Chapter Sixteen
Sixteen
Bridget awoke the next morning feeling very strongly that she had been tricked.
She couldn’t believe she’d been willing to exchange a few kisses for deeply painful and embarrassing personal information, and wished now that she could take it all back.
Luckily there wasn’t much time to ruminate, because Neil had slept on a cot at the foot of her bed, and the second she opened her eyes he was jumping up like a hound begging to be walked.
“I’ve been awake for ages,” he groused. “That was the itchiest blanket in the world. It felt like sleeping under ants. What was yours like?”
“Normal. Normal blanket.”
“Normal?”
“Not ants.”
“Lucky. We’re setting off soon, I want to eat as much weird breakfast as possible before we do.”
Breakfast was indeed quite weird. Parsnip pottage, painfully tart damson jam, bread dotted with apricots (nice, but very sticky) and huge stacks of cold cuts with the mold conspicuously cut off.
Luckily there was no formal table, and Bridget was able to load a plate with various shapes and then eat in her room, listening to Neil review each item of food as he encountered it.
Then they launched right into the hubbub of packing up, the fast flow of a household in motion.
Bridget had barely had time to unpack her trunk, and now they were on the move again.
She didn’t mind. They’d spent such long weeks on the road traveling between tourneys, it was second nature to her now to have her boots ready by her bed and one foot already out of the door.
Bridget pulled on her cloak as she walked down toward the courtyard, and her fingers brushed against a letter tucked into the inner pocket.
It had arrived just before her departure from Camelot, and she’d glanced at it once before shoving it hurriedly out of sight.
She took it out again now, with inexplicable trepidation.
My dear Bridget,
Your mother and I are so glad to hear from you—and to learn that you are a knight of the round table has brought us immense joy.
This is what you have worked for all your life, ??.
We never doubted for a second that you would be great.
From where I write I can see the practice yard, and I cannot help but think of all the hours you spent there when you were small, the way you woke up each day determined to be better. It was all leading to this.
Be safe, work hard. ???????????????????? ?????????????????????.*
With love,
Your mother and father
*Where there is effort, there is success.
It was a nice letter. Good, even. She was lucky to have parents who weren’t ashamed that their only daughter spent her life parading around the countryside in armor, hitting men with sticks.
That they were proud, and often told her so.
Even if it hadn’t been the life they had once imagined for her.
Even if her mother had looked at her with such unbearable sadness when she’d returned home last summer—mere weeks after the uprising, when Bridget could still feel the bloodied sword Excalibur gripped tight in her hand—that it had nearly broken her.
No part of what they’d written should have made Bridget’s heart feel like it was being squeezed to jam between two millstones.
She hadn’t told them about all the tourneys that had ended in quiet disaster, the missteps and withdrawals—the sudden lack of certainty that had come from nowhere, made no rational sense, and therefore seemed to have no obvious cure.
What were you supposed to do when all the things that had been second nature to you before suddenly felt like a language you didn’t speak?
Her parents couldn’t know. If they were willing to be proud of her, it was her job to make them proud. If not at the tilting grounds, then here, as part of this new order. Anything less would be a disservice to all involved.
In the courtyard, there was a miasma of hangover in the air. Bridget had been far too shaken and on guard to drink more than a cup or so of wine, and had gone to bed as soon as Gwen had, although they had parted chastely in the hallway.
“You look very fresh of face,” Adah said, squinting in the thin morning sunlight. “Stop it.”
“I wasn’t singing drinking songs with Sidney Fitzgilbert long into the night.”
“Yeah. Wise. He’s good fun, until he gets too drunk and starts talking about his fiancée. I get it, she’s got perfect bosoms, she speaks three languages, whatever. I found a girl anyway.”
Bridget just looked at her.
“Highborn, discreet, I’m not stupid. One of the Fentman … cousins, I think. She asked if I could pick her up and carry her.”
“How could she have possibly guessed,” Bridget said dryly. “Your signature move.”
“I mean, I did sort of imply that I could do it. A lot.” Adah smiled at the memory, then winced. “I don’t know if I’m in the best frame of mind to hunt the Questing Beast today. You think it’s real? Head of a snake? Body of a leopard?”
“Legs of a snail,” Bridget added. “Face of an angel.”
