It's as though she woke up one day and half the years of her life had disappeared in the flap of a dragon's wing. Her tiny boy, born into a changing world, had become a man every inch his father's child. Thomas towered a head taller than her and was broad across his shoulders; yellow-haired and blue-eyed and she wished that Arthur could have known him.
The last days of Thomas's princedom had passed. That day was the day of her abdication and thus his coronation. Across the kingdom, there would be festivals and celebrations to mark his accession in the coming weeks. While it was the first official day of his kingship, the truth was that Thomas had been involved in making decisions since he was fifteen. She had ensured that he came to council meetings to hear the lords tussle the issues, that he spoke to the visiting royalty and nobility to cultivate their friendship and that he spent much time with his people. She had encouraged him into going haggling in the market square, listening during the healing clinics, and, to her reluctant agreement, drinking in the tavern.
She felt it was her purpose to guarantee Camelot's safe passage from one king to the next. She had planned for that while Thomas was still just a gentle swell in the fabric of her dresses. She knew that blood still counted for much and she did not relish the thought of rule without Arthur, so she decreed that the years of her caretaking would last until the child's twenty-first year and then she would rescind the crown to the rightful heir of Camelot.
Suddenly, twenty one years were gone, meaning nigh on twenty two years since she found herself alone in the world with a coming child and a kingdom to run.
During the last few days, Thomas had been excited. His youth relished the notion of succession, the chance to build on his mother's triumphs in repealing magical laws, unifying some lands into Camelot and encouraging peace with others. It was such a contrast to the circumstances of Uther's death. Then there had been the waiting and the futile hope and the haunted look on Arthur's face when he came to her paltry house to seek comfort in her embrace, whispering how it was all too soon.
"Oh, my love," she whispered at the memory as she sat at her dressing table. Using the looking glass, she glanced to the ring around her neck with the Pendragon crest. It had never fit even her largest finger, so she had found a chain to thread through the centre and kept it safe across her heart. She felt reluctant to give it up, even to her son. It was the last thing Arthur had ever bestowed on her and it was precious beyond words.
But she could not fail to acknowledge how tired she was, how there would come a great relief when the burden passed over. Naturally, she worried for Thomas as a mother, but Thomas had the energy and the vigour that she no longer had as Queen. The years had taken their toll on her: the hairs on her head had lightened to a sword-grey with every passing year, her face was lined with soft wrinkles and her hands bore age spots.
Still, she mused on her good fortune: how many others in her position ever had the opportunity to plan anything after ruling? She would have the running of the school as her occupation. There, all children learned their letters, numbers, history and swordsmanship. She remembered when Gaius was alive and he used to come and cast little spells to delight the younger children and then teach the older ones of the importance of magic and the correct use of it. His loss had hurt her deeply; another break in the chain of people who had known and loved Arthur, and not just his legend.
"Are you ready, my lady?" her handmaid, Eleanor asked.
Guinevere looked around to where Eleanor waited with the crown on a cushion. The last time, she thought.
"Yes," she said, shaking her head to clear her mind and wondered just how long she'd been looking at herself and reminiscing. Eleanor stepped forward, laid the cushion on the dressing table and took a comb from nearby.
She had only been with Guinevere for a year, but Eleanor was a thoughtful, gentle girl and Guinevere liked her immensely. She suspected that there was a little romance brewing between the girl and her son, but naturally had kept her observations to herself. She knew all too well the perils of hiding a royal love affair…
There was a rumble of approaching footsteps in the hallway and a knock on the chamber doors.
"Mother!" The shout came from the other side of the door. Guinevere smiled to herself. Thomas sounded as though he was in good spirits.
"Come," she said, a little loudly, but she did not take her eyes from the looking-glass, because she caught Eleanor's unexpected smile reflected in the mirror. He bowled in, her exuberant son, and was pleased at the handmaid's presence.
"Eleanor," he said, surprised and light-heartedly. Guinevere saw Eleanor look across to Thomas and smile demurely. One day, they would tell her, she thought. Inwardly, she rolled her eyes at the similarity of her son to her husband and not for the first time, wondered exactly if she had anything to do with the whole business.
