Legend of the Lakes

by Clara O'Connor

  “We could test it,” Bronwyn suggested.

  “Cat stays with me.” Gideon turned to face us, his jaw set. “The castle is full of strangers.” He cracked his neck. “Besides, somebody told my father that we are married.”

  He glared at Rion.

  “It wasn’t Rion,” Bronwyn defended him. “It was me. During the negotiations with Alba, they said they wanted the fully grown Lady of the Lake, who obviously isn’t available.”

  She looked at me before offering the room a shrug. “It has been almost four years.”

  With so many people packed inside York, many of the council were not present in the great hall as we made our way to dinner that evening. The princes of Cymru in particular were noticeably absent.

  “Where is Llewelyn?” I asked as I walked to the high table with Rion.

  “The princes of Gwynedd, Powys, and Gwent, and Richard Mortimer tend to stay out of each other’s paths. They have always shared an uneasy border. It doesn’t help that when Mother died Richard was so vocal in his demands that Rhodri should be executed, which he very nearly was. Llewelyn does not forgive easily.”

  I eyed the table ahead of us. The steward sat in the middle with Bronwyn on one side and two empty seats on the other. I had a bad feeling that I was expected to sit beside him in the position of honour at his right side, while Rion sat with Bronwyn.

  “That is one of Gideon’s brothers?” I nodded to the dark-haired man at the end of the table.

  “Yes, Henry, and his wife, Alice,” Rion confirmed. “The eldest, another Richard, has gone to Eireann to beg further aid.”

  Of course, it was. The steward had the praetor’s inclination to make mischief, it seemed, or perhaps he just enjoyed making everyone as uncomfortable as possible.

  “Lady,” the steward greeted me as I sat down. “Or should I say, daughter?”

  “Lady is fine,” came a dark growl from behind me as Gideon lowered himself into the seat on my other side.

  The steward’s lip thinned. “It appears you all failed to tell us the full truth of what happened that day on the beach. Married, and made the Griffin?”

  “Yes,” Gideon said shortly.

  “You’ve finally made something of yourself, boy.”

  Gideon rolled his shoulders and leaned back in his chair, a smirk easing his features as he met his father’s gaze. “If you say so.”

  “I wasn’t aware that sleeping with the lady was part of the Griffin’s duties,” Lord Richard prodded, knowingly or through luck making a direct hit on the most sensitive part of our relationship.

  Gideon took my hand from where it was reaching for my wine glass, in need of a healthy mouthful. He lifted my hand to his lips and laid a lingering kiss on the backs of my fingers before directing a burning amber gaze directly at me.

  “A terrible hardship,” he agreed, flicking his heavy-lidded gaze back at his father.

  “What new skills do you bring to the field apart from your prowess in bed?” he asked before looking past Gideon. “Not that that’s new.”

  Alice and Henry both stiffened at the jibe and Gideon’s face tightened, visibly sustaining a hit from his father’s attack. This dance had a familiar rhythm, but he had a new partner.

  “What new skills did he need?” I asked. “My understanding is that I married the strongest warrior in Mercia.”

  Not Anglia. The steward’s eyes narrowed; he did not like to be reminded of this fact, despite having kicked Gideon out.

  “Not exactly your choice though, was he my dear?” Lord Richard’s eyes gleamed in triumph as I failed to protest, and he redirected his gaze to his youngest son. “Second choice again. Unwanted by your mother, unwanted by me. Your wife and her brother would give you up for the real Griffin in a heartbeat. You as the Griffin! What a travesty. You care for no one but yourself. Devyn Glyndŵr had more duty in the soles of his feet than you have in your entire body.”

  My breath was taken by the sheer unprovoked viciousness of the attack. If the steward had set out to hurt his son, he had to know he had drawn blood.

  Gideon leaned across me. “But at least I have a wife.”

  His smile was a malicious gleam as he swiped back at his father, before pushing away from the table and strolling out of the hall.

