Archive of Our Own ^beta

He’d expected the constant surge of the water to be greater here. The scent of it was certainly stronger; free of the castle walls and their stone-cold stench of earthen decay, the aroma of salt and spray reigned unfettered in the gusting breeze. The White Knight inhaled deeply, letting the familiar, bracing taste of it wash over and through his tired lungs. It felt like home.

‘Home’ was certainly the last thing he’d expected to find here. Every muscle in his body burned with exhaustion as he carefully picked his way over the water-smooth stones, and whenever the breeze relented a little, he could smell the copper-sharp stench of his own blood, which stained his white tunic from innumerable wounds. The three scarlet bands crossing the shield he still carried may have granted him strength, but now they looked not unlike gashes themselves in the dirty, abused field of white. The one grimly satisfying thought midst all this, of course, was that not all the blood was his.

The Copper Knight, Indeed, he thought sourly, pausing for breath a moment as he watched the light of the setting sun arc along the sanguine edges of the partially submerged tombstones. The dank, fetid water sucking moodily on the bones of those who had perished in the castle dungeons had made him think his mother’s aid had gotten overly ambitious; but he knew that she would not have sent her waters here. The cemetery itself surely predated the sullen reign of the keep’s latest lord. Brandin of the Isles had proven himself a traitor, and certainly hadn’t struck the knight as the sort of person to honor the last rites of the men who’d fallen to his sword.

“Dolorous Gard,” he muttered aloud to himself, just to feel the shape of the name against his tongue. It tasted like the souring blood already in his mouth.

To be honest, he wasn’t entirely certain why he was out here. Niniane’s handmaiden had wisely bid him rest in the name of her fretting mistress, and it had been sound counsel. He could feel the weight of her blue eyes on his back now, watching him from beside the half-rotted wooden door, but he did not turn around. “They should be told,” was the only explanation he’d given. She had not protested this. Was his mother not always extolling the virtues of the noble dead?

Honor or no, a curse escaped his pursed lips before he could stop it as his foot slipped on a slick stone. Sea water rose to meet him, flooding over the top of his boot and filling it. His skin recoiled from the cold. One hand braced against a dangerously listing headstone, the knight raised his eyes to look beyond the cemetery wall and examine the sea. Mercifully, the tide was going out. The waters would not be able to reach this benighted plot of land over the stretch of barren and drying beach. But the waters that had breached the walls remained, of course, weary from the long crawl across the sands and unable to quite escape the divots and swells of the uneven ground. Cut off from the seething foam, it now stood stagnant and listless, as still and silent as the dead it covered.

Carefully extracting his foot to higher ground, the knight’s war-calloused fingers drifted lower across the headstone bearing his weight, tracing the faint indentations of a name now lost to time. Such a simple marker to find in a castle keep; perhaps the grave belonged to a babe, or to the youngest maiden sister of a greater lord. A deedless death. The notion made him shudder. He could see the more detailed monuments off towards the far cemetery wall, and something - some form of reverence, perhaps, tempered with a baser curiosity - made him press forward through the flood.

“Take care, now, King’s Son,” the maiden at the door called out to him. It was the first time she’d spoken since he’d ventured out here, and her soft voice carried unnaturally loud in the hushed quiet left by the departing sea. The knight risked a glance over his shoulder.

“The water does not run so deep, lady,” he told her. He had meant it as a reassurance, but it coaxed a strange, sad smile onto her pale face. Or was that only a trick of the fading light?

A tree had once taken root out here in the bone yard, and its skeleton still remained, hollow limbs twisted and contorted against the greying sky. He grasped at its branches with sticky fingers, steadying himself as he found another foothold. When he released the tree again, he left behind smears of blood on its brittle bark, some of his enemies’ and some of his.

Copper-red streaks against the dolorous grey.

The water swirled and splashed around his legs like shattering glass, and by the time he’d reached the far monuments, he was soaked to the bone and shivering. The first effigy was not the likeness of a fallen lord, but rather of the angel left behind to watch over the tomb at its feet. Some strange trick of sea air and age had cast dark streaks upon the ashen stone, so that the angel seemed to weep thick, black tears from black, empty eyes. The tomb itself had been claimed by the sea. He could still touch its edges if he let his scarred hands sink below the water’s surface, but in the dying light, he could not see what it was she guarded.

