Legend of the Lakes

by Clara O'Connor

  “But he wasn’t?”

  “Hmm?”

  “He wasn’t a spy?”

  “No,” he said, taking up the story again. “He wasn’t. He just needed somewhere to be, and I needed someone to count on. Nobody really favoured our alliance, or indeed the bad behaviour we brought out in each other. But we got older and wiser… or married, in his case.”

  “You mean me?” I realised. “Are you implying I’m a steadying influence?”

  “I’m not sure. He does seem to have taken on a bit more responsibility in the last few years.”

  Féile. My Féile was the reason he had changed. A change I was so profoundly grateful for, because it meant that she had been loved. Though if Gideon hadn’t stepped up, Rion would have been there. Was there, I realised. My daughter had an uncle, and I had a brother.

  “Why did you choose Gideon?” I asked. From all I knew of him he was an odd choice for the strategically minded Rion to have made that day on the beach. He was at odds with his father, the Steward of York, an alliance Rion had wanted to strengthen. I had some inkling of the youth he had shared with Rion, making him far from the type of man to whom one married one’s sister. He refused to swear fealty to anyone in a society bound together by such oaths. Any one of the Mercian soldiers on the beach that day would have been a better choice. “He cares about nothing and no one.”

  “He certainly works hard to make it appear that way.” Rion eyed me speculatively. “But if that’s what you think of him. Maybe the better question is, why did he say yes?”

  I knew little enough about why Gideon did anything. Maybe if I knew more about him, I could figure it out.

  “Why did he leave York?” I asked.

  “You’ll have to ask him.” Rion smiled wryly.

  “Why, because you don’t know?” I tried again. Bronwyn’s speculation that it was because of a woman was something that returned to me more and more often of late.

  “No,” he said. “I know, but it’s his story to tell.”

  I frowned. “Thanks.”

  I spent most of my time with Gideon proving to him I was a fit mother or enjoying his company in other ways. The idea of probing him about his past was terrifying. He wasn’t like Devyn who had been mysterious but open in his own way. Once I had got past his secrets, it had been clear what drove him.

  Gideon was the Griffin by chance; it was not who he was, the way it had been for Devyn. What drove Gideon was less clear. He loved my daughter and slept in my bed, but what was in it for him?

  Chapter Eleven

  As the first snowdrops began to push their way back into the world heralding the new season, Marina, who had shouldered the burden until reinforcements came not just from Glastonbury but Alba as well after learning of Elsa’s death, was ordered to take a break and so she came to visit.

  Her brother clucked around her, despairing of her druidic robes, delighted when she asked him to provide her with some of the more practical outfits he had rustled up for me. Loose tunics with wide belts and simple leggings, jewel-toned wraps with the intricate swirling patterns the Celtic region favoured, even adapting some of the Anglian preference for hard-wearing leather trousers, which she wore while training.

  She had been enthralled at the sight of the Britons training for the war to come, insisting on working with Gideon. Rion joined them on occasion to round out her skills with the more magic-wielding side of battle skills. He had graciously lowered himself to teach her after learning she had a solid gift for two elements as well as a voracious appetite to learn everything. Freed from the ley duties she had shouldered since escaping Londinium, she was a whirlwind of energy, a life-force bowling our careful steps out of her way in her boundless energy to take in all she could.

  She had always been so careful and wise beyond her years – the poverty and danger of her early life behind the walls, the responsibility of the ley, which she had picked up without complaint – that it was hard sometimes to remember she was only sixteen.

  “She just appeared on the battlefield?” I could hear Marina asking from where a near-collapsed Rion lay at the side of the training field.

  Gideon nodded as I delivered Féile to him, swinging her in the air before setting her up with the wooden sword that our indomitable daughter insisted on learning to use.

  “So legend has it. The Romans had us pushed back beyond Hadrian’s wall; we had been losing ground for centuries—”

  “But even without a Lady of the Lake there are still druids, still people like you and me who can fight,” Marina interrupted the once impeccable King of Mercia.

