Guinevere Evermore (36 page)

Durriken leaned forward and lowered his voice. “My Lady, if this plague continues unabated through the summer, there will be no country to matter.”

Guinevere thought of all the new graves, too many to be contained in the old cemetery. They were taking the bodies to the fields, now, and putting them in common graves. There wasn’t time or energy to dig them individually any more. Of the thirty or so people attached to the villa, twenty-two had died and dozens more among the farmers and shepherds. There would not be enough people to bring in the crops this year or care for the sheep. And, if they slaughtered animals to bring down the herd size, there were not enough people left to eat the meat before it rotted. Durriken had reported that in Wroxter there was no one left alive. Bodies lay on the side of the road and no one, not even looters, had the courage to enter the town.

“I don’t care,” she said firmly. “Someone will survive. It’s cowardice to abandon our duties now. Constantine can’t destroy what’s left of Arthur’s order just because his son has died. I have no patience with that. Oh, Durriken, I’m sorry! You’re tired and I’ve kept you here so long. Forgive me! Cafdd! See if you can find a clean room for Durriken and something to eat. I must go, now. Risa was taken sick last night.”

The lump in Risa’s neck was already huge and burning. She tossed on her bed, her hands clutching at her own throat. Even through the stupefaction caused by lack of sleep and the sight of constant pain, Guinevere felt wrenched unbearably by the agony Risa was suffering. She wiped the maid’s face and neck, swallowing her horror of the swelling. Risa grabbed her hand.

“My throat!” she sobbed. “It’s choking me! Cut it out, Guinevere, please! I can’t breathe!”

“Risa, I can’t!” Guinevere looked with revulsion at it.

“Help me!” Risa cried. Then she fell unconscious.

Guinevere sat there, staring at Risa’s neck. Sometimes those things had burst open on their own, spewing out a stinking viscous liquid. “I couldn’t do it,” she told herself. “I’m not used to such things.”

Risa tried to scream again, but only coughed hoarsely. With streaming eyes, Guinevere drew her knife. She held it in the candle flame until it glowed. She put a dish at Risa’s neck and prayed to anyone listening.

“Please let me do this without killing her!”

Then, before she lost courage, she plunged the knife point into the swelling. There was a disgusting noise and then a gush as the liquid poured into the bowl. Guinevere set it on the floor and wiped the cut clean. Then she staggered out of the room and fell in a dead faint outside the door.

When she awakened they told her that Risa’s fever was down and she was breathing clearly. She was going to live.

They tried the cutting with others. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it was too late. They learned that once the red marks appeared, early or late in the illness, nothing more availed. As summer waned, so did the plague. By early autumn, there were no new cases. The rains began and seemed to wash away the contagion with them. Travelers were seen on the roads again, bringing news of the rest of Britain. It was hard for Guinevere to understand what they were saying, her world had shrunk so in the last few months. One pilgrim did catch her attention.

“We can be grateful that old King Arthur went to aid the Armoricans,” he stated. “They took in our refugees and even sent help in the worst days. If we had turned our backs on them, they’d have ignored us in our need. He was a good man, the old King. Would there were any like him now.”

She treasured the man’s words. “You see, Arthur! It didn’t die with you, like a candle in a storm. Your light still shines. I won’t let them forget. I promise.”

Slowly, they learned what had happened elsewhere. Gwynedd was hard hit. Maelgwn and most of his court had died. Whole towns, like Wroxter, were inhabited only by ghosts. It was thought that the British population had been cut by a third. The Saxons were untouched. No report came of any cases of the plague in their villages.

“You see,” people told each other. “That Gildas was right. We’re being punished for our sins.”

Wandering monks preached the same thing and swore that only through prayer, repentance, and a life of self-denial could Britain be saved. Strict monasteries were founded. Great lords and ladies rushed to join them, leaving worldly property behind. One day, word came from Letitia that she was returning to Cameliard permanently, if they would take her.

She arrived a few weeks later, weak and thin, with her two remaining children. She was hard and angry. It was several days before she would tell them why she had come.

