Greenwode

by J Tullos Hennig

  “Worse?”

  “All of it.” Gamelyn turned into the cushions for a second, and when he turned back to Rob his eyes were as reddened as his lips and cheeks. “This,” he furthered as he reached out and stroked Rob’s cheek.

  “Was it you that told him, then?”

  Gamelyn blinked, shook his head. “I’d never have—”

  “Then seems to me ’tis more a blame on the head of who told a sick man sommat he didna need to hear.”

  Gamelyn gritted his teeth, hissed, “That’s what I told the Abbess—”

  And every nerve on Rob’s body drew up. “She was the one who—?”

  Voices, outside the door. Raised in consternation, then hissed into quiet.

  Both of them froze. Rob gave a soft growl, made an agile roll to his feet. Nigh silent, he crept over, snatched up Gamelyn’s discarded braies. Gamelyn’s recovery was not as practiced or swift, but he was upright in time to catch the braies as Rob pitched them to him. As he straightened from yanking them on, Rob padded back over and spoke against his ear.

  “I’m thinking they found the guard I made to sleep.”

  “You what?” Gamelyn hissed

  More voices, muted and urgent, from the door.

  “It was s’posed to—”

  A tap on the door, and they both stilled. “Gamelyn?”

  “I bolted the door,” Rob said, just as it shook.

  “It’s my brother… You have to get out of here!” Gamelyn gritted, half whisper and half hoarse plea. “He can’t find you here—”

  “Gamelyn, are you in there?”

  Rob watched the wish to panic flirt itself dry in Gamelyn’s expression, replaced by a scary-cold reserve as Gamelyn lifted his chin and spoke. “I am. What do you want?”

  “Aye, that’s my poncy ginger paramour,” Rob purred in his ear, and for a moment, Gamelyn nearly laughed.

  Instead he snatched up the rope. “Check below,” he murmured back. “Now.”

  Rob padded across, looked down as Gamelyn uncoiled the rope, tossed it to him.

  “Open up, Gamelyn. It’s about Papa.”

  Gamelyn paled, but gave the rope two wraps about his waist. “I’ll be right there!” he called. Then, to Rob, a bare whisper, “Get out of here. I’ll hold you, throw the rope after you.”

  Rob tested his grip, arched an eyebrow at Gamelyn. “Can you, then?”

  Gamelyn snorted. “You and two others just as skinny. Go on, damn it!”

  Rob hopped into the window, took a firm grip on the rope, and swung out into the air with his feet braced against the sill. Stopped, groped around his belt.

  “Rob!” Gamelyn hissed. “What in Hell are you—?”

  Rob held up the quillion dagger, and saw him pale, go mute. “D’you….” He almost couldn’t say it, was afraid to hear the answer. “D’you want it now?”

  The freckled cheeks suddenly flushed dark, and Gamelyn took in a thick breath. “Keep it,” he growled, low. “I’ll come for it. We’ll go. Together.” And set himself against the rope.

  Rob bounced, slid, and toed himself down the stone turret, landed straddled and bent-kneed, tugged the rope. He paused only long enough to snatch at the rope as it came soaring down after him, then fled.

  GAMELYN THREW the rope down, watched the dark figure scoop it up then melt into the shadows outside like a shade. He leaned heavily against the window, touched three fingers to his lips, and blew a kiss after. Only then did he walk over and open the door.

  Johan came bursting in, with two guards right behind him. “What were you doing, taking a piss?”

  “It’s my chamber, Johan, and perhaps I was….” Gamelyn trailed off as the guard began looking: in the clothes press, under the bed, behind the hanging in the corner. He was afraid he knew what—who—they were looking for. But there had been no alarm raised. Surely there would have been if they thought…. “Johan, what’s happened? You said Papa—”

  “He’s well enough. No thanks to you.” Johan was watching the guards, his ire growing by the second. They looked at him and shrugged; he jerked his head. “Get out.”

  They bowed, obeyed—but not without wary looks at Gamelyn. None of it made sense. “Johan, you said you were here about Papa? Is he—?”

  Johan strode over, quick as a snake, and struck. The backhand blow caught Gamelyn unprepared, snapped his head sideways and sent him staggering back.

