The Camelot Spell - Laura Anne Gilman [9]
“Do you not think Sir Gawain has the greatest chance? He is…very religious.”
“So religious he will seek the Grail only in churches and monasteries,” another woman at the table suggested, waving her bejeweled hands in dismissal. “If the Grail were there, it would have been found already.”
Ailis kept her gaze lowered and her mouth shut as she refilled her lady’s goblet and replaced stained napkins with new squares of cloth. It was one thing to argue with Mak and Gerard, despite their squire’s rank. Responding to an adult was out of the question. No, she was a servant, and as such would never dare speak her mind to any of the court, not even if they asked her. That would lead to dismissal, and no matter that the queen had been known to smile upon her from time to time.
Someday soon, she knew, Mak and Gerard and the others would earn their spurs and go off to be knights in the service of the king, but she would still be here, serving at the castle. That was the fate of a landless, family-less orphan.
“Oh, stop feeling so sorry for yourself,” she scolded herself quietly. A practical girl, Ailis knew it wasn’t a bad life. Lonely? A little. But she was well treated and fed and cared for, and was learning skills that would be useful as she got older. She had a fine hand with her stitching. That might earn her a place as a seamstress, eventually, in the queen’s cozy, comfortable solar. But…
“I want more than to be a seamstress or the mistress of the linens in some lord’s manor house,” she whispered fiercely to the food-stained napkins in her grasp. “I want…”
Her thought was interrupted by something odd. Her head lifted, like a doe scenting the air, and her young lips creased in a frown. The musicians…that was it. The musician playing the lute—his tune was off somehow. Not much, perhaps nothing most in the crowd would notice, but Ailis had a good ear as well as a pure singing voice, and music she knew well.
Ailis shrugged. Perhaps he had drunk too much mead. Or he was tired. They had been performing for hours now, and it was far more difficult work, she knew, than any observer would think. Either way, it was no concern of hers.
But still. Something was odd, now that she looked about her. It wasn’t a specific thing, exactly—a smell that was off in the air, maybe, like wood smoke, only not as familiar or comforting as that. Movements were also off, slowed somehow, as though it were just a bit too much effort to carry on as usual.
Worried now, Ailis instinctively looked over her shoulder to check on the queen. Others might think the sun rose and set on King Arthur. He was the lion of the court indeed, but Ailis had long ago learned that Guinevere’s moods set the temper of the castle, not Arthur’s.
“My lady?”
Guinevere turned to look down at Ailis, smiling prettily. The queen was no longer the young woman she had been when she first came to Camelot, but her beauty remained intact, and her wits likewise.
And yet those eyes, normally sharp with intelligence, looked dulled now, as though the queen were having trouble focusing.
“My lady, is all well?”
“Indeed. It is simply…I find myself wearying of all this.” The queen gestured at the entire hall. “But it pleases Arthur to send them off with such frolic.”
“Yes, my lady.” Ailis bowed and backed away. But her frown deepened as she noted others at the high table looking as—there was no other word for it—sleepy.
Something wasn’t right. But the queen’s taster, a bright-eyed lad, one of Guinevere’s cousins from her home of Cameliard, was still alert and healthy, so it was not anything in the food. Indeed, Ailis