She was needed by Atremus, too, and over the course of the weeks, she learned more and more of the knight’s history, not that there was much detail to it. He had taken service with Bretagne’s father shortly after the last time that Gwynn had seen him—and she suspected, although he did not say as much, that he had been smitten with the elder Gwynnhwyfar, her mother, and had looked for refuge in service elsewhere. He had served his baron well and truly, and he had pledged his liege on the baron’s deathbed that he would serve the son likewise. And so he had, until he had taken an injury in a tournament melee on Bretagne’s behalf that had left him crippled, at which point he learned just how seriously Bretagne took his own vows to his liegemen. Which was to say, not at all.
Gwynn got the distinct impression from what Atremus did not say that if Atremus had taken more care of his own safety and less of Bretagne’s, Atremus would not have been hurt and Bretagne might not have survived to rule.
Atremus was left to heal or die on his own, and discovered that he had been demoted in importance to the very least of Bretagne’s knights. Hence, the subtle insult to her when he was selected to meet her at the door.
“He would probably have dismissed me, except that if he did, he knew he could get no other knight to serve him—ever,” Atremus told her sadly. “And there are times when I wish he would, but at least I have a roof above my head and food on my trencher, and if I swallow insult with my beer, at least I have beer to swallow.”
There was nothing whatsoever she could say to that; all she could do was to cover his hand with her own in an attempt to comfort. But the touch on his hand made her face suddenly flush, and she averted her gaze so that he would not see it. But she knew what it was; even Robin knew, though thanks be to God, no one else saw, because no one else saw them together.
“You’re in love with him,” Robin said flatly one night after closing the door behind him.
“And I am not foolish enough to risk his life and mine to say or do anything about it,” she replied just as flatly. “Perhaps Isolde and Arthur’s queen could not control themselves when the passion was upon them, but I can, and will.”
Robin nodded with satisfaction. “Good. I’m pleased to see you aren’t going to lose your head over him—literally! Though it isn’t beheading you would fear.”
“No. They drown adulteresses,” Gwynn replied softly.
Robin wasn’t finished, though. “But in that case, are these chess games wise?”
“They are my only unmixed pleasure,” she admitted sadly. “And if I did not have them—”
Robin waved her hands wildly, as if to cut off further explanation. “Never mind. I could not bear to see you drooping about like a broken flower. At least now you are holding your head up and even smiling now and again.”
And that was the end of that conversation, but it lingered in her thoughts long afterward, along with one other thing. The great diagram and all of the spells and enchantments woven into it, was almost complete. There were two days of the year in which it could be used for the purpose that Gwynn intended, and one of them, May Eve, was fast approaching. She wanted to use it. Robin kept giving her impatient and significant glances, as if wondering when she would.
But she did not, as yet, have a justifiable reason to do so. Nothing had changed between her and Bretagne.
Nor had anything come of that single command—to listen—although listen she most certainly had, every day.
Finally, near the end of April, on a cold and rainy day, in absence of any other guidance, she went into the tiny chapel to pray for guidance.
It was shrouded in darkness, with only the tiny, flickering Presence lamp on the altar providing any light at all. Nevertheless, because she did not want to be disturbed, she took a flat cushion and knelt in the corner, where she could not be seen unless someone was actively searching the chapel for occupants.
She emptied her mind and clasped her hands before her—but what came then was no “still, small voice” in her heart. No indeed.
It was, in fact, a clear, distinct, but far-distant echo of voices from some other place in the keep.
One of the voices was Bretagne’s. One was another man, whose voice she did not recognize.
“—Border Lords want me that badly, eh?” Bretagne said with a chuckle. “That’s a rich price—but how do I know I’ll get it once the King’s been driven back and the north is free of him again?”
The words made Gwynn grow cold.
“You don’t trust a sworn oath?” the stranger replied.
“You’re asking me to break mine,” Bretagne pointed out. “Why should I trust yours?”
“Would marriage to Lord Seward’s eldest daughter serve to appease your concerns?” countered the stranger.
“I have a wife,” Bretagne said.
But the stranger laughed. “A wife who you are known to despise, who is apparently barren, who suffers from fainting fits. A man who cannot find a route to bachelorhood with a wife like that is not as clever as you claim to be.”
The words made Gwynn grow colder still.
But the next ones turned her to ice.
“Putting her aside,” Bretagne said slowly, “would mean losing the income from her rents and rights, which I will not do. The Devil knows I’ve earned it, looking at the whey-faced bitch in my bed, night after night. I might require some help from outside my household, lest suspicion fall on me.”
