I've held my silence long enough and see no reason why my story cannot now be told. My children are grown, everyone concerned save only my lady and me has passed beyond, and though you'd never know it by looking at me, I'm getting on in years. So is my lady, drowsing now beside the fire. Her hair-that smelled so like wild violets that I delighted to roll in its spring-bright strands during those long months when her lord was campaigning and we lay together for comfort. Ah her hair-where was I? Oh yes, (how one does wander as one gets on in years) her hair is now white as that cold stuff-snow, it's called-that sticks to the paw pads and inevitably comes around whether it's wanted or not.
Just like some people I could mention. But more about them later.
As I was saying, it's peaceful here in this simple, quiet place, and although it is drafty, my lady always has a nice fire. Of course, the idea is that we live here with the sisters because my lady has been humbled, you see, and they, she and the sisters, are supposed to be all the same, but snobbery springs eternal and my lady's rank gets us our little fire and the choicest morsels and never a cross word about me even if I choose to sleep in the chapel. A queen-even a former queen, even a disgraced queen, is still top cat.
Not that we haven't made many sacrifices. This is not as nice as the palace with its lovely fresh rushes twice a day and the delicious fur coverlets to nuzzle and knead and that little velvet cushion just for me. Not that I ever actually used the thing, mind you, but I appreciated having it reserved for my exclusive occupation nonetheless.
But those days have long since passed away, as soon shall I and my lady as well, though not necessarily in that order. Just in case I'm some day left alone I've taken as my protegee Sister Mary Immaculata the cook's mouser, a common but cheerful young calico who loves to hear of life among the quality. As well she might. For who came closer to any of them than me? Who knows better the truth behind the dreadful events that preceded the fall of Camelot, and who else fully realizes why anything or anyone worthwhile was salvaged from the entire mess? Who knows with more claw-baring conviction than I the true villain of the piece?
And who besides myself and my lady knows the deepest, darkest, most private secret of the great and fearless Sir Lancelot DuLac himself? No one, that's who. And so of course no one else is aware that this weakness in the great warrior is the crux of the entire matter. Ordinarily I would never cast aspersions on such a seemingly flawless reputation, but willy nilly there's no tampering with the plain and simple fact that Sir Lancelot was allergic to cats and it was that weakness that was both the undoing of Camelot and the salvation of my lady.
When I say allergic, I do not mean dislike leading to the genteelly martyred sniffles some affect in my presence. Oh, no. Blew up like a toad, he did. Broke out in spots as big as mouse droppings. Got so itchy he looked like he was trying to dance a pavane in a seated position. Sneezed loud enough to be heard halfway to Cornwall. And his eyes, usually so clear, swelled shut as if encased in two red pillows.
And me? I was crazy about him. He was like catnip and cream to me. Something about his scent, I expect. But particularly when I was younger, I simply could not stop myself. No sooner did he walk into the room than I twined about his ankles. No sooner did he drop his hand to the arm of a chair than I began grooming his fingers. No sooner was he seated at the Round Table than I leapt upon his shoulders and ran my tail beneath his nostrils, rubbing my face against his hair, purring like a chit of a kitten.
The other knights laughed at us and my lord the king looked rather sad that I had never so favored him, for he was very fond of cats and had given me as a kitten into my lady's service, but I was shameless. My mother always told me it is a wise creature who knows her own mind and I knew that I wanted to be with Lancelot. Not that I ever got to spend a great deal of time with him. My lady would always come to pluck me away, though often I managed to bring with me a bit of fabric or a strand of hair for a souvenir, to purr over at some later time. Lady Elaine, my lady's minion, once tried removing me and all I will say about that is that she never tried again. Lancelot himself was too polite and too afraid of offending my lady to swat at me. Also, I am quite sure he admired me from afar, for as events revealed, at one time he was fond of cats, despite his malady, and my fur is very soft and my purr is very soothing, as my lady has so often said. I used to hope that one day his iron will would overcome his unfortunate reactions to my presence.
Alas, we never had the chance to find out, for my lady, at the instigation of that beastly Elaine, shut me up in the privy tower whenever Lancelot was in the vicinity. After the time when I almost fell into the hole and had to be rescued after hanging on by a clawtip and screaming for hours before anyone heard me, I decided that my attraction to Lancelot was merely a superficial one, and whatever silly problems Lancelot had to overcome, he would simply have to find some other cat to train him out of them.
