“Quit foolin’ with that cap and come on!”
They stepped out into the hallway, and as luck would have it, straight into the path of the patrolling soldier. Rob threw Anne a querying glance. She shrugged and walked over to the guard. “I’ve linens for the lord’s dining chamber.”
The night hours weren’t a factor, as Anne had earlier confessed; they were expected to do their work when it wouldn’t have to be seen or endured by their masters.
The guard nodded, shot Rob a sour glance, then blinked. “Hoy. You aren’t Dunstan—”
Rob acted on sheer adrenaline and instinct. He whirled on the guard and, instead of the expected blow, sidled up beside him.
“What’re—”
Bringing up both hands before him, Rob opened them with a flourish that set the guard back on his heels. It gave him the necessary instant to breathe across his palms once and then again, first with intent, then a whisper: “Cysgwch yn dawel.”
The guard crumpled. Rob caught him just before he hit the floor—not without a grunt; the man was bloody heavy in all that mail.
“You killed him,” Anne whimpered, cowering back. “With nobbut a word!”
He grabbed her, shook her. “Nay. Was a bid to set him sound t’ sleeping, nowt more. Help me!”
She got hold of herself and helped him drag the guard to the narrow, winding stable stair and prop him on a step. Rob looked down at him, thoughts as twisted as the stair, looking for the out. He straightened. “Anne. Is there….” and trailed off at the look on her face.
“M… m’lord?” Suddenly there was reverence, hot and nearly terrified, in Anne’s eyes, and Rob mourned the coming of it as if he’d lost a limb.
“Will there be another coming for a while?”
She shook her head. “Th-the one who g-guards my lord’s chambers around the curve will stay there, and none else to relieve this one ’til the dawn.”
“Then on with you, lass. I’ll either be fine or I waint; either way there’s no use to you getting amidst it any more than you have.” She hesitated, frowning, and Rob shook his head. “Go on, then.”
With a quick nod, Anne turned and hurried away.
IT WAS a mercy that Anne had shown him precisely which door was Gamelyn’s chamber—they all looked as like as the fancy archery butts in Sheffield’s common before any arrows had pricked them.
And the bloody door creaked. Rob shoved at it—better a quick sound than one that lasted ages—and then shut it just as quickly behind him. For a mercy it didn’t creak again, and the bolt was well-oiled, nigh silent as he slid it home.
The chamber was bloody huge. His family’s entire cottage could have fit with room to spare. Rob didn’t see anyone, was coming close to panic until a familiar silhouette moved from the shadows of the far wall and into the nearly full moonlight of the one window, ruddy-fair hair glinting like silver.
Gamelyn peered at him in the dim. “What do you want?”
Of course. He was thicker, dressed wrong, all tarted up like some old farmer….
Rob stepped forward into the one stream of candlelight. “It’s me,” he hissed.
Gamelyn’s eyes widened, at first, it seemed, in shock. Then his eyebrows furrowed. One side of his mouth gave a quiver, tilted upward.
It was that bloody codger’s cap. Rob yanked it off, sending pins flying. It didn’t help. Gamelyn closed his eyes and looked away. His shoulders shook, and it wasn’t fear. Rob looked down: his clothes were dirty, but on straight, his knob wasn’t hanging out or anything… but a quick recce of hands over face and skull told him the braids with which Anne had fastened his hair were sticking out at all angles. With a growl he yanked at the worst offenders, left the rest straggling, and came to a decision.
For this his poncy ginger paramour was going to owe him a bit more than just one bend-over of that lovely arse.
Instead the poncy ginger paramour stiffened quite suddenly, rounded back on him, and hissed, “What in Heaven’s name are you doing here?”
Rob grinned, shrugged from the too-big coat, and threaded the coiled rope from over his shoulder. He proffered it with a small bow. “I’m here to rescue you, Sir Gamelyn.”
“This is not funny!” It was nearly—nearly, despite their necessary spate of whispers—a growl. “You have to leave, Rob. Now. If they catch you—”
“Aye, they’ll kill me ’n’ all of that.” Rob came closer. “Fair enough, but I’m not leavin’ without you.”
Surely it was not good that Gamelyn tottered back, out of reach. Even less that he shook his head. “I can’t leave.”
