Lilliana made a pouty face. “Not soon, I’m afraid. His Highness wanted certain ‘favors’...” The tip of her tongue glided across her upper lip. “Only then will he lend the artifact to our cause. This delays its delivery, but it will arrive.”
Teodorico grunted. “I’m amazed it is coming at all, thanks to your skills and his...‘proclivities.’”
Lilliana laughed lightly.
“Even if we had the artifact today, are we certain Lucan will eventually have success holding the cup?” Victor asked, stroking his goatee. “It surprises me, of all people, he can’t touch the cup now.”
The cardinal grunted again. “I’m surprised as well, but with Henry’s gift I believe he’ll be able to do much more than perfume a room.”
“Perhaps, but we do not have the artifact just yet,” Victor pointed out, “and our stall tactics are wearing thin. We must do something soon.”
“Agreed.” Teodorico leaned back in his chair. “It’s time to make a move. First a soft move, then a harder one later if necessary.”
“The children?” Victor stated, smiling.
The cardinal nodded.
“What pretext shall we use to test them?” Lilliana asked, taking her cup back from the cardinal and finishing it off.
Teodorico remained silent for a moment, plots running through his mind, but he finally stated, “Those squires. Their knighting ceremony is fast approaching and they have requested Patrick to perform the ceremony. A special occasion calls for special events. We will have the children try then.”
“And if they fail? What do we do with them?” Victor asked. “If they no long serve a purpose, then they still pose a liability, as Sister Abigail reminded us.”
Teodorico pondered quietly again. “God allowed both Nero and Herod to slaughter thousands of children so destiny could be fulfilled. What’s a few more?”
Chapter Eleven
Aimeé could not believe her eyes when she entered the great hall. The usually pleasant dining experience had become a mob scene. Twice the ordinary number of people crammed into the room for dinner, raising a din that could rival that of a battle. Just then, a stranger bumped into William of Monmouth while he reached across to rip off the last drumstick on a roasted duck. The stranger neither apologized nor offered an explanation.
She took a seat next to him. “These board folk are becoming insufferable,” Willy confided in a whisper. “When are they ever going to leave?”
Trent grunted from across the table. “Soon, I hope. It seems the longer they stay the more they feel entitled to act as they please. Look at that duck—there’s hardly anything left of it, and I’ve hardly eaten.”
In the beginning, the Board of Benefactors, their ladies, and their innumerable servants stayed within their pavilion city, but as the weeks wore on and it became apparent the council debates over the cup would not end anytime soon, they began to filter into the keep for its comforts. They filled the dining hall to capacity, overflowed the privies, and made bolder and bolder demands of the staff.
“Come to join us for dinner, Aimeé?” Willy asked, changing the subject. “I thought you had become too good for us since working in the Hall for Lady Guests.”
Aimeé smiled with a wink. “Never too good for you boys, but no, I didn’t come to eat. I’m looking for Sir Patrick. I heard he might have something for me. Have you seen him?”
Willy and Trent looked to one another, shrugging. “Not since he’s become drill-captain,” Willy lamented. “Now he’s become too good for us with all his new responsibilities.”
“Aye, he’s no fun anymore. Up at the crack of dawn, and goes to bed exhausted,” Trent added. “He’s already in bed tonight, I think.”
Aimeé frowned, clouds darkening her mood. When she had heard someone had raided the store of pickles, she had assumed Patrick had finally made good on his promise. Disappointment and more cravings fought for her attention, but a disturbance from across the room drew her eye.
“More wine, wench!” one of the Cardinal Guard shouted from his table, hoisting a goblet into the air.
The offending off-duty guard, the Sergeant Dragonetti, looked no less threatening with his mail hood pulled back. If anything, he looked more brutish with his squashed nose and exposed hair, cropped to pig-hair length.
“We are not ‘wenches,’” the nearest maidservant, Anna, explained patiently. “A ‘wench’s’ duties involve the sort you will never see from us.”