  Callum, who was waiting to start our own oh-so-frustrating training session, answered for him.

  “Not like now. Guinevere had been dead for centuries. Without the lady to tend the ley lines on our island, the power in the blood fades, and there are fewer and fewer people with the druidic gifts, fewer latents. There are certainly no latents with the level of power you have, girl.”

  “So a new Lady of the Lake just arrived and beat the Empire?”

  “More or less,” Rion answered without opening his eyes.

  “What does that mean?”

  “Well she helped win the battle, but more importantly the Lady Evaine fell in love and married the handsome Mercian King Belanore and her children inherited some of her powers. They eventually were slain in battle and their children continued the fight. Their daughter, Olwen, became Lady of the Lake, she was saved in battle by Llewelyn the Great and his son Gruffyth became the first Griffin and they pushed the Romans south.”

  Callum went to fetch our horses to head out and I took a seat – the Marina I knew of old would never be satisfied with this.

  “What happened then?”

  Rion groaned, levering himself up on an elbow and smiling at me in greeting. “Generations passed and magic grew stronger in the land. Mercia had given refuge to their Plantagenet cousins who had fled Anglia before the Lady Evaine came to us. The House of York spent its time raiding the lands they had once ruled, until the Lady Katherine, Evaine’s descendent, married the widowed King Consort John and persuaded him to unite our houses, creating the Union of the Roses.”

  “Ooh, I know about this. They pushed the legions all the way south of the May line.”

  “Where they remain to this day,” Rion summed up in a final tone.

  I couldn’t help the laughter that escaped me at his attempt to fob her off.

  “But aren’t you missing the bit where the Rose armies are defeated at Stratford and the valiant King Henry was slain without leaving an heir, thus breaking the line of the great Mercian House of Lancaster?” I had broadened my studies to understand better the history of my home.

  Rion cast me a dark look, though I knew he would be pleased at my knowledge and at Marina’s interest.

  Marina’s eyes opened expectantly. “What happened then? Did York take over Mercia?”

  “Henry’s widow, a princess who had fled Gallia, married the Griffin Owain Tewdwr. Their son, Edmund, married a Lady of the Lake, Margaret Beaufort, and together they founded perhaps the most celebrated House of Mercia.”

  “House Tewdwr.” This was a Briton house that even the least educated child inside the stews of Londinium knew. “Was their son the High King Arthur?”

  Rion chuckled at Marina’s somewhat hero-worshipping expression. “Not yet. Their son Henry married the sister of Edward of York and their son Arthur becomes the first High King of Briton as he tied together some of the major bloodlines of Briton: the Lakes line, the Plantagenets, and through the Tewdwrs, House Glyndŵr.”

  United, the Briton tribes had pushed back the tide that had devoured Europe and northern Africa, all the way to the walls of Londinium itself. At least for a time.

  “And his death started the two-hundred-year war, and pushed you back above the May line. But how come you couldn’t defeat the legions again? Arthur did it in only a few years.”

  “The battles are not always as important as who leads,�
� Rion explained as I made my way over to Callum, who had returned with the horses. “All those lines coming together created a king who everyone wanted to follow. When he was killed, we were splintered apart once more.”

  Callum tilted his head back and exhaled in frustration, pinching the bridge of his nose as he did when he was at the very edge of his patience. It was one of those little mannerisms more suited to the professor who lived on the inside than the bear of a man he appeared to the world.

  “You need to have faith in what you do. Believe in the gift you’ve been given,” he urged me for the millionth time.

  I stared at the belligerent rock in front of me.

  “Why won’t it just obey me?” If I could smash it into gravel and throw it into the ocean to be ground down to sand it would be no more than it deserved.

  “Obey?” Callum echoed, his mouth gaping in surprise at me. He let out a guffaw. “Obey? You are telling a rock what to do? No, no, it can’t be as simple as that.”

