She woke in her own little bed, in her firelit solar, with no idea of how she had gotten there. “Robin?” she faltered.
“I’m right here,” came the familiar, friendly voice. “And cook will have my head if you don’t eat this and drink this, right this instant.”
As she sat up, taking support from the head of the enclosure around her cupboard bed and the pillows, Robin walked over from the fireside with a bowl and spoon in one hand, a cup in the other and a great smile on her face.
“What are they? Oh, never mind, I’m hungry enough to eat what passed for food our first night here,” she replied, and took the cup first and took a sip. “Good heavens! I hadn’t known there was mead to be had in this benighted place!”
“Cook’s private stock, or so I was told,” Robin replied, and handed her the bowl. “You have made an unconscionable number of allies today. I think if you told Wulfred to lead his men over the side of the keep, he’d do it without looking down.”
The bowl held another surprising serving of custard, a much better version than the last—but then, cook had the knack of it now, after her careful teaching. It was topped with beaten cream sweetened with honey, and just the thing for someone who had done the equivalent of running up to the top of a mountain this afternoon. Her hands were even trembling with fatigue as she handled the spoon. It had been this sort of instinctive magic that had killed her mother—but then, her mother’d had no warning of Black Anghus’s sorcerous attack, and her mother’s magic had been needed to accomplish a far greater goal than lifting a child twelve feet up a well shaft.
“Let us hope it never comes to that,” she replied soberly. “Please, tell me that no one told Bretagne what happened this afternoon!” She could just imagine her husband’s reaction—rage, of course. He would be angry that she had “exposed herself” in the course of the rescue, angry that she had bothered about a lowborn child, and absolutely enraged that she had won the devotion of the men-at-arms, especially his captain.
“Be easy. No one is foolish enough to have breathed a word of this to Baron Bretagne,” Robin said tartly, making her heave a sigh of relief. “Nor has Ursula heard aught. His men know him and his tempers better than you, my lady, and as for you—well, all that Bretagne knows is that you are ill. He was told that you swooned for no particular reason, as delicate ladies are often known to do, and both the baron and his leman have been loud in the scorn that you are such a poor stick of a woman. Neither of them, of course, took any thought as to whether his last beating might have caused you some lasting injury.”
“Or perhaps they have,” Gwynn corrected with a tightening of her lips.
Robin frowned. Gwynn finished both the mead and the custard without further comment. She discovered that she was still fully clothed, though, and decided to assess her own recovery by climbing out of bed. “I hope that you have brought me stronger fare than custard,” she continued after a step or two proved that she was strong enough to stand on her own—and anything more would be easily remedied with food and rest. “I still hunger, let me tell you!”
Robin had brought plenty of food, of course, for this was not the first time Gwynn had depleted herself in such a manner, and Robin knew well what Gwynn would need afterward. But as she ate, she realized that she had escaped her husband’s attentions for another night. And that seemed reward enough.
At that moment a tapping on the door frame made her look up with dread, fearing that Bretagne had decided to see what ailed his wife himself. But that dread turned to delight when she saw that the visitor was not Bretagne, but Atremus, peering anxiously from the doorway, his face clearing as he saw that she was all right.
He entered the room when she beckoned, and then, unexpectedly bowed low to her.
“How now, Sir Knight!” she said with surprise. “What means this?”
“My lady, were you my esquire, I would have knighted you this day for your valor,” he replied, bending to kiss her extended hand. “As it is, I can only offer my acknowledgment, small thing though that be. And—if you will take this as the great compliment that it is—my humble assertion that you truly are worthy of your blessed mother’s memory.”
She felt herself blushing and withdrew her hand slowly from his. “I accept the compliment, with gratitude, though I fear that you rate me overhigh. But I wish that you join me in a chess game, sweet friend,” she replied, to which he laughed and agreed.
They spent a pleasant evening there by the fire, though Gwynn was wrapped in a great fur coverlet and would look every bit the invalid if anyone should come spying. As it happened, there was little enough chess played that night and a great deal of conversation. She learned more about Atremus than she ventured he would have guessed….
And the only unfortunate aspect of this was that she was only confirmed in her feeling that if she could have been wedded to this man, rather than the one she was, she could have been a very happy woman.
