Arthur nodded. “I thought the same thing myself. Perhaps our search will still be a needle in a haystack, but this should narrow our quest down to the right haystack, and keep our party safe. Let’s keep riding while the sun is in our favor.” Arthur kicked Llamrei into a trot.
They reached the port village of Conwy in no time.
Lancelot reigned Cheval behind Fionna’s mount as they walked onto the crowded wharf, full of fishmongers selling their latest catch and merchants loading or unloading vessels.
“My steward has arranged a vessel to take us to Ayr,” Arthur said, nudging Llamrei forward. “We’re looking for the Scarlet Selkie.”
“Sounds like a fun ship,” Galahad said with a soft laugh.
“No ship is a fun ship,” Fionna countered. She was looking even paler than normal.
Galahad quirked an eyebrow. “Am I to understand that our fair Fionna isn’t a sailor?”
“If the goddess intended for me to float on water, she would have made me a swan,” Fionna muttered.
“Ye would be a very handsome swan,” Percival said.
Fionna wrinkled her nose. “No one looks handsome while retching over the side of a boat.”
Lancelot tried to hide a smirk.
“What are ye looking at?” Fionna asked him, her eyes flashing in challenge.
“It gives me comfort to finally discover one thing that you are not good at.”
“There are plenty of things I’m not good at,” Fionna shot back.
“Such as?”
“Understanding brooding French princes.”
“I share a similar weakness in trying to understand the whims of murderous Irish princesses—”
“There she is,” Arthur said, interrupting them. He pointed to a sturdy vessel with a hull painted in red ochre.
Fionna turned from Lancelot and closed her eyes. She seemed to be muttering a prayer. Whether it was for an iron stomach or patience, Lancelot wasn’t sure. He could use the same divine aid.
ARTHUR HAD NEVER really trusted the sea. The land was firm and solid and reliable. But the sea? Ever-changing and unpredictable. Always moving. Even on a calm day, unfathomable life teemed beneath the surface. Creatures of this world and unnatural monsters. An entire underwater realm he didn’t understand and would never see. It didn’t help that in a single blink of the eye, that strange life could turn on you, swallowing you into its abyssal depths.
Perhaps the sea was akin to loving a woman. Though with Fionna, he had glimpsed beneath her surface—or so he thought. Regardless, she was a woman he dearly wanted to understand. Like a sailor takes to the sea, learning Fionna might take him a lifetime of trying and failing, learning and exploring. With Fionna, it would be a life well lived.
The captain of the Scarlet Selkie was a short stocky Welshman with a brown shaggy hair and a weathered face so furrowed you could plant crops in the wrinkles. Davies ran a tight ship—his crew was tidy, respectful, and hardworking. On this clinker-built cog and the two others carrying their horses and supplies, Davies was king. And Arthur could respect a man who fairly ruled his domain.
For three days now, they had been at sea and would port this day. Fionna spent the better part of these three days with her head over the side. The warrior hadn’t been jesting. She truly was seasick.
They took turns sitting beside her in a nook the five of them shared at the longboat’s stern, regaling her with tales when the ship’s bard wasn’t on duty. They shared stories of brave deeds or foolish ones.
Except Lancelot.
Lancelot had taken up a position on the longboat’s bow and appeared as fixed and as firm as the ship’s selkie masthead. He stared out over the sea, watching the endless waves, the soaring gulls, and the craggy coastline of Wales and Strathclyde pass by. Arthur had thought Lancelot was surfacing from his black cloud, but his mood seemed to be declining further instead. Arthur sighed. He had resisted talking to Lancelot, knowing his friend was just as likely to bite his head off when he got like this. But . . . maybe he could help, nonetheless.
Arthur walked across the boat, past coiled ropes and sailors, to stand by Lancelot’s side. “You aiming for a record?”
Without turning Arthur’s way, Lancelot grunted, the sound more like a question.
“How long a man can stand and look at the sea?”
Lancelot shot him a sideways look. The gray of the sea reflected in his light eyes, turning them a smoky hue.
“Oh no, you broke your streak.” Arthur flashed him a crooked grin.