Dragonetti’s eyes bulged in disbelief. He slurred, “Don’t get saucy with me, wench. You’re a servant, so act like one!”
“As are you,” Anna scowled at the big man. “You are neither knight nor nobleman, but a hired hand... and a drunk one, at that.”
Sensing trouble, Aimeé rose from Willy and Trent’s table and went to Anna’s aid. Before she could cross the floor, however, Sir Geoffrey intercepted her with a cloth-covered dish. Aimeé backed away as if confronted by a snake.
“Aimeé, please, I need to speak to you,” he said with imploring eyes.
She side-stepped him like a pool of urine on the floor.
“Aye, a hired hand,” Dragonetti was saying, wavering comically when he stood, “but a hand sufficient to smack you upside your insolent head.”
He staggered forward to the sound of gasps in the room and Anna backed away, clutching the pitcher of wine to her chest.
Aimeé inserted herself between Anna and the guard. “That will be quite enough, Sergeant. If you would please take a seat, we will provide you with all the wine you will need.”
At first agitated by the interloper, Dragonetti’s scowl turned to a malicious smile. “Well, hello, pretty. I have a better idea. How about we take us some wine and have our own private party?”
He reached for Aimeé, but before he could make contact, a crimson-cloaked figure swooped in from one side, grabbing the belligerent Italian’s arm.
“Sergeant, I think you’ve had a little too much to drink,” Sir Geoffrey said sternly. He shoved the covered plate into Aimeé’s hands, moving her aside in the process. “You can’t possibly mean the things you’re saying. I’m sure once you’ve gone for a walk your mind will clear and you’ll be your good self again.”
Dragonetti shook off Geoffrey’s grasp. “Bugger off,” he sneered. “I answer only to the cardinal, and to Sir Lucan if it pleases me.”
“You’re drunk,” Geoffrey insisted. “Nothing good will come of this.”
Dragonetti ripped the pitcher of wine away from Anna. He splashed fluid into his cup, and again as much onto his red and yellow surcoat. “There is so much good drink to be had here, and nothing else to do but drink.”
“Nothing else to do?” Geoffrey frowned at the brute. “Last I heard, a monster is running about. Why don’t you put yourself to good use and go hunt it down?”
“Hunt it down?” Dragonetti shouted, addressing the crowded dining hall. “There is no need. We all know exactly where the monster is.”
He gestured with his wine cup towards the table of candidati, spilling more in the process. Some in the room murmured in agreement.
Dragonetti approached the candidati table and grabbed Emilie by the collar of her dress and pulled her up. She squealed in protest and began to wail horribly, disturbing the other candidati to wails in the process.
“I say it’s this little ugly one,” Dragonetti leered at the girl and made a show of dusting off his hands. “Always touching things, she is. She...”
Before he could finish, Geoffrey grabbed him and tossed him across the room, sending him crashing into a table of his fellow Cardinal Guards. Geoffrey stood between them and the candidati, gloved hands balled into fists, ready for action.
The candidati clung to one another, sobbing, as the cardinal’s men struggled to set Dragonetti back onto his feet. When he achieved solid footing, he shook free of his companions and reached for his sword.
Geoffrey partially drew his and shouted, “Please, I beg you, give me sufficient cause!”
“Listen up!” Geoffrey addressed the room that had fallen deathly quiet at the drama. “I have spent a great deal of time with these children, the candidati as they are known, and I can tell you they are no monsters. Different from you and me, certainly, but not foul creatures. All harassment of them will end now!”
He leveled a serious gaze about the room, eyes coming to rest on the worst perpetrators.
“Or you will have to deal with me. Is that understood?”
The room murmured, and the disgruntled Cardinal Guard filed out the door, casting angry looks over their shoulders.
All the children save Emilie calmed. She continued to sob in Candace’s arms.
“What’s wrong with her?” Geoffrey glowered, still hot under the collar.
“He called her ugly,” Candace said. “It would have been better if he had just called her a monster.”
