???????? Chapter ii : Guinevere's Oath ????????
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Lady Guinevere was accompanied by King Arwen's most esteemed knights.
They embarked on a quest to locate the missing prince.
Among the most esteemed among them was Sir Olewain of House Arundell.
A knight of Aridian descent, an ancient and patricious race originating from the eastern desert expanses.
A region where empires burgeon and decline in pursuit of refuge amidst oases and decadent trade routes.
They usually are statuesque in stature. They possess skin of a dusky hue.
Their noses of aquiline refinement and hair of the darkest ebony.
Though Sir Olewain bore features of a Verdesaintean.
Possessing fair complexions, yet the hues of their hair did oft vary, influenced by the lands from whence they hailed.
His mother was of House Taliesion. Following their distinctive auburn.
Her initial clue was the grotto, sullied by the wetnurse's attire.
The torchlight was flickering in a most agitated fashion.
It danced upon the Grotto's dewy, melancholic walls.
Sir Olewain led onwards with his blade drawn.
Yet twas Guinevere herself who proceeded with utmost resolve.
She paid no mind to the searing pain in her side and the blurring of her vision as she drew each ragged breath.
She was guided by the subtlest olfactory clues.
Not the expected incense or stone but a delicate, milky fragrance akin to that of a newborn babe mingled within the air.
Metallic essence of black peat mud, reminiscent of that upon Marged's skirt.
"Observe!" Guineveree exclaimed as she gestured towards a gathering of fern.
It occludes a slender limestone fissure that is proximate to the springs.
"The hounds, if you please! Fetch forth the hounds!" She ordered.
The King's hounds did surge forth with subdued growls to ascending, frantic and whining scratches.
They were against a substantial wooden crate.
Which was settled within the dim recesses. There it was a vegetable crate, unrefined and splintered.
It was partially concealed by a dampened wool cloak.
Perhaps to suppress any untoward sound.
Sir Olewain, with a calculated sweep of his boot, displaced the verdant fronds.
His countenance was a rise of escalating dread.
Though his hand had commanded armies, it now faltered to reach the lid.
Beset at the mere prospect of its contents.
"Pray Recede, Your Majesty..." he entreated, his voice faltering.
"Should they have...should he be..." Olewain's voice faltering ever further.
"Pray! make way!" Guinevere directed, though it was far from a mere supplication.
She swept past him, her delicate nails momentarily entangled with the rugged timber as she raised the lid.
The stillness was profound, bar the measured cadence of water falling from the cavern's apex.
Within, enrobed in coarse sacking that had roused his tender skin to a raw blush, reposed the Prince.
His lips were cerulean from the insidious damp. His diminutive chest labouring in shallow and uneven ascensions.
He uttered no cry. He was far too cold to summon the vigour for tears.
Instead, she delicately retrieved the diminutive, trembling baby.
Cradling it against her bare flesh, ensconcing it within her girdle proximately to her very heart.
She then gracefully subsided onto the sodden earth, assuming a protective posture as any mother would.
Her body's warmth permeated across the shivering baby.
"He lives..." she whispered with a broken and jagged voice. "He lives! Providence be praised!"
Sir Olewain, upon bended knee, knelt in the mire beside her. His gaze fell upon the crate.
A sepulcher intended for a child yet living. He glares upon the wet nurses, whom the knights had conveyed to the Grotto.
Marged's countenance, once only pale, now bore the pallor of a specter.
Chillingly translucent. She realized, with profound horror.
The wrath of the queen was soon to follow.
He arose, his shadow cast long and ominous upon the cave's rugged walls.
No longer did he resemble a regal Knight, but rather a dreaded grim reaper.
He turned his gaze towards the other knights present.
"Chain them!" Sir Olewain commanded. His voice resonated like a death knell against the stone.
"Secure them within the dungeon cells! Uncover the source of their funds for that crate.
Should a single splinter thereof be discovered within the palace!
I shall demand the head of every man who laid hands upon it!" Sir Olewain followed.
Guinevere eschewed the guards' assistance.
Erect, she clasped the child to her bosom.
Her vision drawn to the distant luminescence of the cave's mouth.
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"The trial may bide the sun's ascent..." she declared, her tone now glacial and clear.
