by Irene Gallo
After that day I watched for you in the castle, eavesdropping on the servants to see if you featured in their gossip. Once or twice I considered simply asking about you, but I knew how rumours spread and didn’t want anything to get back to Garrick. So I waited. Then, down by the buttery one morning, I overheard Letia whispering to her brother’s sweetheart:
“Hugh says his birds won’t come near him since he took that tongueless witch as an apprentice. Says she’s put her heathen magic on them.”
I was gripped by a desire to have her tongue pulled out for speaking of you that way, but I contented myself with being sullen and contrary when she clothed me that evening, making her lift my arms to get my dress over my head.
Your role among the staff discovered, I needed only to contrive an excuse to speak with you. That afternoon, I told Father that I wished to take up falconry again. He was surprised, I think, but then any interaction between us tended to surprise him. He had a servant bring my bird up from the mews. She was a proud, white, staring thing—I’d forgotten what I’d named her—who twitched her head from side to side and could not sit still on the glove.
I brushed off my mother’s suggestion that hunting was something that Garrick and I might do together and instead went down to the forest on my own, stopping on the way to borrow a small knife from the kitchens. I spent an hour with the falcon tethered to my wrist, cooing and crooning until she grew used to me. When she was settled enough to consent to my touch, I took out the knife and snicked along the roots of several crucial-looking feathers. She jerked as I maimed her: when I released my grip on her wing she flew shrieking to the full length of her tether, squawking panic and displeasure. I batted her away from my face and waited out her pain. Eventually, after a great deal of shushing, she calmed down enough to be taken back to the castle and tied up in my chamber. Her left wing was slick with blood.
“A cat attacked my bird while I was hunting,” I announced at dinner. “I thought I’d take her down to Hugh this evening.”
I knew that Hugh would not be there—I had it from the bucktoothed boy in the stables that he met with a lady in the village tavern every Wednesday after nightfall—and that, with any luck, I would have you to myself. In my chamber, the falcon perched warily on the back of a chair, ducking her head round to pick at her injured wing. I brushed my hair until it shone. Cold air whistled through my sleeves as I crossed the darkened courtyard.
It was never completely silent in the mews: I could always hear the rustling of feathers or the clacking of a beak, or the scratch of claws on wood from within the screened compartments where the falcons slept. My nose wrinkled at the smell of guano.
You stood there with your back to me, humming. I’d heard Hugh sing to the birds before—it was part of a falcon’s training that she be sung to the same way each time she was given food—but the notes echoing in your hollow mouth climbed straight up my spine. I had heard no tune like it.
“My bird,” I said, and your eyes flashed fear at me for a second as you turned. You stared at me. “I think she’s been injured by a cat. I thought that maybe you could examine her.”
My blood thumped as you put down the bird you had been feeding. It was the first time I’d been so close to you; I realised that you stood two inches taller than me, and that your lips were scabbed with scar tissue. You held a hand out for the bird.
“Thank you,” I said. “She’s very dear to me.”
I think you caught the waver in my voice. Your eyes plunged into me, direct as daggers, and I had to let mine drop. My fingers lingered on the leather of your glove as I handed the bird over. I had seen enough, in that look—I had seen, in the way your eyes hesitated on my hair and then my lips, that you shared something of my desire.
“I’m Claire,” I said. “Lord De Rouchefort’s daughter. I … I saw you in the great hall.”
Your head was bent over my falcon’s injured wing. In the distance, I heard a bucket clank against the inside of the well.
“You will be well looked after here.”
I knew that I was gabbling, but the emptiness behind your teeth seemed to be sucking the words out of me. “My father treats his villeins fairly, and there are lots of holidays. You—” I stopped. You had the falcon’s wing pinched between your thumb and forefinger. You looked at me and ran the first finger of your other hand along the flat, regular wound inflicted by my knife blade.