The tomb beside it rested on slightly higher ground, still submerged but close enough to the surface for the knight to make out the partially eroded features of the effigy resting on the lid. He touched first the hilt of the stone sword the knight held, then let his fingers wander to the rounded cheeks of the dead man’s face. There was something almost familiar about the sunken visage, something almost dear -

He looked away before his mind could properly catch hold of the thought, and began to climb again.

The going was more difficult now. There was no way to be sure what exactly he was bracing his mud-slick boot heels against, and beneath the lengthening shadows of night, the silent pools of water became unfathomable, revealing neither their depth nor what they concealed. But there was one last tomb he was determined to reach: a sarcophagus set slightly apart from the others, plain and unadorned, with its heavy stone lid slightly ajar.

It had been there long enough for the sea salt to begin its destructive work at the tomb’s base, but the stone was overall paler and less-weathered than the rest. The fact that it sat there, open to the airs, filled the knight with both curiosity and trepidation. Surely the effort of reaching it would be great enough to deter the sacrilegious. And he had seen nothing to indicate that the curse haunting the castle walls had extended in any way to the keep’s unfortunate dead. So what, then? Had the Copper Knight preemptively carved his own final bed, awaiting the inevitable moment when someone stronger came along to replace him? The knight recalled the last glimpse he’d had of Brandin, fleeing from a broken window like the coward he was, and discarded the theory as unlikely.

Finally, the knight drew close enough to grasp the open corner of the sarcophagus with hands now numb from the cold, and he used this leverage to pull himself up out of the sucking waters until he stood in the shallow pool surrounding the base of the tomb. Drawing in a deep, fortifying breath of sea air, the knight gritted his teeth and then leaned forward to peer inside.

He wasn’t entirely sure what he’d expected. A half-rotted corpse, maybe, or dust marking the place where a half-rotted corpse had once been. Stains of iron from an ancient sword. Certainly - something. But there was nothing there.

If anyone had slept in this somber stone box, they’d left not a single impression behind.

Releasing a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding, the knight swallowed his disappointment and braced one hand against the partially open lid, preparing to turn and make his shaky descent.

But as his blood-smeared palm came into contact with the stone slab, something happened.

He’d been raised by an enchantress. Even if there was not a drop of magic blood in his veins, he’d learned over the years what to look for. Something sparked briefly in the corner of his eye, the sort of white-hot flash that always disappeared under direct scrutiny; and when he looked again at the stone, he realized that the surface of it had changed. What had been blank and entirely unadorned before now bore a rough picture: a knight charging an undersized castle, which was veritably brimming with armed guards.

“What devilry is this?” the knight breathed, and he glanced across the sunken graveyard to where he knew the maiden still awaited him. But even though he felt certain of her presence, it was growing too dark, and he could no longer make out anything aside from the ghostly sheen of her white garments. It seemed this mystery was his alone.

Determined to make sense of things before the light entirely fled the sky, the knight grabbed the lid of the sarcophagus with both hands and pulled. The newly decorated stone tottered a moment on the lip of the base before it overbalanced and fell, striking the murky water below with a resounding splash. He’d intended to get a better look at the inside, but found himself looking instead at the underbelly of the lid.

There was a name carved there.

It was too dark for him to make out clearly with his eyes, so he dropped his hand as before and pressed his scraped fingertips against the section of scarred stone.

Lancelot. Lancelot du Lac.

He traced the shape of the letters with his fingers, and then he traced the shape of the memory with his tongue, finally whispering in the dark: “Lancelot du Lac. Son of King Bran of Benyoc.”

On the surface, the words meant nothing to him. But something about them was too heavy to bear. The weight of the revelation dropped the battle weary warrior to his knees, heedless of the cold water which rushed to meet him.

