The Reckless Oath We Made

by Bryn Greenwood

  “Is it time yet?” He put his knee on the bench next to me, but didn’t sit down.

  “Time for what?” LaReigne said.

  “We’re going to the zoo. To see rain forest bats,” he said.

  “Here in a minute,” I said.

  “You’re going already? I get two hours for visitation and you’ve only been here fifteen minutes.”

  “We’ll stay longer next time.” I meant we’d try to stay longer next time. LaReigne gave me her sad, disappointed face, but I pushed myself up to standing and took another drink of my Coke. Then I put my hand on Marcus’ shoulder and squeezed it. “Do you think you can give your mom a goodbye hug?”

  I did it first, to show him it wasn’t a big deal. When I let go of her, Marcus was hanging back at the table, but after a minute, he nodded. Still holding on to his pop, he took a couple steps closer and let LaReigne hug him. After maybe twenty seconds, he pulled away from her.

  “I’ll see you Saturday after next.” She was trying not to cry.

  “Probably not,” I said.

  “What do you mean probably not?”

  “I don’t think we’ll come on our next weekend.”

  “Why the hell not?” Supposedly I was the one with the bad temper, but there was a flash of LaReigne’s.

  “Because it’s not fair to him. Or me,” I said. “It’s four hours of driving on the only full day we get to spend together.”

  “And Leon is cooped up at home while we’re gone,” Marcus said.

  “And what about me?” LaReigne said.

  “You’ll be okay.” Marcus shrugged.

  It was a crappy note to leave on, but I felt like I’d gotten lucky, because she didn’t get a chance to ask me about giving Tague her letter. I hadn’t decided if I was going to tell her the truth.

  When we got back to the car, Marcus looked relieved. I gave him my phone to find directions to the zoo.

  “When are we going to visit Sir Gentry?” he said. I was glad he was focused on my phone, so he wouldn’t see me looking T-boned.

  “Well, you can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “You have to be a relative or you have to be eighteen. And you’re not either one.”

  “Oh. Will you tell him I say hi when you go visit him? And tell him I’m helping you take care of Leon. Okay?”

  “Okay,” I said.

  CHAPTER 61

  Zee

  I got there early, like the Arkansas DOC website said to, and went through all the checks. My car, my purse, me. They even swabbed my hands for drugs, so I was glad I’d quit smoking weed and was only taking drops for my hip. The system at Malvern was a lot more thorough than at Topeka, and different from when I was a kid. When I was little, the visitation area at El Dorado was a long counter with partitions and glass, to keep prisoners and visitors from touching. I remembered how Mom and Dad would put their hands up on either side of the glass, like they could somehow feel each other through it.

  The visitors’ room at Malvern was full of square metal picnic tables, with a mesh bench seat on each side. As soon as I was cleared, I filed into the room with everybody else, and found my assigned table.

  I was there for five minutes, watching inmates come in and hug their families, before Gentry came through the door with a man in a sport coat. They stood at the doorway for a few minutes, the man in the sport coat looking at me and talking to Gentry, who was looking down at the floor. Finally they walked over to my table and Gentry sat down.

  For some stupid reason I’d thought he would look the same, but his hair was cut down to his scalp. Either they were making him get a buzz cut or he was doing that himself with a razor, but he looked like a skinhead. Someone had broken his nose, long enough ago it was healed, but not quite straight. I’d expected him to look smaller, the way LaReigne did, the way my father had, but if anything Gentry was bigger than I remembered. The muscles on the tops of his shoulders bulged so that he almost didn’t have a neck, and the arms of his jumpsuit were stretched tight. He was pale, though, almost as white as me. I didn’t imagine they let him sleep outside.

  He wouldn’t look up, so I had to try to figure out how he was feeling by looking at his hands. They were both palm down, pressed flat to the tabletop, the left one relaxed, the right one tense enough that his knuckles were white, and the scar on his thumb stood out purple. I didn’t know what that meant.

  “Hey,” I said.