  “Where is he?”

  A thrill along Gamelyn’s nerves—active fear. He allowed none of it to show on his expression, shook his head. “I don’t know what you—”

  Johan hit him again. It was almost casual, the method behind it, but of the power there was no question, even open-handed. “Keep quiet, petit frêre. You have been loud enough this night; if you wake our father, the consequences will not be pleasant.”

  Gamelyn hit the floor sprawling, then rocked up to his hands and knees with a curse and lunged.

  He got several silent, brutal blows in before Johan swore and punched him, a heavy fist into the gut that drove the breath from Gamelyn as well as what was left of his dinner. Gamelyn dropped to hands and knees, and once he started retching he couldn’t stop, and heaved until his ears were ringing and his vision red-soaked.

  Only then did a hand tangle in his hair, haul him to his feet and shove him backward until he hit the stone wall. Johan held him there, nearly dangling.

  “It is over, little gadelyng.” The old taunt held even more bile than usual; in this place and moment struck home all the more. “Don’t lie to me. I know he was here.” Johan stuck his face into Gamelyn’s. “A castle such as this has secrets, ones that only the lord and his heir might know. There are passageways in the walls, ways to safety. Ways to observe nearly every room here. I was watching you, just in case. I saw the peasant whore-son come in here. I saw you talking, and then?” His eyes gleamed, furious. “All this time, I thought you were acting the man. I scoffed at the Abbess’s talk of witches and enchantments, but I was wrong. You are enchanted. You have to be.”

  The fear was filling him, as if he were submerged in water, flooding into his eyes, nose, throat. “Johan, you don’t—”

  “I saw you. Saw you… with that scrawny cuivert maleis.” The oath was as vulgar as Johan’s tone was abnormally quiet. He preferred shouting, striking, throwing things—this stillness was disturbing. “It turned my stomach, but I watched you with him, and you liked it, what he did. You begged that filthy peasant scum to fuck you. Like a dog. Like a woman.”

  “You….” Fury and disgust were so mixed up they were choking him. “… bastard!”

  Johan clapped a hand over his mouth. “Keep your voice down!” he hissed. “Our father is ill enough without knowing the full details of your sins.”

  Gamelyn jerked away, hissed back, “You showed such tender regard for his health before, when you dragged me before him for no better reason than to shame me!”

  “It was a mistake I do not plan to make again. I will confess I was willing to show him you’re not the untouched saint he thinks you… non, I was more than willing. But this.” Johan shook his head. “He is weak and this would kill him. You are out of your mind with this… this thing that has enchanted you, and our father does not need to know that… that the son he loves above all else”—he spat it like the bitter dregs it must have been—“has been made slave to an animal.”

  Johan was not the only one swallowing fury’s acid; Gamelyn was nigh choking on the taste of it, his words muddled into near incoherence. “You don’t… know… anything!”

  “I know enough.” Johan stepped back, released Gamelyn to totter and stagger against the wall. He raised his voice, ever so slightly. “Gervais!”

  “Aye, my lord?” The largest of the two guards stuck his head in, followed by the other as Johan motioned.

  “My brother has become… irrational again. We must guard him carefully, for his own protection.”

  “Johan,” Gamelyn growled, “don’t—”

  “You g
ive me no choice, petit frêre.” Johan motioned the guards in, and they advanced.

  Gamelyn backed away from them, shaking his head. Pinwheels still hung, red whirlwinds, behind his gaze. “And what of Papa?” he demanded.

  “I myself or Otho will bring you up to see him, should it be necessary. But until your little sodomite friend and his demon-worshipping family are dealt with, it is plain you cannot be trusted to act rationally.”

  “Dealt with?” Gamelyn struggled almost perfunctorily as the guard took hold of him, spent an almost rabid focus on Johan’s words. “What do you mean, dealt with?”

  “Oh, gadelyng. Truly, you are raving.” Johan tsked with a pitying frown. “Do you really think that some peasant witch-cult can be allowed to take liberties with a lord? Or that lord’s son?”

  “Johan—!”