“He’s renounced the crown, the land, our children, and me,” she told them, her voice shaking with bitterness. “He’s left his cousin, Vortemir, to run things as best he can and gone into a monastery.”

“Constantine!” Guinevere wouldn’t believe it. “But he’s coming back, of course.”

Her niece stared at her blankly. “If he does, I won’t be there waiting. But I don’t think he’ll leave it. He blamed himself for little Arthur’s death and then for all the others and for not being King Arthur reborn. He left us gold and jewels and alone. So, I’ve come back. When my children are old enough, I’ll try to see that they get their patrimony. But now we’re defenseless. Will you let us stay?”

So there were children again at Cameliard. Guinevere showed them her old hiding places and taught them to swim in the baths. They quickly forgot the horrors of the summer past. Their presence discouraged others from dwelling on it. Under the snow and rain, the graves sank and blended into the landscape again.

In the spring Allard came to Guinevere with a suggestion. He hemmed a long while, rather defensively, before he came to the point.

“There aren’t enough people here any more, Aunt,” he pointed out. “We need people to settle and work the land. I want to go to the Alemanni living on the coast and offer them a chance to live here.”

Guinevere looked at him suspiciously. “Alemanni? I remember Arthur had a treaty with them. Aren’t they a kind of Saxon?”

“No, Aunt. They’re a kind of Alemanni. The languages aren’t too unlike but it’s a totally different tribe. They’ve been here a few generations and know something about the way we farm and raise animals. They won’t just hunt and fight as the Saxons do, but they can fight, if we need them, and I think we will.”

“You want
foederati
at Cameliard?” Guinevere was outraged.

“Now Aunt.” Allard backed up a few steps. “Not hired warriors, settlers, with wives and families. They’re Christian now, you know. There was an Irish missionary among them a few years ago. That’s more than most of the peasants here are.”

“I don’t know. I have to think about it,” Guinevere hedged. “We’ve had the same families living here for three hundred years.”

“Then it’s time for new blood,” Allard insisted. “Please, Aunt Guinevere. Let me bring a few of them here. We must have more people or Cameliard won’t survive.”

“Well . . . only a few, though, two or three families to start.” She felt he was right, but hated the idea anyway.

He kissed her excitedly. “Thank you, dearest Aunt. You won’t be sorry. I’ll see that they are model tenants.”

“I’m sure,” she replied. “You know, you didn’t need my approval. You could have put them on your own land without saying anything to me at all.”

“Yes,” he answered. “But that wasn’t the way I wanted to do it.”

She felt very comforted.

The Alemanni were greeted with apathetic distrust. They cleaned out houses from which whole families had died and began to till the land. Under Allard’s guidance, they gradually blended in with the natives. The adults never gave each other more than wary acknowledgment, but watching the children together, Guinevere could see that the next generation would be as much a blend as Allard. She wondered if Arthur would approve. His walls had been built to fend off the invaders. In the rest of Britain, there was no sign that anyone else was welcoming the Germanic immigrants. Still, she was reminded more and more of the early years at Camelot when she saw the new tenants and the old together.

Another year passed and another. Allard built his villa and went north with an invitation to Lydia to spend her last years with her old friends. He brought back regrets and her youngest daughter, who was not afraid of Saxons. Guinevere received her with joy.

She was busy and useful. She was happy. But every morning she watched the road and wondered how many steps one took to Jerusalem and back.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

After the plague, the remnants of the British aristocracy who did not enter monasteries withdrew deeper into the mountains and the peninsula. Saxon, Angle, and Jutish newcomers flowed into the forsaken land. Where a number of people remained, there were battles, but not great ones as in the first days. The British loathing of the Germanic immigrants never abated, and they refused to send missionaries or envoys to “barbarians.” Intermarriage with the Franks had brought Christianity to some Saxons and the land of Britain itself had changed them, drew them into herself and away from continental relations.

They tried to conquer Cameliard, but Allard and his Alemanni settlers joined in the defense and a treaty was made and hostages exchanged.

Guinevere found herself in charge of five Saxon children, terrified of the strange world they had been sent to. Their grandmothers had told them that the old Roman buildings were full of ghosts. The first day, they refused to enter the villa.

