Gawain

by Gwen Rowley

  The crowd fell back before her, leaving an aisle leading to the far end of the hall, where Gawain stood beneath the largest window Aislyn had ever seen, a shaft of sunlight burning in his hair. He looks like his own ghost, she thought, and for a moment her heart smote her. Then she remembered the night he rode away from Lothian—

  The cobblestones cut into her knees, but Aislyn scarcely noticed. She could not move. She could not think. She could only kneel where he had left her, each heartbeat like a hammer blow. Gone. He is gone. What will you do now? It seemed an iron band encircled her chest, pulling tighter, tighter . . . she struggled vainly to draw breath, but even when the last air had been driven from her lungs the relentless pounding still went on. Fool. He has betrayed you. Where will you run now? Grief gathered like a wave—and then it broke, crushing her beneath it as a wrenching sob tore through her and ripped her heart in two.

  —and smiled beneath her veil. On either side people were whispering behind their hands as she hobbled up the aisle. Let them wonder. Let them speculate. Whatever they were expecting, they couldn’t possibly be prepared for what was hidden by this veil—the same veil she had once placed over her wealth of red-gold hair with trembling hands, imagining the moment when Gawain would lift it. How they would all stare, that foolish girl had thought, knowing she would strike them dumb.

  Well, they’d be stricken dumb today.

  At last, Aislyn reached Gawain. “Took me a bit, but I’m here now,” she puffed.

  “So am I.” He looked down at her gravely, then turned to the priest. “Good Father,” he said, “let us begin.”

  The words were said, the vows made. And then at last the moment came. With hands that shook only slightly, Gawain raised the veil.

  Someone gasped. Another cried out in shock. Several ladies burst into tears. Gawain gazed down at her in silence, his expression showing nothing. This was it, the moment of her triumph. Oddly enough, it felt very like that moment in the courtyard, for her heart was thudding and she could not catch her breath. But this time she did not waste a moment weeping. Instead, she laughed, a harsh and ugly cackle that tore at her like rending sobs.

  Chapter 5

  “STILL alive?” Queen Morgause spoke in her most dangerously soft voice. The two knights who had accompanied her champion exchanged nervous glances, and as one they stepped back from the entrance to her pavilion and melted into the shadow of the trees. “Did you tell me he is still alive?”

  “Eh? What’s that you say?”

  Somer Gromer Jour—Lord of the Summer’s Day, as she had named him in a flight of fancy—stood before the queen, resplendent in mail so finely linked that it rippled like water when he moved. His helm was of the bucket variety, silver-washed and gleaming, with only a narrow slit at eye level.

  Morgause gripped the arms of her chair. “Did you say the king is not dead?” she asked, raising her voice.

  The knight pulled off his helm to reveal a lad of some twenty summers, with curling auburn hair flattened to his skull. His face was pleasingly proportioned, his features regular, unremarkable save for his eyes, which were wide-spaced to an unusual degree. The effect was rather more attractive than otherwise, and at first glance he was quite a good-looking young man. Indeed, he was very nearly arrestingly handsome . . . though somehow he just missed that distinction. Feature by feature, it was difficult to say precisely why, only that there was something oddly lacking in the whole. Perhaps it was in his smile, eager and a trifle vapid, or his eyes, empty of any spark of intelligence and purpose. But Morgause had never been inclined to look deeply beneath the surface of any handsome face.

  “What?” he said again. “Sorry, I can’t hear anything in that helm.”

  “You feckless, witless fool!” she cried. “Do you dare tell me that you failed?”

  “Well, he had the answer, didn’t he?” Somer Gromer Jour—who usually went by the more prosaic name of Launfal—said defensively. “So I had to let him go, didn’t I? I mean, that was the agreement, what?”

  “The answer? He had the answer? But that is impossible!”

  Launfal shrugged. “He did.”

  “Where,” Morgause asked distinctly, “did he get it? Or did you not think to ask?”

  “I asked,” Launfal said hastily. “Of course I did. But he only said that was his affair and no part of our bargain.”

