We were not far from Fair Guard’s boundary when the sun began to sink behind the treetops and the light took on a soft, copperish haze. At the edge of my senses, I felt the shimmer of the manor’s ancient spirit: the high valleys, deep woodland and rich green meadows; the rising spring and rivers running like silver; Llyn Glas, our blue lake and the willow tree, calling me home.
Just before the final bend, we were interrupted by the sight of two men at the forest’s edge, horses tied nearby. One stood fully armoured with a drawn sword, the other kneeling bare-chested and blindfolded, hands bound in front of him. His gold spurs trembled in the fading sun.
Alys leaned towards me. “What do you suppose that’s about?”
“What it’s not,” I said wearily, “is any of our business. Men, yet again, addressing their problems with swords, according to rules they made up. I am so very tired of it.”
I indicated for the household to ride on. We needed to get back to Fair Guard, withdraw from this world for a good while.
“Is someone there?” called a man’s voice. “Wait, please!”
My limbs stiffened, and Accolon’s horse stopped in response. I looked back to see the kneeling knight’s sightless face upraised. He had been badly beaten: lips split, nose bleeding, a laceration at his hairline already angry with infection. My concern for his injuries was instinctive, but I pushed my sympathy away.
“This man holds me illegally and without cause,” he went on. “He has beaten and imprisoned me, and––”
“Without cause!” roared the other, cuffing his captive hard on the side of the head. “I’d advise my ladies to keep riding. This is a personal matter—not for delicate eyes.”
His authoritative tone prickled at the back of my neck. “And yet, sir,” I said coolly, “you insist upon playing out your private business on a public road.”
The prisoner struggled with his bonds, unaware that he knelt beside a gaping, stone-rimmed hole, overgrown with grass—a well, long abandoned. “I am a knight of King Arthur and cannot be treated this way,” he declared. “I demand you get word to Camelot.”
His voice had taken on its usual self-righteous tone, bringing a torrent of unwelcome memories. If not for this man, Accolon would still be alive at Fair Guard, and I would be there with him, rather than returning with my life obliterated and a near-impossible future ahead of me.
Once again, I made to turn my back upon his doom, when Alys rode up and gasped. “Iesu mawr! It’s Sir Manassen.”
“In the flesh,” I said grimly.
At the sound of his name, Sir Manassen stopped struggling. I dismounted and walked over to him, tearing the blindfold off. He hissed in pain from his tenderized face, squinting up at me through a pair of swollen, purple-black eyes. He had been beaten for several days.
“Lady Morgan, Dieu merci,” he said. “Tell this brute who you are, that I have standing…I…”
I ignored him and addressed his captor directly. “What has he done?”
“I’m not sure it’s for a lady’s ears,” said the armed man, then gave a resigned shrug. “He’s been living in sin with my own wife while I was away. Caught them sleeping side by side. So I tied him up and took him prisoner.”
“And beat him bloody for a week?” Alys piped up.
“As is my right,” he said tersely. “She was given to me in marriage, not him.”
“You vicious cur,” Manassen spat. “He treats his wife worse than he has treated me—beats her for the slightest hitch in his mood, keeps her locked away, complains at her every word. Her life with you is a prison.”
“Is this true?” I asked.
The man regarded me with offence. “That, too, is my right as a husband. My wife’s purpose is to obey me, warm my bed and keep loyalty with only myself and God. How will she learn if I don’t punish her?” He gave Manassen a shove. “In any case, there’s no excuse for him to defile her.”
“I didn’t,” Manassen protested. “She and I met a long time ago, before him. We…love one another.”
A brittle laugh escaped me. “You love her? Sir Manassen, paragon of moral virtue, is caught sleeping with another man’s wife, and love is your excuse? The same ensnarement you so disapprove of?”
Manassen offered his ferocious look of old. “I did not do this to amuse you, my lady. But if you don’t help me, this man of violent appetites will run me through with my own sword and throw me down that well to drown or bleed to death.”
“Or be devoured by noxious vermin,” remarked his captor.
“You won’t dare, blackguard,” Manassen snapped. “This woman knows me and will not let me be executed without justice.”
The man regarded me with new caution. “Is that true, my lady? You are friend to this knight?”