Lancelot rumbled out a dark laugh. “Not much else to do on this vessel.”
“You could help us keep Fionna company. She’s asked after you.”
Silence.
“Did something happen between the two of you?” Arthur asked. “I thought . . . I don’t know. I thought things were better.”
“Don’t you ever miss how things were? When it was just the four of us?” Lancelot asked.
“I—I don’t know. Things can’t stay the same forever, Lancelot. We were always going to add more knights.”
“More knights, yes. But with Fionna . . . nothing is the same.” A gust of frigid wind teased Lancelot’s curls and Arthur wrapped his cloak more tightly about himself.
“We’re still the same, Lance,” Arthur said, using his nickname from when they were younger men. “You and I? We are brothers.”
Lancelot turned to him, and the pain in his friend’s eyes nearly stole Arthur’s breath. “We’ll never be the same again. Not since Morgana. And certainly not after Fionna. My friendship with you is the one possession I treasured most in this world. And now our brotherhood is the one thing I fear will never be the same again.”
Arthur set his jaw. “Different, yes. But let us make our friendship stronger, then. Allow these adversities to bring us closer. I feel like you are giving up, and I don’t know why. If this is about Fionna, my friend, my brother, I have been thinking much on what you shared. The time she spent with Galahad and Percival doesn’t bother me so much as I thought it might. Perhaps . . . there is room for all of us in her heart. Even you.”
“And in her bed?” Lancelot’s lip curled, his dark eyebrows knitting together.
“Even in her bed. If that is what she wishes . . . I think . . . I think I might be warming to the very idea.”
“You mean, brother, that you will put up with anything because you are so desperately in love with her?”
Arthur’s pulse darkened. “I mean, each of you is dear to me in a way I cannot express. Our fellowship is precious to me, and even more so now that Fionna has joined our brotherhood. Somehow, she has completed us. But this completion doesn’t feel right with you on the outside like this. And I don’t understand why you insist upon separation when I am insisting that you are welcome. And needed.”
Lancelot buried his face in his hands, scrubbing at the morose, haunted shadows lining his face. “You deserve happiness Arthur Pendragon, more than any man I have known. With me in the mix . . . things could only implode spectacularly. It is because I love you, and I love her, and I love Caerleon that I will hold myself apart.”
Arthur whispered, “I do not understand . . .”
“Someday you will. And you will thank me.” Lancelot twisted away from Arthur and resumed his post as before—his mind lost at sea.
Arthur waited several heartbeats before walking stiffly back to the ship’s stern, ducking his head and studying the planked floor beneath his boots. Emotions roiled within him. His friend had proved an enigma even since they were lads. But lately . . . Arthur heaved a tight breath as heavy and chilled as the North Wind. Perhaps being raised by the cursed faeries darkened Lancelot’s tongue. He had learned their ability to speak truth without saying anything decipherable whatsoever.
As Arthur pushed past a sailor to his party’s corner nook, the smell of sick hit him like a top wave, turning his already soured stomach. Fionna lay on the sea-drenched floor, shivering, her head resting on Percival’s thigh—the lad
asleep—with an extra cloak draped over her weakened body. She hardly looked up when he lowered himself against the rail boards. Her face was pale and coated in a sheen of sweat, and her arms wrapped around a wooden slop bucket.
Galahad stood, giving Arthur a little more room. “Going to stretch my legs,” the big knight said. Arthur didn’t blame him. This ship was oppressive.
“Thank you, friend,” Arthur said. “And you, Fionna? Would you like to try and stretch your legs a bit too? Might help you.”
She moaned, her eyes fluttering. “The only thing helping me,” she rasped, “is this strange little root Lelah gave me.” She held up a piece of gnarled brown root in her hand. “Chewing on this actually soothes my stomach.”
“What did she call it again?” Arthur reached out to examine the root, but Fionna snatched the strange plant back, as if it were the most precious possession in the world.
“Ginger,” Fionna managed. “Oh boy,” she shoved herself up onto the rail, jostling Percival awake while positioning herself over the sea.
