In Camelot’s Shadow: Book One of The Paths to Camelot Series (Prologue Fantasy) (16 page)

That seemed to startle him. He bowed his head in polite acknowledgement of the declaration. “You may be right.”

But Risa could only hear her sour words ringing in her own ears, along with the reminder that despite his serf’s garb, this was still Lord Gawain in front of her and that if the walls of Pen Marhas stood, she was still dependent on his good will. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“For speaking so plain. For … ah, Mother Mary.” She turned her eyes up to the blank, black heavens. “I do not know.”

“I do.” Gawain pushed himself away from the wall. “You are sorry you are so tired that you cannot say what you wish and can only say what you mean.” He took her hand. “Come. Let us return you to Lady Cailin. Your heart and hands will be needed come the dawn.”

They walked to the great doors in a silence that felt to Risa surprisingly companionable. Weariness, the peace of night and a fresh wind that smelled for a change of nothing but the coming rain were hard to resist. Gawain’s hand was warm, though roughened from his day’s work.

What would he do if she turned to him now and took back that kiss he’d had from her? For an instant she thought, what harm? Her reputation here was already tarnished. If she was to face the penance, why should she not commit the sin?

Because she did not want to be the woman who would behave so, and she did not want Gawain to see her as that woman.

They’d reached the hall’s steps. Gawain paused again, and Risa felt, rather than saw him looking at her. His face was lost in shadow, and she felt strangely glad. Her heart was beating slowly and heavily. She could feel his warmth, and he was standing strangely still, almost as if he was afraid to move. “You were the archer on the walls today.”

“Yes.” She tried to speak plainly, simply, but again, she felt currents beneath the words, and between the two of them, with Gawain standing so close and so still.

“You did not have to go.” His words were little more than a whisper.

Risa felt her mouth twist into a tight smile. “If the Saxons break the gate, they will not stop to realize I am only a guest here.”

She had meant to make him laugh at that, or at least smile back there in his shadows, but he remained completely serious. “You are wondrous brave, Risa.”

No. Oh, no, she was not. She wanted so badly to run away. If death did not wait outside these walls in so many forms, she would have. “I am only doing as I must.”

“No. It is more than that. I have seen necessity, and desperation both. Your actions spring from a courageous heart.”

Do something, say something. Turn away from this. If you don’t you’ll choke on your own breath
. “You need to sleep, Sir.”

“I know. But what appears as drunkenness in some men … in me, is restlessness.”

“You will make yourself ill, and then be no good to anyone.”

He stepped back and bowed with a courtly flourish. “With my lady’s permission, I will walk a little yet, and then, I swear upon mine eyes, that I will seek my bed. I have no desire to topple onto a Saxon sword because I’ve fallen asleep in the saddle.”

Risa found she could not even smile at that. She just returned his bow with a curtsey and a studiously grave face that she hoped would be taken for a dry jest in its own right. Turning, she gathered up her hems. To stay a moment longer would be to utter words she could not take back.

But Gawain’s voice came again, freezing her in her place. “Never be sorry for speaking openly with me, Risa.”

“God be with you on the morrow, Gawain,” was all the answer she had. Then, because she could not bear to stay a moment longer, she hurried away.

It was dark in the women’s quarters, forcing Risa to pick her way to her bed with extreme caution. As it was, she prodded more than one sleeping body with her toes, only to be swatted at, or softly cursed. She did not even try to apologize.

At last, she reached that little island of wood and feather beds that was her own and crawled up onto it. The woolen dress was made for one who had no waiting women, so she was able to shuck it easily. The night’s cold drafts moved across her skin.

She had thought to fall asleep as soon as she laid down, but instead, she felt more wakeful than ever. Perhaps something of Gawain’s restlessness had infected her.

Or perhaps it was just something of Gawain.