  “Oh, did he really?” Morgause sank back in her seat and drummed her fingers on the armrest of the chair. “Well,” she said after a moment, “I think we both know there is only one place he could have found it.”

  Launfal’s brow furrowed. “Is there? Where?”

  Morgause sighed. For a moment she had forgotten to whom she spoke. “He had it from your sister, you brainless dolt!”

  “Sister?” he repeated slowly. “What, you mean Aislyn? Why would it be her?”

  “I told you—” Morgause broke off, realizing there was no point in reminding him of their earlier conversation. Launfal didn’t understand half of what she said, and what he did understand, he soon forgot. Luckily for him, it was not for his mind that she kept him. “It doesn’t matter now.”

  “I don’t see how you work out it was her,” Launfal said, his broad brow drawn into a puzzled frown. “He’s been asking for a full year now, anyone could have—”

  “He did not know it when he set out from Camelot, my informants were quite certain on that point. So somewhere on the way . . .” She rose swiftly to her feet. “This time I shall have her. Guards!” she cried. “Guards, to me! Saddle my horse, we ride at once! Not you,” she snapped at Launfal, who had donned his helm again and taken a few steps toward the door.

  “Eh? Did you say something?”

  She seized the helm and pulled it from his head. “Not you!”

  His full lips turned down sulkily. “I don’t see why I shouldn’t come. She’s my sister, after all.”

  Morgause regarded him narrowly. “She is.”

  “Well, then, I think I should be allowed to go.”

  There were times Morgause wondered if Launfal could possibly be what he seemed. Once she’d even gone so far as to question his mother—her own servant—and Olwyn had said with undisguised contempt, “The boy is little better than an imbecile. He was a seven-month babe and never quite right in the head.”

  Morgause, braced for a lie, had detected none in Olwyn’s voice or eyes. But still, there was something . . . wrong about Launfal today. She could not put it more clearly than that, but Morgause had not earned the title of Queen of Air and Darkness by ignoring her instincts.

  “You could have been back here long ago, but you lingered, didn’t you? Didn’t you?” she demanded, her voice rising to a shriek. “You knew it was Aislyn! Admit it!”

  He started back, a look of comical astonishment on his face. “Me? Of course not! The thought never crossed my mind!”

  Not many do. Morgause’s lips twitched, her suspicion dying as suddenly as it had flared. What had she been thinking? That he could possibly deceive her? That he would even imagine attempting such a thing? No, Launfal was as he was, no more and no less. And while he did not have much in the way of brains, that was part of his attraction. He was young and strong and beautiful . . . a man fashioned for a woman’s pleasure.

  “Then where have you been? The truth, now!”

  He flung himself to the ground before her. “I was sick. You can ask the others if you don’t believe me. They laughed,” he added resentfully, “but they don’t understand. I can’t bear to displease you, and I was afraid that you’d be angry. But it wasn’t my fault!”

  Even as she cast an impatient glance over her shoulder, knowing she should already be on her way, Morgause could not resist the sight of him down upon his knees. “Say you aren’t angry!” he begged. “You must!”

  She looked into his eyes, so clear and empty, and saw herself reflected there: beautiful beyond the dreams of men, all-powerful and infinitely desirable. She drew the tip of one finger from his temple to his jaw
, then dealt him a stinging blow across the cheek. “You presume too much.”

  He seized her hand and pressed it to his lips. “Forgive me, I did not mean—it is only that I cannot live without—”

  “Yes, yes, I know. Very well, you are forgiven. But you are not coming with me. Wait here for my return.”

  “Yes, madam, as you wish. I won’t stir a step.”

  Morgause reached the entrance to the pavilion and looked back with an exasperated sigh. “Oh, do get up, Launfal. You don’t have to stay just there.”

  “Of course!” He scrambled to his feet. “Right. I’ll just . . .”

  He looked around blankly.

  “Why don’t you have a wash?” Morgause suggested. “Then eat something and go to bed.”

  “A wash. Food. Bed.” That was a word he never failed to understand. A pleasant warmth stirred in her belly as he shot her a heated look beneath half-lowered lids. “Don’t be too long.”