Never let it be said that I am anything but generous and patient to a fault, but I had my position to think of and my lady could not be expected to do without my services for long periods of time just because a mere knight, no matter how worthy, had what was really a rather comical reaction to cats.
So I hid. I hid in the little hollow of the crown at the top of Arthur's throne, under the Round Table, and on nice days in one of the arrow slits overlooking the moat. I particularly liked the top of the canopied beds because I couldn't be got down before I made sure the tapestries, as well as arms and faces, suffered, and I knew very well how much Lady Elaine hated mending. After a while, they forgot to look for me, and I once again assumed my rightful duties as my lady's chief confidante of overseeing the business of the castle.
I could have told them never to let those two in. Mordred and that so-called cat of his. Any cat worth the water to drown her in could have told them that Mordred was the sort of boy who torments cats with unspeakable indignities (and I should know), not the sort to share a morsel and pillow and a bit of companionship with one of us. That alone should have warned them, as I could not, but since it did not, they should have realized what those two were up to at once when that so-called cat snuggled up to Lancelot and he didn't so much as sniffle.
That should have told the humans, poor things, that something distinctly fishy was brewing and it wasn't chowder. I knew at once, of course. The creature's accent was dreadful and her manners Worse.
I was in the garden when they arrived, Mordred riding his golden steed, the creature in a basket in front of him. I was paying no attention whatsoever to traffic but was efficiently rearranging the piled leaves the gardeners had gathered. My lady, His Majesty, and Sir Lancelot were playing dominoes on a nearby bench. Mordred, sweet as pie, dismounted, lifting down the basket more tenderly, I swear, than he ever did anything. To no avail. The nasty creature hopped out, landing with a plop in the middle of my leaves, where she sat as if she belonged. Naturally, I hissed at her and told her whose territory she was invading before giving her a pawful across the nose. She did not even do me the courtesy of hissing back. She did not raise a hair, did not arch her back. She merely flipped her tail as she deftly avoided my paw, rose, and sprang' straight onto Lancelot's lap.
I crouched expectantly, quick thumps of my tail sending the leaves flying like so many gold and orange birds flushed from the flock. Soon she would get her comeuppance as he sneezed and swelled. I was not greatly surprised that no one else stirred themselves to remove her. It had been some months since I had made my private, privy-bound decision to leave the man to his own devices. I've noticed people have very short memories when it comes to who suffers what ailments, and a good thing that is, too, I suppose. But when, after several minutes, the knight's long fingers strayed to stroke her sleek black-and-red mottled fur, and his eyes didn't swell and he did not cough or sneeze, I confess I was quite insulted. To all appearances, he was unperturbed by the newcomer. To all appearances, therefore, he was not allergic to cats in general, but to myself in particular.
Not that I cared, mind you. I'd given up on the man as hopeless already. I sat washing the fur of my stomach with disdainful licks, so that he should see my indifference when he glanced my way. But he did not glance my way. While Mordred charmed Their Majesties with soft words, the tortoiseshell slitted her sly gold eyes at my lady's Champion and purred in a disgustingly ingratiating manner. And Lancelot, normally so intelligent and perceptive, called her la petite minou and fondled her ears and smiled like a complete ninny.
I entertained myself listening to Mordred, who was attempting to convey greetings from the exiled witch, Morgan le Fay, the King's sister. His Majesty did not want to hear about it. I have heard rumors that the witch was exiled for plotting the King's murder. I have also heard rumors that she once stole Excalibur and arranged for the disappearance of the king's old tutor, the wizard Merlin. Whatever the king's true reason for her banishment, to him it was an urgent one: that brave and kind man's brow sweated at the mere mention of her name.
My lady the queen nodded politely at everything Mordred said, but stretched out her hand to the newcomer in Lancelot's lap, who arched so that her head butted my lady's palm. Well! That was enough for me. I bounded from my leaf pile, not that anyone noticed, and twined about my lady's ankles, plaintively reminding her who was her trusted associate and who was not. I was poised to jump up when Lancelot, the traitor, began sneezing and snotting and, though I couldn't see for my lady's skirts, swelling, I am sure. To my great satisfaction the tortoiseshell horror was dumped from his lap and I did a bit of swelling myself and lashed for her with my front paws. Bat-a-bat-bat! I would give her, mincing her nose, which would teach her to bring it interfering into the business of others.
