Chapter Text
Two months.
“I don’t want to talk to you,” said Guinevere. Her black hair, usually dripping over her shoulders in tight braids, was carefully concealed by her wimple. Her dress was modest and severe.
Lancelot felt his mouth twitch involuntarily. After everything, this rejection was entirely expected and, despite that, more hurtful than any thus far. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come.”
“But you came anyway. Go away, Lancelot.” She gave him an acidic glance. “You never bring anything but ill in the end. Go darken someone else’s doorstep, won’t you? Mine has been haunted long enough.”
So he nodded, and he left.
Two years.
The abbey stretched up into the grey sky, wood and bits of old Roman stone stuck together over the years until they formed a network of wings with a labyrinthine layout. Lancelot had avoided it like the plague. The half-finished roads of the faded Empire offered endless distractions for the whimsical wanderer: dead-ends, hidden woods, and bandits galore. He had tried his hardest not to think. He had, in true Lancelot fashion, failed.
But the abbey at the end of the cobbled lane awoke in him a sense of foreboding that he had not felt in quite some time. Girding his nerves, he took a deep breath, gripped his walking stick tighter, and marched up to the front gate. When he rang the bell silence greeted him, followed by a concerning number of minutes before someone finally opened the door. She was short, with a warm face and the traces of smile-lines around her mouth. “Hello?” she said, peering out. “Are you the Bishop’s man?”
“Ah, no.” Lancelot tried for a smile. It felt stiff, but it was probably about the right expression. “I’m here to talk with the-- with the Prioress.”
Her hand flew to her mouth in pardon. “Oh! She’s occupied today. We are hosting a travelling monk, you see.”
“I can wait.”
“If you don’t mind. There are spare rooms in the East wing. That’s where we put up all sorts of dignitaries. You may come in, if you like.”
She propped the door open for him and he ducked his head to enter. It was a modern door, built into the thick wood of the gate itself, and when he emerged on the other side he blinked against the sudden darkness. As his eyes adjusted, he made out the vaulting hall in which he now stood. Pillars propped up the walls and, high above him, a skylight lurked in the ceiling. It was the only light.
“I’m Sister Léline,” said his greeter, closing the door. She regarded him curiously. “You were a knight.”
“I still am,” he said absentmindedly, “technically.” The lack of a hilt to clutch thrummed at his fingers, and he splayed them in the air. He felt Sister Léline’s eyes on him. It had been too long since he talked to another person. “You could call me Malfaisant.” One eyebrow raised incredulously. “Is that your name?”
“No,” Lancelot admitted, “but a hermit yelled it at me last week and I thought I’d try it out.”
“Huh.” She gave a noncommittal humming noise and stepped further inside the hall. “Well, it is an honour to have you here, Sir Malfaisant. It’s not often we get visitors.” “You were expecting someone.” His footsteps echoed on the floor and sound cascaded around the pillars, too loud. “The Bishop’s man?”
Léline nodded and hurried forward to catch up with him. “We expect him tomorrow. I thought he might be early.”
“What is he coming for?”
For a second she looked as though she would respond, but then her eyes narrowed and she gave him a closer examination than she had at the door. “What are you here for?”
Lancelot wished desperately that he had someone at his side who was good at talking, because he found himself a pauper in words, and lies most of all. He settled on repetition. “I’m here to talk to the Prioress.”
“You said that before.” “It’s all I know.” He patted his pocket and produced the rumpled letter he had received several days ago. “A hermit gave me this. It’s from her. Said to hurry as quickly as I could, she needs to see me.”
Léline let out a light laugh. “You meet a lot of hermits.”
“They keep an eye on me.”
The campanile rang suddenly and Lancelot flinched, unaccustomed to such loud noises. Darting one hand out, Léline gave him a sympathetic pat on the shoulder. “You get used to it,” she said. “Eventually. Come, I’ll get you something to drink. Just because we live modestly does not mean we expect our guests to starve.”
