Chapter Six
Autumn 497
A fiery shower of reddish-orange leaves fluttered from the oak trees surrounding us as I looked out over the assembled men, many of them my friends, all of them my sworn subjects. From their number I had finally chosen my champion, and they were here, in a sacred grove protected by the Druids, to hear his name declared in one of our few rituals that mingled the secular with the sacred.
It had been my right, or more accurately, my responsibility, to choose a champion from the moment I was crowned queen. Arthur could not serve as both king and champion because doing so would have divided his loyalties between his wife and his realm, so I needed to choose a protector. But a champion was more than a bodyguard; he was in essence an extension of my will, vowed to follo