“Yes. Um.” I swallowed. “It’s a nasty wound.” Once a few seconds had made it clear that my story about the cat was not going to be believed, you turned away and went to find a salve. I took a step closer. The torchlight rippled in your hair.
“They call you Aya, don’t they?” I said as you dipped your finger into a little cup of unguent. It smelt of vinegar. You flashed a look at me, then bent your head to brush paste onto the injured wing. Your fingers were slenderer than mine, I realised, and more supple. I held my breath as the falcon stood twitching on your wrist.
“Are you finished?”
You lifted the bird towards me, not quite far enough for me to take it without stepping closer. I moved forwards and reached out my hand.
You flinched as I touched you. Some spark jumped between our skins. The falcon squawked and drew its talon through my finger; you jerked back and collided with the bracket of a torch. The torch crashed to the ground, the gravel snuffing out the flame. The slighted bird flapped noisily up to the roof beams. Cold crept up my forearms.
“Aya?”
You touched my hand. The room was too freshly thrown in darkness for me to see anything, but I could feel your strong, calloused fingers squeezing each of mine in turn, probing for the wound. You lifted my hand up to your face. Your breath shivered on my broken skin.
I moved the finger to your lips.
“It’s all right,” I whispered. You had gone very still, like an animal backed into a corner. “It’s all right.”
You had more to lose if your instincts were wrong: I had to be the one who crossed the threshold. I slid my free hand behind your neck. “It’s all right, it’s all right.”
Your lips opened like a flower. My finger slipped between them, softly, until it was submerged up to the knuckle in the warm wetness of your mouth. Your damp, empty mouth. My eyes strained in the darkness, but I didn’t need to see. You drew my finger in until I felt the slightest touch of a shrivelled, shorn-off tongue against my fingertip.
Revulsion and desire rose in me like quicksilver.
* * *
Oh, my love—the night we passed among the birds still echoes in my dreams. Next morning, when I woke up in my bed and pieced myself together, I thought it was a dream. My stomach tingled when I realised my mistake.
“You look happy this morning, my lady,” Letia said as she helped me dress. At breakfast, Garrick was rather less kind.
“You’ve a grin like a demon.” He’d spent the night drinking with the guardsmen: his eyes were bloodshot, and several of the serving girls looked ashen-faced that morning. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing,” I said sweetly. “I’m just happy that you’re back with us.”
He grunted and bit into a bruised apple.
Father was preoccupied that morning, as usual, and I wasted no time in putting my plan into action. I’d been so impressed, I told him, with how ably you had mended my falcon, that I had asked you to tutor me in all the outdoor arts: falconry, hunting, fencing, riding. It would save him the expense of a tutor from the capital, I added quickly, as well as keeping you out of Hugh’s way during the afternoons.
“I see no reason why not,” he said, after giving me that same look he had on the night of his return—vague surprise at what his daughter had become in his absence.
If only he knew.
By the time Letia had finished dressing me for the outdoors, the morning had evaporated. I took a servant’s corridor by way of a shortcut to the armoury. It was dimly lit, illuminated only by a slit in the wall that opened out onto the courtyard, and I w
as already halfway along it by the time I realised I was not alone. A couple stood in the shadow of the far wall, joined at the lips.
The girl was slight and boyish, dressed in servants’ grey, with enviably sleek, chestnut-coloured hair. The man had shoulders like a mountain range.
“Garrick?”
I immediately regretted speaking. The girl sprang back, hand leaping to her mouth, and dropped her gaze as soon as she realised who I was. Garrick just turned around and stared at me.
“I was, um.” I looked away. “I’m on my way to the armoury.”
I felt Garrick’s eyes on my back all the way along the corridor.
* * *
“You are going to tutor me,” I said, and tossed you one of the wooden training swords. You caught it in one hand. The birds were awake and eating, the midday sun throwing light on all the crevices and corners that had been wrapped in darkness during our last encounter. Your fingernails were outlined with dirt.
