The Reckless Oath We Made

by Bryn Greenwood

  As we came up the path, I could see a bonfire and some sort of a Hobbit house with a grass roof. I hadn’t known what to expect, but I wasn’t sure why we needed a tent, if there was a house. When we got to the fire, two people stood up to greet us. A man and a woman, who was wearing a nightgown.

  “Sir Gentry!” the man said. “Ever true to your word. We had begun to worry that you were delayed.”

  Then they saw me.

  “You brought a guest!” the woman said.

  Even with all that stuff balanced on his shoulder, Gentry bowed and said, “I present to you Lady Zhorzha. My lady, these folk been Sir Edrard, long my friend and brother-in-arms, and his wife, Dame Rosalinda.”

  “Lady Zhorzha! Welcome!” they said.

  When Sir Edrard came around the fire, I put out my hand, meaning to shake, but he took it and bowed over it, the same way Gentry did. Dame Rosalinda curtseyed to me, and since I didn’t know how that worked, I waved.

  “I shall make ready the pavilion,” Gentry said.

  I would have been just as happy to help set up the tent, but I stayed there and made polite conversation. Sitting around the fire, I could see Edrard and Rosalinda a little better. Gentry wasn’t all that tall, but they were adorable little gnome people. Edrard had a thick curly mustache and beard, and Rosalinda had Princess Leia hair.

  I took the water they offered me and, when I asked, Rosalinda led me into the woods, where I expected to have to squat, but there was an actual outhouse. When we got back to the fire, Gentry was talking to Edrard about sledging stones. Or I thought that’s what I heard.

  By then, the sun was down, and we sat around the fire talking until I couldn’t anymore.

  “If it’s okay, can I go to sleep?” I hated having to ask, but there I was, like always, a guest in someone else’s house . . . ish.

  “My lady, I am sorry thou hast waited and art weary.” Gentry stood up and bowed to Edrard and Rosalinda. Then he gestured for me to come with him into the woods, further away from civilization. Twice I had to stop, because going up the hill made my hip feel like it might give out on me. The second time, Gentry held out his hand. I took it, because I wasn’t sure I was going to make it otherwise. I didn’t know how he felt about holding hands, but he held on to me the whole way up.

  At the end of the path, where he let go of my hand, stood the tent. Pavilion, that was what he’d called it and, standing alone in the woods, under the moonlight, it looked like something out of a Robin Hood movie. Or like a miniature circus tent. I was so relieved when he pulled back the flap for me to go in. There were pillows and sheets, and he’d hauled all that up the hill and set it up by himself.

  He handed me the little LED lantern he’d used to light the way, and bowed to me.

  “If thou needest aught, I am without, my lady.”

  “Where are you going to sleep?” I said, because the bed was big enough for two. Sort of. Two people who knew each other better than we did.

  He pointed over his shoulder to the outside and then closed the tent flap and left me alone. I took off my shoes so I wouldn’t get the bed or carpet dirty. Then I took off my jeans and my bra, and sat down on the bed to dig through my backpack for my THC drops and a pain patch. I didn’t usually double up, but I didn’t want the pain to keep me awake thinking. After I took my dose and put the patch on, I turned off the lantern and laid back on the bed.

  Then I turned the light back on. Sometimes all I wanted was to be alone, but now that I was alone, I was miserable. I missed Marcus and LaReigne.

  “Gentry?” I said.

  “My lady?” he answered.

  “Nothing. I just wanted to be sure you were there.”

  “I am here.”

  “Thanks.”

  I turned the lantern off again and pulled the top sheet over me. I wasn’t cold, but I wanted something on me for protection. I thought about getting up and putting my jeans back on. I thought about calling for Gentry again, but I fell asleep before I could do either.

  I dreamt I was in a long hallway, with gray-tiled floors and walls. In real life, the hall wasn’t nearly as dark or as creepy, but in my dreams it was like something out of a horror movie. I’d only been there once, when I went to claim Dad’s body, after he died. I was twenty, and while LaReigne was off playing Air Force wife with Loudon, and Mom was having a nervous breakdown, I was the one who arranged for the undertaker, picked out the coffin, and planned the funeral.