“They can’t spend the next seven years camping in the atrium,” Letitia said in exasperation. “We’ll have to drag them through and show them there are no spirits.”

“I hate to frighten them even more,” Guinevere worried. She got down on her knees and reached out her arms to the youngest child. She racked her brain for the little bit of Saxon she had learned.

“
Leof cild
,” she began. The little girl started, then cautiously touched a lock of Guinevere’s hair.

She smiled. “
Swa swa Mama
,” she said.

“Yes!” Guinevere was pleased. “Just like Mama’s. Now,
Comst! In hus na grimlicum gas turn
.”

The children looked doubtful. Guinevere repeated, “
Na grimlicum gas turn!
”

“What are you saying?” Letitia asked.

“I think I’m telling them we have no ghosts, but I’m not sure,” Guinevere admitted.

“Well, let’s try to get them inside again and find out. I hope they learn good British soon. I’ll never get my throat around that guttural language!”

“All right,” Guinevere agreed. “Oh, what is it, Leofric?”

“My Lady, there is an old, blind monk at the gate who has asked about you.”

“Oh? Did he want to talk to me?”

“No, Lady, but Aulan thought you should be sent for. He gave me no reason.”

“Very well, I’ll be there in a moment.” Guinevere looked at the guard. “Leofric, how close is your language to that of these children?”

“I can understand them a bit, if they talk slowly.”

“Good. Then go with Lady Letitia, please, and try to make it clear to these poor babies that we are not sending them inside to be devoured by monsters, but to wash and eat and put their belongings away.”

She hurried to the gate, a hope growing in her. Her lame foot dragged as she tried to go faster. The hope flamed into certainty as Aulan hurried to meet her, pointing to a figure sitting patiently at the gate.

“He didn’t give his name, but I knew him,” Aulan told her. “He only asked for news of you. I made him wait until you could come. I hope that was right?”

“Of course. Thank you, Aulan, thank you!”

As they came closer, the pilgrim’s face turned at the sound. How worn he was! The winds of sea and desert had furrowed his face, but not stooped him. So many years! Guinevere struggled to control her trembling as she laid her hands on his shoulders.

“A long journey, Lancelot,” she whispered. “Did you find your answers?”

He took her hands in his, conscious that they were not alone.

“I only found more questions, Guinevere,” he answered. “The world is filled only with questions.”

“Not here, my love. Here there is sunshine and quiet and children discovering that, in my house at least, monsters are not real. Stay with us . . . awhile?”

“Yes, I dreamt of it, all the way to Jerusalem and back.”

She led him to a guest room and ordered that food be brought to them there. While they ate, she told him of what had happened in Britain in the years he’d been gone.

“And have you discovered what you can do?” he asked wistfully.

She laughed. “Some of it. I can help in a sickroom and play with children and, maybe, I can hold people together. I never knew that was a talent before, but I’ve worked all these years to keep Cameliard, just my own corner of Britain, safe and well. It may be selfish to preserve what I love, but it was as much as I could do.”

“From the babble of tongues I heard as I journeyed to your door, you’ve accomplished a miracle.”

She pushed her tray aside and came to sit next to him. He finished his cup, then touched her face with his fingers.

“My eyes dimmed slowly until I finally realized that I could tell nothing more than light and dark. Constantinople was only a blue and gold blur, and Jerusalem a blending of browns. It didn’t really matter. They could not have outshone the Grail. But I would give so much to be able to look at you now.”

“It’s better that you have only memory, my love.” She kissed his palm. “I’ve grown old. Feel the wrinkles in my brow. My skin has faded and my hands are mapped with veins.

“And your hair?” he asked, as he pulled out the pins and unwove it.

“Gray, almost white,” she lied, tears in her throat.

“It feels as beautiful as ever. Oh Guinevere!” He buried his face in her neck. “I’ve missed you so dreadfully. Stay with me tonight!”

“I never meant to do anything else, my dearest.”

She lifted his face to hers and kissed him slowly. He drew her more closely against him, sliding her robe from her shoulders. She shook it off.