by Sarah Zettel
Morgaine laid a hand on Kerra’s shoulder and looked into her eyes for a long time. Kerra held herself straight and still under her mistress’s gaze though she felt as if the secrets of her soul must surely be laid bare. It was of no matter. Morgaine would see how well she served. Morgaine would know her true strength at last, and there would be no more waiting. They would destroy Merlin, they would take Camelot, and Morgaine would have her vengeance, and Kerra would have her freedom.
“Very well,” said Morgaine slowly. “But if you seek to bind or barter with Jack-in-the-Green you must do it with the greatest care. One wrong word can skew a bargain with such a power. A missed courtesy or an ill-conceived phrase can put you into his power rather than he in yours, and that must not be.” Her voice softened such as Kerra had never heard before. “I cannot do without you, Kerra.”
Kerra knelt at once. “Gawain will lose his Risa, and Arthur will lose Gawain, and the Easterner will be blamed for all. I will see this done. I swear it. All will be as you desire.”
“Yes,” Morgaine said with her knowing smile, laying her hand atop Kerra’s head. “It will.”
Chapter Twelve
Father had meant it when he said she was to leave at once, as she was. With him at her heels, she was not permitted to turn aside to take any sort of leave of her hostess nor to reclaim her possessions. Bow, jewelry, clothes, all were to be left behind. Even Thetis, steady loyal Thetis, who had made her way straight back to the hall’s stable after she fled in the fire, was to be left behind. Two brown horses, one with white fetlocks, one with a forehead blaze, stood before the hall in their harness. Father did not even speak to the boys who held the reins. He just swung himself up into the saddle and looked down at Risa, waiting for her to do the same.
Perhaps he was waiting for her to demure, to threaten, to beg. She did none of these. She allowed the nearest boy to help her onto the second horse and met her father’s gaze. Relief was written plainly on his features. But it was equally plain he did not trust her any further. He reached over and twitched the reins out of her hands.
“I will not run,” she said stonily.
Father did not answer. With a quick dig of his heels, he urged his horse to motion, leading her mount down the gentle slope, out through the gates and across the devastation that had been the fields of Pen Marhas.
Father did not look back. It seemed clear to Risa that he would ride the whole way in silence if he had his choice. She was not ready to bestow that mercy upon him. He would not deliver her like a sack of wheat. “What did mother say when you told her you were coming here?” asked Risa, raising her voice to cross the distance he kept between them.
“She does not know,” he answered without turning around. “I told you, she has taken to her bed.”
Those words cut through Risa’s anger. “She is ill?”
“God willing, that’s all it is.”
Risa bowed her head. What had happened in the past weeks could make the strongest woman take to her bed. The idea of mother languishing in sickness made her want to drive her heels into this dispirited horse’s ribs and gallop home with all speed. But what would that do? She would not be allowed to stay and nurse her mother. She would not be allowed to do anything but be the sacrifice her father was determined to make her.
Do not lose sight of what is truly happening. Do not permit him to work on your heart.
“Who told you where I was, father?” she repeated the question he would not answer before Bannain. “There are at least three halls in these hills where I could have been. You did not have time to visit each of them.”
“I tried to let you go, Risa.” She had to strain to hear the words he spoke so softly. “I did try. But your mother fell ill and the sorcerer came. What would you have me do?” He raised his head and Risa wondered if he was asking her, or God.
God had no immediate answer, so it was up to Risa. “Go to the High King, speak with his cunning man Merlin,” she said as adamantly, as persuasively as she could. “Let them be your liege lords as they are sworn, and come to your aid.”
“And your mother dies.”
Risa’s heart ached with that thought. Father’s dull, certain repetition of it chilled her to the bone. “At least it will not be you that kills her.”
Her father made no reply and Risa watched what little of his face she could see. She saw shame there, and determination and fear. She imagined regret, a great crushing load of that. What she did not see was any sign that he would change his mind. There was help. Why would he not see that? Why would he not try? And why, why would he not ask mother what she wanted? Why did he not consult her?