He followed her through the long hall in silence, listening to the ringing echoes of the campanile and the hollow places where birdsong should have been and wasn’t. It occurred to him as he walked that she had not answered his question. They were expecting an important visit, and the confluence of his summonings and this event could hardly be a coincidence. Well, they could have been a coincidence, but coincidences didn’t happen to Lancelot. Everything that happened to Lancelot was supposed to happen, although what mysterious force directed the charade of his life was unclear to him. It was possibly God-- someone had thrown a fireball at him in the Wastelands, at any rate. He tried not to trouble himself about this. The fireball incident had been an outlier. Whatever unseen hand directed affairs so precisely had decided he should live; or, if today was the day that he should die, there was hardly anything he could do about it. Anyway, this event seemed too unusual for him to die. It would be anticlimactic.
Finally they reached the end of the hall and Sister Léline led him through a covered arch into the inner courtyard. It was beautiful. Far more luxurious than he would have expected from an abbey, it boasted trestles and beds of multicoloured flowers, desaturated in the pale fog of the day but chillingly striking nonetheless. Lilacs arced up above him, mixing with the faint scent of wisteria. He breathed in deeply.
“The Prioress organized all this,” said Léline, with a knowing look. “She said we all needed something to put our hands to. It’s pretty, isn’t it?”
“Yes.” He paused to examine a trailing arm of garden-roses, perfect and miniature. They emitted a pleasant smell, but it was a shadow of the fragrant wild roses that used to grow in Guinevere’s garden in Camelot. Perhaps there wasn’t enough sun here.
Léline waited patiently for him with a faint expression of pride in the work to which she had contributed. When he stirred himself from the roses she turned back towards the path she was walking along, and said, “I don’t know how long you will have to wait. We cannot eat with you, but we can either serve you privately or you may eat with the serving-people. They are very friendly. But your honour is your own business.”
His honour, what was left of it, seemed to be everyone’s business all the time. A private meal would have been preferable, but he did not want to seem aloof, especially if this stay proved longer than a day or two. And besides, at the very least he had some fantastical stories he could recount in fits and starts. Talking was hard, but he was hardly stupid. People needed hope. No miraculous tales left the makeshift court of King Constantine, and most of the protagonists were dead anyway. He could do his part to make sure they weren’t forgotten. “I’m fine in the serving hall. I can help with the affairs of the abbey while I’m waiting for the Prioress.”
“You may be waiting a while, she’s very busy,” said Léline, leading him through a narrow arch on the other side of the courtyard. This part of the abbey was darker, less vaunting, more like the back alleys in Camelot than the grand main hall. Just as before, it was abandoned save for him and his erstwhile guide. “The man she’s talking with-- Garoc is his name. He’s a wanderer, but quite an esteemed political thinker. It’s an honour for him to stay with us. He’s travelling to the court of King Constantine, you know.”
“I didn’t,” said Lancelot. He had an overwhelming sense of having been pushed into a moat and finding that he had forgotten how to swim. Politics had not always been this exhaustingly incomprehensible, had they? He had aptly navigated the edged lanes of Camelot’s inner circles. He had understood things, or at least he thought he did. Certainly he must have done something right, to wind up with the friends he had. But the language of power evaded him now. Garoc was talking with the Prioress. Garoc was going to King Constantine. These pieces of information were meaningful. What they meant, however, was absolutely beyond him, and he found he did not care very much. Politics could stay away from him. If they didn’t, he had a hefty stick and an immaculate knowledge of how to hide bodies. “Where is everyone?”
Léline made a turn down a small flight of steps and he followed. “Attending to the back gardens, mainly.” Noticing his amused silence, she gave a laugh. “We garden a lot. There’s not much else to do. Ah-- here we are. There may be more company here. Are you an honest type of man, Sir Malfaisant?”
Lancelot frowned. This seemed like a difficult question to answer honestly. Then the humour of that sentiment caught up with him, and he opted for a simple answer. “I’m not a liar, but I can keep my mouth shut if it’s nuns in the kitchen you’re talking about.”
“Nuns in the kitchen are common,” said Léline, grinning. She swung the door open, and suddenly a warm murmur trickled out in the hallway. Amusingly, it sounded more like an inn common room than anything else. That got him remembering the last inn he had visited. Several weeks ago, perhaps. He had sat by the wall and listened to the burble of conversation, completely unnoticed. The bartender hadn’t paid him a second glance, and the only disturbance of the night was when someone offered to buy his sword. That had been uncomfortable, because Lancelot had said “what sword?” and then had to pretend he was joking when the man pointed at the sheathed blade sitting on the seat next to him. It was events like these which made inn visits a rare treat.