  Morgause smiled indulgently. “No longer than I must.”

  LAUNFAL’S eyes were no longer empty as he watched Morgause walk away, but blazing in a face as bleakly beautiful as a winter’s moor. Had Morgause bothered to look back, she would scarce have known him.

  But Morgause did not look back. Launfal knew she wouldn’t. Had she begun to guess how well he knew her she would have been astonished—and deeply affronted that she was not the mystery she thought herself. If she learned he had feigned illness to give Aislyn the chance to flee—had, in fact, delayed Morgause for another quarter of an hour with his nonsense—she would likely have him whipped. And she would watch every moment of it, drinking in his agony with the same expression she wore when he pleasured her in bed.

  Oh, yes, he knew her. He knew her very well.

  “God help you, Aislyn,” he said aloud, then a hard smile touched his lips. God had abandoned their family long ago. They were in the hands of a demon now, one who walked the earth in a woman’s form. “Run,” he breathed. “Run fast and far.”

  Aislyn would. She had always been the clever one. And she would not look back, for she never had before. He doubted she even remembered she had a brother, let alone wasted a moment in wondering what had become of him.

  And why should she? He was as much an imbecile as Morgause thought him. Who but an imbecile would have just thrown away his one chance to escape this life that was killing him by inches?

  He’d planned it all so carefully, choosing the precise words with which to convince King Arthur that he had no intention of slaying him, had never harbored any such intent, and that he himself was a loyal subject in need of the king’s aid. He’d have only a few moments in which to say those words, for Morgause’s guards would be posted near at hand, but the king was said to be quick of understanding. He would surely realize it was the truth when Launfal did not attempt to exact the terrible penalty for the king’s failure.

  The one thing Launfal had not anticipated was that the king would not fail; that he would, in fact, have the very answer Morgause had sworn he could not know. Morgause had been certain that none but Aislyn could give it to him, and Launfal had been equally certain that his sister was long dead. Why he had been so sure he could not say, save for his belief that had she lived, she would have found a way to contact him, an assumption as ridiculous as it was pathetic.

  All this had flashed through his mind in the moment the king stopped speaking. Launfal’s careful plans were blasted into ruins, but even so, he might have managed to win the king’s aid. The risk would have been nothing to him had it been merely his own life at stake, but now it was Aislyn’s, as well, and he had not known where she was or whether to speak would bring her into danger.

  And so his chance had slipped away, all for the sake of a sister who despised him. “Nit,” she used to call him, and though now it seemed trivial, at the time the pain had been quite real. It wasn’t so much the name, though it was hardly flattering, but that Aislyn knew how it hurt him to be mocked for his size. He’d made the mistake of showing it, and so the name had stuck, others taking it up until he nearly forgot he’d ever had another.

  Nit. It no longer fit his stature, yet there was a certain truth to it, though fool would be closer to the mark. You would think that by now he would have learned that the first lesson of survival was to think only of himself. Everyone else knew it, after all, Aislyn first and foremost. It could only be some errant scrap of honor that had driven him to folly, the dying remnant of the knight he might have been.

  Somer Gromer Jour—Lord of the Summer’s Day. What a joke. He was lord of nothing but his own ruin.

  But perhaps Aislyn would have better fortune.

  Chapter 6

  THE stale heel of a loaf had been Aislyn’s breakfast; her supper the night before, a handful of boiled oats and a few walnuts. She had long since forgotten what it was to eat for pleasure rather than to merely keep herself alive, and when the doors leading to the kitchens were thrown open, the scents were enough to make her dizzy. When the varlets began to stream into the hall with platters on their shoulders, her knees grew weak and her stomach rumbled noisily.

  She and Gawain were seated at the high table—Gawain at the king’s right hand and Aislyn beside him, with the young brown-haired knight who had stood up with Gawain to her right. She spared him only a quick glance before her attention was riveted by the dishes appearing before her— suckling pig, parsnips and onions swimming in oil, manchet bread and pots of butter, barley in a fragrant gravy studded with currants— She gazed at it all, barely able to stop herself from seizing everything in sight. But why should she stop herself? The crone wouldn’t. Laughing inwardly, she grabbed a slice of pork and stuffed it in her mouth, moaning aloud as the various flavors of meat and pepper and garlic exploded in her mouth.

