Chapter Nine #2
“You do,” Bridget said truthfully. “You do now.”
She’d always loved it when Gwen blushed. It wasn’t pink and delicate; she always went strikingly red from her shoulders to her forehead, like she’d not just caught the sun but been walloped around the head with it.
This was different to her usual blushes. Angrier.
“Good to know,” she said stiffly, and Bridget knew with sudden clarity that she was doomed.
It wasn’t as if she’d expected a glowing reception, walking back through the gatehouse after so long away and weeks without sending word, but she’d pushed it down—along with a great many other thoughts—to be dealt with at a later date.
Now she was beset with roosting chickens. Gwen opened her mouth, about to say something, probably something that couldn’t be unsaid, so before she could, Bridget asked, “Have you seen one? A knighting?”
Gwen paused, and shook her head.
Bridget looked at her—the way she was standing, holding herself with her arms crossed over her chest, the unlikely clean lines of her hale and whole fingernails, the little defensive tilt of her chin—and decided she’d have to deal with this the only way she knew how: going down fighting.
“I have,” she said. “Come here. I’ll show you.”
“Come … there?” Gwen echoed, wrong-footed. That was something. It was better than anger, at any rate.
“You can knight me,” Bridget said, reaching over to where she’d hung her belt and unsheathing her shortsword. “Practice.”
“I don’t think—”
Bridget eased herself from her chair and knelt fully on the floor, a damp supplicant.
She offered Gwen the sword, balanced on the flat of her palms. Gwen was staring at her, face still hot, expression unreadable.
She took the sword eventually, weighing it in her hand.
Bridget wondered a second too late if it was wise to hand a weapon to the girl whose letters you’d been ignoring.
“You’ve been fighting,” Bridget noted, watching the way she shifted her body around the weapon to accommodate it; shoulders back, one foot forward for stability. They’d sparred together on occasion, but been too easily distracted from the task at hand for Gwen to make much progress.
“Yes,” said Gwen, looking down at herself and relaxing her stance. “I thought it … prudent. I don’t want to feel helpless ever again.”
“Good,” said Bridget. “That’s good.” Gwen didn’t smile, so Bridget cleared her throat, suddenly feeling foolish.
“You just have to ask me to … swear my allegiance to crown and country, give my body and my spirit in service, hold firm to the values of chivalry … There’s more, I don’t know it.
Then you touch the sword to each shoulder and then it’s … arise, Sir Whatever.”
“Or Lady Whatever.”
“Yes. Although…”
“What?”
“Sir Bridget,” Bridget said slowly, swirling the feel of it in her mouth like fine spirits. Lady had been grating, lately. It felt nothing to do with her, with who she was. Sir tasted better. “No?”
“Yes,” Gwen said immediately. It seemed to be the only thing they were going to agree on today. She renewed her fierce grip on the pommel, putting back her shoulders. “Go on then,” she said, combative again. “Swear it.”
Bridget shrugged one shoulder. “I really don’t remember the rest.”
Gwen leveled the sword at Bridget’s chest, just close enough to imply a real threat.
Bridget swallowed. When she spoke, her voice was gravelly. “I swear an oath this day to the king and to England, to uphold the most noble values of chivalry…”
She was watching Gwen’s face as she spoke, and for a moment it seemed like this tactic might work: Her lips parted slightly as Bridget maintained perfect eye contact, her pupils blown wide like a hunting cat’s.
The flat of the blade came to rest on Bridget’s left shoulder as she leaned closer, and Bridget thought, hopeful, Maybe this is one fight I’ll win.
“… to give my willing body and ready spirit…”
The weight of the sword shifted slightly, and Gwen frowned. “Willing body? You made that up.”
“That really is what you say,” Bridget said apologetically.
She didn’t want to lose her momentum, so it was now or never—she rose up on to one knee, gently pushed the sword aside with the back of her hand, and then let that hand fall to Gwen’s hip, her thumb and forefinger splayed wide across the top of the princess’s thigh.
Gwen stopped breathing. When she seemed to remember it was necessary, her efforts were valiant but somewhat shaky. Bridget was watching her intently, checking her face for tells, but was still caught off guard when she leaned down, buried her fingers in the back of Bridget’s hair, and kissed her.
Bridget was forced very suddenly to reckon with all the things about Gwen she’d been trying not to think about out there on the road: her unflinching purpose, her soft mouth and flighty hands; the fact that it was never enough to just kiss her without both of them feeling driven to move, to find some horizontal or vertical surface to brace against so they didn’t keep going until they fell out of a window.
There was something that felt like alchemy when they touched.
Bridget didn’t know if it was because of the way their bodies were put together, or the years they’d each spent acutely noticing the other from across courtyards and tourney stands, or if maybe it was something age-old and inevitable about knights and princesses doomed to want each other.
It didn’t matter which it was, but Bridget was fond of that last one.
She wasn’t romantic about many things, but she liked the idea of being Gwen’s cavalier; Gwen’s sword, forged to serve her.
Sort of ruled you out as devoted sentinel when you stopped replying to letters and avoided your princess entirely though.
Don’t think about it, Bridget told herself, if she’s not thinking about it.
It was actually quite easy not to, because Gwen’s dress had these stupid slits in the ends of the sleeves that were probably just for show—fashion, maybe?
Bridget had no idea what happened in the realms of fashion—but allowed access to long, smooth-skinned limbs, so that Bridget could run her hands up them with reverence.
Gwen’s skin was cool to the touch but warming up fast, and Bridget was just thinking it was probably about time to get up off the floor when everything came to a sudden halt.
Gwen stopped kissing her. She pushed her away, and in a flash she was … furious. Shit.
“Where the hell have you been?” she said, the point of Bridget’s sword scraping along the ground as she took a half step backward. Her face was still red, but her eyes were bright with angry tears now. Bridget had been right the first time. Doomed.
Bridget swallowed, her throat dry. “You know where I’ve been.”
“Obviously, Bridget, I mean—why did you stop replying to my letters? Why did you just vanish? I thought something might have happened to you, but I-I had someone check, and then when the results were published I knew you’d still been showing up to the tourneys.”
In the silence afterward, Bridget knew that what she said next would be very important. “I didn’t … know what to say.”
Gwen’s mouth fell open slightly, her lips pink with kissing, the rest of her now pinched and drawn. “What?”
“I still don’t know what to say.”
“Well, that’s … that’s just not good enough.
” She was talking with her hands, the sword punctuating every other word.
“We said you’d do the circuit again but that you’d write at least every week, and visit if you could when you were in the south.
That was the agreement. You get your freedom, as much of it as you need, and then you come back to me when you’re done.
You were there! You were the one who suggested it!
I even started to question if we’d had that conversation at all, when you went silent.
But I know that’s what we said, and God, Bridget, I’m so angry at you for making me doubt it.
It wasn’t fair. So … I’m sorry, but I’ve been waiting for six weeks to hear what you have to say for yourself, and I need you to say it. Now.”
What could Bridget say? My hands aren’t connected to my brain anymore.
Things that were once as easy to me as breathing are like another language.
My horse seems to hate me. I can’t stand the sight of sunlight glinting off a helm.
It distracts me. Everything distracts me; the world is made up of too many sounds, too many colors.
I used to know exactly who I was and what I was for, but now that’s all gone.
“Sorry.”