His face shone with unbridled adoration. She understood what he meant. Vera would have called this sort of friendship magic before she even knew magic existed. But the way he’d corrected himself when he referred to Guinevere as another person needled at her mind.
“I think I’m only a container for her memories,” Vera said. “I’m not really her.”
He cocked his head and met her eyes, searching her. “Maybe not. The way you move and talk, even your expressions are the same. But Guinevere often seemed like she was walking through a dream, and you’re …” He exhaled a laugh before he finished, “Not that. I can’t imagine her stripping down to her undergarments and swinging into a pond, but there were glimpses. Like when she came up with the battle strategy. She was rather fearless. That part feels like you.”
Vera laughed. He wasn’t seeing her clearly. Perhaps it felt harsh to him to face the truth: the only part of her that was important was Guinevere’s memory. “That’s kind,” she said, “but I’m far from fearless, and I certainly shouldn’t be anywhere near commanding anyone. I still have Matilda address the kitchen staff for me”
“I’d follow you into battle,” he said. “And I mean that.”
“Thank you,” Vera said, blushing under his gaze and the compliment. “What do you have there?” She reached out to steady his busy fingers on the stone.
He grinned as he handed it to her, aware that she was asking solely to change the subject. “It’s a nice shape, isn’t it?”
Vera turned the stone in her hands and smiled. “It’s a heart.”
And so it was, a smooth black river stone in the shape of a heart that fit comfortably in her palm.
“A heart?” He leaned closer for a better look. “I’ve seen a heart. That is not what it looks like.”
Vera laughed. “Well, in my time, this is the shape that’s used to represent a heart or love. People draw them, make jewelry with them … My mum actually finds heart-shaped rocks everywhere she goes. She has a whole vase full at home.” As Allison’s face came to mind, the sting of it was instant. Vera held the stone back out to Lancelot.
“You should keep it. To remind you of her,” he said.
“I don’t want to be reminded of her,” Vera said, sharper than she meant to. If she thought of her parents, if she thought of her own life at all, she’d think of Vincent. So much for being fearless. All Vera could do to make the painful things bearable was hide from them.
“All right. I’ll keep it.” With one hand, Lancelot took the rock and put it in his pocket. With the other, he took Vera’s hand and gently squeezed it.
His gaze drifted from their entwined fingers up Vera’s blanket-wrapped body to her face, and it was as if their proximity occurred to him for the first time. He pulled his hand back.
“You know I didn’t bring you here to seduce you, right? I don’t have any interest in … I have no physical desire for you,” he said. Then, hastily, as if that might have offended her, “You’re a beautiful woman, but it’s not like that.”
“I know.” And as Vera said it out loud, the knot in her stomach undid itself because she knew it was irrevocably true. “Do you worry, though, that our friendship is suspicious to others? I mean, I questioned if we’d been together.”
He considered it only briefly. “I don’t know how it was in your time, but it’s rather scandalous for a woman to be alone with a man who’s not her husband or father. But you and I have some fortunate latitude. I’ve been named your escort. I’m trusted with you because of my station in the kingdom and my friendship with Arthur. Granted,” he surveyed the cave and the nest of blankets surrounding them and squinted guiltily, “this might be pushing the boundary.”
“Pushing the boundary or absolutely trampling it?”
“It could be worse,” Lancelot said, his lips turning up at the corners. “I usually swim naked.”
Vera made a choice. Since her efforts to get closer to Arthur had only ever backfired, she decided to stop trying, and the freedom that followed was a marked relief.
She reassured herself with Merlin’s promise that they’d begin magical intervention when he got back. And he had encouraged Vera to reacclimate. Since Arthur removed himself as a point of connection, she took that as the go-ahead to spend her idle time precisely as she pleased. She had no delusions that she could be more than the conduit for lost memories—but she could at least try to enjoy herself along the way.
Over the next two weeks, she started seeking out nooks of delight. The first was the chapel Vera had noticed in the courtyard on her first night here. The inside was beautiful. Light shone through the stained glass in corridors of color, especially lovely when it bathed the many statues in its beams.
The sculptures with their draped clothing carved onto precisely chiseled musculature reminded Vera of the Roman statues she’d seen on display in the British Museum. But one statue, the one closest to the front on the left side, was a very pregnant woman whom Vera associated with Glastonbury’s imagery for Gaia, Mother Earth. It was something about how she stood, one foot slightly in front of the other as if walking. Her shoulders were back and chest up with her stare trained straight ahead, an expression of strength and wisdom forever fixed on her face. She had one hand below and one above the globe of her pregnant belly, pointedly framing it.
Vera had never seen the mother of Jesus sculpted with this aura of power before, but she was positive that the woman frozen in marble was intended to be Mary. She loved the chapel the second she saw it, and she had plenty of time to admire it when she’d attended Sunday services with a stalwart and silent Arthur at her side.
She’d been failing to resist the urge to look back at the chapel door every time it opened.
“He isn’t coming,” Arthur’s low voice had rumbled near her ear. He faced forward, his face impassive, but he’d inclined his head ever so slightly toward Vera.
“Who isn’t?” she’d replied instinctively.
“Lancelot,” he said, correctly guessing who she was expecting. “He follows the old faith.”
“Oh.” No one seemed to mind that the kingdom’s general followed the “old faith” as Arthur had called it. In fact, Vera learned that Camelot’s population was nearly an even split between Christians and pagans—and, evidently, they weren’t yet at a point in history when that had become contentious. Vera wasn’t sure whether this peaceful, seventh-century cohabitation was recorded in the schoolbooks collecting dust on her shelf back in Glastonbury.
Matilda was perhaps the most delightful surprise. Initially, her sense of propriety had her holding Vera at arm’s length, stiffly guarded in her presence. Vera tried including her in after-dinner banter with Lancelot, but she merely gave them the smile of a mother patiently indulging her children’s uninteresting stories.
She cracked the code of Matilda quite by accident the next week, as the young stable hand she’d met her first night (who she learned was called Grady) gave his weekly update. Grady’s father, the stable master, left him in charge while he was out training their newest horses. The boy was all of fourteen and took his role very seriously. He wore his father’s too-large boots and had slathered some sort of oil through his unruly dark curls that only partially smoothed them. Grady must have been told how sweet his dimply smile was all his life, for he hardly showed it during Vera and Matilda’s visit. Like all young boys, he wanted to be seen and treated as a man. Yet he was the least intimidating of all the castle staff, so Matilda encouraged Vera to resume her duties here first.