Legend of the Lakes

by Clara O'Connor

  “Gideon Mortimer, son of the Steward of York, man of the King of Mercia.” There was a mass intake of breath as the pedigree of the Wilder who waited their judgement was revealed. Not just any Briton, but one who was in his own way an elite, a noble of the untamed lands to the north. The mask he wore was for optics and nothing else as his anonymity was stripped away.

  “You are accused of crimes against the Code. How do you plead?”

  Gideon hesitated. It was not in him to bow, much less to kneel. Frustratingly independent, he marched to the beat of his own drum, the world be damned. Calchas’s threat was explicit though, and he called the tune, so for Féile’s sake Gideon sank slowly to his knees as instructed and the mob was jubilant. They had been informed that this man was the murderer and there was no pretence at justice. Now they wanted to see Calchas’s greatest ever production play out on their screens.

  Idly, I wondered how many of the accused who had taken the sands during Calchas’s reign had been somehow manipulated here by a change in fortunes, or a chance temptation tripping across their path. Accused Codebreakers presenting the mob with a case that quieted unrest at just the right time, a rival cut down before he could become a real threat. My only surprise was that I hadn’t seen it before.

  The screens high above the arena began to play out the events of last night. The lack of cameras in the Governor’s Palace had not persisted into Dolon’s reign, it seemed. Dolon’s choice or the praetor’s?

  The evidentiary reel rolled, showing Gideon ripping through the sentinels. A nightmare come to life as the camera captured the flicker of the otherworldly Griffin, the ferociousness of his attack and a close up of Governor Dolon bleeding on the ground. Followed by me in Marcus’s arms, for all the world looking as though he was protecting me. My face was disguised by the mask I had worn, my gown unmistakeably in the Briton style though. My identity seemed not to be part of tonight’s reveal. No, Calchas would be waiting, but the seed was sown; a woman in Marcus’s arms would be noted, commented upon.

  I looked up at the Imperial balcony to find Calchas smiling in my direction. This, this was why my mask allowed me to see. So I wouldn’t miss the show. He couldn’t see my face, which at this point wouldn’t reflect much more than my confusion. No, it was so that I could see what he was doing, so he could show me how clever he was.

  And he was clever, for I had yet again done precisely as the hidden puppet master had decreed, and yet again I’d had no idea what he was doing until it was too late.

  The reel stopped and the focus moved back to Calchas once more as he raised his hand, his thumb to the side as the voting commenced. The seconds moved heavily by. Blind under his mask, Gideon would have no idea why the deathly silence had descended. I swayed slightly, my legs giving way because my body was still not fully recovered; the endlessness of this moment was truly too much to bear.

  The gong finally sounded.

  A sentinel stepped forward, his movement hurried, jerky as he reached up and removed Gideon’s mask. Gideon stood up, at some unheard direction, revealing his impassive face to the crowd which had stood in judgement over him.

  Calchas spoke, a thin, satisfied smile on his lips. “Friends, you have seen the terrible events that took place, and your eyes have been clear. Gideon Mortimer, son of York, for the heinous crime you have committed upon the body of a citizen of this city, you have been utterly condemned and are found guilty by every last man and woman within the walls of this proud city. The only pity is that you can pay for this crime but once. But that payment must be made. You will return to this place and in full sight of the city pay the ultimate price of your life as a forfeit. The sentence is death.”

  No! My burst to run to Gideon was sharply halted before it could begin as strong hands gripped me from behind.

  “Now, now, Donna Shelton,” Alvar’s voice whispered in my ear. “None of that. I believe we had an agreement.”

  My legs threatened to go from under me as the adrenaline was sucked out of me, leaving me sagging in the praetorian’s arms. He was the only thing holding me upright as I watched Gideon being marched from the sand.

  I had known the outcome from the moment I had woken this morning, but inevitability was no protection against the shock of hearing those words condemning the man you loved.

