Chapter Nine
Nine
The first time Bridget laid eyes on Gwen, she’d been squiring for a friend of her father’s, a knight of middle age and middling ability who called her “girl” and rolled his eyes if she let one of his lances dip even slightly when she was handing it up to him.
Squiring was a key part of the journey to becoming a knight, a period of servitude that was meant to build character and allow the initiate to get to know the lists.
It had been a particularly hard day at the tourney when Bridget’s gaze had wandered over to the royal stands and caught sight of a girl around her own age, with flaming red hair and a dress the color of shifting seas, chewing voraciously on her own fingernails.
She’d been pretty in a way that Bridget knew men did not seem to see; tall, boyish in attitude, with a striking, freckled face, and everything about her long and slender and bony. Despite her finery, she didn’t hold herself like a princess, with none of that practiced, graceful stillness.
Bridget always liked it when people were contradictory by nature.
Contrasts attracted her: a raspy voice from a soft mouth, surprise muscle beneath the silk of a dress; a royal girl with the posture of a stable boy, with impeccably turned-out hair and ragged nails at the end of large, square fingers.
Over the years, as both of them had grown (Gwen taller, Bridget broader), she had found herself watching for that hair, a lucky flash of red on a Sunday. A few times she’d discovered Gwen looking back.
When Bridget had last seen Gwen, bidding her farewell with a lingering kiss as she left for the summer tournament season full of misplaced confidence, the princess had been thin and hollow-eyed with grief, but just as strangely beautiful as she’d always been.
Now Gwen had cut her hair. This was the first shock.
Bridget had loved that hair. It fell down her back when unbound, always smelled like the first spray of juice from freshly cut fruit, and was unbelievably soft, a waterfall running through her fingers.
This new haircut was defiant in the face of the fashions of court, where long hair among the ladies reigned supreme, with Gwen’s coveted even by the girls who’d hated her.
She looked more solid too, like she’d been eating a few extra helpings at supper, perhaps even lifting heavy things. This was most confusing of all. Bridget couldn’t think of anything Gwen might be lifting on a regular basis that was heavier than her brother’s cat.
There was something else too—something about her attitude, the way she was holding herself, the fact that she had clearly been in mutual conference with the pretty, stern-faced older woman who was ordering them all about. She looked … full of purpose. No longer lost.
Stupid, really, that Bridget had imagined her staying exactly the same while she was away, frozen in time. Three months of missing her, and she’d thought she’d known what she was coming back to.
She’d been wrong. She didn’t like to be wrong.
Camelot felt strange this time, like she was haunting it, or the other way around.
The royal tourney had been canceled this year for obvious reasons, so the stands had not been built, the land left empty.
Bridget hadn’t seen it, because she avoided all windows facing in that direction.
She had no desire to gaze upon that place, or the fields that had hosted the battle beyond.
Odd. She hadn’t minded so much, back in the spring.
She’d been back and forth between the castle and her family house, Drakesease in Sussex, going for walks with Gwen and runs with her father, eating real food that nourished her down to her bones at her parents’ table and feeling well-fed in an entirely different way when she shared a leisurely breakfast with the princess.
There had been lots of training of course, but days of fair weather had meant lazy afternoons in the orchards with Gwen, kissing in the long grass, falling asleep and waking up with Gwen’s head on her chest, blanketed by silky copper.
The chambers she and Neil had been assigned this time weren’t in the royal wing, but they were perfectly pleasant; there were late-blooming roses the color of old blood on the dresser, a new tapestry on the wall, fresh blankets on the bed without a stitch out of place.
Neil was not to sleep at the foot of her bed, much to her relief, but in an entirely separate anteroom next door.
“You can’t be angry with me,” he was saying, as he placed one of her trunks by the door. “He’s a work of art. If you liked boys you’d understand.”
Right. Florian Arden. Bridget had looked at him and only seen the man whose father she’d killed.
She hadn’t dared make direct eye contact with him.
Would it help, if he knew how much she’d hated it?
How heartsick it made her, when people lauded her as a hero for taking his life?
That she often thought of her mother, sad behind the eyes as she told Bridget, “We don’t take what isn’t freely given, and life is the most precious thing of all,” the first time Bridget had taken up a sword?
Of course not. So she’d just avoid him. It was for the best.
