Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley [564]
“Then who?” She did not speak; he leaned over and took her shoulders so roughly that for a moment she was afraid of the warrior as she had never been of the lover. “Gwen, tell me! In God’s name—did I kill my cousin Gawaine?”
This she could answer without hesitation, glad it was Gawaine he had named. “No. I swear it, not Gawaine.”
“It could have been anyone,” he said, staring at the sword and suddenly shuddering. “I swear it to you, Gwen, I knew not even that I had a sword in my hand. I struck Gwydion as if he had been a dog, and then I remember no more until we were riding—” and he knelt before her, trembling. He whispered, “I am mad again, I think, as once I was mad—”
She reached out, caught him against her in a passion of wild tenderness. “No, no,” she whispered, “ah, no, my love—I have brought all this on you, disgrace and exile—”
“You say that,” he whispered, “when I have brought them on you, taken you away from everything that meant anything to you—”
Reckless, she pressed herself to him and said, “Would to God that you had done it before!”
“Ah, it is not too late—I am young again, with you beside me, and you—you have never been more beautiful, my own dear love—” He pushed her back on the cloak, suddenly laughing in abandon. “Ah, now there’s none to come between us, none to interrupt us, my own—ah, Gwen, Gwen—”
As she came into his arms, she remembered the rising sun and a room in Meleagrant’s castle. It was like that now; and she clung to him, as if there were nothing else in the world, nothing more for either of them, not ever.
They slept a little, curled together in the cloak, and wakened still in each other’s arms, the sun searching for them through the green branches overhead. He smiled, touching her face.
“Do you know—never before have I wakened in your arms without fear. Yet now I am happy, in spite of all . . .” and he laughed at her, a note of wildness coming into the laughter. There were leaves in his white hair, and leaves caught in his beard, and his tunic was rumpled; she put up her hands and felt grass and leaves in her own hair, which was coming down. She had no way to comb it, but she caught it in handfuls and parted it to braid, then bound the end of the single braid with a scrap ripped from the edge of her torn skirt. She said, her voice catching with laughter, “What a pair of wild ragamuffins we are! Who would know the High Queen and the brave Lancelet?”
“Does it matter to you?”
“No, my love. Not in the least.”
He brushed leaves and grass out of his hair and beard. “I must get up and catch the horse,” he said, “and perhaps there will be a farm nearby where we can find you some bread or a drink of ale—I have not a single coin with me, nor anything worth money, save my sword, and this—” He touched a little gold pin on his tunic. “For the moment, at least, we are beggars, though if we could reach Pellinore’s castle, I still have a house there, where I lived with Elaine, and servants—and gold, too, to pay our passage overseas. Will you come with me to Less Britain, Gwenhwyfar?”
“Anywhere,” she whispered, her voice breaking, and at that moment she meant it absolutely—to Less Britain, or to Rome, or to the country beyond the world’s end, only that she might be with him forever. She pulled him down to her again and forgot everything in his arms.
But when, hours later, he lifted her on the horse and they went on at a soberer pace, she fell silent, troubled. Yes, no doubt they could make their way overseas. Yet when this night’s work was talked from one end of the world to the other, shame and scorn would come down on Arthur, so that for his own honor he must seek them out wherever they fled. And soon or late, Lancelet must know that he had slain the friend who was dearest to him in all the world save only Arthur’s self. He had done it in madness, but she knew how grief and guilt would consume him and in time he would remember, when he looked on her, not that she was his love, but that he had killed his friend, unknowing, for her sake; and that he had betrayed Arthur for her sake. If he