‘Why do you care what they’ll think?’ Benesek asked, tipping a wash of ale down his throat. ‘Nothing to do with them what Pelleas wants—’ He stopped and hoomed in the back of his throat. ‘What Pelleas wanted. Wasn’t any of them he coaxed from under a table and carried over his shoulder back from Benoic chased by a rabble of cut-throats.’ He shook his head. ‘He loved you, lad. Even took an interest in that broken-feathered hawk of yours. Was always going on to Edern and me about how you refused to give up on that bird. Said your stubbornness was a thing to behold. He admired you for it.’
Holding the scabbard in my left hand I gripped Boar’s Tusk by its leather and silver-wire-bound hilt and drew just enough steel to catch the fire’s molten copper glow as it had done the last time I had seen it, when I cleaned it of the dark blood which had made patterns on the wool grease coating the blade.
‘Thank you,’ I said.
‘Don’t thank me, lad,’ Benesek said, retrieving his cup from Bors. ‘I just told you I nearly kept it.’ He pursed his lips as though considering this. ‘Might have done had I not been drunk tonight.’
‘Then thank you for not being sober,’ I said, wondering if it really had been Pelleas’s wish that I should have Boar’s Tusk, or if this was just Benesek’s way of acknowledging what I had done for our friend with that very sword.
The ring, hiss and scrape of steel on steel announced that Madern and Hedrek had begun their demonstration of sword craft. I knew every lunge and retreat, every cut, thrust and parry, and no doubt the handful of sailors from the Elsam would be impressed by Hedrek’s speed, skill and grace. And yet I knew they would almost certainly have preferred to be watching Guinevere still. I looked for her myself but could not see her amongst the knot of girls who clustered around the Lady beside the raised platform at the far end of the room. Those girls looked less interested in the swordplay than they did in Melwas, Agga, Kitto and Florien who edged the dais, and that was not perhaps surprising, this being one of those rare nights when all of us – the maidens of the Mount and we future Guardians – were gathered together under the same roof. The boys on the other hand, for all their brave talk on the training field and in the communal hut of pretty girls and future conquests, seemed more beguiled by the flashing blades than by the girls’ flashing eyes.
She will meet you in the Lady’s dream chamber. Alana’s voice whispered in my head.
Bors slapped my shoulder again. ‘You’re the first of us, cousin,’ he said, looking at Boar’s Tusk as though it were one of the lost treasures of Britain, ‘to win your own sword.’
‘I didn’t win it,’ I said, feeling unworthy, nagged by the thought of Benesek’s beautiful sword rusting on the seabed while I, who had never fought for a king, a lord or a lady, now owned such a weapon.
‘You won it, Lancelot,’ Benesek said, and he did not need to take his eyes off the demonstration for me to know what he meant by that.
Hedrek was a flurry of movement as he attacked Madern, their swords weaving through the smoke.
‘Whether or not you can hold on to it, well that’s another matter,’ Benesek said, though he knew full well it had been Melwas who had dropped his sword over the side of the currach.
‘I’ll look after it,’ I said.
Benesek nodded and for a moment I stood and watched Hedrek’s sword dance, admiring his mastery of the techniques. He was good and could be better still if he learnt not to fear pain. But I had seen it all before and had other things on my mind. Ale for one thing. Guinevere for another. And perhaps the gift of Pelleas’s sword, given to me by Benesek, whose respect it seemed I had earned, emboldened me to daring action.
With the folk of Karrek Loos yn Koos deep in their cups now and cheering Hedrek’s every sweep and stroke, I went to find Guinevere.
The stairwell was dark and empty and as I climbed it seemed that every sound – my leather shoes on the worn stone, my breathing, the blood pulsing in my ears and, somewhere, the drip, drip of water which had found its way in through the old Roman tower – was abnormally loud. And though none of the rushlights in the wall mounts were lit, my eyes penetrated the darkness so that I saw every tool mark in the dressed stone, every rust-like patch of lichen and each crevice where the old mortar had crumbled away.
I heard the latch and creak of a door behind me and pressed myself against the wall, holding my breath to listen for the sound of feet ascending, my heart thumping in my chest. But whoever had left the girls’ chamber was heading down and so after a moment waiting in the dark, I continued up towards the Lady’s dream chamber.
