Legend of the Lakes

by Clara O'Connor

  We climbed hills and over dales as we made our way south. On occasion, a farmhouse would appear, and Gideon would stride off and return with food. The first time he had done so, I had attempted to follow, but the glare I received had stopped me firmly in my tracks, and I hadn’t tried it a second time.

  On the third evening, Gideon dismounted, taking both horses’ reins, indicating that we should continue. My legs felt heavy, the evening was dark, and I struggled to keep up with the tall figure in front.

  Watching the ground to pick out where it was safe to step forced me to concentrate only on putting one foot in front of another. He wouldn’t leave me behind, I was sure of it. Well, I was almost sure of it, but it made me feel better to keep telling myself so.

  “We’ll stop in Ripon,” came a voice from the other side of the horse.

  The yelp that escaped me was unfortunate.

  “We’re stopping?” I asked. The pace had been relentless and he had gone from being caged to ruthless in his determination to reach York as quickly as possible. If I hadn’t been slowing him down, I had no doubt he would already be there.

  “Aye, York is another day on. We’ll get fresh horses in Ripon and be in York by lunchtime tomorrow.”

  “We have no money,” I couldn’t help but point out.

  “We’re in Anglia now. My name will get us what we need,” he said grimly.

  A name he bore with no pride but which he was willing to use if it got him where he needed to be quicker.

  The town was small, a cluster of stone houses around a wide market place with a large inn on the south side of the square. Gideon stooped as he stepped inside and dealt with the innkeeper who hurried to assist us before Gideon even gave his name. Clearly we were not his usual type of customer.

  I had never really paid attention to how others reacted to Gideon. For the last few years, it had been because I had been so indifferent to the world in general and, more recently, because I was so busy dealing with my own reaction to him. But now I watched him as he interacted with the innkeeper, taking notice of his impact on the room in general. He was magnetically attractive. His features shouldn’t work together like they did, carved as they were with a brutal hand. His eyes were golden and framed by dark lashes, his brows arched, his cheekbones lethal in an almost over-long face. The scar added a counterpoint to the beauty that he clearly dismissed himself. Female eyes followed him about and a few male ones, too. He often projected a lazily amused air, yet there was an aura about him that kept most people at a distance. He let few close to him, and fewer still did he welcome into his proximity. Where Marcus’s charisma had brought people to him like bees to honey, there was something about Gideon that warned that, like flickering flames, what drew you was as dangerous as it was beautiful.

  His eyes flashed in my direction before moving coldly on. Flames? The man was walking frostbite. But I was tied to him regardless.

  The innkeeper noticed the interaction.

  “My apologies, my lord. I assumed…” he stumbled over his words. “I have many rooms available. I can have a second made ready.”

  “Is that so?” A dark brow arched. “One will suffice.”

  I cut him a glance. I had a strong preference for a second bedroom myself. It would be nice to have a moment to myself out of range of his resentment and anger.

  “I want a separate room,” I said, the moment we were shown to a surprisingly large room above the bar. The beams on the roof were dark, catching the flicker of the merry fire that danced in readiness of our arrival. The staff must have prepped it while we ate our hearty but silent meal downstairs.

  I felt full and warm for the first time in days, and it made me strong enough to insist that I did not have to put up with whatever this was.

  “No.”

  “No?” I echoed. “I’m not sure when you think I started taking orders from you, but let’s put that to rights.”

  I headed for the door but a firm hand encircling my upper arm ended that act of rebellion.

  “Let me go.” I glared up at him. “Enough.”

  It was all enough. The manhandling, the mood, everything was enough. I whipped around.

  “What is it?” I demanded. “What is wrong with you?”

  “Nothing is wrong with me,” he said. “We are in a hurry. You may have forgotten, but there is a war about to start, and we don’t want it to start without us.”

  “Forgotten?” I echoed. “Forgotten that my daughter is in Londinium?”

  How dare he imply…!

