Vera gestured to the seating area by the fire, where Matilda sank into one of the comfy poufs. Vera fetched two glasses and the pitcher from the desk, which was always filled with fresh wine (presumably by Matilda herself). She poured Matilda’s and then filled her own cup. Matilda shook her head as she took her first sip.
Vera wasn’t sure where to begin. She had a plan for this conversation, but it felt unnatural to jump right to it. Her eyes landed on the vase of flowers on the low table. They were replaced with new ones at least once a week. When Vera left this morning, they’d been blooms of yellows and golds, and during the day, those had been swapped for large burnt orange blossoms mixed in with smaller white and cream flowers so lovely and perfect that Vera wouldn’t have been surprised if they’d been made of silk. She fingered a petal in an unnecessary confirmation that they were real.
“Thank you for these. They’re lovely,” Vera said. “I always enjoy seeing the week’s bouquet.”
“I—” Matilda became keenly interested in her glass of wine. She stared down into it, swirling her goblet as she answered. “You are very welcome, Your Majesty. But you should know—”
“I was hoping you might call me Guinevere instead of Your Majesty,” Vera said.
Matilda pursed her lips. “It would be improper for me to address you so informally.”
“What if you just called me Guinevere in private?”
Matilda sighed a slow, deliberate breath. “I’ll try, Your Majesty, but it’s a rather big adjustment.” Vera smiled at the first lapse. “Your—Guinevere,” she said it stiffly, “your sense of propriety has been … relaxed since your return. And,” she shook her head as Vera refilled both cups, “you should not be serving me.”
“I’m sure you’ve noticed many things that are different,” Vera said. She’d been thinking about this since her first night when she couldn’t ask Matilda her most pressing questions, certainly during all their work together around the castle. After tonight, it was unavoidable. Vera needed more help. More importantly, though, she needed to be less alone. Maybe there was a good reason Matilda had been left in the dark about all that happened to Guinevere, but they clearly trusted her to care for Vera and to be around her so much. She must have noticed the books while tidying up, not to mention Vera’s undergarments.
“Matilda, I need to tell you something.”
Matilda set her cup down and leaned forward. “I think I may already know.”
Vera blinked. “You do?”
“You have memory loss, don’t you? From the accident?”
“I—” Why hadn’t she thought of that? Come to it, why hadn’t Merlin or Arthur thought to feed Matilda that story? “Yes. That’s it. I do.”
“I’m not sure why anyone thought that needed to be a secret from me.” Matilda smoothed her skirt, somehow conveying her irritation with the gesture. “Arthur knows, of course?”
“Yes,” Vera said, noticing how easily Matilda called Arthur by his name.
“He hasn’t been the same since it happened.”
“Did I do something before the accident?” Vera asked. “To make him so angry with me?”
Matilda frowned as she lay a comforting hand on Vera’s arm. “No,” she said. “I was with you nearly always, and in the times when I wasn’t …” She shook her head. “I can’t imagine what you could have done.”
“Then why does he hate me?”
“He—” Matilda went silent, and Vera thought she might not answer at all. She leaned forward to straighten the flowers. “I don’t get these, you know.”
Vera laughed in stunned discomfort. She wasn’t sure what that had to do with anything. “Who else comes in here?” Her eyes shot to the wardrobe where her bag of anachronisms was now carelessly tossed. Her photograph with her parents was on the bedside table, tucked into The Hobbit as a bookmark.
Matilda looked at Vera pointedly. Why wasn’t she answering? If there was someone other than Matilda and Arthur coming in the—oh.
They were the only ones who ever came into the room.
Matilda nodded as Vera’s eyes landed on her.
“Is that … has he …” She thought back on her chamber, on how everything had remained the same except the flowers, the only physical evidence in the room that time had passed these first few weeks.
“Every time?” Vera asked, her voice breathy.
“Every time.” Matilda finished straightening the flowers with a frown. “I don’t understand his behavior since you returned, but he has never, not once, hated you.”
Vera felt an irrational certainty that, the strange kindness of bouquets aside, something had happened to make Arthur treat her so poorly. And she knew who she really needed to ask. Based wholly on her experience so far, if there was something Guinevere had done, Lancelot would know—because it would have happened with him.
It was unseasonably warm when they set out in the early morning darkness. Lancelot didn’t mention Arthur’s behavior the previous evening, but he did watch Vera more closely. Like she was a tea kettle on the edge of boiling, one that would scream out any moment. She was used to their route now, but he turned right instead of left at the fork in the road, and Vera followed without question. It would be nice to have a diversion from the conversation she knew needed to come at the end of their run.
She enjoyed the new trail and could understand why he’d held off on it until he knew she was capable. While the other wove between and around hills, keeping the loop submissively flat, this trail was narrower and took them into the woods, where it climbed and fell frequently. But it was lovelier, even in the dark. The trees they ran through were rich with their autumn leaves, and Vera could hear flowing water nearby.
Twenty minutes in, Lancelot stopped. He’d not done that during their runs before.
“What’s wrong?” Vera asked.
He turned off the trail and held aside a bendy branch, beckoning Vera to follow. “Nothing,” he said. “Wanted to show you something.”
She followed him down a well-trodden game trail, the sound of rushing water growing in her ears until the branches thinned and gave way to a grove straight out of a fairytale. A pond lay before her with water so clear that she wasn’t sure where it began until a frog jumped in, and the widening ripples traced the outline of the shore. On the opposite side was a tree so vast and ancient that the trunk was the size of a small cottage. She turned to match the sound to a stream gurgling down the rocky hillside and falling into the pond from ten feet above, a narrow curtain of a waterfall.
Vera turned back to Lancelot, her joy at this place on her lips, just in time to see him taking off his shirt.
“What are you doing?” she asked, aghast but laughing.
“Going swimming,” he said, as if it were the most obvious answer to the silliest of questions. “Can’t imagine we’ll get a day warmer than this before spring. And I have a rule that I follow fastidiously: when you come upon a beautiful body of water, always go swimming. Always.”
He took off his shoes and dropped them in a pile with his shirt, leaving him only in his trousers. He tossed the orb light underhanded in a high arc over the pond, but rather than falling after reaching its highest point, it stopped and hung there, a miniature moon that only answered to the tide of the sacred grove.
Lancelot scrambled up the rock next to him and unwrapped a rope from the tree branch above. He held tight just above a hefty knot at the end, swung from the side, and dropped, his body in a tight cannonball, right into the middle of the pond. An impressive splash exploded in all directions around him.