The Beholder

by Anna Bright

  He didn’t touch me. But I felt him, close, close at my side.

  The village green was a crowded party beneath the glowing morning sky. All around us went up calls from men and women hawking wares and taking bets on who would win the joust that morning and the melee later that afternoon. Bunting strung across stalls snapped in a breeze scented with flowers and tea and roast meat and pastries. As we talked, I did my best to take it all in: the busy stalls and the empty dais beneath King Constantine’s green-and-gold coat of arms and the horses, everywhere horses, stamping and snorting and gleaming in the early light. “So,” I prompted. “Are you going to compete?”

  Bear toed a rock with his shoe, pouting. “I’m not allowed.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because.” Bear tipped his head at me. “I’m supposed to be looking after you.” His mouth was still sullen, but his eyes were teasing.

  I opened my mouth and then shut it, suddenly self-conscious. “I’m so sorry. I don’t mean to be a—”

  “It’s not your fault.” Bear shook his head. “Besides, I expect I’ll enjoy the day regardless.”

  I couldn’t admit how his smile threw me off-balance. But this time, I didn’t look away.

  When it was time for the joust, we took our seats on the dais, next to the prince and the king. At a word from His Majesty, it began.

  I’d never been afraid of animals in general, or of horses specifically, but the joust was unlike anything I’d ever witnessed. It was noisy and terse and brutal—all the danger of fighting, without any of its necessity. I shrank farther and farther into my seat beside Prince Bertilak, growing tenser with each crash of spear against shield and armored man against earth. It was unsettling, and worse still, it was boring.

  I stared around the dais, dying for distraction, but the royal family was engrossed, and Bear along with them. Though his chair had initially been a little behind mine, he’d edged forward to get a better view until he was beside me, practically leaning over the rail. Only the Beholder crew seemed not to be paying attention—Skop, because he was laughing and beset by the royal children, and Perrault, because he couldn’t relax beside Cobie, expression black as her clothing. “Where are Lang and Yu?” I suddenly asked.

  Cobie’s eyes flicked to the back of Bear’s head. “Surprised you noticed.”

  Skop elbowed her. “I’m sure they’ll be here soon.”

  “I hope they’re off meeting the Duke of Cornwall, as I suggested.” Perrault scanned the audience, eyes greedy. “A very valuable contact. You can never make too many connections at events like this, you know.”

  I wanted to hit my head against the railing until I couldn’t make out his words anymore.

  If the joust was dull, the melee was even worse. It was endless, one long, droning battle beneath the brazen afternoon sun. Dazed by the clash of blunted practice weapons and the cries of the two armies draped in green and gold jerseys, I distracted myself by admiring horses and coats of arms. Bear explained the significance of the colors and symbols splashed across the warriors’ shields, never growing annoyed as I peppered him with questions. But when the leader of the forces dressed in gold disarmed the last remaining green knight, he flopped back in his chair, crossing his arms and grunting in disgust.

  As the armies regrouped out on the field, preparing to present themselves to Constantine, a lean-muscled boy in a green jersey waved at Bear. He tugged his helmet from his head and shook out his dark, sweaty hair, and even at a distance, I could see the disappointed twist of his scarred upper lip; he’d taken their loss hard. Suddenly, he stopped short.

  The boy cut his dark eyes in my direction, and Bear gave a tiny nod. But then Bertilak appeared without warning.

  The prince smiled politely. “You and I shall present the winner’s reward together, to the leader of the victorious gold army.”

  “To the victor, Sir Mark, Duke of Cornwall!” cried Constantine. I started at the name of the valuable contact Sir Perrault had mentioned, whom he’d pointed out the night before, along with his nephew, Tristan. He rose from his low bow, revealing longish teeth in a wide leer.

  I swallowed hard. “Congratulations, Your Grace.”

  “Until this evening, Seneschal-elect,” Cornwall replied smoothly, not needing to raise his voice much over the crowd. Though they had cheered wildly for the joust’s winner, their enthusiasm over the champion of the melee was barely polite.