  “You were gone a long time,” he threw at me. “Who knows what you care about?”

  He couldn’t really believe I had abandoned my daughter a second time, could he? My breath came fast as I struggled to rein in my temper. I had more control than this, even as I felt the winds respond to my agitation.

  “What is that supposed to mean?” I dared him to say it, dared him to say that I didn’t care for her, that I didn’t love her, even as the guilt at the delay gnawed inside me. What would she believe?

  “You were gone for a long time,” he levelled at me. “You have pulled in a lot of power – I can sense it in you. You get a little less concerned about others when you handle that much magic. Did you just forget us? Tell me the truth.”

  What power? The tingle. I…

  He was right. More energy than I had ever held simmered through my veins without my even noticing it. It barely registered. But I’d had enough of his accusations. “I have told you the truth. I didn’t know that it had been so long. It wasn’t like that for me.”

  He pulled me into him, and his mouth descended on mine, far more softly teasing than I would have expected given his mood. It was a leisurely exploration and I responded tentatively, unsure of him. I wanted him to believe me, I wanted to be with him, but something wasn’t right.

  He lifted his head, his amber eyes glinting down at me speculatively. “Tell me the truth.”

  I was confused. I was telling him the truth. What was it about my kiss that confirmed his suspicions that I was lying?

  “I am telling the truth.”

  “Dammit, Cat. However damned this relationship is, you have at least always been honest. What aren’t you telling me?”

  I shook my head and his lips flattened grimly.

  “Do you know what it’s like for me?” he asked lazily, his hand lightly brushing hair away from my face. His mood was mercurial, slipping from one thing to another and I couldn’t follow what was happening or where this was coming from.

  I shook my head. “What what is like for you?” I asked.

  “I married you to save your life,” he reminded me.

  “Yes, I know,” I said, when the silence lengthened way beyond what I could withstand. “Thank you,” I offered lamely.

  “Thank you?” He huffed, repeating my words. “I slept with you to save your soul.”

  My mouth dried. Was that how he saw it? That I was using him?

  I felt sick. It wasn’t like that.

  “No thank you this time?” he asked mockingly, reverting to the Gideon I had first met.

  I stood there stricken dumb. Did he really want my thanks?

  “It wasn’t like that…” I began.

  “Wasn’t it?” he asked. “Do you know what it was like when you came to me all those times, when you sought out the Griffin after magic had sucked the soul from you?”

  I thought about the first time we had slept together when I had been ill. It had felt as though he had wanted me as much as I did him. Gideon had a reputation with women – he had certainly been far more experienced than me – but it had felt reciprocal. My stomach folded in on itself as his words came back to me. He had done it because it was his job as Griffin.

  “You think I…” But the words stuck in my mouth – my mouth that felt too dry from horror to produce noise. “You felt used?”

  His head went back in surprise. He blinked as he looked down at me.

  “No, you little fool. I never… that
’s not what I’m saying.” He shook his head. “When we came together I… you drank me in like I was oxygen. Like my touch was a living elixir that you were starved of and needed for your very existence.”

  I nodded. I knew what he meant. It had felt like that to me, like I was scorched earth after a draught and he was rain. I hadn’t been able to get enough of him.

  He ran a finger across my lips.

  “You don’t kiss like a lady who has been absent from her Griffin for too long,” he said speculatively. “Yet it’s been months.”

  I flinched. It hadn’t been long for me, but maybe that really had been Devyn in Avalon and he had been there to help keep me on an even keel even as I absorbed the extra power, more power than I had ever known before.

  “Not for me,” I said, but not fast enough. “A few hours, no more. Not months.”

  “There’s something else,” he accused. “Whatever has been between us, it may not be love, but it’s always been honest. Now, tell me what you are hiding.”

  I lowered my lids and hid my eyes. He could see through me, he’d always been able to see right through me, and he was right, I couldn’t lie to him.

  “Devyn was there.”

  His breath caught, and his face turned to stone.

