Gawen breathed a deep sigh of relief.
19
Off on the Hunt
GAWAINE MET the king at the portcullis. Both were in their leather hunting costumes and, except for Arthur’s great ruby ring, the signet of power, neither wore any jewelry.
Arthur sat upon a white horse named Boudicca and Gawaine on a grey called Hag. Each had a short sword at his side, the flat pommels covered with horn, and a five-foot Saxon yew bow slung across his back. A quiver of arrows hung on each mans belt. Capering around Boudicca’s legs, as spirited as a pup, the white brachet hound had taken on new life.
Before they could leave, Kay raced across the forecourt, calling out and breathing hard as he ran. “Arthur!” he cried. When he caught up to them, he put a hand on Arthur’s knee.
Arthur looked down and shook his head. “I am going, you know.”
“Then take care,” Kay said quietly, so Gawaine should not hear.
“You are like an old man, startling at shadows,” Arthur whispered back. “Now let me go.”
“Keep an eye on the boy,” Kay said. “If he makes so much as a move toward—”
“Do not teach me how to protect myself,” Arthur said. He pushed Kays hand from his knee and turned to Gawaine. “Are we ready?”
Gawaine grinned, unaware of Kay’s worries. “Ready, my lord.”
Arthur kicked the horse with his heels and pulled back so hard on the reins, Boudicca rose up on her hind legs. The movement sent Kay scuttling away.
The brachet raced ahead of them as first Gawaine, and then Arthur, rode out under the portcullis, across the road, and up the small rise that led to the forest.
As soon as they were out of hearing, Kay called, “Guards!” Suddenly there were six guards on horseback, all well armed and armored, by his side. “Do not let them get too far, but do not let them see you, either.”
The men nodded.
Kay said again, “They must not see you. The king would be angry to know he is being spied upon.”
The leader of the small contingent looked down at Kay. “Are we spying on him, my lord?”
“You are keeping him safe,” Kay said.
“Safe from what?” the leader spoke softly. “If I may ask such?”
“From assassins,” Kay said grimly. “Sent by the North Witch.”
“Lord Gawaine?”
Kay put a finger to his nose and nodded, but did not speak Gawaine’s name aloud.
The guards waited until Arthur and Gawaine were over the hump of the hill, and then Kay sent them on, thinking, I have done what Merlinnus asked. But is it enough?
The question so worried him, he went back inside the tower. There he belted on his own sword, grabbed up a bow and quiver of newly fletched arrows—though he was never that good a shot—then came out again, saddled his brown mare, and went after the men.
THE AFTERNOON was one of those glorious springtides, with a blue slate of sky, and birds singing on almost every branch. Both Arthur and Gawaine found themselves grinning much of the time they rode, like boys let off from lessons.
When they entered the forest, not far from where Merlinnus had his favorite oak, Arthur pulled Boudicca to a halt.
“We may be followed,” he said to Gawaine. “Followed, my lord?” There were light worry lines on Gawaine’s forehead as he frowned.
“Kay has an overweening sense of protection.”
“What is he protecting you from, my lord?”
Arthur laughed. “From life!”
The boy laughed as well.
“So here is what I plan to do,” Arthur said, leaning forward and whispering low enough that Gawaine had to lean in to hear him. “We shall go through this small forest...” He used his forefinger to draw a map in the air. “Then plunge into the river, ride downstream about a hundred yards, come back out, and race away about a hundred more yards, where there is a second stream. There, we go into that one and then immediately back the horses all the way to the river again, where we will go on another hundred yards, coming out the other side.”
“Covering our own tracks, my lord?” Now Gawaine’s face was bright with enthusiasm.
“Exactly. It should fuddle them for a bit while we get away.”
“‘Them’?”
“My bodyguards.” Arthur grinned again. “Are you game?”
In answer Gawaine gave two sharp kicks to his grey, and sped off toward the river.
