The Book of Mordred (32 page)

Padraic didn't care.

Nor did Kiera, who had become anxious about some of the looks she and her mother had been getting the last day or so. As if they had spent all those hours changing fetid bandages and ministering to the weak and delirious only to poison them at the first signs of health. Many of the men who had never before bothered much about religion had suddenly taken to wearing rosary beads around their necks. Kiera would walk into the infirmary and be greeted by a flurry of bowed heads and mumbled prayers. She and her mother were lucky to be out of it, she thought, if only Alayna didn't provoke anybody.

Alayna pulled her bag off the table. "It has been delightful working with you," she told Padraic. "Delightful and inspiring."

Padraic shrugged.

Tight-lipped, Alayna looked around the room, at the knights in their various stages of recovery, as though she still hoped for some word or acknowledgment from somebody whom they had helped.

Nothing. Not one sign of reluctance to see them go.

"God be with you," she said. "May you all prosper under Padraic's skilled and gentle care."

Still nothing.

Alayna turned and stalked out of the room so abruptly that Kiera had to run to catch up.

For Kiera, and the other women and children of the castle, things quickly settled into a routine, a routine involving refugee peasants who had taken over the public halls and rooms and who were always underfoot with their bundles of clothes, their children, and their squealing, squawking, or bleating livestock.

As for the men, there were constant skirmishes as adventurers harried the ill-fortified border lands. To support the thinly deployed knights, Mordred announced he would begin to train a troop in the use of longbows. Anybody—anybody—could join.

Over the years, Kiera had often enough overheard her mother and Mordred debate the morality of arming peasants. It had been a familiar argument between Mordred and Arthur, too, during their last days together.

No doubt those of like mind to the King sent word to him.

No doubt Arthur sent word back that Mordred's special troop was to be disbanded.

But if so, Mordred ignored the order. And though the knights complained about fighting side by side with commoners, it wasn't long before everyone saw that even this small, raw group of archers had a devastating effect in battle.

By autumn, the serfs felt safe enough to return to their fields for the harvest. Only a small number of holdings had been burned, and Mordred saw to it that those affected were provided for, which pleased both the peasants and the inhabitants of Camelot—who could finally walk down a hall without tripping over somebody.

With each peaceful day that passed, Mordred became more popular. And as his popularity grew, the antipathy toward Kiera and her mother finally lessened.

They are just waiting,
Kiera thought. It wouldn't take much to change their mood again.

Dispatches came from Brittany. Lancelot and his men were entrenched in Joyous Gard and would not come out to fight Arthur's men. Arthur had settled down to wait for Lancelot to run out of supplies, which probably wouldn't happen until spring or early summer.

Knights who had been banished for denouncing Lancelot during the early years returned to court to reaffirm their loyalty, to offer Mordred their service. Others came whose exile had had nothing to do with the out-of-favor Lancelot, but who hoped to be welcomed back because of the general atmosphere of harmony and forgiveness that Mordred was promoting.

One of these was Sir Bayard of Castle Ridgemont at Ravens' Rock.

Kiera was sitting at the edge of the pond talking with the ducks. They had been complaining about a pair of boys who had found some of the nests and were stealing eggs. That should have been warning enough, when the birds went into a sudden panic of squawks and beating wings and left without a good-bye. But Kiera put it down to ducks' flighty temperament, and she remained where she was. She leaned back, savoring the spring sun on her eyelids, the tickle of the new grass on her bare legs, the breeze that lifted wisps of her hair.

Behind her, a pebble rattled down the hill. Kiera sat up, rearranged her gown to cover her legs, and called out, "Hello?"

A twig snapped, but no one answered.

The air suddenly seemed too chill for her to be out here alone sitting on the damp ground. Standing, she tightened the ribbon that kept her hair back from her face and stood. On one of the bushes at the top of the slope that lead down to the pond, a branch moved. She didn't call again, but only picked up the basket in which she had been gathering flowers.

Someone laughed softly.

Then there was a war whoop, and the clatter of someone half-running and half-sliding down the hill. Two of them, town boys: She knew them well enough to recognize them. They were three or four years older than she and had the rough, swaggering look of bullies. So, she thought, they were hunting for duck eggs after all. But then they reached the bottom of the hill, and they didn't go straight, to the pond, but swept along in a wide curve to the right, toward her.

She hesitated, and already it was too late. The boys separated, one on either side. As they passed, one snatched her flower basket away, the other yanked on her hair ribbon, undoing the knot, tugging her hair. "Stop!" she yelped. "That hurt!"

They stopped running and now tossed her basket to each other, spilling buttercups, violets, and alyssum.

"Stop that," she said. She stepped forward, but they danced away, always just beyond her reach. She pulled the trailing ribbon out of her hair before they could seize that, too, and held it tightly in her fist. "Give me back that basket."

"Oh, she wants her basket back," one of the boys taunted. He held it out toward her, balanced by its handle on the tip of his finger. "Come and get it, then."

She took a step toward him and he swung his arm in closer to himself.

"Come on," he taunted. "Come and get it." He shook his pale blond hair out of his eyes and met her anger steadily.

Kiera put her hands on her hips, refusing to play this game.

"Don't you want it? Let your animal friends fetch it for you, then. Witch." He heaved the basket into the pond. It disappeared into the water, leaving behind a rainbow swirl of daisies and bluebells that bobbed and floated on the surface. The boys laughed and whistled.

Bullying was one thing.

