Greenwode

by J Tullos Hennig

  “I mean God. The presence of all creation, the true source, Father, Son and Spirit—”

  “The end and the beginning and all between.” Rob nodded. “But that’s here, Gamelyn. If that’s your god’s grace, it’s all about us, in every tree, every river, every star in the sky. We see it, feel it, taste it, hear it. Breathe it.” He murmured something Gamelyn didn’t understand—another language, surely, that sent tingles and shivers along his skin. “Tynged is here, in th’ green Wode. In your… garden.”

  Tynged. That was one that Gamelyn knew by now, and some deep place within him recognized it even further, hugged it close. The simple surety with which Rob talked of such things spun him dizzy. If he were Christian, he’d be some holy man, lit from within, walking a sacred path….

  But he wasn’t. Rob was Heathen, a pagan. Had never seen the face of God, never prayed for Christ’s mercy….

  So quick to judge, to name and tag and declare what you don’t understand. So sure, little princeling, when you’ve never truly lived.

  The voice was deep, and powerful, and undeniable.

  Gamelyn buried his head in his arms, clutched fingers in his hair.

  Even your priest admits to us. The voice stretched thin, then wavered into an echo of Brother Dolfin: The old gods aren’t dead… we forget that at our peril….

  This, then, was Eden, where gods spoke in velvet voices and possessed lads with eyes mild and wild as a summer storm? Where gods walked amongst them, shades and whispers in the cool and green?

  Where a god’s son whispered love words into his hair, stroked bow-hardened fingers down his naked back and made him believe… believe… in magic?

  “… love you. Let me. I want to. You like this.” And Rob’s fingertips slid down into the cleft of his buttocks, slick from oil or spit or… it didn’t matter… as Rob gave a push-twist with his fingers, flaring a simultaneous pop of sensation behind Gamelyn’s eyes and out his toes. “It’s even better. You’ve seen it with me… you like doing it to me. It’s lovely, and I want to make you feel it.”

  Just this last thing, this one thing…. Surely it wasn’t so much. And he wanted it. He wanted it. Wanted to feel what Rob felt as he arched back with Gamelyn deep inside him, wanted Rob to shove his face down into the furs, hold him down, fuck him breathless….

  Yet just like the last time Rob had broached this, every nerve ending on his body froze with negation. It was the last thing. The last step off a cliff that he was somehow terrified of making… and he pulled away, curling up into a seated ball with his arms wrapped about his bent knees.

  “I can’t. Don’t you understand, I can’t.”

  Rob was still on his knees, peering at him, bewilderment backlit with darkness. “I don’t mean to make you do what you don’t want to… but I don’t understand. It’s just another way.”

  Another way. Another step off the cliff….

  Gamelyn tried to explain, could only recite, in a dead voice, “‘If any one lie with a man as with a woman, both have committed abomination—’”

  Rob’s breath sucked in sharp, as if Gamelyn had punched him. “So when you… when you tup me, what does that make of me, then? A woman? An… abahmin?”

  “Abomination,” Gamelyn repeated dully.

  “That means evil, aye? What you keep callin’ ‘sin’.” Rob shook his head, curls falling into his face, yet they couldn’t mask the revulsion in his voice. “I’m not a woman, nor you… begging the Lady’s pardon, but I don’t want to be a woman, so how could we do owt a woman would?”

  Gamelyn tried to answer, found that he had none. It made too much… sense.

  “Worse, it sounds like you’re saying that something a woman does is evil, and that… that I really canna work out.” Again, a head shake; Rob rocked back on his haunches, busied himself with wiping his fingers on the rushes padding the furs. “Gamelyn, all we’re doing is loving each other. And it’s like… like sometimes you’re set to rend yourself into little pieces over it. It makes me sick to m’ stomach to see you like this, so miserable with this… this sodding weight you canna seem to put away… and all because of what some money-grubbing priest tells you from a book?”

  “Not all priests are like that, Rob. And it’s not just any book—”

  “I’ll say, because it sounds more evil than owt I’ve even heard tell of—”

  “Rob—”

  “A book that says love is wrong. That says women are… abomination. That’s an evil, that very thought. My mother’s evil? Marion’s evil? Th’ Lady Herself, evil?”

