by Sarah Zettel
“Come, come, Squire!” cried Sir Kai. “It will not do to make yourself dizzy!”
This raised a bark of laughter and Gareth knew coin and bets changed hands behind him. Not this time, Uncle, he swore silently. You’ve goaded me as far as I’ll go.
Gareth darted in again, landing two glancing blows on Sir Kai’s shield, and parrying two aimed at head and arm. He backed swiftly out again and circled again, and kept circling, forcing Kai to turn on his one good leg. Sweat already trickled down his uncle’s face and the glint in his eyes grew brittle as he turned and turned, not daring to let Gareth get behind him. Kai stabbed forward, but Gareth just jumped back out of the way, and circled again.
The hissing began then. It was low and soft at first, and Gareth took it only for the wind in the trees. But slowly, it grew louder, and a low rumble began. The crowd, those friends turned strangers, were booing him.
“Coward!” shouted someone.
“Afraid to face a cripple?” shouted someone else.
Now Gareth’s heart banged against his ribs. The noise got into his thoughts, crumbling his calm. Kai lunged again, and once again, and Gareth danced back both times, although the second blow caught the edge of his shield. A disappointed roar lifted up above the hissing.
Kai was going pale, but he still managed to grin. His shield hung on his arm a little lower now. “What are you going to do, Gareth? Dance about until the crippled old man falls over? That will be a famous victory for you.”
Gareth was hot and cold at once. The shouts and the boos robbed him of his ability to think. He stopped, standing still for a moment, trying to catch his breath. When had he started panting? Whistles and cat calls erupted all around, and he couldn’t stand it anymore.
Finish this, he told himself as the crowd’s bellows throbbed through skull and bone. Now.
He ran in sword up, quick forward, quick back, turn again, look for his opening. Quick in, strike hard, let Sir Kai feel his weight as well as his speed, quick retreat. The noise redoubled until the ground trembled. Sir Kai staggered, stumbling backward over his own crutch where it lay, barely catching himself on his good leg as Gareth dove in, bringing his blows down hard and fast, pushing with all the force he could manage. But Kai still got in a blow to Gareth’s helm, making the world blur dangerously for a moment and forcing him to stagger back. When he could see straight, Sir Kai was upright again, panting hard, his shield and sword both down by his waist. His smile had finally vanished from his face and he took two staggering, trembling steps backward, his knee buckling underneath him.
Now, Uncle, let us settle this, thought Gareth grimly, raising his own blade.
He charged in, taking dead aim at his uncle’s crippled side. Sir Kai straightened in an instant and swung his blade up in a long looping motion.
Inviting me in. thought Gareth in the heartbeat before his own momentum carried him beneath Sir Kai’s reach and Sir Kai, against all reason, pivoted on his crooked leg, at the same time reversing the motion of his sword to slash the blade sharply across Gareth’s face. Gareth flew past, so stunned by shock and swift pain, he barely felt the boot planted in the center of his back to help him sprawl full length on the grass.
Blood filled his mouth. Pain burned in every nerve of his face. Shouts and laughter rang against his head so hard they were like another blow. Then, the light faded and something very sharp and very hot pressed against the back of his neck, bringing a perfect clarity of mind back to him. The tip of his uncle’s sword dug into his bare skin, and his uncle’s long shadow blotted out the noonday sun.
“Well, Squire Gareth?” asked Sir Kai pleasantly. “Do you yield?”
He was bleeding hard. The salt gore filled his nose, and making it nearly impossible to breathe. He was flat on the ground. His arm and chest hurt badly, as he had landed right on his shield, and his blade was a foot away, and all the court was shouting for Kai the Tall.
“Yes,” he whispered. “I yield me.”
But Sir Kai was not yet done. “And have you learned, nephew?”
“Yes, uncle,” said Gareth with an honesty that hurt worse than the blows he had taken. “I have learned.”
“Good.”