  Is that what he thought? That I didn’t want him? I rose to follow him, throwing his father a dirty look… and caught him watching Gideon’s exit with a look that was at odds with the words he had spoken. He looked as if he would eat every word he had just flung at his son.

  I frowned down at him.

  “Then why?”

  He didn’t pretend not to understand as he looked up at me.

  “I did not intend…” He pulled a weary hand over his face. “A pattern, once formed, is hard to break. I spoke badly. He goads me and then I hear worse things coming from my mouth.”

  I was all too familiar with the pattern. I sat back down, unwilling to make the situation worse – and having both of us leave his table would be worse. The steward, however, withdrew into a morose mood after delivering the only glimmer of sympathetic nature I had ever seen from him. This left me to the slightly awkward overtures of Gideon’s one-time lover, for which I found myself very particularly not in the mood.

  Despite his words at the table, Gideon did not spend the night in my bed. In the morning I finally tracked him down to the stables where he was busy saddling a horse.

  “You’re leaving?” Was this his response to learning that we might no longer be shackled to each other?

  “Nothing so dramatic,” he said, continuing in his task. “I’m going for a ride.”

  “You didn’t come to your room last night.”

  “Did you miss me?” He slanted a leery look my way.

  “Gideon, please.”

  “Please what, Cat? What is it you want?” he flung at me, his mood shifting, “You don’t need me anymore, isn’t that right? So I stayed away. Yet here you are. Why?”

  “I thought…”

  “What? What did you think?” He turned, hemming me in. “That you got what you needed from me? And now I’m discarded, no longer of use.”

  I frowned. I had given him his freedom back.

  “Was it what your father said?”

  “My father didn’t say anything I didn’t already know.”

  “Then, why?” Why was he angry? Why had he left me alone last night? He had already known that I had seen Devyn in Avalon, had been okay with it. What had changed?

  “You asked the lady to take back the one thing you needed from me as Griffin,” he said into the horse’s neck.

  “No.” I went to him and placed a hand on the hunched muscles of his shoulder. “I asked her to give you back your freedom. You shouldn’t have to be tied to me like that. It’s not fair.”

  “And am I free? Do you not need me now?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “She told me that needing you was a choice. I don’t know what that means but I feel restored now. Whole.”

  He nodded to himself and shrugged off my hand before turning towards me in a way that made me feel like I was the prey he was stalking.

  He bent his head and his lips grazed across my collar bone as I stayed frozen in place.

  “What do you want?” he asked into my ear. It was a mere whisper, a breath that urged my confession. “Tell me,” he said as his lips brushed across mine. My body melted as my brain swirled, trying to find an answer to give him. Or hide from the one I wasn’t ready to face yet.

  His hands reached and tangled with mine by my side before twisting them behind my back as he pulled me into him.

  “This?”

  I was molten liquid. I looked helplessly up into his glittering eyes in that darkly brutal face.

  What did he want me to say? My mouth felt dry, and my heart was pattering like a butterfly’s wings in the cage of my chest. Did I want more? Was he offering more?

  At my continued silence, his hot gaze cooled, a flicker of what might have bee
n disappointment crossed his face. Nodding tightly, his body was rigid.

  Then I was suddenly free as he mounted the horse and left the stable without another word.

  He clattered out of the courtyard and I turned to find that the stable was not as empty as I had thought. Two pairs of sympathetic eyes peered around the corner of the last stall.

  Bronwyn, and Gideon’s sister-in-law, Alice. Of course.

  “Great.” They must have heard everything. I leaned my head against the stable wall and closed my eyes.

  “Puppies,” Bronwyn explained, holding up one of the offending articles that had brought them to their hidden spot in the stables.

  I blinked the extra moisture out of my eyes and walking to her, lifted the liquid-eyed pup out of her hands, cuddling him to me. I was unable even to look at Alice. Rubbing my cheek against the silky softness, I closed my eyes and drew it in to myself, allowing it to restore my equilibrium.

