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‘Thyme for courage. Basil for wealth. Rosemary keeps a woman young. Sage wards off evil.’
‘A precipice in front, wolves behind’. That was Britain then, though I didn’t know it at the time.
I think it's Britain now!
And if I could have passed from my world then, to escape it all, I would have. But I could not.
In the years since I had last seen her, there had not been a day when I had not thought of Guinevere. Whether I wielded a sword and shield, learning the arts of war, or swam around the Mount. Whether I was picking mussels off the rocks at low tide, climbing down the ledges in search of gulls’ eggs, honing blades, polishing the men’s war gear or eating in the communal hut. There was a moment of every day, be it as fleeting as a sparrow darting into a lord’s hall then out of the smoke hole, that I thought of Guinevere.
At those most often unexpected times, when I was not on my guard against it, she came on me like a stab wound. A wound which, though hidden from sight, never scabbed over. And even when she did not come with sudden, sharp and unbidden anguish, she was always with me; a dull ache deep in my chest. An ever-present absence.
That Samhain eve I took Bors’s advice and lost myself in my cups. And the next day, when the feasting began in earnest, I did the same, so that even if all the dead of Arawn’s realm had crossed over to skulk amongst us I would not have noticed.
How could Arthur imagine that my heart would still clench in my chest at the thought of Guinevere? That my blood would beat like a drum in my ears at the sight of her gathering herbs from Camelot’s ramparts or tying the worm’s knot to cure a restive cow, or shearing wool from a black sheep to cure a child’s earache.
