Authors: Suzanne Weyn
Bedivere bent low in order to hear Arthur more clearly. As he attuned his ear to the dying king’s words, he gazed out over the corpse-strewn battlefield at Camlan. Fallen men from both sides of the horrific fight lay with their limbs still entangled in combat, their blood-soaked bodies turning the grass a blackish red. Their dead horses lay splayed and bleeding beside them.
He was not yet sure which side had won. It appeared that he and Arthur were the only two left alive. All the other knights of the Round Table now lay dead, their armor reflecting the pink light of the setting sun.
Mordred, who had raised this army against Arthur, was slain by Arthur’s own hand. In that fight, Mordred had not fallen before dealing Arthur a severe wound, enhanced by a deadly poison at the point of his sword. It had been concocted for him, no doubt, by his witch mother, Morgan le Fey.
“One good thing can come of this for you,” Arthur spoke in a fading, forced voice. Uncannily a glint of merriment had found its way into his dying
eyes. “No longer will the minstrels call you the handsomest man on the island save King Arthur.”
A blast of dark laughter escaped from Bedivere despite the dire circumstances. The minstrels who sang of the bold exploits of King Arthur and his noble knights of the Round Table always spoke of Bedivere as
most handsome save Arthur
. It had never bothered him; he was not naturally vain.
What
had
irked him was that, of late, they had begun referring to him as
Bedivere the one-handed
. He’d suffered a severed tendon during a particularly fierce battle and it had cost him the use of his left hand. He didn’t want to be known as the
one-handed
because it implied weakness. The minstrels were quick to add, “Although he was one-handed, no three warriors drew blood in the same field faster than he.” Nonetheless, Bedivere still found his ailment an embarrassment.
“So, most handsome one remaining on the island, I have something to ask of you,” Arthur continued, the glint of mirth still alive on his strained, drawn face.
Bedivere shook his head. “I am not
yet
the most handsome,” he replied. “And I would be glad never to have that title. Lean on me, and I can support you away from this bloody ground to where we can get you some care.”
“There’s no reason to move me,” Arthur said, resisting Bedivere’s attempt to raise him. “The wound I suffered to my head, the one dealt by Mordred, is too deep. Let what will be come to pass.”
He lifted his sword, Excalibur, which he still
gripped at his side, several inches from the ground. “Take my sword and toss it into the middle of a lake. Return it to my kinswoman Vivienne, the Lady of the Lake. She who first gave it to me bade me promise I would never let it fall into any other hands but my own.”
Bedivere turned in every direction. “Do you mean the river?” Bedivere asked, nodding toward the Camel River that ran under a nearby bridge.
Arthur shook his head and winced at the pain it caused him. “It must go back to the Lady of the Lake,” he insisted.
Bedivere heard the crash of the ocean’s surf against the rocky shore a short way off. “I’ll plunge it in the sea, then,” he suggested.
Arthur gripped Bedivere’s arm with surprising strength and pulled himself up. “It must go back to the enchanted lake,” he said, his eyes now burning with determination. “My soul cannot rest until this is done. Swear to me that you will return it to her. Swear!”
“I swear it,” Bedivere promised as Arthur slumped back onto the ground, dead.
Bedivere sat down heavily on the chill ground beside Arthur, his friend and king. Excalibur gleamed in the sunlight, and the idea of using it to take his own life occurred to Bedivere. He should be dead; all his companions lay lifeless around him. It was merely some quirk of fate that he still lived.
He sat, feeling that the life was gone from him, that he was some freakish breathing corpse whose
soul had gone off to accompany the departed soul of his king.
Reaching across Arthur’s lifeless body, he lifted Excalibur from Arthur’s loosened grip and laid it on his own knees. Its golden, bejeweled hilt glistened with diamonds and topaz.
How could he ever throw his king’s weapon away into a lake? It should be hung on a wall as a remembrance of the greatest king the island of England had ever seen. But what wall? Arthur’s castle at Camelot probably had already fallen to invading armies. There was no place for him to return to, no wall of honor on which to mount Arthur’s sword. And besides—he had sworn to throw it in a lake.
