Guinevere's Gift

by Nancy McKenzie

  The queen's eyebrows rose. To Guinevere's astonishment, she seemed attracted, not repelled, by this admission and the violence it implied. “I'm sure you did. But I cannot go into the forest after them; I have not enough men for more than a patrol, and thus far, patrolling has not stopped them.”

  Sir Darric bowed his head politely, but his eyes never left her. “Never you worry, my lady queen. I'll hunt them down for you, if you give me leave. My men are itching for some action. Say the word, and we'll clean these hills of those thieving vermin for you.”

  “Thank you, Sir Darric. I'd be most grateful.” The queen's smile was almost coy. “You must let me know if there is anything I can do for you in return.”

  “I'm certain I'll be able to think of something. My lady.”

  Jordan and Drako chuckled and nudged each other. Elaine blushed prettily and set her ringlets bouncing with an arrogant toss of her head. Guinevere glanced swiftly at Ailsa, who kept her eyes on her plate and concentrated on picking the bones from her fish. There was more going on here, she sensed, than she could understand, but one thing was clear: the Old Ones were in danger. Sir Darric meant to drive them from the hills. Whether or not they were the thieves Queen Alyse was seeking, she owed them at least a warning.

  She had been forbidden to ride out, but someone had to rebuild that cairn. Someone had to meet Llyr in the clearing and pass on the message. Whom could she send? To send anyone at all would mean revealing that she had been in contact with the Old Ones. The gods—God—only knew what Queen Alyse would do if she should learn that. Guinevere's hand shook as she reached for her watered wine. She could think of no alternative. She would have to go herself.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The Cairn

  Elaine dashed into the bedchamber and flopped on the bed, arms outspread. “Did you see the way he looked at me?”

  “Who? Drako?” Guinevere followed her in.

  “Drako!” Elaine's voice was full of contempt. “That fat oaf? No, I mean Sir Darric, of course. He was staring at me all night; you must have seen him. Isn't he beautiful? Have you ever seen such gorgeous eyes?”

  “But . . . Sir Darric had eyes only for . . . your mother.”

  “What would he want with my mother? Don't be ridiculous, Gwen. Oh, he flirted with her, of course, but couldn't you see through that ruse? He had to make her think she was the object of his attentions, else she might throw him out on his ear. He came uninvited, after all. He had to make himself welcome.”

  Guinevere nodded warily. That might be one interpretation of what they both had seen, but it wasn't hers.

  “You must have seen him glancing over at me every time he paused to drink. Oh, Gwen, I blushed until I thought I'd burn. Have you ever seen such a handsome man? Half the time, I could not lift my eyes from my plate. He winked at me twice. Oh, I can't wait to see him alone.”

  “Alone!”

  “Shhh.” Footsteps sounded in the corridor. Elaine jumped up to pull closed the curtain between her bedchamber and the antechamber and leaned close to her cousin's ear. “Say nothing of this to Grannic or Ailsa or it will get right back to Mother, and she'll send him home. I know he'll try to contact me secretly; I know he wants a chance for private speech. You'll be the go-between. Come, Gwen, you're the only one who can. You've got to promise me that you'll carry messages between us, that you won't run away if he approaches. Quick, Gwen, promise.”

  Guinevere's breath came short and fast. “You can't be alone with that man. Your mother will—”

  “All right.” The footsteps came through the door and into the antechamber. Elaine grabbed Guinevere's wrist and held it hard. “Then you'll have to come with me. Promise me. Swear it. Or I'll tell Mother where you really go when you're out riding.” Her eyes glittered hard and blue. “When she hears about all those silly obstacles you built and how you never use a saddle, even when you're jumping, she'll throw a monstrous fit. She'll never let you near a horse again.”

  Guinevere paled. How on God's sweet earth had Elaine learned about the jumping field? “All right—I promise,” she gasped, pulling out of Elaine's grip as the curtain behind them parted and Grannic and Ailsa entered the room.

  “Come, come, my lady,” Grannic grumbled, still puffing from the stairs. “It's time for rest after all that drinking and feasting. Why your mother didn't water the wine better, I hate to think. Come, Elaine, and let me unlace that gown.”

  Elaine rolled her eyes with exaggerated weariness. “I can't wait until I'm a woman grown and can stay up as late as I choose. You may be tired, Grannic, but I'm not. Not at all.”

