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This is how it ends—an outnumbered, outstrategized king waits for morning and waits to die. His traitor wife has held out thus far against his traitor son, and now it is his own turn to fight. He's called for help from his traitor friend, whom he has banished so far away that it will be a miracle if he comes in time.
He grunts as he pushes himself to his feet. He's old now and has a traitor body and a traitor heart. He still loves them. All of them. And yet, somehow, it's come to this.
He doesn't consider the possibility that he might win. Hope is beneath him now.
He doesn't see, alone in his tent and night-blind with age, the ships slipping silently up the river to Camlann.
A raucous cheering starts, the sound of a mob, not an army, and Arthur shakes awake from a dim nightmare and reaches for his sword. His first thought is that his own men are welcoming Mordred like a savior, and that he will soon be dead.
He cannot make out shapes through the canvas, but he hears, "No, let me," and draws himself up. He may kill Mordred and save Guenevere, if not himself.
A tall man pokes through the flap, and Arthur is halfway across the tent, sword raised, before he sees who it is.
Lancelot chuckles.
"I know you well enough, after all these years, to say with confidence that if you could have killed me, you would have done it already."
Arthur lays down his sword, wincing at the twinge in his back, and embraces his wife's lover.
At dawn, Lancelot and Arthur ride into the enemy camp. They have barely spoken to each other since the first flush of excitement wore off, and distrust and damage came between them. But this feels exactly right, riding in silence, his old friend behind him. Guarding his back.
A little bitter, that thought.
A haggard Mordred greets them. He hasn't slept. No doubt he already knows. As ever, he's smiling, but you can't trust that smile.
"Father," he says. "Have you come to ask for terms?"
"You bastard." That wasn't what Arthur had planned to say. Oh, well.
"Father of bastards," Mordred returns, still smirking. Arthur doesn't know how to read his son.
But Lancelot gets between them, as he would to defend Arthur from an arrow or a spear.
"Sir Mordred. You've gotten this far by your wits, and that's something. But there are now twice as many men arrayed against you as for you. Do you want to waste lives?"
"There'd be no bloodshed if you would mind your own business, and the old child-killer would get out of my way."
Even with his friend drawing fire, the words strike home.
"I think you've forgotten how battles work, Sir Mordred," Lancelot goes on, silk and venom. "We're giving you the chance to walk away, to go clear and free to the Orkneys, and to forget this ever happened."
"Forget?" gasps Mordred. "As if I could forget."
"Then on your head be it. You'll be responsible for the senseless death of your allies. You'll be a glorious failure—a pretty and worthless page in the chronicles."
"You still seem to think this is about ambition."
"I have a proposal," Arthur breaks in, "if it's so personal. Your brother Gawain gave me the idea. You chop off my head, if you like. But then Lancelot chops off yours."
Lancelot glares at his king.
"I'm tempted to take you up on it," says Mordred, cool as ever.
"You idiots, both of you! Sir Mordred, we'll let you keep the Orkneys, we'll make you heir, we'll—."
"What? Give me Guenevere? Make me High King? Bring back the dead babies? Travel back in time and undo my conception? There's no favor you could do me big enough to make up for leaving my father alive." His smirk has become something vicious and animal and strangest of all, victorious.
A deep calm pervades Arthur's soul. He is going to prevent the war he has long dreaded.
"Then don't leave him alive," says Lancelot.
For the first time, Mordred looks confused.
"Civil death," Lancelot clarifies. "Outlawry. He'll have no rights, not even to remain alive. Only let me take him away to France, and you can be High King of Britain."
"You have a deal."
"You ruined everything!" Lancelot yells at Arthur, once they're back in his camp. "Once you'd made your idiotic chivalrous offer, the fact that we outnumbered him and were guaranteed to win made no difference. I hope you're pleased with yourself."
Arthur is, though. He hasn't felt such peace in a long time. Maybe before Mordred was born, before the May-babies.
"Turns out I came racing here from France to save you from yourself," says Lancelot softly. "Come to the flagship. We leave when the tide goes out."
They make one brief stop on their way from Britain. In London, Guenevere continues to hold the Tower.
