Lady Lynette the Damsel

Lynette was the daughter of a noble house from the legendary land of Lyonesse, the sunken kingdom off the coast of Cornwall that would one day vanish beneath the waves, and she was sister to Dame Lionesse, the lady whose castle was besieged by the Red Knight of the Red Lands, and to Sir Gringamore, the knight who would later abduct Gareth's dwarf to discover his true name. When the Red Knight, a tyrant of terrible strength who had sworn to kill every knight sent against him, laid siege to Castle Dangerous and trapped Lionesse within, Lynette rode alone to Camelot to beg for a champion. She arrived at the Pentecost feast, the greatest gathering of the Round Table, the fellowship of knights gathered at King Arthur's court, and asked for the noblest knight in Christendom to rescue her sister. But she refused to reveal Lionesse's name, and Arthur, bound by his own custom, would send no knight on an adventure without knowing the lady's identity. The court fell silent. And then a tall young man with white hands, who had spent a year in Arthur's kitchen, stepped forward and asked for the quest.

Lynette was furious. She had asked for Lancelot, the greatest knight in the world, or for Gawain, the most honoured knight of the Round Table, and Arthur had given her a kitchen knave called Beaumains, a name that Sir Kay, Arthur's sharp-tongued steward, had given him in mockery of his uncalloused hands. She reviled him from the moment they left Camelot, calling him a scullion, a kitchen page, and a boy unfit to carry a knight's shield. She mocked his horse, his armour, and his silence. Yet Beaumains answered her only with courtesy and meekness, and as they rode through the wilderness she began to notice things she did not wish to admit: that he fought with a skill that matched any knight at court, that he spared his enemies when honour allowed, and that he bore her insults with a patience that was itself a kind of strength. By the time they reached the castle of Sir Persant of Inde, she had relented, begged his pardon, and warned him sincerely against the dangers ahead.

At Castle Dangerous, Lynette watched from the walls as Beaumains fought the Red Knight of the Red Lands from noon until evening, their armour hacked to pieces, their swords notched and broken. When Beaumains was brought down and the Red Knight stood over him, Lynette shouted from the wall, reminding him that Lionesse was watching and that his courage must not fail. Her voice stirred him to rise, and he turned the battle and won. After the fight, it was Lynette who staunched the blood of both men, who tended their wounds with the skill of a surgeon, and who revealed to her sister that the kitchen knave was in fact Gareth of Orkney, the king's own nephew. But her greatest service was yet to come, and it would require magic rather than medicine.

Gareth and Lionesse fell in love at once, and like all young lovers in the flush of first passion they conspired to lie together before their wedding. Lynette, discovering their plan, was displeased. She thought her sister overhasty, and she knew that the honour of their house depended upon Lionesse's virginity at the altar. Using sorcery that she had never before displayed, she sent an enchanted knight to attack Gareth in his bed at midnight. Gareth cut off the knight's head, but Lynette appeared, took the severed head, and with an ointment and a salve stuck it back to the body, bringing the knight back to life and hiding him in her chamber. The next night Gareth hewed the knight into pieces and threw them from the window into the castle ditch, but Lynette fetched the pieces, anointed them, and set them together again. She told Gareth that she did it all for his honour, and for theirs, and she would not let them ruin themselves with premature lust. Only when Lionesse agreed to reveal herself at a tournament and Gareth proved his worth before the whole court did Lynette relent, healing Gareth's wounds with her salves and arranging the tournament that would make his name immortal.

At the tournament of Kink Kenadon, Lynette rode her ambling mule between the camps, carrying news, tending wounds, and finally riding to King Arthur to tell him that Gareth and Gawain were fighting each other on a mountain, two brothers who did not recognise each other through their armour. She brought Arthur to them, and the brothers were reconciled. The story ends with a double wedding: Gareth married Lionesse, and Lynette married Gaheris, Gareth's brother, in a ceremony that united the houses of Orkney and Lyonesse. After that, Lynette vanishes from the chronicles, her work done, her sharp tongue silenced by marriage, her sorcery retired to the domestic arts of a knight's wife. But the memory of the Damosel Savage endures, the damsel who tested a knight with insults and found him worthy, who healed what she had wounded, and who guarded her sister's honour with a ferocity that no man could match.