I stopped by a window slit and put my face to it, breathing in the cool air to clear my head of the smoke which had hung like a gauze in the chamber below. A breeze blew a few fine drops of rain onto my cheeks and lips. My mouth was dry. Somewhere in the night a screech owl cried and for some reason I shuddered at the sound and looked up into the darkness. Then I climbed the last few steps and stood outside the oak door, my hand on the cool ring handle of twisted iron as I steadied my nerves and remembered those fevered days I had spent in this room. Dark, flesh-shattering days during which my soul would surely have fled had it not been for the sound of Guinevere’s voice calling it back, commanding it to stay, coaxing the sickness out of me.
I took one last full breath. No one downstairs would hear me open that door. Even so, I turned the handle slowly and pushed, wincing at the creak of the hinges. That’s when I heard Guinevere’s muffled scream.
I threw the door back and stepped into the chamber and by the sooty flickering light of the bedside candle I saw a man on top of Guinevere, one hand pushing his trews down, the other on the back of Guinevere’s head, thrusting her face into the bed furs. Faster than a stooping hawk I flew, throwing my arms around the man’s neck, trying to haul him off. But he was big and heavy and he twisted in my grip and drove his left elbow into my temple, sending me staggering.
He turned, slurring curses at me as he found his feet, and I put my head down and launched myself at him and Guinevere leapt from the bed onto his back and for a moment he withstood us both, strong legs planted wide as I tried to drive him back while Guinevere clawed his face and eyes. He reeked of wine but he was not too drunk to ignore the threat to his eyes and he reached behind and took hold of Guinevere. Grunting with the effort, he threw her across the room and I hammered a fist into his groin and another into his belly and he doubled over, then I threw my fist against his bearded cheek as if I were launching a spear. I heard the crack of some bone in his skull, yet he swung a brawny arm and his knuckles caught me below my right eye and spun me round.
‘This how you treat guests?’ he said, for he was one of the Elsam’s crew, and I turned back just in time to see the fist as it slammed into my left eye, knocking me down to the rush-covered boards. I tried to rise, throwing my arms up to shield myself and blinking furiously, desperate to see past the flashing spots which filled my vision.
‘I’ll kill you,’ the sailor growled. His hands were around my neck and darkness was flooding the dream chamber, swallowing me.
I heard Guinevere’s shriek as she smashed a clay jug against the man’s head and he should have fallen but he was too drunk or too hard-headed, or perhaps it was his seaman’s balance, but he kept his feet and backhanded Guinevere, who spun away. But in that same moment I knocked his other hand away from my neck, grabbed hold of his thick beard and pulled down with all my strength and now he lost his balance. I drove his face down into the floor and there was a splintering sound, like a walnut shell being cracked.
A blade flashed and I leapt away from it as his bloodied face came up and he swept the knife out again, coming onto his knees now, growling and choking on blood from his ruined nose. I pulled Boar’s Tusk from its scabbard but before I could thrust the blade down Guinevere flew at him, snarling like some fierce creature. She took hold of his head from behind and forced her fingers into his eyes, her blood-smeared face a terrible sight as she hauled him backwards onto herself, still
clawing and gouging and wreaking her savage vengeance. And though the sailor must have feared for his eyes, he knew the greater threat came from the sword in my hand and he blindly flailed his arms towards me even as I thrust the sword down.
Boar’s Tusk was a wickedly sharp sword. Its point burst through the wool tunic and the skin and muscle beneath, sinking deep into the cavity between his ribs. He knew well enough where my sword was then and he clutched it, trying to pull it from his chest as that double-edged blade bit deep into his hands. He spat blood at me, muttering some curse through the bloody bubbles and gore which frothed his mouth and dribbled into his salt-crusted beard. I was horrified then, because it seemed this man would not die, that he would pull Boar’s Tusk from his body and hack Guinevere and me to death with it.