But that was of no matter. A marriage to Atremus would not have bought her father protection. Only marriage to Bretagne, or someone like him, could have.
It had, evidently, been Atremus who had brought her up here to the solar when she had swooned, despite the handicap of his bad leg, just as it had been Atremus who had been first on the scene when Robin summoned help.
She bade him farewell for the evening feeling sad and wistful, though she took pains not to show it.
But she could not help but wonder, as she retired to her bed after another night of painting, if Atremus knew just what that special compliment about her mother’s memory meant—to her.
Then, just before sleep, it suddenly occurred to Gwynn, as a bolt from the blue, if perhaps the question she had asked of the Almighty not long ago was the wrong one. Perhaps she should not have asked “Why do I suffer?” but “Why am I here?”
For there might be a reason for her being here—perhaps beyond the simple one, that she had bought her father’s protection with her own sacrifice. Perhaps—
Well, that would lead to a further question, wouldn’t it? And it was the question that the faithful heart should have asked in the first place.
“What must I do?”
And in the stillness of the winter night, she heard a single word in the depths of her heart.
Listen.
She knew, knew, that this was no echo from her own mind. This was the “still, small voice” within one’s heart, but from the Source outside of oneself.
There it was, the answer to the question. This time, the right question. She must listen, and she would learn what she must do, for there was another purpose to her being here that went beyond the simple bargain she had struck.
As the days of winter dragged on to spring, she sometimes wondered how she could bear her life a moment longer—then something small would happen to prove to her that, if nothing else, she was needed here, if only by the common folk of the keep. She was not the only one to suffer from Bretagne’s black moods, but sometimes she could deflect his rage onto herself, or find something that would distract him. Unfortunately there was not much she could do to protect any woman of the keep or village that Bretagne found attractive.
She could only pick up the pieces afterward—but at least, she could do that much. And she could advise anyone likely to catch Bretagne’s eye how to avoid it, or how to make themselves look unattractive, at least as long as he was about. Binding generous breasts was the least of her lessons, which included the creative use of dirt and the making of temporary warts and blemishes. She knew that her efforts were bearing fruit when she overheard Bretagne complaining how ugly the women of his lands seemed to have become. “Half of ’em are squint-eyed hags, and the other half are poxy,” he growled to one of his knights.
She was needed by Atremus, too, and over the course of the weeks, she learned more and more of the knight’s history, not that there was much detail to it. He had taken service with Bretagne’s father shortly after the last time that Gwynn had seen him—and she suspected, although he did not say as much, that he had been smitten with the elder Gwynnhwyfar, her mother, and had looked for refuge in service elsewhere. He had served his baron well and truly, and he had pledged his liege on the baron’s deathbed that he would serve the son likewise. And so he had, until he had taken an injury in a tournament melee on Bretagne’s behalf that had left him crippled, at which point he learned just how seriously Bretagne took his own vows to his liegemen. Which was to say, not at all.
Gwynn got the distinct impression from what Atremus did not say that if Atremus had taken more care of his own safety and less of Bretagne’s, Atremus would not have been hurt and Bretagne might not have survived to rule.
Atremus was left to heal or die on his own, and discovered that he had been demoted in importance to the very least of Bretagne’s knights. Hence, the subtle insult to her when he was selected to meet her at the door.
“He would probably have dismissed me, except that if he did, he knew he could get no other knight to serve him—ever,” Atremus told her sadly. “And there are times when I wish he would, but at least I have a roof above my head and food on my trencher, and if I swallow insult with my beer, at least I have beer to swallow.”
There was nothing whatsoever she could say to that; all she could do was to cover his hand with her own in an attempt to comfort. But the touch on his hand made her face suddenly flush, and she averted her gaze so that he would not see it. But she knew what it was; even Robin knew, though thanks be to God, no one else saw, because no one else saw them together.
“You’re in love with him,” Robin said flatly one night after closing the door behind him.
“And I am not foolish enough to risk his life and mine to say or do anything about it,” she replied just as flatly. “Perhaps Isolde and Arthur’s queen could not control themselves when the passion was upon them, but I can, and will.”
Robin nodded with satisfaction. “Good. I’m pleased to see you aren’t going to lose your head over him—literally! Though it isn’t beheading you would fear.”
