Ides of the May (Children of the May 2 - updates weekly)

Chapter Twenty-Three: Neave (part two)

‘I am sorry, madam, I don’t follow you. What boy?’

My heart catches in my throat. lancelot may be young in the world compared to me, but he cannot have forgotten our boy. He wept when I told him about Galahad at Camelot, he promised to marry me and be a father to the child when we found him. King Arthur had just announced his betrothal to Guinevere. Lancelot agreed to be mine.

‘Last time we spoke,’ I say quietly, ‘I asked you to find the child stolen from the village outside my mother’s lands. The baby taken as part of Arthur’s misbegotten scheme against my brother and the other May-children.’

He shrugs. ‘I have no memory of such a request, madam, though rest assured that I will take this quest if you so wish. I would have no innocent in danger.’

‘You forgot, Lancelot?’ No, I think, I am lost, lost. ‘You forgot our child? You forgot Galahad?’ Unsummoned, a tear falls from my eye. ‘You promised me you would find him.’

He comes forward; he is trying to console me. Lancelot does not understand that my pain is his pain. I look in his eyes and I see my mother within them. She has done this to him; she has taken away the adventure I set him upon.

‘Lady, I am sorry, but this is only in your mind. I have never lain with a woman. I cannot have had a child with you. It is not possible. Do not cry, please.’ There is pain in his voice, but it is pain for his lost Guinevere. He crouches before me, this second-loveliest man in the world. ‘Madam, I accept your quest. I will find this child Galahad.’

‘Mother,’ I sob. ‘I will have your life for this mother. She has made you forget, Lancelot. She has made you forget our child.’

He leaves, and I cry, and cry. Music drifts up to the room from King Pellam’s Pentecostal festivities. The song is appropriate. ‘Love, love, love is the killer,’ it begins. The song weaves together with other things I have heard here at Castle Spar-Longius. Slowly, I realise that I can take the Spear of Longius from the foundation stone of the castle. With that spear in my hand I will revenge myself upon Mother for standing between my son and me.

An alarm sounds below. This, then, is the time to do it. I race down to the very base of the castle, where Nemone is hiding. She is delighted by the silly trick she is playing on King Pellam. The Knight of the Ice will win his tourney, and then reveal herself to be none other than Lady Nemone of the Lake. She has been in a strange mood ever since that boy Balan of the Isles was murdered by the Knight Invisible.

‘Where are the true-lovers?’ I say.

‘There is no true-love in the world, not since Sir Garlon killed Balan and took him away from me,’ says my sister.

‘That is not what Merlin believes. He thinks there are another pair here, two whose blood will release the spear.’

I hear a groan from above. I run into the shadows. Here he is. A bloody, unconscious boy, wounded three times in the belly.

‘Balan?’ says Nemone when I bring the boy from the shadows.

‘His twin,’ I say. ‘Heal him.’

‘He’s awake now,’ says Nemone as the water snakes work to heal his wounds.

My sister finds something in the boy’s mind she does not like, and forces me to take over the healing. And what a stroke of luck that I do, for within his memory I find a story told to him by a minstrel, the Saunce Pité girl’s little bard. A story of the shipwreck, and my brother, and – I struggle to conceal my joy – my boy. My Galahad is alive, and I know that Bellina Saunce Pité and the minstrel Elia can take me to him.