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  Lancelot

  Her Story

  Carol Anne Douglas

  Hermione Books

  Washington, D.C.

  Copyright © 2015 by Carol Anne Douglas

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author or author’s estate, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to [email protected].

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

  Book Layout © 2013 BookDesignTemplates.com

  Lancelot: Her Story/ Carol Anne Douglas

  ISBN 978-09967722-0-4

  This book is dedicated to Mandy Doolittle,

  who brought joy to my life.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I express my gratitude to the writer whose story about Lancelot as a woman I read as a college freshman. I have searched for many years to find the story or the writer but have not been able to do so. That story inspired this book, and I have drawn on aspects of it, such as Lancelot's friendship with Gawaine.

  I want to thank many people, especially Sherwood Smith, who has given me years of encouragement while I worked on this book, and Betty Jean Steinshouer, who lovingly prepared the manuscript for publication and designed the cover.

  I thank the friends who read the manuscript, especially Tricia Lootens, who read several early drafts, and Ken Louden, who read a very early draft when he was dying. I thank Virginia Cerello, Russell Cox, Liz Quinn, Victoria Stanhope, and Stephanie Wynn for reading the manuscript. I thank Amy Hamilton for helping me find the wonderful listserv ARTHURNET and for her encouragement of my writing.

  I thank Viable Paradise for providing a great environment for writers, and everyone at VP XV, especially those who provided comments, including Stephanie Charette and LaShawn Wanak. I am particularly grateful for comments from Debra Doyle and Jim MacDonald, to Debra for her editing, and to Jane Kinsman for last-minute advice on the cover design as well as interior details.

  I want to thank the wonderful friends and family who have given me emotional support over the years: Lois and Nancy Brown, Ned Cabot Sr., Suzie Carrigan, Tacie Dejanikus, Beth Eldridge, Colleen Flannery, Daniele Flannery, John S. Flannery, Carolyn Gage, Barbara Gardien, Julie Gerard Harris, Alice Henry, Marlene Howell, Jackie Hutchinson, Edward P. Jones, Sue Lenaerts, Vickie Leonard, Elizabeth Lytle, Colise Medved, Trudy Portewig, Luanne Schinzel, John Schmitz, Delores Smith, Liz Trapnell, and Judith Witherow. Above all, I am grateful to my wonderful mother, Joan Flannery Douglas, who always gave me love and encouraged me.

  I am also grateful for the kindness of Mary Frances Moriarty, who has been like a second mother to me; Jim Bethea, who was my first unrelated male friend; Tom Field, a King Arthur who has reigned with genius and compassion; Dean Ahearn, who was a true knight, loyal and excellent in all he did; and Lissa Fried, the bravest knight of all.

  Contents

  Lancelot

  1 The Changeling

  2 The King’s Daughter

  3 The Witch’s Son

  4 The King’s Sister

  5 The Future Queen

  6 Lancelot Alone

  7 The Queen Courted

  8 Guinevere the Wife

  9 Queen of Light and Darkness

  10 The Barren Queen

  11 Before the Journey

  12 The Reluctant Warrior

  13 A Strangely-made Warrior

  14 A Warrior among Warriors

  15 The Courtly Life

  16 A Most Courteous Warrior

  17 A New Kind of Fighting

  18 The Otherworld

  19 Return to Camelot

  20 The Queen’s Move

  21 The Queen

  22 The Stolen Nights

  23 The Raven and the Hawk

  24 The Fisher King

  25 The Fathers

  26 The Seducers

  27 The Green Warrior

  28 The Lady of Tintagel

  29 A Double Disguise

  30 The Sword

  31 Truths and Untruths

  SNEAK PREVIEW – Volume II

  Lancelot and Guinevere

  1 Camelot

  Part I The Path to Camelot

  1 The Changeling

  Anna lived in the forest, as much as she could. Animals spoke to her, telling secrets lost for a thousand years. Birds guided her home. This morning she was eager to be outside, walking with her mother.

  She looked through the window at the endless waves of trees that grew beyond her father's holding. She longed to feel pine needles under her feet, to touch soft moss.

  Magpies that lived at the wood edge screeched, beckoning her to join them. She imagined that she could smell the pines, but only the scent of baking wheaten bread strayed up from the kitchen. She wanted to see the early morning light, still slanting through the trees, not the ordinary light of midmorning.

  A deer, or even a bear, might appear in a sunlit glade. In the villa, there was eternal sewing and spinning, and nothing magical ever happened. Twisting vines and bunches of grapes were painted on the walls of the room where she was supposed to be sewing. What would happen if they suddenly came to life, if vines took over the villa?

  Seeing her mother make her way across the cobbled courtyard, Anna jumped up from her stool. The crimson gown she had been mending dropped to the floor. Anna picked it up and flung it onto the stool.

  "I never knew a girl whose mother let her sew and spin so little," her plump nurse sniffed. Rathtyen had a small, upturned nose, and often sniffed as if discontented with the very air, though she never wanted to exchange the air indoors for the air outdoors. "What kind of wife will you be?"