  He shifted in his seat, raised his left hand to tug at the collar of his T-shirt, and then started scratching the back of his neck. The guy in the sport coat stood next to our table, but I ignored him until he said, “Gentry, can you put your hand down and introduce me to your visitor?”

  I tried to give him a look that said, Can we get some privacy?

  “Gentry? Who’s your friend?” he said.

  Gentry dropped his chin closer to his chest. He put his left hand back on the table, but his right hand tightened into a fist around his invisible sword.

  “Gentry.” The guy snapped his fingers, which made Gentry flatten his sword hand back out on the table.

  “Hello,” Gentry said in a voice I didn’t recognize. “This is Lady Zhorzha Trego. This is my psychologist, Dr. Kimber.”

  “I’m so pleased to have this opportunity to meet you, Zhorzha. And not a little surprised.” The doctor gave me a cheesy smile and made me shake his hand.

  “Oh, you thought I was a voice like Gawen,” I said, and got my hand back from him.

  “I admit, I did not expect Lady Zhorzha to turn out to be—”

  “Lady Zhorzha is a waitress. She lives in Wichita. We met at physical therapy,” Gentry said.

  His voice gave me the nervous giggles. Like a cross between my cousin Dirk and Keanu Reeves—half redneck, half surfer dude. Was he messing with the doctor or with me?

  “Very good,” Dr. Kimber said and then, like Gentry wasn’t even there: “But we are trying to encourage Gentry not to use unnecessary titles.”

  “I don’t see how my title is unnecessary, since I prefer to be called Lady Zhorzha,” I said. It was a lie—I’d always felt weird that Gentry called me that—but it was a true lie. Gentry was allowed to call me whatever he wanted.

  Dr. Kimber frowned. Maybe he thought I was a dominatrix.

  “Part of what we’re trying to do during Gentry’s time with us is to encourage him to speak more normally, so he can better adapt to his surroundings.”

  “Okay.” I didn’t want to make trouble for Gentry, so I kept what I really thought to myself.

  “Well, it’s nice that you’ve come to visit, Zhorzha. I’m sure Gentry appreciates it,” the doctor said, and made me shake his hand again. Then he left us alone.

  “I’m sorry.” It was the only thing I could think of to say, and then we were quiet for a few minutes. “That’s all I really wanted to tell you, that I’m sorry, because this is all my fault. Especially what happened to Sir Edrard. I’m so sorry about that. I know he was like your brother.”

  Gentry looked over his shoulder to where Dr. Kimber was standing across the room, talking to one of the corrections officers.

  “I’m gonna go. I shouldn’t have come,” I said.

  When Gentry turned back to me, he brought his chin up from his chest. His right hand slowly squeezed his sword, and the world tilted back into balance.

  “Nay,” he said. “Thou art welcome, my lady. My heart is gladful to see thee, tho I know not how to answer thine entreaties for forgiveness, for most urgently I would ask thy forgiveness.”

  “Oh, crap, Gentry. You freaked me out with that surfer redneck voice. Why would you even ask for—what is there for me to forgive?”

  “I neglected my oath to thee. I was thy champion, and I abandoned thee.”

  “No. You didn’t. You were so brave. And you did what you had to do,” I said, but he sh
ook his head. “How are you? Are you okay here?”

  “I am well. This place be full of knaves and godless motherfuckers, but I fear them not. And the time is short enough. Mayhap only two years more.”

  “Why are they trying to make you talk funny?” That was how it felt, and not because he said motherfucker.

  “Dr. Kimber desireth that I speak as he speaketh. He biddeth me also take physic to silence my voices, but no physic has yet been made as will quiet Gawen.”

  I knew he was making a joke, but I couldn’t laugh about it.

  “And how farest thee, my lady?”

  “I put money in your commissary account, because that’s what the women in my family are good at. I don’t mean—I’m not saying you’re like my father. Anyway. I brought you a couple things. Marcus drew this for you.”

  I took out the envelope the guards had let me bring in and unfolded the drawing for Gentry to look at.

