Free Camelot's Blood by Sarah Zettel Page B

had served him so well for so many years into place. Under its shelter the sniggering and the ribald jests passed over him like a summer’s breeze and he was able to let go of the foolishness surrounding him more easily.
    But he could not let go of the memory of Laurel’s cheeks so brightly flushed when she found him watching her. That was modesty, surely, injured dignity at the jibes that had been flying. Surprise. Anticipation.
    It was not fear. It could not be fear.
    Don’t let it be fear. Please
.
    But this prayer, Agravain kept between himself and God.
    â€œCome, sweetest, to you hear me call!
    â€œTo you, loved by one and by all!
    â€œYou’re the light of my eye and a part …”
    â€œYes, but which part?”
    â€œThere’s only one that interests her tonight!”
    The song dissolved into shrieks of laughter as Guinevere’s ladies hearded Laurel into her bed chamber. They’d been busy in here. They must have stripped every rose bush within a ten-mile square. White and pink flowers twined with ivy around the posts of the bed. Heaps of them decked every chest and stick of furniture and framed the window. The perfume was dizzying, as was the heat. The fire had been built up high and all four braziers blazed. Candles burned in bronze stands worked like leaves and branches. It was too warm. Perhaps it was just that she was too warm, with all these women filling the chamber, making lewd and intimate insinuations that she wouldn’t have suffered from her sister.
    And there stood the queen, smiling benignly on it all, so Laurel couldn’t even say anything, let alone throw them all out the door.
    One of them said tartly, “My lord Agravain is more likely to have an icicle between his legs than anything fleshly.”
    Another gave out a bark of laughter in reply. “So speaks the woman who’s found out what’s between the legs of half the men-at-arms of Camelot. Were I to guess, I’d say you only curse my lord Agravain because he did not rise to your lures.”
    â€œStop it, you hens,” admonished Lady Risa, waving them all back. “You’re terrifying the bride.”
    Laurel could abide in silence no longer. “The bride is quite composed, thank you,” she said frostily.
    This drew another chorus of knowing
oh-hos
, accompanied by raised brows and widened eyes. Laurel clenched her teeth, remembering this was all to be expected, and that it was but a part of this final act. She glanced over the heads of the laughing women to see the queen, standing behind, neither participating in this, nor making any move to ameliorate their actions.
    â€œYou’re the light of my eye and a parte …” Someone began the song again. “The far better part of my heart!”
    They all circled around her, a cluster of eyes and hands and laughter. They pulled at her laces and clasps, stripping her of sleeves and overdress and jewels. She could not even see the queen. It was heat and damp, wine-soaked breath and constant jostling. Her veil was taken and her braid undone, so her hair tumbled free in a white wave. They were breathing all the air, and she couldn’t tell who was who. They plucked at her laces, her sleeves, her jewels and skirts. Just as she thought she would have to scream, they moved back, leaving her standing alone in only in her white linen underdress and, to her shame, gasping for breath, and trying not to clap her hands over herself to hide what already felt like nakedness.
    It was no comfort at all that now she could hear the ragged, weaving chorus of voices teetering up the corridor outside.
    â€œâ€¦ Since on error bent
,
    I’ve earned grave punishment
,
    Please, O seize the penitent
    And lock him in your chamber!”
    On this last exclamation, the door flew open so violently, Laurel could only assume it had been kicked. A flood of men spilled in, along with a reek of sweat and wine so pungent it threatened