The Conqueror

by Kris Kennedy

“A vessel,” he said tonelessly.

  “No,” shouted Marcus to his back. “Guinevere is the Vessel. God’s truth, didn’t you know?” He gave a bark of mad laughter, and Griffyn drew to a halt. “At least my father taught me that much. The women who tend the roses are the Vessels. But that you don’t know that?” He laughed again. “That means you haven’t found the Hallows, yet, have you?”

  Griffyn started walking.

  Gwyn stared at Marcus’s unfolding fury and madness. He stood, boot atop his helm, one arm crossed over his chest, the opposite elbow resting on his wrist, fingers pressed into his unkempt beard. Motionless. Smiling. “What Hallows?” she demanded.

  He grinned. “Your father’s little chest, Gwynnie? Remember that?”

  Griffyn’s step hitched.

  “Your Griffyn wants it, Gwyn,” Marcus called out, still grinning. “Badly.”

  “Please, Griffyn,” she said, catching up to him again. “Let me go to him. ’Twill be madness if I stay. Every time you look at me, you’ll remember. Every word I say will be suspect. Let me go.”

  He down looked at her from his cold, terrible heights. “No.”

  Tears burned at the back of her eyes, hot and painful. Her exhale came in a short, thrusting out-breath. “Saint Jude, Griffyn, let me go. You’ll be killed! I can save you.”

  “No.”

  He did not wave her off, did not invite her closer. She was walking at his side and it was as if she was a thousand miles away.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  “So this is it,” Griffyn said. He and Alex stood in the lord’s chamber hours later, after the horses were rubbed down, the injured tended, the soldiers fed, and the children comforted. They were both staring at the small carved Guinevere chest, which is how he thought of it now, sitting square in the centre of the table.

  Apparently; he could trust himself.

  The sun was getting ready to set, not that one could tell from this side of the castle. On this northeastern side, the storm clouds were lowering, grey-edged and sullen, pumping across the sky. Griffyn walked away from the chest and threw another square of peat on the brazier. It flared into life, crackling.

  “‘I think I ne’er truly believed,” he said.

  Alex nodded. “Many thought your father waited too long to tell you about your destiny. The deathbed is no good place to lay such a burden on a young soul, for many reasons.”

  Griffyn pushed the coals and new fuel about, coaxing it into a hotter burn. “I once would have claimed my father did so because he wanted it all for himself. Trying to live forever.”

  “And now?”

  “Now.” He threw down the poker and sat back at the table. “Now I think he took me away from it. To protect me from the things it did to men. The things it did to him.” He picked up the letters and trinkets scattered inside and laid them on the table. The tarnished ring, the scrap of reddish-purple linen, the blade hilt, the lock of hair, the coins.

  “I know what you did, Alex,” he said quietly.

  There was a pause. “Pagan?” He could hear confusion and tension, spiraling together in Alex’s voice.

  “Did you know I have this?” Griffyn asked, and held up the steel key.

  He heard Alex’s breath suck in. “Where did you get it?”

  “Same place you tried. De Louth.”

  Stillness descended behind him. If he wished to, Alex could simply whack him on the back of the head and be done with it.

  “What did you plan to do with it, Alex, if you got hold of it?”

  He heard Alex’s boots thud as he came around. His face was bleached white. “I’d like to say, ‘give it to you.’”

  Griffyn leaned back, spine against the wall. “Yes. I’d like that too.”

  Alex grabbed a bench and dragged it near. He sat down, one leg on either side, leaning deeply forward. “There’s so much I haven’t told you, Pagan—”

  “I know. Why not?”

  Alex wiped his hand over the top of his head. “At first, ’twas simply that you did not want to know. Were rather militant in your wishing not to know, for many years.”

  “That I was. But you’re supposed to be my protection, are you not, Alex? A Watcher?”

  “Aye, we Watch, Griffyn. And protect. But we are protecting you, so you can protect the treasure. We are oath-bound to protect the treasure.”

  “Not me?” Griffyn said, but it wasn’t a question.

  Alex stood stiffly at the unspoken accusation of betrayal. “I am your friend, Pagan. I will always be your friend. I need no vow to make that so.”