“Lancelot,” he murmured again, a little stronger this time, still trying to get the sense of the word in his mouth. “Lancelot du Lac … is … me. King’s Son.” He blinked against the darkness, lanks of dull, dirty hair falling into his lowered eyes and across his perplexed scowl.

He wasn’t sure how he knew, but magic was like that; it asked no boon, and sought no permission. The revelation was his to have, whether he wanted it or not, and here it was.

A christening from the dead.

A baptism in the saltwater of the sea.

“Dolorous Gard.”

Arthur spoke the name the same way Lancelot had, as though trying to adjust to the heft of a foreign phrase on his tongue. The king stood in the great hall of the castle, hands braced on his hips as his pale blue eyes surveyed the high ceiling and shadowed corners. ‘Great’ was something of a misnomer now, actually. Whether because of the curse or because of some strange madness exclusive to himself, Sir Brandin of the Isles had let the majority of the keep run to rot. Faded paint, cold, bare walls, overturned chairs, inches of dust on the unkept hearth; there were no end to the signs that the hall had been in disuse for some time.

The young king seemed to be having similar thoughts. “Did he supply for them at all, then, or simply leave them to forage for themselves among the hapless people in the town?” His expression was simply curious, but there was distaste in his tone.

Lancelot looked down at his still-healing hands, flexing stiff muscles in the pale, dusty sunshine drifting down through the high windows. “I know not, my lord. Though … I am not certain that those men were entirely … human.”

In truth, Lancelot had been reluctant to allow his lord admittance to his new acquisition. The long-neglected castle was hardly the sort of place to host a king and his retinue, of course, but that had only been a part of it. The strange, timely revelation of his name had presented Lancelot with some unexpectedly difficult choices. His knighthood was still in its youth; his allegiance to Arthur still just words that had not yet had time to grow flesh. As the son of a king himself, he was now wary about to whom he bent his knee. But he was glad now that he’d finally relented to Arthur’s persistence. The level gaze which shifted to focus on him was neither derisive nor disbelieving.

“Cursed castles,” the king sighed, as though bemoaning something as common as a rodent infestation. It made Lancelot smile in spite of himself. Arthur had been equally accepting of the mystery surrounding Lancelot’s naming, asking to see the mysterious tomb in a tone that was curious but not disbelieving. King or no, he’d sloshed through the waters beside his knight, cursing the cold with the eloquence of a sailor but not hesitating in the journey. He, too, had passed his hands over the stone, but nothing had happened.

He had not questioned this. He also had not voiced any concerns regarding the newly-minted prince’s loyalties, in spite of all the hesitance shown him at the gate.
It was hard not to feel a little grateful towards him for that.

“Well, Sir Lancelot, it seems you have secured yourself lordship of the infamous Dolorous Gard,” Arthur mused matter-of-factly, wandering a few feet away to examine the carvings on the back of a half-broken chair. “What, may I ask, do you intend to do with her?”

The quiet echo of soft footsteps drew both men’s attention, then, and they turned as one to the room’s far entrance, where the queen was picking her way towards them. She held her skirts in either hand to keep the hems from snagging on the room’s dusty detritus, but any disgust which Lancelot might have expected to find in her expression was absent, replaced instead by a look of wry amusement. “I might have a few suggestions as to that,” she announced as she drew near, accepting the arm Arthur held out for her but reserving her smile for Lancelot. It was strange, the things that smile did to him. It made him feel as helpless as the scraggly, nameless fosterling who had once hunted crabs on the shores of Avalon; it made him want to ride out in a blaze of glory and slay a dragon in her honor.

“Oh?” Arthur asked, lifting her small hand to his lips in a gesture of automatic courtesy and affection. Arthur had been a fosterling himself, Lancelot recalled. His unadorned straightforwardness - tempered now and then with flashes of humor - had to be a product of that.

“Certainly,” Guenevere answered, now turning that smile on her husband. “And they all begin and end with a broom.”