But once more she neither cowered nor raised a hair to attack. She simply sat there and then, as I was poised to strike, emitted the most unfeline meow. Well! Really! I halted in mid-swipe, amazed at her dreadful shredding of our mutual language. Not even her apparent origin in the country could account for such noise. Before I could administer the chastisement due such a creature, a pair of rough hands grabbed me up, nearly breaking my ribs, and flung me into the fish pond.
If I had had any delusions that Mordred contained a scrap of decency, they would have vanished at that moment.
I dashed back into the kitchen to complain to cook's mouser, who laughed at my soaked and bedraggled condition as heartily as ever did his mistress but allowed me a place by the fire. I make it a point to be always on good terms with the kitchen cat, as I may have mentioned.
From this inauspicious entrance, Mordred and his familiar, as I believed her to be, continued to ever more dastardly deeds. Mordred kept the King constantly upset, though he was outwardly polite to everyone else, especially smarmy to my lady and Lancelot. And that beast never let Lancelot alone while he was in the castle. And he tolerated her. He even seemed to like her. He never swelled at her, or sneezed at her, or broke out in spots from her. He was quite pleased with himself and with her, looking at her as if he had composed her himself.
I lay atop the canopy and watched them, mourning the ignorance of men. I knew something was wrong but I wasn't sure what until I stalked her, one night, to Mordred's lair in the east tower room.
Even as I stalked, I realized my instincts were correct and the beast was not what she seemed.
It was her scent, you see. She smelled not of honest cat musk, but of bitter herbs and nightblooming cereus.
And once behind the door, Mordred bolting it safely after her, she spoke. I knew it was her. I recognized where the accent had come from at once. Her mews were the sort made mockingly to a cat by a woman who does not care for cats. Her new voice was like this too, nasty-sweet as the smell of a rotting carcass.
"This is rather fun," she said, "But I hope you remembered my tray. I'm not about to actually eat one of those birds I've been catching for sport unless it's properly marinated, spitted, basted, and served."
"Oh, well said," Mordred answered. "And I take it I must wait until our other quarry is likewise prepared before I may begin planning my coronation?"
"Certainly, my dear. As we cats might say-patience."
I confronted her the first time I caught her alone. "See here, you, you, whatever you are. I'm onto you. And let me tell you, dearie, the pecking order is well established around here. My master is king, my mistress is queen, and Sir Lancelot their champion. He may be taken in by your mincing ways now, but if you and that pimple-faced princeling try anything with Their Majesties-, he'll make stew meat of you in a thrice, make no mistake."
"What hideous noises you make. I can't understand a word," she said, and sashayed off. I sprang for her back, feeling her tail in my teeth as I leapt. But at the last moment, she was twenty flagstones away and I in midair before I landed-and not on my paws.
It was perfectly obvious to me then who she was, of course. Any cat who could escape my claws had to be using witchcraft. And the witch most closely associated with Mordred was none other than my lord's chiefest bane, his sister Morgan le Fay.
Unfortunately, though I understand the human tongue quite well, my people are more limited when it comes to my own language and were woefully dense.
"Look at Gray Jane!" my lady laughed. "She is so jealous of Mordred's little cat she cries all the time now for attention."
Lancelot laughed and kept his distance, but the king very kindly knelt and stroked my ears. I tried even harder to tell him, and badly wished that the old wizard was there so that I might warn my good master that his old foe stalked him in a new guise.
But Merlin was long gone and I had only my own wits and skills upon which to depend, so I stalked the witch myself. Lurking silent as dust in the shadows, I stalked her, through the rushes of the chambers to the flagstones of the halls, sliding along the walls and darting into corners if she stopped and turned. Once I let her see me, but she summoned Mordred. Fortunately, he was not quick enough to catch me and I always made sure to stay well out of range of her tail. When I saw how the waving of that tail stilled a bird in flight so that it dropped so stonelike into the yard I half-expected it to clatter, I knew that the tail was her wand.
By the waving of it, and the long gaze of her eyes, she hypnotized Lancelot. I scooted in behind her as she padded through the half-open door into his chamber where he sat on the edge of his bed, his head bowed from the weariness of the day's labor and the heavy responsibilities of being the king's most trusted advisor. I dared not draw too near lest his allergies betray me, but I watched as she sprang onto the bed beside him, wriggled herself under his elbow and onto his knee, and sat gazing raptly up at him, the tail describing magic patterns in the air as she held his gaze. His hand, which had moved to stroke her back, hung in the air above her as she purred, sounding less like a real cat than like a Scotsman gargling.