  “Rob—”

  “But what else to expect from people who’ve come in, taken our lands as their own and put chains on us—uh!” This as Gamelyn reached out, grasped his wrists, shook him.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Gamelyn trailed off as Rob ducked his head aside.

  Gamelyn swore he’d seen the glimmer of tears.

  “Never liked reading,” Rob growled against his wrist. “Too many thoughts gathered all ripe in one place, too many scrawls and marks t’ make anyone’s head full to bursting. You and Marion can have it, and welcome. Anyway.” He peered up at Gamelyn and perhaps there were tears glimmering about the edges of his eyes. He didn’t have a chance to look further, for Rob put his hands about Gamelyn’s face and kissed him, hard. Then pushed him back into the furs and straddled him again. Said, in one of the changes of mood that seemed as quicksilver in Gamelyn’s hands, runnelling here and there, changing from one thing to the next so rapid it was oft hard to keep up: “I like it when you fuck me. And I don’t want you unwilling to owt.”

  And by damn, but he could have Gamelyn’s eyes crossing in bliss and his knob akin to stone in the time it took him to breathe twice. “That’s funny, coming from one who’s coerced me into more than—”

  “Have I, then?” The smile was back on Rob’s lips, but hadn’t quite reached his eyes.

  “I didn’t mean it like—”

  Rob leaned forward, sliding his pelvis back and forth against Gamelyn’s, sliding his lips along Gamelyn’s cheek. “I know,” Rob whispered. “Half the time you don’t know how to say owt you mean. You think I don’t know the difference between ‘full stop’ and ‘don’t stop’? Like this.” He ran his hand down between them, gripping, then sliding and twisting.

  Gamelyn reached for him, pulled him close.

  “Mm. More? How about….” A shift, a slide, and they were both bare, nestled and twinned in Rob’s hand. “This.”

  “Oh… God.”

  “And that’s ‘don’t stop’ if I’ve ever heard it, aye?”

  IT SEEMED so strange, as if the past nights hadn’t happened or the morning broken. Horses saddled. A black-haired young peasant, shrugging bow and quiver onto his back and securing saddlebags to his black rouncey. A ginger-haired young nobleman, mounting his gray courser with a practiced ease that belied the swordsmith’s hardware he carried.

  Rob knew he could never mount like that with a piece of iron strapped to his leg, it just wasn’t on.

  He was betting, however, that Gamelyn couldn’t shoot a pheasant’s eye from horseback. And smirked. Aye, well then, Gamelyn couldn’t do that standing still….

  Rob walked over, Arawn following, and looked up, met the green gaze with his own. Held out his hand, palm up. From his first two fingers dangled the quillion dagger.

  Gamelyn’s eyes widened and his brows knit together. Then he smiled, shrugged. “Keep it for me,” he said, light. “Until next time.”

  Rob peered at him for a long moment, then nodded. Closing his fingers about the knife’s leather-wrapped hilt, he stuck it in his belt. Then he reached up and grabbed Gamelyn by the breast of his tunic, pulled him down into a kiss. “Don’t make me come for you,” he murmured against Gamelyn’s ear. “I will, if I have to. And I don’t want to embarrass you in front of all those brothers who think you’re poking my sister instead of me.”

  And felt satisfaction curl, heated and smug in his gut as Gamelyn leaned closer,
whispered against his cheek, “Shut the bloody fuck up, Hob-Robyn.”

  SHE’D NOT yet spoken to her mother. She wasn’t sure she wanted to, that it was proper to bring such things into the light of day.

  And over the next few days, Marion came to realize that there were some things she could no longer lay before her mother, like a little girl blurting out secrets at bedtime or a winsome request for approval. This was… beyond any of that. It wasn’t a lack of trust, or love… it simply was.

  And they were busy, not only with the householding chores, but the plant gathering and storing and drying. The last days of spring were always busy for a wortwife; only so many days to gather a season’s bounty needed for the year’s use. Not only that, but Beltain was approaching, and there were deeper concerns to address.