“That may have to wait,” Lancelot ventured, a touch apologetic. “Sir Gawain -”

“We’ll go get my nephew tonight,” Arthur assured him, absolutely no trace of doubt in his tone. Gawain might have been off on a cordial visit to a friend, for all the concern Arthur displayed. Now that the curse on Dolorous Gard had been lifted, the king did not seem to consider the Copper Knight to be much of a threat.

Some of his thoughts must have betrayed themselves on his face, for Arthur glanced at Lancelot before adding, “My White Knight has conquered the Copper Knight once already; doubtless he will do so again.”

My white knight. Something about that was oddly pleasing.

“You’ve a whole army at your command, my lord - must you send Sir Lancelot?” Guinevere protested, but she did so lightly. Her confidence in him seemed absolute, too.
“Certainly, lady.” Arthur shot Lancelot another glance, and this time his expression was wry. “After all, it is his fault that Sir Gawain and his companions are in prison. Perhaps the exertion will teach Sir Lancelot not to turn his friends away from his gates in the future.”

Lancelot bowed his head slightly at the rebuke, even though there was no thread of anger in Arthur’s tone. On the contrary, the king still seemed to find the entire situation somewhat amusing.

Friends. Is that what they were? Maybe not; but it wasn’t hard to imagine that that’s what they were on their way to becoming.

The waters had receded from the castle proper, the Lady of the Lake’s fury abated at the victory of her adopted son. The cemetery, though, was another matter. The conundrum of the sacred territory lost to nature drew Lancelot to its threshold time and time again, and when he did so this afternoon, he found that Arthur was already there. The king had found a dry patch of wall to perch upon, arms linked loosely around drawn up knees as he surveyed the waterlogged grounds. He looked so young and un-king-like, which prompted Lancelot to forgo his first instinct and wade towards him.

The tide was in this time. What wet ground had been visible before was now entirely submerged once again. The water pulled and eddied around his legs, thigh-deep in places, as he crossed the space to Arthur and his seaside wall. The king turned his head to watch him approach without comment. The expression on the monarch’s face was absent and, Lancelot thought, vaguely troubled.

“I had to let him go, my lord,” the knight offered, guessing at the reason behind the look. “It was the condition upon which he agreed to release Sir Gawain and the others. But I do not believe you have need to fear future retribution from him. He is powerless now.”

Arthur waved a hand to indicate that the matter did not concern him, looking off across the bone yard again as Lancelot took a seat on the wall beside him. The water gave him up only reluctantly, rivulets cascading noisily off of his sodden boots as he pulled them up onto the wall in the same manner as his lord. “Look at those birds - there, over by the tomb,” the king offered instead.

Lancelot turned to look where he was bid. Two large crows, their wings a glossy blue-black in the late afternoon sunlight, had indeed settled on the enchanted stone. It was strange, he thought, to see crows so close to the shore.

“They appear to be watching you, my lord,” the knight mused, half-joking.

“Not me.”

Lancelot wasn’t sure what to say to that, so he said nothing.

Arthur was silent for a long moment, too, obviously lost in thought. Finally, he shifted a little on the sun-warmed stone and said, “I have made many bargains with the sea over time, but she is a fickle mistress. Always, she seems to have her fingers deep in the heart of those things which I cannot fathom, but which seem to matter most. And always, I feel at the mercy of her whimsy.”

“My lord?” Lancelot studied Arthur’s expression, his own handsome features puzzled. When Arthur said nothing, he tried: “I am sure she would serve you, were she able, as all things under God.”

Arthur gave him a strange look, but said nothing for some time. Then: “The Mistresses of Avalon do nothing lightly. I cannot help but wonder, Sir Lancelot; what is it that you hear in the pounding of the sea?”

It seemed to be a serious question. Lancelot thought about it a moment, then he closed his eyes and listened, once again breathing deeply of the salty air. He could feel Arthur watching him intently.

Finally, he opened his eyes once more and offered his lord a small smile. “Home,” he confessed simply. “And you, my lord? What do you hear?”

Arthur’s gaze flickered back out over the drowned graveyard, skipping between the half-submerged stones like a pebble flicked carelessly across the surface of a lake.

He smiled, a touch melancholy, but said nothing at all.