Disclaimer: The conversation between Arthur and the Knights is from the King Arthur movie script, as is Lancelot's quote "I will die in battle, of that I am certain..."
Warning: Scenes of Lancelot and Elena's "rendezvous".
Chapter 6: What tomorrow brings, we do not know
They walked round the bend of the stables and into the castle. The corridors were dark as always, and unusually quiet at this point of hour. Suspicious, Lancelot moved ahead slowly, his hand interlaced with Elena .
"It is quiet." Lancelot observed.
"Uncommon?" She asked, apprehensive.
"Quite. Regularly, you could hear Bors drinking round this time." He answered, a slight smile evident upon his lips. A shaft of light illumined the halls, and Lancelot carefully approached the doorway. Sighing with relief, he cracked open the door an inch to reveal the rest of the knights and sitting around the Round Table, and Arthur at the head, pacing. They all shifted their gaze to the door as it creaked.
"Ah, Lancelot, you have come to join us?" Arthur pointed to his right hand chair. Lancelot eagerly sat down besides him.
"What is it, Arthur, that has brought us here at the Table?"
"The Saxons. They are coming closer, and will attack most likely by tomorrow. We will need to stage a war with them."
The other knights stared at him disbelievingly. A war? How possibly, could Arthur even consider a war with the Saxons when they were free men, when they had fought fifteen years to protect Rome?
Galahad spoke, "Arthur, our duty to Rome, if it was ever a duty, is done. Our pact with Rome is done."
"Every knight here has laid his life on the line for you. For you." Bors pointed out, "And instead of freedom, you want more blood? Our blood? You believe that taking the lives of the Saxons will bring the peace we have been fighting for so long?"
Arthur looked crestfallen as he searched the faces of his fellow knights. "Bors, these are our orders. We must leave at first light, and when we return, your freedom will be waiting for you."
"I am a free man!" Bors interrupted.
"How many times in battle have we snatched victory from the jaws of defeat? Outnumbered, outflanked, but still we triumph? We are knights. What other purpose do we serve if not for such a cause?" Arthur questioned, as calmly as he could.
"Arthur, you fight for a world that will never exist," Lancelot shook his head, "Never. There will always be a battlefield. There will always be something to fight for."
"Knights, if you do not wish to accompany me, then so be it. My journey with you must end here then."
"Arthur, this is not Rome's fight. It is not your fight. All these long years we have been together, the trials we've faced, the blood we've shed. What was it all for, if not for the reward of freedom? And now when we are so close! When it is finally in our grasp, look at me, Arthur!" Lancelot grabbed Arthur by the shoulders roughly and shook him. "Does it all count for nothing?"
"You ask me that. You, who knows me best of all?" Arthur whispered, shaking off Lancelot.
"Then do not do this! Only certain death awaits you if you do this, Arthur." Lancelot was pleading for his friend to give up on this war. Arthur rested a hand on Lancelot's shoulder and sighed.
"Then live for the both of us, Lancelot. You be my friend and do not dissuade me. Of all the lives I have taken, all the blood I have shed has come down to this moment." With that, Arthur gave his knights a solemn farewell and left, barely noticing Elena as he fled from the room. The other knights watched in incredulity. Elena looked at the knights with an emotive glance, her eyes cast downwards. Lancelot walked over to her.
"There is nothing left for us to fight. We are free men; we deserve the freedom we have earned. To fight is only an obstacle to lose that freedom. I fought for peace. And I earned it." He said, fumbling with his fingers.
"Did you ever believe what you were fighting for?"
"For peace, of course. All these years, it has been for peace."
"What peace, Lancelot? Peace for yourself? Or for your people?"
"These are not my people that I fight for. And I do not believe that one fights for anything. Not for his country, nor his people, and especially not his God. One only fights for the sake of it. "
"If you do not have faith in what you are fighting for, then a war is worthless, Lancelot. If you died fighting, what would it be for? Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity."
"War is not its own end, expect in some catastrophic slide into absolute damnation. It is peace that is wanted. Some better peace than the one you started with." He replied.
"Lancelot, one is left with the horrible feeling now that war settles nothing; that to win a war is as disastrous as to lose one. War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling that believes that nothing is worth the war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight for, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. "
She cupped his chin, her full lower lip trembling. Lightly, she planted a single kiss along his jawline, and then broke apart. She turned and walked out the door, her robes fluttering after her. Galahad stood up, his chair squeaking against the floor, and clasped a hand on Lancelot's shoulder. Lancelot made no move, but stared straight ahead, wondering what had just happened.