  Cernun left the sign at their door as he did upon the moon-dark heralding every season’s fête. This time it was a mommet from last year’s wheat, braided all about with a spray of foxglove and peacock’s feathers, in honor of the goddess’s eyes upon her suitor. Beltain was the time of the Great Marriage, after all, the time when the Lady took Her Consort to Her bed of earth.

  Only Marion found it, and some predator had killed a fox right upon their doorstep, leaving the fox’s hind end slung across the mommet, with blood all over it and the step. Eluned was horror-stricken, and took it to the mere to cleanse it, and when she returned, Marion almost told her mother everything. The omen was too dire, too apropos.

  It will be a brutal time. You must hold together. You must forge the links now, make the trust and hold to it no matter what….

  Eluned’s face, white as any ghost and wearied, gave her pause.

  It never seemed to be the right time. The work was staggering, never-ending; the evenings they would eat, too tired to bear more than perfunctory conversation. Even the nightly ritual where they brushed and braided up each other’s hair for bed—one honored from the time Marion could manage a braid with a pudgy child’s fingers—had become a still point of silent relaxation between dinner and sleep.

  And then, the evening Adam rode in, Marion realized that her brother had called it all too closely.

  Their father was not the same man, and never would be.

  “Da!” Marion ran to Adam as he dismounted, and he scooped her up as if she were a bairn again. But the arms that held her seemed thinner, less hale, and his face older, as if they had stepped into fae and he had remained in the real world, felt those few se’nnights as years.

  “Oh, lass, how good it is to be back in my own place.” He kissed her cheek, put her down.

  “I’ll take the horse, see to him,” Marion said, reaching for the rein with one arm still around her father. “You go on up to th’ house—you look as though you could use a meal or two.”

  “Or three or six,” he replied, and for an instant the father she knew was there, with his sly teasing. “The food’s terrible in Nottingham. They’ve not your mother’s way with a roast, and I’ve not found a pottage to match yours. How does your ma and brother?”

  “Ma’s at the cottage. Rob’s….” She trailed off, not certain of the impact of that news.

  “Adam!” Eluned came running down the steps, and Adam leapt like a horse at the starter’s shout, ran toward her. It was a lovely sight any child should be lucky enough to see, the open affection of two parents too long kept separate. But there was a desperation in it that made Marion more wistful than pleased, and she turned away. Murmuring to her father’s gelding, she led him toward the stable, determined that she’d take her time brushing him down, give her parents some time to themselves.

  And—coward! Marion accused herself—let her mother be the one to break the news to her father about Rob’s preoccupation Blyth-ward.

  XXI

  GAMELYN MADE it back to Blyth as stars were beginning to appear and the chapel bell was tolling the end of Evensong. He snuck up the stable stair and vanished into his chambers—surely tomorrow was time enough to face the consequences. If anyone had, in fact, missed him.

  The next morning he was up before dawn, unable to sleep, dressed in fresh tunic and breeks, and down in the kitchens for an early snack. There was a reckless melody playing along every nerve he had, twisting any discretion into pieces and blowing it widdershins; by the time Gamelyn had eaten a good portion of cheese, sausage-stuffed bread, and washed it down with good ale, he had all but decided he would just creep back up to his chambers, grab his rucksack, and head out again before anyone could stop him.

  Still gnawing on hard cheese, he took the stairs two at a time, humming beneath his breath, and almost laid out Alais coming down. Gamelyn grabbed hold of her just in time, steadied the tray she was bearing.

  “My word, lad!” Alais chuckled. “Where have you been? And to return singing!”

  Gamelyn paused, then leaned forward and kissed her cheek. It surely was a sin to feel this much joy and not share it, somehow.

  “Faith!—but you are in a sunny mood!” Alais smiled, reached out and straightened the lay of his tunic, then hesitated. “What’s this?” Her fingers flicked at the lanyard and charm. “That’s a pretty… and what have you done to yourself here, lad?” She pulled the neck of his tunic aside, probed a spot that briefly stung.

  Gamelyn remembered, suddenly, the mouth that had given him that spot—the teeth that had latched on, hard, and how he’d been so close… so close that it had sent him over the edge, then and there….