Arthur was taken by surprise. “Hoy!” he cried out, then clapping his heels to Boudicca’s side, he quickly followed after. The little brachet, tongue lolling, went, too.
THEY RODE EXACTLY as Arthur had outlined and within an hour had left their keepers far behind. Cresting a hill, they found themselves at the edge of a high, grassy meadow rimmed with patches of guildes, that corn yellow flower also called gillyflower.
There on the far edge was a doe and her fawn.
They reined in the horses and dismounted, and Arthur patted his leg so that the brachet came to him.
“Guard!” he said sternly, and the dog stood at attention, keeping an eye on the grey and white mares.
“How shall we take them?” Gawaine asked.
“Never take a doe with her fawn,” Arthur said sternly. “Is that what passes for hunting in the Orkneys?”
“Well...” Gawaine’s face took on a sulky, hurt look.
“There will be a stag nearby. I am sure of it.” Arthur wet his finger and held it up to the air to test the direction of the wind, then made a contented sound. He pointed. Closer to them, head up and already alarmed, was a large buck with a wonderful set of antlers. By his side was a second doe, as wary as her mate.
Arthur dropped at once to his belly, and Gawaine followed suit. Then they began to crawl under the shelter of new bracken and leafy trees, till they were close enough for an arrow to have a chance.
When they stood, both does and the fawn were gone, but the buck was still staring out, to where the horses were grazing unconcernedly.
Nocking their arrows swiftly, Arthur and Gawaine pulled back the bowstrings and let fly at the same time. Both hit the stag, one high on the shoulder, one in the neck, and he fell heavily to his knees.
“Well done!” Gawaine cried even as Arthur was sending another arrow toward the staggered buck. It hit him in the eye, and the creature fell over onto his side, silently, like a mountain crumbling.
With a whoop, Arthur raced across the meadow to the deer, bent down, and slit the dying bucks throat to save it further pain. When he looked up, Gawaine was racing toward him, his bow missing, but his sword held high.
“What...?” Arthur hurriedly stood, furious that he should have so misjudged the boy, his mother, the times. He put his now bloody hand to his own sword and was just bringing it up when Gawaine swept by him and, with a yell, swung his blade at a masked man dressed all in black who—with five others—had come out of the trees, attempting to encircle the king.
The ferocity of Gawaine’s attack surprised the lead man, and he was already down on his knees with Gawaine’s blade in his bowels.
Arthur wiped his sword hand quickly on his tunic so that it was not slippery with stag’s blood. Then he gripped the hilt of the sword with both hands and plowed into the muddle of masked men, with a battle cry loud enough that the brachet left off guarding the horses and ran to her master’s side.
With his first blow, Arthur struck off one of his attackers’ arms and hacked halfway through the knee of another.
That left three men standing against two.
“To me!” Arthur cried, and Gawaine turned.
“Yes, my lord!” He ran to Arthur.
They placed themselves back-to-back and, with the brachet harrying the three men who were left, Arthur and Gawaine made swift work of them for, though they were outnumbered, the king and prince were well trained at this sort of bloody work.
But one assassin, as he died, gutted the little hound with his blade. She collapsed to the ground with an awful howl that went on and on and on.
Arthur knelt beside the brachet and picked her up tenderly. Her intestines, hot and bloody and tangled, spilled out across his arms.
“Na, na!” the king crooned, weeping, holding the dog as if she were a baby, rocking her to his chest. The dog shuddered and whimpered. “Na, na. Go gentle, my angel, my lovely, my pet.”
The brachet looked up at him, eyes glazing over. Arthur took out his knife, still red with stags blood, and drew the blade quickly across her throat.
When he looked up again, Gawaine was standing above him, holding something out to him. It took him a moment to realize that the thing was a mans head, caught up by its hair.
“This is the one that killed your brachet, sire. Do you want the rest?” Gawaine was painted in blood, his blond hair matted with it. He gestured to the side. All six bodies lay separated from their heads. The ground was soaked with their blood.