But Lancelot did not know the difference. Nor, for a time, did he know anything else. When at last the witch jumped from his knee to the floor, he stood, belted on his sword, and sleepwalked to the door of the royal chamber.
The king answered. "Yes?"
"My lord, I-" he said. I darted past him into the chamber where my lady was brushing her hair. He sneezed abruptly and said. "I suppose, my Liege, I came to bid you and Queen Guinevere bon nuit and a well-deserved rest." But he was covering up. He had no idea why he was there.
I got some hint the next day of what the two malefactors were scheming when I followed the beast and Mordred to the Great Hall where the knights gathered to brag about their latest good deeds. Most of the knights never quite got the hang of virtue being its own reward!-they enjoyed topping each other with stories of who was the most modest and selfless, but usually the knight talking finished, as did Sir Geraint that day, by proclaiming, "So honest and humble was I when I accepted the purse that poor clothier begged me to take for rescuing his daughter from the dragon that I'm sure God will notice my goodness and let me find the treasure first."
"Poppycock! The treasure will be mine! I have the most calluses on my knees from praying," Sir Gawain said.
"You can show them to us all if you like, sir," Mordred said. "But I doubt you'll have as many as Sir Lancelot, who will surely have the treasure as he has the confidence of the king and queen. He is so good, in fact, it's a wonder he isn't the king."
Normally, such disloyalty would have been overridden, but with the witch sitting on Mordred's shoulder, waving her tail, gargling Rs, and gazing into the middle space among the knights, the louts didn't seem to understand that anyone was being insulted.
"In fact," Mordred said, languidly stroking the witch's tail where it hung down over his shoulder, "I shouldn't be at all surprised, you know, if he didn't try to do something about it sometime. Really, the tradition is that the strongest and most infallible should lead, you know. I wonder if anyone, even the queen, would really object. Certainly Papa-I mean, the king-doesn't seem to guard his own reputation that zealously. He practically allows Lancelot to run things as it is. And the queen seems to agree. But then, may the best man win as they always say."
Someone should have said, "Nonsense, boy. The king has already won and no one could be happier than Lancelot and the queen." Someone should have said, "How dare you sully the name of our gracious queen by even hinting that she is other than perfectly loyal to King Arthur." Someone certainly should have said, "Who does this fool think he is anyway? Throw him in the dungeon and that bedraggled piece of fur with him. Let her try to keep the rats from nibbling him." But no one did.
My position as advisor and confidante of the queen has always been a more personal than a political one for the most part, but even I know treason and accusations of treason when I hear them. Mordred and his accomplice were casting a sticky net indeed to catch the three people who ruled the kingdom. My three people.
I could not but emit a hiss of indignation at the whole scene but remembered myself in time and slunk quietly away, resisting the urge to give that mealy-mouthed Mordred such a slash across the legs he'd be hamstrung. By keeping my peace, I permitted them to underestimate me. Their mistake, of course, for it allowed me to continue my investigations.
I skulked ever so stealthily, shadowing Morgan as she bewitched that poor noble knight, using his thwarted affection for feline-kind to lure him into her clutches (well, actually, she insinuated herself into his clutches but the effect was much the same) where she mesmerized him into performing suspicious-seeming actions while Mordred continued to use his poison tongue and his sneaky charm to pollute the minds of the knights of the Round Table.
He pointed out that the Round Table, supposedly so democratic, made conversation with any but those right next to one very difficult-and Sir Lancelot always sat on the king's right hand, Sir Cay to the left, so who, after all, had a chance to talk to the king and share his good ideas? No wonder Lancelot had taken virtual control of the kingdom! And the queen, he intimated, spent too much on her wardrobe and had too many relatives in high positions and wasn't it she who had dreamed up the abysmal Round Table anyway, tables being women's stuff, and might she not be secretly in control of the kingdom and with Lancelot to provide the brawn to her brains, what did they need poor King Arthur for? And more drivel of that ilk.
The king remained suspicious of Mordred, but since the conversation always changed when he entered the room, he had no idea of the infamy perpetrated by his guest. Mordred took advantage of his befuddlement by fawning over him, the fawning looking very much like pity to the other knights. Meanwhile, Morgan La Chat would jump down from
Mordred's shoulder and go find Lancelot, who was always absent during these little character assassinating sessions, of course.