‘Kill him, Lancelot,’ Guinevere hissed, blood spilling from her split lip in ruby drops. The sailor’s bulk was crushing her yet she would not let go and I saw that her fingers were deep in his eye sockets and so I gritted my teeth, gripped Boar’s Tusk’s hilt in two hands and threw myself down onto the man, driving the sword deeper still, and for a moment something held it, but then gave way and I felt the point break through more muscle and viscera before sticking fast.
I was half lying on top of the man, still gripping the sword’s hilt as he let go the blade and grasped my face in his hot, slick hands. The reek of fresh blood was overwhelming, though now cut with the rotten stench of the mess in his trews, but I held on and Guinevere held on and the man’s legs kicked and thrashed amongst the reeds and a warm dark pool spread beneath us. Then, like a bird finding its way out of a house by the smoke hole, his strength just vanished. His big arms fell with a thump onto the boards but we held on for several heartbeats more, gasping for breath and staring at each other across the sailor’s body.
At last, I nodded at Guinevere and together we let go. I grabbed fistfuls of the man’s tunic and pulled so that Guinevere could wriggle out from under him, then I let his head hit the floor with a thud.
I left Boar’s Tusk sticking from the dead man’s chest and scrambled over to Guinevere, who sat pale and wide-eyed in the candle-lit gloom.
‘You’re hurt,’ I said, holding her face in my hands.
She shook her head. ‘No,’ she said.
We were both slathered in blood. Both trembling.
‘He’s dead,’ she said, looking deep into my eyes.
‘He should be,’ I said.
She lifted her hand and laid a bent finger on my cheek beneath my left eye and held it there. For a moment I wondered what she was doing, then I realized she was letting the blood from a cut well against her knuckle. Her eyes still fixed on mine, she drew the finger to her lips and kissed the trickle of blood which ran down it towards her pale wrist. And with that I pulled her face to mine and she winced with pain as we kissed. I tasted the salt and iron tang of her blood and a shiver ran through my flesh and then we were pulling at our clothes, fumbling and snatching and casting them aside until there was nothing between her skin and mine, and still we were not close enough.
‘You are mine,’ she whispered, hot breath in my ear.
I pulled my head back so that our eyes could meet once more. I could not read her face, though for a moment I thought she seemed full of sorrow. Then she smiled and nodded and all the tension left her body.
The candle on the far side of the bed crackled and Guinevere gasped, and now we could not have been closer than we were. Not in body or spirit.
‘And you are mine,’ I said, speaking the words into her mouth, our gore-smeared bodies moving together, writhing like some insatiable beast in the blood of the kill.
Afterwards, we sat against the foot of the bed, holding hands in the dark, staring at a corpse lying in a pool of blood.
‘What will happen to us?’ Guinevere asked.
For a while I did not reply. I wanted to hold on to what we had just shared. I wanted to savour it, even in the presence of the dead, rather than try to untangle the mess of that night. In truth, the dark but heady enchantment which had gripped me was fading fast. The stench of blood was repugnant now. The corpse on the floor beside us sickening.
‘Lancelot.’ Guinevere’s voice was anxious. Impatient.
I prodded the dead sailor with my foot. He had clung to life, that Dumnonian. Dead meat now.
‘He followed you up here. He tried to—’
‘I know what he tried to do,’ Guinevere said.
She said nothing more and neither did I want to drop more clumsy words into the silence. ‘The Lady will ask what I was doing up here,’ she said, following the thread of her thoughts, ‘and when she learns that you were here too, it will all be clear. Everyone will know. My father will hear of it.’
‘What is the worst they can do to us?’ I asked. Perhaps I was a fool but I felt neither fear nor regret. The sailor from the Elsam had got what he deserved and as for Guinevere, I loved her and she loved me, and perhaps my blood was still running hot in my veins but I believed that was enough.
‘The Lady will make one of us leave the island,’ Guinevere said. ‘That will be our punishment for what we have done.’ She lifted her chin towards the corpse. ‘Not for what we did to him, but what we did together,’ she said.
‘We’ll tell her I saw that big ox go up and I thought he intended to steal from her. So I followed him.’
‘She will know, Lancelot,’ Guinevere said. ‘Believe me, she will know.’