“Gamelyn—”
“You don’t understand. You never have, have you?” There was an odd expression on Gamelyn’s face. It seemed altogether akin to… pity.
It sent all sorts of alarm tingling up and down Rob’s spine.
“You have to go. It’s over, what we did. It wasn’t real, don’t you see?”
“Nay, I canna see a thing you’re….” Rob trailed off. It was true. He saw nothing. Saw nothing. Only the weave of tynged to the mere reach of his arm, threads chopped off and blackness beyond….
He blinked. Shook his head. Reached out with mind-magic only to hit that blackness. It wasn’t as Cernun had said, a rent in time’s fabric.
It was a wall. An ending.
“You have your world, and I have mine—”
“What have they told you?” It was barely a whisper, choking at Rob’s throat. “What did they do?”
Gamelyn was still looking at him, that strange, indefinable chill behind his eyes. “They’ve only told me what we both knew they would. Rob, I promised. I promised my father.” It choked off, and Rob stiffened.
“Is he all right? Is he worse?”
“He’s much worse. He’s stopped taking your mother’s medicines—”
“Sweet Lady, why?”
“Because he thinks your mother’s a witch!” It was a scream, all packed and smothered into a bare whimper. “He thinks all of you are witches and he thinks your mother used her magics on him, on all of us. He thinks you enchanted me. They know, Rob. They know what we’ve done, and I warned you, warned you more than the once what would happen to us and you have to get out of here.”
“Not without you.”
“I’ll be fine. Don’t you understand? This is my place. This is where I belong, where I’m supposed to be. What I have to… be.” Gamelyn shook his head then went over to the window, looked out. “Use the rope. Lash it to….” He started looking around. “If nothing else, I’ll belay it—”
“I’m not”—Rob realized that his voice was starting to crack above the muted whispers they were using, stifled it back—“leaving without you.”
“Rob, you don’t—uh!” A small grunt as Rob grabbed his sleeve, yanked him close.
“I’m not leaving without you,” Rob said, and kissed him.
Gamelyn uttered a noise against his teeth, broke it off and sent Rob sprawling against the wall beside the window with a shove, merely to end up staggering after him when Rob didn’t loose his sleeve. “Are you out of your bloody mind?” Gamelyn hissed.
“Happens I am.” Rob yanked the sleeve again. Convince him, John had said, and Rob had joked about what persuasions he’d have to use. Joked.
Hear me laughin’, little stable lad? Ha.
So he curled one hand about Gamelyn’s nape, pulled him closer for another kiss. Gamelyn wrenched sideways, tried to wrest free. The action merely allowed Rob to curl his arm around Gamelyn’s throat and pull him back. “So.” It was a breath against Gamelyn’s nape. “Is this a ‘don’t’?—or a ‘don’t stop’?”
Because, oddly enough, he didn’t know. Couldn’t read Gamelyn’s body like his own—couldn’t parse the sudden… strangeness of it—and it sent alarm from a tingling into sharp little bells jangling in the back of his skull, faint but there.
Then Gamelyn sent it all wheeling sideways by giving a little shudder and moan, then twisting in his arms to take Rob’s mouth
with his own, lips parting, hungry and desperate as a man starving for a se’nnight. Rob’s spine knocked hard against the wall as Gamelyn shoved him there, framed his face with his hands then slid fingers up into Rob’s hair, at first thwarted by the tiny braids there then grabbing at them, using them to pull himself even tighter against Rob.
Aye, then. “Don’t stop.” Definitely.
Rob wrapped his arms around the small of Gamelyn’s back, slid one hand down to Gamelyn’s haunch, dug his fingers in and pulled, gave a slow, grindy shove that made Gamelyn gasp into his mouth.
Only then Gamelyn was tearing away, staggering back, sucking in air and shaking his head. “Rob—”
Enough was enough. Rob still had that sleeve-grip; he gave another yank, a twist and shove, and not for the first time thanked those brawny pub lads who’d taught their skinny mate the proper uses of leverage when outweighed and overmuscled.
And all of it still in that eerie, heavy quiet. With the broken-threaded blackness beyond his Sight….
“My turn,” Rob said against Gamelyn’s ear. “You’ll stop this.”