While I watched fuming, she purred in his ear and in a moment, he would rise and walk to the royal chambers or to wherever my lady happened to be, for all the world, to suspicious eyes, as if he was conspiring treason with her. Even though, once he got there, he stammered and stuttered and seemed to have very little to say while she asked his opinion on whether to use the carmine thread or the scarlet in the latest tapestry or if Sir Cay would get the most use out of a linen shirt with wool embroidery or a wool shirt with linen embroidery for his Christmas gift.
From my perch in the window or atop the canopy I would have tried to warn them, but even if it had not been futile, Lady Elaine, who had something of a crush on Lancelot (most unseemly since she was a good five years his elder and of much lower rank besides), would glare at me and I would set to grooming my paws as if I would not dream of approaching while Lancelot was present.
In the same way, of course, Morgan and Mordred couldn't truly approach while the king was present. And so, with Morgan wrapped around his neck, one day Lancelot urged the king to take a break and go hunting. He and the knights could handle any crisis that might come up.
"Yes," Mordred said sweetly. "You're looking a little tired these days, sire. And of course, you needn't worry about the queen with her champion right here to protect her." The king didn't see the broad wink the nasty boy directed at the Round Table in general.
The next morning the king set out for his hunt, carefully selecting the three best hounds. He wanted to be alone. I think his instincts were telling him what his friends were keeping from him and he was very worried, without knowing precisely what worried him.
I was worried, too. I kept close to my lady's side all the day, sprawled across her feet when she sewed and curled up in her lap when she read. Neither Mordred nor Morgan La Chat came near us, but if one of the knights passed by, he would duck his head and look away, as if ashamed to face my lady.
As Lady Elaine readied her for retirement, I grew restless and went in search of a flower pot so that I might ease myself without leaving the premises. My favorite was the captive palm from Palestine a foreign emissary had brought the king. It was kept near the fireplace in the Great Hall. A drunken party was in progress there, however. The king did not approve of drunken revelry and the knights, like mice, were playing in his absence. I would simply have to find somewhere else. I couldn't go in there now without getting stepped upon. But as I fled toward the kitchen and cook's indoor herb garden, I heard familiar hateful voices whispering.
"I still think you should come along and put them under a bit before you go to Lancelot," Mordred whined. "They don't really like me, you know. They're very snobbish about anyone who hasn't bested them in battle at least once. I'm not sure I can convince them to play peeping torn without a little magical urging along."
"I made sure a potion went into the wine," she said, and I heard the staccato beat of her tail impatiently drumming the floor. "They'll do the highland fling from the crenellation with the slightest suggestion. Lancelot's tougher. He is really such an impossible prig. So afraid of appearances. Good thing for me he is so very fond of cats and so very unable to tolerate any others but me. I'd scare him to death in my true form, but he is so delighted with his itty bitty kitty cat he just can't get enough of me."
"Hah!" Mordred commented, and swaggered off toward the Great Hall. I slunk behind Morgan La Chat and followed her to where Lancelot knelt in the chapel, praying, his sword by his side. Lately he had been troubled by his own odd behavior, going to the king's room at odd hours and seeking out the queen's company when in truth he had no interest in the colors of embroidery thread whatsoever.
Most of all, I think he was troubled by the way the other knights had been avoiding him. Like most toms, he valued the goodwill and camaraderie of his brothers-in-arms more than any other sort of relationship. Little did he think that had he spent more time with them and less with that phony feline he could have continued to lead a happy life indefinitely.
But it was not to be.
Morgan sat,upright in front of him, staring straight into his face, her tail curled like a beckoning finger. Slowly, Lancelot rose and slowly she sidled away from him toward the door, the tail all the time beckoning. Lancelot, his sword at his side, followed.
Why did he need his sword to be captured "conspiring" with the queen? And then I knew. He was not to conspire with my lady: he was to slay her! I bounded ahead of them back to the Royal Chamber, making use of the private entrance the carpenter had devised for me at the foot of the bolted door.
My lady was asleep already, her golden hair fanned out across the satin pillow, her fingers curled against her cheek. I leapt onto her chest and roared my battle cry, so that she would know I required her immediate and undivided attention. Nevertheless, the effect was somewhat more dramatic than I anticipated. She sat bolt upright, flinging me away from her so that I hit the bedcurtains, where I clung to avoid tumbling off the bed.