“I’d like to learn the sword this afternoon, I think.” I smiled at you. You made no response. I thought for a moment that you were going to deny what had happened between us, but then a blush blossomed in your cheeks and you ducked your head.
“Come for your gyrfalcon, milady?” It was Hugh, bandy limbs twanging as he hurried over, eager to attend to me.
“I’ve come to borrow your apprentice, actually,” I said. He was only too happy to part with you.
I found us a secluded spot just inside the northern wall, beneath a sycamore. I’d really only brought the swords to support my cover story, but you unwrapped one from its sheet as tenderly as if it were an infant and tested its balance in your hand. You began to limber up.
“Be merciful,” I said, once I had watched you flex the long, thick muscles in your thighs and stretch your arms behind your head. With your hair tied in a scarf, you looked almost like the statue of Akresa, raising her blade to smite the guilty. My own sword sagged and tilted in my grip.
You came at me like a rush of wind: you fanned my sword aside and touched yours to my throat, just hard enough to be uncomfortable. With the tip, you gently lifted my hair away from my cheek. I drew back, breathless.
“Teach me.”
You did so delightfully. You corrected my posture after each engagement, standing with your body behind mine as your warm, firm hands posed me like a mannequin, your breath fluttering in my ear. Again and again your sword swept through my guard. My back would meet the trunk of the great tree, the bark hard and knotted between my shoulder blades, and you would pin me there and kiss me. Then we would break apart and I would submit again to your manipulation of me: let you lift my hands higher, pull my arms out straighter. I spoke as little as you did. We had another language for that afternoon.
I was glad that Garrick caught us sparring with our swords and not our lips when he came to fetch me for the evening meal.
* * *
It is strange—we spent almost every hour that we could between then and Winterfest together, and yet I hardly knew a thing about you. My lessons continued. You taught me how to use a bow, how to hunt, how to ride. How to love my body as much as I loved yours. We fell into each other’s patterns when we were together: either I would talk enough for both of us, telling you about my life before you came and my guesses as to yours, or we would spend hours in your silent world, talking only with a touch on the arm or a stone thrown in the lake.
Every now and then, when the mystery of your past frustrated me, I turned my guesses into direct questions, hoping that if you could not speak then you could try at least to draw or mime. But you only smiled, and kissed me, and gave me other things to occupy my thoughts.
When the leaves had turned entirely yellow, my father announced his intention to host a tournament. It would be held just after Winterfest, and half the knights in Southern Lucea would be invited to attend: the barons Crawdank, De Lyre, Cheal, and Faxsly had already expressed their warmest interest. Several had sons or daughters of marriageable age.
I only half listened. You and I had gone out to the lake the night before, and my head was full of images of moonlight pooling over darkened water. We undressed beneath the stars. Hugging my nakedness, I curled a single toe and placed it in the water, then yelped and drew back from its icy bite. Had you not pushed me in, I doubt I would have braved it.
You were easy in the water, and I watched enviously as your limbs slid in and out of it, as you flicked your head with each broad stroke to keep your nose and mouth above the surface. You swam across to me and held me, hands wet and slippery on my arms. Your lips parted as you bent your mouth to mine …
“Claire?” My mother was looking at me as though I was sick.
“I’m sorry,” I said, putting down my knife and ignoring Garrick’s frown. “I was just trying to remember the name of Lord Faxsly’s eldest son—I’ve heard he’s quite the scholar.”
My parents shared a smile.
Winterfest drew nearer. Nights began to settle earlier, and what sun we did have hung in the corner of my eye and blinded me. Mist seeped into the mornings. The fires were fed perpetually. I began to swaddle myself in furs whenever I stepped outside and put sheep fat on my lips to keep them moist. When I passed you in the courtyard, your hair was sugared with frost.