  “Okay.”

  He moved away and started to unbuckle his leather body armour.

  I stood there uncertain, still braced for the storm that should be headed my way in the face of that confession. But he had no right to be angry, and I wasn’t even sure it had been Devyn. At the time, I had convinced myself it couldn’t be.

  I climbed into the bed beside him. His arms reached over to the edge where I lay as far away as possible from him and pulled me against his chest.

  “Go to sleep,” he grated as I lay stiff in his arms.

  “I don’t understand,” I whispered into the dark.

  There was silence. I had only just managed to force my body to relax and enjoy his closeness when his deep voice came as I was on the edge of sleep.

  “If he was there…” he paused, “then I’m grateful that you came back. For Féile.”

  He thought I would have chosen Avalon and Devyn over my daughter, over him, and he was saying that he understood. I’m not sure I did. I hadn’t just come back for Féile; I had come back because I had to, because I had needed to. Not just for my daughter, not just for Britannia.

  I had come back for him.

  I wanted to explain, to correct him, but I was so tired and being here in his arms I couldn’t help myself as sleep overtook me.

  The next morning the horses took us swiftly to the walls of York, which loomed up before us. Fortifications in Anglia were taken seriously. I had thought that Llewelyn’s castle at Conwy was built to withstand attack but here in York it wasn’t enough to fortify the castle. Gideon told me the entire town was built with attackers in mind, and the defences were many and varied. The great stone walls surrounding the city seemed almost as high as the walls of Londinium itself, and they made Carlisle’s walls look flimsy in comparison.

  “Anglia has spent centuries preparing for this war,” Gideon said as we waited for entrance at the heavily guarded gate.

  “Clearly,” I said, craning my neck to appreciate the feat of engineering such a task would have been. I still on occasion forgot the advantages of magic, which such a wall would surely have required. There were makeshift camps further along the walls on both sides, a small, ramshackle town sheltering beneath the immense walls. “If an attack comes, are they allowed inside?”

  Gideon frowned in the direction of my gaze. “The camp has been growing for months. When I flew over, I couldn’t tell at night who was in it.”

  I realised as I watched the sentries at the gate shoo away a family ahead of us.

  “The ill.”

  The mother and one of the children looked feverish and they were shivering. The scene reminded me of the crowd outside Bart’s Hospital when I had visited with Marcus. People desperate for aid stayed close to where hope lived. Even when denied entry they lingered in the belief that being nearby salvation, even if they could not access it, was better than returning to where they had come from, where there was no hope at all.

  “Why are you not letting those with the Mallacht inside?” Gideon addressed the sentry as we reached the top of the line. “It’s not contagious.”

  The fresh-faced soldier shook his head, his expression troubled. “Orders, my lord. They get some treatment, but we been told for them to be kept out.”

  “No entry for nobody without papers,” said a more weathered-looking soldier beside him.

  I looked at Gideon. What kind of papers?

  “We don’t need papers,” Gideon said in his most arrogant sneer from his relative height.

  The grizzled sentry was entirely unfazed.

  “No papers, no entry,” he said, his hand going to his weapon. “Move along.”

  Gideon smiled and didn’t move one inch. The sentry recognised trouble and nodded up to the discreetly placed archers above the gate.

  “I said, move along.”

  “I am Gideon Mortimer,” he said, leaning down. “I suggest you let me pass.”

  The man’s face dropped and he looked Gideon up and down. He didn’t step aside until he was satisfied that the dark-haired warrior in front of him was at least potentially the steward’s youngest son.

  “And who’s she then?” He nodded toward me.

  “She’s with me.”

  The man’s eyes flickered in my direction, and I could see the moment he worked out by whatever reasoning my actual identity. Where he had remained somewhat unimpressed by the menacing son of his liege lord at my side, the Lady of the Lake was another concept entirely, and he stepped back immediately. The abruptness of the move took his younger companion by surprise as he stepped into him.