  He pulled at his beard slowly.

  “When you are dealing with the ley line, what do you do?” he asked.

  “What do you mean, what do I do? I don’t do anything. I sing to it, with it, I let the magic wash through me and the notes change, the harmony flows and continues on its way.”

  “And when you feel a storm rise when you are angry, how do you do that?”

  I didn’t really do anything, that was the problem. It just happened. I was aware of it and knew enough to release it if things hadn’t got too out of control. When it took me with it, I usually needed someone to remind me not to be the storm. My heart stuttered a little at the flash of the first storm I had conjured, of Devyn’s kisses bringing me back to myself.

  “Cass,” Callum prompted.

  I shrugged. “I don’t really do anything, it’s just there. The magic comes in, and things happen.”

  “And when you tell the rock what to do?”

  What did he want me to say? I wasn’t able to do it. It was beyond me.

  “Your best work comes when you just do what seems natural, no thinking, no weighing up the scenarios, just doing,” he said. “Stop overthinking everything. Just do it.”

  The power was within me. I had everything I needed.

  And the rock rose.

  Callum swept me up in his arms, jubilant.

  “I can’t believe it. After all that,” a broad smile stretched across his face. “You can do anything! You just need to… do it.”

  I beamed at Rion as I flopped into the seat in his study. I wanted to share my success with someone and as Gideon wasn’t at training, the king was the easiest to locate. At this time of day, he was always in his study working his way through the large amount of paperwork that ruling the kingdom seemed to generate. My brother was nothing if not a man of routine.

  My mood was not matched by his. Whatever it was he was reading was clearly not agreeable as he muttered angrily in response to what lay within.

  An eyebrow rose in enquiry as I waited for him to acknowledge me. He finally laid his quill down.

  “Why don’t you use pens?” I asked. It was beyond ridiculous. How was dipping a feather in ink a better idea? I wasn’t asking that they install computers in the castle but what harm could a ballpoint pen do?

  He raised a brow across his papers. “When the Treaty was signed in 1772, the industrial age was just beginning. If truth be told, the new weapons that the Empire were producing were a large part of the reason we decided it was time for a truce. But a number of the delegates became ill during the negotiations; it’s the reason we stay in the city no longer than a week. By the time we leave, there is always some signs of the illness. After we leave the technology behind, the stricken delegates usually recover fast enough.”

  “I always thought technology didn’t work out here,” I said.

  “It works, though it can be unreliable. I wouldn’t care to sail in a boat reliant on tech,” he said. “It also doesn’t agree with us. We have survived well enough without it.”

  “You think a ballpoint pen causes the illness?”

  “I don’t know what causes the illness. What I do know is that in Londinium, those with magic in their bloodline get sick, and when they leave they recover.”

  “Marcus’s line is Plantagenet,” I reminded him.

  “How old was his mother when she died?” he challenged back.

  I wasn’t sure how old she had been. Marcus had been young though. “Maybe thirty or so.”

  “None of the Courtenays have enjoyed old age, as far as I’m aware,” he said. “There was a reason I did not accompany Gideon and Bronwyn when you escaped the city.”

  “You were sick? But Bronwyn attended the Treaty renewal as well,” I recalled.

  “They had both recovered. I had never been to Londinium before.” He shrugged. “I was drained for some weeks after. Anyway, you did not come here to talk about the reason we do not embrace technology.”

  “I lifted a rock.” I grinned. “On purpose.”

  His eyes lit. “Most impressive.”

  Of course, he would have been slinging boulders about since childhood. I hunched my shoulders. It had taken me years to master this. I eyed his desk and, catching me, his hand lifted in warning as I poofed the air and all of his carefully stacked papers went flying.

  Rion stood and watched as leaves of paper floated to the ground in every corner of the room.