  Bear’s friend was lost in his army’s ranks by the time I returned to the dais. I leaned near the guard as I settled into my seat. “I have to see the duke tonight?”

  “It’s tradition for you to dance with today’s victors.” I hardly heard his answer beneath the delighted screams of the royal children, finally free to play.

  Great.

  Alexander and Gemma fled the dais, tearing over the green with the other children, shrieking and giggling. I pressed fingers to my temples, trying to massage away the long hours of posturing. “Could we convince Bertilak to replace next weekend’s melee with a few rounds of blindman’s buff?” I tried to sound light, but my voice came out strained.

  Bear leaned against the dais rail. “His Highness mightn’t agree, but for your pretty face, the armies would play whatever game you asked.”

  I gave a breathy laugh, grinning a little sadly. “Is that really all you think of me? That I have a pretty face?”

  I expected him to insist he’d complimented my looks, protest I shouldn’t be so sensitive. But above his smirking mouth, Bear’s blue eyes were bright and serious. “Oh, Selah.” He shook his head. “Your beautiful face is the very, very least of you.”

  27

  That evening, for once, I was the first to be ready.

  I’d hoped to take a nap after the tournament. But though my body was tired, the day turned itself over so feverishly in my mind that I gave up on sleep.

  When I finished getting dressed, I propped myself against the corridor wall, across from the door to Bear’s room. I told myself I would be patient, but the curious feeling that had refused to let me sleep shifted restlessly in my chest.

  I had no business wondering what was happening behind Bear’s door. I was here to court the prince he was bound to serve.

  I remembered what Perrault had said, about slights to rulers and their international implications. Remembered Bertilak, awaiting me at the ball. Remembered the folder full of suitors, the Imperiya fürst who I would have to court, should I fail here or in Norge.

  I walked across the hall and knocked.

  The door burst open. His hair was wet and uncombed, and he was tugging a dinner jacket on over his shirt, a tie half-knotted around his neck. Bear stilled with his hand on the doorknob and met my eyes. Arrested.

  I was struck suddenly with the feeling of desperately needing to ask him a question and at the same time not being sure exactly what it was I needed to ask—the feeling that the question didn’t matter, so long as the answer came from him.

  His Adam’s apple bobbed, and he pushed his hair out of his face, fumbling lucklessly to fasten his right collar button. “Am I late?”

  My mouth felt dry. I shook my head. “You’ve got a minute.”

  Against my will, my gaze strayed across his mostly bare room as Bear leaned into a mirror by the door. Water droplets spattered his shoulders as he combed his wet hair. But I couldn’t help noticing the books piled on the end table and scattered across the floor, the sheets crumpled on the bed.

  Was he tossing and turning, too?

  He was still fiddling with that button.

  “Come here,” I said, and he obeyed, pausing just a foot from the doorframe.

  I had no business in his room.

  I crossed the threshold to meet him.

  With unsteady fingers I unbuttoned the collar of his shirt and flipped it up, staring resolutely at the plum-colored silk tie as I looped it into a knot and slid it up to his neck.

  Neither of us spoke.

  The pulse flickering in his throat distrac
ted me momentarily, and I accidentally tightened the tie too far. Bear choked a little, hand flying to his collarbone.

  “Sorry!” I whispered, laughing and meeting his eyes. They were lit candles over his smile.

  I flipped his collar back down, buttoned its corners easily, smoothed its crease. I was acutely aware of his hands hovering between us, of the warm skin and damp hair my fingertips grazed at the back of his neck.

  “There.” I straightened his lapel, releasing the jacket only reluctantly.

  Bear examined the knot. “That’s different.”

  “It’s called a Bowery knot.” I wrung my fingers. “It’s the one my father wears.”

  Bear nodded, watching me carefully.

  “Is something wrong?” I blurted out. I appraised my dress, dark green lace that curved off my shoulders and over my hips. “Do I have a thread—”

  He cut in. “No, you look—”

  But I never learned what he was going to say. Perrault glided into the corridor. “Your Grace.”

  I took a large step backward into the hallway and Bear did the same, closing his door behind him with a click.