“But what lake, Arthur?” he asked the dead companion beside him, addressing him as the friend he had been before becoming his king. “What lake?”
He sat beside Arthur for more than an hour. Then Bedivere got on his knees and lifted his king, staggering slightly beneath the dead man’s weight as he stood. There was nowhere to take him, but he could not just leave him there on the field.
Bedivere carried Arthur toward the sea crashing at the bottom of tall rocky cliffs. The way down to the ocean was steep, yet Bedivere was so deeply entrenched in sorrow that he barely noticed the difficulty.
When he reached the pebble-strewn beach, Bedivere laid Arthur down while he collected drift wood and lashed together a raft with tough beach grass as rope. It would be strong enough for his
purposes. He wasn’t constructing a vessel that would have to last long.
When the raft was built, he laid Arthur on it and draped his own cloak over the dead man’s body. He then heaped the raft with more beach grass and wood.
Bedivere had witnessed warriors from across the North Sea bury their chieftains at sea in this way, and it seemed fitting. With the edge of his sword, he struck a flinty rock but got no spark. Repeated attempts brought no fire until he switched swords and hit the rock with Excalibur’s blade. A spark instantly ignited a piece of grass, quickly creating a line of flame as it spread.
Satisfied that he’d built a bonfire strong enough not to be extinguished by the ocean breeze, he pushed the raft out into the surf and watched as the tides carried the fiery vessel away from him.
The salt of his silent tears mingled with the ocean water as he stood a long time and watched the raft disappear out to sea, the flames glinting on the darkening horizon. Once the raft was finally out of sight, Bedivere returned to the beach. With no idea where to go or what to do next, he sat on the sand as a full moon rose and waves crashed onto the shore.
In his stunned state, with his mind finally free of the pressing urgency of battles and funerals, he recalled the strange thing that had happened to him in the field that day; how he’d swung his blade down
upon his enemy, spraying a veil of blood before his own eyes. His heart had hammered with the effort and the relentless horror of flying body parts until he thought he could bear no more—
when suddenly he was transported out of the battle.
Instead of flailing his sword in a fevered dervish of frenetic violence, he was suddenly lying peacefully on a sun-drenched rock. The tranquility surrounding him in this new place was so complete that the smallest sounds could be detected. A bird sang. A brook babbled and insects buzzed.
His heart-rate slowed and the warm rock soothed his tightly clenched muscles, relaxing them. He heard a woman’s soft sigh, and he had the feeling that the sound had come from his own mouth. He turned, as if, all too soon, his spirit were departing the serene space, and as he looked back he saw a woman reclining on the rock.
Long, wavy copper-colored hair fanned around her incredibly delicate, breathtakingly beautiful features. A sigh escaped lips that seemed almost poised to speak. He felt a strong urge to go back and kiss them….
In the next second he was once again on the bloody battlefield, sprawled on his side. Not another man stood. As he staggered to his feet, he saw Arthur, down but still moving, several feet away. He’d had the strange but certain feeling that this mysterious flight he’d somehow taken out of his body had saved his own life.
Looking down now, he ran his good hand along Excalibur, which shone in the moonlight. His mind
swam as it struggled to understand all that had just happened.
Arthur, dead.
The other knights of Camelot, slain.
Surely this was the end of the world as he knew it.
“How was
cooking
class?” Eleanore asked pointedly when Rowena returned from her supposed cooking class yet again. She noticed the forked twig caught in the hem of Rowena’s cape, the half of a leaf snarled in her gorgeous hair, the dirt smudged on the back of her wrist.
And with a glance at Rowena’s feet she saw that though her sister’s slippers were not dirty, her ankles were.
Eleanore had long suspected that these cooking classes were a fraud, intended only to get her youngest sister out of spinning and embroidery. But the day before Rowena had actually been dirty when she returned. And now here it was again for the second day—signs that she’d somehow gone beyond the wall. Besides everything else, the girl was wet!