Guilt settled itself on Risa’s back. She imagined her mother lying still and pale in her bed with ancient Una trying to spoon broth and beer into her mouth. Sorcerers had all manner of means of casting a curse from a distance. This one with his snake’s eyes that would make such a bargain as father had told her of would not shrink from keeping it.
The correct thing, the dutiful thing the was to commend herself to God and do as she was told. Would not prayer and faith keep her safe, or at least assure her a place in Heaven when all was over? If she prayed hard enough, God might even grant her a miracle as he did his saints. A flock of doves, or some such, to bear her away from the sorcerer’s clutches.
But Risa knew she was no saint, and she knew in all honesty she lacked the heart to become a martyr. Did father count on her piety to save her? Did he believe that much?
Risa looked at him again. He must have felt her gaze on him, because he glanced sideways at her and flinched, directing his eyes immediately forward again.
In that moment, Risa saw the truth and it cut through her like the blade of a sword.
“You’re not doing this for mother,” she whispered. “You’re doing this because you’re afraid he’ll kill you as well.”
“No.” The word came out low and harsh.
You’re lying. “Yes. You’re thinking to yourself, ‘I’m still young enough. I can marry again. I can still father other children, if only I live.”’ They were hard words, horrible words. No daughter should speak so.
No father should act so.
“No,” he said again. The horse danced under him as his agitation became clear.
But Risa could not stop. Once, just once, the truth would be told before God, if it never was again. If she would die, it would be knowing the whole of what had happened. “Who put those thoughts in your head? Was it him? Was it the sorcerer that turned you into such a coward?”
His horse whickered and Risa’s answered, breaking its stride and protesting at being led. “You will be quiet!”
“I will not!” She knotted her hands in her horse’s mane. If it was going to balk, she would keep her seat. She would not be shaken off. “You wanted me with you, father. Now you have me. If I were going to submit meekly to my doom, I would never have run this far.”
“God’s wounds, Risa!” Father turned his horse so that he could face her. Her own mount snorted uneasily, and there was little she could do to comfort the animal as it champed at its bit. “Why you are so anxious to condemn your mother to death? Or damnation? Have you thought of that? Have you thought what happens to her soul if this sorcerer kills her without a priest to give her grace?”
“Have you sent for a priest?” She saw from his shocked face that he had not. “All these fears, all these protests that I must do my duty and you have not even done that for her!”
Father was silent for a moment, and she watched his face flush with the anger burning beneath his skin. “Do you want the truth, Risa? Do you?” He threw down the reins he had clutched so tightly. A new steel edged his voice and he urged his horse forward so that they were side by side. Risa saw not very far beneath his eyes a wildness that she had never known in him before, not even when he was at his worst for drink. “Very well, I will tell you. What will I gain from giving my willful, heedless, undutiful child to this man? I gain my wife’s life, my own, and my so
n.”
“What?”
Father smiled, and even in the burning of Pen Marhas Risa had never seen anything so grim and terrible. “Your brother, Risa, who was taken from us while still in his swaddling bands. He will be given back to us once you are with Euberacon. I will have a son again.”
“Oh, father, no.”
But this time he made no answer. He turned his head forward and set his jaw.
If Risa felt cut to the heart before, now she felt as if flayed and laid bare upon the butcher’s table.
“This is a devil’s bargain, father. God will not forgive.”
“Then so be it.” He pulled his horse’s head roughly around to turn the beast, ignoring its sharp whicker of protest. “I will have my wife’s love again, and I will have my son.” He took up her reins again and Risa watched him. She realized she could have taken them up herself, could have ridden away, but she had been too shocked to move, and now it was too late.
This was madness. This was damnation, and father would drag them all down with him, because of his obsession. A devil’s bargain? The devil had no need to bargain with him anymore. The devil had him. The devil had gained him years ago, and had only now decided to claim him.