The hot, dangerous pressure of the sword point lifted from his neck, and the shadow slipped away. Spitting out his blood, and panting hard for breath, Gareth shoved himself into a sitting position. Lionel was running across the green, probably to help him with his helm and shield. But Gareth only watched Sir Kai. Shaking with effort the knight stooped to drop his shield and pick up his crutch and limp off the field, much more quickly, Gareth noted, than he had come on. In so doing, he did not neglect to bow to the king.
Lionel crouched down beside Gareth, saying nothing, but easing off his helm, and slipping his shield cautiously off his bruised arm.
“It’s not so bad,” Lionel was saying. “It looks like a shallow slash across your cheek. Face wounds bleed badly, but it’s not torn through …”
But nothing he said mattered, because Sir Lancelot had left the crowd that pressed after Sir Kai, and was marching across the green.
Gareth’s strength drained away from him as he saw the fury on his knight’s face.
“Get me up,” he whispered hoarsely to Lionel. “For God’s sake, get me up.”
Lionel had also seen their knight. He grabbed Gareth by his good arm and helped him haul himself to his feet. Sir Lancelot’s his face flushed a deep purple and his eyes narrowed down to black slits. Gareth had seen the knight angry before, but never this livid. It was as if a thunderstorm approached, waiting for its moment to break. Sir Lancelot seized Gareth’s chin, turning his head this way and that, examining the wound and how it bled. He released him just as abruptly and Gareth steeled himself for the blow that he was sure must follow.
“You fool!” Sir Lancelot shouted. “Imbecile! Did I teach you nothing? Are you a babe playing with a stick? He laid a trap for you and you ran straight into it. One of the oldest and feeblest tricks there is, and you fell for it without thinking!”
“My lord,” began Gareth feebly. The cut he’d taken burned badly as he tried to talk. “I …”
“You are useless!” bellowed Lancelot. “How dare you enter into a challenge that shames me before the king and the whole court!”
For one wild moment Gareth wanted to shout back at his knight, to say that it was not Lancelot who had been kicked to the ground in front of the king, his brothers, and every woman in the court. But of course it was. Gareth was Lancelot’s man. His loss was Lancelot’s, and Lionel’s and even Brendon’s.
“You are more fit for wielding a broom than a sword on the battlefield!” Now Gareth wished Lancelot would hit him. The blow would be easier to take than the furious tirade. “You will get to the scullery where I don’t have to look at you, and you will take orders from the lowest maid there until you can prove you are fit to take orders from a man!”
Gareth’s head snapped up. “My lord, if you …” he pleaded, pain and blood filling his mouth, flavoring his shame.
“You dare question me, sirrah!” Sir Lancelot roared. “You shame me before all the world and then you have the gall to play dumb?”
“No, my lord,” whispered Gareth. Hanging his head, he turned away. Lionel reached a hand toward him, and Gareth brushed it off. His sword and shield still lay on the ground. He did not dare stop to collect them. Alone, Squire Gareth, son of King Lot, wounded and without help, angled his path toward Camelot’s great hall, and the kitchen gardens behind it, swearing with each halting step that he would accept this last and harshest punishment, and that no man would see him cry.
Chapter Eleven
Over the next few days, Gareth more than once considered taking his own life. Surely God’s damnation would be easier than Sir Lancelot’s. Word of his punishment was swiftly communicated to the kitchens, and those who served there were more than happy to become his guards and masters. No task was too mean, too long or too dirty to be given him. No taunt was too c
oarse when the hands he had thought well hardened by sword and leather began to bleed from scrubbing great iron kettles or bleaching yards of linens. He saw Rosy once in the yard as he staggered under a yoke of slop buckets of slop to the pig sty. She turned swiftly away from him. He did not have the strength to pretend he did not see her smirk as she did.
Geraint and Gawain came to sigh over him, and Agravain to scold and to remind him he had been warned. Lionel came once, to say he had Gareth’s arms in his keeping. He also told how both Gawain and Geraint had been to Sir Lancelot, and the king, to try to lift Gareth’s punishment, or at least set a limit on it, but it was to no avail. Sir Lancelot was within his right, and the king would never violate that.