At that moment a loud knock thudded against the timbers of the door.
"Good heavens," my lady yawned, "what on earth is all this commotion about? Who on earth can that be? And what in heaven's name can have gotten into you, Gray Jane?"
She swung her legs over the side of the bed and I did the unforgivable, had it not been for the dire circumstances. I grabbed her feet with my front claws and would not let go until she picked me up by the scruff of the neck and flung me away again.
"Who is it?" she called. "What's the matter? Is the palace on fire? Is there a dragon in the courtyard? This had better not be a false alarm."
"C'est moi, madame la reine. C'est Lancelot. I have a matter of the utmost urgency on which I must speak to you."
"Oh, very well. But it had better be a matter of an invading army at the very least or I shall never forgive you."
I heard all this human chitchat through a bit of a daze since my lady, in her drowsy state, had tossed me against the stone wall and my head was somewhat the worse for wear. I rose on trembling paws and watched helplessly as she trudged on bleeding feet to the door and opened it. Lancelot stood there with his hand on his sword, the wretched tortoiseshell smirking on the floor beside him.
"Oh, my. It must be at least one invading army for you to come to my chamber armed," the queen said. "You'd better step inside to make your report.
The tortoiseshell came in, too, glancing around the chamber. I scuttled up the bed curtains and peered down at them from the canopy.
Lancelot drew his sword. "Madame, my regrets-" he began, and I sprang for his head, landing on his shoulder when he moved to raise the sword. He threw back his head and sneezed six times, during which the sword clattered harmlessly to the floor-harmlessly, that is, except that the heavy hilt landed on Morgan La Chat's tail and she let out a hideous yowl and sprinted back out the cat door, her tail dragging after her in a rather dashing forked lightning shape.
"Mon dieu!" Lancelot exclaimed. "My Lady, my apologies. The hour-my sword-what am I contemplat-Ahhhchoo!" He was breaking out in spots already and I was twining desperately around his face. The spell was well and truly broken, I was convinced, but I did not want to take any chances.
At that moment, the door banged open and a throng of Camelot's finest flooded in, brandishing weapons and perfuming the chamber with the stench of a cheap tavern. I jumped clear of Lancelot to let him retrieve his sword as Mordred yelled. "You see! You see! They're conspiring." I sprang for Mordred's face, at great personal peril to myself, and jumped from pate to pate of the bareheaded and in some cases balding knights, giving them something to think about besides harassing innocent queens and their hapless cat-enchanted champions.
The queen huddled against the bed curtains, but Lancelot sneezed, scratched, swelled and sneezed again, then fled to the window, gasping for air, in his pain casting only a cursory glance through red-pillowed eyes at the scene in the room. At last he was realizing that Mordred had turned his friends against him. I sprang from a shiny head, belonging, I believe, to Sir Lionel, freshly incised with a random pattern of scarlet ribbons, courtesy of my claws. In one light leap I pounced upon Lancelot's back, giving him one more good sneeze which sent the two of us out the window and, I am sorry to say, into the moat.
He swam manfully out and jumped onto the back of a golden horse conveniently saddled and tethered and let out into the outer paddock for grazing. I, on the other hand, had to crawl and climb, sopping wet, onto the shore and sit out in the freezing rain, hearing my lady's indignant cries.
After a very long interval, the drawbridge thudded down and a black and red streak ran across the bridge and stopped, no doubt wondering where that grazing horse could have gone. She was bleeding about the tail-wand and bedraggled and I was mad as-as a wet cat. I jumped on her and throttled her, giving no quarter to that injured tail, so that when she changed back into human form, she limped away from me, still kicking me off, while trying to protect her eyes and her bleeding nose while I clung to her knee.
We had barely entered the woods when she changed into a giant raven and I crashed to the ground. She dove for me, dripping feathers and gore, but thudding hooves distracted us both and in a heartbeat, I saw the horse and rider and heard the baying of hounds.
I jumped into the nearest tree as she flew away, and as the rider approached, I saw it was the king. With a last mad leap I landed upon his shoulders. Startled, he swore and shook himself, then I meowed plaintively in his face.
"God's blood, 'tis wee Gray Jane! Whatever has happened to you, you poor puss?"
