by Cynthia Hand
His heart was pounding from more than just the exertion of the fight. This whole sparring-with-a-girl situation made him wildly uncomfortable. It wasn’t proper, of course. What if he were to hurt her? But Gran had said that was nonsense and sent them outside to “work up a sweat.”
Right. Edward was definitely sweating now. Gracie was making sure of that, what with the distracting trousers that hugged her in all the right places as she parried and thrust at him, her eyes bright and cheeks flushed, the sheen of her own perspiration on her forehead and what glimpses of her neck he could see around the tumble of black curls. It was outright unfair, he thought. How could he be expected to concentrate?
“Your Majesty.” She grinned and swiped at him again. He struck back at her lightly, a series of moves designed to impress her with his vast knowledge of swordplay, and she retreated.
“You’re not bad. For a girl,” he said.
Her next blow glanced off his shoulder, not hard but certainly unexpected. Somehow she’d made it past his superior defense techniques, but it must have been blind luck. He darted away, regained his footing, then advanced on her again. She retreated. She was open; she left him all kinds of vulnerable places to strike. Still, he could not bring himself to really hit her.
“Come on, Sire,” she scoffed as his broom gently grazed her leg. “Enough with the chivalry.”
“My lady,” he said gallantly, “I’m willing to stop whenever you are. Perhaps you’d be better off sticking to more womanly pursuits, like embroidery or music or—”
She bashed him in the ribs. If it’d been a real sword in her hand, instead of half of a broken broomstick, he would have been done for. As it was, he went to his knees, the wind knocked out of him. She rapped his hand then, hard enough that he dropped his broom, and she kicked it out of the way. Before he could reach for it, she lifted her foot and sent him sprawling into the grass. When he looked up, the blunt end of her broomstick was at his throat.
Beaten. By a girl.
Inconceivable.
His mind whirled with excuses. He was still getting over the effects of the poison, of course. His twisted ankle remained a bit tender, not to mention the dog bite on his leg. A broom was not the same as a good sword in your hand—it was a poor replacement, in fact, different to balance, difficult to hold. The sun was in his eyes.
“Do you yield?” she asked.
He laughed up at her and rubbed his knuckles where she’d struck him. “Hey, that hurt.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry, Sire,” Gracie said, but she didn’t look sorry. “Now, does England yield?”
“To Scotland?”
“Aye.”
“Never.” He grabbed her broom, a move he’d never be able to pull off with a real sword, and pulled her down to him. They wrestled, which gave Edward some lovely opportunities to touch her, to feel the gentle curves of her body against his. But Gracie was a wild thing is his arms, and not in the good way (although it certainly wasn’t in a bad way, either). Within moments she’d somehow managed to flip him and was sitting on his chest, pinning his arms.
Inconceivable.
“Do you yield?” she asked breathlessly.
He was going to say no again, but then he got looking at her eyelashes, which were so long that they cast shadows on her rosy cheeks. And he knew he’d say yes to just about anything she asked of him.
“Yes,” he conceded. “I yield.” He looked up at her, panting. “I’m a bit rusty, I’m afraid.” That and, before now, people usually had let him win.
She got off him and picked up her broom. He tried not to look disappointed.
“You’re getting better,” she said, although he knew she wasn’t referring to his fighting, but his condition in general. He was getting better. Even after a mere two days at the abandoned castle under Gran’s torturous but effective care, his body felt stronger, his thoughts clearer. He hardly coughed anymore.
He was going to live.
Gracie reached down to offer to help him to his feet. “Do you want to make a real go of it now, Sire? Are we done playing with our dolls?”
“Call me Edward,” he said, scrambling up without her help.
She dropped back into fighting stance. Edward grabbed his broom out of the grass. He wiped sweat off his brow and smiled.
“Take that, you beef-witted varlet!” He made an honest try at hitting her this time. She dodged easily, almost skipped out of his way. Edward had the sudden suspicion that up to now she’d been going easy on him.