  In the dream, sometimes the hallway turned into my old high school, and I was going to take a test I hadn’t studied for. Other times, I was waiting to see Dad’s body, while the prison chaplain tried to comfort me. When one of the doors opened, I knew I was supposed to go in, but I guess my brain decided I’d had enough of that particular dream and woke me up.

  For a few minutes I didn’t remember where I was. I sat up and looked around, because it wasn’t completely dark. The walls glowed white, almost like there was a streetlight outside, but it had to be the moon.

  I got up, stepped around the tent’s center pole, and opened the flap to look outside. Gentry was lying there, sleeping right on the ground.

  “My lady, art thou well?” he said. While I stood there like a dope, looking at him, he’d been awake, looking back at me.

  “I’m fine. You surprised me. I thought you were asleep.”

  “Nay. Needest aught?”

  “No. I’m just restless.”

  I didn’t know what to say, so I tied the screen flap to keep the bugs out, and went back to bed. Having the outside flap open let in a lot more moonlight, and I could hear Gentry breathing. I felt better knowing he was there. Like being alone, but not alone.

  CHAPTER 20

  Zee

  In the morning, the way the light came through the tent canvas was so beautiful, I felt a little buzzed, even though I was sober. The roof of the tent was held up by something that looked like a wagon wheel, balanced on top of the central pole. It reminded me of the parachute we used to play with in PE class in grade school.

  I wondered if this was what it felt like to jump out of a plane, because I felt like I was free-falling. I was helpless, and there was nothing holding me. Marcus was with the Gills. Mom had disowned me. I didn’t know where LaReigne was. I’d lost my job, my apartment, and my car.

  I’d felt that way after my wreck, when I was in the hospital with nothing to do except lie there. For a while it was peaceful, but eventually I crashed into the ground. I lost the baby. Nicholas abandoned me. I had no place to go. LaReigne rescued me, but living with her and Loudon was like Thunderdome with the fighting. Then the bills started coming, and the giant shit show that was my life returned to regular programming.

  Thinking about all that crap ruined my little moment of calm, so I sat up and found my phone. I called Mom first, but it went to voicemail. Probably she was still mad at me. Or she couldn’t find the phone. Or she’d tried to carry things back inside and had an actual heart attack.

  After I hung up, I looked at my call log, at that seventeen-second phone call to Uncle Alva. I didn’t even know why I’d called him, but the more I thought about it, the more tempted I was to call him again. He’d said, Don’t call me again, and I kept turning that over in my head. I hadn’t done anything for him to be mad at me. The last time I saw him, I was eight years old, right before he and Dad robbed that second bank. The one that got them caught. The one where my father killed a bank guard.

  Uncle Alva had spent six years in the penitentiary at El Dorado. The same place my father had served. The same place LaReigne volunteered. I wondered how much had changed at El Dorado in the twelve years since Uncle Alva got paroled. It wasn’t that long ago, and there were lifers there. Men who’d been there before Uncle Alva and who were still there. Men who might know something.

  He’d told me not to call, but maybe he was worried about his phone line being tapped.
Maybe his phone line was tapped. Ours had been for years after Dad went to prison. One more reason not to have a landline.

  I closed the phone app and opened my browser to check a few news sites, but they were rehashing what I already knew. They’d dug up some new photos, including one of those portrait studio shots. They’d blurred out Loudon and Marcus, but there was LaReigne with a big smile on her face. I don’t know why I kept looking, burning up my data, knowing that eventually I’d stumble across the video of Mom being loaded into the ambulance. At the end of the news clip, Gentry stepped in from the left of the screen and put his hand over the reporter’s camera lens.

  All I was doing was sitting around feeling helpless, so I got up and got dressed. The braids Elana had put in my hair had come halfway out, so I took them the rest of the way out, but didn’t bother trying to comb the mess. I stepped outside and looked around at what I hadn’t been able to make out in the dark. The tent was surrounded by trees with a fire ring about twenty feet away, and the ice chest was strung up between two trees, to keep it away from animals, I guessed. In the night, I’d thought we were hiking over rough terrain to get there, but in daylight, I could see there was a trail that led back down to the main camp.

  I followed the path, and found Rosalinda beside the fire, stirring something in a pot. Last night, I’d thought she was wearing a nightgown, but now I could see it was some kind of Ren Faire outfit. A long dress under a bustier, and a head scarf. She stood up and waved at me.