“No. They drown adulteresses,” Gwynn replied softly.
Robin wasn’t finished, though. “But in that case, are these chess games wise?”
“They are my only unmixed pleasure,” she admitted sadly. “And if I did not have them—”
Robin waved her hands wildly, as if to cut off further explanation. “Never mind. I could not bear to see you drooping about like a broken flower. At least now you are holding your head up and even smiling now and again.”
And that was the end of that conversation, but it lingered in her thoughts long afterward, along with one other thing. The great diagram and all of the spells and enchantments woven into it, was almost complete. There were two days of the year in which it could be used for the purpose that Gwynn intended, and one of them, May Eve, was fast approaching. She wanted to use it. Robin kept giving her impatient and significant glances, as if wondering when she would.
But she did not, as yet, have a justifiable reason to do so. Nothing had changed between her and Bretagne.
Nor had anything come of that single command—to listen—although listen she most certainly had, every day.
Finally, near the end of April, on a cold and rainy day, in absence of any other guidance, she went into the tiny chapel to pray for guidance.
It was shrouded in darkness, with only the tiny, flickering Presence lamp on the altar providing any light at all. Nevertheless, because she did not want to be disturbed, she took a flat cushion and knelt in the corner, where she could not be seen unless someone was actively searching the chapel for occupants.
She emptied her mind and clasped her hands before her—but what came then was no “still, small voice” in her heart. No indeed.
It was, in fact, a clear, distinct, but far-distant echo of voices from some other place in the keep.
One of the voices was Bretagne’s. One was another man, whose voice she did not recognize.
“—Border Lords want me that badly, eh?” Bretagne said with a chuckle. “That’s a rich price—but how do I know I’ll get it once the King’s been driven back and the north is free of him again?”
The words made Gwynn grow cold.
“You don’t trust a sworn oath?” the stranger replied.
“You’re asking me to break mine,” Bretagne pointed out. “Why should I trust yours?”
“Would marriage to Lord Seward’s eldest daughter serve to appease your concerns?” countered the stranger.
“I have a wife,” Bretagne said.
But the stranger laughed. “A wife who you are known to despise, who is apparently barren, who suffers from fainting fits. A man who cannot find a route to bachelorhood with a wife like that is not as clever as you claim to be.”
The words made Gwynn grow colder still.
But the next ones turned her to ice.
“Putting her aside,” Bretagne said slowly, “would mean losing the income from her rents and rights, which I will not do. The Devil knows I’ve earned it, looking at the whey-faced bitch in my bed, night after night. I might require some help from outside my household, lest suspicion fall on me.”
“A small thing to arrange.” The stranger sounded indifferent.
“Then…very well. When you next come to me, you must bring word of these arrangements,” Bretagne replied, his voice full of gloating. “And when I am a bachelor again, then I shall be glad to entertain your—friends—and their propositions.”
Listen. Well, she had. And she had certainly heard. This was justification; Bretagne planned her murder, and treason, both.
She had often wondered why the chapel was where it was—an out-of-the-way corner, inconvenient, cold in every weather. Now she thought she knew; it was the long-ago listening post of some long-dead baron. She would probably never discover who it was, or why he had built it, but it was enough that it had given her what she had not had before this.
She waited for some time with her head bowed over her hands, but either Bretagne and his visitor had moved away from the place that brought their words down to her, or Bretagne had dismissed him. Finally, when her knees were aching and she was so cold that her nose felt numb, she got to her feet and returned to her solar.
As she had hoped, Robin was there; the girl gave her an odd look, for she was not normally in this room during the middle of the day. “My scissors—” she said with a sharp glance at the girl, for the scissors were there, in plain sight, on her chatelaine belt.
“Ah. Why… here they are!” The girl walked toward her, feigning to carry something in her hand. As she bent to “fasten” the imaginary scissors to her lady’s belt, Gwynn whispered. “We act. May Eve.”
Robin cast her a startled look that turned to one of satisfaction, and nodded.
Gwynn left, to return to her duties, but it was with her own head a’ whirl. Somehow she would have to get Bretagne up to the solar that night—a man who so despised her that he had just planned her murder. It was the one flaw in her plan and it had to be overcome.
Somehow.
Because if she didn’t—she might not be alive to try on All Hallow Even.