Arthur stood and pulled her long tresses and braids off her sweaty neck and out of the way. Then he placed a comforting hand on her back and drew soft, soothing circles. With his head, he gestured for Percival to go stretch and walk with Galahad. The young man complied, but only after a hesitant look Fionna’s way.
She breathed out slowly, sagging in relief. “False alarm, I think.”
“Do you desire another story?” Arthur asked, settling back onto planked floor beside her.
“You have any left? I think Percival has exhausted all the Scoti tales he knows, and Galahad the Norse ones.”
“I have a few left to share. Do you want the one about the knight and the green man or the knight who befriends a lion?” Arthur asked
“Do all your stories revolve around knights?”
“Obviously, they have the best adventures.”
A ghost of a smile flickered across Fionna’s face. “You choose.”
“All right. Once, a king was hosting a feast. A huge green giant showed up and offered to let someone cut off his head with an axe, so long as he could do the same to them one year and a day later—”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Fionna countered, her eyes closed. “The giant would be dead.”
“They’re legends Fionna. Details don’t need to be plausible.”
“Right,” she whispered.
“Are you going to listen?” Arthur asked. “Or are you going to argue?
“Argue . . .” she whispered faintly in reply once more, but her body had grown still.
Arthur brushed loosened strands of hair from her cheek. Her pale, waxen face finally appeared relaxed, the lines of tension around her eyes and mouth now peaceful, her breathing even.
Arthur gently pulled the bucket from her grasp, wincing when she stirred. But the motion had not awakened her, and she settled back into much-needed slumber.
He placed the bucket on the other side of where he sat and then pulled an extra wool blanket slowly up over her, softly kissing her clammy brow. “Rest fair Fionna. Dream of green giants and solid shores.”
NEARLY FIVE DAYS had passed since arriving in the Kingdom of Strathclyde. One day of rest in the grand port city of Ayr, followed by four days of hunger and growing weakness while skirting around musty peat bogs and crossing through endless birch, pine, and oak lined woodlands. Forests and marshes that should be teaming with game, but strangely remained shrouded in pale, misty silence. The trees and grasses had withered into shades of brown and gold, odd colors for this rain-soaked land. Black sap oozed from trunks and limbs and oiled the surface of every bog they passed. Galahad’s horse, without grass or grain for leagues now, dragged each hoof over yet another hill.
So many hills and rock formations. He didn’t know the land rose to such heights and so willingly until he had ventured into Scoti territory.
But nothing compared to the hunger gnawing at Galahad’s stomach, like a wolf that slowly chipped away at the bones of its last kill. His fellow sword-brothers fared no better, and Fionna even worse. The poor woman was but a husk of her former self. After three days of purging all nourishment from her body, she was barely present at times. Her silver eyes frosted over from a dull, persistent ache he knew she felt in the deepest recesses of her gut. Her skin shimmered in the chill as though ice crystals. Yet, she held herself aloft in the saddle with nary a complaint. A warrior even when flirting with the delusions of hunger, even when shivering from the never-ending mist.
A moving, almost living mist that appeared deep in the forest, several leagues east of Ayr.
He thought back to the day they had reached port. Striding across solid ground had warmed Galahad’s dampened spirits after so long at sea—strange for a Norseman, he knew. Still, the earth had felt strange beneath his boots, his legs unsure of how to walk without a deck tilting beneath his feet.
Fionna looked about ready to weep with relief as she led her horse off the livestock ship and onto the docks of Ayr. She had lost significant weight from her already thin frame.
“We need to fatten you up,” Galahad had remarked, falling into step beside her.
“Your lips to the goddess’s ears,” Fionna murmured. “Give me another ten minutes and I’ll be so hungry I could eat a whole cow in one sitting.”
Galahad chuckled to himself at the memory before reaching into his saddlebag. His fingers searched around for something, anything, and made contact with a strip of dried venison. He had only two strips left, the only food stores he possessed untouched by the finger of death and rot in this goddess-forsaken land. Steering his horse beside Fionna’s, he reached out and gently pressed the dried venison into her cold-stiffened fingers. “Until you get a whole cow to eat in one sitting.”