  “Good morrow, Lady Zhorzha.”

  “Hi. Is Gentry around?”

  “Sir Gentry, as he is known, hath gone a’hunting with mine husband, Sir Edrard. They shall return anon. What strange garb ye do wear. If ye would care to dress in a manner more suited, Sir Gentry hath provided garments for ye.”

  I stared at her for a couple seconds, thinking Oh shit. We’re going full-on Medieval Times. I was used to the way Gentry talked, but she sounded like she was auditioning for a cheesy movie with her fake English accent. He didn’t sound like he was acting at all. He sounded sincere.

  I must have spent too long staring at Rosalinda, because next thing I knew she was coming at me with this big wad of fabric. The whole getup was three layers deep, and it didn’t look much like hers, so apparently we were time travelers from different centuries. It started with a long white sleeveless thing like a nightgown, and over that went a long-sleeved dress that laced up the back. On top of that was another sleeveless dress that was half apron, half douchebag gym-rat T-shirt with the armholes cut out big. I couldn’t figure out what to do with the dress sleeves, because they flapped open when I moved my arms. While I was standing there trying to find a way to cuff them back, Rosalinda brought out a needle and thread, and sewed me into the dress from my wrists to my elbows.

  “Thank you for, uh, loaning me some clothes,” I said. Never mind I had my own clothes that she’d more or less forced me to take off out in broad daylight.

  “Nay, lady. Sir Gentry had this cotehardie made for ye and of the very best quality.”

  Honestly, it spooked me a little. There was a time when Gentry could have legit planned to invite me for his Camelot camping adventure, but that window was small and long past. He’d been waiting two years for this, or he’d made plans on the off chance that someday he would need to rescue me. It made LaReigne’s joke about him being my stalker less funny, and it hadn’t been that funny to begin with.

  I managed what I hoped looked like a smile, because what else was I going to do? In Wichita I was homeless, and at least here, Gentry was making decisions for me. Even if he was a stalker, he wasn’t a creep. Creeps didn’t let you sleep unmolested in their tents while they slept outdoors. My creep ex-brother-in-law didn’t even let me sleep on his couch without trying to mess with me.

  I spent the morning hanging out with Rosalinda, making half-hearted efforts to participate in what she called huswifery. I stirred a pot over the fire that smelled like nasty soup but turned out to be soap. Then I helped hem a dress, which was about a million stitches and made my fingertips raw. At first the whole situation was like a hell dimension of camping and home economics, but after a while it was soothing. Plus Rosalinda seemed super happy about me being there.

  “I confess it, lady. We did betime wonder if ye weren’t a fancy of Sir Gentry’s imagination. To see ye art real, ’tis a delight. I hope ye will come again.”

  “Well, it’s complicated.” That seemed to be my go-to for Gentry, but I didn’t want to embarrass him by telling his friends we weren’t dating, if they thought we were. I settled for: “We’ll see if he invites me again.”

  “Sooth, ’tis a joy to have another lady to while the time with,” Rosalinda said.

  “Do they usually just leave you here?”

  “Oh, ay. There are ladies who enjoy the knightly life, but I am not inclined to tromp after the lads upon the hunt.”

  I was 99 percent sure she didn’t mean “hunt” literally—like the way LaReigne called grocery shopping “foraging”—right up until Gentry walked into camp carrying a rabbit and three pheasants. He was dressed up all Ren Faire, too. A big poofy blouse with a vest over it, a pair of pants that only came to his knees, and soft leather boots that came up over his ankles. Seeing me by the fire in my huswife getup, I think he didn’t know what to do. He waited until Edrard caught up with him before he came to the fire.

  “I see ye have had a successful hunt,” Rosalinda said, and then in this straight-up medieval Peg Bundy voice: “More so than mine own husband.”

  Edrard rolled his eyes and ducked into Mud Manor, which by then I knew was their house. That was why Gentry had a pavilion.

  “For a common meal among friends,” Gentry said, as he took off what he had slung over his back, which was a goddamn bow and a bag of arrows.

  “You seriously killed three pheasants and the Easter bunny with a bow and arrows?” I said. Gentry looked down at his homemade instruments of death. Was he embarrassed?

  “Oh, ay. Sir Gentry is a skilled hunter,” Rosalinda said.