  The crowd was subdued as I took my place at the centre of the arena. The atmosphere was one of curiosity, the mob intrigued by the accused presented for judgement. Their lust for vengeance on the Britons they blamed for the illness had been quenched for now. Today’s offering was something new, something different, and they were willing to let it play out.

  The council were seated, dignified, not chatting among themselves as they usually did at a regular Mete. As I stood facing them, I was grateful not to be standing here blind as was traditional. I felt stronger today. Spending the afternoon with the Griffin had restored me somewhat – physically at least, though my magic was not yet fully returned. But it was getting there. They had captured us when I’d been at my weakest, and every moment that had passed had allowed me to regain my strength – and exponentially so in Gideon’s arms.

  The distinctive music was played again as the pieces were reset, and Calchas stepped forward once more, but instead of standing alone as he had earlier, now he had company. My brother.

  Rion looked regal and handsome in a dark-blue Celtic-style shirt, his bright hair flowing free onto his shoulders. He had a gold circlet on his head, and no sleeves concealing the flow of tattoos down his biceps and onto his forearms.

  Calchas stood on the edge of the balcony and held his arms wide to begin his speech.

  “Citizens, people of Londinium. We call you here today to judge yet another who has wronged you, one who is accused of crimes against the Code. However, our esteemed guest has pleaded to be allowed to speak on her behalf.”

  Incredulous murmuring began with sections of the crowd booing as they realised that the praetor intended to allow the Wilder lord beside him to speak.

  Calchas held his arms high until the noise stopped.

  “We are a just people, and when presented with a case, a merciful people. Let it not be said that we do not extend this justice,” his voice rose, “this mercy, to all within our walls, be they citizen or guest.”

  Rion bowed his head slightly in acknowledgement of the wise and generous words of his host.

  “People of Londinium,” he began, “I am Rion Deverell, King of Mercia. As a child, my sister was lost to us. She might have perished were it not for this great city. She was found and raised here among you, as one of you.”

  A murmur began, speculation rippling across the amphitheatre.

  “She returned to us, and there was great rejoicing among the peoples of this island, for my mother’s heir was restored to us, and once again a Lady of the Lake walked amongst us.”

  He looked toward the praetor as he continued to plead my case.

  “She was still a young girl, and she mistakenly gave her heart to a young man who deceived her, and who led her to commit crimes that were judged by you, the friends and family who had given her so much. He led her away from the safety and security of Londinium. She returns now, and she offers her life for the wrongs she has done you. But I would plead with you not to judge her harshly, for she was young and led astray.” He paused. “I would beg you to forgive her. To show her the mercy for which you are famed.”

  He bowed his head to the crowd and, reaching up, lifted the circlet from his head and laid it on the balcony, an offering to the mob. His kingship for their mercy. What was he doing? He couldn’t do that! What did it mean? Was it just a gesture, or did it have some greater significance?

  Calchas stepped forward and picked up the crown with a smile.

  “You do us great honour, Lord Deverell,” he said, inclining his head slightly. It was an acknowledgement, but not in any sense intended to be mistaken as more than that. Even his term of address was less than it should be. “Who amongst us does not
understand the waywardness of youth? Such a sad tale.”

  He stood silent for a moment in contemplation.

  “I will speak to the accused.”

  He turned and left the box. There was uproar in the crowd; this was unprecedented. The councillors were all looking at each other and some were standing. Rion had backed up and taken his place with the rest of the Britons where Bronwyn was whispering urgently to him.

  I waited on the sand as the figure clad in ceremonial robes emerged from the tunnels and made his way over to me in what I supposed was meant to be a dignified manner. He came to a halt a few feet from me – a large man facing a smaller white-robed figure on the otherwise empty sands. I suppose, given the carefully arranged image of it all, I should be grateful my delicate mask concealed my terribly inelegant snort.

  “You don’t like my little show?” the praetor asked, splaying his hands to take in the amphitheatre.