  Ailsa led Guinevere back into the antechamber, which served as a sleeping place for both nurses and as a dressing room for Guinevere. She drew the curtain closed behind them and pointed to the stool. Obediently, Guinevere sat. “Now,” said Ailsa, as she plucked the pins from the girl's hair and began to comb it out, “what was all that about?”

  Guinevere kept her eyes in her lap. “What was what about?”

  “You know perfectly well what I mean. All that whispering just before we came in. What's Elaine up to now, eh? Something to land you in the soup and leave her looking innocent as daisies, I'll be bound.”

  When Guinevere did not reply, Ailsa knelt down before the girl and looked up into her eyes. “I'm not your mother, may the Good Goddess bless her always, but I love you, Gwennie, as if you were my own. You don't have to tell me, of course. You're a king's daughter, and I'm naught but a laborer's widow. But your dear father charged me with your care, and I can't look out for you if I don't know what's going on.”

  A hot flush of color rose to Guinevere's face, and her eyes brightened with tears. She slid her arms around her nurse's neck and rested her cheek on Ailsa's plump, comfortable shoulder. “Oh, Ailsa, I do want to tell you everything, but you can get in trouble, too, just for knowing.”

  “There, there,” Ailsa crooned, patting the white-gold head. “If there's trouble afoot, you'd best share it with me. You may swear me to silence, if you like.”

  Guinevere dried her eyes. Ailsa had a heart as big and as deep as the open sea, but keeping secrets was beyond her. Still, it was comforting to have such a loyal and willing confederate. She swore Ailsa to secrecy for form's sake and told her about Elaine's designs upon Sir Darric and her own promise to act as chaperone. Before Ailsa could open her mouth to protest, Guinevere told her of the threat Elaine had made to ensure her compliance.

  Ailsa frowned. Horses had been part of the girl's life since King Leodegrance first put her on a pony at the age of three. In Northgallis, with no mother to keep her close and teach her feminine skills, Guinevere had spent her childhood on horseback, racing across the countryside with young Gwillim and his hawk. Here in Gwynedd, where her life was more circumscribed, riding gave the child a little freedom and the only privacy she had.

  “I knew about the riding bareback,” Ailsa said. “You've done that all your life. But what is this about leaping over obstacles? How long has that been going on?”

  “Not very long. I only built them last autumn, and then winter set in.” She looked away. “I needed something vigorous to do when . . . when Elaine got her monthlies.”

  Ailsa hugged Guinevere to her breast and kissed the girl's damp cheeks. “I've told you over and over, Gwen, you will be beautiful someday. I can see it in you already, and I think your aunt Alyse is beginning to see it, too. Each person, each animal, each tree and flower, has a beat of life inside it that marks its own time, proceeds at its own pace. Your mother was late to blossom, by all accounts, but what an exquisite bloom she was! It's beneath you to be jealous of Elaine. This is her time in the sun. Yours will come soon enough. Mark my words, in three years you'll be looking back on your days in Gwynedd and thinking how carefree and easy life was when you were an innocent girl.”

  Guinevere pulled away, blinking hard. “In heaven's name, why? Is adulthood so horrible?”

  Ailsa chuckled. “Men, my dear. Men disrupt everything. They may be
our fate, and even our blessing, but they do change everything they touch.” She nodded toward the curtain. They could both hear Elaine's voice from the bedchamber, imperious, arrogant, and excited. “Young Sir Darric's not been in this house an entire day, and look at everything he's changed.”

  Guinevere bit her lip. “I don't like him. I have to keep my promise to Elaine, but I don't want to go anywhere near him.”

  “Nor will you, if I have anything to say about it. Elaine is playing with a fire she doesn't yet understand, and you were foolish to promise to help. But since you promised, I will go with you.”

  “That might work for taking messages back and forth, but she wants to see him in private. What if he agrees?”

  Ailsa shook her head and smiled. “He won't. Even a halfwit would think twice before wooing the queen's daughter behind her back. I'm certain he's got at least that much sense of self-preservation.”

  But Guinevere did not smile back. “I don't think he has any sense at all. Did you hear what he told Aunt Alyse about the hillmen?”

  Ailsa blinked. “What hillmen?”