I glanced down at Sir Manassen’s bloody, stubborn face, his kneeling pose saintly in the evening’s pink-gold light. Around this time, Accolon would be pouring the first goblet of wine in our chamber, drinking to our health and lacing up my gown with clever fingers, before we joined the household to eat outside. Later, perhaps we would play boules or hear some music, Accolon leading the melody with his lute; then, if the moon was high, he and I might take the long walk up to our lake, to lie under the willow tree, and stay there until dawn.
But Accolon was dead, and I was going back to Fair Guard to sleep alone, all because Sir Manassen rode through our veil of protection and guilted my Gaul into leaving. Whatever Accolon had claimed about knightly oaths, it was for love of his cousin that he had ultimately given his life.
“No,” I said. “This knight is no friend of mine.”
“Morgan…” Alys murmured, as I started towards my horse, but my fury, my hurt, was too great to heed her.
“Lady Morgan, wait!” Manassen called. He struggled to his feet, limping in pursuit. “If you will not help me, then fetch my cousin. You may despise me, but his love has never wavered. Send Accolon to my aid.”
His name spoken aloud, and the innocence with which Manassen invoked it, hit my gut like a broadsword. A faint groan came from Tressa, waiting some yards away.
“My God,” I said. “You don’t know.”
“Know what?” he asked.
“Accolon is dead.”
“Dead?” Sir Manassen collapsed back onto his knees, gasping for breath like I had kicked him in the ribs. “How?”
“Slain by King Arthur himself.” The words caught in my throat, raw and terrible. “All because you told him to go to Camelot, you told him that your future was in jeopardy if he didn’t save you. We were happy—couldn’t you see that? We were safe. Yet for your own selfish ends you sent him into the jaws of a dragon.”
I pulled my hand back in a half fist to strike him, and Manassen didn’t flinch, so willing to take the blow that I dropped it again. He shivered, bare chest rising in gooseflesh.
“I was supposed to be there, to meet him. But I went to her first.” He gestured to where his beloved’s cuckolded husband stood stunned into silence. “I thought if I was a little late, Accolon would understand.”
“He would have understood,” I said bitterly. “He wouldn’t have judged you, scolded you, or dismissed your feelings as weakness. If you had told him the truth, he would have waited to ride out and would still be alive. And I would have been in time to settle things with King Arthur—Accolon’s freedom, my own, your future. Everything.”
Sir Manassen stared at me with pure agony, tears cutting a bloody track down his cheeks.
The man with the sword cleared his throat. “My lady,” he said gruffly. “This crime involves my marital property. If you intend to intervene––”
“She will not intervene,” Manassen cut in, voice clear as a Matins bell. “Nor should she. I have failed and will take my wrongs to a fool’s grave.”
Hoisting himself to his feet, he paced to the edge of the well and regarded me steadily. “Accolon was the best knight—the best man—I have ever known, and he loved you. What you had was true and beautiful, and I should have let him be. For what it’s worth, Lady Morgan, I’m sorry.”
I couldn’t speak, so he turned stoically to his executioner. “I’m ready. Do your worst.”
“You don’t get to decide that,” growled the man. “But let’s get this over with, then I can go home and deal with my wife. If she isn’t solicitous enough of my forgiveness, perhaps you’ll have her company in the well.”
“You can rot in Hell,” Sir Manassen said through gritted teeth.
The cuckold pushed the swordpoint against his exposed belly. “This is nothing for a woman to see, my lady.”
I thought of Accolon’s heart in my hands, what it took to snatch his soul away from Camelot. “I’ve seen and done much worse,” I said tiredly. “But you will release this knight into my custody. He is indeed sworn to King Arthur, so you must make your trial petition to the Royal Court.”
The man snorted. “What authority do you have to speak for the King?”
“Absolutely none,” I replied. “I speak only for myself. You will hand this knight over to me regardless.”
“Nay, you are too late. He dies here, now.”
I caught a zephyr of wind in my palm, feeling its lively summer force dancing through my fingers. At my request it gathered into a gust, and I sent it forth, whipping the man’s sword out of his hand and pushing him onto his back.
“Or, if you prefer,” I said, “I can take him by force.”
The prone man spat an oath, swiping at my skirts as I passed, but I was already incanting, filling the channelled wind with the power of paralysis. He thudded back against the grass, face fixed in outrage.
Manassen twisted sideways, almost toppling into the well. I caught his arm and dragged him clear, then took out my father’s knife and cut the grimy bonds from his wrists. “There,” I said. “You’re free. Now put your clothes on.”
He was halfway through pulling on his boots when he let out an anguished groan, lamenting loudly in French. Accolon’s regional curses landed like a spear in my chest.
