Arthur limped into the side-chamber where Guinevere was sewing, sat down on the bench next to her, and winced.

'Are you all right?' Guinevere asked.

'Oh, fine, fine, just a bit bruised.' Arthur was grinning.

Guinevere could only think of one thing that would make him this happy. 'You've found a new knight for the Table?'

Arthur had taken to searching for suitable candidates by going out, in black armour and with his shield covered, to challenge any knights riding by to joust with him. It wasn't just a test of their strength and skill, but also a test of their character, to see whether they lost their tempers when Arthur unhorsed them, or whether they behaved courteously when they unhorsed him and he asked for mercy.

'About-to-be-knight, anyway. He's barely eighteen, but the gentleman who came with him – he claims to be Lancelot's squire, but I gather from Lance that he's actually Lance's uncle, tutor and mentor – says he's been more than ready to be a knight for the past two years, but that he's been refusing to be knighted by anyone but me. It'd be an honour to do it. You should have seen the fall he gave me! He's a genius, that boy – and his uncle says this is the first fight he's ever had, so Heaven knows what he'll be like when he's had some experience. He was a child the last time I saw him, six years ago, and he looks as though he's been doing nothing but work out ever since. He was a good boy then, and I think he's grown into a good man.'

Guinevere smiled at her husband's enthusiasm. 'Are you sure you're not in love with him?'

She had meant it as a joke, but Arthur tensed. 'Don't ever say that in front of the other knights. There's enough jealousy and rivalry as it is – they won't accept that building a Round Table means they're all equals, if they can tell themselves that the man sitting 2.4 degrees away from me is more favoured than the man sitting 4.8 degrees away. With these feuds breaking out, like the one between my nephews and King Pellinore, who is one of my oldest friends apart from Kay and Merlin and the Dog Boy, the last thing I need is a rumour that any knight is particularly close to me. I don't think they'll claim that I've taken Lance as a lover – he's not exactly good-looking, to put it mildly – but please, don't make jokes like that in public.'

'Sorry. Talking of sex, will you be too bruised to do anything with me tonight?'

'No, I think that's an excellent idea. I think I'd better be on top this time, though.'

They had been married for just a year, since Guinevere's eighteenth birthday, and the novelty of sex hadn't yet worn off. In fact, they were barely past the stage where just a goodnight kiss was enough to leave Guinevere feeling too excited and aroused to sleep.

Arthur had been her first partner – after all, considering that she had been betrothed to him since she was fifteen, she could hardly have been allowed to take other lovers in the interim – and she had been surprised to learn, on their wedding night, that he was nearly as inexperienced. Normally, a young man's sex education would involve a few visits to a prostitute before he married, because, if he couldn't learn from an experienced woman, how could he be expected to give his wife satisfaction? But Arthur had unexpectedly gone from being his foster-brother's squire to being king when he was sixteen, and since then his life had been too full of war and politics to have much time for anything else. He mentioned that he had had one brief affair, with an older married woman, but he wouldn't talk about the details, and Guinevere got the impression that it had been more traumatic than educational for him.

Merlin had given the couple a book as a wedding present. The quotations from 20th century psychologists hadn't been particularly helpful to them, but the diagrams certainly had, and they had practised whenever time permitted.

'It might be a while before we get to bed,' Arthur warned her. 'I've got to knight young Lancelot, and then receive his loyalty oath. Could you sort out the details of finding rooms for him and his squire, and organising a welcoming feast?'

'Of course.' Usually, these details in the running of the castle were Sir Kay's job, but he was on leave, visiting his father in the Forest Sauvage and helping out with the running of the village and farms there. Some of the Knights of the Round Table were landless men with no-one to serve except their king, but Arthur, having grown up as the son of a country knight, made it a rule that every knight who held land owed a certain number of days' service to his domain, whether he was the King of Orkney, like Sir Gawain, or simply the heir of a local knight of the shire, like Sir Kay.