What could she do? There had to be something. But where could she go? She did not know the way to Camelot. She did not even know the extent of Lord Bannain’s lands, and if she were caught anywhere in them, his judgment had already been passed and she would simply be returned to father. At home? With mother ill and Whitcomb dead? Aeldra would help, but there would be no time to plan or to act. The sorcerer might even be waiting.
She had failed. Failed. For all her defiance, for all her arrogance and bravado, she was lost.
Risa’s father rode ahead, and never once looked back while his daughter’s heart broke in two.
The day wore on. Risa rode in a daze, with nothing to do but keep her seat on the slow-stepping horse. The light brightened and faded as clouds scudded across the sky. The wind smelled of rain. They came again to the forest, and it was shady and cool. The road began to rise beneath them. They were leaving the valley.
All of this Risa was aware of only distantly. The whole of her mind was consumed with her own sorrow. She could not even muster anger anymore. Her very heart felt too tired to try. She thought of escape. She thought of suicide. They seemed one and the same. She could not move. She could not decide. She could not even weep.
Her horse checked its stride, snorting its consternation. Risa looked up, more from reflex than interest.
A man on horseback blocked the road. He had a short sword drawn. At first all she saw was the Saxon’s helm, its guard chased and molded to the shape of a bear’s maw, and the leather jerkin and the shaggy horse. Terror brought mind and heart back to life with one painful lurch
Then she saw the man beneath, and the green trappings on the horse’s reins, and she knew who it was.
“Stand off, Risa.” Father drew his knife. Risa did not move.
“I know you, Lord Gawain!” Father cried. “You have no right here!”
But Gawain, in his clumsy Saxon’s disguise only put his heels to the horse’s sides and charged.
It was over in a moment. He barreled past father, and dealt him a blow, not with the sword, but rather with the side of his fist. Father sprawled on the stones of the road. Gawain swung the balky horse around, and caught up the Risa’s horse’s reins. Before father could get to his feet, her mount was trotting obediently after Gawain.
Risa looked back and saw her father, alone and wretched in the middle of the road. He shrank smaller and darker until she could not bear to look anymore, and faced forward again, letting the tears flow unhindered down her cheeks.
Although no hoofbeats or shouts followed them, Gawain did not halt, nor did he turn to speak, until they had left two hills behind them and were surrounded again by stones rather than by trees. A shepherd leaned against one of the green-flecked boulders, one eye on their approach, one eye on his flock. Gawain reined his borrowed horse up before the man, who unfolded himself slowly. He vanished into a fodder shed, and emerged again with Gringolet on one side of him and Thetis on the other. More used to sheep than horses, he did not hold the charger’s bridle tightly enough, and Gringolet swung his head casually to jerk himself free and trotted up to his master. Gawain tossed a coin to the shepherd that glinted silver. The man caught it out of the air with one hand and inclined his head.
Gawain helped Risa down from her horse. He gave the animal a smack on its flank. It snorted at the insult and gladly trotted away, heading for whatever stable it called home, or perhaps toward whatever new master was lucky enough to catch it. Risa stayed where she was, caught somewhere between not quite believing what had happened and not quite understanding it. Thetis nuzzled her ear. Risa pushed her away absently. Gawain held the mare’s bridle and Risa mounted mechanically. Thetis stamped and whickered but Risa could not seem to remember what the reins she held were for. Thetis, though, was content to follow Gringolet and the shaggy Saxon horse, and Risa was content to let her and they rode once more into the hills, heading north and east again, avoiding the valley and keeping to the hills. The clouds overhead thickened, the wind grew brisk and the sounds of the birds and the trees grew restless.
Then, the horses’ hooves found the stones of the high way again. Gawain reined his horse up short, bringing them all to a halt. He dismounted and came to Thetis’s side. He held up his hands. Risa let herself be helped from the saddle. She stood before him, feeling the clean wind, wondering when the rain would come, and understanding that something important had happened, but she could not think what it might be.
