Good Friday
Mar. 20th, 2008 05:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dolevalanTitle: Good Friday
Fandom/original: Arthuriana
Characters: Laurel, briefly Mordred
Rating: PG
A/N: I've been working on this for too long, and I need to post it so I won't fiddle it to death.
It is funny, how time stretches on. I heard things so piecemeal there, it seemed something of interest only happened every half decade or so. Gaheris and Lynet returned from exhile, perhaps. There were rumors that Galahad and Percivale found the Grail. Rumors that the king was sick; that he was heartsick. So many whispers, so many “My lady, I don’t know, but I have heard…”s.
This was a fact.
The summons was a solid piece of paper, in my hand. A fact. I knew how to read it myself, traced the meanings out of Mordred’s own slanting hand. He’d known, I think, that no one else would have thought to write me. And he knew not to try to explain, not that way.
The ride to Camelot was a fact. The quiet, rain-soaked days of travel. The coach was broken, and he’d never sent to get it fixed, so I rode, soaked to the skin by the soft mist that settled on everything. The silence didn’t bother me. It was no more silent here than it had been at home, and I knew I was riding to no good end.
Everyone was polite; everyone was kind. Beyond that, there was not a thing to be said, so no one spoke. It was just as well.
I was not ready for how Camelot had changed. Not just the new buildings, the new faces. There were few I recognized, but it had been years, since my husband bothered bringing me to court. The few men I knew who weren’t family were dead or had retired to their own lands, leaving the questing to younger men. If I’d had sons, they’d be squires by now. That I expected.
But the air had changed. There was something thick and rotting. Not like Gawain’s castle had been, back when it was still his mother’s. Not that sickly sweet rot of overripe fruit. No, it was as if the city was ill. Plague-ridden, though all the faces I saw were flushed enough. All tilted at me, their lips pressed tight.
I had known, marrying him, I would have stares.
No one met me. Gawain was busy, and I’m sure the youngers were tagging along, grown men as they were. Lynet wasn’t there; she and her daughter were away, I’ve forgotten where. Ragnelle was long gone. And I could not have faced Lyonors, that day.
Mordred’s face, when I finally saw it. That was a fact. He looked away from me, as he’d never done before. Of all of them, he had never. That was when I knew for sure, what he’d not had the heart to say.
A young man I’d never met before showed me to the room where they were keeping him. No one quite knew if he was a disgrace or not, so the room was sparse, ill-lit, but clean. A compromise. It was appropriate.
He did not look like he was sleeping. The heavenly father knows he did not. I had seen Lancelot joust, when I was first married, and I had seen men enough killed, in the loud intrusions into my quiet days.
No one ever told me the full story. I pieced most of it together, the way I pieced together almost all of the life he led away from me. Of course he would have thought the best way was to charge in, to drag it out to the light. He never understood quiet, my husband, or subtlety, or secrets. He never understood guilt, truth be told, though I don’t think any of Lot’s sons could lack understanding about betrayal.
I touched the gashes, that someone had half-cleaned before realizing there was no point. It hadn’t been quick, either, his death. Probably the cut in the stomach, that did for him, but hard to say.
I touched his eyes, closed now. His lips, cold and dry. His hands. The calluses had changed very little, since I’d known them.
He was a fool, brutish, underhanded, mean. He was most of the things people said about him, and my arguing will not change that. But Sir Agravaine was my husband, even if no one remembers it but me. And it does not matter, in the end. I remember. I will always.
And at least one person shed tears for him and him alone, as the world around us began to die.
Fandom/original: Arthuriana
Characters: Laurel, briefly Mordred
Rating: PG
A/N: I've been working on this for too long, and I need to post it so I won't fiddle it to death.
It is funny, how time stretches on. I heard things so piecemeal there, it seemed something of interest only happened every half decade or so. Gaheris and Lynet returned from exhile, perhaps. There were rumors that Galahad and Percivale found the Grail. Rumors that the king was sick; that he was heartsick. So many whispers, so many “My lady, I don’t know, but I have heard…”s.
This was a fact.
The summons was a solid piece of paper, in my hand. A fact. I knew how to read it myself, traced the meanings out of Mordred’s own slanting hand. He’d known, I think, that no one else would have thought to write me. And he knew not to try to explain, not that way.
The ride to Camelot was a fact. The quiet, rain-soaked days of travel. The coach was broken, and he’d never sent to get it fixed, so I rode, soaked to the skin by the soft mist that settled on everything. The silence didn’t bother me. It was no more silent here than it had been at home, and I knew I was riding to no good end.
Everyone was polite; everyone was kind. Beyond that, there was not a thing to be said, so no one spoke. It was just as well.
I was not ready for how Camelot had changed. Not just the new buildings, the new faces. There were few I recognized, but it had been years, since my husband bothered bringing me to court. The few men I knew who weren’t family were dead or had retired to their own lands, leaving the questing to younger men. If I’d had sons, they’d be squires by now. That I expected.
But the air had changed. There was something thick and rotting. Not like Gawain’s castle had been, back when it was still his mother’s. Not that sickly sweet rot of overripe fruit. No, it was as if the city was ill. Plague-ridden, though all the faces I saw were flushed enough. All tilted at me, their lips pressed tight.
I had known, marrying him, I would have stares.
No one met me. Gawain was busy, and I’m sure the youngers were tagging along, grown men as they were. Lynet wasn’t there; she and her daughter were away, I’ve forgotten where. Ragnelle was long gone. And I could not have faced Lyonors, that day.
Mordred’s face, when I finally saw it. That was a fact. He looked away from me, as he’d never done before. Of all of them, he had never. That was when I knew for sure, what he’d not had the heart to say.
A young man I’d never met before showed me to the room where they were keeping him. No one quite knew if he was a disgrace or not, so the room was sparse, ill-lit, but clean. A compromise. It was appropriate.
He did not look like he was sleeping. The heavenly father knows he did not. I had seen Lancelot joust, when I was first married, and I had seen men enough killed, in the loud intrusions into my quiet days.
No one ever told me the full story. I pieced most of it together, the way I pieced together almost all of the life he led away from me. Of course he would have thought the best way was to charge in, to drag it out to the light. He never understood quiet, my husband, or subtlety, or secrets. He never understood guilt, truth be told, though I don’t think any of Lot’s sons could lack understanding about betrayal.
I touched the gashes, that someone had half-cleaned before realizing there was no point. It hadn’t been quick, either, his death. Probably the cut in the stomach, that did for him, but hard to say.
I touched his eyes, closed now. His lips, cold and dry. His hands. The calluses had changed very little, since I’d known them.
He was a fool, brutish, underhanded, mean. He was most of the things people said about him, and my arguing will not change that. But Sir Agravaine was my husband, even if no one remembers it but me. And it does not matter, in the end. I remember. I will always.
And at least one person shed tears for him and him alone, as the world around us began to die.
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no subject
Date: 2008-03-21 03:00 am (UTC)Poor Laurel.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-20 03:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-20 03:38 am (UTC)