Charmed Destinies

by Catherine Asaro

  “Typical,” Gwynn replied blandly, coming over to the fire and taking up a bowl of soup and some bread. “What does he blame, then, since his guzzling is not to be considered?”

  “The eels. He swears he’ll never have eel pie again.”

  Gwynn shrugged. “’Twas he who demanded it. Cook did his best, but he made a right mess of it, and swore at every eel that went into it. That receipt I did not have, for you know that never there was an eel in any river of ours, and I could not help him. Mayhap that was what made it disagree with Bretagne.”

  “Mayhap,” Robin agreed just as blandly. “As to aught else, Sir Atremus presented himself after breaking fast, while you were still asleep. He wished to present his Yuletide gift, and wondered if you had ever made good your vow to get your father to teach you chess. I told him that you had. He said then that he would give you his gift in person, this afternoon.”

  “Really?” Now that had her interest and roused her curiosity. She well remembered why she had made that vow—she’d watched her father and Sir Atremus spend long hours over the chessboard, ignoring everything around them—including an increasingly impatient Gwynn, who wanted stories. That was when she had told the amused knight that she would make her father teach her chess so that the next time Atremus visited, he would have to spend all that time with her….

  Odd of Atremus to have remembered that. And what on earth could he have gotten her for a Yule gift?

  “Get out that shirt that I made before we left,” she told Robin, making a hasty decision. She had sewn a handsome linen shirt as a wedding gift for Bretagne—needless to say, she had not presented it to him, nor did she intend to now. But from the sorry state of Atremus’s garb, he badly needed a new shirt, and if he was going to give her a gift, she wanted to be able to reciprocate.

  Robin’s face lit up with pleasure and mischief as she instantly understood what Gwynn intended. “Happily, milady,” she murmured, and dug into the bottom of the chest to retrieve it, still folded and bound with a bit of bright ribbon. She laid it aside on the stool beside the embroidery frame at Gwynn’s nod. Gwynn finished her soup and went back to her loom, losing herself in the hypnotic passage of the shuttle, the thud of the beater, as she continued to weave a length of simple twilled wool. This, she decided, would also go to Atremus, as a new surcoat or tunic. That Bretagne allowed one of his knights to be so shabby was a sad comment on his neglect of his men. Though it was not all of his men who were neglected, but since Atremus was the least regarded of any of his knights, no one seemed to care what he looked like. She spent the time at her loom, lost in happier memories of the time when her mother had still been alive and Atremus had been their welcome guest. Odd. At the time he had seemed the same age as her father, but then all adults seemed the same age to a child. Could he have been her father’s squire, and knighted by him before her father had wedded and become lord of his own manor? It was certainly possible; Atremus was younger than her father, though the years had not treated him kindly.

  Atremus presented himself in midafternoon, tapping politely on the frame of the open door and observing the niceties by waiting for Robin to come to the portal to admit him formally. Gwynn set her shuttle in the warp and turned toward him, her hands folded in her lap. He was carrying a basket, and something bulky, wrapped in a cloth, beneath one arm.

  She noted, a little sadly, how his eyes went to her blackened one, and how he quickly averted his gaze. “My lady,” he said in that gentle, deep voice, “I beg you forgive me for making this somewhat of a Twelfth Night gift rather than a Yule gift, but my fingers are not as nimble as they once were and this took me longer to carve than I had hoped.”

  Carve? Now she was alive with curiosity. “Please, Sir Atremus, show me! You find me as greedy for your gift as a little child!”

  He smiled at her sally and nodded to Robin. “Please, child, if you would bring me that small table, and by your leave, lady, a stool to sit on?”

  Robin brought both, set the stool down near Gwynn, and put the table between them. Only then did Atremus wait for Gwynn’s permission, and on getting it, sit down to reveal that what was beneath his arm was an inlaid wooden game board, alternate squares being walnut and white birch, upon which he began to set out handsomely carved chessmen in the corresponding woods.

  Gwynn laughed for pure joy, the first time she had done so since setting foot in this place, and clasped her hands beneath her chin. “Sir Atremus! They are wonderful! However can I thank you?”

  “By playing a game or so each day with me, my lady,” the knight said with a pleased smile. “No one else here plays the game, and I miss your father’s skill. One grows weary of dicing and wagering, particularly when one has little to wager with.” He seemed resigned and yet accepting of his poverty, to be able to make even a feeble jest of it. Gwynn was embarrassed for him.

  “Then I hope you will not wager my gift to you away,” Gwynn replied, lifting a finger to Robin in signal, more pleased than ever that she had decided to give Atremus the shirt. Robin brought it and at Gwynn’s nod, gave it to him. He looked surprised, then pleased that she had thought of a return gift, and carefully unpicked the ribbon. He unfolded what, to him, must have looked only like a bit of cloth, and shook it out.