Adah put one foot in her horse’s stirrup and then changed her mind and swung it back down, needing another moment to gather herself. “You are such a boring little nonbeliever.”
Bridget had beliefs. They were just based on this earthly plane. Her mother traded in blessings and offerings, amulets and talismans; her father mostly in practicality and common sense, things he could see with his eyes. She’d always been more her father’s daughter.
“Thought you were too. You give Elaine enough stick.”
“Yeah, but this is fun. I need you to lock in, because I drank a magic lake’s worth of wine last night, and the idea of hunting down a weird fucking collage animal is the only thing getting me on this horse.”
“You’re still not on the horse.”
Adah put her foot back up, then swayed slightly. “I’m working on it.”
They rode side by side once the party finally set off, in a companiable silence interrupted by brief observations.
Adah pointed out some cows, a crumbling ruin of a manor house, and a weird-shaped tree.
Bridget pointed out that Adah hadn’t secured her bags and was about to lose half her road supplies.
One of the things Bridget liked about Adah was that she never expected more from Bridget than Bridget wanted to give.
Unlike some people.
How was it that Bridget had gone away to prove herself, and had instead returned, scattered and confused, to find that Gwen was the one more herself than ever?
She looked damned good on a horse. The lush green of her gold-edged traveling cloak draped over her shoulders, the silk of her dress rippling across her legs, the cold wind pinkening her freckled cheeks.
There was something very enchanting about seeing her framed by all the pastoral scenery.
With a view like this, it was almost possible to believe in the unnatural beauty of the fae.
Not quite enough to convince Bridget of magical beasts roving the countryside, however. The road they were following became less defined, the country more wooded, until they pulled off to gather and receive instruction.
“We’re meeting John, one of the men who witnessed the Beast, and he’s going to lead us to the place,” Gwen said, taking charge, as she did so often these days.
“And I’m sure this doesn’t have to be said, but just in case—nobody is to laugh.
It doesn’t matter what he says he saw, or how ridiculous you think it might be.
If he saw a Beast, he saw a Beast. Arthur, I hope you’re listening, because I’m talking to you. ”
Arthur had been muttering to Sir Florian, their heads very close together, and shot Gwen a brief flash of a smile. “Of course I’m listening, my darling dove.”
Gwen mirrored his smile right back at him. “If it turns out to be a boar or a bear, please let’s exercise the appropriate amount of caution. Except Arthur. Arthur, if it’s a boar or a bear, feel free to investigate.”
“Well, I know you’re being horrid,” Arthur said, “but I will actually. I like boars and bears.”
It was a short ride to the small village; once they were there, they found not just John and his dog ready to guide them into the woods, but the entire village dressed for an outing, from the very elderly right down to the women with babes in arms. It wasn’t very practical—especially if the Beast was shy—but Bridget supposed that the opportunity to hunt for a legendary creature with the King of England was probably somewhat of a one-off for woodbound villagers.
They were nervous and shuffling at first, the children wiping their noses on their sleeves and glancing at each other askance, unsure what they were supposed to do in the presence of nobility, but then a gray-haired woman carrying a fire skewer came up to Bridget, held out her weapon to check the length against Bridget’s sheathed sword, then nodded with apparent satisfaction and went back to her friend.
It broke the tension somewhat, and everybody started chattering.
“Thank you for joining us,” Gwen said, raising her voice to be heard over the increasing volume of the crowd.
“We would be grateful if you could, er … circle the perimeter of the woods, to ensure that the Beast stays within. If you see it running toward you, encourage it to turn around. Peaceful encouragement,” she added quickly, watching two boys with sharpened sticks practice stabbing at the air. “We want to capture the Beast alive.”
“Alive?” said one young man, so appalled by this that the very idea seemed to have knocked his hat halfway off his head. “But it eats the pigs!”
“Does it eat the pigs?” Gwen asked the leather-skinned John, who was of stern eye and middling height.
“Oh, yes,” he said. “Or something does, anyhow. Takes big bites.”
“How big?” said Arthur, now paying uncharacteristically close attention.
John held up his hands and approximated a hole the circumference of his middle fingers and thumbs joined in a circle, then considered, and expanded slightly. “Large turnip,” he said. “Small gourd.”