She comes to meet them, golden hair streaked with gray. When Arthur last saw her, it was long and loose like a maiden's. Now she's chopped it off so it fits under her helm.
Visor up, she calls to them, "Shouldn't you be in France?"
"We came to pick you up. And to let you know of the treaty, but then it seems you already do."
"I'm not coming. You're dead; I'm not your wife anymore."
Arthur feels as if someone has knocked him down.
"Oh, and Lancelot? Leave me your fleet."
Lancelot nods. Arthur wonders at the unspoken understanding between them, wonders that he did not see it sooner.
"With pleasure, my lady."
Guenevere replies with a feral grin.
"Isn't this…not in keeping with the spirit of our deal?" Arthur worries.
Lancelot sighs. "You're alive—that's all I care about. And besides, you don't get a say. It's my fleet."
Arthur is beginning to get tired of everyone discounting his opinion. He supposes this is a consequence of his death.
Arthur finds he can't keep to his cabin; he ends up in Lancelot's, more often than not. They don't talk about the past, they don't talk about Guenevere and what they're leaving her to face, they don't talk about the whole mess of hurt and betrayal.
"Will you be needing a seneschal? I've been thinking about Kay, and how much he's done to keep us all going. I think, since I am no longer king, I might like to try that."
"You don't have to be so humble, Arthur. There's plenty of work for a knight in France."
"I am sick to death of battles."
"I had noticed. Very well, you'll be my seneschal. But also my honored guest."
"Will we see Gawain when we arrive?"
"I thought you knew."
He knows, now. The sons of Lot are all dead now. But their brother lives and reigns. He should feel guilty for abandoning Britain to his misrule.
He doesn't.
Lancelot's castle is astonishing—strange that he's never seen it till now. It is not very much to look at, but Arthur looks with a commander's eye and sees how difficult it would be to take. No wonder Lancelot felt safe leaving it in another's hands for years at a time. You didn't need to be the greatest knight of the Round Table to defend it.
They will be safe here.
With most of the fighting men in Britain with Guenevere, everything is hushed. It's like entering an enchanted castle—servants move soundlessly through the otherwise empty halls, and the stables are near-empty. Lancelot doesn't really have a family. Galahad's ascended, and the rest of his relatives are dead. He never married. No wonder he spent all his time in Britain, in the company of other knights. And Arthur. And Guenevere.
Over the course of their short journey, he's regained the companionable relationship he had with Lancelot. The ability to lay all his burdens at his friend's feet, and know Lancelot would at least give him strength to pick them back up. To speak of Guenevere now is to jeopardize that. But during the voyage, he has regained his strength.
"What do you think will happen in Britain? With the queen?"
"I have faith," says Lancelot. Arthur knows he means in Guenevere.
"She has your fleet."
"Arthur," Lancelot begins, weariness clear. "Do you want to—well, I suppose you do want to talk about her."
"When did it begin?" He's never asked this. Lancelot escorted Guenevere on her wedding journey. Did she ever love him at all?
"When she was kidnapped by Meliagrance, and I went into the castle on a cart."
"How we laughed over that trick."
"It was a good one."
"But how did you come out of the trial by combat the victor? He accused Guenevere of unfaithfulness as soon as you'd rescued her."
"Apparently God likes a good technicality; he accused her of adultery with one of her wounded knights. I wasn't one of them."
They share a grin. It is easier than he thought it would be.
"I do believe," Arthur says, "that even if you hadn't saved her, she'd have made mincemeat out of Meliagrance before long."
"I don't doubt it."
"You know," Arthur says, and every word has to be forced out, even now, "Now that I'm dead, you can marry her."
"Don't do this to yourself, Arthur."
"Isn't it better for everyone? It's not as if I had no bastards, besides—she only did what I had done…"
"I can't stand this! Do you understand me? I can't stand it." Lancelot is shaking. "You're alive, you understand? That's what I came to make sure of. And there's no way I'll let you write yourself off now." He looks over his shoulder with an adulterer's practiced glance. "Come with me."