  “Silence him.” Johan made a gesture, and the larger guardsman twisted Gamelyn’s arm up behind him. A meaty arm snapped about Gamelyn’s neck, mail and leather stifling the surprised cry it drove from him.

  “Take him,” Johan ordered, “to the undercroft.”

  XXV

  HE HIT the floor hard, slid then skittered across the hard dirt of the passageway and lay on his back for valuable seconds.

  Shocked. Still stunned.

  Furious.

  Gamelyn staggered to his feet, leapt for the door just as it shut and he slammed against it.

  There was the sound of the heavy lock tumblers clunking home as he bounced off the door; it was the impetus to renew the fight. He lunged up against the door, banged his fists against it.

  Kept banging. Shouted. Ordered. Finally screamed abuse into the thick wood, his throat tightening, scraping, and burning.

  There was no reply. He could hear nothing beyond, and behind him….

  He turned, looked down the narrow, meter-long passageway. There was a torch burning at the end, and beyond it, a dark hole.

  The undercroft was in the very bowels of the castle, sided with rock and masonry, the arches and foundations of which supported the bastion above clearly visible. There was but one way out; this passage and this locked door.

  Gamelyn bent, picked up the sack that had been flung in with him, and trod forward, into the black. He took the torch from its sconce as he entered the undercroft chamber, held it aloft. It was dank, deathly quiet, the only sound that of the fire in his hand, hissing and crackling along the pitch-fueled surface of the torch. There was the smell of ferment, mold and compost; the back wall abutted the stables, with gratings that, when he inspected them, were too small to contemplate wriggling through had they led anywhere but more darkness. Moisture abetted the growth of moss and fungus in the cracks and corners, and there were casks of wine aging against the western wall. There were also several other sconces, with torches; Gamelyn made a circuit of the chamber, setting them alight and settling the one he held in an iron stand at the undercroft’s center.

  Then he inspected the bag. He had been left with a promise of a good meal in several hours, a candle and flint against the dark, a thick fur to ward the damp chill, and a warning not to attempt to drink any of the wine—it was surely still vinegar at this point.

  It seemed… impossible. Impossible that he was here, impossible that it had all gone so bloody wrong. Gamelyn leaned against one enormous arch, put his head in his hands and wanted to weep. Instead, he let out one solid howl and kicked the emptied sack against the far wall.

  Put his face in his hands again. Considered his options.

  There had to be options.

  Had to be.

  He was to be locked up until they’d dealt with Rob and his family.

  Dealt with, how?

  Gamelyn’s hands clenched in his forelock, chased back to his nape, threaded together.

  It was obvious what Johan had seen… and even now that had the power to send a cold fury coursing through Gamelyn’s veins.

  Mine. It’s mine, damn you, you had no right!

  Only Johan did. He had every right, and it was Gamelyn that had walked every wrong that existed….

  “No.” It was a hoarse growl. “No, no, no!”

  There had to be a way. As impossible as it seemed. Yet if he was down here, he couldn’t stop whatever it was Johan intended to do. Couldn’t meet Rob. Couldn’t go with him for the Fête… Beltain. Couldn’t stop what Johan intended to do. He’d once sworn that if Rob went to Hell, he wouldn’t go alone… was Hell now stalking Eden, its fires to burn through the green Wode?

  He didn’t know. He didn’t know, and he should.

  Hadn’t Rob already come after him, risked capture and death just to give Gamelyn a choice?

  And how craven was he, if he refused to even reach for it?

  For it was his. His. Everything he had done over the past month, everything he had felt, every light he had seen shining in Rob’s eyes, pain or passion or defiance, it was a living thing, lit between them like an artifact. Part of him. They couldn’t take it from him without his own consent. Only God could take it from him.

  MARION WAS waiting by the rock. She wasn’t sure what to feel when she saw Rob coming up the hillock—alone. She’d had doubts, certainly. Rob’s expectations had been as foolish as reckless and romantic. But she’d also hoped.

  Perhaps if there was some chance for Rob and Gamelyn, there’d be one for her and Will.

  She was wearied of this strange, unsettled limbo they seemed to be walking in, neither one nor the other, forward or back.

