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Guinevere almost answered yes, but she froze. She was glad she had already extinguished the candle so Lancelot could not see the horror on her face. How did Lancelot know that the Lady of the Lake had made Camelot? No one here knew where it had come from. But Guinevere’s silence gave her away. She heard Lancelot cross the room. In the darkness she could see only the silhouette of her knight, standing next to her bed.
“There is something I should tell you. Something I should have told you a long time ago.” Lancelot sat on the side of the bed. “I know the Lady of the Lake. Or at least, I knew her.”
“How?” Guinevere whispered.
Lancelot and the Lady
Excalibur was returned to the Lady of the Lake without ceremony, thrown over the side of a boat as its occupants fled the king who would kill young Arthur before he could fight back. It was not his time yet. She would wait, as she had waited.
But he was not the only child she had chosen, or the only one she cared for.
Lancelot stood on the shores of the lake, threadbare tunic not covering knobby elbows. Knees scraped beneath too-thin leggings. Boots stuffed with grass so she could fill her father’s steps. She was tall for her age, underfed but with a frame that could be strong, given time and food and training that she would never have.
She was alone, and she was about to die.
Behind her she could hear the band of men, soldiers under Uther Pendragon’s banner but criminals and rapists with or without those colors. They had chased her here, her knife sticky with the blood of the man she had stuck it into while her mother’s body was still warm in the shack they had shared.
She knew she needed to care for her weapon. To keep it clean. Her father had taught her that, at least. She bent down and carefully washed the blade in the lake as the men approached. Maybe she could get one more of them. It was all she had left. She wished Uther Pendragon were there, that he were the one who would feel the knife as it cut away his life. But she never got anything she wished for.
Her hands under the water looked distorted. Smaller than they were. Delicate, like her mother’s. A shout from behind her was more animal than man, a sound of rage and violence and hatred of their own weakness, turned to hatred of anything weaker than them. Lancelot closed her eyes and gripped the knife. And then two hands, translucent, circled her wrists and pulled her under.
When she awoke, she was in a cave. There was a shining expanse of lake between her and the shore, and her attackers were nowhere to be seen. Water dripped along the back of the cave, sounding like laughter as it fell.
A wave rolled her knife onto the floor of the cave, along with three bruised apples and one flopping, gasping fish.
The Lady of the Lake had saved Lancelot. Over the next few years, Lancelot retreated to the cave whenever she needed a safe space. She grew strong, fed and protected by the Lady. She trained and worked with single-minded purpose. The Lady had saved her and Lancelot knew what it meant: She was chosen. Chosen to kill the king. To get her vengeance.
Lancelot got her first sword, old and rusted as though it had been dredged from the very bottom of the lake. No Excalibur for her, shining and perfect, but a flawed, heavy sword that would force her to compensate. To get stronger. Piece by piece, armor was delivered to her from the water, plucked from bloated and rotting bodies left behind in attacks or retreats. And always she had the gentle lullaby of waves lapping the edge of the cave, the extra push of the water as she swam, buoying her and speeding her to and from her excursions into the mad violence of the world beyond the lake.
When Lancelot was not out training or working, she returned to the cave. But it tormented her, knowing who lived above. When she was sixteen, she tried to climb the cliff to Camelot for the first time.
She fell a third of the way to the top.
The water rushed up to meet her, breaking her fall and depositing her with a thump back in the cave. She tried again, and again, and again, until she no longer needed to be caught. She could climb that cliff in her sleep. The cliff to Camelot. The cliff to Uther Pendragon.
She was ready. She had a better sword now, hard-won in a fight. It seemed most days like everything about her, from her muscles to her voice to her soul, had been hard-won in fights. Strapping on the armor cobbled together from less fortunate fighters, Lancelot tipped her head to the lake and whispered her gratitude. The Lady had given her everything she needed. She was ready.
It was midnight with no moon, but Lancelot had climbed the cliff so often she did not need to see. She pulled herself over the top and prowled through the alleys, toward the castle. Toward the king she would kill. She turned onto the main street and was surprised to hear a splash. She looked down. The street was flooded.
Not flooded. Flooding. And the water was rising. Lancelot ran to get ahead of it, but it followed her, swelling into a river and sweeping her off her feet. It carried her from the castle, down a street, twisting and turning until she slammed against a rock. Her breath was knocked from her and she feared she would drown, but the river stopped as suddenly as it had started. Lancelot stood, in pain and furious, using the rock as support.
She felt the words beneath her fingers. This was no simple rock. It was the stone that had held Excalibur until someone had claimed it. A boy. A stupid child, gone now.
Lancelot pushed her hair from her eyes, which were blurry with tears of pain and rage. She turned back toward the castle, but her way was blocked by the river, now in the form of a woman rippling in front of her.
Lancelot, the Lady said.
Lancelot stumbled backward against the stone in shock. She had been alone for so long. Sometimes she wondered if she was mad, if she was imagining the Lady so she would not have to be lonely. So she could pretend someone out there cared whether she lived or died. Whether she killed Uther Pendragon.
It is not you, the Lady said, her voice so familiar. Cold and clear and sad and joyful all at once. It is not you, she repeated, and Lancelot hung her head in shame and despair. All her work, all her training, had been for this. But the Lady had chosen someone else.
I will leave soon, the Lady said, unaware or uncaring that Lancelot’s entire life had led her to this point and was now over. Worthless. Why had the Lady saved her, if Lancelot was not chosen for this?
You will return my kindness. It was not a question. It was a command. You will know when. The water surged forward, warm and overwhelming, surrounding Lancelot before splashing to the ground and running downhill, no longer the Lady, eager to become the lake once more.
That night, as Lancelot carefully climbed back down to her cave, she knew with a certainty that nothing would catch her if she fell. She was alone, again. And she would be alone until she found her calling, her quest from the Lady of the Lake. Because she had not been chosen to defeat this evil, but surely, surely out there was some other reason she had been saved.
“When Arthur defeated Uther Pendragon and I found out the Lady of the Lake had given Excalibur to him, I decided he must be what she had been talking about. So I set out to become a knight. And then I met you, and…and she was right. I knew.”