Standing, Arthur said none too gently, “I am more Roman than Celt, Gwalchmei. We do not take heads here.”
Gawaine dropped the terrible thing on the ground and squatted down beside it. Then he turned his face aside and vomited into the grass.
Still holding the dead dog, Arthur came over and put a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “First kill?” he asked gently.
Gawaine nodded.
“It never gets easier,” said Arthur. “But it never gets harder, either.”
Just then there was a sound of horses’ hooves. Arthur set the dog down carefully and stood again, his sword at the ready.
Wiping his mouth on his sleeve, Gawaine stood up as well and stared at the force barreling toward them. He shuddered and whispered, “Too late.”
Arthur nodded. “We shouldn’t have done such a good job losing them.” He waved to his guards, who came galloping across the meadow to his side.
“Sire,” the captain said, saluting him. “We caught these two with your horses.”
There were two men, tied with the binding of the three narrows—wrists, ankles, knees—slung over Gawaine’s grey mare. One was an older man with touches of grey in his close-cropped hair, the other hardly out of childhood.
“Good work,” Arthur said, suddenly aware that he and Gawaine were both covered in blood. “If someone will gut that deer, and bring it back to the castle, you and your men will have venison with me tonight.” He picked up his dog, wrapped her gently in his cloak, and mounted Boudicca. Gawaine got on behind the captain. Then, leaving four men to bring in the deer and the corpses, they rode swiftly and directly for home.
20
Aftermath
“I WARNED YOU...” Kay began as he and Arthur rode.
“You warned me about Gawaine,” Arthur said. “And it was he who saved my life.”
“It would not have needed saving,” Kay went on doggedly, “if you had stayed at home.”
“A king cannot be casked up in his castle,” Arthur said, just as doggedly, because he knew that Kay was in the right, and he didn’t want to admit it. “Not all day and all night because he fears the bogies and boggles.”
“Because he rightly fears assassins,” said Kay, “a king takes precautions. And does not find ways to fool his guards.”
“I did a good job,” said Arthur, though the bundle in his arms told him otherwise.
Kay would not be cozened. “You could have been killed. We were warned—”
“These were not men sent by the North Queen.” Arthur was positive of that.
“And you know that how?”
“They were poachers, thieves. They were after the deer, my horse, my sword, my ring. And they were not well trained in fighting. It was more like a slaughter than a battle.” He held up his right hand, where the ruby glittered, redder now because it was flecked with blood. “The North Queen does not send a group of masked men to find me out-of-doors. She favors nights and poison, or a viper in the bed.”
“She favors anything that gets the dark deed done,” Kay told him.
“You sound like a poet”
“I sound like a prophet.
Arthur shut his mouth before he said something he would later regret, and they rode the rest of the way in silence. But the little dead brachet was like a stone in his arms, and her death was like a stone in his heart.
WHEN THEY GOT back to the castle, the guards set up a great cheer—for Gawaine and for the king. The corpses of the dead men were laid out upon the ground, their heads set back on the stumps of necks. No one could name them and no one would claim them, not even the two who’d been captured alive.
“We just saw the horses, my lord,” the boy told Arthur. “Such horses could buy us a year’s worth of food. Maybe more. We had no knowledge of the others.”
“I do not believe that,” muttered Kay, stroking his mustache.
Arthur shook his head. “Sometimes,” he cautioned, “coincidences of that sort do happen.”
“Only in ballads, sire,” said Captain Cassius.
“Put them in the dungeon,” Kay counseled. “I can find out more about this sort of coincidence there.”
“The dungeon?” For a moment the king looked nonplussed.