  “Gideon didn’t love me, you know.”

  Or not.

  If I kept my eyes closed, maybe she would stop.

  “Not like that. We were friends, but his mother left him and then I was leaving him too. He begged her to stay. He used his body to try to get me to stay. He uses it as a weapon. He does not give his heart easily and he doesn’t care for people lightly.”

  Wow. That was a lot of information from someone I didn’t know.

  But I guess she had just learned a lot too.

  “It’s not like that between us.” I squirmed uncomfortably, finally opening my eyes to meet her earnest ones. “I don’t know you or anything about you other than that you are the reason he bears that scar.”

  She waved dismissively. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. That scar is nothing to the one his mother left when she abandoned him. He was a sweet child, and after… He won’t love easily, and he will never ask you to stay.”

  “I think you may have misunderstood our conversation.”

  “Have I?” she asked. “He will never put himself out there first. If you don’t hold on to him, he will not hold on to you. He will let you go. He expects you to leave him, to not want him.”

  “You aren’t hearing me. Gideon feels nothing like that for me. For Féile, yes, me not so much. We’re married because Rion commanded it, that’s all.”

  “You think Gideon does whatever Rion orders?” Bronwyn said, amusement at Alice’s forthright approach hovering on her lips. “Like bringing Devyn north unharmed?”

  I saw again Gideon throwing that knife at Devyn, his uncaring attitude when Bronwyn pulled him up on it. My first impression had been that he cared for no one and did no one’s bidding. Had I really seen anything that suggested otherwise?

  “He does follow orders. He was a parent to Féile when I was unfit,” I threw back.

  “That was his choice. No one commanded he do so.”

  “He slept with me,” I managed to get out, mortified.

  Bronwyn’s eyes rounded and she exchanged glances with Alice. “You think…” she spluttered. “Why on earth do you think that?”

  I cringed, hunching my shoulders and wishing they could all leave me be.

  “He didn’t want to share my bed, but he did it because Rion ordered it.”

  “Cass, I was there. He was ordered to share his room, and if things got cosier after that, that was his choice, and yours.”

  I shook my head, rubbing at the tension in my temple. I needed this conversation to be over.

  “He didn’t seem all that pleased that you tried to free him when you were in Avalon. Nor does he seem to be in a hurry to kick you out of his room now,” Bronwyn went on.

  “We fight all the time.”

  Alice laughed. “Henry and I fight all the time. From the moment we married we fought, we made up, and we fought some more. You know who I never fought with? Gideon.”

  “I fought with Devyn,” I said, to no one in particular.

  “What did you fight with Devyn about?” Bronwyn asked.

  “Mostly him and his bloody duty.” I huffed out a laugh.

  “What do you and Gideon fight about?”

  I gnawed my inner lip as I thought back to some of the choicer moments when we had clashed, unwilling to share the details with the room.

  “I’ve witnessed one or two of those fights,” Bronwyn said, leaning towards me. “You two, when you fight, it’s personal. You both make the other bleed. This is not how people who are indifferent to each other act.”

  She leaned back against the straw behind her, eyeing me speculatively.

  “Do you want him? If you do I’d wager he’s yours.”

  “I’ll take that bet!” Alice laughed. “The way he watches you…”

  “It’s his duty to watch me.”

  “Not like that. If people went around doing their duty with that look in their eyes there’d be riots in the streets.”

  Were they right? I rested my head against the wall, the puppy a warm bundle in my lap. Was I more to Gideon than his duty? Was I his choice? And if so, what was he to me?

  I had never chosen this. I had never chosen him.

  But what if I did?

  Chapter Eighteen

  At lunch, Gideon took a seat beside me with no indication of our earlier fight. I understood that whatever else was going on between us, in front of his family, specifically his father, we would maintain a united front. We had only just finished the meal when a young girl ran into the hall and whispered in the Lord Steward’s ear. Whatever she said caused his face to darken.