  “Am I supposed to?” I threw back. Here on the sands, I had defied him before and I would do it again. I would defy this man until my last breath.

  “Your brother pleads for your life,” he said. “I myself found it most touching.”

  Calchas raised his hands, and the crowd grew quiet, so silent as we stood there waiting that you could hear a pin drop.

  “Citizens, people of Londinium, people of the Province of Britannia. One amongst you stands accused of crimes against the Code. How do you plead?”

  The roar was deafening. Some cheered for me to stand – possibly those who had been swayed by the handsome king begging for my life, believing the council would show mercy. Most urged me to kneel. They wanted their fun, they wanted to see my crimes played out on screen. They wanted to judge my guilt for themselves.

  Once I would have stood. I would have thrown myself on the mercy of the crowd, to see, to judge, but I knew better now. There was no justice. The evidence would be curated, presented to sell to the crowd whatever predetermined fate the council had decided upon.

  I tilted my head at Calchas. Which way did he want this to play out?

  “Kneel,” he said, smiling beatifically.

  Despite my awareness that Calchas had already decided how every last moment of this played out, I couldn’t bring myself to bend my knees. My fists curled at my sides. This man had sentenced Gideon to death, had stolen my child, had killed my mother. Fury filled me, and I could feel the essence of the earth beneath me, and the sky above me, begin to seep into my bones, into my soul. I was not the same defenceless girl I had been the last time I had stood here.

  “Tut, tut, Cassandra,” he said as I failed to comply with his direction. “So very many lives in my hands. Do you care nothing for theirs, if not your own?”

  I glared at him from behind the mask. He smirked a little and then I did it. I knelt, bowing my head to the man I hated most in this world.

  The last time I had defied him, revealing Devyn to be Briton, I had been alone. Devyn had already been condemned, and there had been no one else who mattered. Now he had my daughter, my brother, my friends. My shoulders dropped.

  “There, was that so very hard?” he asked, his fingers lightly touching my shoulder.

  The crowd was alive with anticipation, an electric hum rippling around the arena and across the city.

  He put his hands down in front of me.

  “Give me your hands,” he said softly.

  I did as directed, and he raised me to stand. The mob screamed, beside themselves at being robbed of their entertainment. Calchas released one hand, raising his to silence the crowd once more. He was like a conductor, playing each hum and roar with the flick of his hand.

  “We have been asked to show mercy,” he called to the crowd. “While I understand the foolishness of youth may be owed some blame, and I might wish to grant some leniency, I do not, cannot, because this girl has been judged by you before. It is your right and her fate that she be judged by the great citizens of Londinium here today.”

  He was a virtuoso now, whipping them up, and for the crescendo he pushed back the hood of my white cloak, and my distinctive bright hair fell in a wave down my back. The talented hands of the girls this morning had somehow bound it in such a way that the hood coming down had freed it. Then he reached for the delicate mask concealing my face and revealed me. The crowd erupted as they recognised me.

  I stumbled back as the force of their emotions buffeted me. The noise of the roar was unlike anything I had ever experienced. I blinked as I attempted to absorb what was happening, to stay in the moment. Up on the screens flashed the devastated faces of Camilla and Graham Shelton. Unlike last time when they had been all too quick to disown me, tonight they were in the crowd and my father’s arms wrapped around his crying wife as she reached for me. That made no sense; she had barely cared for me when she was raising me and I had been gone for years. This show of motherly grief was entirely out of character.

  Then the screen showed Marcus’s face – not in the Courtenay box though. No, he must have taken his father’s place with the council. He was standing, his green eyes gleaming in his gaunt, shocked face – very shocked for someone who had sat and partaken of a meal with me only hours earlier.

  I looked back at Calchas. I didn’t understand.

  The notes rang out, heralding the start of my evidentiary reel. It played scenes which had been shown the last time I had stood upon the sands, but this time they were interspersed with other scenes from that time. Not evidence of Codebreaking but geared towards whatever slant Calchas was playing out.