“You have to—”
“I warned you, love. I told you I’d come for you. I told you, you’re worth the catching and there’s nowt any of your kind can do to convince me otherwise. Nowt you can do ’less you’re planning on dragging me out to the gibbets and let your soldiers hang me—”
“My father said he’ll have you hung, he’ll—”
“He’ll have to catch me first.”
“I can’t—Oh!” This as Rob sidled against him—hard.
“And if rutting you stupid is the only way I can get it through your bloody thick skull, then I’ll do it.”
“You… daft clot… if we’re found… if you’re caught….”
“Well, you’re so good at confessing, I’ve one to make to you,” Rob murmured. “Sometimes it takes a little wank beneath the eyes of the black to make you know what it is to be alive.”
Gamelyn was shivering between him and the wall, gave a grunt, a lurch, and a shudder as Rob snaked his hand down beneath Gamelyn’s braies.
“Just what I thought. Look at that soldier, all at attention.” Rob lipped at Gamelyn’s earlobe, fisted him tight, pushed then pulled. “I’m thinking he’s also liking the raw nerve of it all—”
“You’re… absolutely… mad.” The breaths came in bursts, truncated to the rhythm of Rob’s fist.
“And you’re mad to think I’ll just leave you here.” Rob skated murmurs over freckled skin, from copper-scruffed jaw to the arch of throat, down his breastbone and over to one hard-ruched nipple. Gamelyn leaned back, hips lurching with every jerk of Rob’s hand; he had one hand at Rob’s skull, tangled in braids and curls and pulling him down, mouth trailing over breast then belly, tongue dipping at his navel.
Rob snatched Gamelyn’s braies down; Gamelyn kicked one leg free. Rob knelt on the crumpled fabric, met the gleam of Gamelyn’s eyes beneath the fall of ruddy silk, saw his chest rise and fall beneath pale muslin, the flush of his cheeks and lips brilliant and dark.
“Nay, you’re no dog… yet no wolf either,” Rob whispered against the down of Gamelyn’s belly as if it were a minstrel’s love song. “You’re more a hawk they’ve tried to break, jessed and hooded and never set to fly save to a lure.”
Hooded.
Hooded….
You are not meant to wear a hood, my last-born son. You are meant to wear the sun and spread your wings across the Summering….
Rob heard it as if spoken, a memory not his own; the voice steaming deep within Gamelyn, velvet as the wet nap of Rob’s tongue curling about him, as deep as the sudden twist-push of Rob’s fingers inside him. Felt Gamelyn’s shudder as if it were his own, took him deeper, slid his fingers harder and Gamelyn twisted, cried out.
It echoed in the stillness of the room.
They both froze, trembling. Waiting.
Like Gamelyn had ever figured out how to hold anything back once he got going, including those lovely cries that Rob usually ached to hear….
A fist in his hair, dragging Rob rather unwilling to his feet, and Gamelyn panting against his cheek. “The bed. Quiet. Cushions.”
Madness?
Aye, well, then.
Who dragged whom across the flooring was immaterial, and there was a brief struggle when they arrived at the bed. But once Gamelyn had twisted around, back to front, his hands tugging at Rob’s breeks, once Rob curled fingers about him and started mocking hand rhythm with his hips, it became very clear who wanted what, and how.
Rob bent Gamelyn over the bed. He spat in his palm twice, sent a breath across it, slicked himself with it and slid through his hand, then pushed inward, slow. Gamelyn propped against him with a hoarse grunt, then arched his back and gave another shivery cry as Rob pushed deeper. Mid-cry, Rob grabbed at thick, ruddy hair, shoved Gamelyn’s face down into the cushions, stifling it into a whimper.
Not that he could lay blame; it was all Rob could do to bite back his own voice. Instead he leaned over Gamelyn, held him down and went at him, at first slow then building as Gamelyn writhed beneath him in an obvious demand for more… and when Rob couldn’t keep his voice stilled any longer, spent it in whispers along Gamelyn’s spine, into the freckled hollows straining between his ribs. “Give it to me. All their damnation, and hate and scorn; let ’em say what they want. I can take it for you. I can take it. The only thing I’ll not be able to take is leaving you here in hell—”
And Rob Saw it: tynged rippling into being, no longer frayed, no longer ending, but chasing after the black and taking Gamelyn’s with it, knotting fast even as Gamelyn knotted the sheets in white-knuckled fists, smothered his cries into the ticking, and shuddered to another ending.