“Stop it,” I snapped. “Get up, and remember that you are alive.”
To my surprise, he did, falling silent and lacing his second boot.
“My apologies, Lady Morgan,” he said, heaving himself up, “but we both know you should have let him kill me. I’m not worthy of your rescue, or your grace, and will never be able to atone for what has been lost.”
A swell of emotion rose in my throat, half sob, half laugh. “Mother of God, you sound just like him.”
His brow pinched in question.
“Accolon,” I said. “When we first knew one another, all he used to say was he wasn’t worthy—of me, of knighthood, of success. It was never true, but to hear it wasn’t enough. He had to learn, and he did, because of you.” A tear escaped and I let it fall, though my voice held steady. “You found him, saved his life and taught him that he was worthy. He knew how to be happy because of what you did, and so we were. Do not let it go to waste.”
“But what is left for me?” he said. “To die a noble death in penance—”
“Letting yourself die is too easy,” I cut in. “To honour the ones we love, or avenge them, we must survive.”
He paused, seeming to consider it; another surprise. “Perhaps you are right, Lady Morgan.”
“I know that.”
I beckoned to Alys and Tressa, who dismounted and brought across bandages and their saddlebag of remedies. “We will heal what we can on the surface, but the rest you must learn from. Take that wisdom and fix things. Or break them. You choose.”
Manassen pointed at his former tormentor. “And him?”
“Him I leave to you. I was never going to let him return to punish his wife. Is it true, what you said?”
“That he is a brute and a scourge upon her? Yes.”
“No,” I said gently. “Is it true that you love one another?”
He managed one of his typical sharp looks, made less severe by his puffy purple eyes. “I would not lie about such a thing.”
“Then you have somewhere to go. At the very least you can carry her the news.”
Alys and Tressa began examining his injuries, applying salves and testing bones, finding nothing more serious than cuts and bruises. Once he was bandaged and ready, I picked up his sword and handed it to him, releasing the paralysis cast over his captor.
He ducked his head. “Thank you, Lady Morgan, for saving me. Even if I will never know why.”
“I’m not saving you,” I said. “I’m giving you the chance to save yourself. It’s what Accolon would have wanted.”
We had not ridden much farther when fast hoofbeats sounded behind me and I heard my name called.
“Lady Morgan, attendez!”
I slowed as Sir Manassen pulled up alongside Phénix, but did not stop.
“Why?” I said. “I’d like to reach Fair Guard sometime on this endless day.”
“This will not take long. Please.”
His bruised face bore some semblance of his former seriousness, and I knew what had restored his calm; I had seen him avenge himself on his beloved’s husband, executing him swiftly in the manner of a knight. Would that I could so easily find peace.
I sighed and let him hand me down from the saddle. Immediately as I touched the ground, Sir Manassen—dirty, bloody and the most unknightly he had ever been—planted his sword at my feet and knelt before me.
“Lady Morgan, I wish to swear fealty to you. For saving my life, and for the love you bore my cousin.”
“What madness is this?” I said, ushering him up. “You are sworn to King Arthur.”
“So I will stay, in official terms,” he said. “King or not, I cannot keep faith with the man who killed Accolon out of spite. How could I bear such dishonour? I know in my heart where my loyalties lie, and that is with you.”
“Don’t do this now,” I said. “Think on it. Ride to your lady. Marry her, if she will have you.”
“I will,” he agreed. “But on this I will not change my mind. If you will have me, then I will serve you. Sword and spurs.”
I opened my mouth, but words were hard to find. I was so tired, with so much to do; some of Fair Guard still didn’t know that their beloved knight-errant would never walk our halls or ride his meadow tiltyard ever again. I could barely contemplate any of it.
Sir Manassen rested a hand on his bloody planted sword. “A reckoning must be had, my lady. I see it in your eyes that you will be the one to bring it. Let me help you. Let me swear to you.”
Slowly, he knelt before me again and looked up, his steel-brown eyes grave and certain, as ferociously determined as we would both have to be.
I reached out and placed my hand on his head. “I accept your loyalty, Sir Manassen of Gaul, as a knight of my household.”
He rose and plucked his sword out of the ground, sheathing it with a sigh, as if free of a great weight. “Thank you, Lady Morgan. It means a great deal.”
“Why?” I asked.
For the first time in our lives, Sir Manassen of Gaul smiled at me. “It is what Accolon would have wanted.”