They were out of rations after the voyage. Though they had restocked in Ayr, the foul—almost preternatural—weather quickly spoiled most of their newly gathered supplies. They would need to find provisions in Castellum Puellarum—and desperately—before embarking to Caer Benic. Galahad was lucky he had even scrounged up this piece.
“Thank ye,” Fionna smiled sleepily, as though the act took the energy of a full day’s practice on the tourney round. And then she woodenly nibbled a tiny bite between her front teeth.
Galahad swung his gaze up ahead onto the narrow trail for a glimpse of the emerging village beneath the dormant volcano of Castle Rock.
High on a hill above them, just visible through the sheet of white, a ghostly timber and stone fortress dominated the landscape, like something made by Odin himself. Winding, compacted-earth streets snaked up the hill throughout the tidy turf-sided buildings. They had made it. But Castellum Puellarum was not what he had expected. Even the name differed here. A post outside of the village read “Eiden’s Burgh”—Anglo-Saxon rather than Roman. From the stories that had reached his ears from his time as a squire, he expected a large, bustling city. But there was not a soul in sight.
Arthur pulled Llamrei to a stop next to Galahad, surveying the village, a troubled look on his face. “It’s so quiet.”
“Where is everyone?” Percival asked. “When I came here with my father as a wee lad, these streets were full to the brim.”
“Is it still early?” Fionna asked, her voice slurred and drowsy. “I’ve lost all sense of time.”
Galahad frowned as an uneasy feeling twisted his stomach. “Just past mid-day. There should be fishermen stringing up their early morning catch, people tending to their gardens . . .” His voice trailed off as he spotted a couple of small croft plots, now barren.
“Perhaps there’s a festival, drawing people into the village center?” Fionna murmured weakly. But Galahad could tell by the tight set of her jaw that even she didn’t believe her own words.
“Or perhaps, there’s foul magic afoot,” Lancelot said. “Could this be Morgana’s doing?”
“My half-sister dogs our journey,” Arthur replied, his voice hesitant. “But I’m not sure even she is capable of
making the people within an entire village disappear.” Arthur squared his shoulders. “Whatever is going on here, this changes nothing. We need provisions and then we need to find our way to Caer Benic. Percival, I think this would be a good time to keep the adder stone handy. Everyone else, swords at the ready. I agree with Lancelot. Something strange has bewitched Eiden’s Burgh. We must be on alert.”
The knights rode up the narrow streets single file, their swords out, save Fionna. She was still too weak and her body slumped slightly, as if talking had consumed what remained of her strength.
A thick, wet fog mixed with the bluish mist, blanketing the buildings and glistening along thatched roofs. Haar or sea fret, if Galahad remembered the term correctly. The kind of sea mist that clung to fur and eyelashes and seeped cold fingers into a man’s bones until he rattled and his teeth chattered hard enough to fall out. A different kind of cruel cold than the mist they had traveled through for days.
Though the hour had reached mid-day, an oppressive gray sky hung low overhead. They saw not a single soul in the houses or shops they passed by, nor on the street. Not even a rat scurrying in the gutter or a bird soaring overhead. Had a vile plague darkened their doors? Though, the smell of death didn’t linger in the air.
The knights remained as silent as the ghostly village around them. Somehow, speaking seemed wrong, even if a hushed whisper. Galahad had experienced magic before, even black magic, like Morgana and her sisters’ curse on Caerleon. But this . . . this was something altogether different. This was Otherworldly.
When Fionna broke the silence, her warbled words were deafening. “Should we check that inn for food?” She pointed to a nearby longhouse with a sign dangling from the roof’s beam: “The Glæd Bard.”
Lancelot cocked his head. “I do not speak barbarian.” He looked at Galahad, a faint smirk playing on his lips. “Translate?”
“Anglo-Saxon for ‘happy.’” Galahad smirked back at Lancelot, refusing to give in to the man’s jibe.
“I doubt crabapple is feeling verra jolly right now,” Percival muttered under his breath, completely unaware of Galahad and Lancelot’s silent poke at one another. But Galahad couldn’t help but grin at their mopey, dark knight as the last word left Percival’s mouth.
Gwenevere's Knights- The Complete Knights of Caerleon Trilogy Page 31