He shook his mind clear of uncomfortable memories and followed Léline through the doorway. Inside, a thin room packed with tables and cupboards extended down a ways. Kitchen staff alternately bustled around the food-stacked counters or sat on the tables, talking with one another. Two nuns, the skirts of their habits rucked up around their knees, lounged on one end, chatting with a young boy in a page’s cap.
Léline cleared her throat. “We have a visitor.”
The room stilled. One of the nuns, a brief look of panic crossing her face, frantically pulled her skirts down and crossed her ankles. Her friend scooted behind the page-boy as though she assumed Lancelot lacked comprehension of object permanence. Lancelot, for his part, gave a small wave and a grimace.
“He’s fine,” said Léline dryly.
The assembled watchers relaxed slightly. Across the room, the staff went back to their mingling and vague food preparation. The page-boy stepped to the side, thus betraying the nun who had hidden behind him. Léline pointed at her. “Thaïs,” she said. Then the other nun. “Aicha.”
Thaïs and Aicha gave him guarded nods.
“I’m--” Lancelot stopped. “Hi.”
“Hi,” said Aicha.
“Please don’t report us,” said Thaïs piteously. “We won’t do it again.”
Léline raised an eyebrow at him. “They will.”
“We will,” agreed Aicha. “But still please don’t report us.”
“I don’t know anyone to report you to,” said Lancelot, taking a few cautious steps into the kitchen and backing up against the wall opposite them. “Well, except the Prioress, but--”
“Oh, no,” cut in Aicha, her face deadpan, “please don’t report us to the Prioress for stealing food and shirking our duties, that would be terrible. She would never forgive us.”
Thaïs nudged her.
“I’m not going to say anything,” squeaked Lancelot. He had the head-under-water feeling again. Aicha and Thaïs appeared to be about twenty years younger than him and probably did not know how to use a sword or cut someone’s throat or do any of the definitely scary things Lancelot was experienced at doing, but nonetheless in the space of about a minute they had managed to substantially intimidate him.
“He’s here to talk to the Prioress,” said Léline, his saving angel. She appeared to have realised that words were not his forte and taken pity on him. “I told him he could wait here until she was free.”
Raising her eyebrows, Aicha said, “That will be sometime next week. The holy Garoc is very injured in the lungs. He makes noises every time he breathes, and passes them off as words.”
Oh, thought Lancelot, a tiny Guinevere. This would be amusing if nothing else. And if he didn’t start crying unexpectedly, which tended to happen quite a bit. But the two of them did not give him time to slip down the dangerous road of memories, too intent were they on performing their own two-person comedic pantomime.
“In the guise of God, it is important that we tread the footsteps of the sacred.” Thaïs spread her hands and put on a garbled impression of an old man. “God loves us because we love God. We love God because God loves us. This is sacred. This is holy. Is there more wine?”
And there’s the other half of the set, thought Lancelot, with a pang of sadness.
“I need to get back to the main hall,” said Léline, in a strangled tone of voice. Judging from the look on her face, Lancelot was not the only person who held Aicha and Thaïs in terrified awe. “In case other people show up unexpectedly. Goodbye. Be nice to him.”
She left.
“You’ve got a nice face,” said Thaïs after a moment’s silent staring. “I like your hair.”
“I like his hair too,” said Aicha, nodding.
Lancelot made some kind of a noise which was possibly a thank you and more probably a choked scream, but to his relief he stayed upright and did not start crying on the spot. He tried for reciprocity. “I like your hair too.”
“Oh, Aicha,” said Thaïs, turning her head slowly to her companion, her eyes wide, “no one has told him about wimples.”
Aicha pointed at the page boy, who was watching the proceedings with rapt enthusiasm. “Cover your ears, Lucien.”
Without waiting for him to oblige, Thaïs leaned forward towards Lancelot, who wished desperately there wasn’t a wall behind him. “When a woman loves God very much--” she began, leering, but at that instant the door next to him swung open once more.
Relief running through his veins, Lancelot turned to behold his saviour. At that instant no God could question his faith in divine deliverance.