Calling her a witch was much, much more dangerous. Kiera turned and ran, heading for the woods. But she'd taken only a few steps before one of the youths hit her from behind, making her fall. He forced her to sit up, her arms pinned behind her. It had to be the blond, short one who held her, for the dark, gangly youth stood before her, poking her with a stick.

She aimed a kick at his knee, but couldn't reach.

"Witch," the blond boy said. "Hold still! Hold still, or I'll twist it off." He forced one arm up higher. Then, to his companion, he warned: "Don't let her look in your eyes, Lowell, and she won't be able to put a spell on you."

The second boy averted his eyes from her face but continued to poke at her.

Kiera jerked her head back, smacking it into the face of her captor.

He grunted but held her all the tighter. "Look what she's done!" His voice was a mumble around his pam. "My mouth's all bleeding!"

He shoved her away then, and the dark youth, Lowell, grabbed a fistful of her hair and twisted. She didn't cry out, though her eyes swam with tears of pain. She saw the blond one put his hand to his mouth, then take it away again. "Miserable witch!" He slapped her, hard.

Lowell demonstrated he was as stupid as his friend by using
bis
name, which any fool should have known was a more dangerous thing to give a witch than even a direct look in the eyes. He said, "Know what they do with witches, Eldred?"

Eldred's cut and bruised lips twisted into a slow smile. "Same as we did to her flowers."

They wouldn't,
Kiera told herself. They wouldn't risk that she couldn't swim and might drown. Still she tried to squirm away, but they both had her by the hair, and now the blond Eldred had once more forced her arm behind her back.

They dragged her to the edge of the pond. There, they picked her up—one taking her arms, the other her legs. "One," they chanted. "Two. Three."

She still thought it was only a threat until the moment they flung her loose.

The water closed over her head, instantly soaking the layers of her clothing, weighing her down. Kiera didn't know how to swim and she had no idea how deep the pond was and already the breath she'd instinctively taken right before she'd hit the water was burning in her lungs.

At first she couldn't tell which way was up. But then she felt the bottom, sucking mud and clinging water weeds. She got her legs beneath her, was on her knees. Her head cleared the surface, the water coming barely to her chin.

They'd probably known that; they'd probably just wanted to frighten her.

Or so she thought, until—sputtering and spitting, and fighting both her own hair and her clothing—she felt one of the boys grab the back of her neck and force her face once again under the water. She tried to hit and kick at the encircling arms and legs, but the water pressed against her movements, slowing them, weakening them, making them ineffectual.

They
were,
she realized. They
were
trying to kill her.

And then suddenly, just as she knew her lungs would surely burst, there was an extra pair of legs in the water. One of the boys let her go, and then the other, and she bobbed to the surface long enough to suck in the breath she needed. She found the bottom again and got her feet beneath her and stood.

An armored knight had Lowell by the front of his shirt. She didn't recognize the man's insignia—a crow?—and he had his back to her; but he was big—big enough to hold the lanky youth off the ground and to shake him hard enough to cause his dark head to snap back and forth.

On the shore, Eldred struggled to get out of the bush into which the stranger had thrown him. Besides the bruises she had made with the back of her head on his face, he had deeper gashes from the sharp branches, and he held one elbow in close as if the arm might be broken. He struggled to his feet, but made no effort to help his friend. Instead he tried to get out of the clearing, staggering and weaving.

The knight saw him, and dropped the limp body of Lowell into the water. The youth was face up, and he floated, but Kiera knew he was dead by the angle at which his head was tipped. His neck had to be broken.

Good,
she thought. But she didn't feel good.

"No!" Eldred screamed when he saw the knight coming after him. Despite the man's heavy armor and the water streaming out of it, his longer stride and the youth's battered condition made it a one-sided race.

The knight grabbed the back of Eldred's collar. He whipped him around and struck him with his heavy mailed fist. Then he picked him up and flung him against a tree.

From where she stood, Kiera could hear the
thud
as Eldred's head struck the tree trunk. She had spent too much time these past weeks ministering to broken bodies, listening to the crying of families, and could find no satisfaction in what was happening. She had seen how fragile life could be. Watching this violence, she felt in her heart that they deserved it, but she could take no satisfaction from it.

The knight stepped back. He turned from one motionless body to the other, then faced Kiera. "Are you all right, little maid?" He waded into the pond, then went down on one knee. His dark eyes inspected her anxiously.

She stood there, cold and dripping and wondered if she would ever feel warm again. She nodded.

"Yon young ruffians will harm you no more."

"No," she agreed, unable to get her voice more substantial than a whisper.

He stood, extending his hand to her. "Let me help you out of there."

Kiera just hugged her arms to herself.

"Do not be afraid," he said. "I have seen you at Camelot. I am from there, too, though just recently, so you don't know me. My name is Sir Bayard of Ridgemont." He smiled. Fatherly. Brotherly.

"I know who you are," she told him.

"So. Well." Before she could resist, he had put an arm under her knees and the other around the upper part of her body, and he picked her up.

Her heart pounded so hard she thought she would die from it.
Mordred's enemy,
she thought.
Mordred's enemy.

But his horse was there, tied to a tree just a few yards from the clearing. He set her down on the saddle gently, then took the bridle and walked the horse down to the path that led to the castle, asking over and over to make sure she was unharmed.

Kiera kept her gaze on the back of the horses neck, holding tightly to the saddle, which was too big to give her enough support, and slippery with the wetness of her clothes.

In the courtyard, people started to gather. Bayard snapped at them, ordering them out of the way, declaring that the young lass needed to be tended to.