Gwynn would have expected Bretagne to pay as little attention to May Eve and May Day as he did every other holy festival, but he surprised her by declaring a tournament for May Day, and a feast for the evening before.
Then again, May Eve was well known for licentious behavior, what with young men and women staying out all night to go a’ maying, gathering the spring blossoms with dew still on them. “May nights make New Year bellies,” was a saying among the old women, meaning that there were plenty of babies born January to May Day sweethearts who might have actually wedded only in August. And apparently this was something of a tradition for Clawcrag, at least according to Atremus; a May Day tournament and a Harvest Feast were the two celebrations that Bretagne preferred to hold.
Bretagne even went so far as to suggest that she ought to try another local custom, of visiting a certain standing stone on May Eve, one that was reputed to bring fertility. She, suspecting that this might be the setup for an ambush, countered gaily with a plan to make a torchlight procession of it of all of the married women of the keep and village, and he quickly lost interest in the idea, which only hardened her suspicions. She had kept vigil in the chapel every day since the fateful one, but had not overheard another such conversation. She had also discovered from Wulfred who Bretagne’s visitor had been, and obtained a pledge from him to tell her if the fellow turned up again. Thus far, he had not—but Bretagne could easily have arranged to meet him away from the keep.
If he had—if the suggested trek to the standing stone had been an attempt to place her where she could be done away with—then her days truly were numbered. Sooner or later, either his co-conspirator would find a plan that would work or Bretagne would become impatient and do the job himself….
This was hardly a pleasant frame of mind to be in as she woke on the morning of the last day of April and tried to fix her mind on the preparations for the night’s feast. Bretagne had invited guests—none of them known to her, and she wondered how many of them were his prospective allies. At least none were Lord Seward and his eldest daughter. The guests had been installed in every available room in the keep—and some that were not technically available; many of Bretagne’s knights and a great many of the servants had been displaced, and were either packed double and triple the usual number to a room, or were in the stables or anywhere else a pallet could be laid. Only the solar had not been invaded, but only because up until this very moment Gwynn had been storing the barrels of wine and beer, the precious spices and the expensive sugar and white flour for the feast there for safe-keeping. Now the drink was in the hall, kegs tapped and ready, the food in the kitchen and her solar was empty.
The rest of the keep was in a fever of good humor and anticipation, enhanced by the fact that for the first time in years—thanks to Gwynn’s planning and preparation—everything was going smoothly. Bretagne himself was nowhere to be seen in the keep; he was down just outside the village, at the tourney ground, where he and his guests were watching the peasant competitions of wrestling, archery, single-stick, quarter-staff and stone-tossing. Which was perfect, for it left the keep empty of demanding guests and allowed the keep servants to get on with the feast preparations.
As the afternoon burned on, Gwynn felt but one thing preying on her mind—that at some point after Bretagne returned, she had to lure him to the solar. The exact time of the spell did not matter, but it must take place between sunset and midnight, or wait until All Hallow Even. And she still had not managed to think of a way to bring him up there in the midst of the feast.
“My lady?” came a call from the door to the kitchen, interrupting her thoughts. She turned with a frown; the last thing she wanted at this point was an interruption! But the speaker was Sir Atremus, and she knew at once that something was wrong—
Nevertheless, she hurried to his side.
“My lady—” he began to whisper, but with great difficulty. “There is something you must know—about the baron—the King—and you—”
His face had begun to sag on the left side, like melted and softened wax. He appeared unsteady…and as he took a single step into the room—
—he collapsed.
Two of the kitchen maids screamed and Gwynn dropped the bread she’d been holding onto the table as her heart seemed to stop, and ran to his side. His face worked as he tried to speak to her, but he was no longer able to do more than make inarticulate sounds. Neither his left arm nor leg were working at all, and his right hand could not manage more than to paw at her.
“Take him to my solar!” she cried, and miraculously, two of the men obeyed her without a word, picking up the stricken knight and carrying him off. And she ran after them, biting her lip to keep from scolding at them, for they were carrying the knight very gently and with as much care as she could have asked.
Up the stairs they went, with the sunset light pouring in scarlet and gold through the window slits on the stairway. She wanted to weep, and dared not; she knew what this was, for the same ailment had struck her father in a lesser form—only her father had not collapsed with half his body completely useless.
This was a brainstorm, and in this strength, it was a death sentence, for there was no cure for this, and Atremus, her only friend here, would surely die within days or weeks. He would not be able to swallow, and would waste away, for how could anyone get food or drink into him? And the cruelest blow of all, he would be perfectly awake and aware the entire time—
She heard horns blowing from the walls and the clatter of hooves in the outer courtyard—Bretagne and the guests were back, which would signal the start of the feast. She heard another horn echo inside the keep—the call to table. She wouldn’t be there—
It didn’t matter.