Risa stared out into the dark. How did people fall in love? How did one know it had happened? She did not feel faint or inclined to fall to her knees and beat her breast when she thought of him. Gawain had given her no token to swoon over. Nor had he sung her any poem, sent word by any messenger or lingered beneath her window, nor asked for her sleeve — not that she had one of her own to spare him — or done any of the things lovers in the epics did. Nor was she certain she could perform such miracles as, oh, wearing out three pairs of iron shoes walking the world in search of him, should he disappear.

But if this was not love in her, what was it?

She remembered sitting at her mother’s feet while mother combed her hair, patiently picking out tangles with an ivory comb, tugging gently but almost never pulling.

“He will be a good man,” mother said. “Of good family. Your father and I will see to it. And when he comes, you will open your heart to him, and learn what is good in him. From this, love will come.”

“Was that how it was with you and father?” She asked, leaning her head against mother’s knee.

The comb paused, and mother laid her hand on Risa’s hair. “No. When I saw your father … it was sudden. Like lightning.” She shifted, and the comb returned to its work, picking quickly, gently at a snarl. “But lightning is no guarantee of happiness, my dear. Sometimes all it brings is a roll of darkening thunder. Life is a long journey and slow understanding is the surer road.”

It was a good thing to say, and meant lovingly, and now that Risa knew so much more of the way things were between mother and father, she understood why it was said. Memory of home and her mother only brought fresh pangs to her bewildered heart.

Risa rubbed her frigid hands together and tucked them under the blanket. They were growing chapped from her days out in the wind, too long holding Thetis’s reins, too long working her bow. Lady Pacis had smooth hands that looked to work little more than threads for the finest tapestries. Come to that, she had not seen Lady Pacis on the walls today. She would have thought that was the best place for that fine lady to catch a glimpse of her hero.

Am I jealous now? Oh, God and Christ
.

This was ludicrous. It was childish. A war band sat outside the walls waiting for their chance to swarm over the dykes, batter down the gates and take all they could carry, including Risa and any other woman they could reach. They had a witch helping them, and she had a sorcerer waiting for her.

As if these weren’t worries enough, she was wringing her hands because the thedu’s wife’s niece had an eye for the High King’s nephew.

And what of Vernus? Risa huddled in on herself. How long had it been since she had thought of him? She had let her heart get so out of order, she had forgotten that she meant to marry him, that he was going to speak to his father to speak to her father …

Would Vernus come to court to fetch her if she asked him to? The king could marry them. He might even be able to force father to pay her dower. It could all be done quickly, and that would be an end to her pining for Gawain.

Would it?

Risa wrapped her arms around her knees and hugged them to her as if she were a small girl. She had to keep her mind on staying alive, on helping in the protection of her protectors and lying here mooning in the dark would only leave her more exhausted on the morrow.

But, Mother Mary, I’m so lonely
.

She had never before been among so many strangers. When she was sent to Clywd for fostering, she was greeted by family and surrounded by cousins. Soon she had place and friendship. At her father’s hall all the surrounding crofters and freemen knew her name, and if they did not know her face, they knew her at once by her dress and her manner, as she knew them. She knew who she was and how to act and what to do.

Here, she was no one. She had no kin, no ties to any, except Gawain, and those ties were suspect. She could see that plainly enough in the eyes of the other women. She was unknown and while not entirely unwelcome, not wholly welcome yet either, whatever their protestations. They did glance at her from the corner of their eyes, as if she were a servant who might be thieving. That was as far as it would go, at least while every hand was needed in Pen Marhas’s defense, but it was there, and it would remain since not even battle could halt gossip.

It was nothing. It would pass. If she and Gawain lived, if tomorrow and the day after that came, they would leave, and they would go to court and she would tell her story to the queen, and then … and then …?

Risa found she could not dream so far ahead. For a long time, she stared into the darkness while the women sighed and snored around her, but she saw nothing ahead save the night.

Outside, the rain began.

Gawain watched as Risa vanished into the hall, swallowed more quickly by the night’s darkness than by the solid doors.