"My lord," Eleanor said, and bobbed into a quick curtsey, before returning to attend to Guinevere's crown. Then, as though to regain his credibility, Thomas retained his same light-hearted tone to speak to the Queen.
"Mother! Let me tell you about Sir Simeon this morning…"
Then he moved around the chambers, talking about Sir Simeon hiding his crown in the stables at dawn, and then of the assembled royalty and nobility in Camelot's corridors that morning. Her son was excited but nervous. She knew that anxiety made his tongue run itself out. She listened while Eleanor finished setting the crown, while she stood up and shook out the opulent amethyst fabric of the dress, while she checked her appearance in the long-length mirror.
There was another knock at the door and Eleanor moved to answer it. Thomas had stopped his chatter, suddenly a little grey in the face. Guinevere turned to her son and smiled sympathetically. He was dressed in his knight's attire and wore Arthur's cape. The red did nothing for his pallor.
"We are all here for you," she said calmly. There was a look on his face of terrible vulnerability and suddenly she found herself engulfed by her son's embrace. She set her arms around his big shoulders, cold and lumpy with chainmail and closed her eyes.
"Thank you," he whispered. "It can't have been easy,"
She nodded against his face, feeling the rise of emotion inside her. She thought of sending for a goblet of wine to steady him, and even her. There would be plenty of it around…
"Sir Leon, my lady, my lord," Eleanor's voice broke the moment. Thomas let go of his mother and moved to the open window, his body language rebounding back to boisterous.
"Eleanor," he said. "Come and see Princess Fiona's horse. It's beautiful…one day, I'm going to give my wife a horse just like that…"
Guinevere smiled at her son, and met Leon's gaze. His face was littered with wrinkles and framed by greying hair and beard but his smile was the same. He looked over to Thomas and rolled his eyes at the prince, who kept talking about the things he would do for his queen, before breaking into a grin.
"They're ready," he said. She felt as though her stomach had plummeted to her feet. She nodded and felt for the chain about her neck. Thomas quietened in the background.
"Twenty-one years," she said, disbelievingly, looking back at her old friend.
"A long time," he replied. "Are you prepared?"
"No," she said, and laughed a little. "It's very strange," she whispered, and she turned to look about the room.
So much of her life had come through those stones and lived within those walls and at that moment, she felt as though they had all come together to see her into the next stage of her life. There was the bed where she and Arthur had probably made their son, the floor by the window where she had fallen to her knees when dear old Percival, dead only that past winter, had brought back that terrible news. The chaise by the fireplace where had she sat to feed Thomas when he was tiny and in later years told him of his father, of Merlin, of Elyan and Gwaine. The table where she and Arthur had eaten, made love, talked, laughed…
"I know," Leon said, gently.
But she looked to the window and caught her son with his lips to the handmaid's fingers and felt that this room contained some part of her future too: her son and her King, Camelot and Albion's hope, the woman she felt sure would be her son's wife, the grandchildren she hoped for, the peace and prosperity that she felt Thomas had the energy and support…and love…to pursue. Thomas would go on, armed with knowledge and compassion and strength among his tools, as well as the goodness of his father and, perhaps, some of his mother within him. He was ready to seize the future and make it work for Camelot. It would be alright.
She looked to Leon, the last person that remained from the time before, the one thing that had helped to bear her sanely and safely through the years. He extended his arm outward towards her and she slipped her left arm through his and they began to walk through the open door and out into the corridor.
Not for the first time, he laid his left hand atop hers and she mused how at ease she is with the gesture. Whispers had always abounded among the court about them and intensified lately with the idea that the First Knight, who had never married, would ask for Guinevere's hand in the time to come. But these whispers came from the young and the romantic, those that lived with the tales of Arthur and Merlin as bedtime stories and did not regard them as people with virtue and flaws, whose legacies left long impressions on the lives of those left behind.
Guinevere loved Leon, and she knew that he loved her. But theirs was a love rightfully bereft of passion, a platonic love, born from sorrow, living for duty and destined to die in the shadow of their undying love and loyalty to Arthur.