So, Gareth worked himself until exhaustion smothered thought. He curled up on his hard pallet in the corner of the great hall — creeping in only after all the others had settled themselves to sleep — and tried not to wish himself dead. He had earned this. He would bear it. He would find a way to prove himself. He must.
It was the morning of the sixth day of his exile. Gareth trudged out from the keep in the frigid damp of dawn, a birch switch clutched in his hand. Pol, the scullions’s master, had woken him while it was still dark. Grinning, Pol told Gareth that the pig-keeper’s boy was down, his leg having been torn by one of his own charges, and it was for Gareth to take his place.
So, Gareth walked through the town behind the heard of tan and pink swine, breathing in their stench, which matched the stench of their keeper, a mottled brown man named Tiegh. At first, it was a bright relief to get away from the stink of the midden and the laundry kettles and out into the fresh air. Tiegh was a silent man, disinclined to taunt or shout. The pigs themselves seemed to know where they were going and as soon as they reached the wood’s edge, they scattered eagerly among the trees, grunting with delight and rooting about for any of the previous year’s acorns that the squirrels might have hidden.
Tiegh seemed unconcerned that his charges had galloped off. He sat down between the roots of one broad and crooked tree. “Keep watch,” he said, pulling his filthy hood over his filthy face. With no more than that, the man leaned against the tree trunk and promptly fell asleep.
Gareth sat on a cold stone, and dug the butt of his birch rod into the mud. The dappled sun was pleasant and the birds sang loudly overhead, proclaiming love and challenge. It was the most peace he’d known in days, and of course, his heavy thoughts thronged to fill the quiet.
He had relived the moment of his defeat a thousand times. He should have known, should have seen Sir Kai’s trick for what it was. He was a fool, and it did not matter if the whole of the court thought so, it was that Sir Lancelot thought this that burned as freshly as it had when he had been ordered from the field.
The other thing that haunted him was the news that had come with Lionel. Gawain and Geraint had failed to get Sir Lancelot to set a limit on his penance. What if the knight did not mean for the punishment to end? What if the humiliation had been too great and he did not intend to recall Gareth to his service?
Leave now, despair whispered to Gareth as he sat in the forest shadows with the pig’s distant grunting and Tiegh’s matching snores. Do not beg, or force your brother’s to beg for you. Go back to Gododdin, and let that be an end.
For an end it would be, an exile shorter than death, but no less certain. He would never be admitted to the court of Camelot again if he left it so ignobly.
But what would he be returning to if he went back to the great keep at Gododdin? For him, the place of his birth was a place of vanishings. His mother had gone away when he could barely walk, and had never returned. When he was still a boy, his sister, Talia, had met the most violent of deaths, and she was but a day in her grave when Gawain had set out on the road down to Camelot. It had felt like a miracle when Geraint had shaken him awake in the cold light of dawn a few months later and told him that they were disappearing too, going down south to Camelot to join Gawain. Before that moment, his boy’s heart had assumed that like mother and sister, Gawain was gone forever.
Until now, it had always been easier to put memory of his days in Gododdin aside, to look forward to a brave future. He was the city man, and Lancelot’s man. But that had vanished now as surely as his mother and sister, and unlike his elder brother, he might not see it again. But could he make himself walk back into the nightmare that was his only other home?
Hoofbeats drumming hard startled Gareth out of his grim reverie. A company galloped fast from the north, growing nearer every heartbeat. Before he could stop himself, Gareth ran out through the bracken to see who rode so fast.
They were a battered mud-stained cadre. Five men, he counted reflexively, pelting hard up the track as if the devil was at their heels. To his surprise, he saw they were led by a woman as pale, battered and mud-stained as any of them. Foam flew from the mouths of their unkempt ponies and for a moment, Gareth thought they would tear straight past him.
But no. “You there!” the woman cried as she reined up sharply beside him.
Gareth bridled at the rough greeting, before he remembered how he must seem standing there reeking of pig with his villain’s tunic flapping loose about his knees. But this lady could not throw stones. Her dress was so muddy and salt-stained, he was hard-pressed to tell what its color had once been. Her hair tumbled in elf-locks around her shoulders and the hands that gripped the nag’s reins were swollen and cut by some recent hardship. It was only the gold at her throat and wrists that told him she was a lady.