  "I'm going to walk in the forest with Mother now," Anna darted away from Rathtyen and her question. Life was a song, after all. She warbled one of the hymns she had heard her mother sing. She made it sound much more cheerful than her mother did.

  In the courtyard, her father and his men mounted their horses to leave for a hunt. Her father's roan stallion tossed his head and pawed the ground while her mother glided across the cobbles to bid him farewell.

  What splendid horses, Anna thought, leaning out of the window as far as she could. If only she could ride mounts with that much spirit, but girls never could. She wanted to tame wild horses and travel to faraway lands. She couldn't bear to stay indoors another moment.

  "Mother! Father!" Anna called. She waved to get her parents' attention.

  "Don’t lean too far," Rathtyen warned.

  Finally, Anna's mother signaled that Anna could join them in the cobbled courtyard. "If I find any mushrooms, I'll pick them for you," Anna said to mollify her nurse.

  As she rushed out of the room, Anna began to sing another hymn. She would go among the trees. She would be free of sewing and other chores.

  Anna hurried out of the old stone villa, through the atrium where men were repairing the floor tiles left from Roman times, and met her mother at the gate in the wall that surrounded the villa.

  She felt a surge of pride at the sight of her beautiful mother, Lucia. It was good to have a mother who walked in the woods often and sang hymns while she sewed, Anna thought. And it was good to have a father who seldom raised his voice.

  Lucia gazed at Anna's father as if he
were going away for a month instead of a day.

  Anna hoped he would look at her.

  Three of his men-at-arms were with him, all of them clad in chain mail because the forest they must travel through might hold creatures more dangerous than deer. The men made little noise because her father scowled at them if they were rowdy. But he rarely frowned at Anna.

  She wished that she could ride out with them into the forest's darkest recesses, rather than just visit the safest part near the villa. If she rode far enough, she might even be granted a vision of a holy saint. No, she was unworthy of such a blessing.

  She wondered how sharp the swords hanging from the men's baldrics were, for she was not allowed to touch weapons.

  "God grant you a safe hunt, Marcus," her mother said to her father. Lucia's voice made the words sound full of meaning, as if no one had ever said them before. Her black hair strayed from her headdress.

  "Don't worry, we'll be safe, and we will bring back a fine deer."

  Marcus clasped her hand. He smiled at Anna, then went on his way, leading his men.

  Anna and her mother began their more modest journey on a well-marked path, though the trees and bracken on either side were almost impenetrable. Anna wanted so much to investigate the tangled way among the trees, but her mother would never let her do that.

  Anna scampered through the woods ahead of her mother. The children of other noble families had sometimes asked her if she minded not having any brothers or sisters, but she thought the question foolish. Of course she did not. She had her mother to herself, while other children's mothers were always having more babies, sometimes leaving the older children entirely to their nurses. Besides, in her tenth year she was old enough to know that girls with brothers had to defer to them, and she did not want to defer to any boy.

  Anna breathed in the welcome scent of the pines. Why didn't Mother walk faster? They might miss something. Ladies never ran, and that seemed foolish. A red squirrel chattered, and Anna chattered back at it. Her mother caught up with her.

  "What if that wasn't really a squirrel? What if it was a little man with a squirrel's head? This squirrel seemed to be just a squirrel, but the next one might not be," Anna said, staring up the pine that the little animal had climbed. She touched the bark and rubbed her fingers in the sticky resin.

  "Has Rathtyen been telling you impious tales?" Lucia chided. "I must tell her to stop. You must never confuse people, who have souls, with animals, who do not." The slightest of frowns appeared in her forehead. "And don't get the resin on your gown."

  "Yes, mother," Anna agreed, rubbing her fingers on a stone to scrape off the resin.

  A tremulous birdsong filled the air.

  "Not many birds sing this late in the summer," Lucia mused. "Can you tell me what song that is?"

  "The wren's," Anna replied, proud that she remembered the many songs her mother had taught her.

  "Good girl. Yes, it's the wren." Lucia’s smile transformed her face until it glowed like the faces of the angels painted on the walls of their chapel. Her tender look made it seem that Anna had done something remarkable.

  Anna felt as if she had sprouted wings. She wanted to be just like her mother when she grew up. When she walked in the forest with her own daughter, would her mother be there with them? She hoped her father would not marry her to a lord who lived far away.

  "It is important to know all the different songs," her mother said.

  "Can we go as far as the lake today?" Anna begged.

  "Yes, to be sure we can." Lucia caught hold of her hand and squeezed it. "You always want to go to the lake. You're my little Lady of the Lake, aren't you?" She frowned and looked around as if someone could overhear them. "Don't tell your father I said that. That is the name of a pagan priestess across the sea in Britain, and he wouldn't like me to call you that, even in jest. But, my water-loving girl, you are my child of the lake." She clasped Anna to her, then let her go.

  "I'll remember, and I won't tell, I promise."

  Anna felt important because she was sharing a secret with her mother. She bounced along the path and wondered what waterfowl they would see at the lake. She let out a squawk. "Listen to me, I'm the heron of the lake."