  “Good my lady!” he exclaimed, partly in pleasure, partly in shock. “My gift is as naught to this!”

  “Oh, I wager there are an equal number of hours in each,” she said casually, but delighted with his reaction. “But enough of that! Come, let us put your gift to good use—but I warn you, ere I left, I was trouncing my father three games in five!”

  They played until the afternoon light began to fade. Gwynn, despite her boast, did not trounce him; he might have won, but that game ended in a stalemate caused at least in part because Atremus clearly underestimated her early on and was caught in check from which he extracted himself only with great difficulty and by sacrificing a knight.

  “I see I have found a worthy opponent,” he said when they both declared end game. He winked. “I should have known better than to be deceived by a lovely face. I do believe, my lady, that we will not find our afternoons a bore any longer.”

  “Oh, but I must not neglect my duties,” she said reluctantly. “It is only because I am…unwell…that I laze about here this afternoon.” Then she felt her face brighten as she thought of an idea. “Come at evening meal. Robin can bring enough for three and we may eat and play out a game at the same time. I cannot believe that you find the company below to be congenial, as I have always known you to be a man who prefers lighter amusements to blood sports and would rather take his meals seasoned with conversation than conflict.”

  “No more do I,” Atremus admitted with a sigh. “And I will scarce be missed. If it is no imposition?”

  “None at all,” she assured him.

  “Then I look for a rematch this very night,” he promised, and rose and bowed himself out.

  Robin gazed at the empty doorway long after he had left. “If he had been, indeed, what you first took him to be,” she said slowly, “you would—”

  “Hush!” Gwynn said in alarm, with a nod at the door. Robin bit her lip.

  “Well, you would have been playing chess over every evening meal, as you now plan to be,” the girl said instead of what Gwynn feared she had originally intended. “So it seems that the fates have brought you to that place after all.”

  Was there a movement in the shadows of the stairs? Gwyn
n could not tell, nor did she hear a footfall. It could have been an animal, a cat or a dog, or nothing at all. But one never knew who might be listening at doors, especially here, and she felt more than ever that her decision never to be unchaperoned and to keep the door to her solar open except when she and Robin were painting or sleeping was the right one. Had she not warned Robin, her maid might well have said what Gwynn herself was thinking—that had Sir Atremus been her husband instead of Bretagne, she would be a happy woman today.

  That would have been a severe misstep, if there was a spy on her. It could be, that for all his apparent indifference, Bretagne was watching her closely. She should have expected that; no matter how little he cared for her, no man wishes to be cuckolded, and Bretagne most of all was the sort to hold greedily to any possession, however despised it was. For all she knew, Bretagne was having her door barred from the outside at night, even as she barred it from within. She had her own chamber pot and a garderobe to pour it down, and if the bar was lifted by servants in the morning before she or Robin tried the door, she would never know.

  Well, and if he was, he was only doing her a favor. Little though he knew it.

  She sent Robin down to the kitchen to make sure that there were no questions or problems; Robin returned with the cook’s tale of woe—not that anything this evening was going wrong, but that Bretagne blamed his eel pie for what was really a hangover. And Ursula was sulking, and though Robin could not report why, both of them guessed. Ursula had gotten little pleasure out of the baron last night and would probably get none tonight.

  In due course, Robin went down a second time and returned, closely followed by Sir Atremus, both of them burdened with the evening meal for three. Gwynn felt suddenly touched and her heart warmed with gratitude. Atremus need not have burdened himself with anything; it was Robin who was the servant, and he could rightly have left her to struggle with the additional weight on her own.

  They set up the board beside the fire for the light, with a table beside them laden with the food and drink that Robin had brought. Robin watched, as she had watched their afternoon game, with interest but no understanding, while they played.

  This time the knight did not underestimate his opponent and Gwynn had a hard fight on her hands. She kept an ear tuned to the noise in the hall below. She wanted to know when Bretagne left the table—because even if the game was not yet at an end, she would send Atremus away.

  But it seemed that Atremus was also listening and had a keener feeling for the rhythm of the goings-on in the hall than she, for at a point, perhaps two hours into the game, he feigned a yawn. She knew it was feigned; it hadn’t called up a corresponding yawn from her.

  “Ah, my lady, I fear I have not the energy I had when I battled your father,” he said with real regret. “I fear I must seek my bed.”

  “Then we will continue this game tomorrow,” she replied warmly, allowing him to take her hand and kiss it. “Good night to you, and I thank you for a most pleasant contest.”

  The door had, of course, remained open all during this time, and now Gwynn was certain that something—or someone—slipped down the stairs before Sir Atremus could move toward the door.

  So there was a spy, although it was impossible to tell if it was someone set there by Bretagne, by Ursula, or was merely someone hoping to profit by telling one or both of them of her activities.