  “And yet, you lied to me. Why did you not tell me you thought you had found one of the puzzle keys?”

  “Because I couldn’t be sure you were going to be a good Guardian,” Alex burst out. “Good?” he added, then gave a short bark of laughter and began pacing the room. “I did not even know whether you would become one at all. You inherit the Blood, but the burden, as you said yourself, has to be chosen. No one can give it to you, or force it upon you. You must accept it.” He stopped by the west-facing window and looked over. “I didn’t know if you would.”

  Their eyes held. Griffyn nodded, accepting the indictment. “And?”

  Alex’s gaze flickered in confusion. “And what?”

  “And why else didn’t you tell me about the key?”

  Alex flushed. He ran his hand over the wide window ledge, then over his mouth and chin, hard. “I don’t know,” he said. “’Twas a thing I liked, knowing, being the one who knew. The gatekeeper, I suppose.”

  “The power.”

  Alex nodded and looked over. “You didn’t take me to Ipsile. You took Fulk instead. Why?”

  Griffyn shrugged. “I suspected before then. De Louth just confirmed it.”

  “How did you know?”

  He shrugged again. “You were too insistent, cared too much what I did with it. That’s what it does. I don’t need to be its scholar to know what it does. It makes men care about things that don’t matter. It takes our souls.”

  The brazier fire had caught fully now, and its little flicking flames brightened the darkening room. Griffyn shifted. Took men’s souls, indeed. How close he had come. Once the seed of desire had been watered the slightest bit, it sprouted like a weed. How long had he been at the Nest? Just shy of three weeks, and within two days he’d been chasing rumours of it halfway across the shire. Leaving Guinevere the space to do what she had done.

  He smiled bitterly. “Perhaps our family isn’t strong enough to guard this thing anymore. No one seems to have considered that.”

  The thick dye of Alex’s blue surcoat absorbed the flickering brazier light as he shook his head firmly. “You are the proof that isn’t so, Griffyn.”

  “Damning proof, methinks.”

  “You rejected it. On the battlefield, when given a choice, you let it go.”

  “I fail to see how that could keep it safe.”

  Alex sighed. “I fail to see any other way to do so.”

  Griffyn’s eyebrows arched up. “So that’s the test? To have it, you must reject it?”

  “It depends on the choice each Guardian is given. That was yours.” He swallowed. “No one else could do it, reject it. I couldn’t.”

  Griffyn leaned forward, elbows on his knees. He stared at the small Guinevere chest. “My father thought there was something about the treasure that could make him live forever.” He shifted his gaze to Alex. “Is there?”

  “Maybe.”

  Griffyn nodded. He moved his elbow to the table and dropped his forearm across the tabletop. His fingers just barely touched the edge of the small, ornately carved chest. He let out a long breath.

  “So, what now?” Alex said. “I mean, about me.”

  “What do you think?”

  Alex stood still, his back rigid, his head down. Hoarsely, he said, “I think I made a mistake. I think I forgot you were my lord. My friend. I think I came too close. I know I am sorry.”

  Griffyn nodded. He interlaced
his fingers and leaned forward, peering at the ground between his knees.

  “I mean it, Pagan. It won’t happen again.”

  He looked up. “I know. I won’t let it.”

  Alex bowed his head. “My lord.”

  He reached out again to trace the worn wooden carvings on the small Guinevere chest with his fingertips. Abruptly, he sat back.

  “So, I’m not to have a traitor’s death?” Alex asked, quite seriously.

  Griffyn smiled a little. “No.”

  “And you’re not turning me out?” he asked, his voice cracking.

  Griffyn shook his head.

  “Nor Guinevere?”

  He shook again.

  Alex exhaled. “I would think you would want the two of us far away. You’re keeping closest the ones who’ve betrayed you.”

  “I’m keeping closest the ones who’ve made mistakes, and know it.” He looked at the chest. “I may need to be reminded of that from time to time.”

  Alex laughed bitterly. “Of what? That people are flawed?”

  He shook his head and got to his feet. “That redemption is possible.”