The servants had their orders and knew what to do. He would hardly miss her. He would probably put Ursula in her place.
Robin arrived at that moment and took in the situation at a glance. As the maid helped her lady, Gwynn turned to one of the two fellows who had helped carry the knight here. “Tell them what has happened, and that either I will be down in a moment or I will send a further message.”
Atremus could never fit into the cupboard bed; as a consequence, she took cushions and blankets and made a pallet for him on the floor. And it was at that very moment, when a chance movement uncovered a bit of the painting on the floor, that it came to her.
She suddenly knew exactly what she was going to do tonight; there would be a change in plans. It was audacious; it was, possibly, the most foolish thing she could do. But it would give Atremus another chance at life and perhaps—
She would not think of the “perhaps.” Only what this meant to Atremus.
She knew the exact placement of every bit of the diagram; she placed the pallet with excruciating care and the men lowered Atremus down into it. Now only his eyes could follow them as his limbs and mouth trembled.
“You can go, and thank you,” she told the remaining man, who bowed to her, cast a pitying glance at Atremus and fled. He, too, knew very well what fate awaited the poor knight.
“Blessed Jesu,” Robin muttered, looking down at Atremus, her face a mask that concealed her feelings. “My lady, what is to be done? He—”
“Robin, you know what we do tonight,” Gwynn replied, standing up and taking the maid’s shoulders with both hands. “And I can only think one thing— he is to take your place.”
Robin stared at her, and if the situation had not been so grave, it would have been comical to see how relief and horror chased each other across her face. “But…my lady! The risk for you! He has not been—he does not know—”
“I am about to tell him,” Gwynn replied, her heart pounding in her ears with fear, the taste of fear metallic in her mouth yet not unmixed with hope and excitement. “And as for what will happen when we are done—that is in God’s hands. Now, do you clear and prepare the room, while I explain it to him.”
Once again, Gwynn knelt at Atremus’s side while Robin prepared the room for a Great Work. She cleared away the rushes, lit candles she removed from the secret compartments of the chest and placed them at cardinal points in the diagram, lit incense in a censer, and placed Gwynn’s white and black knives in the center of the diagram, awaiting Gwynn’s hands.
“My sweet friend,” she began, taking his unresponsive hand in hers and swallowing back tears at his state. “What has struck you has no cure, and you will not recover from it. There is nothing that can be done for you, as you are.”
His eyes stared into hers and she thought she read in their sad depths the acknowledgment of that truth, the knowledge that he was doomed.
“But I do not intend for you to die.” She gulped. “Though what you will think of what I am about to do, I cannot tell. You spoke more truth than you knew when you compared me to my mother. Like her, I am a sorceress. I learned my business at her knee. Like her, I bought my father’s safety with my life—in her case, it was to save him from the evil power of the black magician Anghus, and in mine, I purchased his safety against Anghus’s mercenaries from the King with my marriage to Bretagne. But it was always a possibility that Bretagne would continue to prove treacherous, and so we prepared for that eventuality, Robin and I, though the King knew it not, and does not know how dearly we hold our liege’s safety. And indeed, Bretagne has proved a traitor still. I heard him, with my own ears, plotting the overthrow of the King with the Border Lords—and his price for that treachery was my death. I think perhaps…you learned something of that today and came to warn me.”
A slight dilation of Atremus’s pupils and an inarticulate moan was all that showed his shock and dismay, but as he tried to nod, she knew, then, that he had somehow learned of the baron’s plans, as well. She patted his hand.
“Nay, listen, for all is not lost. I told you, there was always the chance that he would prove to be a traitor still, or to wish me harm, and Robin and I did plan for that. Now, let God be my witness, I had every intention of being a good and true wife to Bretagne. I did my best, with all my heart—which he spurned. There is justice in what I do!” The last was a cry, a cry to him for understanding.
He simply stared at her. Did he understand or not? She could not tell.
“Good, my friend—oh, my love!” she said, and then sobbed—then got control over herself, though she thought her heart would burst with the force of her emotion. “Atremus, I confess that I love you. I loved you as a child, with a pure and simple child’s love—but when I saw you standing at the door of this keep, my heart leaped to you with a woman’s feelings! And the more time I spent in your company, the more I came to love you—the man, the spirit within your shell of flesh, a spirit I would love if you were old as Methuselah, foul as a leper, scarred or maimed! And it is out of that love I bear you that I will dare this thing, whatever you may think of me, though you may repudiate me! This night, nay, this very hour, I shall exchange your soul with that of Bretagne—you shall possess his body, and he yours, and he will die in it, as you would have. I told you that Robin and I had planned for this. It is no light sorcery, and I do not do this without much thought. It would have been Robin’s spirit not yours, and this will put me in much peril, for he has always been my helpmate.”