Elena crossed out of the castle and into the surrounding grounds of Camelot. Shrouded against the darkness, she tightened the claret cloak around her shoulders and spotted Arthur figure a couple of steps away. She swiftly approached him, her feet barely making any sound, and crouched down next to him. Arthur made no impression that he knew she was there, but Elena knew he acknowledged her.
"The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainly, not knowing what comes next. Your knights say they fight for peace. But peace is not an absence of war; it is a virtue, a state of mind, and a disposition of benevolence, confidence, and justice. I do not agree with you on many things, but I do believe that one who desires peace must prepare for war, whether it be his war or someone else."
Arthur turned to look at her. She rested her head on her hand, her eyes flickering in the moonlight, her hair blowing in the cool winds. He sighed heavily. "You can't separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom. My knights know this. They know they have not their freedom yet, until this world is at peace."
"But this world will never be at peace, Arthur. No matter what you believe, you must know that this cannot be the end. Lancelot said that there is always something to fight for. For freedom, for glory, for love, for power. Men fight for such things each and every day, and they will for as long as they rule the earth."
"Then I am not the hero that you say I am. If I have not achieved even such a short-lived peace, then I am nothing. I have failed." He hung his head. Elena touched his cheek, forcing him to look up.
"I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with his freedom. You understand it. You know that there is always a price to come with freedom and with peace. You are more of a hero than you think you are. You are what you are because of the conscious and subconscious choices you have made. In the truest sense, freedom cannot be bestowed, it must be achieved."
"We have waged a war to protect a Rome that does not exist. What if my knights are right? We fought for something that does not belong to this earth for so long, and I must throw it away with a single deed?"
"You stayed and fought when you didn't have to. You killed evil men when you could have run. You did all that for a reason, Arthur," her voice was barely above a whisper now, but still comforting and uplifting. "These are your people."
"And if I die?" Arthur questioned, though he never asked this before to anyone, save she.
"Then you die an honorable man, knowing that you have departed from this wretched world a man with optimism and opportunity. Arthur, do not what your knights say or what your country says. Do what your heart says, for a man ruled by his heart is far greater than any other man."
Arthur stared at her for a brief moment. Her eyes were dancing with a powerful and passionate confidence, and a desperate faith for him he had not seen in any of his loyal knights or his loving wife. Here was a woman, a stranger practically, who he barely knew, and yet he trusted deeply. She touched his shoulder gingerly, her hand very light. Arthur took her hand in his, and then said, "Of every battle I have fought and every blood I have shed, I never would have imagined it come down to this. That tomorrow could be the certain death of us all."
"What tomorrow brings, we do not know. As for me, I do not care." She said. Taking one final look at him, she stood up and walked back towards the castle, solitary but strong.
Elena sauntered back to her room, and drew the transparent silk curtain around her bed. She removed the clasp from her hair. Golden strands of hair fell down her back, draped with candlelight. The door scraped open, and she stood, unmoving. She heard the familiar footsteps of a knight as he approached her, his hands suddenly caressing her bare arms, his lips on her shoulders, and his hair tickling her neck. Her robes hanging round her elbows, she abandoned them as she stroked his face and moaned with pleasurable delight. He spun her around, and surprised, she stumbled forward and fell against him.
He caught her steadily, and kissed her. He obviously put everything he had, every ounce of feeling for her, every last vestige of passion and every shred of frustrated love, into that kiss. As if he were trying to burn whatever it was he felt out of him, exorcise it, wring it dry. She melted, completely under his overwhelming and intense love for her, and pressed her hand against his chest, drawing in breath once when necessary.
He lowered her on the bed leisurely, settling her into his lap. She guided his hand to her leg, her hand running through his curls, his hand stroking her thigh. When he lifted his mouth off hers, she felt lost, and caught at him, a short involuntary clasping at his shirt, but he had only moved to pull her closer (although, she thought, surely they couldn't get any closer, it felt to her already as if every inch of their bodies were touching) and his hand slid somehow into the nonexistent space between them and began to fumble with the fastenings of her clothes.
Her robe came open, and his hand slid inside and over the thin silk of the camisole she wore underneath, which provided no barrier at all to his touch. It felt to her exactly as if there were no material between his hand and her own naked skin as his fingertips slid around her body to trace her spin, the wings of her shoulder blades, the hollow at the back of her neck. It seemed suddenly extremely important that there be even less clothing between them, and with that objective in mind her hands flew to his shirt. Swiftly, she removed them, the coolness of his skin compressed harder with her warmness. His callused hands ran up her back, her refined beauty was everything he touched beneath all the clothing she wore.