Saw it, still rippling in green eyes as Gamelyn tilted his head to suck in hoarse breaths, to peer at Rob as he pulled back, then snuggled along his back and laid his cheek to Gamelyn’s arm.
No longer fear, somewhat gentled, but still.
Gamelyn rolled over, pulled Rob onto the bed with him, curled close to him… and Rob had never felt a bed so soft, never felt bedding against his skin that was more akin to the gossamer of a spider’s web, or the first milky fur of a newborn foal.
He rubbed his face into the cushion where Gamelyn had smothered his pleasured cries, and sighed.
Gamelyn was smiling at him, a curious thing that could have been derisive but instead was gentle bemusement. He took a handful of bedding, stroked it across Rob’s forehead then trailed it down his breast.
“You’d better take care,” Rob murmured, “or there’ll be rutting again. How can you sleep in all this? I just want to wallow like a happy sow.”
Gamelyn smothered a laugh against his shoulder, then stayed there, nestling down. Rob smiled, wrapped arms about him, breathed the sweated silk of hair, watched the skeins of tynged light his lover’s eyes.
But he could feel the dawn approaching—only a matter of hours. They were running out of time.
“Gamelyn. Please. Come with me. Be with me.”
“I can’t.” Gamelyn sat up and rubbed his hands over his face. Tynged faded, replaced by something dark and cold. “And you have to go, Rob. It’s impossible. We were dreaming like children. We can’t—”
“You’ve said this before. More than the once.”
“Yes, well, I mean it this time. I have to.”
“Gamelyn, please.”
Fingers tautened, dug into the freckled forehead. “You have to understand. I promised my father. I promised him I’d stay close. Rob, he’s dying.”
And that Rob did understand. He leaned forward, pulled stiff fingers from Gamelyn’s brow and nuzzled the spray of gilt forelock out of his eyes. “There has to be a way. Somehow.”
Gamelyn lay silent, then said, very slowly, “Papa. He said a place had been made for me at the monastery at Ely. He said he had made the arrangements, and that the time of leaving would be my choice.” Rob saw him swallow, hard. “He said I might be bett
er off leaving. Before he….”
Rob tucked closer to him. “Where is Ely?”
“In Cambridgeshire.”
“I… dunno where that is, either.”
Gamelyn frowned. “It’s on the other border of Huntingdon. About… a hundred miles?”
“Bloody damn,” Rob whispered. “That’s the other end of the world.”
“But I’d be free to go.”
Rob propped on one elbow. “When could you leave, then? If… if you could go in two days, you could come to t’ Fête, to Beltain.” He nodded to himself, thinking aloud. “You could clear y’rself of these lies. Come see what we are. And after Beltain….” He hesitated and peered at Gamelyn; it was no less a huge jump for Rob than Gamelyn contemplating leaving his dying father. Taking a breath, he held it, then let it out. “After, I’d be free to come with you.”
And his voice didn’t so much as quaver.
Gamelyn was equally grave, quiet, looking away. “Where is it held?”
“I’ll wait for you in our caverns. Take you there.”
“But….” Gamelyn was adamant. “Where?” Then, softer, “What if we miss each other? If something happens. If you have to go on… if you want me to follow….”
There was a ban against telling outsiders where the rite was held, but it wasn’t exactly a secret, either. “Of course I want you to follow. It’s the old dolman circle to the southeast of Loxley Chase, between Hathersage and Dronfield. Mam Tor, remember it? We’ve ridden through it a time or two when you came to visit.”
Gamelyn nodded, still not looking at him. He swallowed, then said, slowly, “It’s just… hard. Do you understand?”
“I do.” Rob curled a hand at his chin, lifted it. “Perhaps your da’s pain will be over, anon, and you’ll truly be free.”
A sudden light flickered behind Gamelyn’s eyes, soft answer, then dulled again. “It could only be a blessing, now, an end to his pain,” Gamelyn murmured. “And I’ve done nothing but make it worse.”
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