Alain appeared laden with a tray of food garnered from the kitchen staff as the pair turned from the doorway and started toward Lancelot’s door.
“Have they gone, then?” Alain asked, by way of greeting.
“They are bound for Cadbury Castle where Arthur will go through the motions required to set aside his queen.” Gawain spoke tersely leading the way into the chamber.
“Does the king think she played him false with King March?” Alain’s eyes were wide with amazement, perhaps finding it hard to believe a mere page was one of the first in the kingdom to learn of the queen’s disgrace and Arthur’s anger.
“Whether she did or no doesn’t matter. It is the king’s pride which needs salvaging.” The Lady Nuina spoke harshly.
Gawain gave her a puzzled look and gestured for Alain to place the food on the small table. Lancelot’s eyes were open, but the wounded man offered no word of opinion and lay motionless under the white linen sheet. The Lady Nuina felt his forehead and checked his wound for seepage. Satisfied with what she found, she sank into the chair vacated by Queen Gwenhwyfar. Gawain poured some wine into a bronze cup and offered it to Lancelot, who drank it in one gulp and asked for more. Gawain plied the wounded knight with the wine, inducing a drunken slumber in spite of his pain.
“I’m not sure I agree with your methods, but the truth is, I have nothing better to dampen his pain,” the Lady Nuina said tiredly as she watched Lancelot’s chest rise and fall with his breathing. “At least the fool can’t think about dying of a broken heart if he is in a drunken stupor.”
Gawain dropped down unto the trunk at the base of the window and ate his fill of the bread and excellent cheese Alain had procured for them. Alain cut up the garlic sausage with his belt knife and passed some to Gawain and Lady Nuina. Gawain felt much more human once the hole that was his stomach was full of food.
“Where did Prince Tristam disappear to?” Gawain asked suddenly. He had forgotten totally about March’s son.
“No one has seen him since the battle. The castle folk have no great love for him, so they say in the kitchens. They would turn him in for the reward King Arthur has offered in a heartbeat,” Alain informed him.
“What of the horses? Surely they aren’t still in the laundry yard.” Gawain’s brain suddenly dredged up all sorts of loose ends.
“They are well taken care of, Sir Gawain. They reside in the best pasture this place has to offer. Ailim is quite happy to keep Rose company.” Alain grinned widely while relaying the stallion’s message.
As a snort of laughter exploded out of Gawain’s nose, wine slopped down his tunic. When the laughter stopped, he wiped at his tunic with a strip of linen from the pile of bandages and was relieved to see Lancelot still slept undisturbed by his outburst.
“Do you think the queen played the king false?” Alain returned to his earlier train of thought.
“I would not say for certain without witnessing them together, but she was playing the harlot in the great hall at Castle Mount,” Gawain said carefully. “Arthur has said she will be sent to the cloisters at Glastonbury, where she will retire from public life and be well cared for.”
The Lady Nuina snorted in a very unladylike manner and glared at both Gawain and Alain. “So it is the queen who is the villain here is it? No matter she had no say in who she married, or that she loved another and had to deny herself to him? No matter that the king has taken every likely female at Cadbury to his bed in an effort to prove the lack of an heir is not his fault, while the queen is supposed to turn her face and ignore his behaviour?” The Lady Nuina spat the words like daggers at them.
“But he is the king.” Alain sought to defend Arthur.
“He is a man,” The Lady Nuina said in disgust. “When the husband takes women to his bed and brags about his conquests, it is considered virile and manly. But when a woman does the same, or worse yet, seeks to deny her husband her body, and sometimes for very good reasons, she is branded a harlot and a whore. I have no use for Queen Morgause of the Orkneys, but some of what she says is true. A woman is not a horse or property to be bartered or used as a broodmare and then cast aside. Her body is her own, and she should be able to distribute her favors as she sees fit.”
The Lady Nuina glared at both of them and defied them to dispute with her. Alain opened his mouth and then wisely closed it again. Gawain kept his counsel and privately thought what the lady expounded had some merit. Alain took the opportunity to exit the room in search of some pallets and bedding for Gawain and the Lady Nuina. Both indicated they would sleep in the room with Lancelot, ensuring he wasn’t left with only the lady for protection. Alain vowed to sleep across the doorway and keep guard over them.
* * *
The next fortnight was a blur of sleeplessness to Gawain. Lancelot’s wound festered, and his delirium raged from the high fever gripping him, eating the flesh from his large frame. In his fever ravaged brain, Lancelot mistook the Lady Nuina for Queen Gwenhwyfar, constantly wringing her hand in his large ones and professing his love. Begging her to run away with him and leave Cadbury and King Arthur forever. They could go to wild Ireland and remain hidden there for the rest of their lives. Lancelot alternated between commanding her to come with him and crying and begging her when the fever was at its height.
The Lady Nuina and Gawain took turns bathing Lancelot in cold water and forcing broth and water down his throat. Alain kept watch over the two of them and made sure there was a steady supply of clean bandages for Lancelot and wine and food for the Lady Nuina and Gawain. In the quiet reaches of the night and early morning hours, the Lady Nuina and Gawain along with Alain promised each other no word of Lancelot’s ravings about Queen Gwenhwyfar would leave the small chamber.
“The queen will be well cared for at the cloisters, and after her adventures, she may well be glad to be done with court life,” Gawain remarked in the wee hours one morning.
“She will be a prisoner, no more no less than one entombed in the dungeons. Her cage is just prettier than most,” the Lady Nuina replied wearily, too tired even to put much energy into her voice. “She has embarrassed the king, and so she must be punished lest the blame should be somehow construed to fall on Arthur.”
