The dream woke Igraine gasping, her skin ice-cold and her lips salty with tears. Uther stirred beside her, sitting up in concern and putting an arm around her shaking shoulders.

“What is it my dear? Shall I call the midwife –“

“No, no,” she wrapped her arms around the swollen mound of her belly, “It was just a dream. Just a dream.”

She wanted to un-dream it, forget the images that moved vivid like looking into a holy crystal of the Druids. There were ashes, ashes everywhere, blocking out the sun. The air was stagnant with weeping and wailing. The ashes kept falling. They fell upon the rose garden like cold kisses. She watched the roses die.

***

Spring was finally awakening and the travelling merchants were once more parading their wares in Camelot’s marketplace. Gwen walked beside Morgana, admiring the multi-coloured displays. Morgana’s mood seemed different, more cheerful, and despite the sleepless circles under her eyes that only Gwen knew well enough to discern, she appeared determined to enjoy the bright day and idle gaiety of admiring jewels and trinkets.

Their attention caught by a particularly impressive display of colours, they paused to admire the wares. Bolts of exquisite fabric cascaded in waterfalls of colour all around them. Morgana immediately reached for the jewel-tone velvets and silks - emerald green and stark violet -, while Gwen gravitated to the soft silks and moth-wing linen. She ran her hand admiringly over a cloth of loveliest peach embroidered with delicate gold roses.

“That colour seems made for you, milady, if you don’t mind me saying so,” the young woman behind the stall gushed.

Gwen held up the fabric to the sun, admiring its summery translucence. Impulsively, she swept it around her shoulders, turning from side to side in front of the small mirror.  Out of the corner of her eye she caught a glimpse of silver and turned; Arthur and two of his knights were riding on patrol, and the busy marketplace crowd moved humbly aside before the mounted glory of their red-caped forms. Gwen had barely seen him since the night of the feast: a murdered palace guard and some mysterious disturbances in the lower towns had kept the Knights thoroughly busy. She stole a glance as their horses neared: sunlight kindled the bright gold of his hair, and the drape of his scarlet cloak only emphasized the magnificent armoured shoulders.

Gwen looked away when his eyes sought hers, feeling suddenly warm along her neck and ears. The memory of their last interaction flashed through her mind, and almost unconsciously her hand went to her throat, fingering the chain from which his ring hung secreted in her bodice. How could he think she favoured Melwas’ wealth and power? Did he not know, she would gladly trade every jewel she owned than part with the ring he had pressed into her hand that night in Eirinn?

She kept her eyes lowered until the patrol passed.

“It must be hard,” Morgana mused, holding up a small jewelled comb to her ebony hair.

“What is?”

“Hiding your feelings for each other.”

Gwen tried to keep her voice light, “What do you mean?”

Morgana rolled her eyes, “Oh give it up Gwen! You think I was blind to what was happening with the two of you in Eirinn? You think I didn’t notice how Arthur looked at Melwas at the feast like he wanted to run him through with his sword right there? You don’t really expect me to believe you rushed to Camelot as soon as you got the chance just to see me, did you?”

Though her words were careless, they were tinged with an infinitesimal bitterness.

“Morgana I -,”

“How much for these?” Morgana turned abruptly to the girl, bargaining a generous purchase of embroidered satin. Gwen realized sadly that she no longer felt eager to confide in her friend as she’d once done. All those years when the oceans lay between them, they had flung their deepest thoughts at each other in preciously hidden letters. Now they stood shoulder to shoulder, and yet it seemed a dark chasm yawned between them.

****

Lately, Guinevere found her dreams turbulent as the ocean, tossing her helpless upon the shores of desire. Despite her anger at his words, Arthur was a flickering ache of longing always burning at the edge of her consciousness. She dreamed of his embrace, of their limbs entwining, of his mouth sliding hot over her sweat-slicked skin. Their bodies would transcend flesh and the boundaries of the elements: one moment she was molten fire beneath his hands, and the next she was cresting in pleasure like a sunlit wave. She would awake breathless, moaning softly at the tight knot of heat between her thighs.

After one such night, sitting in the warm bath, Guinevere allowed her hands to wander over her body, caressing her own breasts, wantonly imagining Arthur’s large, sword-callused hands in place of her own. The image drew a needlepointed thread of sensation through her, and the now-familiar moisture warmed her inner thighs. Weary with resisting, she touched a finger to the moist folds at the juncture of her thighs, biting her lip at the raw current of feeling. Suddenly hot all over with the memory of her dreams, her fingers played urgently over the sweetly throbbing mound, desire guiding her touch as she closed her eyes and pictured Arthur above her, his shoulders and powerful chest dripping with water, his eyes dark with lust, his hands stroking her wet, wet secret.

