Guinevere Evermore by Sharan Newman

leave?”
    “What? Of course not! It’s not you, how could it be? You’ve been very good to me, Guin.”
    Her lip trembled and she buried her face in his lap. He ran his fingers across her braids as he spoke.
    “It’s only that it seems as if at last adventures are beginning again. The last few years have been so horribly dull! With Merlin gone and St. Geraldus killed I had begun to think that true magic had gone from Britain. If it hadn’t been for you I might have stopped believing in enchantments altogether. You can’t know how much I hate this petty drizzle of childish accusations and stupid brutalities. The constant watching and conniving and playing one side against the other in the hope that somehow justice will come out of it drives me mad. To go forth again, freely, in search of truth . . . Can you imagine it? At last a quest in which no one need harm another. And I must sit here like a dotard and hope that news of it trickles back to me! Do you wonder I want to tear something apart?”
    She smiled at him and shook her head. But she didn’t understand. She didn’t want to. The Grail was a pretty trick; it gave food and light, good things to have. It would be a handy thing to have around in time of winter famine. All this “truth and understanding” though . . . well, really! Guinevere understood all she wanted to, and as for universal truth, she wasn’t in any hurry to find out about that, either. Her theology was uncomplicated. If God wanted her to know something, he would tell her. She had read the church fathers and they seemed remarkably clear to her. If she wanted anything else, the old gods were often very thoughtful to those who left a bracelet or a bit of meat at their shrines. Even her mother had not been so cruel as to destroy the lares and penates of the house. They had simply been removed to a small room near the servants’ quarters for storage. The door had not been locked and she had often gone in to ask about matters such as a new gown or less nagging from Flora, her nurse. Guinevere believed in letting the deities each do what they were best suited to. To her, the Grail quest was just another one of those things men did to keep themselves occupied.
    She was, therefore, unprepared for the storm she discovered among the women that afternoon.
    “Well, I can’t go, of course,” Lydia said firmly. “I have too much to do here, and Ectoris and Aurelia are too young yet to be fostered. Anyway, Cei says it’s all nonsense.”
    “You saw it yourself,” Brisane interrupted. “It was as real as we are, and that poor woman! Why should we stay here while they go out and have all the fun? It’s not a war they’re going to.”
    She had already dressed in her riding clothes, pants under a long tunic. Her boots had been stained bright green. She would not be mistaken for a knight.
    “They don’t know where they’re going or how to get there,” one woman answered. She held her arm crooked to shield her sleeping child from the sun. “It doesn’t sound like fun to me. And while my husband is gone, I must be expected to depend on the kindness of my friends. We have no great lands to support us.”
    “You needn’t worry, Tertia,” Guinevere said quietly. “We will not change your status here.”
    Tertia smiled her thanks. “But that’s not the worst of it. You know that.”
    They all nodded.
    “It was like this before, you know.” The woman who spoke was the oldest of the group. She was grandmother to Bedivere and had come to Camelot when his father died. She had meant to stay only a week or two, but the place had drawn her in and now she was part of it. They looked at her expectantly.
    “I remember thirty years ago and more, when a young man swept through Britain like a torch, setting the men afire to follow after him. Only then they took their swords and spears. My man did not come back. He fell at Mons Badon. It’s been a long time since then. The soldiers who returned have grown