“No,” Merlinnus said. He had just arrived, having heard the commotion. Young Gawen was at his side, close as a shadow, and trembling. The mage’s voice seemed strong as ever, but his hands gave him away, for they were shaking. Clearly the sight of Arthur covered in blood had unnerved them both. “Not the dungeon. Arthur—we do not want them there. Too...” He hesitated. “Too cold, too damp, too—”
Arthur nodded. Until the sword and stone were discovered, best to keep people away from the dungeon. It was why he had gotten Agravaine out of there so quickly. “Too far for easy access,” he agreed. Turning to the captain, he ordered, “Take them to the guardhouse, where I can speak with them later. At my leisure. Now I just want to clean up. And Gawaine, I suggest you do likewise. Blood under the fingernails is especially hard to dislodge.”
But first Arthur went around to the garden where, by himself, he dug a grave and laid the loyal little brachet down, under an apple tree that was white with blossoms.
MORGAUSE HAD WATCHED the aftermath of the fight in her scrying glass, when Gawaine had held out the severed head and Arthur had refused it.
“Pah!” she said, spitting to one side, and thinking how weak a king he was to disdain the blood gift. Did the man not know that keeping the head meant keeping the corpse’s ghost subservient? In Eire, where many of her best fighters came from, the heads of the slain were hung up by their hair in sacred groves. If she thought her own people would revel in it, she would do the same. But they were more Northmen than Celts.
She was sorry, though, that the masked men had not killed Arthur, even though they were none of hers. Better the king died at someone else’s hands so as not to taint the throne for her sons. But Gawaine had done the right thing. His own life had been threatened. He had to fight the men. And now he was Arthur’s brother in blood. Completely trustworthy. Perhaps—and here she smiled slowly—even his heir.
Briefly she gave thought again to poison or a viper in the bed, but dismissed any such.
They would know then, she thought, and the killing would be laid at my feet. She had sent her assassin forth with a much better plan.
ARTHUR WENT to the guardhouse to question the men. He was not pleased to see that they had been badly treated by the soldiers. The boy, who gave his name only as Will, had two black eyes. The other, a sullenmouthed man in his mid-forties, was breathing through what seemed to be a broken nose.
“I apologize for the roughness of my soldiers,” Arthur said to them. “I give you my word, it will not happen again.”
The boy nodded his head, deep enough to be a bow, but the older man grabbed him by the arm. “None o’ that, Will. There’s no royal blood there.”
“None I know of,” Arthur cheerfully admitted. “But blood does not make a good king, any more than it makes a bad thief.”
“An empty belly makes a thief,” muttered the older man. “Well I
know it.”
“Why are your bellies empty, then?” asked Arthur. He was not just making conversation, or trying to trick them. He really wanted to know. “Last year was a good harvest.”
“Aye, for the tax collectors,” the man replied.
“And my da died,” Will put in, “and my mam sold herself to a new husband to pay for our farm. And Uncle James, here—”
“Shut thy mouth, boy.”
It was the command of a familiar.
“Did you not know the other men, then?” Arthur asked suddenly.
“No,” Will said, “though one of them, the dark one, came through our village once to—”
Uncle James shoved his elbow into the boy’s side, but not fast enough.
Arthur believed the boy. He did not trust Uncle James, but young Will seemed steeped in innocence. “Tell you what I am to do with the two of you.”
“Hang us, I warrant,” James said gruffly, and unbidden tears began to shine in Will’s eyes.
“Ah, I expect not,” Arthur said quickly. “Perhaps it is because I do not have king’s blood in me but am of the people. Rather than hang you, I am going to let you go, and give you each a copper coin. In a year, you shall return to me to show me how that coin has prospered you.” Arthur was satisfied to see that the older man’s jaw gaped open at this strange sentence. “He who has done the most with what he has been given, shall be given more. He who has done the least shall be put in my dungeon.”
“Why should either of us return, then?” the older man asked.
It was a sensible question.
“Honor,” Arthur replied, as if that answer said it all.
21
The Price of Honor
“YOU CANNOT THINK to let them go like that,” Kay said, when he heard. “It is like something out of a minstrel’s story. A year to prosper in. What were you thinking?” He and Arthur were standing by the fire, warming their hands. The day—like many spring days—had suddenly turned cold, as if remembering its closeness to winter. “To let them go?”