  "Don't go too far ahead of me. Stay within sight," her mother called out.

  Anna ran ahead as she usually did, reveling in the crisp air that foretold the coming of autumn. She ignored her mother's warning and sped on. Mother never punished her for running ahead, as long as she stayed on the path.

  Anna flapped her arms. Perhaps feathers would sprout on them and she could become a heron in truth. Perhaps if she ran fast enough, she might begin to fly. She ran further and further into the woods.

  Small white butterflies fluttered through the trees like spots of light in the dark forest. "I am flying, too," she told them.

  Anna found some golden chanterelles, the most delicate of mushrooms, and began to pick them. They would taste so good at supper, and Rathtyen would be pleased.

  In the forest behind Anna, crows cawed wildly, as if trying to drive off a hawk or an owl.

  A terrible scream made her drop the chanterelles. Was it her mother? Anna ran back through the trees. When she came to a clearing where she found wildflowers in the spring, she saw a huge man writhing on top of her mother. Only shreds of clothing, sleeves and stockings, still clung to Lucia's body. Blood poured down her legs. Her screams had stopped. No sound came from her.

  Anna flung herself on the man's back. He smelled rank, like carrion. She pounded on his shoulders and kicked his sides, but he only growled and tried to shake her off. She bit through his ear, and he reached up, grabbed her, and threw her to the ground. Only slightly bruised, she staggered up. He returned to grinding himself on her mother.

  Looking around desperately, Anna found a long branch several inches thick. She rushed again at the man and thrust the pointed end as hard as she could into his eye.

  Shrieking in pain, the man thrashed out at Anna, but she leapt away from him. His hands clutching his bleeding face, he jumped up from her mother and, still screaming, lumbered off among the trees.

  Anna knelt beside her mother and touched her cheek. Lucia's neck was snapped; her head hung at an awkward angle. Her brown eyes stared unseeing at the sky. Anna lay down beside her mother, clutched her, and sobbed.

  "Mother! Mother! Mother!" She screamed, she moaned, but her mother made no reply. Anna knew that she would never hear that sweet voice again, but she begged anyway. She buried her face in her mother's dark hair as it spilled on the ground, along with the blood that pooled on the pine needles.

  Mother was dead. Dead like her first horse, which had gone lame and had to be killed. No, Mother had a soul. Mother must be with the Christ and his Mother.

  Come back, come back, Anna begged. I need you, I need you. I never should have left you.

  Why did she have to run off alone? She reproached herself. Perhaps she could have saved her mother. Perhaps her mother's death was her fault. Tears covered her cheeks.

  Why had God let the man kill her mother? Why didn't He freeze the man's hands before they could strangle her? If Anna had prayed more often and more fervently, if she had been a better girl, would He have saved Lucia?

  Anna begged God to raise her mother from the dead as He had Lazarus. She would never ask for anything else in her life, just this one miracle, please.

  No voices answered her. The clearing was silent, except for a squirrel's chatter. How could squirrels still chatter in this nightmare world?

  People said that weasels could bring the dead back to life. She looked around the clearing, as if a weasel might emerge from a hole, but none did.

  Two carrion crows flew down to investigate her mother's body. Screaming at them, Anna waved her arms to keep them off.

  Her thoughts became less and less clear. She felt nothing but pain, in her chest, in her head. Surely no one could feel this much pain and live. Perhaps she would die, too, and be with her mother in heaven, i
f only she were good enough.

  Then Anna was empty. Perhaps she had died. No, she was not with her mother, not in heaven, but nowhere, just someplace black, the smell of blood mingling with the pine scent. Could there be pines in hell?

  Voices cried out, "Lady Lucia! God's wounds! Is the child dead, too? Who did this?"

  She did not speak, but struggled when arms lifted her away from her mother's body. A strong man was carrying her somewhere – it didn't matter where.

  Later, voices prayed beside her, but there was only blackness.

  "Anna, speak to me."

  She heard her father's voice. She was lying in a bed, probably her own. She did not open her eyes.

  "Be merciful, Lord," she heard Marcus pray. His voice was solemn but desperate, far different from his ordinary calm tone of authority.

  "Let my child speak." He sobbed. "I vow that I'll never wed again. I'll spend all of my days praising You, Lord, only let my child live. Anna, Anna, listen to your father." He clasped her hands in his.

  She knew she ought to open her eyes, and so she did. She saw her father, tears streaming over the stubble on his usually clean-shaven cheeks.

  "My little girl. Are you well, Anna?"

  She looked at him, but could not speak.

  "Your mother is in heaven with the holy angels. All the priests from miles around came to her funeral. And the vile murderer was soon found. His head is on a pike on our wall. He'll never harm anyone again. No one will ever harm you again, little one." He chafed her hands as if they were cold, but she said nothing.

  She noticed they were in a room she had never seen before, with an unfamiliar hanging on the wall.

  "I have taken you to my brother's villa," he told her. "I shall explain later."

  She remembered that her uncle had died fighting the Franks.

  At last, her father left and she was alone again. It didn't matter whether she was in her own bed or another.