  “He still talks about you showing him how to sword fight. For his birthday, I got him one of those Playmobil sets with the k-nights.” I said it with the k. “He wanted to draw this for you, since he can’t come see you.”

  Gentry leaned forward to look at the picture, and I think he smiled.

  “How is thy nephew?”

  “It’s pretty confusing for him. The court gives me visitation two weekends out of the month, and maybe I’m going to get him for the whole month of July this summer, because his grandparents are going to France. Sometimes we go see his mother, but he doesn’t like it, which I get. I was that way about going to see my dad. And Mom, she can’t go see LaReigne. Or she won’t go, I guess. She won’t leave the house, which is a wreck. Every time I try to do something about it, she gets mad at me.”

  “Thou mayest not command a dragon do thy bidding. She hath her own ways in her own time,” he said.

  It made me laugh, when I usually wanted to cry thinking about Mom. There was something about her as a dragon that made it easier to let it go. How could I make a dragon do anything?

  “What be this?” Gentry put his finger down on the corner of the picture, where Marcus had drawn Leon. It looked more like a ghost couch than it did a dog.

  “That’s your dog,” I said.

  “I have no dog.”

  “You do if you want him. Do you remember the dog you made friends with at my uncle’s house?”

  “I remember it well.”

  “After I went back to my uncle’s house, I took the dog. He’s living with me.”

  “Methinks ’tis thy dog,” Gentry said, and he was definitely smiling. I didn’t know what Leon thought, whether he was my dog. Maybe I only wanted him to be Gentry’s dog, so I would have something of Gentry’s.

  “I named him Leon, kind of after Yvain.” After I butchered the title in French, Gentry said it right. Le chevalier au lion.

  “My lady, tell me true. Yvain, it thee liketh?”

  “I haven’t finished it yet. And I know, it’s been a long time, but I’m kind of scared to, because I’m afraid Yvain’s going to get himself killed. He’s the nicest guy, but kind of a sucker, and he’s reckless.” As soon as I said it, I remembered I was talking about Gentry’s hero. “I mean, he’s noble and very brave, but I can’t do sad endings right now.”

  “Nay, all is well. Sir Yvain liveth.”

  “Oh, that’s good.” I really was relieved.

  “And his lady wife forgiveth him. For one must have mercy on sinners, the story says. I fear thou wilt not forgive me, for I shall not return ere a year and a day.”

  I wasn’t sure what he was asking me for. Forgiveness? To wait for him?

  “Since it’s my fault you’re here, I totally forgive you,” I said.

  “Dame Rosalinda writ me that thou carried her to Bryn Carreg. ’Twas kind of thee to go in my stead. She said ye two scattered Sir Edrard’s ashes upon the northern hill.”

  “Yeah. Better cell reception up there.” I was a jackass for making the joke, but I was shitty at serious conversations, and we’d gotten to the serious stuff so fast.

  I opened the envelope again and took out the other thing I’d brought. I hadn’t been able to figure out how to print a panoramic picture, so I ended up with three pictures taped together. I unfolded them before I laid it out on the table, but I couldn’t bring myself to look at Gentry looking at the view from his tower. I couldn’t keep my mouth shut, either, because him sitting there looking at the picture without saying anything was killing me.

  “I don’t know if they’ll let you keep this, because I know they have rules about how many photos you can have, and this is really three instead of one. I’ll try and figure out how to get it printed on one piece of paper.” He still hadn’t said anything so I kept talking. “I didn’t think it would be so pretty in the fall, but the leaves—the trees with the bright orange leaves, I don’t know what they are, but they’re beautiful.”

  “They aren sugar maples,” he said, sounding kind of soft but not sad. I glanced at him, but he was still looking at the picture. “When I return, I shall tap them for syrup. And sledge more stones for the tower. I would most earnestly thank thee, my lady, for I know ’tis by thine hand Bryn Carreg was saved.”

  “Oh. They weren’t supposed to tell you that.”

  “Brother Trang cannot be trusted with a secret, and God’s blessing upon him, for I am glad to know. It giveth me hope.”