  “I’m impressed.” I really was. Less so with the actual dead things, but that he’d got them dead with arrows. I was even more impressed that he was the one who cleaned them, brought them back to the fire without their fur and feathers, and put them on a spit to roast. I’d worried that might turn out to be huswifery, and I didn’t want to skin and gut a rabbit. My people are citified white trash. We’re more familiar with opening dented cans of off-brand Spam from the food bank than skinning varmints.

  Once the animal parts were cooking, Rosalinda put some actual soup on to cook, and Gentry chopped up some vegetables. I hoped it would turn out to be edible, because I’d apparently time traveled too late in the day to get breakfast.

  While we waited for lunch to cook, Gentry sat down beside me on the log bench I’d been occupying all morning.

  “Thou art well, Lady Zhorzha?” he said.

  I was tempted to answer with Rosalinda’s “Oh, ay,” but I didn’t want him to think I was making fun of her. Even though I was.

  “I’m okay. Thanks. And thanks for this, um, dress thing, I guess. I mean, thanks for sure, but I can’t remember what it’s called. I’m gonna shut up now.”

  “’Tis a cotehardie. And hearen thy voice me liketh. Thou seemest well,” he said down into his chest. “Wouldst eat of an apple?”

  “Oh god, yes. I’m starving.” I was so hungry I couldn’t even be polite about it.

  “Dame Rosalinda offered thee no bread to break thy fast?”

  He didn’t make me answer, because it was obviously no. He took a knife off his belt and an apple out of his pocket. He cut it in half, flicked the core into the fire, and pared a slice off for me. While I ate, he kept cutting slices and passing them to me on the tip of his knife.

  “You don’t want any?” I said, as I scarfed another piece.

  “Nay, lady. I regr
et thou wast famished this day. ’Twas not my wish.”

  “It’s okay. I’m fine.”

  Right then it was true. I ate the whole apple, and I sat in front of the fire, not thinking about anything. After the meat was cooked, everything got ladled into bowls, and I could see that our medieval midday meal was ramen. Seriously. Ramen noodles in soup with grilled vegetables and meat on top.

  Since there wasn’t a table, I spent a few minutes watching Gentry’s technique, which was resting the bowl on his leg while he used chopsticks for noodles and things. In between he picked the bowl up and drank the soup.

  “So, did they have chopsticks in medieval times?” I said.

  “I should think in Asia they did, though certainly neither Saxon nor Dane had them. We take an ecumenical approach to our reenactment,” Edrard said, which didn’t exactly answer my question and added a vocabulary word I didn’t know.

  “I thank thee, Dame Rosalinda, for this meal,” Gentry said.

  “Nay. I thank thee, Sir Gentry, for having secured meat for our soup,” she said.

  “I declare this mystery meat ramen most excellent,” Edrard said.

  “It’s not exactly a mystery,” I said, even though I’d been trying not to think about that.

  “A staple of medieval Japanese cuisine: phabbit ramen. And now for a recitation. Things which Sir Gentry hath killed and eaten, parts one through nineteen.” Edrard hummed a little note and then half recited, half sang: “Pheasant, rabbit, bison, songbird. Prairie chicken, lesser and greater. Catfish, trout, carp, duck, duck, goose. Rattlesnake, quail, vole, elk, deer, moose. Unicorn, selkie, ogre, dragon. Pegasus, phoenix, elf, and griffin.”

  “Nay, Sir Edrard. Thou makest me a great villain. I have ne killed ne eaten so many creatures,” Gentry said, but he was laughing. That was new. He was normally pretty serious around me.

  After lunch, I got to see the inside of Mud Manor, when I helped Gentry wash dishes. It was sort of half hut, half trailer park. The inside walls were made of the same mud-looking stuff as the outside, except they were painted white. There was a fridge and a kitchen sink, but no stove, unless I counted the fireplace. Helping Gentry mostly involved me standing there with my sleeves sewn closed while he washed and rinsed. I took the chance to do a little spying, and looked in at the bedroom. They had a futon and a cupboard. Little nooks and crannies were set into the mud walls, and they were full of books and bottles and crystals and shit. Except for the shelf where there was shampoo and toothpaste and a box of tampons. It hit me then: Edrard and Rosalinda lived there. They weren’t camping out. It was their home all the time.