“I have never thought about such things from the lady’s point of view.” Gawain cleared his throat and handed the Lady Nuina a cup of wine. “It just seems like such a neat answer to the knotty problem of what to do with a dispossessed queen.”
“Tidy for the man in question.” The Lady Nuina snorted softly and eyed Gawain over the rim of her cup as she sipped the wine.
“I begin to see your point, My Lady.” Gawain bowed his head slightly to Nuina.
He rose from his seat on the chest and crossed the distance that separated them in long strides. Gawain took the wet cloth from her fingers, grasped both her hands, and drew her to her feet. He promptly forgot to breathe when the Lady Nuina tipped her head back so she could look him directly in his eyes. His fingers tightened on her hands, and she took an involuntary step closer to him. Her hair had come free of the confines of its pins, and long curls fell about her shoulders, glimmering in the flickering light from the torches on the walls.
Gawain tried to quell the heat building in his belly and quickly threatening to set him on fire. An amused and tolerant smile played on the Lady Nuina’s lips as Gawain’s passion made itself evident to her, standing as close to him as she was. Gawain tried unsuccessfully to quash the heat rising up his neck into his face and attempted to turn away from her bewitching face.
“Think you that I know not what it is you desire,” the Lady Nuina said quietly, her skin soft on his.
“I…you…we…we have not had time or opportunity to speak of things as I have wished.” Gawain’s thoughts went every which way as the feel of the Lady Nuina’s stroking thumbs sent all the blood rushing out of his head.
“I came late to court life, Gawain. I was raised on a farm, and I know very well what is involved in the act of procreation. I did not know only a certain man could make one feel as I do with you.” The Lady Nuina smiled, and a faint blush crept up her throat and over her cheekbones.
Gawain hesitated, at a loss for words, and then being a man of action, reacted in the only way his blood starved brain could manage. He folded the Lady Nuina against his iron-muscled body and sought her mouth with his. A lightening jolt raced through his body as his lips nuzzled hers, inhaling her sharp gasp of breath into his lungs. The Lady Nuina freed her hands and pressed them against Gawain’s broad chest. Encircling her hips with his arms, the brave knight trembled when his tongue softly brushed hers.
He was totally unprepared for the reaction from the very proper and lady-like Nuina. She thrust herself against him and raked her fingers through his sleep dishevelled hair. Her fingers locked behind his neck, and she let her head fall back in abandonment to expose the lovely curve of her throat. Gawain plundered her willing flesh and left a trail of wet kisses along her jaw before seizing her earlobe in his teeth and was rewarded by the tightening of her hold on his neck and the small squeal of pleasure from her swollen lips. Emboldened by her behaviour, Gawain lowered her pliant body onto one of the sleeping pallets and pressed kisses down her throat. The Lady Nuina wriggled her strong capable hands into the front of his tunic and caressed the springy coarse hair she encountered on his battle-hardened chest. The Lady Nuina’s mouth smiled under his at his reaction.
The sudden sound of Lancelot calling out in his delirium brought Gawain back to himself as quickly as if someone threw a bucket of cold water over him. Quickly the knight scrambled to his feet. He avoided looking at the Lady Nuina, who after a quick glance to ensure Lancelot was indeed okay for the moment, was sitting up on the pallet.
“Don’t be ashamed Gawain, I am not.” The Lady Nuina rose gracefully to her feet and crossed the distance between them to place a soft kiss on his lips.
“It has never been like that before for me.” Gawain rested his hands on her shoulders and studied her face. “Never like it were both of us coming together, not just one or the other amusing themselves.”
“Nor I, and if that is what Gwenhwyfar and Lancelot feel, how can we fault them for not denying something so strong.” The Lady Nuina rested her forehead on Gawain’s chest who dropped his head to kiss the dishevelled crown of her hair.
She raised her head, gave him a radiant smile, and then left his side to check on Lancelot’s fever. The Lady Nuina rinsed the cloth and applied more cool water to Lancelot’s face. She pulled back the coverlet to change the bandage covering the wound on his thigh. Gawain watched beside her, ready to restrain Lancelot if needed while the painful process of changing the linens was in progress. The flesh around the wound was far less red and angry than the last time Gawain saw the laceration, and there was much less ugly yellow pus. The Lady Nuina swabbed the injury with steaming water from the bowl on the brazier by the sick bed and grunted in satisfaction when she failed to squeeze much drainage from it. She slathered more of the foul blue grey salve in the wound and on the surrounding flesh. With a considering look, the Lady Nuina propped the leg up on a bolster and left it exposed to the air.
“It looks better to me. Is it?” Gawain asked hopefully.
“Aye, it is. There is a time in the healing when it is beneficial to allow the wound to breathe in the open air so long as there is no chance of a chill.” The Lady Nuina allowed herself a tired smile of satisfaction. “For the first time, I begin to believe Lancelot will survive. Please tell Eldon to stop fretting and to eat. Alain is beside himself with trying to entice that horse with tasty tidbits. Sleep now, Gawain, I will watch him through this critical period and hopefully take some rest when the light comes.” The Lady Nuina pushed Gawain gently toward his pallet.
Gawain allowed himself to be convinced to lie down. So tired it was easier just to do as he was told, and anyway, there was no energy for arguing. His brain barely registered the relief of lying flat on the soft pallet before falling into a deep dreamless sleep.
“There will be time enough to talk later.” The Lady Nuina smiled down on Gawain’s peaceful face. “If not in this life, then surely in the next.”