“Ah, bloody hell,” Geoffrey rolled his eyes. He kneeled on the floor next to the child on her bench and grabbed her by the shoulders. “Look at me,” he said, making a stabbing gesture at his eyes with a pair of fingers for emphasis. “You’re not ugly, you hear me? There are all kinds of beautiful in the world and you’re one kind, see? By that reckoning you’re the most beautiful girl in all the world, no questions asked.” Geoffrey stood and announced the next loudly to the room, gripping his sword again. “And if anyone has a problem with that, they can talk to me.”
Emilie’s sobbing transformed to giggling.
“You won’t hurt anyone just because they call me ugly,” she said.
“Like hell I won’t,” Geoffrey insisted, scowling.
“You won’t kill anyone, though,” Emilie laughed.
“Well, perhaps not,” Geoffrey conceded, but addressed the room again loudly, “but I’ll certainly pull some ears!”
This elicited more giggles from the girl.
Aimeé stood by throughout the episode, brow creased with conflicting emotions.
Sister Abigail arrived just about when the room started to settle down. Even when the nun gathered the children to take them to bed, Aimeé still found herself frozen, especially when Emilie and Candace each clung to one of Geoffrey’s hands, and he helped lead them from the hall.
After they had left and Aimeé had shaken her head to clear her mind, she realized for the first time she still held the plate Geoffrey had shoved in her hands. Curious, she removed the cloth.
A pile of pickles stared back her.
#
Despite an evening nap, Patrick still found himself yawning during his shift of night watch. His was indoors, on the mezzanine above the great hall and out of public view, so at least he did not have to stand at rigid attention. He could relax while monitoring the floor below for monsters.
Unfortunately, the late quiet hours offered too much time for reflection. His mind drifted to dark places in just the sort of manner Corbin had recently chastised him for.
Soft footsteps made their way up the stairs toward his position. By their sound, Patrick could tell even in the darkness they belonged to a woman, so it came as no surprise when a woman leaned against the pillar opposite him.
“Smile,” Katherina said to his gloomy countenance.
“I am.” He glowered, not quite able to stifle his surprise at which particular woman was paying him a visit.
Katherina’s breath of a laugh echoed in the empty chamber. In the low light, Patrick could just make out her smile crinkling the skin around her beautiful icy eyes. They almost luminesced in the darkness. In fact, in her white gown she could have been a ghost come to visit him. A lovely ghost of lovers past.
“If that is what passes for a smile, I fear your frown.”
“You’ve seen my frowns and my smiles. You’ve seen it all,” Patrick replied, a real, but tired, smile creasing the corner of his lips. “This shouldn’t surprise you.”
“It surprises me now,” she said. “Recently, you were a changed man. You were no longer ‘Sir Silence.’ Now, you have slipped into your old ways. Why is that?”
“The burden of leadership, perhaps,” Patrick said, shrugging. “Much more is expected of me these days. And I feel responsible for all Greensprings’s troubles because I brought the cup here.”
“I sympathize about the responsibilities,” Katherina replied. “I did not expect to be in the position I am now, doing the things I am doing...”
“You are doing very well,” Patrick interjected. “What you did at the Shrugging Giants, that was nothing short of miraculous. Even Sister Abigail says she has not seen the children open up so much.”
“Thank you,” Katherina said, smiling, “but do not change the subject. When you left Greensprings for your home, you were a hero with a beautiful future bride. Now, look at you. No, it is not the burden of leadership or even the cup that troubles you so much. It is something else. What happened?”
Patrick rubbed at the thin scar running the length of his palm. “It’s like an old wound opened inside me and bleeds, but I can’t find where, and I can’t stop the bleeding. Aimeé says I don’t try hard enough. She seems to find fault with everything lately. She hates me... and it hurts.”
Katherina came closer, leaning against the rail next to him.
“She does not hate you. Have you told her you love her?” she asked.
He had no trouble making out her face now. She looked up at him earnestly.