  You are meant to walk the road together, wherever that road might lead. If all else is forgotten, remember that, and it will illuminate the darkness….

  She was here, then. They were together. Beyond that, she wasn’t sure what else to do.

  Rob gathered her in by gaze alone, somber. It wasn’t exactly reassuring. But there were no alarms from the castle, and he wasn’t being pursued, so that much was well enough.

  She followed him back to the cave in silence.

  THE CLUNK of the lock tumblers echoed down the short passage and ricocheted around the walls of the undercroft.

  No possibility of sneaking up on him in here, at least. Gamelyn didn’t move from where he was propped up against an arched beam, didn’t raise his head, merely slid his eyes up to see who had entered.

  It was Abbess Elisabeth. With, of course, the gray-clad novice, who held a large wooden supper tray.

  Gamelyn gave an embarrassing stagger as he lurched to his feet, and realized how long he had been sitting there, wheeling between furious and dumbfounded; the cold and damp had penetrated nearly bone-deep.

  “A cold place,” the Abbess said, her graceful halt seeming to chide Gamelyn’s awkwardness, her gaze taking him in. “I am sorry for the necessity of this.”

  Necessity. He threw a look over to the novice holding the tray, then peered back at the Abbess. “I am allowed food this time?”

  “Gamelyn.” Her look was chiding. “I know you cannot help yourself, but this obstinacy is unappealing. It merely convinces me that your brother is altogether correct in confining you. When you hold your own safety so lightly, others must see to it for you.”

  It was tempting to make some pithy comment. Unfortunately, he didn’t have any. Instead Gamelyn went over to the tray and looked down at it. Eels and sturgeon, a slice of pigeon pie with sauced apples.

  Rob would have called it a rich man’s portion.

  Gamelyn wanted to smile; instead he let the warmth of the thought wax through him. There was a resounding strength in it.

  Mine. Mine, and you shan’t have it.

  He had spent enough time in numb confusion and disbelief, in self-indulgent flailing, in waiting for things to happen. All any of it had done was see him locked up. He was no longer skirting the borders, no longer “the afterthought.” Things were happening, ones that concerned him and his lover….

  His lover.

  This time the smile did quirk at his mouth. Just as quickly, it vanished, and his eyes flattened.

  He
needed to know what was going on. Why. How. He had to be self-possessed, collected. Had to be that cold and insensitive nobleman’s son that Rob had once condemned.

  Had to think. Plan.

  “I am sorry,” he murmured, and the apology echoed against cool stone. “I… sometimes don’t know what I mean. Things… are very confusing right now.”

  Silence. It was difficult to not turn, gauge the Abbess’s response. Instead he put a hand out, ran it around the edge of the tray. “I don’t mean to be…,” and he trailed off again. Waited.

  “I warned you.” Her reply was soft, but echoed and carried through the hollows and arches. “Remember? I warned you of the danger. Not only from the outside, but within yourself. Your pride. Your insolence. All of it, weakness ripe for the poison of enchantment.”

  The words quivered, acute weapons against new-laid defenses. Gamelyn closed his eyes, swallowed hard, hardened his heart.

  It was not easy. She advanced, step by step, wielding poisons with sharp-honed skill.

  “I greatly feared the enchantment ran deep, and I was right. Everything you’ve done: the lies, the insolence, the unnatural… acts. And you thought a rumpled monk could cleanse you!” A hand came to rest on his shoulder; with no small effort he did not pull away, merely slumped against it. Offered the appearance of capitulation.

  You can touch me, but I’m not here.

  Defenses held.

  “Ah, lovely Gamelyn, could it be that you finally see? This demon boy has taken your heart and pierced it with a thin, long bodkin. He would have you for his horned master, and you lying in your blood upon their altar.”

  The stag. The hooded figure, waiting. The voice, like sharp tines swathed in spring’s velvet, feral and ferocious….

  Flowers on the altar. Flowers in Rob’s hair; the smell of lake silt, mint, and foxglove. Beauty to stop one’s heart….

  “You must turn from them. But it will take more than a one-time soldier masquerading as a priest to give you peace. To grant you lasting absolution.”

  “Then,” Gamelyn took a deep breath. “If I asked it of you?”