“The Prioress is finished with her business,” said the sister in the door, scanning the room briefly. “She heard there was a man here to-- oh!”
“Ah,” said Lancelot, “hello.”
Cerise de Gorre took the Lord’s name in vain.
“You sin,” said Thaïs reprovingly, at the same time as Aicha, a look of quick calculation on her face, said, “Do you know him?”
“I…” Cerise said faintly.
“Do you love him?” said Thaïs gleefully, jumping up from her table.
“What? No!”
“No,” Lancelot said, shaking his head firmly.
Cerise’s face, weathered and sun-kissed under her wimple, broke into a wide smile. “Come here,” she said, holding out her arms. “I can’t believe it. I-- I thought you were dead, to be honest.”
He let himself be pulled into a firm hug, breathing into the unusual sensation of someone else’s hands, comforting and strong, on his back, and studiously ignoring the jeering noises of the two junior nuns. “I didn’t know you were here,” he whispered to Cerise. “I thought you’d be back in Gorre.”
“My father died some time before-- before everything. So I left with the queen. A lot of us did. This abbey is half Camelot’s lost daughters.”
“Is he a knight?” Aicha exclaimed, overhearing this.
The murmurs of the kitchen quieted. A dozen eyes turned towards Lancelot.
“Oh, dear,” he mumbled.
“Girls,” said Sister Cerise, straightening her shoulders and assuming a position of delicious authority, “this is Sir Lancelot du Lac.”
“You weren’t-- you weren’t supposed to tell them that,” said Lancelot sadly into the silence.
Aicha gaped at him. “Lancelot du Lac? Sir Lancelot du Lac? The one who killed Sir Gawain?”
“Yes,” said Lancelot, “that one.”
The page, ostensibly named Lucien, raised one hand politely. “Can you really breathe underwater?”
“Did you really give up your kingdom to your cousin?” called someone from the back of the room.
“Is it true that you were raised by the Lady of the Lake?”
“Did you cross the Sword Bridge without magic?”
“Did you--”
More questions ensued, but Lancelot was not particularly of a mind to hear them. He gave an apologetic and hopefully amiable smile before jetting past Cerise and out the door that was still open behind her. Once outside, he braced a hand against the wall and took three deep breaths. The door clicked close and Cerise’s footsteps padded gently towards him. “I suppose it’s always like this,” she mused, running a hand along his shoulder. “I should have guessed. I’m sorry.”
“I had told the nun at the door to call me Malfaisant,” he said plaintively.
“That’s a bit on the nose.”
“A hermit yelled it at me last week.”
“He was right, to be fair.”
Lancelot shrugged her hand off. “I know. That’s why I decided to give it a turn.”
“I’m so sorry, Lancelot,” she said, pity twisting her face. “But I’m glad you’re here. I should take you to the Prioress.”
He nodded, not trusting himself to speak. It would not do to make it this far in proud austerity and then burst into tears at this juncture. So instead of talking, of asking how the last two years had treated her, he simply followed Cerise out of the back hallway and up a wide flight of stairs in the living quarters of the abbey. The twists and turns of the building eluded him. But finally they emerged on a high landing and paused outside a door. Cerise glanced at him nervously, then knocked. “Sir Lancelot is here, Prioress.”
A vague mutter of greeting came from within. Cerise turned the knob and held the door open for him. “Good luck,” she whispered. Then she closed it quietly behind him.
The Prioress, her wimple crisp and perfect, her dress darker than the regulation, rose to greet him. “Thank you for coming,” she said. Her face was open but blank. “I didn’t think you would.”
He accepted the hand she offered in silence and gave it a light kiss. Her skin was painfully cold against his lips.
“Yes, that’s all very well,” she said, turning away from him once that perfunctory courtesy was done. “I cleared out Garoc as soon as I heard you had arrived.”
He hummed. At least here was one person with whom he did not have to say pointless words.
Then she turned back towards him suddenly, her movements sharp and anxious. For the first time his eyes caught hers, as green as ever, widened in some unusual emotion. She let out a short breath from unpainted lips. “I need you here,” said Guinevere, “because yesterday someone in this abbey was killed. And I want you to find out who did it.”