  “Hello, Sir Perrault.” I studied my gown, my hands, the carpet—anything but the protocol officer’s narrowed eyes.

  A crowd had already gathered in the tapestried banquet hall when Skop, Bear, Captain Lang, Perrault, Yu, and I reached its doors, our numbers one short because Cobie had flatly refused to come. You’ll do enough sucking up for the both of us, she’d said. Then she’d slammed the door in Perrault’s face.

  We found the ballroom a blaze of color, a rainbow of gowns and gems and tailored jackets. I was grateful for the doors flung open to the courtyard and the cool night air, dazzled as I was by the glitter and noise and Bear close—so close—on my left as we took our seats.

  “Bear.” Skop turned to him, intent and oblivious, as our plates came. “I’ve been wondering all day: Does Lord Geraint typically joust with a lance that long? He was struggling with it.”

  I groaned inwardly, wishing Godmother Althea’s book weren’t the size of a paving stone and impossible to tote around. Here, there weren’t even coats of arms to distract me.

  Time to start studying tapestries and gowns.

  I glanced around the room, taking in the party again. Lang should have joined us—an empty chair waited beside Perrault a few seats down—but the captain stood to one side of the open doorway, scanning the room as if searching for someone in particular. I could probably have abandoned the party entirely and he wouldn’t have noticed.

  Bear nudged me, suit jacket rustling against my bare shoulder. “The melee and the joust are no blindman’s buff, but would you find them less tedious if you understood them?”

  His nose and cheeks were so near to mine. My pulse skipped. “Maybe.”

  Bear smirked. “I’ll take that as a personal challenge.”

  My stomach went warm, then froze when I saw Perrault. Across the room, his eyes on me were narrow slits in his pink cheeks.

  I wanted to stare him down. To hold his gaze until he lowered his eyes.

  But I was a coward. So I looked away and turned back to my friends.

  Bear took his self-imposed directive seriously. Rather than simply talk about past tournament results, flicking through names and places I wouldn’t have recognized, he told stories, elaborating for my benefit on the personal tales of winners and losers and his own triumphs and training history. We didn’t notice when our empty dinner plates were cleared away and the outer courtyard filled with dancers.

  “Scarecrows?” Skop laughed, wiping tears from his eyes. “You fought scarecrows?”

  “We beat them senseless.” Bear laughed into his hand, shoulders shaking. “Had to be entirely rebuilt. Veery’s father was ready to tan our hides.”

  “And with good reason,” I choked. “You young vandals!”

  “We were seven. We called it training for the melee!” Bear protested. His blue eyes laughed inches away from where I leaned on my elbows, my forearm brushing the sleeve of his dinner jacket, my insides soaked with a drunken, delirious warmth.

  A servant reached around me, setting a pie on the table. I gasped as I reached for a slice.

  “Something wrong?” Skop frowned, poking at it. “Looks fine to me.” He licked his finger, dark eyes lighting up. “Tastes better than fine.”

  “Nothing.” I smiled at Bear, nodding at the pie. “It’s pecan.”

  “Technically, I believe it’s walnut.” Bear arched his eyebrows, smug. “Still. Seems as though you’ve made an impression on someone.”

  I swallowed, not able to break from his gaze. “Seems so,” I agreed.

  But at a voice behind us, we both sat up straight. “Seneschal-elect . . . ?”

  I turned to face Prince Bertilak, hoping I didn’t look as guilty as I felt. He waved a courteous hand at the dance outside. “Of course,” I stammered.

  My unsettled insides felt wrong among the straight spines and graceful arms of the dancers as we joined the minuet. But Bertilak fit perfectly among them, voice as crisp and civil as it was every night at dinner. “Did you have anything to contribute tonight, Your Grace?”

  I mustered a smile. “I had a very good chicken pie today for lunch. But then,” I added, “so did you. So it would seem we had identical days.”

  Eyes like candles in a darkened hallway.

  A tie around a neck, fingers grazing a pulse.

  I was lying through my teeth.

  Bertilak laughed politely, a superficial sound that came from his mouth and nowhere deeper. When the dance ended, he gave a chivalrous bow and moved on.