  Marcus and me dancing in the ruins at Richmond, us walking hand in hand along a street, the night of my graduation as he shielded me from the paps, a close up of our entwined hands as we stood here on the sands facing trial the last time. A shot of me pushing Devyn away when he attempted to kiss me in the White Tower the night of our trial, when I had been wearing the handfast band and before his proximity had reminded me of my true affections, Marcus busting in and me running from the room with him.

  They showed another scene on a beach far beyond the city. It was the Holy Isle raid, the sentinels loading the mistletoe onto boats, Marcus jumping onto a ship and then turning to look at me. Then me again, screaming, reaching out to the camera as I was held by Gideon and Rion. Screaming for Devyn, but that wasn’t apparent to the crowd; as far as they were concerned I was screaming for the boy they had last seen me handfasted to. The boy who was returning from his mission to find a treatment for the illness – successfully, though the cost was our separation. I remained behind on the beach, held against my will by the Wilders. Or at least, that’s the story that was being broadcast across the city.

  He was twisting everything. There was a last look at Marcus’s devastated face as the ships carried him away, and I fell to the sands. Then, more recent scenes, me looking stressed and unhappy in the company of the Briton delegation, arriving for the masquerade, dancing in Marcus’s arms. Then finally me in Marcus’s arms at the end of the ball, his father dead in front of us.

  The whole thing had rushed by. I was still trying to process it as Calchas raised his hand, his thumb extended to the side, and the seconds until my fate was decided began to count down. He had twisted everything, changed it to look much more sympathetic to me.

  “Why?” I asked, dazed. But I knew already.

  “Why make you look as if you can be redeemed?” he whispered into the silence. “Because I have use for you, dear Cassandra. Why else?”

  The gong sounded and we waited until a runner finally came to whisper the results in the praetor’s ear.

  “Citizens, your vote displays your loyalty to the Code, the Code by which we live and by which you have already judged this accused. However, I sense, like me, that you are moved by her brother’s words, that you are torn by the love you once held for this child of our city. One who strayed but now returns to us. To her mother and father, a lost daughter returned. To her betrothed, who after the loss of his father glimpses joy in the return of the love he thought
stolen from him. Your verdict is 60%. I hear your cry for mercy, for leniency.” He projected his voice up into the audience, up to the balconies above, turning so all could see his great wisdom in interpreting the vote. “But I must weigh our desire to show clemency while still recognising the importance of adhering to the Code and the severity of crimes committed against it. I will take this night to consider the sentence, and we will return here tomorrow and right all wrongs here upon the sands, as we have done through the ages.”

  He looked back at me and laid a gentle hand on the side of my face, smiling with his dead eyes. “Now, we discuss terms.”

  With a whirl of his robes, he was gone, and I was left alone on the sand.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  There was no sign of Gideon by the time I made it back to the tunnels. After the crowds had dispersed, I was led out to a waiting car under cover of a canopy. Calchas was taking no chances; I wasn’t entirely sure what he was guarding against.

  There was no chance of anyone coming to my rescue. The Britons were at a severe disadvantage this side of the wall; there was no resourceful, tech-savvy Devyn to give me hope of escape. The few Britons who remained loose in the city would have no idea how to aid me. Though it seemed I was not entirely in need of saving, Calchas having confirmed my suspicions that he had a use for me yet. I frowned. I needed to figure it out, but I was still too tired from the ley line, too worn and numb by the emotional tumult of the events of this day. Gideon’s sentence was death.

  I was returned to the empty room in the White Tower where a new evening gown was waiting. I pulled off my penitent’s white robes, recognising them for what they were now.

  Calchas had never intended to let me die on the sands. He needed me to heal the ley line, to keep it in check from the imbalance that threatened the destruction of the land. I had done what I could, but it hadn’t been enough to heal it and he planned to keep me. His very own pet druid, and he would do it by rematching me with Marcus.