  “I cannot believe you just did that,” he said, coming around his desk, making his way purposefully toward me. “Those contain important matters of state.”

  “Don’t be so stuffy,” I threw at him and, dodging his wrath, ran for the door. I was halfway down the corridor when I realised he had not remained in his study to tidy things. There was a slightly alarming glint in his eye as he stalked me down the corridor.

  Fleeing out to the courtyard turned out to be a mistake as he pursued me across the lawn and captured me beside the ornamental pond, which he decided to make use of in a way older brothers usually got out of their system earlier in life.

  I gasped as I resurfaced in the cold water before I sent a wave of water into the air and dumped it unceremoniously over the King of Mercia.

  Which was the state Gideon found us in as he came careening around the castle.

  “You’re not being attacked?” he glowered as I took his hand and he pulled me out of the lake.

  I glared at Rion. “I was.”

  “She messed up my desk.”

  “He threw me in the lake.”

  Gideon’s jaw went slack, and he took a deep breath before turning on his heel and walking away, grumbling out loud.

  “I lifted a rock,” I called after him. At which my serious older brother burst out laughing.

  Chapter Twelve

  I tucked Féile into her bed in the new style she favoured, which involved her blanket being tucked in all the way from her toes to her neck “like a butterfly”. More accurately, a caterpillar, but if that was what she wanted, then I was hers to command. My heart swelling, I pressed my lips to her cheek, and her eyelids fluttered over the eyes that danced their way through the day from one adventure to the next.

  I entered Gideon’s room, where he sat by the fire reading a book.

  “Little butterfly asleep?” he asked without looking up from his book.

  I nodded. Do it.

  “Yes,” I said aloud rolling my eyes at my own foolishness.

  Do it. Have a conversation.

  “What are you reading?” I asked.

  He lifted an eye in my direction. “A military history of the last war.”

  “Ah, the one on the borders?” I asked, as I sidled over to the table and poured myself a healthy glass of red wine.

  “Yes,” he said, watching me as I took a seat opposite him.

  “Is there anything in there that might help?” I cringed at the stupidity of my question. Yes, Cass, that’s how we will win if the Empire attacks, by reading about a war from four hundred years
ago, but I had to start somewhere.

  He tilted his head, the firelight catching his scar.

  “How did you get your scar?”

  Oh wow. Apparently, I was going all the way on this don’t-think-just-do philosophy. Looking at Gideon’s expression, the change was a little too sudden.

  “I mean, how did you come to live here? I was talking to Rion about it, and he said I should ask you.”

  “You were talking to the king about me?” he asked quietly.

  I swallowed. I couldn’t be making a worse job of this if I had come in here to annoy him on purpose. Gideon was somewhat intimidating at the best of times, and it was only as I asked him a direct personal question that I realised how little I knew of him. Titbits gleaned from others, mostly – his reputation as a warrior, and plenty of hints that before we had married he had had plenty of female companionship but nothing real. He was raising my child, and we shared a bed, and I knew almost nothing about him.

  “Before or after he dunked you in the lake?” his lip twitched.

  I pulled a face.

  “No, I mean it wasn’t today, that is, I… uh…” I shrugged helplessly. “I just wanted to get to know you better. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pry.”

  I stood. This had been a bad idea. Gideon didn’t like me. He didn’t want to get to know me better, and he certainly wasn’t going to tell me anything.

  His golden eyes flickered as I stood feeling like a fish flopping on shore. I was so profoundly out of my comfort zone. Just do? What a ridiculous plan.

  His eyes dropped as he adjusted his position in his seat before he started to talk.

  “My mother left when I was a child. She believed she had a greater purpose in life than to be a wife and mother. My older brothers were teenagers, but I was still young. I didn’t understand that after the lady – your mother – died, those with the ability to tend the ley lines were needed. So little magic remained that she felt she had to do what she could. She trained in Anglesey, and occasionally took me along when she remembered. Then, when I was ten or so, she left for good.”