  “The ones Queen Alyse thinks are stealing her livestock. Or rather, the ones Sir Darric convinced her are stealing her livestock.”

  “That's nonsense,” Ailsa said firmly. “The Old Ones don't steal. And what they borrow they always repay.”

  As Ailsa unlaced her gown and helped her out of it, Guinevere reflected on the stories she had heard in Northgallis about the Old Ones and their interactions with the valley folk. They were a shy people who honored the old ways and kept to themselves, but occasionally, the villagers, who lived close to the land, had traded with them. Someone would leave a newborn lamb, trussed for slaughter, at a wayside shrine in the forest. Within a fortnight, the gift would be repaid. On a dark night with little moon, a slab of venison, a sack of newly sheared fleece, or a stack of cut timber would mysteriously appear in the giver's yard. Few words were ever exchanged, but gestures were always understood.

  Guinevere looked at Ailsa anxiously. “But Sir Darric doesn't like them. Do you think he means to kill them or just chase them from the hills?”

  “I couldn't say, I'm sure. It does sound as if he means them harm. But King Pellinore is due back by Beltane. He'll settle everything.”

  “But that's a week away. Anything might happen in that time. Sir Darric will kill them if he finds them, Ailsa. I could see it in his eyes. And he has plenty of time to do it.”

  Ailsa nodded thoughtfully as she folded the gown and put it away in the carved clothes chest at the foot of her pallet. “ Aye, he can be a cruel man, Sir Darric. I've been hearing tales about him. Wild as the day is long, for all his courtier's manners, and jealous of his elder brother, Mathowen, the earl's heir. He's got a reputation for devilry, for all he's just eighteen.”

  “I can't let him do it!” Guinevere cried. “I have to warn them. I owe it to them.”

  Ailsa looked up sharply from the chest. “Owe it to whom? The Old Ones? Guinevere, what have you been doing up there in the hills?” She glanced nervously toward the curtain. “Out with it. Quickly.”

  Hesitantly, her face flaming, Guinevere confessed her meeting with Llyr in the forest. Ailsa grew thoughtful. Silently, she pulled Guinevere's shift off over her head, rubbed her body with an herbal balm she had prepared to protect against agues and blemishes, and wrapped the girl's nightdress around her. Finally, she spoke.

  “So they've been looking after you all these years? It does make sense. That's why the journey to Gwynedd went so smoothly, in spite of all the tales we heard about thieves and bandits along the road. That's why you've never come to harm riding about the forest as you do. That explains who returned your cloak after you lost it in the high meadow in that storm.” Unthinkingly, she clutched the amulet at her throat. “Oh yes, that explains so many things. Even in Northgallis.”

  Guinevere shivered. She hadn't wanted to tell Ailsa about her adventure in the forest, because Ailsa, with all her superstitions about magic and unseen powers, was sure to believe Llyr's tale, just as she steadfastly believed every word of old Griselda's prophecy. To Ailsa, the world teemed with a thousand invisible deities who scrutinized her every movement. The Christian God, whom she had accepted with alacrity, was merely one among the many.

  “Maybe there were no thieves and bandits,” Guinevere suggested. “Maybe I've come to no harm because I'm a better rider than you think. And I always thought it was Stannic who retrieved my cloak. He was willing to take credit for it, as I remember.”

  Ailsa hesitated, and Guinevere hid a smile. Her nurse was always taking baskets of kitchen tidbits to the stables or apples from the storerooms or loaves of new-baked bread filched from the bakehouse. Her gifts did not go unnoticed. Ailsa's liking for the stablemaster was returned. Now, watching the struggle on Ailsa's face, she waited to see who would win the credit for finding and returning the lost cloak.

  Ailsa shook her head. “The cloak is a small matter. But it's true you've been under a powerful protection, that I've always known. I just didn't know whose it was.”

  “Then you agree I should warn the Old Ones about Sir Darric?”

  Ailsa swallowed hard, then nodded.

  “Then I've got to ride out to the clearing tomorrow, early, before dawn, and build a cairn to signal Llyr. I'll be back before the queen can miss me.”

  “Who will miss you?” Elaine said, pulling open the curtain. “What are you up to now, Gwen? What's all this whispering about?”

  “Just gossip. That's all.”