“A small thing to arrange.” The stranger sounded indifferent.
“Then…very well. When you next come to me, you must bring word of these arrangements,” Bretagne replied, his voice full of gloating. “And when I am a bachelor again, then I shall be glad to entertain your—friends—and their propositions.”
Listen. Well, she had. And she had certainly heard. This was justification; Bretagne planned her murder, and treason, both.
She had often wondered why the chapel was where it was—an out-of-the-way corner, inconvenient, cold in every weather. Now she thought she knew; it was the long-ago listening post of some long-dead baron. She would probably never discover who it was, or why he had built it, but it was enough that it had given her what she had not had before this.
She waited for some time with her head bowed over her hands, but either Bretagne and his visitor had moved away from the place that brought their words down to her, or Bretagne had dismissed him. Finally, when her knees were aching and she was so cold that her nose felt numb, she got to her feet and returned to her solar.
As she had hoped, Robin was there; the girl gave her an odd look, for she was not normally in this room during the middle of the day. “My scissors—” she said with a sharp glance at the girl, for the scissors were there, in plain sight, on her chatelaine belt.
“Ah. Why… here they are!” The girl walked toward her, feigning to carry something in her hand. As she bent to “fasten” the imaginary scissors to her lady’s belt, Gwynn whispered. “We act. May Eve.”
Robin cast her a startled look that turned to one of satisfaction, and nodded.
Gwynn left, to return to her duties, but it was with her own head a’ whirl. Somehow she would have to get Bretagne up to the solar that night—a man who so despi
sed her that he had just planned her murder. It was the one flaw in her plan and it had to be overcome.
Somehow.
Because if she didn’t—she might not be alive to try on All Hallow Even.
8
Gwynn would have expected Bretagne to pay as little attention to May Eve and May Day as he did every other holy festival, but he surprised her by declaring a tournament for May Day, and a feast for the evening before.
Then again, May Eve was well known for licentious behavior, what with young men and women staying out all night to go a’ maying, gathering the spring blossoms with dew still on them. “May nights make New Year bellies,” was a saying among the old women, meaning that there were plenty of babies born January to May Day sweethearts who might have actually wedded only in August. And apparently this was something of a tradition for Clawcrag, at least according to Atremus; a May Day tournament and a Harvest Feast were the two celebrations that Bretagne preferred to hold.
Bretagne even went so far as to suggest that she ought to try another local custom, of visiting a certain standing stone on May Eve, one that was reputed to bring fertility. She, suspecting that this might be the setup for an ambush, countered gaily with a plan to make a torchlight procession of it of all of the married women of the keep and village, and he quickly lost interest in the idea, which only hardened her suspicions. She had kept vigil in the chapel every day since the fateful one, but had not overheard another such conversation. She had also discovered from Wulfred who Bretagne’s visitor had been, and obtained a pledge from him to tell her if the fellow turned up again. Thus far, he had not—but Bretagne could easily have arranged to meet him away from the keep.
If he had—if the suggested trek to the standing stone had been an attempt to place her where she could be done away with—then her days truly were numbered. Sooner or later, either his co-conspirator would find a plan that would work or Bretagne would become impatient and do the job himself….
This was hardly a pleasant frame of mind to be in as she woke on the morning of the last day of April and tried to fix her mind on the preparations for the night’s feast. Bretagne had invited guests—none of them known to her, and she wondered how many of them were his prospective allies. At least none were Lord Seward and his eldest daughter. The guests had been installed in every available room in the keep—and some that were not technically available; many of Bretagne’s knights and a great many of the servants had been displaced, and were either packed double and triple the usual number to a room, or were in the stables or anywhere else a pallet could be laid. Only the solar had not been invaded, but only because up until this very moment Gwynn had been storing the barrels of wine and beer, the precious spices and the expensive sugar and white flour for the feast there for safe-keeping. Now the drink was in the hall, kegs tapped and ready, the food in the kitchen and her solar was empty.
The rest of the keep was in a fever of good humor and anticipation, enhanced by the fact that for the first time in years—thanks to Gwynn’s planning and preparation—everything was going smoothly. Bretagne himself was nowhere to be seen in the keep; he was down just outside the village, at the tourney ground, where he and his guests were watching the peasant competitions of wrestling, archery, single-stick, quarter-staff and stone-tossing. Which was perfect, for it left the keep empty of demanding guests and allowed the keep servants to get on with the feast preparations.