His lips traveled down to her throat, and she clutched at him, her hands winding into his hair, which was impossibly fine and delicate and soft, as his mouth moved back up to hers, and all thought dissolved, or at least all ability to separate thoughts into cogent threads of consciousness. All that mattered now was his mouth on hers, his heart pounding against her own, and she wanted to drown in it, wanted to drown in him, in the hard grip of his arms on her back, the softness of his mouth, and the pressure of his body.
Three hours later, Elena sat in one of the huge cushioned window seats in her room, with her knees drawn up to her chest, looking out at the moon-drenched grounds. She was wrapped in one of her white nightgowns, her hair still tousled from the past few hours. She turned her head to look at Lancelot, asleep on his side in the huge bed, one arm curled around a pillow.
A slight smile was on his face, which looked strangely naked without his eyes opened. There was ample evidence to what they had just done. The room was strewn with articles of their clothing that lay wherever they landed, and her whole body was tingling pleasantly in memory of an all too physical experience. Her chest hitched once and her vision blurred through the prism of unsheds tears. Elena pressed her fist to her mouth as the teardrops fell from her eyelids and trickled down her cheeks.
"Elena?" came a soft, sleep-muddled voice. She looked around; he was just turning over, still mostly asleep, but he'd noticed her absence. He blinked and propped himself up on his elbows, squinting at her myopically. "What are you doing?" he murmured, rubbing at his eyes. Sleepy disorientation made him seem much younger than his 23 years, and for a moment Elena saw the young Sarmatian boy who the Romans took from his home for his service to the Roman Empire instead of the man she knew today. She shivered at the powerfully discordant image, then he sat all the way up and the grogginess left his face, shattering the impression.
She smiled. "Just thinking."
He slid to the edge of the bed and rose, wrapping a sheet around his hips as he came over and sat on the edge of the window seat next to her. She turned her face away so he wouldn't see the wetness there, but she wasn't fast enough. He peered at her, his brow furrowing, then reached out and cupped her cheek in one hand, wiping away the tears with his thumb. He smiled gently at her. "What are you thinking about that's making you cry?"
"The war we must face tomorrow. I need to grieve for a bit."
"How so?" He pondered in question.
"Well, we'll be heading off to fight the Saxons tomorrow, and who knows what will happen? Whether it ends up in victory or defeat, or terrifying deaths that cannot be prophesized or prevented?"
Lancelot understood her concern. "You are afraid I might die."
"And Arthur too. I am afraid all of you might. I know it sounds out of character for me, but I have never really fought together with those I cared about. I always feared that I would lose them."
"Elena, I chose to follow Arthur into battle. This is my choice, and if I die doing so, then so be it. I will die in battle, I am certain. Now hopefully, it will be a battle of my choosing. But, if it were this one, grant me one favor: don bury me in our sad little cemetery. Burn me." At these words, Elena sucked in a deep breath. "Yes, burn me, and cast my ashes to a strong eastern wind."
"If you wish it so, then it will be done. But, I must confess, sometimes you frighten me so, Lancelot, with words like this. Burn you and cast your ashes to the east winds. How will Arthur make of that?"
"He will understand. If it is my desire, he will oblige to my wishes."
"I am still worried for you. And the rest of the knights. Whether it be your choice or not, this vast terrible army will come to destroy us."
"This land, this outpost, is the last thing on this earth that separates us from them. If we do not defend it, then our walls will crumble and fall, and this era as we know it will come to an end."
"You have decided to follow Arthur then? You will fight?"
"Yes. I will. I will follow him until there is nowhere else to follow. I will fight, and for the peace and freedom we have earned, and I will not stop fighting until we have settled that here in this land. I only hope that I am able to fight to the best of my possible abilities."
"It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." Elena said, a wisp of hair falling in her face. Lancelot nodded.
"Then this is my choice."
"As is mine. I will follow you to the battlefield."
Lancelot wanted to argue with her, but she was undoubtedly going to come, he knew, because once she made up her mind to do something, she did. And when she said something, she meant it. Moreover, he knew she was a positive asset to the knights. Her skill in archery was equal, perhaps greater than, the skill of men, and she fought fiercely for anything she believed in.
"Now I fear for your safety." Lancelot said, half-joking
Elena smiled coolly, "I am an able warrior. As long as I have something to fight for, then in no doubt, I will fight till the death. You have my word on it."