“Who are you calling beef-witted?” she laughed at him. “Your mother was a hamster, and your father stank of elderberries!” And away they went, whirling and stabbing with their brooms, almost dancing as they moved about the field.
She was good. Really good.
“Where did you learn to fight like this?” he panted as she nearly disarmed him again. Not for the first time it occurred to him that in spite of the hours he’d spent in Gracie’s company, he still knew next to nothing about her.
She tossed her hair out of her face, then brought her broom down hard against his. He only just managed to push her off.
“It was just something I picked up along the way,” she answered, as slippery as ever when it came to this type of question. “I prefer knives, though. Nothing beats a sharp knife in your boot.”
“Along your way to where?” he pressed. “Why are you in England?”
“Mind your own business!” She jabbed at him with her broom, but he parried. “You beetle-headed, flap-ear’d knave!”
A laugh burst from him. “You cankerblossom!” he cried, aiming a blow that made her duck. “But seriously, Gracie. Don’t you think it’s about time you told me something about yourself?”
“What you see is what you get, Sire.” She gave him a quick bow, then swung at him again. “You poisonous bunch-backed toad!”
Sire, again. He might have preferred toad.
“Enough.” He sighed, then suddenly threw his broomstick to the ground. “I don’t want to play games anymore.”
Gracie lowered her own broomstick uncertainly. “Sire?”
“Perhaps you’d better be on your way, Gracie. I appreciate all you’ve done for me, but I’m sure you have better things to do than play at swords. You said you would see me to my grandmother, and you did. You don’t have to stay.”
His heart was beating fast again. He was taking a gamble, he knew. Calling her bluff.
Her eyebrows came together. “You don’t trust me? After everything?”
“I want to trust you, really I do, but I don’t know you,” he said. “I’m grateful for what you’ve done to help me, but I don’t understand your reasons for doing so. You could be a spy for Mary Queen of Scots, for all I know.” He shuddered at the thought.
Gracie stared at him for a few tense heartbeats, her brow still furrowed, and then she let the broomstick drop to the ground.
“Fine,” she said irritably. “Come on.”
She walked to the edge of the grounds where the forest began, away from the ruins of the castle and out of earshot of anyone who might hear them. He followed. She spent a few minutes picking up pieces of wood from the forest floor and then throwing them down again, as if she was searching for something. (He hoped that she hadn’t at long last decided that he wasn’t worth all this aggravation, and was choosing a branch to club him with.) Finally, she seemed to find one she liked. She sat down against an elm tree. Edward lowered himself to the ground a few feet away. He waited for her to speak.
“You asked me once when it was that I knew I was a fox.” She drew her knife out of her boot and started stripping down the piece of wood in her hand. “I was seven.”
She was going to tell him a sad story; he could tell by the way the light had gone out of her remarkable eyes. He was tempted to stop her, because he hated sad stories, and he had no right to demand something so personal from her, but then again, there was truth to what he’d just told her. He needed to know who she was.
Grac
ie was deftly shaping the wood with her knife, her gaze fixed on her work so she didn’t have to look at him as she talked. “That night I woke to our cottage burning. We were all inside, my ma and da and brothers—I had two brothers—and they’d blocked the door from the outside, boarded the windows, too.”
“The English,” he said, and she didn’t answer, but if it’d been anyone else, he knew she would have corrected him.
“My family was all E∂ians, as I told you. My da was a beautiful red stag, and my mum a doe, which is why they got on so well. My brother Fergus was a black horse with a white star on his forehead.” She laughed softly. “My brother Daniel was a big, lumbering hound. Myself, I’d never changed before. That night was the first time.”
She fell silent. Edward shifted uncomfortably.
“The rest of my family were too big to get out of the cottage,” she continued after a moment. “Only I could squeeze out. My da told me I had to go. He said I should make my way south, to a convent in France where I had an aunt. He even drew me a kind of map, as the house was filling with smoke, and tied it to my neck with my mum’s handkerchief.”