‘So we go on as before?’ I said, wanting her to look at me instead of at the body which still had Pelleas’s sword sticking out of it. ‘Stealing a moment here and there? Hiding in the woods like outlaws?’ Yet even as I said it I knew that was how it must be. So did Guinevere.
‘We must get rid of the body,’ she said, still looking at the corpse. ‘We can sink it.’ She got to her feet, tying back her dark hair. ‘Most of the blood will have soaked into the reeds. We can replace them. Wipe the blood off the boards before it stains. The Lady doesn’t come up here often.’
Guinevere might have been staring at the sailor but I was staring at her. I could hardly believe what I was hearing. ‘And how will we carry that great lump down and get him out without being seen?’ I asked her.
She looked over to the part of the chamber which was beyond the candle’s glow and at first I did not know what she was looking at but then I saw it. Another door. I had taken no notice of it before, but now I recalled having on occasion seen the Lady standing on a ledge at the top of the keep looking to the south-west. For the Roman soldiers garrisoned on Karrek long ago, it would have been the highest lookout from which to watch the Saxon Shore. Now that ledge would have another use.
I pulled Boar’s Tusk from the dead sailor and cleaned it on his tunic, reflecting as I pushed it back into the scabbard that I had worn my own sword for less than a day and had already killed a man with it. Then we dragged him out onto the ledge and together lifted him so that he sat slumped on the low wall, a cold, reeking, blood-soaked corpse, and Guinevere held him there while I left the dream chamber and made my way back down the spiral stairwell, past the main chamber in which the celebrations were in full flow, then out into the night.
I was drinking in the clean fresh air when the door opened behind me and I spun round, my heart jumping in my chest. To my relief it was Bors. Drunk as he was, he knew something was wrong as he came over to me, frowning and untying the rope belt which held up his trews.
He did not even bother to go to the rocks but just began to urinate onto a clump of gorse. ‘You’re playing a dangerous game, cousin,’ he said in a low voice, then glanced up at me and his mouth fell open. He jerked his head back. ‘What in Balor’s name happened to you?’ he asked.
‘You hit me,’ I said. ‘We argued about which of us is the better spearman. We fought. You won.’
He frowned. ‘Are you drunk?’ he asked, shuddering as the steaming liquid left his body.
‘We fought, cousin, that is what you will say.’ The sound of raucou
s song came as if in waves.
He considered this as he tucked himself away and tied his belt. ‘I’m happy to say I beat you, and doubtless the others will believe you deserved it,’ he said. ‘But what really happened?’ He grinned. ‘Not Guinevere, surely?’ The grin disappeared when he saw the look on my face.
‘Come with me,’ I said, thinking of Guinevere still holding on to the dead sailor up there in the dark, and we walked around the keep until we stood below the high ledge and I looked up, though my left eye was so swollen now that it was almost closed. Still, I could make out Guinevere as a dark shape against the star glow of the night sky. She waved to me.
‘Back,’ I hissed to Bors, moving away from the great tower, then I gave the hoo hoo call of a tawny owl and a moment later a shape plummeted from the heights and thumped onto the ground.
Bors cursed, the whites of his eyes flashing in the shadows.
‘He attacked Guinevere. I killed him,’ I said.
‘Let me guess how you did it,’ Bors said with a sour grin. Even in the dark you couldn’t miss the hole in the sailor’s chest or the blood-dyed wool around it. ‘He’s big,’ he said, going closer to get a better look.
‘I know,’ I said, wincing. I had the aches and pains to prove it. I bent and took hold of the sailor’s wrists. They were cold. ‘Grab his legs,’ I told Bors. ‘We’ve got a long way to carry him.’
Bors did not move but just stood there staring down at the corpse.
‘What is it?’ I asked.
‘His eyes,’ Bors said through the downward curl of his lips, then spat to ward off the evil of those little wells of dark blood and gore where the sailor’s eyes had been.
‘Take his legs, Bors,’ I said.
Bors grimaced and bent to grab hold of the sailor’s ankles. They were perhaps the only parts of him not daubed in blood or wet with urine. ‘I’m beginning to wish I hadn’t come outside,’ he said, then we lifted the corpse and moved away down the hill as fast as we could, avoiding the main track in case we should be seen by anyone on their way up to the keep or down to the shore.
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