As the afternoon burned on, Gwynn felt but one thing preying on her mind—that at some point after Bretagne returned, she had to lure him to the solar. The exact time of the spell did not matter, but it must take place between sunset and midnight, or wait until All Hallow Even. And she still had not managed to think of a way to bring him up there in the midst of the feast.
“My lady?” came a call from the door to the kitchen, interrupting her thoughts. She turned with a frown; the last thing she wanted at this point was an interruption! But the speaker was Sir Atremus, and she knew at once that something was wrong—
Nevertheless, she hurried to his side.
“My lady—” he began to whisper, but with great difficulty. “There is something you must know—about the baron—the King—and you—”
His face had begun to sag on the left side, like melted and softened wax. He appeared unsteady…and as he took a single step into the room—
—he collapsed.
Two of the kitchen maids screamed and Gwynn dropped the bread she’d been holding onto the table as her heart seemed to stop, and ran to his side. His face worked as he tried to speak to her, but he was no longer able to do more than make inarticulate sounds. Neither his left arm nor leg were working at all, and his right hand could not manage more than to paw at her.
“Take him to my solar!” she cried, and miraculously, two of the men obeyed her without a word, picking up the stricken knight and carrying him off. And she ran after them, biting her lip to keep from scolding at them, for they were carrying the knight very gently and with as much care as she could have asked.
Up the stairs they went, with the sunset light pouring in scarlet and gold through the window slits on the stairway. She wanted to weep, and dared not; she knew what this was, for the same ailment had struck her father in a lesser form—only her father had not collapsed with half his body completely useless.
This was a brainstorm, and in this strength, it was a death sentence, for there was no cure for this, and Atremus, her only friend here, would surely die within days or weeks. He would not be able to swallow, and would waste away, for how could anyone get food or drink into him? And the cruelest blow of all, he would be perfectly awake and aware the entire time—
She heard horns blowing from the walls and the clatter of hooves in the outer courtyard—Bretagne and the guests were back, which would signal the start of the feast. She heard another horn echo inside the keep—the call to table. She wouldn’t be there—
It didn’t matter.
The servants had their orders and knew what to do. He would hardly miss her. He would probably put Ursula in her place.
Robin arrived at that moment and took in the situation at a glance. As the maid helped her lady, Gwynn turned to one of the two fellows who had helped carry the knight here. “Tell them what has happened, and that either I will be down in a moment or I will send a further message.”
Atremus could never fit into the cupboard bed; as a consequence, she took cushions and blankets and made a pallet for him on the floor. And it was at that very moment, when a chance movement uncovered a bit of the painting on the floor, that it came to her.
She suddenly knew exactly what she was going to do tonight; there would be a change in plans. It was audacious; it was, possibly, the most foolish thing she could do. But it would give Atremus another chance at life and perhaps—
She would not think of the “perhaps.” Only what this meant to Atremus.
She knew the exact placement of every bit of the diagram; she placed the pallet with excruciating care and the men lowered Atremus down into it. Now only his eyes could follow them as his limbs and mouth trembled.
“You can go, and thank you,” she told the remaining man, who bowed to her, cast a pitying glance at Atremus and fled. He, too, knew very well what fate awaited the poor knight.
“Blessed Jesu,” Robin muttered, looking down at Atremus, her face a mask that concealed her feelings. “My lady, what is to be done? He—”
“Robin, you know what we do tonight,” Gwynn replied, standing up and taking the maid’s shoulders with both hands. “And I can only think one thing— he is to take your place.”
Robin stared at her, and if the situation had not been so grave, it would have been comical to see how relief and horror chased each other across her face. “But…my lady! The risk for you! He has not been—he does not know—”
“I am about to tell him,” Gwynn replied, her heart pounding in her ears with fear, the taste of fear metallic in her mouth yet not unmixed with hope and excitement. “And as for what will happen when we are done—that is in God’s hands. Now, do you clear and prepare the room, while I explain it to him.”
Once again, Gwynn knelt at Atremus’s side while Robin prepared the room for a Great Work. She cleared away the rushes, lit candles she removed from the secret compartments of the chest and placed them at cardinal points in the diagram, lit incense in a censer, and placed Gwynn’s white and black knives in the center of the diagram, awaiting Gwynn’s hands.
“My sweet friend,” she began, taking his unresponsive hand in hers and swallowing back tears at his state. “What has struck you has no cure, and you will not recover from it. There is nothing that can be done for you, as you are.”
His eyes stared into hers and she thought she read in their sad depths the acknowledgment of that truth, the knowledge that he was doomed.
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