“Nah,” Bridget said, keeping her tone light, hanging up her cloak so it could drip forlornly onto the flagstone floor. “Too obvious.”
“Excuse me for not wanting to have to excavate somebody’s better features,” Neil said, opening the trunk. “You don’t have the moral high ground because you’re obsessed with the way the light catches a neck, or whatever.”
Bridget was not obsessed with necks. She had a fine appreciation for them, that was all. They were nice. Soft, sensitive. Held up the head. All good stuff.
“This whole thing is obviously going to be a disaster,” Neil said, holding up a dry tunic. “What do you think of this, for dinner? Are we trying to impress anybody?”
“No,” Bridget said, glancing in the mirror. She needed to cut her hair. Her fringe had grown so long she could part it like curtains and tuck it behind her ears.
There was a knock at the door, and Neil went to open it.
“Oh,” he said, dipping into a bow. “Your Highness.”
“Hi, Neil,” said Gwen. “I like your mustache.”
Bridget’s shoulders relaxed. Gwen had come to see her; everything was going to be okay.
“Thank you,” Neil said primly. “At least some people appreciate it.”
“I didn’t say a damned thing about it,” Bridget said, taking off her gloves and laying them out on the windowsill nearest the fire to dry, keenly aware of Gwen in her doorway.
“Your silence,” Neil said, drawing himself up to his full height, “spoke volumes.”
“Hot water, please. Now.”
Neil rolled his eyes, and Gwen stepped aside so that he could leave the room. Bridget took off her jacket and belt and hung them off the back of the chair by the hearth. Gwen had wandered over to the window by the time Bridget turned to look at her properly.
“Things are different around here,” she said, trying for a smile, and Gwen shrugged, the blunt ends of her hair slipping over her shoulder.
She had put on a dress that was yellow-green and silken; it showed off her collarbones and did strange, exciting things to the milky tones of her skin. Bridget pointedly did not stare.
“Under new management. Lady Oakley, I mean, not Gabe. She’s got a lot of ideas. I think most of them are good.”
“Can’t imagine your brother agrees.”
“No, but he’s too scared to say no to her, so it all works out in the end.
She wants me to do the knighting ceremony, because it’s exactly the sort of thing he hates, and I’m the only one who can really do it with the right amount of seniority unless we drag my mother out of her tower and put a sword in her hand. ”
“How is she?”
The last time Bridget had been at Camelot, Gwen had returned from every meal with her mother looking slightly depleted, as if their mutual grief was distancing them, not drawing them closer.
Gwen took a deep breath. “All right actually. I mean—devastated, obviously, but better than she was. We’ve been getting along better too.
She said she didn’t really want to do anything ceremonial for a while; that turned into a sort of retirement from duties, and then she got really into weaving, and now that she’s less concerned with the goings-on at court, she’s become almost … mellow.”
“Good for her.” Bridget sat down, knowing she was going to ruin the chair, too tired to care. Gwen hovered, instead of taking the other, and in that moment Bridget realized she’d been wrong: Gwen was angry. Her jaw was tense, her hands clenched by her sides. Laughable that Bridget had missed it.
How did they move past this? Normalcy? Bridget had never been in a relationship long enough to know how to navigate this. She could try for normalcy. “So … who are you knighting?”
“Arthur. And Sidney. And your friend Adah.”
“Wow. Okay. Really is all change.”
Gwen blinked back at her, brow furrowed.
“Yes. I suppose so.” There was an awkward pause before she added, “It’s silly of course, because Arthur is already Lord of Maidvale.
He doesn’t need knighting to elevate his rank, it’s a lateral move.
But he insisted we do the proper ceremony and everything.
I think he’s going to ask everyone to call him Sir Arthur instead of Lord Delacey. It’s going to be very annoying.”
Bridget stretched out one of her legs, sore and still cramping from so much concentrated riding, and caught the moment Gwen’s gaze flew briefly to her thigh then returned determinedly to her face.
All hope wasn’t lost then. “Few inches of overshoot with the ceremonial sword will nip that in the bud.”
“Mmm,” Gwen said vaguely. Bridget was losing this game and she hadn’t even figured out the rules. Not normal enough? Too normal?
“How are you … feeling … about it all?”
Gwen didn’t seem particularly impressed, but she sighed and said, “I don’t know. I’ve never knighted anyone before. I don’t know if I have the … the gravitas.”