She saw a fog of puzzlement in his eyes and laughed sadly. “Yes, you heard me a’ right. Robin is not my half sister, but my bastard brother, for this sorcery can translate only male to male and female to female. A clever actor, is he not?”
She glanced over her shoulder at Robin, who shrugged and grinned wryly. “And a cursed ugly wench I am, which made me both my lady Gwynnhwyfar’s best guard and safest servant,” Robin said, dropping his voice into his normal tones for the first time in half a year. “I practiced this ruse for so long it was second nature e’er we rode here.”
Gwynn nodded as Atremus blinked in shock. “And it was as brother and sister we would have afterward lived. Robin was prepared to take Bretagne’s place and would not have betrayed me afterward—you, well, you may well feel that so wretched a sorceress as I must needs be sent to the stake.” Her voice shook a little, then recovered. “I care not. I will take that chance. I only ask this—that you remember your oath to your King supersedes that of your oath to Bretagne and his father, and that when you wear his seeming, you will serve him as loyally as we, in our way, have done.”
There was no time to say anything else, for by now even Bretagne would be wondering at her absence. She rose to her feet and beckoned to Robin. “Tell Bretagne that—” she thought quickly “—that Atremus is dying and that he has something of great import to tell his liege, and that it concerns his fortune.”
That should be more than enough to bring Bretagne, hot-foot, from his own feast. He would hear the word “fortune” and in his greed, would assume that the old knight had a treasure squirreled away somewhere.
Robin nodded and marched out the door without a single word. Gwynn took her place in the middle of the diagram, took up the black knife made of volcanic glass in her left hand, the white one made of bone in her right, crossed her arms over her chest and, with three words of power, activated the first of the spells.
The lines of the diagram flared with sudden incandescence and glowed a fiery red. A wind of both air and magic, carrying tiny motes of energy like sparks from a fire, swirled up and around her, making her skirts dance and tendrils of hair that had escaped from her braids float in the light.
She heard heavy footsteps running up the stairs and smiled. It was as she had thought. Bretagne’s greed brought him to the trap.
“Atremus!” the baron shouted as he burst through the door. He was three steps into the room—and right in the middle of the second circle of the diagram, before he realized that all was not as it “should” be.
He stopped dead in his tracks. “What—” he said stupidly.
She shouted three more words of power and froze him where he stood.
Once again the lines of sorcery flared and glowed brighter than before. The wind borne of magic picked up, now swirling her skirts around her, surrounding her in a storm of sparks. Robin edged inside the door, slammed it shut and barred it against intruders. Not that Gwynn expected any. The servants were all fully occupied, and the guests being served the first of many delicious courses of food, with a set of comic tumblers giving them good and noisy entertainment. Even if Bretagne could have bellowed—which he could not, his voice being paralyzed along with the rest of him—no one would have heard him.
No, now was her hour—and she felt, for this moment at least, like a goddess of Justice.
“Bretagne of Clawcrag!” she shouted against the whine of the wind of power, flinging out her left hand, pointing at him with the black-bladed knife. “As God is my witness, I call you murderer, traitor and oathbreaker! Oathbreaker, that you forswear your vows that you made in exchange for my hand and fortune! Traitor, that you betray your liege lord and King to his enemies! Murderer, that you conspire to slay your King and your wife! I call you to justice, Bretagne of Clawcrag! I call you to answer for your crimes, and I summon all the powers of Earth, Air, Fire and Water to aid me! Gabriel, Michael, Raphael and Uriel, witness this work and lend me your power!”
She pointed the white-bladed knife at Atremus. “Atremus, Knight of the Realm, true-sworn liegeman to our King, I make of you the instrument of Justice! Let him serve your life, what is left of it, and let you take his place to be a true and loyal knight to your King! Gabriel, Michael, Raphael and Uriel, witness this work, and lend me your strength! As I will, so mote it be!”
From the tip of each knife, with a crack like lightning, a lance of power shot out and impaled each man. Gwynn was the center through which the power flowed—Bretagne convulsed and shook, his eyes bulging, his mouth open in a silent scream. The chamber was lit as bright as day by the glowing lines of energy, by the bright lances of magic, by thousands of tiny lightning bolts crackling from Gwynn’s body and striking randomly about the chamber. The pentagrams she had painted invisibly on the walls were glowing, too, feeding the spell, and she felt, heard, tasted, smelled nothing but the mighty force that held her transfixed, the still center of a whirlwind.