  Gwyn was speaking with Fulk just outside the third-floor solar door. He’d been set as the guard outside her door, or rather he’d set himself there. The landing was dark, both from the late evening hour and the storm outside. Rain pelted the leaded windows.

  “Lord Griffyn is not going to hurt me,” Gwyn had protested, half laughing, the first glimmer of unburdened amusement in her life in a long time.

  “I know, milady.” Fulk straightened his tunic and cleared his throat. “’Tis just that, I’d rather stay close by.”

  Gwyn smiled. “Fulk, if I were a better woman, I’d marry you.”

  He hemmed and hawed and blushed. “Nothing to it, my lady. I’ve just been at protectin’ ye for so long, t’would feel strange to stop now.”

  She leaned her shoulder against the doorway, unwilling to go inside and shut the door. And yet, she planned to stay up here until she heard from Griffyn, one way or another. Send her to a nunnery, to Marcus, to plead her case with Henri fitzEmpress. Whatever he wanted, she would do, if it meant being outlawed to Palestine. But for now, the storm outside was kicking up, things were dark, and she didn’t want to close herself up in the room just yet.

  “I think I know what Papa wanted, Fulk. I think he wanted Griffyn to have the chest.”

  “Well, sure he did.”

  She looked at him as if he’d just told her he was studying to be an alchemist. “Why, Fulk. Why didn’t you tell me that before?”

  “I had no idea ye were wondering about it,” he retorted with an identical level of indignant surprise. “I had no idea ye thought ’twas anything but a chest.”

  “I didn’t, really. Don’t. And now Marcus has it. Whatever it is.”

  Fulk gruffed. “I wouldn’t worry much, my lady. Pagan’ll see everything he needs is brought home again.”

  She opened her mouth to say more, then shook her head. “Whatever was, doesn’t matter anymore. We will simply wait and see what tomorrow brings.”

  “Aye, milady.”

  She leaned her shoulder against the doorframe, and Fulk leaned his back against the wall. They stared at the far window. The storm was crashing and kicking at the walls, much like that night a year back, when she’d fallen into love with Griffyn at the storm-tossed inn.

  “Yes, don’t you see?” she said thoughtfully. “‘Wud. Guh. Saw.’ I thought it meant something about ‘giving.’ Giving the chest, of course. It must be. ‘Griffyn Sauvage.’ ‘Give Sauvage.’” She paused. “I don’t quite understand the ‘wud,’ of course.”

  “Wed.”

  Gwyn’s head turned slowly. “What?”

  “‘Wed Griffyn Sauvage.’”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  She stood in the antechamber outside the lord’s chamber. Edmund was looking at her beseechingly. Despite all the trauma and drama of the last days, his naïve earnestness was a light balm over her mood.

  “Can you make it a’right, my lady?”

  She laid a hand on his shoulder and smiled. “I will do my best.” She glanced at the chamber door. “You go get some food, Edmund. And find my scribe. Have him teach you a few notes on the dulcimer.” She smiled. “We need some music in this keep, Edmund. Do you not think?” He nodded vigorously. “Can you make me some?”

  He puffed out his chest. “Rest assured, my lady,” he promised, and hurried off.

  She took a breath, turned, and rapped her knuckles lightly on the oaken door of the inner bedchamber. “My lord,” she called, her voice raised slightly. “’Tis I.”

  There was a pause. The door swung open. Alex stood there, his body slightly to the side.

  “Come in.”

  They stared at each other for half a moment, adversaries in some sudden truce, then she nodded and swept past him, into her bedroom. Griffyn looked up.

  His hair was damp, sticking up in damp, dark spikes, and he was clad in chausses and a linsey-woolsey tunic. Its soft material draped against his hard stomach and over his powerful thighs, almost to the knee. He was sitting at the small table they’d played chess on so many nights, where he’d laid out manuscripts, where he once laid out her body.

  From some reservoir she didn’t know existed, more tears sprung up. She looked at the ceiling, pain pinching her nose. Hadn’t she already wept herself dry?

  “Come in, Guinevere.” His deep masculine rumble drew her into the room more than his words. She took a few tentative steps forwards.

  “My lord. I do not mean to disturb. I came only to—Why, you have Papa’s chest!” she cried softly.