Guinevere came with Arthur to meet Lancelot and his companion, Prince Gwenbors, known to Lancelot as Uncle Dap. Gwenbors was an excitable, eccentric man with a long white moustache that quivered when he felt emotional about something, usually to do with weapons or heraldry, but also, most of all, to do with his immense love for and pride in his nephew.

Guinevere wasn't sure whether the boy Lancelot felt passionate about anything. He was tall, lean and muscular, his narrow face seeming almost too small for his powerful body, with a big hooked nose, glaring yellow eyes like a hawk's, and long, discoloured teeth. He dressed plainly, with no decorative plumes on his helmet. He barely met her eyes when she tried to speak to him, and answered questions only with, 'Yes, Ma'am,' or, 'No, Ma'am.' The only answer he didn't give a monosyllabic answer to was 'What would you like to eat for your welcoming feast?' to which he had to afford a whole three syllables: 'Anything.'

On informal occasions, any of the Knights of the Round Table could sit anywhere when it was being used as a dinner table, other than the Siege Perilous, the fated seat 180 degrees away from Arthur, and with so many of them away on quests, there was generally space for wives, girlfriends or squires to sit alongside them. On a normal night, Guinevere would have been sitting next to her husband. But at an official occasion like a welcoming feast for a new member, the king and his knights had to sit at the places inscribed with their names, and the spaces of any knights who were away were deliberately left empty.

The seating arrangements didn't reflect emotional closeness to Arthur. When Guinevere's father had given him the Round Table as their wedding present, it had already been inscribed with the names of the 100 French knights who had also been part of the wedding present, so that the places from 2.4 degrees to 120 degrees away on either side were already taken up before there was room for Arthur's old friends and family. Arthur had added 28 more names, including old friends who wanted to join him, like Sir Kay and King Pellinore and Pellinore's friend Sir Palamedes (122.4 to 127.2 degrees on the right) and three of his sister Morgause's sons, Sir Gawain, Sir Agravain and Sir Gaheris, on the other side. Now (counting Arthur himself) there were only 21 seats to be filled, one of which had just become Lancelot's.

Guinevere could have sat at a side-table near Arthur, or perhaps nearer to the newly knighted Sir Lancelot, to see how he was settling in and whether he minded being a whole 156 degrees from his liegelord. If Lancelot had been disinclined to chat, it didn't matter. If Merlin had been there, she would have enjoyed chatting to him, but when Merlin had set off for a holiday with his new girlfriend, he had hinted that he probably wouldn't be coming back.

On balance, though, she decided not to go. Lancelot was clearly uncomfortable around her, and she didn't want to make this any harder for him. She collected a tray from the kitchen and set off for her room. She could eat in private, and then maybe do some sewing or catch up on reading that book Merlin had given them while she waited for Arthur to have time to join her.

As she passed Lancelot's door, however, she heard a muffled groan. She knocked gently. A voice inside snapped, 'Go awa – I mean, hello, please come in,' with a great effort of will.

She turned the door handle with one hand, still balancing her tray of food with the other. Sir Lancelot was sitting on his bed, face buried in his hands.

'Are you ill?' she asked.

'Not – physically. Just an ill-made knight.'

'What's wrong?'

'Me. Everything about me. I don't belong here.'

'Why ever not?'

'Too ugly.'

'Have people been staring at you? Arthur says that when he and King Pellinore and Sir Palamedes first visited Orkney, his nephews couldn't take their eyes off Palamedes, because he was the first black person they'd ever seen. But no-one now thinks there's anything odd about his being here because he's black, or because he isn't a Christian, for that matter. He's just such a kind, lovely person that people can't not like him. And it'll be the same for you.'

'It won't. I'm not a nice person. I'm not even sane.'

'Arthur's best friends include two men with no noses who prefer the company of dogs to people, a knight who has spent most of his life questing after a monster because it pined away with loneliness if no-one hunted it, and a time-travelling wizard who can remember events hundreds of years in the future but often can't remember what he was discussing five minutes ago. Most of Arthur's favourite childhood memories involve being turned into various different animals. You'd have to work very hard indeed to be the strangest person here.'