It felt like plunging into and caressing the velvet depths of a rose. One arm swung overhead to grip the tub as she gave in to the urging waves of sensation, touching and rubbing, remembering not her dreams then but that stormy night when Arthur’s hand brushed her breast through the soft chemise, when his hard length swelled against her thigh.

An ‘oh!’ escaped her lips as the pleasure tightened and suddenly burst into completion, rolling velvet waves through her shuddering legs.

After the brief flash of ecstasy slowly faded, the ashes of reality floated down on her skin.

 Guinevere drew her knees up to her chest, and let the water grow cold.

***

What will he see?                

Roses. The roses of Igraine, red as the blood he’s spilled.

I thought the mandrake conjured visions of horror.

Horror takes shape according to the heart perceiving it.

***

Arthur couldn’t recall the feeling of good, sound sleep. Their hasty departure from Eirinn, the two-year search for Morgana that stretched the Kingdom thin, and seeing Guinevere again, were an exhausting web of desire and doubt that his consciousness struggled helplessly against. He threw himself into training the Knights, pushing them and himself harder than ever before, until even humble Leon was compelled to inquire quietly if all was well.

The taste of her mouth, the autumnal pools of her eyes, her quiet, graceful presence was a constant torture he’d almost grown to enjoy. It took all his will to maintain a calm countenance when he’d glimpsed her in the market place. Arthur hated the rift between them; the memory of her hurt eyes, the knowledge that his words angered and wounded her, needled him even more than the reality of her betrothal to another man. For days he had tried working up the courage to ask her forgiveness, but the words he’d assemble would turn to ashes in his mouth by the light of day: they felt paltry and inadequate. He had even sunk to asking Merlin, Merlin of all people, for advice, and all he’d got in return was a shrug and a “Make a gesture you think is appropriate.”

Fine bloody help that was.

Dusk was settling her wings over the city when Arthur found himself in the palace gardens, an area he rarely had cause to be in, since he preferred the open lawns where he could joust or fence. The gardens were well tended, with enough shady fruit trees and petunia hedges to furnish attractive picnic spots for the noblewomen. Soon the full blossom of spring would witness many a leisurely lunch under soft green branches.

He found his footsteps drawn to the area cordoned off by iron fencing covered in years of thick vine growth: his mother’s rose garden. It’d been a long while since he had looked on the bare bushes and twisted stems all desolate and broken like bones abandoned on an ancient battlefield. Like almost everything else concerning his mother, the empty garden brought only the sadness of unanswered questions.

Arthur recalled an old tale told by his nurse.

The minstrels sang they were the most beautiful roses in the five kingdoms. Tended by the Queen herself, they blossomed in every shade of red imaginable, from the scarlet fire of the Pendragon banners, to the crimson of blood. To look on them in the full splendour of their blossoming, went the songs, was like holding up rubies to the sunlight.

He wandered what his mother’s counsel might have been. A small glimpse of colour caught his eye, almost hidden beneath a fallen branch. Could it be? But the roses had been dead for years, a lingering affect of the magic that killed Igraine, Uther said.

He squinted, certain now that he could see a small speck of red, before climbing easily over the fence.

***

Guinevere returned to her chambers after supper, relieved that Melwas did not insist on accompanying her. Arthur was absent at the meal, and she hated her weak and foolish heart for its pangs of disappointment. She forced herself to remember his careless words to her, to conjure up anger as a defence against helpless longing.

She saw it as soon as she entered, the flower and the carefully folded note beside it. Gwen looked at the rose in wonderment: its vermilion colour was poised poignantly between heartache and lush desire, sweetness and velvety promise, the pleasure of beauty and the pain of its memory.

I was a cur, and my words unworthy. Forgive me, Guinevere.

                        Arthur.

***                   

The two guards who found the king, John and Colum, were thankfully discreet. They alerted the prince and helped carry their stricken sovereign to his chambers.

 Only to Arthur and Gaius did they confide the condition they found Uther in: shuddering, weeping, and terrified, clutching at rose-stems dead for years, hands bloodied by thorns, saying over and over

 Igraine Igraine Igraine.