“We are come from Cambryn to Queen Guinevere,” the lady declared. Her voice was harsh with weariness. “Can any nearby take us to her?”
Cambryn? The heavy accent on her words reminded Gareth of the lilt in the queen’s voice. She could well be of the same country. What news is this?
Gareth collected himself, and bowed. “I am of Camelot, my lady,” he said. Let Tiegh gather in his own pigs. “I can take you.”
“Quickly then,” she ordered. “We cannot be delayed another moment!”
Gareth bowed again. “Of course, my lady. This way, my lady.” He gestured up the track.
She bit her lip, the skinny pony under her dancing even as it blew hard from its run. “Can you ride at all?”
Gareth wasn’t sure whether to laugh or hurl the question back at her. “Some, my lady.”
“Up behind Captain Hale then. You can guide us from there.”
Would ‘twer you’d have me behind you, I might guide you well from there, he thought, stung pride and bitter humor making him lewd. But he reminded himself with one glance that something was badly wrong here and did as he was ordered. He swung himself easily onto the prickling blanket that was this Captain Hale’s only saddle. Hale saw how practiced Gareth’s movement was and frowned. But the lady’s attention was already on the way ahead. She dug her heels into the pony’s side. The beast gave a high wicker of protest, then he too obeyed her.
That they had missed the main road somehow did not give Gareth any good opinion of their skills at direction, but his guidance, shouted into the captain’s ear as he took the lead, brought them to it soon enough. The roads’ stones were laid in the Roman times. They were now cracked and uneven, but they served well enough to bring the ragged troop up to the town’s wide-open gates.
Many from the country gaped when they first came to Camelot’s city. They stared at the great warehouses and straight streets, and the boisterous crowds of people that filled them. Gareth himself had once, clinging then to the back of a horse Geraint had given his silver arm ring to buy. But neither Captain Hale nor his lady seemed to see anything but the way forward. The city turned to field and orchard, and at last the great keep’s gates loomed before them.
“God be praised!” The captain breathed. These were the first words he had spoken that were not Gareth’s directions.
“Amen,” answered back the lady as she kicked her horse again, trying to urge a little more speed from it. Her eyes were nearly as wild as the beas
t’s by now.
“If my lady permits, I can take you through!” bawled Gareth over the captain’s head. “I am known here.”
The lady reined her pony back just a little, clearly considering whether he was just bragging, and whether it would cause more delay to believe him or doubt him. In the end, she nodded. Gareth slipped off the captain’s pony with his own prayer of gratitude. His pride was not so far gone that he wanted to be seen coming back to the hall jolting along behind an outland man-at-arms, whatever the emergency.
Striding briskly, Gareth led them up to the iron-banded gates of Camelot’s keep.
“The lady of Cambryn to see the queen,” he announced to Shahen and Rafe who stood guard at this hour, helms on their heads and spears in their hands. They gaped at him, and the bedraggled crowd behind him. But for all his recent humiliations, Gareth still was the king’s blood. They raised their spears to salute those who accompanied him and let them all pass.
Gareth and the newcomers crossed the yard, which was alive with folk going about their morning tasks; drawing water, carrying baskets of food and linens to and from the hall’s outbuildings. It was another city within these walls, and just as lively as the one outside. Many heads turned to see him back early and in such company.
“Joss!” he shouted to a small boy scattering a pan of crumbs to the chickens. “Run and find Sir Kai! There are …”
But word had flown ahead, and Sir Kai emerged from the great hall. He came down the marble steps, dressed in his customary black, his golden chain gleaming in the midday sun. That Gareth brought these people had clearly not been assurance enough for his uncle, because in addition to the pair of serving boys who followed at his heels, Marcus and Lud came close behind, and they both wore their swords.
“God be with you, my lady, an’ you come in peace,” Sir Kai said stiffly. “I am Kai ap Cynyr, Seneschal to Arthur the High King.”
Gareth, in his servile role, held the drooping head of the lady’s over-weary pony so that she might dismount beside her captain.