It was—intoxicating, and all-consuming; there was no room in her mind for anything but the words with which she shaped the spell and she held them…held them…held them—
Until, with a sudden snap, and a last flare of light, the spell was complete.
The chamber dropped into darkness, lit only by the candles on the floor and the fire in the fireplace, silent and still.
Bretagne swayed and nearly fell. Atremus thrashed—or tried to—and began to howl, a garbled and inarticulate jumble of nothing like words. By that alone she knew that her magic had worked—it was Bretagne’s foul spirit that was lodged in Atremus’s poor, failing body, and Bretagne was not amused.
Bretagne—or his body, at least—recovered first. He blinked; he looked around. His gaze fell on Gwynn and he took four purposeful strides that carried him across the room to stand beside her, before she had even gotten her wits about her.
“My lady,” he said. “I believe we have some business below. The company awaits, and there is much that I must say to them.”
And before she could say anything, he seized her hand and led her—nearly dragged her—toward the door, then out of it, then down the stairs.
She was tired, so tired—and so numb of spirit, the expected aftermath of great sorcery—that she simply let him lead her. She did not know what he intended, but it hardly mattered. Her fate was in God’s hands now and if he chose to denounce her in front of the entire company—
Well, if she could not live with the man she now knew she loved with all her heart, she was not sure that life was worth the living.
As he drew her onto the dais behind him, the entire hall fell silent.
Ursula was, as she had expected, in her seat, looking smug and self-satisfied. When she saw Bretagne dragging Gwynn by the hand, she looked even more pleased.
Bretagne pulled Gwynn to the side of the High Seat—then suddenly dropped her hand and grabbed Ursula’s chair with both strong fists and yanked it out from under her. The strumpet landed on the floor of the dais with a thud and a yelp.
“Out!” Bretagne shouted. “ Out! Gather your goods and go! You may have a single mule and all you can carry, but be gone from my lands by sundown tomorrow, or by sweet Jesu, you’ll find yourself in a Magdalene convent before you can blink!”
As Ursula scrambled to her feet, her face holding mingled disbelief and anger, he “helped” her up with a toe to her well-padded backside. “You and you—” he said, pointing to two of his men-at-arms, neither of whom had any love for the wench. “You go with her and see that she doesn’t take what she isn’t entitled to, then follow her until she passes our Borders!”
Without further ado and with great relish, one yanked Ursula off the dais, and both of them hustled her out of the hall before she could even squeak.
Now Bretagne turned to Gwynn—and with both hands on her waist, he lifted her to stand on the seat of his chair.
“Friends, neighbors—” he said, addressing a company still held silent by shock and surprise. “This sweet lady…this, my good and true wife, has been—much abused. He to whom she should have looked to for protection and honor has been treating her as…as—” He shook his head. “I cannot say how ill he treated her. This wretch, my former self, this vile creature who she consented to wed—did not and does not deserve so good a woman, and the fate and words of Sir Atremus have brought a revelation. I am reborn into a new self and I see what great ill, what terrible dishonor has been done to her, and I hope in time to achieve her forgiveness.”
He turned and took both her hands in his, as she stared down at him, hope and joy beginning to dawn in her heart and tears starting in her eyes even as a smile curved her lips.
“So I ask you, my lady, my friend and my love, will you forgive me all that has been heaped upon you these past six months? Will you permit me to be to you the husband of your hand and heart? Will you allow me to lay my life at your feet?”
She tried to answer his eloquence with her own, but tears flooded her eyes and choked her throat, and all that she could do was to answer, “Yes—”
But it was enough. With a mighty roar, the entire hall erupted with the cheers of the assemblage, as Bretagne lifted her down and into his embrace.
A gentle embrace, not the crushing grip that the “old” Bretagne had once used to flatten her into submission. The kind of embrace that she had dreamed of and never dared hope for, as Bretagne turned her tear-streaked face to his and placed his lips on hers in a warm, passionate kiss.
Her knees went weak, she melted into his arms, half delirious with a surge of unexpected desire that fired her loins and wilted her will. It was a very good thing that his arms were supporting her or she might well have collapsed to the floor at that moment.
But he was not finished.