"Tonight, I am but a mother. Upon on the morrow, I shall resume my station as Queen.
And may providence have mercy on those who have conspired!" Guinevere remarked, a tear finally descending from all the emotions she held back.
At the break of dawn, the castle's court stood frigid at the expanse of cobbled stone, heavy with consequence.
Guinevere stood on the dais with her posture a testament to unwavering resolve.
She was adorned in a silken girdle of midnight velvet, reminiscent of a fresh contusion, and her son.
Rescued from a damp crate within the Grotto, slumbered soundly in a cradle, attended by the knights.
Including Sir Olewain. The wetnurses knelt upon the rushes, their hands bound by heavy manacles.
Looming amongst the crowd gathered at the court was the true orchestrator of this scheme.
Duke Gruffyd
Cousin to the King himself, whose ascendancy to the throne would have been assured had the Prince 'departed'.
He maintained a dignified silence throughout the court's discourse, lest suspicion begin to sniff at his handlings.
Guinevere, addressed the assembled court with utmost poise.
Her pronouncements were magnified by the court's silence.
"You speak of maternal madness?" she intoned, her gaze sweeping across the line of trembling wetnurses.
"You calculated that my body's weakness would be mistaken for my mind's decay...
You wagered upon a maternal reticence!"
Whereupon, she stamped her left foot resoundingly.
It compelled the wet nurses to prostrate themselves before the cobbled floor.
Descending from the platform, the silk of her girdle hisses against the floor like a serpent coiled
She paused before Marged.
"Lift your head!..." Gwinyvere intoned, her voice a thunderous growl.
Her eyes fixed upon Marged with the chilling regard of an executioner poised with their instrument.
Marged, her composure slightly ruffled, lifted her gaze to meet the queen's.
"For the transgression of abducting a Royal Prince...
The law stipulates a sentence..." quoth Guinevere, with an icy resolve.
"But for the crime of attempting to drive a mother to the executioner's block using her own grief as the axe...
This sentence is too swift." Guinevere resumes. Her icy resolve now stipulated into an iceberg.
Guinevere directs her gaze towards the King, then returns it to the court.
"You shall be spared the noose...You shall each forfeit your tongues!
Instruments that are so readily dispensing falsehoods!
The remainder of your days shall be spent ensuring everybody be spared from your lies!"
Guinevere declared with complete condemnation.
King Arwen stepped forth, placing heavy hands on Guinevere's shoulders.
A public avowal, indeed.
His skepticism had now dissolved.
He would stand beside her against those who dared perpetuate these vexing accusations besetting the court.
His gaze swept across the court, his voice resonating with authority.
"Mark well!" declared Arwen.
"That the Queen's decree is mine own! To conspire against Her Majesty's tranquility is to conspire against the very throne!"
Guinevere, however, did not find solace in the King's pronouncement.
She had indeed proven her innocence. Yet a harsh truth had been unveiled.
Within those very halls, her maternal affections were a weapon readily turned against her by those of ill intent.
In the recesses of her mind, she harbored the conviction that the true adversary remained at large.
Thus, she orchestrated a scheme to influence the wet nurse's fate, in the earnest hope of unmasking the mastermind behind the plot.
From that fateful juncture forward, a palpable unease was unleashed amongst the dukes.
From her elevated vantage, Guinevere observed with her child nested closely.
Swaddled in a sling of the finest reinforced Aridian silk.
The court stood aghast. A bereaved mother was anticipated.
Instead, a lioness arose from the ordeal. The King's Council, once given to interruption.
Now succumbed to silence upon her entrance.
Ere the wetnurses were sentenced to the salt mine, Guinevere mandated a final audience.
She did not dispatch the Royal Inquisitor. Rather, she herself descended the spiraling stone steps to the dungeon.
A damp, lightless chamber below the foundations.
Yet to her astonishment, the wet nurses were strangled within the dungeon cells.
Guinevere forthwith summoned the guards.
Sir Olewain was among the first to breach the dungeon cells with a mace.
"Heavens forfend! Someone is most assuredly determined to preserve secrecy of their schemes..."
Sir Olewain remarked.
Guinevere thenceforth stood erect.
The conspiracy extended beyond a mere concealment.
Its reach was beyond the castle walls.
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