And perhaps it is because of the half-empty, half-magical atmosphere of Lancelot's castle that he follows. He isn't sure what comes next, but this life is new and strange and he, fool that he is, trusts Lancelot more than he trusts himself.
"Well?"
The first thing that slips out is, "Better than my sister Morgause."
Lancelot takes it in stride. "But not better than Guenevere, I'm sure."
"She sets a high standard." And they fall into ridiculous squire laughter, the years having fallen away sometime in the night.
"I have to go back," Lancelot says, snuffing the light mood like a candle. "We can't leave her to fight alone."
"I can't go with you, not with outlawry on my head and my sworn word against me." Maybe this is how Guenevere's always felt, watching her loves ride away to battle. Helpless. "Just convince her it's not worth it, and bring her here."
"Do you really think she should give up? And leave the Britons to that monster?"
Arthur doesn't think of him as a monster anymore. If he is one, it's not his own fault, anyway.
"Be safe. Both of you."
"I'll try."
He receives messages constantly, a few days delayed. Lancelot has arrived in London, which Guenevere still holds. Guenevere and Lancelot are planning, sallying forth, harrying Mordred's troops with lightning strikes, baiting him into a battle he can't win. Mordred is clever, but he was never the greatest knight of the round table, and besides, he reckoned entirely without the tenacity of the queen.
The people rally to them—they love a good romance, however illicit. Everyone knows Mordred would have seen the Guenevere burn, and they love her now, with her cropped hair and her helm, more than they ever did before.
They pen proclamations with their signatures on the same line—the flourishing L of Lancelot, the quasi-illegible trailing end of Guenevere. They sign dispatches to Arthur the same way. They are perfect together, and he would have taken it as a sign to let them go. Only he has learned once again to need, to want, to desire. Some part of each of them belongs to him as well.
Then the messages stop coming.
Terrible, confused rumors make their way to France—Guenevere has fallen in battle, Lancelot was shipwrecked in the channel, Mordred is putting London to the sword. They are not coming back.
He wonders who he is, without their love. He knows who he is: a dead man. If only he had given battle at Camlann, they would still be alive. He has prevented no war, saved no one. Perhaps it is justice—a pale, inadequate justice—that he is now no one himself.
When a British army disembarks in France, he thinks Mordred has lost his famous wits. When they march toward Lancelot's castle, he's certain. There's no way to lose this battle, except not to fight it.
He will fight. He has given Mordred every chance possible, and all it has done is killed his lovers.
He makes his way up to the tallest tower, arthritic knees aching, to survey the enemy. They are numerous and well-armed, but what strikes him is their flag. They carry Lancelot's flag as well as that of Camelot. And the two armored figures at the head—Mordred, the king's son, brooked no equals.
They are alive.
He races down as fast as his old joints will carry him.
"Why didn't you send a messenger? I thought you were both dead."
"We did, but his ship was lost in the channel, unfortunately," Lancelot replies.
"And you," says Arthur, turning to Guenevere, "Your poor face! No wonder they said you had fallen."
Moving her lips as little as possible to avoid yanking the stitches, she says, "I had fallen. And I got back up. I wanted to bring you Mordred's head as a trophy, but I knew you wouldn't like it."
"So it's over."
"Yes, at long last."
"Who rules?"
"My lady does," says Lancelot with mock-deference.
"The High Queen of Britain," Arthur savors the words. "And what, Your Majesty, are you doing in France?"
"I came to resurrect a dead man. Your pardon, signed." She pulls a roll of parchment from her empty quiver. "I can't kiss you with these stitches, my love. So I'll have to do it by deputy."
A giddy Lancelot says, "I volunteer."
This is how it begins—they sail back on the flagship, hardly letting each other out of their sights. They fence on deck, with the waves for a challenge—Guenevere solidly beats Arthur, but Lancelot fights her to a draw. They lie in in their stateroom, limbs as tangled as their history together. They pray for the dead, who are too many.
Guenevere has a scarred face and choppy gray hair and Lancelot has begun to wrinkle and wither into gauntness. The weight of the years has worn them into each other, so that they naturally rest in tandem.
Arthur would not give them up for anything.