He lifted his mouth from hers long before she was ready and signaled to two manservants. “Go to my lady’s solar,” he said quietly, “and remove that poor old knight. Place him in Ursula’s chamber, and send someone to tend him. We must keep him comfortable until he dies, which, for his sake, I pray will be soon. I would not have him suffer longer.” The men nodded sympathetically and hastened to do their lord’s bidding.
He looked back to the assemblage. “Let it be known both far and wide,” he said, his voice now full of threat as well as promise. “That he who so much as offers insult, much less an injury, to my lady, will feel the full weight of my wrath—and hell itself will not be so deep that it can hide them!”
There was a hidden meaning there, which would be understood only by those who had attempted to conspire with Bretagne to murder Gwynn and to undermine the King. There will be no bargain. Whoever they were—and for Atremus to have come to her this afternoon with his own warning, some one or more of those conspirators must have been among the company—they would probably be puzzled, but they would not be unclear about Bretagne’s feelings.
Then Bretagne looked about the company again, with Gwynn nestling in his arms. His eyes scanned the crowd below the High Table, and when his gaze found a monk among the crowd, a stranger in the robes of the Poor Friars, he beckoned to the man.
“Father,” he said as the man came forward and the cheering eased then stopped so that those watching could hear what was to come next in this evening of surprises. “I have a great favor to ask of you. In light of this, and of my pledge to now be a true and gentle husband to this lady, would you say the words of marriage over us again, and renew our vows?”
The monk gaped at him, but quickly recovered his wits and nodded hasty agreement. His eyes gleamed a little, perhaps anticipating a golden reward, and he raised his hand to make the sign of the cross over them both.
The vows were quickly exchanged, the blessing as quickly said, and the monk got his anticipated reward as Bretagne stripped a ring from one of his heavily laden fingers and pressed it into the fellow’s hand.
Then he led Gwynn to the High Seat and placed her in it, taking the second chair from which he had so lately evicted the wretched Ursula. From there, throughout the feast, he plied her with selected dainties, pressing upon her the tenderest bits of meat, the crispest bits of crust, the sweetest pastry. Gwynn was in a daze of happiness throughout the meal, hardly able to think, only to look into the eyes of her husband and see her beloved Atremus twinkling back at her. This, some six months late, was the bridal feast that she had hoped for. And she thought she knew very well why Atremus-Bretagne had had the monk wed her and her husband all over again….
And when the last of the meal was done, the last of the entertainment over, he took her by the hand and led her, once again, up the stairs to the room that had seen so much pain.
There he shut the door behind them both and once again took both her hands in both of his.
“My lady—my dearest lady—” He faltered. “I cannot ever thank you enough, nor repay you for this gift of life that you have given me. And if it is your will that we should live, as you had planned with your sibling, as brother and sister—”
“No!” she all but shouted, then moderated her tone. “No, my good lord,” she said more softly, gazing up at him through her lashes, feeling her cheeks warm with blushes. “I told you that I have always loved you, your spirit—how can I love you the less now? It is still you— ” Now it was her turn to falter. “Unless it is that you have…no feelings for me—”
He laughed—not the loud and crude roar of Bretagne, but the hearty peal of laughter that she remembered from the days when her father had bested Atremus at chess. “No feelings? Oh, my heart, I have loved you from the moment I saw what a woman you had blossomed into! Why do you think I asked that monk to resanctify the vows? I wished to make certain that we were bound in body and spirit in the eyes of God!” He clasped her to his chest and once again she melted into his embrace. “My love, my very love—” Then he stopped and pushed her a little away. “But…what are we to do with Robin?”
She laughed. “We send my maid back to my father, where Robin-the-maid will vanish and bonny Robin-the-lad will reappear! My father will legitimize the boy and make him his heir, and a true reward that will be for all his labor and love! He loves Robin as I do, and surely that is a meet recompense for all he has done on my part!”
Once again Bretagne laughed, a true and free sound of joy. “Then I am content, my only love. Now shall we—” His eyes moved to the waiting bed.
Which no longer held any fears for her. She smiled up into his face. “My lord and love,” she said softly, “with all the will in the world.”
And she knew that she did not need to count crows this time to know what the future held for her.
High up under the eaves of the lady tower of Clawcrag castle, a crow roused out of sleep at the sound of human laughter. He peered down at the glowing window slit beneath the nest he and his mate of a month had built in a niche where the stone offered shelter. Strange. He’d never heard laughter of that sort coming from that place before—strong, hearty laughter, both deep and male and light and silvery female.
Well, let the silly humans carry on all night. He and his mate had more important matters to tend to, the welfare of their two eggs warming in the nest beneath her breast feathers, the second of which had just been laid today.
One for sorrow, two for mirth, three for a wedding, four for a birth….