Of course, he was to find out soon enough and even his wisdom could not convince the knights that Lancelot's apparent treachery with the queen had all been a great misunderstanding. He was forced to try the queen in his new courts of justice, where she was found by the jury of knights to be guilty of treason. I could never tell him about Mordred's treachery with Morgan La Chat and could do nothing but sneak into my lady's cell to comfort her as she waited to die.
The morning of her execution they led her outdoors into a chill and drizzling halflight, the dawn so troubled it was black and blue as a bruise and gray as cold iron.
I followed, jumping from one muddy footprint to the other behind the former friends who were now my lady's guards. More than once I was almost squashed or kicked by heavy boots as I looked up past robes and tunics and into grim faces, searching for allies, all the while listening for hoofbeats.
Arthur's face was averted and wet with more than mist and rain, his hair gone silver-white in the week since the queen's trial, his carriage that of a broken man. Lady Elaine, in her usual useful fashion, cried and cried and cried. The knights looked both truculent and shamefaced and more than one would have called the execution off if he could have, I think. Only Mordred glowed and gloated, though without his magical accomplice, he seemed skittish as a kitten in a kennel. Like all of us, he seemed to be listening, waiting.
My ears swiveling to the west, where Lancelot had ridden. I watched as they bound my lady to the stake with the cross in her hands. Mordred himself lit the pyre. It was slow to catch in the wind and damp and the first lit piece blew away. I squatted over it, warming my tail as I wet the flame into oblivion.
The toe of Mordred's boot caught me in the stomach and flung me onto the pyre, at my lady's feet. Mordred poked the torch at me and I sprang for the well-loved safety of my lady's shoulder as he set afire the straw at her soles.
But from there I saw them, Lancelot and his men, soldiers who loved and trusted him and would believe of him no wickedness. They battled the halfhearted knights of the Round Table, who got no leadership from Arthur or from Mordred, who fled before Lancelot's men. Lancelot rescued us with a slash of his sword that broke my Lady's bonds and set her free to jump on behind him.
Of course, he couldn't ride far with us, because of me. But when he would have flung me down, my Lady cried, "No. I will not go without Jane. She would have given her life for me and I will not let her die out here to save myself."
"Oh, very well," Lancelot said, dismounting. "There is a convent some eight miles away."
"I know," she said. "I endowed it."
"You and your cat may find refuge there. I must return to my men and lead them. There will be a great battle, you know-perhaps a war, I cannot imagine how we all fell into such a muddle but it can-can-c-c-c-fare-choo!-well."
"Farewell, Sir Lancelot," she cried.
All of those tedious historians have decried the sorry end of the lovely kingdom that was our home. And it was a tragedy to be sure that all the friendship and love and good intentions were laid to waste and came to such a sad end. But the end was far better than it might have been without my vigilance and intervention.
Some claim there was a last battle, but I have it on good authority that the battle at the pyre was the last one of any consequence, despite Mordred's best effort to stir up more trouble. Oh, there were a few skirmishes, to be sure, but since Lancelot refused to fight the king, any other conflict was purely anticlimactic. The king was broken-hearted not only because he was deprived of my lady and his kingdom, but also because his own noble ideals of law and justice had been turned against him by Mordred's attempt to destroy those he loved. He left Camelot and after a long illness retired to the magical island of Avalon, to have a good long think about what might have been if only he had done this or that otherwise.
Mordred meanwhile sat on the throne in the castle and played at being king, but everyone else went home and didn't pay any attention to his edicts and, being thoroughly ashamed of themselves, tried from then on to conduct themselves as they thought King Arthur would have liked. Since they now believed him dead, his ideas were thought to be far better than they had been when he was still believed to be alive.
Sir Lancelot implored the queen to return with him to his old estates and live as befitted her station with his family. I think she would have done it, too, but by now Lancelot was not only violently allergic to me but, thanks to the witch, had also developed a totally unfair bias against all cats.
And my lady would not, of course, be parted from me. Though I've never been able to give her the details, of course, I believe she may have been leaning out the window, looking to escape herself, as Morgan La Chat changed back into her true form as a human witch. Of course, we never talk about it. Mostly we pray and sing, work in the garden, she with her little spade and I with my paws, we sleep and we read scripture and lead a quiet life, minding our own business, modest and faithful to one another as once we were to the king and our subjects.
So naturally, I can't be sure exactly how much she has guessed, but I do know of all of the fabled participants in the fall of Camelot, only my lady and I, and now you too, gentle readers, know who really kept that sad historical incident from turning into a true and quite literal catastrophe.