He is utterly oblivious, Uther Pendragon. Arthur knows now, for if not, surely he would see the truth. Parents are often said to have such a great connection with their child that they see love past the infatuations of body, and crushes of mind. Even if love is so much more intangible than these lesser emotions, it reaches out to touch the soul of a parent. The glimmer in the eyes, the curve of the mouth, and the stance of excitement, everything tells the parent, my child is in love.
And yet with Uther Pendragon this is not so, for he is blinded by fear and ghosts from long ago. His supreme terror of sorcery consumes his soul, discoloring and scrambling heart’s clarity. It blinds him from the fact that his son is soundly in love.
Entirely now Arthur knows. As much as it is saddening and tears a tiny little hole into his heart, he accepts. Like he has accepted a childhood with only enough hugs to be able to keep count. Harshness has been there more than fond reaching- outs, touches of fatherly devotion scarce. Something must have happened when his mother died, or maybe sometime before, who knows? A thick shade fell over Uther Pendragon’s eyes.
They hold him back from seeing truth.
Sadly Arthur gets that now. He will love his father no less, and yet it creates a small, but substantial line of divide. Fathers are supposed to know and care for when their son will hurt so much if a deed is done. Why couldn’t Uther Pendragon see right away that killing one handmaiden would ruin his son’s life forever? How can he not tell that this is more than infatuation or crush? How can he not touch that truth?
“I love Guinevere.” Arthur whispers, wondering if his father loved his mother the same. Would it have mattered to Uther if Ygraine had been nothing more than an urchin of the streets, outfitted in rags and displaying knuckles with cracks of labor? Would he have dismissed her easily then? Was it just her fortune and her richness of wear, of makeup upon the face, and a noble’s inheritance that made his father’s manhood stir and his eyes light with excitement?
Was it that kind of selfish devotion which is oblivious to the real unselfish currents of love?
“Did you love my mother…for what she was within?” Arthur asks somberly, standing at his window within the deep night, the white moon gazing listlessly back at him. “Or was it more all her dressing, the power-addition she would give you?”
Why does he not see? Why is he so blind?
The questions are so rapt, so delving into one after another. Arthur can barely hope to keep them in order, and the moon refuses to answer.
It is late, far past the blackening of sky that allows the moon to gleam like porcelain, but his father is away for one day and one evening. He is visiting with another king. There are guards of course and knights, but he knows some back exits out of the castle and he has a blue cloak of disguise. He can make excuse of checking on those doing the rounds. He is prince, acting king when his father is away, and so he will not be questioned.
The doubt of departure instead lingers for her welfare. Every time he enters her tiny home it adds another little barb of danger, and yet his heart is panging. It’s lonely and in need.
He will be cautious.
***
“Arthur?” Gwen asks, in shock to see him at her door, as she covers her thin nightgown with one of her cloaks, a lavender one.
“Forgive the late hour please.”
She nods, viewing the tension in his temple as she stands aside to allow him entrance, and closes the door tight to allow no one else witness.
Arthur steps into the tiny home, inhaling deeply the scent of flowers and herbs. She loves to pick the former from the garden, and she is a fine cook who gathers the best of the latter to enhance her food. It is a pleasurable scent, a woman’s.
“I wonder.” He muses quietly, eyes unfocused ahead. “If he really loved her. I never did before. I never questioned it. But now it’s just scratching at me inside. Did he?”
Gwen is taken aback by the puzzling statement, confused by her prince’s troubled reverie. His brow is so furrowed, his cheeks are taut, his jaw is fixed, and his hands are unconsciously wandering and fiddling, fingers tightening over each other before letting go and repeating.
“Arthur?” It’s a lover’s wonder, in hopes one day she can be.
He turns around, looks troublingly into those calescent eyes, hoping they can add comfort and bring him out of this lost state. “Did my father really love my mother, or was she just the window dressing? Sometimes there have been quiet rumors that the truth has been concealed from me. I never believe it. I never listen to it. They’re traitors. Sorcerers and the like. Awful people who only want vengeance. They will say anything to get it. But am I the one who’s been wrong? Because…”
“Arthur.” She reaches a tentative hand upward. Gwen feels the coldness of his cheek and so she fingers there to warm. Why is he shivering?
Why are there glimmers of shine in his eyes that could perhaps turn to tears?
“Because…” Arthur continues, his voice raw and trembling as he reaches his hand up, presses his fingers to her face with tangents of touch and emotion. “How could he not know? How could he not see that it was more than some stupid spell? That I love you.”
He whispers the last and she nods her head, her eyes fixed to his as their lips automatically come together and seal. And open. And close. And delve on a journey of pleasure and sweet passion. Before they break away. Come apart.