“It is over, Risa,” said Gawain softly. “It is done. You are safe.”
“Safe,” she said dully. She looked up at him, at his beautiful face, and felt nothing. Nothing at all.
“Risa, what did he do to you?”
“Nothing.” She shook her head violently, trying to shake loose the truth, trying to shake life and sense back into herself. “Nothing new, in truth.” She pressed her palms against her eyes. Her heart felt heavy as lead, her mind’s confusion would not clear. “But he wouldn’t … he didn’t … Ah, God help me, I can’t, I won’t …”
Gawain took hold of both her shoulders. She stared up at him, startled by the gesture. “I know, Risa,” he said looking into his eyes. “You must believe me, I do understand. If you cannot shield yourself with anger, then mourn him. Mourn him for the father you once loved. It is all you can do for him now.”
Those words broke the malaise that held her, and Risa began to cry, as she had when she first saw him. Gawain wrapped his arms around her and drew her close, holding her safe from falling while she cried for her father, for the good man who had once resided in his heart and been murdered by Euberacon’s black promises and his own weakness. After a time, she grew quiet, and still Gawain held her, enveloping her in warmth of body and soul, and drained dry of grief she found in that warmth the thing she desired above all else — peace.
“Is my lady well?”
“No,” she admitted. “But I will be. My … Gawain, I owe you —”
He shook his head, cutting off her words. “Let there be no talk of debt between us, Risa.”
She felt herself smile. “What talk shall there be then?”
She had meant it as a joke, but his face remained solemn. Carefully, he reached out and touched the line of her jaw. His touch was exceedingly gentle, and the warmth of it went at once to her blood.
“Shall I say it, then? Does my lady permit her servant to speak his heart before her?”
Risa found her mouth had gone dry. Her heart pounded so that she could feel its pulse in her throat. But she nodded. This once, no matter what happened next, this once, she would hear him say what she longed to hear.
“Then let me speak of love, Risa. If I were granted a poet’s tongue I would fashion you a song that would last down the ages and sear the souls of all who heard it. But as I a
m, I can only speak in the plainest words. I love you. I love your courage and your noble heart. I love your song and story. I love your face and form, and I shall never cease to love the whole of you as long as God may grant me life.”
Risa had no words to answer him. What words could there be? There was no verse, no vow that could be enough for what she felt. Instead, she kissed him. He was startled for a heartbeat, and then returned the kiss, with passion, with longing, with deepest love.
This then was what the poets told of. This was how one knew. One knew because the whole soul sang of it, because even the broken heart rejoiced.
Both an instant and an age passed before they parted. Risa found herself breathless and strangely light, as if she might fly up into the air at any moment. Gawain, however, seemed to become more solid, as if his declaration of love had given him roots much more than wings.
“Come, Risa,” he said, taking her hand. Even that simple gesture now was filled with his warmth. “Let me get you safe away from here to where there are stout walls and strong friends around us.”
But there was one thing. One last thing before she began this journey afresh. “Gawain, do you think … will Queen Guinevere send for my mother if I ask it? She cannot stay in my father’s hall, not with —”
Gawain did not require that she finish. “I am sure that the queen will do so, as soon as she knows the full story. It may be that Merlin himself will ride out to fetch your mother for you.”
“Thank you.”
Gawain’s eyes sparkled as he bowed. Then, sweeping his short Saxon cloak back with a flourish, he knelt on the road and cupped his hands for her step. Risa lifted her nose haughtily to her stepping-stool and permitted him to help her back onto her horse. He stood and bowed humbly, and when he dared to lift his eyes to her again, Risa could no longer keep her countenance and they laughed, long and loud and freely.
When at last their laughter had spent itself, Gawain mounted his riding horse and turned the animal so it faced the way they must travel.