Rain now pelted the window of the sewing room, and it was clear from her frizzled hair and damp cloak that Rowena had been out in it!
Rowena settled on the cushions of the window seat, carefully arranging her wet cape at her side. She gazed out the window at the falling rain. It was a
habit both Eleanore, the eldest, and Rowena, the youngest—just minutes younger than Ashlynn—shared, this tendency to stare longingly out the window, lost in thought.
How had she escaped the manor wall? How could she possibly have done it?
Eleanore had to know.
She, herself, burned to escape from this prison of a home. She read books; she knew she was too old to be unwed. Other women were mothers long before they were as old as she already was!
Eleanore put down her embroidery hoop and crossed the room to Rowena. “Rowena, are you feeling well?” she asked softly.
Rowena shivered and turned away from the window. “Oh, you startled me,” she said.
“I see that,” Eleanore commented, sitting beside her on the window seat. “I asked if you were well because I noticed a distant gaze in your eyes.”
Rowena straightened and seemed to force herself back from the daydream with which she’d been involved. A too bright smile formed on her lips. “I’m quite well, thank you. I was thinking about…cooking.”
“Cooking…” Eleanore repeated, bristling inwardly at what she was certain was a bold-faced lie. “And how was the lesson?”
“Fine.”
“What did you learn to make?”
Rowena blinked at her blankly as if she couldn’t make sense of Eleanore’s question. “Um…pheasant,” she blurted after a moment.
“Did you kill it yourself?” Eleanore probed.
Rowena’s nose wrinkled in an involuntary reaction of disgust. “Of course,” she answered. “It was caged outside with the geese,” she added. “I had to go out and get it. It struggled and almost got away. That’s how I got so wet.”
Eleanore observed her with a mixture of annoyance and admiration. Rowena had anticipated Eleanore’s next suspicious question and answered it before it was asked. Well, Rowena would not put her off that easily. “Then why are your slippers dry though the rest of you is wet?”
“I removed them for fear of ruining them.”
“Did the new kitchen servant show you how to kill the pheasant?” Eleanore pressed, undeterred.
Rowena cast a blank, uncomprehending stare at her.
“You’ve spent so much time in the kitchen that surely you’ve met Millicent, Helen’s new helper,” Eleanore elaborated on her question.
Ha!
she thought triumphantly as Rowena continued to stare at her with helpless incomprehension.
I’ve got you now!
If she ever needed absolute proof that Rowena had not spent a single minute in the kitchen, this was it! Millicent had been helping Helen in the kitchen for more than a month now. If Rowena had been there she would have surely known that.
Rowena grasped Eleanore’s hand and lowered her voice. “I have been out in the courtyard,” she said. “I
have found a small break in the wall, and I like to look through it.”
A flood of urgency surged through Eleanore’s veins. A million questions raced forward in her mind.
Had Rowena seen anyone? Had anyone seen her?
Then she noticed, again, the small piece of leaf in Rowena’s damp hair. “Are you sure you did not find a way
through
the opening?” Eleanore asked, gently extracting the leaf fragment.
Rowena took it from her. “This must have fallen inside the courtyard,” she insisted. She suddenly stared intently at Eleanore. “Have you ever seen a battle?” she asked. “The kind with swords, and knights, and blood?”
Eleanore drew back, surprised by the question. “No. Did you see a battle through the wall opening?”
“It was a sort of dream,” Rowena replied, her eyes troubled by the memory. “I don’t think I was asleep, though I suppose it’s possible that I dreamt it. It was so real, as if I was actually on the battlefield.” A shudder ran through her as she appeared to relive the awful event.
Suddenly a strange glow began to emanate from beneath the velvet cape Rowena had tucked between herself and the window. Eleanore imagined a giant firefly had awoken beneath the cape. Before Rowena could stop her, she drew the cape back and beheld a beautiful bowl lined with gold. A ball of light swirled within it.
“What is it?” Eleanore demanded.