Eire's overlordship, aided principally by Sir Tristan, who was his nephew and a knight of Arthur's Round Table. In gratitude for the aid given by Tristan and the other men and treasure Arthur had sent for the war, Mark had placed the Dumonii under Arthur's lordship, gaining him peace with Eire by the gesture. To help set the seal on the great and complex treaty, Iseult had been given over to Mark.

But she had also heard the lady was a witch, that she'd enchanted the king, that she could brew love potions and poisons, or draughts of eternal youth.

What Lynet saw when the door opened for her was a woman sitting on a plain stool. She was so pale she might have been made of snow except for her eyes that shone blue as the August sky when she looked up to see Lynet enter. Her hands, long and slim and yet having the appearance of great strength, paused at their needlework. Her hair was the red of late autumn, rich and warm. She wore it looped and braided beneath a embroidered veil as was the style of the great city ladies.

Queen Iseult smiled and rose at once to take Lynet's hands and welcome her in a soft, lilting voice filled with the rhythms of her own distant land.

Between one heartbeat and the next, Lynet fell in love.

Lynet had never known her mother, and Laurel had already been gone a whole long year to her own fosterage in Camelot. Lynet's greatest fear at going to Tintagel was finding herself alone among strangers. Queen Iseult seemed to understand her well, for she was more a stranger in Mark's court than Lynet. She took Lynet under her wing at once, teaching her to read in Latin along with the vulgar tongues. She expanded Lynet's understanding of the mysteries of courtesy and proper conduct, and the mysteries of scholarship. The queen was as fair as could be, but she was no fainting, posing beauty for a Romanish city man to admire. She was a physician of such skill that the touch of her hand could find an unseen hurt or detect poison deep within the body. She was quick in laughter and understanding, and she shared what she knew readily.

Lynet also remembered the first time she saw Sir Tristan.

She had thought no one could be so fair as the queen, but the young man was Iseult's match in every respect. Next to him, King Mark, for all his ancient blood and warrior's prowess, looked gruff and clumsy, a figure of dross beside a man of fiery gold.

After the peace with Eire had been concluded, Sir Tristan stayed at Tintagel as Arthur's ambassador to his liege lord Mark, and his representative to the Eire-landers. Lynet remembered the sweet sound of his harping the night he came back from an errand for King Mark at Land's End. Music of any kind was an unexpected skill for a man of war, let alone such expert skill as he showed. She could still feel the warmth that poured from his fair glance and his fair voice whenever he so much as glanced at her.

Oh, she remembered well those looks, those secret words and swift touches. She remembered how each time she turned, Sir Tristan seemed to be beside her, beseeching her to bear some word or token to the queen. He pressed her constantly for news of Iseult's manner, her conversation, her very look. It was dizzying to be so sought after by a man of such beauty and fame, even if it was because of another, much greater woman, and Lynet had succumbed to this too.

Succumbed? Mother of Mercy, I drowned.

It was she who ran ahead to make sure their meeting places were empty, and she who stood watch to be sure they remained unobserved. She also bore tokens Tristan to Iseult, and back again. With a child's heedless and infatuated willingness, she helped to cuckold a king.

The secret was not kept, though Lynet had never knowingly betrayed it. There were no true secrets in any court, especially not about a queen who was not popular with all the people, despite her beauty and her skill. Too many could not forget that the men of Eire had killed and carried off so many of Dumonii. As it came to be known that they met, it came to be known that Lynet was their go-between. So, when the whispers finally reached Mark's ears, it was Lynet he followed.

She had checked the cellar. She always did. She was careful. Some part of her recognized the danger in what she did. It was empty, and she ran back, flushed and breathless to the queen, who smiled so sweetly and pressed her hand. The king must have slipped in while Lynet was gone. Lynet took up her station in the drying room, sorting and bundling herbs while Queen Iseult went down the stairs, a wax tablet and stylus in her hand as if she meant to take note of her supplies.

Sir Tristan winked at Lynet as he passed, and whispered his thanks, brushing his fingertips against her shoulder. She could still remember the heat of them, and the blush that rose in her cheeks.

King Mark did not kill Tristan until later, until he found him alone beneath the cliffs. The king of dross beat the golden knight to death with his bare fists. He did not tell Iseult what he had done. He let her find the body when she went that way to collect the seaweed she favored for some draughts and poultices.

Lynet had not seen any of this, but she did see what came after. It came to her still at night and sometimes even in the day when she caught the scent of blood from the animals slaughtered for the table, or saw the blood on the hands of a man back from the hunt.

She had been with the brewers, overseeing the great steaming kettles in the grey morning air. The wind was heavy with the scents of hops and rain. One of the women had called out, and Lynet had looked up, the great, dripping paddle in her hands, to see Queen Iseult striding across the yard, her hands empty of even the basket she had taken for her work.

Lynet shoved her paddle into the hands of the nearest woman and ran to Iseult. “Majesty, Majesty, what …?”

But Iseult did not answer or even seem to see her. She strode through the door of the great keep, and there beside the fire, on a plain trestle bench, sat King Mark. His hands, his ochre-red hands, dangled between his knees.

He lifted his heavy head and met Iseult's gaze. And Lynet knew. She knew with a sick and utter certainty what turned Mark's hands that particular shade of red.

“How could you do this, Iseult?” Mark asked, the tears running down his face. “I loved you. I gave you all that I had. I treated you with courtesy, with tenderness. What was there that I forced on you that you would not …” His voice broke and he rose up then, a mountain of a man casting his shadow over them. “
How could you do this!
” The raw rage in his shout shook the stones around them.

Iseult made no answer, she just stood there, her eyes cold and glittering. In answer, Mark struck her, knocking her back against the wall as if she were no more than a toy so that her head cracked sharply against the stone. Lynet ran to the queen, grasping her, trying to support her before she slipped to the floor. The queen staggered, but straightened and managed to stand on her own. As she did, Lynet saw the broad streak on her face where fresh her blood had been smeared with the ochre ash that was Tristan's blood.