  “Aye.”

  “When did you find it? Where? I thought Marcus had…”

  Griffyn’s chest expanded with a deep inward breath. “I found it a over a week ago.”

  She considered the various implications of this. “And you didn’t tell me?”

  “No.” His eyes met hers. “I am sorry.”

  Her hand shot up, warding off the apology. “Please. Don’t. Don’t apologise to me. Whatever was, it matters naught anymore.”

  In the shadows behind him stood Alex. So be it. Everything was up to Griffyn now. She reached out and touched the box. “So beautiful,” she murmured, then looked up. “Did you find Papa’s letters inside?”

  “I found my father’s letters.”

  “What?”

  He nodded.

  She shook her head. “But why? Why would Papa have given it to me to protect if it wasn’t—.” She stopped herself and sat back with a thud. “Of course. The chest must be yours. Your family’s. Not mine. It belongs to Everoot, and we,” she laughed bitterly, “were never Everoot.”

  “You are now.”

  Her eyes were filling up with tears. “Not yet,” she said in a brittle, bright voice. “Our nuptials are not until the morn. And perhaps Henri will have off with my head before then.”

  “Henri will not have off with our head. You did no treachery. To him.”

  She stared at the table, her fingers closing around the edge of it. Splinters bit into the skin under her nails. “I will do whatever you wish me to, Griffyn. Nothing is as it was, and I know nothing anymore. Except,” she added with certainty, “this is what Marcus was talking about. This chest. Whatever you needed, or wanted, ’tis in here.” She tapped its lid.

  “I know.”

  She looked at him, sitting there, his eyes unreadable, watching her. It brought a shiver down her spine. Not sexual, not fear. Just, shivery. “May I ask something, Griffyn?”

  “Guinevere,” he said in a low voice, “now is not the time to be timid. You may ask whatsoever you wish. As you say, what was, is no longer.”

  She was nodding in agreement, in support, in anything that would keep him talking to her and looking at her and being in any way remotely connected to her, but his next words brought her up short.

  “The lies must stop. Yours. Mine.”

  She stopped mid-nod, he
r chin down. Her eyebrows went up. “You lied?”

  He swept his hand in the air over the table, indicating the chest and assorted baubles. “I lied.”

  She exhaled a shaky laugh. “That hardly counts.”

  “Oh,” he said grimly, “it counts.”

  Scattered across the table were things she’d picked up and held too many times to count, remnants of only God knew what, rings and scraps of fabric, a lock of hair, and the letters she could never read. Now, the leather thong Griffyn always wore around his neck was curled on the table too, its little iron key knotted at the end. Beside it sat the steel one.

  She reached out to touch it. “The steel one. How?” She looked up. “How…?”

  “De Louth.”

  She almost laughed. “What?”

  Griffyn glanced at Alex. “De Louth gave it to me.”

  “Marcus’s most vile henchman gave you the key I lost a year ago in London?” she clarified in amazement.

  “He did. He had a child. She’ll be coming here, in a few years.”

  She did laugh now, a brief breath of amazement. “But of course. People come to you, Griffyn, with everything open. Of course he had a child and gave you a key. Of course.”

  She touched them briefly. “So, you have two keys.”

  “He is the key,” said Alex from the shadows.

  “I don’t know what that means,” she said shortly. She didn’t care, either. Griffyn’s grey gaze was on her. The planes of his face were lit by firelight and shadows. Somehow, without moving, he permeated a room, and she’d lost him. Given him away.

  “There’s a locked compartment beneath,” she said in a shaky voice. “You cannot see it, but there, at the edge.” She reached forward, pointing.

  The room went completely silent. She looked up slowly into Griffyn’s stunned eyes.

  “What?” His voice was harsh and incredulous. She nodded.

  “Have you seen inside, Guinevere?” Even more incredulity was in these words.

  “Of course.”

  He sat forward sharply in his chair. “How did you ever do that?”

  She shrugged. “Once, when I was young, I found this same little chest and was playing with it. The bottom compartment just sprang open. Papa almost died of horror when he found me. He warned me off in no uncertain terms, and I never saw it again until the day he died.”