  Fine. She wished them joy of it, sitting in the dark and cold stair, with nothing more amusing to listen to than the idle conversation of two chess players.

  Atremus limped out the door. Robin watched him down and around the curve of the stair, then closed and barred it behind him.

  “We had a watcher,” she said flatly.

  “I know,” Gwynn replied and laughed. So, finally, did Robin. Gwynn took up some plain sewing and moved back to the fireside, while Robin curled up on the hearth, staring into the fire, until the last of the sounds below died away. Then, after a cautious peek into the stairwell—which proved that at least tonight no one had barred the door from outside—they began the evening’s painting.

  6

  The next several days passed with little change from this one, except that her eye and bruises faded and healed. She went about her daily business, seeing Bretagne only in passing as he came and went with his men. Ursula, however, was a constant presence; when she wasn’t lounging at one of the fires in the hall, she was in the second seat at the otherwise empty High Table. Gwynn could only imagine that she thought she was establishing—or re-establishing—her position as the most important woman of the household, but the only thing she accomplished was to look like a bone-lazy layabout. Perhaps the men-at-arms weren’t affected, but every working woman, and a good many of the male servants, began casting looks of resentment at her before too very long.

  Ursula was in the process of making herself cordially hated by every underling in the keep, which had the effect of edging more support over to Gwynn’s side. She was not closing herself up in her solar, playing the fine lady, although she and everyone else in the keep knew that she was perfectly within her rights as Bretagne’s wife to do so. No, she was down in the stillroom making medicines, remedies, soaps, rushlights, tallow-dip candles—the many items long needed in the running of the keep, which no one had been making for many years now since Bretagne’s mother had died. Or she was in the kitchen, not only supervising but teaching, even preparing food herself, helping the cooks become proper cooks again. Or she was helping to clean, as well as directing the cleaning, or in the tiny dairy—for there was one, after all, though all the milk had to be brought up from the keep farms down below—or…

  Well, there were hundreds of tasks to be done, and unless she was recovering from a beating, she was down there doing them. Nor was there any doubt, when she finally appeared after the beatings, of why she had merely issued orders rather than appearing herself for a day or two and that she had not been lazing about.

  She had been accustomed to being the lady of a much smaller household than this, where every person needed to turn a hand to the work; she saw nothing demeaning in continuing that practice here. And though this might be a much larger household than her father’s, it had been so long since it was properly run that only the oldest servants truly knew what must be done and how to do it. There would be no sitting for hours at an embroidery frame in the solar for her for a very long time to come.

  Not surprisingly, she was dreading the day when she would have to once again present herself to her husband for his—ungentle attentions. If only he could have been summoned to the King for some campaign or other! Her life had been so very peaceful, even pleasant, during the week when her courses kept her from his bed—

  She greeted the first morning when they were over with a sigh and a distinct lowering of her spirits. Robin noted, of course, but a few of the more perceptive of the servants noticed, as well, and probably guessed the cause. There was one relief, at least; good, clear weather sent Bretagne out with a hunting party at dawn, so at least the keep would be utterly free of his presence until near sunset.

  A great keep such as this one could not store enough to feed all of the people within it, and hunting was necessary to keep everyone fed over the course of the winter. The huntsmen would go out every day for the hares that had been snared, and other small game, but only the nobility could slay the deer and boar—the deer by King’s law, and the boar because it took a well-armed hunting party to bring one down. With good fortune, Bretagne and his young knights would return with fr
esh venison or wild boar to augment the larder.

  With better fortune, he would return gored to death or with his neck broken—

  She winced and set those thoughts aside, attractive as they were. She knew better than to make such a thought into a wish, for there was always the chance it might come to pass, especially for one such as she. If such retribution came upon him, she did not yet have the right to be the engineer of it.

  Now, if he came back black-and-blue and aching in every limb, after having been carried by a runaway horse through a thicket of low-hanging branches, then dumped into a thorn bush or a rocky streambed, that would be just retribution….

  The thought made her smile and brightened her day, just a little, as she bent her attention on the rescue of a kettle of stew that had suffered at the hand of an undercook with no understanding that a “pinch” of salt did not mean a handful.

  Then she retired to the stillroom, where she could work quietly and peacefully, with nothing more to worry about than ointment for chilblains, from which nearly everyone in the keep was suffering. Robin assisted her, which was a great help, for it often took four hands when things were at a critical point in the compounding.

  She had just finished putting the last of the cooling ointment into a jar when—

  “Milady! Milady!”

  The frantic—nay, hysterical—call from the back of the keep startled her, but no more so than the knowledge of danger and urgency that sent her running in the direction of the voice, Robin following, hot on her heels. She literally ran into the maidservant who had been calling her, and the young woman clung to her, sobbing in panic and fear.