Tragedy struck in the last week of October: Letia tripped on the stairs down from my chamber and struck her head upon the stone. Her funeral was short. I said some words over the pyre and made sure her family was given enough food and gold to see them through several winters. Ivarus, the god of death, watched unhearing from the shrine. Just as the justice goddess is blind, the god of death is without ears, and cannot be begged or reasoned with.
We prepared for winter. You and I went hunting in the forest, where I managed, with a little luck, to bury an arrowhead in the warm neck of a deer. The blood had frozen by the time we hauled it to the castle, and my fingers were numb from the frost packed into the fur. We ate together for the first time. I watched, openly curious at first, then with acute embarrassment, as you swilled your stew around your mouth and trickled it gently down your throat to avoid choking on your shorn-off tongue.
Later that month you gave me a gift, one which I could not decipher. It was a stone, chipped loose from the mews, I think, and carefully worked smooth and spherical. Into one hemisphere you’d carved a circle with a cross beneath it: I wondered if it was meant to depict a keyhole or an arrow loop, or perhaps the upper body of a stick figure. I thanked you with a kiss and slept that night with the stone held in my fist.
* * *
November came. I’d forgotten, by then, about the time I’d interrupted Garrick and the servant girl, but it seemed that their secret had somehow been discovered. Father was furious. The girl was dismissed, of course, and given herbs to flush her womb; Garrick, in turn, was immediately betrothed. Her name was Lila Argeatha, a young noble from the coastal territories whom we had known when we were children. All I could remember about her were her eggy, blinking eyes. Garrick stomped around the castle for days afterwards making his displeasure known, relenting only to work out his frustration in the forest, hunting. He spent every mealtime glaring at me. It was hard to keep my expression sombre: you and I were closer than ever, my love, and the deep, warm secret of our love threatened to well up and capsize me whenever we were together.
Later that week you took me by the hand to the mews and planted me in front of a healthy, twitching falcon.
“This is mine?” I held out an arm for her to hop onto, but she just twitched her head to one side and clacked her beak. You stroked two fingers down the back of her skull to soothe her.
“She’s healed beautifully,” I said. “I’m sure she’d like to stretch her wings.”
Hugh was skulking in the background, sweeping. I’d seen the way he looked at you when he thought I couldn’t see him. Children made the sign to ward off witches as you led me through the courtyard.
We left the castle, heading south. When we reached the forest y
ou showed me how to use the bird to hunt, after which we fed her water from our mouths, as was the falconer’s way. You spat yours clumsily, slopping it from your lips and flicking your head up to give it lift. Red with embarrassment, I used the pink tip of my tongue to sprinkle a perfect jet into the bird’s open beak.
We left the falcon tethered to a branch and made love beneath the trees. Afterwards we lay against the damp moss on a tree trunk, your arm around me. We stayed there, listening to the noises of the forest and the rhythms of each other’s hearts, for what might have been an hour. Eventually I leaned my lips to your ear.
“Show me who you are,” I whispered. “Please.”
You sat still for a moment, then slid your arm out from my waist. For a second I thought you were about to leave me, but you just stood and picked a twig up from the forest floor. You broke the end off and began to scratch at the moss covering the tree trunk.
I still remember them, those strange pictograms you scored into the moss. Half a dozen stick figures in a line, then one inside a box. A set of rectangles that might have been a temple, or a staircase. A crescent moon. There were others. You drew until all that you could reach was covered, then stood in the middle of your strange creation and looked at me expectantly. Perhaps it was the fervour in your eyes, or the way your makeshift pen nestled potently in your hand, but I was afraid of you just then.
It was dark when we returned. We led the horses to the stables as quietly as we could, patting their necks to keep them calm, and I offered to return the falcon. Hugh wouldn’t dare say anything to me as he might to you if he were awake. We parted with a kiss behind the stable doors. Crossing the mews, I saw a shadow on the eastern wall.
Hugh had retired by the time I got there. The mews was empty but for the birds, or so I thought—as I placed my falcon on her perch, I heard the gravel crunch behind me.