  Perfectly cordial. Perfectly disinterested.

  Bertilak was handsome, and kind. And we might as well have existed on separate planets.

  Alessandra would have been furious. The Council, too. But I gave a sigh of relief as I watched his retreating back.

  Courtiers flitted around me like butterflies when he left. My throat grew hoarse, my cheeks tremulous from smiling at the noblewomen eager to know if I’d stay to spend the autumn at Windsor and Christmas at Sandringham, at the noblemen hoping to dance.

  I fumbled through a jig early in the evening with Lord Geraint, the friendly young victor of the joust, but the crowd had thinned substantially before the melee’s winner finally approached, bowing low and baring his long teeth in a smile. “Seneschal-elect.”

  His Grace the Duke of Cornwall made no advances on me—I was Prince Bertilak’s potential bride; it would’ve been political suicide—but as the duke described in vain, exacting detail his houses and his horses and the times he’d hosted the royal family, I felt like a fish on a hook, wriggling desperately, wanting nothing more than to be free of his loathsome proximity. I kept my elbows at right angles as we waltzed, to maintain maximum distance between us, searching desperately for my friends behind the duke’s back and catching seconds-long glimpses of them inside the banquet hall.

  One-two-three, one-two-three—Yu and Captain Lang swirling glasses of wine by themselves, eyes on the crowd, mouths terse and disappointed.

  One-two-three, one-two-three—Skop and Perrault nowhere to be seen.

  One-two-three, one-two-three—Bear in a corner with three boys—Cornwall’s nephew, Tristan; the muscular one from the melee with the scarred lip; and another, freckled and awkward-limbed, with a mouth shaped for whining.

  Over Cornwall’s shoulder, I saw the boy with the scarred lip pour drinks from an amber bottle. Bear and Tristan and their other two friends clinked their tumblers together, looking wry and secretive. When Bear caught me watching, I quickly looked away.

  “You’ve heard, no doubt, of my own marriage plans,” said the duke, moving finally from the subject of his wealth.

  “What?” I asked, startled out of my reverie. “No, I haven’t.”

  “Oh, of course you have. Tristan goes to fetch her within the twelvemonth; no one’s been able to talk of anything else tonight. And with the bride-price I paid for that
girl?” He shook his head, drawing breath in through a snarl. “She’d better be worth it.”

  Unease crawled up the walls of my stomach.

  As the musicians played the last strains of our tune, I curtsied, poised to escape when I rose. But when I stood, two boys towered over us like pillars.

  “Bear.” The word was a sigh of relief in my mouth.

  But there was no warmth in the guard’s face. “Your Grace,” he greeted the duke, blue eyes hard.

  I expected the duke to respond in kind, but Cornwall stiffened for a moment before his facade dropped again, smooth as oil. “Bear. Lord Bedivere.” He coughed. “I was just claiming my dance as the melee’s victor. Informing Her Grace of my recent engagement.”

  “That, and nothing else, I’m sure.” The boy with the scarred lip—Veery—rolled his neck and stretched one sinewy arm. “Heard you had to send all the way to Éire for a wife. No one within smelling distance would have you?”

  Cornwall tipped his head to one side. “Don’t look for trouble, Veery.”

  Bear put a hand on my shoulder and glanced down at me, fierce expression softening. But his voice was razor-edged. “He’s a moth to flame, Cornwall. I’d think carefully before I kindled any fires.” Then he lifted his glass to the duke. “May Tristan bring you back exactly the bride and all the happiness you deserve.”

  I tensed, waiting for the duke to lash out. But he left me with a stiff bow, lip curled, not bothering to avoid jostling the few dancers left in the courtyard.

  Veery clinked his glass to Bear’s. “I’ll drink to that,” he muttered.

  Bear bent his head, forehead creased in worry as he eyed me. “Are you all right?”

  “Am I all right?” I glanced after the duke’s retreating form. “What if he—”

  “Don’t worry, Seneschal-elect.” The muscular boy grinned, scarred lips curving in a real smile that improved his whole appearance. “Bear’s been around too long. He’s untouchable.”