(no subject)
It always felt a little as though her father gave her away. She always preferred horse-riding to needle-point. After her mother died, her father married a woman ten years older then his eldest child. It might have been easier if Morgana had not been so
beautiful, as well. If she'd borne a daughter, she'd have named her Rhiannon, for her mother. Silver and gold, but she always preferred the rock, and the heather. He was the first man to ever make her feel small. She loved Merlin so well before wicked Nimue put him in his cave forever. When Arthur and Lancelot were away in France, she went swimming in the lake and, just for a moment, she wished that she'd drown. Her dowery was wool and Welsh gold.
She learned to ride almost before she could walk. In the autumn, they made love in the fallen leaves in a walled garden to which only she had a key. She came some of the way from her father's house on a flat bottom barge on the Avon. Her first horse was named after the west wind. When she was young, she danced on the long table in her father's dining hall when the men were off making their wars in the long days of summer. All of the knights at the court gave her their wanting eyes, at one time or another, and maybe it was the fact that he didn't that made her want him. They bought a lion to court once, and it died in its cage and nothing ever made her so sad. For a while, she bled and then she didn't bleed anymore. May is the most glorious month of the year. No matter how many years she spent in Camelot, she never got truly used to the sight of a knight in full armour, on horseback.
Fine lady or not, Jenny always bit her nails. At some times, it was like she was two women...for Arthur, she was Guen, but in Lance's arms, she was always Jenny. When she was twenty-three years old, in the summer of her love, she rode home to bury her father and Tristan, not Lancelot, rode with her. She never thought that he was ugly. Five thousand welcomes, but she could have clawed Elaine's eyes out as soon as look at her. Her most prized possession was the cheap ring of silver and agate that Arthur gave to her for absolutely no reason at all. There was a story that her hair was golden, but it was not. If she had given him son, if she could have, the only name for him would have been Uther. There was a time in their marriage when Arthur came to her bed every night. There were different songs in her youth.
In May, she would go to bed with petals clinging in her hair. As a girl, she learned to ride bare back. When she was five years old, her father took her with him to a wedding, and she saw the sea for the first time. Not long after she married Arthur, Jenny would sometimes have nightmares about the Lothian witch. Until she met Arthur, nobody had ever treated her like she might be clever. In a chest, somewhere, in a tower, in a bedroom, there's a wedding gown wrapped around a christening robe. Maybe she would never have been born if her father had been capable of producing sons. When she was a child, she fell from a horse and slept for three days. Once, a long time ago, Nimue forsaw the manner of her death. Though she could have, she never learned to speak French.
At midnight, when there could be no-one watching her, she used to swim naked in Nimue's lake. The most beautiful girl that Jenny ever saw was Mark of Kernow's new wife. Guinevere hates her Queen's crown; it's heavy, and it hurts. He might have thought that he was ugly, but she always thought that he had the most beautiful mouth. When Lionel fell from his horse, she thought her heart would break. She was born early enough to remember the blue painted warrior women. As a baby, her nurse told her stories about the dragons in the mountains. It was Arthur who taught her to read. Jenny held Lancelot's son in her arms and prophesied that he would break her heart. Her hair smelled of smoke for days.
She never liked Bors either. In winter, when the trees were bare of leaves, Jenny always thought that Camelot was the ugliest place on earth. On her wedding night, she stood naked with her hands at her sides. The scars on Arthur's back and chest told a story. There were songs that she would have sung to her children. Her mothers's grave lay beneath a granite stone, and on that stone was written all of their love. Hiraeth is a word that means longing for home. Even in the dark, she could tell the difference between them. Jenny never prayed for herself. What is it about Kings that makes them think that they can burn their unfaithful Queens?
Merlin had his limestone cave and, in the end, she had her nunnery; both prisons, and both exactly what they deserved. Once, when riding in the Autumn time, she felt the lonelinest that she had ever been, and both Arthur and Lancelot were at her side. On her wedding day, they made her presents of pearls for purity, agate to protect her from bad dreams and emeralds to guarentee faithfulness. The first time that she had sex with Lancelot, the jewels that she was wearing pressed into her skin so hard that they left a mark. In the winter, she walks with a slight limp from an injury recieved in a riding accident not long after she came to Camelot. Ever since she was a child, Jenny has had a wicked craving for sweet things. The sea in Newport was chill and stormy and not a million miles away from the colours of her youth. Gwenhwyfar was a white ghost who did wicked things. In their youth, Jenny and Arthur lay bundled in blankets at the top of Merlin's tower and made up stories around the stars. Lancelot might have thought that he was ugly, but he was a courtly dancer.
She danced with Arthur on the round table, the night it came to Camelot. For Arthur's thirtieth birthday, they wrapped her hair with green ribbon, and gold wire. Jenny is as good with a hunting bow as any of Arthur's Knights. When the stable cat rejected her kittens, Guenever hand-fed every one, and all but one of them died. When she came to Camelot, she was wearing a carnelian necklace of her mother's; carnelian to calm her temper and find her strength. In the orchard with Lancelot, she pressed her face into the grass and breathed in the scent of the wet earth. If Guinevere was the myth, then Guen was the poem and Jenny was the song. In a box on a dresser, an arrow-head, a dried flower, a length of broken silver chain. Maybe it would have been kinder if he had just kept his miracles to himself. Since she was a girl, she's bled regularly, but not enough.
She was ever torn by the demands of her screaming heart. Gather rosebuds why ye may, they say, so why do they judge so harshly? There is a dream that she has too terrible to talk about, with a baby wrapped in a funeral shroud. There was a time, later in her life, when she would make the many day journey from Newport to Avalon, to sit by the water's edge and wait for her chance to finally tell him how sorry she is. Regina quondam, and that was all that they wrote. Incense makes Jenny sneeze until her eyes water. Despite the clothes and the jewels, she was always happiest in a plain linen gown and her Welsh gold. There was a Welsh page in the court, and, sometimes, Jenny would talk to him in her mother tongue, just so that she didn't forget. In the spring, the flowers bloom thickly on the place where Arthur fell.
One of Jenny's fingers doesn't bend. When she was a little girl, her hair was white gold. Her first horse was named Bloddwedd, after the woman with a face of flowers. The pirsoners kneeling at her feet and it was the children that broke her heart. If she hadn't married Arthur, maybe there would have been another king, or a lord, or a farmer who would have loved her his whole life. It is always better to be barefoot than booted. At night, she would lie awake and trace her fingers over the place where Arthur's nose was broking once in the lists. She was fifteen when she married him, and barely thirty when everything fell apart. It painted her once she could no longer go riding on her own anymore.
There is a story that she was a Queen, and a lover, and a cheater, and a wild girl who rode horses, and all of them are true.