“Define wrong.” Mordred turns on his side to stare at her, tracing a finger down her profile, lingering on her lips. “Better yet, tell me who gets to define wrong, and why.”
She turns to face him. “Arthur.”
Mordred laughs. “But why?”
“Because I chose him.”
“But why?”
Guinevere wants to argue the point, but she does not remember what the point was, or why they were arguing it. And Mordred’s lips are so very close to her own.
* *
*
Guinevere peeled her eyes open. There was no ship’s deck beneath her, only solid, safe ground. Though being awake meant having to feel things again. Guinevere resolved not to. She sat up, accepting the canteen Isolde handed her. Isolde rubbed small circles on Guinevere’s lower back, a simple, comforting touch that was both unexpected and devastatingly tender.
“Your knots are wonderful,” Brangien said, examining the rope Hild was tying to secure the ship. They were not beside the ocean anymore but on a riverbank. It did not make Guinevere feel any better. “Did your brothers teach you?”
Hild laughed. “No. They want me to—” She gestured at her belly, then moved both hands outward like it was expanding. “But there are only men who smell bad and are bad.” She looked regretfully at Sir Tristan, who was preparing the horses. “No good men. But a good ship. A very good ship.”
“Come on.” Brangien held out a hand to help Guinevere stand. “Time to make you look like a queen.”
Guinevere accepted the help. She was shaky and needed to eat, but she had not been asleep as long this time. She reached into her pouch to get her brush. Her fingers bumped against the dragon’s tooth.
“Oh! Is this area very populated?” Guinevere turned to Hild, worried. She had been asleep, so she had not been watching for a good area to sever the connection to the dragon. Now that she was awake she could sense her old friend. Not specifically how near it was, but that it was aware of her and their connection. And she could feel an extra warmth diffusing downward from the crown of her head where she had taken the hairs for the knot.
Hild gestured at the trees around them. “No farmland. Too rocky. My brothers stay in a village there”—she pointed vaguely upriver—“but only a few men.”
Guinevere pulled out the tooth and bit the knot free. She let out a small, sad exhalation as the connection to the dragon disappeared. It was suddenly much colder. She felt alone in a sharp, painful way.
* * *
“Dindrane’s family estate is half a day’s ride to the west.” Lancelot had already mounted. She did not look at Guinevere. “We should speak with Hild’s brothers so we can be on our way and meet up with the king before he arrives.”
Guinevere removed her plain outer tunic. Brangien handed her a pretty blue one, long enough that it would drape nearly to the ground. “I need a collar,” Guinevere said as she fastened a belt made of linked metal squares around her waist. Brangien’s eyes traced the bruises, but she said nothing. She was unusually gentle putting a cloak with a stiff embroidered collar around Guinevere’s shoulders, pinning a jeweled broach in place so the collar would stay shut and hide the marks.
Though they had brought nothing for Isolde, she was wearing something befitting a lady’s maid. Brangien must have spent the ship journey altering her own clothes to fit Isolde.
Sir Tristan helped Guinevere mount her horse. He always treated her formally, but now that she was dressed up, there was an extra distance. She wondered if he noticed. Becoming queen again was almost as isolating as breaking the connection to the dragon.
Hild led them along the riverbank. The trail darted in and out of the trees, rocky and indistinct. Hild rode the extra horse, and Isolde and Brangien once again shared.
“Not far now,” Hild said. Campfire smoke drifted through the air. Someone shouted and Hild answered, a long string of words in a language Guinevere did not know.
A man appeared on the trail in front of them, loping toward them with long strides. “My brother Wilfred.” Hild did not sound excited about the reunion, which surprised Guinevere since Hild was bringing good news. Wilfred looked a lot like Hild, if she were ten years older and twenty years meaner. Sun-bleached hair retreated from his red forehead, and his eyes were almost invisible beneath bushy eyebrows drawn permanently low. A thick beard obscured the lower half of his face. He said something to Hild. Hild answered, and they continued back and forth, unintelligible, with Wilfred increasingly angry and Hild sullen. It was a far cry from her cheerful demeanor before. Finally, Wilfred grunted and gestured for them to follow.
Hild dismounted and led her horse, so they did the same. The village more resembled a camp. The buildings were ramshackle, no order or sense to their placement. Several had already collapsed and been left to rot. If it was a harsh winter, Guinevere did not envy anyone living here. Maybe this encampment was temporary and the villagers went somewhere else for winter. But it made no sense to stay here during harvest; there was no farmland nearby.
Twenty or thirty men lounging around a firepit greeted them with eyes hooded in suspicion. They all had a similar look to Hild and Wilfred. Guinevere had heard of Saxons moving in and taking land, but these men did not strike her as the type motivated to conquer or marry into landownership. No one stood. Another heavily bearded man continued picking at the dead skin between his toes with a dirty knife. If they wanted to be soldiers for Arthur, they were in for a very rude awakening. He would not tolerate this slovenly behavior.
Hild started speaking, but Wilfred interrupted her. He gestured to their group, offering a few curt sentences. One word made all the men look at Guinevere and laugh. It was not a laugh like Hild’s, one that invited merriment even if they could not understand her. It was a dirty cudgel of a laugh, and Guinevere wanted to be invisible.
Lancelot stepped forward, hand on her sword. “We are here on behalf of King Arthur of Camelot. If any of you wish to join his service, you can become soldiers and work for the chance to be a knight. It is not an easy path, but it is—”
The barefoot man belched loudly, scratching his stomach with the tip of his knife. “Sit.” He gestured to logs placed around the firepit. “We eat. Then we talk.”
The scent of whatever was cooking in the large iron pot was as appealing as slop for the market pigs. Guinevere did not want anything that came out of it. She sat on a log, with Brangien and Isolde taking up positions on either side of her. Lancelot remained standing, as did Sir Tristan.