Free THE WARRIOR QUEEN (The Guinevere Trilogy Book 1) by Lavinia Collins

who had to get iron for new hinges for the door. What that Sir Kay thought he was doing...”
    I splashed her again, less playfully this time, and Christine tightened her little button mouth into a knot, holding back her smiles and laughter. It worried me more than it ought to, the jumpiness of Kay, knocking down the door, and Arthur, carrying his sword by his bed. They were still afraid of something, still wary of finding their friends dead in their beds. It was funny enough to the others, but they had not seen Arthur’s face as he reached for his sword. The man still lived in fear of his life.
    Marie filled a little stoneware jug with water and pushed me forward gently to pour it over my head. It felt good, hot and cleansing, as though I was making myself new. New for my new home, my new role as a wife. I would begin to belong in this place. I thought that it was perhaps better, too, to have rooms of my own where I could talk with my ladies in Breton, where I would not always be under the eyes of the court. Particularly the eyes of Merlin, who I did not think I would ever trust. Marie brushed my hair again, wet, and plaited it, winding it around and pinning it with the little gold net while it was still damp enough to be tame. I missed wearing it long, and wild, but in Logrys none of the noblewomen did this. Even Marie and Christine wore theirs neatly tied away. I thought I had heard Christine tell Marie that it was only children and prostitutes in Logrys who walked about with their hair entirely loose.
    There was a soft knock at the door.
    “Find out who it is,” I told Christine. She went to the door and opened it a chink. It was the Lady Igraine, so she let her in, and brought her a chair. Marie brought me a silk sheet to wrap myself in to dry as I stepped from the bath. We would never have used anything as expensive as that to dry ourselves at home.
    “Queen Igraine.” I bobbed my head in a little bow. I spoke slowly, my brain still swimming with Breton, trying to struggle back to my English. I hated switching between the languages, and I was conscious of wanting my English to sound as natural as possible. As much as I wanted to keep my connection to my own home, I also did not want to be obviously foreign here. “Are you well?”
    “Bless you, child,” she smiled, and I saw the lines of smiling crinkle with much use around her lovely pale grey eyes. “You don’t have to call me Queen. I have come to tell you that there is a lady come from Avalon who wants to see you.”
    “What is Avalon?” I asked, as Marie helped me into a dress of pale lilac silk, sewn with little silver flowers at the sleeves and hems. It was not one I had brought with me. I was not sure if the gift of all these new, rich dresses was a kindness, or a judgement on the clothes of my own people. “A realm like Logrys? Part of Britain? Or a noble house?”
    Igraine laughed softly.
    “Avalon is... many people call it an island. It is here, in Logrys, on the borders. It’s a...” she laughed again, “a place that is hard to describe. Merlin the witch came from there, and my daughter Morgan schooled there a long time, but I have never been.”
    I thought of the cold faces and blue woad of Morgan and Merlin.
    “Is it like the barrow-lands?” I asked.
    Igraine shook her head. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what those are.”
    When I thought of Morgan and Merlin I felt sure Avalon would be a place like the barrow-lands, where the Otherworld touched the surface and men and women hovered between death and life, filled with the same trees hung with dead leaves, the same mounds where the barrow-wights lived. Cursed, and beautiful. So Avalon was Logrys’ barrow-land. Yes, I thought Morgan and Merlin seemed as if they had come from a dark, strange place, a place between life and death.
     
    Igraine led us down to Arthur’s throne-room, where I had not been before. It was smaller than I would have expected, much smaller than the hall, though