The Idylls of the Queen. Phyllis Ann Karr

Sir Patrise lay. Lionel and Mador lifted the board from the trestles, carrying the body out as if on a bier. Most of the others followed to watch Patrise laid out decently in chapel. Gaheris joined them, keeping toward the back. In a few moments I was left alone with Lore of Carlisle.

      “Morgan le Fay.” I shook my head. “It was a beautiful thought, Dame Lore, but—”

      “Not merely a thought. A certainty. Have you forgotten her poisoned cloak?”

      “No, I haven’t forgotten the bloody cloak!” It had been years ago, shortly after Morgan’s second and permanent break with her husband and departure from Arthur’s court. She had sent the cloak to her brother as a pretended gift of reconciliation; but, on Dame Nimue’s advice, Arthur made the damsel-messenger who brought it try it on her own shoulders first. In an instant, the cloth had sucked around her small form and the lining glowed lividly, showing through the seams in the dark outer velvet like raw flesh in a new wound. A few moments of shrieks and writhing, and the girl collapsed, her body melting away like tallow. When it was over, and the cloth was cool enough to pull away, there were her feet, curled up like claws in the cracked leather slippers, and her head, hair singed and features screwed up with pain; there was nothing between but bones turned to charcoal. I hoped Morgan’s damsel had been in the plot with her mistress and not merely an innocent messenger, but the stench was not like the stink of Brumant’s death in the Siege Perilous or Corsabrin’s pagan soul going to Hell—it was plain, scorched human flesh.

      “Morgan is as dead as her damsel by now, anyway,” I went on.

      “You all assume she is dead because we’ve heard nothing of her for years,” replied dame Lore, “and therefore you say she was not responsible for this. I say that this proves she is not dead!”

      “She loved her nephews. Why would she try to poison Gawain?”

      “What is her love for Gawain compared with her hatred for Guenevere? She means to burn the Queen this time.”

      Trying not to see the flames leaping up around Her Grace, I thought it over. Dame Lore could be right—Arthur’s half-sister might still be alive. But, if so, why had she been so quiet these last several years, since before the Grail Quest?

      Dame Morgan’s first attempt on Arthur’s life had been a complicated scheme involving a counterfeit of Excalibur, sword and scabbard. When that plot went askew and Morgan’s own paramour of the moment was killed instead of the King, she had tried to murder her husband Uriens in his sleep with his own sword and, that attempt foiled by her son Ywain of the Lion, she left court for good and took up residence in various castles of her own, one of them a former gift of Arthur to her. She had gained knowledge of magic somewhere, whether in the nunnery where she was raised or from old Merlin or elsewhere—enough to establish herself as perhaps the most skillful necromancer alive in Britain, as well as the most treacherous. At one time, she had been heart and head of a whole sorority of enchantresses. Yes, this could be the latest of Morgan’s periodic attempts to destroy the Queen and court. But…

      “She had to get the poison into the fruit,” I said. “I never heard of any magic strong enough to do that at a distance.”

      “At what distance? She could be anywhere. Have you forgotten how she turned herself and all her attendants into rocks when she escaped from the King? And how else does poison come to be found in uncooked fruit unless by magic?”

      “You poor, silly innocent, for all your silvering hairs,” I said. “Do you always look for the magical explanation first? Or do you simply assume that if it’s evil, it must be sorcery?”

      “The poison was not on the skin of the fruit, Sir Seneschal! Her Grace arranged those apples and pears with her own hands, and did not wash her fingers again before sitting to eat.”

      “Then Le Fay missed her chance, didn’t she? If the stuff had been on the skin of the fruit, it would have gotten onto the Queen’s fingers and then into her own mouth with her other food.” I threw that thought away from my mind as soon as it was spoken. “A long pin,” I went on, “dipped in poison, then inserted through the blossom end or maybe the stem end, slantwise into the meat.”

      “You seem to understand the process very neatly, Sir Seneschal. Then I will find a way to poison apples without necromancy, too. Suppose they were buried in venomed earth last harvest? Suppose the venom had all the winter to penetrate each piece to the core?”

      “Without tainting the peel?”

      “Any surface taint would be cleaned off with the dirt when the fruit was dug up. The peel would be left harmful only to the tongue, not to the fingers. And the poison would remain within. You are in charge of seeing the fruit stored each harvest, are you not, Sir Kay?”

      “Yes, I am! In whatever place the court happens to be at harvest time. And yes, we were here in London last harvest. But I don’t always watch every apple buried individually, and I don’t always stand over the servants and order them exactly which pit or bag or tub to go to for the food—or were you aware of that, Dame Cupbearer? This court has made progress through eight different cities since the storerooms were filled here in London last fall, and I go with the court—or had you forgotten that? By God, my lady, when I start poisoning people, I’ll know who I’m—”

      “You will hardly need any other poison, Sir Seneschal, while you have your tongue!” She stood up. “The earth might have been tainted by a serpent, or by water from a serpent-venomed spring. Such things have happened before now. But since you have chosen to defend yourself where there was no accusation—”

      “No accusation!” I was on my feet now, too. “And you call my tongue poisonous? What reason would I have—”

      “Jealousy!”

      “Jealousy? Jealousy, in God’s Name?”

      “Aye, jealousy, Sir Seneschal! You are more jealous of Her Grace and Lancelot than that pitiful fool Meliagrant ever was! Do you think, because the King does not see it, no one else does?”

      I don’t know whether Dame Lore left then because of her own rage or because of something she saw in my expression. If a tenth of what my soul felt was leaking through into my face, I must have looked fierce enough to give an ogre pause.

      I stood there watching her absence until I could be reasonably sure she was not coming back again. Then I sat and stared at the begrimed silver fruitbowl lying sunk in the embers.

      Dame Lore was wrong. I am not jealous of Lancelot. You can only feel jealousy toward someone for whom you have some kind of respect or affection. Jealousy is what I feel towards Gawain. What I feel towards Lancelot is something only the demons in Hell can have a name for, something that should probably frighten me about my eternal salvation, if Lancelot did not deserve every breath of it.

      Who should be the King’s right hand? Kay, his foster-brother, his seneschal, the man who was raised with him, shared his training (a few years in advance of Artus, too, and for every time I may have played the bully, I smoothed out the way several times for him). Who was, in fact, recognized as Arthur’s right hand? Lancelot. And Gawain.

      Gawain I can stomach. He is the King’s sister’s son, and not only is his loyalty above question, but he is usually at hand when needed. When he goes out on quest or mission, he lets it be known in advance. When he aims to kill, he has a reason, he makes sure his opponent is equally armed, and he knows what he’s doing. When Gawain’s father rebelled against Arthur, Gawain came, along with his mother Morgawse and those of his brothers who were old enough, to our side. The decision could not have been easy, especially for a man of Gawain’s scruples and family feeling.

      If Lancelot had any deep, noble reason in coming across the Channel to Arthur, aside from personal glory-seeking, he kept it well concealed. He came, was dubbed knight, and left again immediately for his independent adventuring. Lancelot made sure everyone knew what a great warrior he was before he deigned attach himself permanently to Arthur’s court. If you can call it permanently when every second or third year he either slips away to go adventuring on his own again, without warning anyone beforehand,