  Elaine looked at her sharply. “You're up to something. I can always tell. And you don't want me to know. Well, I suppose I could keep my eyes shut.” She smiled. “You know those three whole columns of Herodotus that Iakos gave us?”

  Guinevere sighed. “I've done the translation already.”

  Elaine grinned. “Excellent. Then you can do mine in half the time.”

  At dawn, Guinevere led Peleth silently from the stable into the shelter of the nearby wood, mounted, and headed uphill. The pale sky, watery blue, was clean of clouds. Dew clung to the meadow grasses, and a rich, fragrant earth scent rose from the forest floor. She felt no eyes on her back as she cantered quietly along a trail soft with damp earth and pine needles. Overhead, birds awakening in the treetops trilled at her approach, singing a sweet descant to the steady thud of the horse's hooves.

  There was no one else about when she dismounted in the clearing. She and the horse and the warbling birds were the only living creatures to disturb the peaceful silence of the morning. A hundred wildflowers grew helter-skelter in the young green grass. Gathering the scattered rocks and pebbles, she carefully rebuilt the cairn. Then she reached for her waterskin and poured a small libation on the ground.

  “Llyr, son of Bran, leader of the White Foot hunters of Snow Mountain, guest-son of the Long Eyes in these hills.” She paused. She felt a little silly speaking aloud to someone who was not there, but perhaps someone was there, listening. “Gwenhwyfar, daughter of Rhiannon, calls you forth. There is trouble, urgent trouble. The Long Eyes are in danger.” She glanced around at the empty woods, willing someone to be there. “Come forth, Llyr, if you can hear me.” But the woods were still. Nothing moved, nothing breathed but the horse among the grasses. “I will come back as soon as I can.”

  She reached for Peleth and leaped upon his back. “Don't fail me, Earth's Beloved,” she whispered, and gave the horse his head for home.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Double Trouble

  Marcus pressed himself against the rough wall of the cowshed and paused to catch his breath. No one had seen him cross the meadow from the woods; there was no one near to raise an alarm. He had dirtied his face, his hand, and his clothes with dust. If anyone should see him, he would look more like a peasant, a peat gatherer, a woodsman, or a cowman than a spy in the queen's service. For once, his withered arm served him well. No one ever paid much attention to cripples.

  He inched his way around the corner
of the shed. He saw no guard, no shepherd, no dog, only ten beasts with soft brown eyes who lifted their heads from their grazing to stare at him. He waited until the animals lost interest and began to graze again. One quick glance into the darkness of the shed confirmed that it was empty. Only ten cows, then, in this meadow, unless there were more over the rise. Moving slowly to keep from frightening the cattle, Marcus approached each one with a fistful of green grass and examined the animal's ears while it chewed. Nine pairs of ears were bare of markings. But the tenth revealed the scars of an old knife cut, two short lines meeting at the top and angling out below. Marcus recognized the mark. It represented the mountains of Gwynedd, and it belonged, like the mountains, to King Pellinore.

  Marcus gazed thoughtfully at the cattle. It was only the third time that day he had seen the mark, and he had examined over one hundred seventy beasts. He had expected more. Out of the stolen twenty head of cattle, why had he found only three?

  His gaze slid across the fertile valley to the fortress. This was not a castle built of stone but a rambling wood and wattle villa with a tiled roof. It was well placed on a low rise and looked well defended. Great earthworks rose around it, topped by a wooden palisade. The entrance seemed to be a tunnel dug into the earthworks. It would not be an easy place to enter uninvited.

  Marcus thought of Queen Alyse's firm blue gaze and smiled. He would think of a way to get in. He would cross that valley and find a place to snug down, invisible and unnoticed, until dark. He would observe the sentries, the changing of the guard, the traffic in and out. By dawn, he would be inside. But what he wanted most to know before he walked under those earthworks was whether the lord of the place had stolen the cattle himself or merely bought them from the thieves.

  His careful planning proved unnecessary. By nightfall, the guards at the gatehouse were so drunk that those still standing were incapable of speech. He joined a group of laborers coming in late with a wagonload of timber. No one looked at him twice. The wagon rumbled through a tunnel arched in stone and emerged in a courtyard still bustling with the business of the day. He turned and made his purposeful way to the nearest door, pulled it open, and walked through.