No wonder Merlin had never described Camelot to her. He had filled her instead with stories of Arthur. His goodness, his bravery, his goals. If she had been aware of the particular geography of the place, she might not have agreed to come.
Come to think of it, she had never explicitly agreed to come, because he had not asked. He had told her the threat was imminent and whisked her to the convent. That was his way, though. For all she knew, ten years in the future he would sit down and explain the whole thing to her, including what the threat was, how she was to fight it, and why it had to be she, and she alone.
After she had already done it.
She tried to have compassion for him. It was like he lived every moment of his life all at once, his mind slipping through time. Which meant that he knew things were coming before they happened, but it also meant that he had a hard time landing on what needed to be said or done at any given time.
And it made her own life very frustrating. Nothing to be done for it, though, but to get to work.
She stood and stretched. The bed, at least, was comfortable. It seemed new compared to Arthur’s. The coverlets were dyed deepest blue. The ropes across the bed frame tight enough that they did not so much as creak when she moved. And the mattress was softer than yellow-green tufts of new spring grass. The bed at the convent had been a straw mattress, itchy and lumpy. And her bed at home had been…She could only picture it, not remember sleeping in it. It felt like a lifetime ago. She had only the memory of dreams, which was fitting for a home shared with a wizard.
Cloth draped over the four posters of the bed could be drawn closed like curtains at a window, sealing her in to sleep. She had not done that the night before. She did not like the idea of being confined in her dreams.
In addition to the bed, there were several chests in the room, sent ahead by the convent. They were the real Guinevere’s. She wondered what was inside them. It felt wrong to open them, but she had already claimed Guinevere’s name. How much guiltier would claiming belongings make her?
She tore her eyes away from the chests, which had begun to feel like caskets. There was a table with a single chair, and Brangien’s neat cot in the corner. A door led out to the hallway, and another door to a side chamber.
Two tapestries brightened the wall without windows; one of them hid the secret door. The tapestries were both old, like the one in Arthur’s room. The pastoral scenes could have been hanging in any great man’s home.
“Why does he have no tapestries of his life?” Guinevere asked as Brangien bustled around.
“Beg pardon, my queen?”
“Arthur. The king. All the tapestries I have seen are meaningless. Does he have none of the miracle of the sword? Of his victory over Uther Pendragon? The defeat of the fairy queen and the forest of blood?”
Brangien paused where she was laying out fresh underclothes. “I had not thought of it before. But he has never commissioned them. And there are no tapestries of Uther Pendragon, either. I think he had them destroyed.”
“Is he— Am I supposed to eat breakfast with him?” Guinevere did not know the rules yet. Could she go over to his room to bid him good morning? Should she?
“I believe there is a trial this morning. A woman caught practicing magic.” Brangien said it as perfunctorily as her movements making Guinevere’s bed were. It was a routine matter. Guinevere forced a neutral hmm in response.
After Brangien was satisfied with the items she had chosen, she bowed and left. Guinevere hurried to the windows, repeating for herself the same work that she had done last night for Arthur. She would need to redo it all at least once every three nights. And there were bigger, stronger magics to work. But those would take time as well as supplies.
She had just finished tracing the knots on the window when the sitting room door opened. She hoped it looked like she was trying to see the view through the thick glass.
Brangien bowed neatly. “Everything is ready, my lady.”
Ravenous, Guinevere followed, eager for breakfast. Instead, she was greeted by a tub of steaming water in the center of her sitting room.
“No!” she exclaimed.
“My lady? Did I do something wrong?” Brangien was standing next to the tub. A table held various tinctures and soaps, a soft length of cloth, a scrubbing brush. Brangien’s sleeves had been tied back, her pale arms exposed.
“What is this for?” Guinevere looked everywhere but at the bath. She had seen something reflected on the water. Something not in this room. She did not want to know what it was. Water was the best tool for seeing, better than any of her paltry tricks. Water touched everything, flowing from one life to the next. With enough patience and time, water could lead a skilled magician to any answer.
But it could also lead them astray. Water shaped to whatever container held it. Not all containers were benign. The Lady of the Lake had long ago claimed water magic as her own, and it all flowed back to her in time. The Lady of the Lake had been Merlin’s ally against the Dark Queen, but she was ancient and unknowable, and Guinevere could not risk invoking any of her power within Camelot. Better to be small. Contained. Knotted.
She could justify it all she wanted to, but magic aside, the bath was water. Guinevere would not climb into it.
“I think the temperature is pleasant, but if it is not to your liking, I can change it. Shall I help you undress?”
“No!”
Brangien flinched, wounded at the vehemence of Guinevere’s response. Her face turned scarlet and she stared at the floor.
“It is perfectly customary, my lady. I have bathed many women before you. And you need not put your face under if it frightens you.”
“It is not that.” Guinevere scrambled, grasping for a reason why this ordinary task for a lady’s maid would not—could not—ever happen. “At the convent they taught me that my body is only for my husband. Even I am not to look at myself while naked.” It sounded reasonable for a society that forbade her from showing her wrists. “I could not bear if anyone else saw me. You are a fine lady’s maid—the best I could hope for. But I must bathe myself.”
Brangien frowned, but at least she no longer looked wounded. “I have only recently become Christian. I have not heard this.”
“I think it is particular to the convent where I was instructed on how to be a wife. There are so many more ways for a queen to sin.” She tried not to grimace at all the falsehoods coming out of her mouth. Certainly in her three days at the convent, she had learned a great deal about sin and guilt, which seemed a powerful type of magic in its own right. A magic of controlling and shaping others. The nuns wielded it deftly, experts in their craft. They were also kind and loving and generous. Guinevere would not have minded more time among them, trying to understand this new religion that was pushing back the old in much the same way men were pushing back the forests.