Arthur steps forward and she is in his arms and everything he has relinquished, squelched for her sake, for his father’s sake, for the sake of kingdom, comes forward like a flood, rushing out. It is a gush of violent need because for a night she was put in a cell. Her life was to be taken the next morning.
“If it had happened I don’t think I would have been able to breathe anymore. I would have wanted to be there with you. In Avalon.”
Gwen clutches him as close as he clings to her, feeling suddenly the burn upon her cheek from when his father struck her, still unknown to Arthur, perhaps forever unknown for it could send him on a rampage that would ruin his destiny. Arthur is so unlike his father in that way, full of tender emotion, that can only erupt when those he cares for are struck and threatened.
It’s hard to say, because letting it fall out of her lips is laying truth to all the feeling. It is a danger for it is nearly treason in Uther Pendragon’s kingdom. It is a threat to the throne the father so adores and that his son simply respects, for his love is not of power or a seat to sit upon. His love is of people, and of…
“I love you Arthur.”
She can hear his breaths’ harder release as she tells him what she rarely does. She can hear their excited shakes as she does her best to temper them with calming hands upon his back and waist.
“I want you for my wife. My queen.” He whispers hoarsely, and she nods her head, the words quaking her heart. It’s hard to respond.
Her own voice shakes as she tells him with as much peace as she can muster. “Maybe one day.”
“One day for certain.” He breathes back with resolve, kissing her cheek and neck, holding her fervently within arms that can’t seem to let go.
“Did he love her like I love you?” Arthur asks, referring to his mother again and the tears fall now. They fall so heavily. His body shudders and starts to falter, a fall so near.
But she holds him harder. Her fingers dig into the material of his tunic shirt and the cape that still surrounds, not allowing him to touch knees upon the floor. She knows he’s crying for what he’s already lost. And what he could have lost. Her prince is shuddering because his father has opened up a new world to him. A crueler one. Where a man who should see his own son’s pain and need, is oblivious because he is so mad with power, so arrogant with ancient protocol, and so fearful of the ridiculous.
And yet she loves his son, because as much he does have aspects of his father’s mind and body, his heart is unique. His soul is its own. “Maybe. Maybe not.” She tells him gently, but wisely.
The man she loves does not want falsehoods now. He has always clung onto her truths. He respects them as he does her.
Sadly she gets all too well this hollowness the ugly revelations have brought him, for she got her own from the woman she has served since just past childhood. Once she believed their friendship was without end. More than a servant, she was a companion and treated with the utmost care. Now that woman who she used to fondly call her mistress and her lady, is a danger. Now that woman has betrayed her.
Now Morgana can no longer be trusted.
As now her beloved Arthur has seen the black holes of his father’s heart. And they trouble him. They torture him.
Let her do the healing work then. Let her arms keep him safe.
The tears start to fade. The saltiness of his cheeks that has mingled with her own skin starts to dry. The redness is still there in his eyes as he pulls back, but so is resolve and comfort that they have given to each other.
“May I stay Guinevere?” He whispers, touching her cheek, caressing her neck, and the crest of her chest, before gently letting his hand fall away, locking onto her fingers, and holding them with care. “I promise. I will let no harm come to you. I will leave by the back moments before dawn. I will make sure no one sees.”
It’s risky, and yet tell that to her heart. Oh love tangles the mind. It messes with the sensible. So raw. So beautiful. “Of course.”
There is no question of what will happen. If he is to love her he is also to respect her. She pulls away his cloak and he helps her rid herself of her own. She leads him to her small bed and he sits with her upon it, before gesturing for her to lie down. She does and he follows suit. The pressure of his warm chest, only minimally shielded by his thin tunic, gets her to sigh. It’s a half cuddle. It’s a caress of arms and hands as they curl together upon the bed and his lips tangle into her wild curls. They touch gently upon her neck.
“Thank you.” He whispers, finally breathing normally, his chest finding beginnings of peace with her.
“Thank my heart.” She whispers back. “My mind no longer can answer.”
He gets it entirely as his mind would tell him all the sensible things his father says, the crueler things. His heart is oblivious to all that though. “Neither can mine.”
Is love supposed to feel so deep, so suspended, as if upon a rope a body can barely walk upon without fear, without excitement?
His hands ascend. They wrap around her breasts, touch her heart. And her hands meet them, touch passionately the same.
Indeed it is, as they close their eyes.
Indeed love is so frightening. So exhilarating.
That touch is necessitated, that too long without it can burn the mind, can turn a soul to what Uther Pendragon’s is now. Dark and fearful. No reminder of what true happiness was.
Arthur resolves to never be that empty. He swears when his own son comes to him with love in his eyes and in his body, to see it right away. To never wish to tear it apart.
“Guinevere…my love.” He’s never been so romantic as with her, never saw these kinds of words more than silly until her.