  “My lady, my lord,” he said, his head bobbing. As we nudged the horses forward, I could see him inform the younger man who took off at a run. I pulled the hood of my cloak further around my face. Heavily populated places were something I had grown less comfortable with since my celebrity. As Marcus’s bride, I had started to become a known face in Londinium, though I had usually only been recognised when I was actually in Marcus’s company. Since I had been introduced as the Lady of the Lake, however, I seemed to command more attention than the caesar himself, at least among the Britons.

  Walking around Carlisle had become something to be avoided, despite Féile’s frequent entreaties. The faces turning, the whispers, the eyes following me about had made me uncomfortable. I didn’t know what people expected of me. Did they judge me? Did they expect something more? I didn’t know, so I avoided crowds of strangers whenever possible. The castle and the communities at Keswick and Penrith were different. They were more used to me, I supposed, and I could go about my business with less fuss. People still watched me, but they were more discreet, and there were simply fewer of them.

  I trailed after Gideon through the cobbled streets of York as we made our way to the castle – winding being the operative word. It seemed like we weren’t so much crossing the city as we were crisscrossing our way through it.

  “Isn’t there a more direct route?” This was ridiculous; it was going to take us longer to cross the city than it had to get here at the rate we were going. I could occasionally glimpse the castle over the rooftops, and it didn’t look like we were getting any closer.

  Gideon looked back over his shoulder, a smirk lifting his brooding features.

  “Welcome to York,” he said.

  I pushed my horse up alongside him. “Is there no quicker way?”

  “The city is designed so that the castle, the defence of last resort, is the hardest place for an attacking army to reach if they breach the walls,” he explained.

  “What is the point of that if it takes all day for your own people to get there?”

  “The defending army and townsfolk take a more direct route,” he said, nodding towards the
narrow alleyways that cut between the shops at intervals.

  “How long will that take?”

  “Oh, not more than fifteen minutes on foot.”

  “Right,” I said, and slipped from my horse.

  “What are you doing?”

  “What does it look like I’m doing? It’s taken us long enough to get here. “

  “So it has.” He descended from his horse and taking the reins of both, quickly handed them to a young boy with instructions, and we were off.

  With permission to hasten, Gideon did just that, and despite the years since he had lived in York, he led the way through the warren without ever hesitating.

  It was ingenious and I pitied the army that ever breached the walls of York. For surely they stood no chance in these dark, narrow passageways. The advantage would be entirely with the defenders who knew the territory and were able to pick off those foolish enough to take on the labyrinth.

  The alleys were not entirely empty, though those who crossed our path were quick to make way for the oncoming cloaked warrior. There were also those who could not step aside – low huddled beggars, coughing, fevered men, women, and children. The reports Rion had related to us had mentioned the growing impact of the corruption seeping northward, but I hadn’t imagined anything like this scale. The Mallacht was here in force, in far greater numbers than in Carlisle, or even in Londinium when I left.

  When we arrived at the castle gates, the guards, clearly prewarned, immediately stepped back to let us pass. Beyond the castle walls, there were perhaps twenty steps before we had to go through another interior wall. The Anglians didn’t take the threat at their southern border lightly. Callum had told me that Anglia had been a place of refuge for rebels fleeing the reach of the Empire for centuries – Saxons, Vikings, Normans. All the strongest and most defiant of the tribes of Northern Europe had either fallen at the hands of the Empire or had made their way here. Wave after wave, generation after generation. Not only was the kingdom of Anglia always on alert against the force to the south, but their very blood was made up of those who itched to tackle the oppression of the Roman Empire. Anglians, and especially those from the capital of York, merely waited for the day when they would be unleashed. Conwy was defensive but life there was about so much more; Carlisle, meanwhile, seemed relatively oblivious to the threat of the south, the castle airy and sympathetic to the beauty around it. York and the land it sat upon were not like that; it was stark and ready for the inevitable conflict to come.