  “Well, well,” Alais said, and she was smiling as if they were both in on some joke. Ever since she had heard that Gamelyn had a crush on the wortwife’s daughter, Alais had been intent on seeing romance in every light step he took.

  Well, she wasn’t far wrong this time.

  “A bit of a wild one, eh?”

  Bit of a wild one… that was, perhaps, the biggest understatement Gamelyn had heard lately. He touched the bruise on his neck, and it throbbed, as visceral as the sudden stiffen and throb against his breeks. Another thrill of memory coursed through him: Rob, kissing the blossoming bruise as they lay gasping their breath back, but it had not been apologetic and Gamelyn hadn’t wanted an apology, or even needed one.

  “Well, curb that ardor,” Alais continued, her voice lower. “Johan has been looking for you, high and low. Something about an errand to Worksop and the Abbess requesting you specifically. He’s in a mood, I’ll warn you. Had the cheek to accuse me of trying to get in your father’s graces! As if I do this”—she jerked her head to the tray, tears suddenly swimming behind her blue eyes—“for anything other than your father’s a good man and I love him…. Grasping sod. He thinks everyone’s like him.”

  If the thought of Johan on the rampage didn’t cool Gamelyn’s ardor, the sudden and guilt-ridden realization—that he had spared few thoughts for his father the entire time he’d been in the Wode—certainly did. “Is Papa well?”

  “He’s fine, Gamelyn.” She gave a sniff, shook her head, shrugged with a little smile. “It is what it is, your papa’s circumstance. But he’s no worse. I’ve kept that bloody-thirsty leech from him, so between that and the wortwife’s potions, I’d say he’s doing a sight better. He did miss you these past several evenings, but he understands that young men have other things to occupy them than their aging Papa.”

  The needles of guilt ramped up into a sword thrust of shame. “I’ll go to him. Right now. I didn’t—”

  “Gamelyn! There you are—by God, where have you been?” Johan’s voice rang down the hall, furious.

  Alais gave a little “I did warn you” twitch of eyebrow and made a hasty retreat.

  THE “AUDIENCE” with his brother was a tactile, bristling affair that left Gamelyn seething, but seething with very explicit instructions. First, he had better quit mooning about and wandering off—if he had to dip his wick he was to not spend several days’ worth at it. Second, while it would suit Johan just fine if Gamelyn spent less time playing up to their father, their father did want Gamelyn, for some unfathomable reason, and
Gamelyn was to indulge him in it at least once a day, and quick was, of course, preferable. Third, that the Abbess’s visit to see to their father’s soul was due four days hence, and as it was their duty to escort her, and she had specifically asked for Gamelyn to perform that duty….

  “Don’t muck it up,” was Johan’s parting shot. “You’re not to go anywhere—anywhere, mind you—until you’ve seen her safely here. You’ll report to me when you leave. You’ll take not just your tame paxman but two others as well. And you’re not to make any detours toward your grubby forester friends on this trip; I’d like my guards to come back alive.”

  That was just nasty. Gamelyn sent a gesture his “forester friends” had taught him after Johan’s retreating back. Then went to see his father.

  Sir Ian was sleeping, but lightly, and spent some time in fairly lucid conversation with him, mostly about the wandering troubador whose troupe was still here—and that Gamelyn should take time and see them as he could. The troubador had come and entertained Sir Ian in his solar the previous night, caught him up on the court gossip, and shared a meal with him by the fire.

  “So you didn’t miss me,” Gamelyn said, somewhat relieved as he knelt by the bed—as if at prayer and just as penitent.

  “Of course I missed you,” Sir Ian said stoutly, then yawned. “But not horribly. He was a good storyteller. He’ll be here tonight, so I hope you can join us.”

  There was a pathos in his father’s voice that Gamelyn had never heard before. Donall was glaring at him, also; not cheeky enough to say anything out loud, but certainly letting it be known that he disapproved of anything that would take Gamelyn from his father’s side. Where he belonged.

  Both together were a lash that whipped him like a disobedient hound. Gamelyn bent his neck and took his father’s hand between his. “I’ll be here. I promise.”