'I'm not some lovable eccentric. I'm – there's something wrong with my brain. Uncle Dap is the only person who doesn't think I'm weird, and that's because he's as obsessive as I am, so he didn't mind coaching me in training for battle all day, every day since I was twelve. But he doesn't know the bad stuff.'

'The bad stuff?'

'When I came here – when I even heard that you existed – I felt like hurting you. And I knew that was wrong – it's not your fault – so I felt like hurting myself.'

'Did you try talking to anyone about this? A priest, or a healer?'

'No. What could a priest do? I already know the Bible says being angry with someone is as evil as murder, and lusting after someone else's spouse is as bad as adultery. But the law doesn't allow me to be put to death for thinking bad thoughts.'

'Maybe a mind-healer could help?' But the only mind-healer Guinevere knew was Merlin, and he wasn't here. He had tried to teach his skills to some of the knights, but it hadn't worked particularly well. When he had urged Sir Palamedes to psycho-analyse King Pellinore's monster, all that had happened was that the monster had fallen in love with Sir Palamedes and refused to be hunted by anyone but him.

The only person available here right now was her, a nineteen-year-old girl with no magic and no training as a healer. Still, Merlin said it was mainly a matter of listening, and asking the right questions. She could already guess where this was going.

'Are you in love, by any chance?' she asked, trying to keep her voice as light as possible.

Lancelot was silent for a long time, but eventually managed to mutter, 'Yes.'

'Is it – someone you've loved for a long time?'

'Yes.'

'Have you tried talking to this person? Seeing how they feel about you?'

'I can't. While I was growing up, trying to grow into a man worthy of them, they found someone else.'

'I'm sorry.'

'It's not your fault.' Lancelot had been on the verge of looking directly at her, but now he turned away again. Guinevere feared that she had probed too closely, but after a few minutes he turned back and asked, 'Do you love your husband?'

Guinevere could see that it would make life much easier for Lancelot if she said, 'No,' but she couldn't bring herself to lie. 'Yes,' she said. 'He's a very lovable man.'

'Does he love you?'

'Yes. He's a very loving man.'

'Did you – marry for love?'

'Well, my father arranged the marriage, on my side. On Arthur's side, I think Merlin told him he was going to marry me and receive a fifty-yard-wide, ring-shaped table as a wedding present. But we liked each other when we met, and we wrote to each other, and visited each other from time to time, for three years between meeting and getting married, so we'd had time to come to love each other by the time we got married.'

'Oh.'

'But talking about me doesn't help you very much, does it? Would I be right in guessing that you haven't seen your beloved, between meeting all those years ago, and now?'

'Yes.'

'In that case, you need to talk to them,' said Guinevere firmly, as if she was much older and wiser, instead of only a year. 'Get to know them, and find out whether you still feel about them, as a man, the same way you did as a young boy. Then, if you do, tell them how you feel, and find out how they feel about you, and decide where to go from there. And whatever happens, I promise you I'm on your side. I'll do anything I can to help.'

'Really?'

'Really. And in the meantime, if you came up here without having any dinner, you need to eat. Here, you can share mine.'

Lancelot gave her the faintest of smiles as he took a piece of bread. Guinevere put her arms around him in a reassuring hug. He hugged her back, bread still in one hand.

Suddenly the door was flung open. 'Is this what this is about?' growled Arthur. 'I come up to look for one of my knights, and find him – cuddling with my wife?'

'Oh, Arthur, you idiot!' exclaimed Guinevere. 'It's not me he's in love with – it's you!'

Arthur stared. 'Is this true?' he asked Lancelot eventually.

'Yes,' Lancelot managed in a strangled squeak. 'But – it wouldn't work. I told Guinevere, I'm too ugly.'

'You're not,' Arthur assured him. 'But I'm a married man, and…'

'And you're British,' Guinevere completed the sentence. 'I think I might need to explain to you a French concept called ménage à trois.'