  I imagined he needed hope, because he’d had his whole life planned out, and I’d ruined it. We were quiet for a while, and I caught myself doing what I’d done as a kid, what Marcus did, watching the clock, like my visit was an hour-long prison sentence.

  “But thou hast not said how thou farest, and ’tis a matter dear to my heart. Art thou well, my lady?”

  I didn’t mean to cry. My father always got so mad and accused my mother of manipulating him when she cried. At least Gentry didn’t do that. I knew it was bad, that I had completely lost my shit, because a woman at the next table came over and handed me a little package of tissues.

  “Girl, you gotta get that all out at home,” she said. “Your man don’t need to see that.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said to Gentry. “I can’t ever make this up to you.”

  I forced myself to stop crying, because it was selfish.

  Gentry waited until I got myself under control again, before he said, “My lady, thou needst not stay if it giveth thee pain. I know ’tis a long journey.”

  “It’s not by wagon, Sir Gentry. And I don’t have to drive the whole way back today. I’ll spend the night at Uncle Alva’s. Turns out he doesn’t have lung cancer like he thought. It’s emphysema, so he’s not going to die anytime soon.”

  “I am glad to hear it,” he said. “But methinks it paineth thee to come to this place. Thou owest me no debt, for ’twas my honor to serve thee. I would that I were thy champion still.”

  “Aren’t you? I thought you were always going to be my champion.” I wished I hadn’t said it, because it seemed like I was asking for something impossible.

  “Thou hast not a new champion, my lady?”

  “I don’t need a new one. Didn’t I swear no matter what happened, I wouldn’t send you away?”

  “Yea, thou made such an oath, but I hold thee under no obligation.”

  “I wanted—I want to come see you,” I said. “It’s stupid, but I had this idea that I’d come and see you and you’d hold my hand. Or something. I don’t know. I’m not any good at this.”

  “Thou offered me not thine hand.”

  His hands were still on the table. One palm down, one in a fist, so they were like rock and paper, missing scissors.

  Both my hands were tucked under my thighs, pressed between my legs and the metal bench. I’d put them there like I was trying to keep them safe. I pulled them out and wiped them down the front of my jeans. When I plopped them down on t
he table in front of me, they were red, and the palms were waffled from the patterns in the bench.

  Gentry unclenched his sword hand and reached across to put it on top of my left hand. Then he lifted it up and put his other hand underneath mine. It didn’t look or feel like any other time I’d held hands across a table. He squeezed his together, like he was making mine into a sandwich. Then like he’d just invented holding hands, he ran his thumb along the webbing of my thumb. We didn’t talk for a long time. I didn’t know what to say, and he was staring over my head, maybe having a conversation with someone else. The Witch?

  He nodded and then he looked at me. My hair, my mouth, our hands together on the table.

  “Lady Zhorzha,” he said. “This be how a tower is built. Lay first the foundation stone. Then upon it, lay the next stone. Up and up, one stone, then another, til thou hast built a tower to keep thee and thine safe.”

  He meant for our hands to be like the tower’s stones, and my right hand was the only one not on the pile. I laid it on top, so that all our hands were stacked together.

  “It’s not a very tall tower,” I said.

  “This tower shall keep out a foe that is broad but not high.”

  I laughed, because I felt like I was in danger of more crying, which wouldn’t make either of us feel better. I squeezed his hand between mine and he squeezed back.

  “What’s going to happen?” I said. “When you get out, what will you do?”

  “When first I came to this place, I thought to give myself over to quiet things. To prayer. To art.”

  “Are you an artist?”

  He smiled and shook his head.

  “Nay. Master Marcus hath more skill than I. Nor am I restful in such labors, for I miss the grip of a sword. And I am ill-suited to be a priest, for I long to spend another night in my pavilion with thee.” For the first time ever, his hand felt sweaty between mine.

  “But what can I do for you now?” I said.

  I knew in another minute, Gentry would have to let go of my hand. Too much. Until then, I curled my fingers around his.