He had lied. He would not seek his bed, not for hours yet. When the battle was done, he would sleep the night through again, but not until then. That was how God had made him, and he knew well enough by now there was nothing to be done about it. Normally, he would not have even come behind the inner walls, but Gringolet was favoring his forehoof and Gawain wanted to see to his charger personally and make doubly sure the stallion had proper shelter for the night. Now he was trapped in this small yard, with nothing to do but prowl its confines.

He climbed the palisades and visited with the sentries, grizzled men and nervous boys, glad to see him and ready to be cheered by a small jest and a brave word from Arthur’s man. They wanted to know about the messengers to Camelot, when he thought they would reach the court, and what response Arthur would send. Gawain answered as fairly as he could, although everyone within the sound of his voice knew that comforting guesses were all he had to give. The way through hill and wood was dangerous, even without the Saxons

Even without their witch, who had somehow caught up with Harrik, Gawain was now certain.

Perhaps Risa killed her
, he thought, looking out toward the hills, toward the faint stars of the Saxon campfires.
Perhaps that raven was the witch disguised, and with her death Harrik is free from whatever glamour has taken him, and he will come as soon as he can to help us
.

But in his heart, he knew that was a vain hope. Witches were not so easily defeated. They did not present themselves for a clean fight, no. They hid, they schemed, they sent their servants and their spells, and although a man might think he had at last rid himself and his family of the danger, yet they would come back.

The witch was still out there, as was Harrik, and in the distant darkness, Risa’s sorcerer.

Risa
.

He hoped sleep had found her. He hoped she knew some ease of heart in a bed that was, at least for this night, safe and warm. He wished … he wished so many things he thought heart and soul would overflow.

When the rain began, great, fat drops falling like pebbles into the dust of the yard, he sought shelter in the stable rather than the hall.

Gringolet had a stout stall, clean straw and a warm blanket on the back. The place was full of the warm smells of leather, contented animals and clean straw. The stallion’s limp had proved to be nothing more than a small stone, easily remedied. The stallion must have been exhausted, however, because neither Gawain’s step nor his scent roused him from his sleep.

Overhead, men and boys snored in the hayloft. Above them, rain pattered on the thatched roof, making its straw rustle like a thousand small fingers searching through it, seeking … what?

Risa would know. Some snatch of poem or song about rain and searching
.

He had not been the least surprised when he found she had gone out on the walls. Furious, yes, but not surprised. If he had his way, she would have been behind the stoutest walls Pen Marhas had to offer, waiting for the end of the fighting and their rescue. Risa, however, could no more hide and wait than he could sleep during battle. It was not in her nature.

But what is?

She was not like any woman he had known before, not even the queen. He would not have said it were possible for one woman to possess beauty, learning and nobility along with courage and quick-thinking that would do a Roman soldier proud. And the way she sometimes looked at him, as if there was much she would say, much she would do, if she dared, if modesty permitted.

If only she were of higher birth. If only her father were not a fool and a coward to have sold off his daughter’s body and soul in a devil’s bargain. Then they might be free, then …

Then, what?
Gawain seemed to hear his brother’s voice speaking from his mind.
She is what she is, and you are what you are. And for once this woman you’re mooning over remembers that
.

Gawain sighed and bowed his head down until it rested on the back of his arm.
God help me, it’s happening again, isn’t it?

Love and Gawain were no strangers. Love came to him as often as the tide came to the shore. But not love he could have, not love that would grace his life until God himself chose to part them at death. His heart had no discretion and very little sense. It reached out to sadness, it reached out to need, and it did not care for marriage or rank, or any other of men’s laws. It charged up to such walls time and again, only to break itself against their stones.

There was no comfort in the knowledge that he
would
marry one day, because he must. Arthur would pick the lady, and she would be good and probably beautiful. She would definitely be wealthy and of rank and connection. Would his heart cease to break itself over others once the betrothal was made? Could he finally harness that part of his nature and do his duty, and produce an heir? Some days he thought he could, but other days …