“Well, not in so many words, but why should I? Why must we play games?”
“There’s your problem,” she said. “Just tell her, and all will be better, I promise.”
“I don’t believe you,” Patrick scowled, consternation rising in his voice. “It seems once upon a time I told another person I loved her and she threw it back in my face. That didn’t go so well.”
Katherina placed her hands on his chest, her eyes drilling into him. “That’s because it was painfully obvious you didn’t love me.” And louder, when he tried to protest, “There is a difference between love and... excessive fascination.”
Patrick took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and let it out slowly.
“You are quite right,” he conceded, relaxing and taking her hands in his. “I know that now, and I won’t argue it. I was a bit... obsessive.”
“A bit?” She laughed, though not maliciously. She let him knead her fingers.
“Very well, perhaps a bit more than a bit,” he replied, and they both laughed.
“Patrick, please don’t let our experience ruin it for you two. Tell her how you feel.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t,” Patrick said, swallowing hard and looking askance. “Maybe I don’t love her. If I did, wouldn’t I rush to admit it? Perhaps I’m doing her a favor by keeping my distance.”
“You are not,” Katherina persisted. “Just say the words.”
“That’s just it.” Patrick’s frown deepened. “What is love, after all? I thought I loved you, but that turned out to be an obsession. I love my comrades, but that is a different kind of love. Am I even capable of real romantic love? Am I such a bad person that I can’t?”
“You are not a bad person,” Katherina replied. “You will never know if you can love unless you try.”
“I’m afraid.” Patrick shook his head. “She has been treated so badly in the past, and no less by me, that if I told her I loved her and it turns out I was wrong... It just wouldn’t be fair.”
“Well, I’ve told you everything I know,” Katherina breathed out, not so much in exasperation, but in mutual frustration. “Love is a complicated matter.”
Patrick blinked, returning from deep thoughts. “Why did you come here tonight to talk about this, all of a sudden?”
Katherina shrugged with a mischievous smile. “Let’s just say someone recently reminded me of the importance of companionship.”
“Jon?” Patrick said incredulously,
smiling wryly.
“Stop changing the subject,” Katherina replied, mischievous smile turning enigmatic, then added, “You have a good thing with Aimeé. I wouldn’t let her get away.”
Patrick’s smile wavered. “I’m not sure who I’m having more of a difficulty convincing: her or myself.”
“You are having a baby,” Katherina replied. “That should motivate you.”
Patrick sighed, not for the first time that day. “It shouldn’t matter whether it’s mine, right? Again, if I truly loved her, I would do the courageous thing and accept it as my own, regardless. Yet I tried, and she didn’t believe me.”
“Perhaps you will yet,” she said, running her fingers along the scar on his hand. “You are not a bad person, Sir Patrick. When I find love someday, I hope that person has many of your qualities. I will not settle for less. For now, I am content to wait, and I am happy for both of you.”
“Thank you, Lady Katherina,” Patrick said, stroking her hair out of her eyes.
They lingered there for a moment, sharing a gaze. Patrick hovered over her while her hands, resting now on his chest, rose and fell with his every breath.
When she leaned forward to inhale deeply, he leaned forward as well. Her mouth fell open slightly, and his lips came to rest on her forehead.
“It is getting late,” he whispered.
She smiled. “Of course it is. I should be going. Goodnight, Sir Patrick.”
“Goodnight, Lady Katherina,” he returned.
She pulled away, letting her hand trail across the front of his surcoat as she departed.
#
When relieved of his guard duty later that evening, he made his way across the great hall towards the exit. When doing so, a brief heavy breeze moved his hair across his scalp. He looked up to see what could have possibly caused the breeze, but only saw the chandeliers swaying.
#
Before the midnight hour, Patrick performed his final duty of the day.
He attended on the squires Jakob, Josef, and Charles as they prepared for their vigil. Their knighting ceremony was set for the following day.
Ripples in the Chalice: A Tale of Avalon (Tales of Avalon Book 2) Page 29