Free Lancelot by Gwen Rowley

believe I was destined for great things. When I first arrived at Camelot, I was insufferable.”
    He chanced at quick look and found her smiling. “I’m sure you weren’t as bad as that.”
    “Oh, I was. If you asked—” He caught himself up sharply. “Anyone who knows me would say the same. The other squires detested me, but I didn’t care. I thought them so far beneath me, you see, so vastly inferior that their opinions meant less than nothing.”
    “Had you no friends?” she asked, her voice warm with a sympathy that touched him, though he knew it undeserved. “None at all?”
    “One or two,” Lancelot said, remembering his cousins Bors and Lionel with a pang, “who would have been my friends. But I’m afraid I did not much regard them, either. Truly, lady, I was detestable.”
    She laughed at that. “You seem much improved.”
    “Do I?” He winced at the eagerness in his voice. “I hope I am, a little. But any improvement is due entirely to the king. He did not think much of me at first—nor can I blame him, since the only time he was forced to notice me was when I was to be punished for fighting. Which happened rather often, I’m afraid.”
    “And did you win?”
    “Always. Which did nothing to endear me to the others. But one day—I’d gotten into the devil of a scrape—King Arthur sat me down and talked to me. He was—is—a very kind man, though he can be stern. He was that day,” he said with a reminiscent smile. “No one had ever spoken to me like that in all my life.”
    “Were you very angry?” Elaine asked. She drew her knees up and clasped her arms around her shins. Pale golden hair spilled over one shoulder, and her astonishingly blue eyes were fixed expectantly on his face, as though she were genuinely interested in what he had to say.
    “No, I was not angry,” he said, then grinned. “Well, perhaps a little, just at first. King Arthur is—I could say he is a good man, and that would be true, but many men arecalled good when they possess but a single virtue among a hundred flaws. Arthur is . . . wholly good.”
    “No man is that,” Elaine protested, “unless he is a saint.”
    “I’ve always imagined that saints are dreary folk, but the king is very human. He has his faults—as he would be the first to tell you—”
    “What are they?” Elaine interrupted. “I’ve never heard of any.”
    Lancelot thought a moment, then laughed. “Do you know, I haven’t, either. Nor have I seen them for myself. Guin—the queen might scold him for not keeping such state as she deems fitting, but I hardly reckon that a fault. No, if he has one at all, it is that he is too ready to believe that others are as good as he is himself. It isn’t that he’s perfect, but King Arthur always
tries
to do the right thing, no matter how difficult that thing may be or how impossible it seems.”
    Elaine rested her chin on her knees. “It doesn’t seem like much, does it, to always try to do the right thing? But when I think of it, there are times I’ve done—not the wrong thing, no one chooses to do that—but what is easy or convenient.”
    “Yes,” he said. “For myself, I have done many things that I would change now if I could.”
    “I can see why you admire him so,” Elaine said thoughtfully. “So after he had scolded you, what did he do?”
    “He sent me off in search of an adventure.”
    “And you became a knight.”
    “I did. But—but it was not what I thought it would be.”
    “I understand,” she said, and though he knew she did not really, he was still comforted. “I always thought—”
    “What?”
    “That I, too, was destined for great things.” She gesturedtoward the flowing river at their feet. “I would sit just here and plan my future.”
    “What was it?”
    “I had been betrothed to Lord—well, it doesn’t matter now, but he was a man of some consequence. I imagined I would rule graciously over my people—wearing very fine clothing while I did it,