She closed her eyes.
“Why?” Edward asked softly. “The English soldiers just . . . burned houses with people inside them?”
“They burned any place that housed E∂ians.” With her knife she stabbed at the piece of wood fiercely, chips littering the ground near her feet. The carving was taking on a shape now, but Edward couldn’t tell what. “And they burned the homes of those who would protect them.”
He wasn’t so naive as to deny that such things had happened. Under his father’s orders, undoubtedly. Edward wanted to believe that, as king, he wouldn’t have authorized this kind of abuse. But even in that, he wasn’t entirely sure. He’d been awfully hands-off in the running of the country. He’d signed the papers his advisors had thrust at him. He’d trusted them to do what was best for the kingdom.
The world felt different to him now. He felt different.
“Did you ever make it to France?” he asked.
She gave a bitter laugh. “I tried. I lost the map after the first week, so after that I just ran south until my paws bled. I nearly starved, because I hadn’t yet learned to hunt or steal. I would have died if . . .”
She stopped whittling momentarily and swallowed hard, like this next part pained her to speak of even more than losing her family.
“If . . . ?” Edward prompted gently, when she didn’t finish her thought.
She looked up and met his eyes. “If the Pack hadn’t found me.”
Edward sucked in a breath. “Oh,” he said, trying to sound like this was no big deal. “The Pack.”
“They weren’t always so bad as they are now,” Gracie explained. “In the beginning, the Pack was about securing safety for the E∂ian people. Yes, we stole and we plundered and occasionally we got into unfortunate scrapes with certain soldiers, but for the most part we kept to the shadows. We survived. We helped one another.”
She brushed an errant curl from her face. “The leader was like a father to me. He took me in when I had no one else. He taught me everything I know, and not just how to get by. He taught me to read and write. Mend a shirt. Figure numbers. Handle a bow, a sword, a knife. Carve and whittle. And he also taught me history and philosophy and the like.”
“What happened to him?” he asked, because he knew from her clouded expression that something had. Not long ago, he thought.
“He got old.” Gracie resumed her whittling. “Another man—Thomas Archer is his name—challenged him for the leadership, and won. After that things were different. Archer believes that E∂ians should do more than simply survive. He believes that we are one with nature, and therefore we should dominate it. Take what we want. Punish anyone who would challenge or harm E∂ians. Archer gathered up a group of men who become wolves, and they started to go about making trouble.”
“So you left,” Edward assumed.
“Yes.” She frowned in concentration as she began working on the finer details of her carving. “I went off one night and didn’t return. Which didn’t sit well with Archer. I was useful to him.”
“So that’s why you were so keen to avoid them.”
She coughed lightly. “Er, yes. Archer put a price on my head.”
“How much?” Edward asked.
She glanced at him. “Why do you want to know?”
“We’re short of money, of course. Every little bit helps.”
She caught on that he was joking. Her dimples appeared. “Ten sovereigns.”
His eyes widened. “Ten sovereigns! How fast can we get to this Archer fellow?”
“The Pack uses a tavern as their headquarters,” she said matter-of-factly, as if turning her in was a real possibility. “The Shaggy Dog. It’s about half a day’s ride from here, I’d say.”
She was finished with her carving. She wiped her knife and slid it gently back into her boot. Edward leaned forward to look at the figure. It was fox, which actually bore a remarkable resemblance to Gracie in her E∂ian form, gracefully suspended in the act of running.
“Is there anything you can’t do?” he asked.
“Needlepoint,” she said, smiling. She put the fox into his hand. “I can only carve foxes. Everything else I try ends up looking like a lumpy dog.”
Together they gazed down at the little wooden fox. “It’s nice,” he murmured. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I only have one more question, then,” he said.
She nodded. “Ask it.”
“If the English killed your family, forced you from your home, hunted you, hurt you at every turn, then why did you help me? And don’t give me that rot about being a friend to the pathetic creatures of the world. Tell me why.”