  “It appears we have company,” he said curtly, and sat back, watching the door.

  The druids entered as a group, long robes flowing white, the epitome of everything I had imagined this world to be before I had arrived here. Having worked alongside them, I knew them to be no different from any other type of people. I knew quite a few of the group: Zara was head of the new settlement at Dinas Emrys and she had a sly humour that was always expressed under her breath; John, the druid who had saved my life that morning on an Anglesey beach, had come north to Keswick since Elsa’s death and he was the most earnest person I had ever met in my life. He gave everything he had to purify the ley lines and took each added wave of corruption as a personal affront.

  Marina was at the back of the entourage of druids entering the room. I saw her smile cheekily to someone lower down the hall and realised with surprise that Oban was here and that he had company – Snuffles sat at his feet. At least one of us was convinced Féile would be with us again soon. The druids strode through the hall with purpose and energy. It was unusual to see so many gathered outside of their own community. The druids were called upon when a higher power was needed in matters of law or health, and it was quite clear from the black look on the steward’s face that he had issued no such invitation.

  They came to a halt halfway up the great hall.

  Lord Richard rose from his seat and strode to meet them as if halting their progress through the hall would prevent them from being fully arrived.

  “What brings you to York?”

  “I do,” a voice from the middle of the group came, and the druids stepped aside to allow the white-haired Fidelma to appear. “You need our help, Richard.”

  If the steward had looked displeased before, he looked positively thunderous now.

  “How dare you step foot in this house,” he spat at the older woman. “Leave your lackeys if you must, but you go now.”

  “The time for games is over, my dearest,” she tutted back at the furious man. “I have done all I can to be ready and now we must stand together or fall.”

  “I want you gone from this house,” he roared.

  “No.”

  Richard Mortimer was not the most diplomatic of men at the best of times but he was a militarily minded one. We needed every bit of help we could get.

  “Fidelma,” Llewelyn intervened in the scene that was unfolding in front of the entire castle. “Zara, John, perhaps we can continue this discussion elsewhere
.”

  The most senior of the nobility present and some key members of their household exited the room. As we made our way to a more private location, Rhodri greeted me discreetly. I hadn’t seen him the night before and now he gave my hand a gentle squeeze. I understood I shouldn’t call attention to his presence, lest someone object, and nodded at his request to speak later.

  Reassembled in a smaller room which appeared to be where the council of war met most often, Fidelma smiled across at me.

  “They treated you well in Avalon, child?” She could sense the power that pulsed inside me. At times it felt so strong that I wasn’t sure why everyone passing couldn’t detect it.

  Lord Richard refused to take a seat, instead appearing behind Fidelma and placing a hand rather too firmly for her birdlike bones on her shoulder.

  “We need to talk. In private,” he growled down at her.

  “That won’t be necessary,” she dismissed him.

  “I insist,” he said, his fingers now definitely gripping her too tightly. This wasn’t right; he couldn’t treat her this way. I opened my mouth to intervene when I felt Gideon’s hand on my own shoulder, his reminder that this was his father’s house and that it was not my place to interfere.

  I was disinclined to agree.

  “Really Fidelma, you’re happy to speak openly?” Richard challenged, his eyes flickering to the man behind me.

  “Perfectly.”

  “After all this time,” came the dour response.

  “After all this time,” Fidelma threw back tritely.

  Their little contretemps was odd and the tone far from what one would expect for anyone, no matter how prominent, to have with the most senior druid in the land. Especially in front of such an assembly. Rion’s face reflected that my assessment was right, and if Rion couldn’t mask his surprise, then we really were in strange times.

  “Shall we speak openly then?” the Lord Steward’s tones were even more dour and authoritarian than usual.

  “Let’s,” Fidelma responded, wrinkling her nose in a fashion I wanted to call flirtatious. Druids weren’t celibate, but Fidelma was as old as the castle walls, and the steward was not a man you teased.