IDYLLS OF THE QUEEN
Version 1.0.0
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
Copyright © 1982 by Phillis Ann Karr.
Revised edition copyright © 2013 by Phyllis Ann Karr.
Cover art © Atelier Sommerland / Fotolia.
All rights reserved.
Published by Wildside Press LLC.
www.wildsidebooks.com
FOREWORD
The setting is Britain in the Fifth Century A.D.—but not a Fifth Century known to any of our history books. It is, rather, an attempt to recreate in modern language the anachronistic, semi-mystical era described by Sir Thomas Malory and his predecessors, when necromancy was as much a fact of life as was the constant need to do battle in the Holy Land, when it was not then as it is nowadays, for “such custom was used in those days, that neither for favour, neither for love nor affinity, there should be none other but righteous judgment, as well upon a king as upon a knight, and as well upon a queen as upon another poor lady.” (Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte d’Arthur, Book XVIII, CHAPTER 6.)
I have sometimes used “Artus” and “Kex,” alternate forms in certain old romances for “Arthur” and “Kay,” as nicknames. In my mind, I always hear “Gawain” accented on the first syllable, the preferred way according to the older dictionaries I have consulted.
“…I, Kay, that thou knawes,
That owte of tyme bostus and blawus…”
—Middle English Metrical Romance
The Avowynge of King Arthur
CHAPTER 1
The Poisoning of Sir Patrise
“And when he had eaten it he swelled so till he brast, and there Sir Patrise fell down suddenly dead among them.”
—Malory XVIII, 3
When Patrise put his head down on the table beside me and started groaning and twitching, my first thought was: and they call me the churl of this court.
Then the bloating became obvious—at least to me; I was sitting beside him. He hunched up with a half-choked cry and collapsed, his face still on the table, and suddenly I guessed that the dark stuff dribbling out of his mouth was not wine.
“Gouvernail,” I said.
I suppose, since I did not shout or use sarcasm, the old squire failed to hear the exact tone of my voice. He came and tried to lift Patrise tactfully, assuming the knight had drunk too much. One hardly expects to handle death at a private dinner given by the Queen of the land.
Patrise rolled away from Gouvernail, bumped Safere, and sprawled on the floor, his mouth still spewing blood.
It happened too quickly. Talk took a few minutes to die away. The last conversation—Pinel’s stale speculation on how much of the heat Lancelot might actually have felt when Brumant the Proud was burned to cinders for sitting in the Siege Perilous beside him—went at least a breath-load of words after everyone else was quiet. (If I had been the one to talk about Lancelot at this particular dinner, I would not have been heard out so politely.)
Gouvernail, bent over Patrise, looked up at me and shook his graying head.
I glanced around at the other tables. Any chance for spiriting the body away as if the young knight had simply eaten and drunk himself into a stupor was gone. Besides, if it had been poison… “Gouvernail,” I said, “what happened?”
“Internal swelling, I think, my lord. He… He seems to have burst inside.”
“Poison, then,” said Mordred, who sat beside me at my right hand.
At the head table, Her Grace screamed. Gawain supported her on one side, her cousin Elyzabel rushed up to support her on the other. I fought down a surge of jealousy and looked at the others. Everybody had stopped eating, of course. Pinel of Carbonek took a gulp of wine, then set his goblet down suddenly, as if he wished he had not drunk, and wiped his brown mustache and beard. Ironside and Bleoberis were sneaking the last bite of food out of their mouths. Probably others were as well. Safere, his chair overturned, was standing and staring down with his eyes like eggshells in his dark face. That pious pander Bors de Ganis had stepped aside to let Dame Elyzabel get close to Her Grace. Everyone else was glancing around as if trying to see who would burst next and praying it would not be himself. The dogs had caught the mood, and the only thing you could hear for a moment was their whining and tail-thumping, our breathing, and the Queen’s sobs.
“Hand me that apple he was eating, Sir Seneschal,” said Mordred calmly.
Patrise had let it roll out of his hand onto the table. I picked it up and handed it to Mordred. Delicately cutting a slice, he whistled to the nearest bitch. She came up, wagging her tail, snuffed up the piece of fruit from Mordred’s fingers—and a few moments later was thrashing on the floor coughing up blood into the newly-laid rushes. Astamore started up, one hand to his mouth, and looked for a moment as if he would rush from the room, but got control of himself and sat down again.
“So now,” said Mordred, “the question is: was it that one piece of fruit only, or all of them? Brother Gawain, I believe the bowl was carried back to you. Will someone kindly fetch it here? Gouvernail? Dame Bragwaine? Dame Lore?”
“No!” screamed the Queen. “No, you will not! Bury it—no, burn it!”
“We must learn, dear liege lady.” Mordred began sectioning his own pear, so far untasted, and whistled for another dog. The dogs were nosing their dead comrade; a few started to howl.
“No!” Dame Guenevere seized the bowl of fruit, turned, and threw it into the fire. Apples and pears spilled on the floor and table; she snatched them up and hurled them after the others. “Is it not enough? Will you kill them all? All our hounds and brachets, too?”
The fruit sizzled, sending off an odor of roasting juices, laced with something more sickly. Dame Guenevere turned back to us, the flames leaping in strange colors behind her. “My lords! My good lords—all who have taken any, throw it onto the fire! All of it! At once!”
No one moved. I grabbed the pieces of Mordred’s pear, deliberately walked around the room to the fireplace, and threw them into the flames.
My right hand was sticky with pear juice. “Coupnez,” I said to the nearest page, “clean water.” Coupnez went for ewer and basin, looking, for once, very glad to have something to do.
“That was a foolish deed, Sir Kay,” said Mordred. “Come, who else took a piece of it? Will you all play the fool, like our good seneschal?”
Gawain reached down slowly and picked up the apple he had chosen for himself. His hand trembled. The whole court knew that apples and pears were Gawain’s favorite light food. At this time of year, the large bowl of fruit had obviously been served in honor of the King’s favorite nephew, although, with his usual over-insistence on courtesy, he had caused it to be passed around among the other guests first.
“My God!” he said softly. “This was meant for me!” He looked at the Queen, weeping in Elyzabel’s arms, at Mordred, back at the Queen. Half-turning, he flung his apple into the flames. Then, in a low voice to the Queen—if the rest of us had not been so silent, we would not have heard him—“Madame, I fear for you.”
“True, brother Gawain,” said Agravain the Beautiful. He went on, siding as usual, with Mordred, “It certainly looks as if it had been meant for you. But as you’ve just destroyed your own choice of the fruit, we can never know whether it was tainted also, can we?”
“What difference if it was meant especially for Gawain?” Mador de la Porte was on his feet now. So were most of us, though not, it seemed, for the same reason as Mador. “Whether she meant to murder one or all, she did not care how many good knights died. And I have lost my cousin, madame, my good cousin and a noble knight, through your treason. A great knight he would have been of his arms in his time! Here I charge you, madame the Queen, with his death!”
Dame