  The tusks made chewing a disgusting business, but the horrified stares of her tablemates only added to her enjoyment, for she had quite destroyed their appetites. They merely picked at the delicacies, faces turned away. At the lower tables, conversation was muted, and several of the ladies sobbed openly.

  Gawain ate nothing. That was no surprise. She didn’t imagine he’d have much appetite just now. What did surprise her was that he didn’t drown his troubles in drink. He lifted his goblet once, took a small sip, and put it down again, where it remained untouched for the remainder of the meal.

  And it was very good wine, or so it seemed to Aislyn, who had not tasted any for five weary years. She finished one goblet quickly and a second more slowly, savoring each drop. When it was done, she reached for the flagon. Gawain’s hand grasped it first and moved it beyond her reach.

  “That is enough,” he said.

  “Eh? Who are you to—”

  “Your husband.” He set a pitcher of water beside her empty goblet. “Drink that if you thirst.”

  “Now, look here, lad, if you think you can tell me what to drink and when, you are mistaken.”

  “No, it is you who are mistaken,” he said with icy courtesy, “if you think I will shirk my duty to protect you, even from your own folly.”

  “Protect—?”

  “My lady will not demean herself or me by drinking to excess.”

  His lady, was she? Once those words would have been enough to make her weep with joy, but now she only fixed him a steely gaze. “I’ve been looking after myself for years, laddie. If you think I will obey—”

  “As you have just promised to do so, I believe I am within my rights to expect it. Should you wish to discuss the matter further, we can do so privately, but I refuse to quarrel in public. No,” he added, holding up a hand as she began to protest, “I have said all that I intend to say on the subject. If you cannot conduct yourself as befits your station, I shall have you escorted to your chamber.”

  Having delivered this pronouncement, he turned away, leaving Aislyn to stare at his profile in shock.

  Was this really Gawain? When had he grown so prim and dreary? The first thing she had noticed about him long ago—well, the seco
nd really, the first being that he was over six feet tall with a face like a young angel and a smile like the rising sun—was his sense of fun.

  When you were with Gawain, everything was an adventure, even if you were just walking through places you’d visited a hundred times before. Look, he said, and she looked to find herself in a world that was new and vibrantly alive. It was all so beautiful, the burn rushing over the stones in a streak of white, a curiously shaped boulder, the first blossoms on a cherry tree. He’d picked one and tucked it behind her ear, his fingertips brushing her cheek— She had forgotten that day. She had made herself forget, because to remember hurt too much. That was the day they’d found the kittens, bobbing down the millstream in a sack. Gawain had spotted it, of course, for there was nothing that escaped his notice, and where anyone else would have passed by, he’d wondered what it was. Once he’d wondered, he had to know, and he’d fished it out and dried the kittens off—how he’d laughed when they climbed all over him, and she had laughed, too, sitting beneath the cherry tree . . .

  That was the day he had kissed her.

  Don’t look back, she told herself. It was all long ago and best forgotten. Five years stood between her and the girl she had been then: five years to understand that she had lost all hope of security—let alone of happiness. Five years of flight, of exile in a dingy little hut, existing but only half alive.

  Five years that Gawain had spent serving his king, surrounded by his friends, living the life he’d always wanted and winning fame and glory.

  She turned to the knight on her other side, who had been listening to her exchange with Gawain with shameless interest. He was a year or two older than Gawain, she thought, with smooth, dark hair caught back carelessly at his neck. His face was lean, his eyes very bright in his pale face. Throughout the meal he had not spoken to anyone, but stared into space, his fingers tapping out a restless rhythm on the trestle. Now he did not shrink from her perusal, but regarded her with those unsettling eyes, nothing but curiosity in his expression. She had been introduced to him, but could not recall his name. Brandon, she thought, or Darmuid . . .