It was the first time he’d ever seen her look embarrassed. She gave a little sigh. “The truth?”
“The truth.”
“I liked the look of you.”
He sat back, amazed. He thought (although he wasn’t entirely sure) that she meant that she’d found him good-looking. “You liked—”
“You had kind eyes. A nice smile.” She was blushing.
This was wonderful, wonderful news. “Have you seen your own eyes?” he said impulsively. “Green like . . . forest moss.”
“Moss?”
“Like pools of . . .” He cursed himself that he was not more of a poet.
“Yes?” Her lips twitched as she clearly tried not to laugh at him.
“Beautiful eyes,” he stumbled on.
“Pools of beautiful eyes?”
“Yes. Exactly. And your hair. And your smile, as well, is so . . . And you’re funny and clever. And brave. I’ve never met a girl like you.”
“Oh, I’m not so very brave.” She was looking at him. That way. He could smell her, the lavender soap from Gran’s bathtub mixed with a woodsy smell that never seemed to leave her.
He glanced down at her mouth. He couldn’t help it.
And (miracle of all miracles) she looked down at his.
He wet his lips nervously. What if he didn’t do it correctly? What if their noses bumped? What if she found his lips chapped? What if his breath was foul?
“Gracie,” he murmured, her name a kind of music on his lips. “Grace.” Their faces were close. Almost close enough.
His heart started to beat like a war drum. He inched even closer.
“Sire,” she breathed. “I—”
“Please call me Edward,” he said. “Things don’t have to be so formal between us.”
Before he lost his nerve he reached out and tucked one of her wild curls behind her ear.
He leaned in. This was it. His first kiss. His first k—
“BOY!” yelled a distant voice. “WHERE ARE YOU, BOY!”
Grace drew back abruptly. “Your granny is calling you.”
“She can wait,” he said.
“IT’S TIME FOR YOUR MEDICINE!” Gran called out.
; Gracie jumped to her feet. “You should go in.”
“BOY!”
She hastily brushed off her trousers. “Besides, I just remembered some chores your sister wanted me to get done. Some very important chores. Full of . . . tasks.”
“Tasks?” Edward said, doubtful.
“Yes, tasks. Lots of them.”
“Gracie,” he started as she backed away from him. “Wait.”
“GET IN HERE, BOY!”
He watched helplessly as Gracie set off toward the keep, almost at a run.
“BOY!”
At that moment we should confess that Edward briefly considered murdering his dear sweet grandmother. And he might have gotten away with it, too, on account of the rest of the world thinking the old lady was already dead.
When he entered the keep, Gran was waiting for him with one of her nasty potions.
“Ah, there you are, boy. Drink up.”
“I wish you’d stop calling me boy,” he muttered.
“And what would you have me call you?”
“I’m a man,” he said.
She threw back her grizzled head and laughed heartily. “That’s cute. Tell me another one.”
She handed him a steaming goblet. He protested—How much of this stuff are you going to make me drink, anyway? The poison is gone, isn’t it? This tastes like rotten apples—but she made him choke it down. Gran had made him suffer through many terrible things in the name of ridding his body of the poison. The first day, in addition to the rotten apple brew she made him guzzle by the jugful, she’d forced him to stand for twenty minutes under the spray of an icy waterfall, then bathe in a tub of boiled milk. On the second day she’d wrapped a chicken gizzard around his neck, stuck a lump of charcoal under his tongue, and made him say the alphabet backward.
“What was the alphabet part for?” he’d asked after he finally reached a.
“Nothing,” Gran had chortled. “I just wanted to hear you say it.”
Gran delighted in torturing him.
“And when you’re done with that, go see your sister. If you’re not feeling too manly to speak with a woman,” Gran chortled now as he gulped down the last of the potion.
He did what she told him, but only because he’d been wanting to talk to Bess anyway. Not because he was a little boy who was scared of his grandmother.