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scooped me up in your hands.
    That you were married to someone else meant nothing to me. Which is more important—a dead marriage or a living love? You never chose private happiness over public duty, you asked only thathappiness be there—a view from the window, a crack in the casing—that sometimes you could ease yourself out, unclothe yourself, swim in me.
    There was never a time when he called you and you did not answer. You asked—without asking—that when he did not call you, there would be no need to answer.
    Then you called for me, and no hawk was swifter to the wrist.
    I saved you from the fire, but the fire I could not put out was burning at our feet. Many times have you and I turned away from each other, our faces proud, our hearts seeming cold, and only our feet, which smouldered the clean stone where they trod, betrayed us.
    My feet, bare and clean on the cold floor of my penance, left charcoal marks where I walked. The flagstones of your heart have become hearthstones. Wherever we stood, there was a fire at our feet.
    ‘One day this will destroy us,’ you said, your lips like tongs, moving the burning parts of me.
    But I wondered how it could destroy us when it
was
us? We had become this love. We were not lovers. We were love.
    Your marrow is in my bones. My blood is in your veins. Your cock is in my cunt. My breasts weigh under your dress. My fighting arm is sinew’d to your shoulder. Your tiny feet stand my ground. In full armour I am wearing nothing but your shift, and when you plait your hair you wind it round my head. Your eyes are green. Mine are brown. When I see through your green eyes, I see the meadows bright with grass. When you creep behind my retina, you see the flick of trout in the reeds of the lake.
    I can hold you up with one hand, but you can balance me on your fingertips. Last night, angry, you split my lip with your fists, then wept over a scar from a boar.
    I am not wounded unless you wound me.
    I am not strong unless you are my strength.
    Her name is Guinevere.

    The rumours increased. There was a plot. Mordred and Agravaine warned the King against us and set to trap me in your room. I killed all twelve of those cowards who lusted after our bravery, and it is brave to love, for love is the mortal enemy of death. Love is death’s twin, born in the same moment, each fighting for mastery, and if death takes all, love would do the same. Yet it is easier to die than to love.
    Death will shatter me, but in love’s service I have been shattered many times.
    There was a day, I remember, when I rode after you in full armour and made my horse swim the Thames to find you. At the other side my horse was shot down.
    I followed on foot, but my armour was so heavy that I made little progress, and I would have gladly torn off helmet and plates, and thrown my shield away, except that a man cannot even unbuckle his armour by himself.
    Exhausted and weary, a man in iron clothes, I came at last to where you were, and killed your captors and set you free.
    Then I stretched out my arms like a little child and begged you to uncouple my harness and unlace my metal gloves. I knelt down and you lifted up my visor and kissed me.
    My armour off, it lay like an effigy of myself on the floor. I was naked with you, carapace of hero put aside. I was not Lancelot. I was your lover.
    Why then fear death, which cannot enter the body further than you have entered mine?
    Why then fear death, which cannot dissolve me more than I dissolve in you, this day, this night, always?
    Death will not separate us. Love is as strong as death.
    Your death was commanded for the next day.
    As the soldiers were tying your hands and packing the dry straw under your bare feet, I rode up on my white mare, and I cared nothing for anyone who fell under my sword. I took you up behind me and carried you to my own castle, and begged you to come with me to France, to my lands, to my heart, for ever.
    You would not break your marriage vow.

    And