I.
Whatever the poets say, he did not love Guinevere at first seeing her.
II.
(That had come later, when he was keeping vigil at Bors’ bedside after a hunt gone terribly wrong—she was still his queen then, known only distantly through the veils of polite deference. But still Guinevere came, and sat with Lancelot at his cousin’s beside.
He could not remember what they spoke of, in whispers, what bent their heads together, only the way the candlelight touched her mouth, and he had loved her, after.)
III.
Their first kiss had been a startled, shy thing, stolen behind a tourney tent. It had not felt like treason.
He had lost every bout that day, still trembling.
IV.
He’d pretended, that night. To be a little more unsteady on his feet than he was, to slur his words more thickly. Arthur’s arm had been too warm, too heavy where it rested across Lancelot’s shoulders (to keep you from straying, Arthur had laughed, and Lancelot had forced himself to laugh too, and not tremble.) It had been too easy to stay, to watch the others retire from the hall, until it was just a king and his knight beside the dying fire, talking of nothing especially.
Arthur’s arm was still warm and heavy at Lancelot’s shoulders.
The firelight had burnished Arthur’s eyelashes red-gold, and Lancelot had not been able to keep himself from leaning forward and kissing the corner of Arthur’s mouth. (That had not felt like treason either.)
Arthur had smiled a slow, languorous smile, and patted his cheek. You are very drunk, my friend, he said. You should to bed.
And Lancelot had gone, alone.
V.
He was never certain how much Arthur knew, had pieced together from an absent wife and lovelorn knight. Lancelot might have spoken, confessed honorably, but the thought of Arthur no longer looking at him with such warmth…
The fear of it had been enough to keep him quiet. He stole his moments and lived in a perpetual summer-tide, spending against the hope winter would never come.
VI.
Arthur had asked, when he returned with Galahad and Percival and Bors. He had asked, and Lancelot had said, The Grail is—it is—
And he had touched his own mouth, and fallen silent. He still could not find the words he left there, in the keeping of the angel clad in white samite.
VII.
He wished he could say that he had suspected and reviled Mordred from the start, but he had been too heady-lost in Guinevere, all of him iron to the lodestone of her. He loved her and Camelot’s walls could have crumbled around him, he would not have known.
He did not even notice the red-gold of Mordred’s eyelashes, until it was too late.
VIII.
He ran, rather than face Arthur knowing. He will regret that always.
IX.
He wrote it all down, all he would say to the king whom he had loved and served and betrayed—the apologies, the pleas and explanations, crossing out I love you I love you half a dozen times only to write it again.
The day the news of Arthur’s death reaches France, he feeds it to the fire, page by pages. Watches it turn to ash.
X.
We are the last of Camelot, Guinevere says. There is frost on the wheat-gold of her hair that not even a nun’s habit can hide, and Lancelot feels the winter ache in his bones. It is only us now, you know.
Is it a punishment, do you think? Or mercy? Lancelot asks.
That of that shining country, only its enseamed queen and its tarnished knight still live? Surely it is a cruel joke.
Lancelot shuts his eyes and thinks of Arthur, though the memory of him has dimmed with time. There is really only the strong jaw and the cupric shock of hair left, all else is brightness and steel, the sharp pang of longing.
When he opens his eyes, Guinevere is still there—undimmed and lovely still, the winter sunlight sharp on her fraying mouth. A jest, perhaps, but then a gentle one, he says. For we have had our bitterness and our sweetness too.
XI.
He loved them, to the last.
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