Chapter Twenty-Seven #2
Fae or not, she was clearly a local witch, a risky thing to be in certain parts of England, and perhaps certain parts of Wales too.
Cultists revered and loved witches despite little evidence of actual magic; good Catholics despised witchcraft, and went to great lengths to terrorize suspected witches in their communities.
Bridget, although not a cultist, had always felt a certain amount of kinship with them.
Anyone who was at risk of being chased out of town for unchristian behavior was likely a friend of hers.
She didn’t believe that the craft they practiced was necessarily real, but she also didn’t believe that you could treat swollen eyes by tying a crab around your neck, as some physicians—men of science, supposedly—liked to recommend.
The woman went to the fire and said, “I would offer you seats, but I only have two chairs, and they have another purpose.”
“That’s all right,” Gabriel replied. “Sorry to ask, but are you … you’re the Lady of the Lake?”
“Yes and no,” said the Lady. “Would you like some tea?”
From somewhere by Bridget’s ear, Adah whispered, “Don’t drink it. Never accept tea from a hippie in a remote location.”
“What was that?” said the Lady. “You want tea also?”
“Oh,” said Adah, startled. “Yes, please.”
“Good, good, I will make everyone tea.”
The tea was an infusion of bitter herbs in hot water. Everybody pretended to drink it, except Sidney, who showed it to Arthur, shrugged, and started sipping away.
Gwen put her tea down on the crooked windowsill, perhaps so she could pretend she’d forgotten about it. Bridget wished she’d thought of that. “So, sorry, just to clarify—you are the Lady of the Lake people have been talking about?”
“That depends. What do they say?”
“That you live half the year in the lake and the other half on land, and perhaps turn into some sort of swimming creature,” said Gabriel. “And that you give magical gifts and grant wishes.”
“Oh! All that! Ha. Yes, why not.”
“You live in the lake? You turn into an animal?”
“Hmm? Well, sort of. Aren’t we all animals? I’m glad you have come. It is a difficult time for all of you. Who will come and sit with me first?”
“Sit with you?” said Sir Hurst, with utmost suspicion. He’d already upended his cup into a bucket by the door.
“Yes, that is what the chairs are for. But you must come one at a time.”
“The king does not go anywhere unescorted.”
The Lady thought, drumming her broad fingers on her hip. “You can see the room first. And pat me down for weapons. And then you will know it is safe, and we will all sit. Yes?”
“No. Look, we came to check if you’re the Lady of myth, and you obviously aren’t, so we’ll be on our way.”
“Then there is no magic for you,” she said sadly. “I think to have come all this way, you must be in need of it.”
Gabriel surprised Bridget by saying, “That’s fine, Sir Hurst, we’ll do as she said.”
Sir Hurst was unamused, but that was his perpetual state of being; he went next door with the Lady and completed whatever searches he deemed necessary, and when he came back out, he was red in the face and she was chuckling.
“I showed him everything,” she said. “He knows I have nothing to hide. All right. Who first? You.” She pointed at Bridget without pausing for any other volunteers. “You will sit.”
Bridget handed her untouched cup to Sidney, who immediately started drinking it, and followed the lady inside. The doorway was so small she had to turn sideways slightly to fit through it, and the Lady laughed and clapped her on the bicep approvingly.
The second room was just a table and two chairs.
In the middle of the table, a stack of cards; when Bridget sat down on the chair she was ushered to, she saw by the light of one sputtering tallow candle that they were incredibly finely made, painted in bright, expensive scarlets, blues, and greens, and finished with delicate gold accents.
They were completely incongruous here, in the middle of nowhere in this hut, and would have been notable even at court. They must have been worth a fortune.
“Beautiful, aren’t they?” said the Lady. “Italian, like my mother. Have you played this game, with cards?”
“Card games? Yes.”
“Have you asked them to tell you the story of yourself? The things you’ve forgotten you know?”
“Um … no.”
“A shame. Nobody wants to know about themselves these days. They only want to show people who they think they are.”
“Yeah,” said Bridget unconvincingly.
She was starting to feel uncomfortable. Despite the chill outside, it was very close in this room, and the candle smelled strongly of weird meat. She didn’t particularly want to know what pronouncements this woman was going to make about her either.
“I see you hate this,” said the Lady, “so I will make it quick, because I am not cruel. We will draw for the challenge you face now and for the dream of your future, should you overcome it.”
She spread the cards across the table with a sweep of her hand, and then said, “Choose.”
“Me? I thought you’d do it.”
“I would choose if I wanted to know my own challenges,” said the Lady. “But I already know my roof has a hole and the weather will turn this week, so there you go. Choose two cards.”
Bridget thought it would play too much into the ridiculousness of it all to spend much time thinking about this meaningless choice, so she pulled out two cards almost at once, and the Lady smiled.
“Decisive,” she said. “I like it. Now we will turn them over.”
She revealed the first card. It looked to Bridget like a blond man with very tall hair and vivid green hose doing a dance; it was only when she looked closer that she realized he was hanging by one foot, and that she was looking at the scene upside down.
“The Traitor,” said the Lady. This didn’t sound promising. “You see he is reversed? He tells of useless sacrifice, of things given that were not demanded. A failure to give what is really needed. Dominance of the ego, an obsession with success, perhaps. What do you think?”
Bridget was growing more irritated by the second. “About what?”
“Does this ring true, O great knight of the round table? Are you plagued by ego? Have you given too much of yourself away? Lived for others, when they had not asked you to?”
“No,” Bridget muttered, but she sounded so annoyed that the Lady laughed, which made her slump farther down in her chair.
“All right,” she said. “Let us turn over the next card, the dream of your future…”
A tall, blocky skeleton with too much face stood on a green lawn, a blue mountain ridge on the horizon, a striped bow in one hand and a primitive arrow in the other. Bridget didn’t need to know anything about cards to intimate that this was also bad news.
“Ah,” whispered the Lady. “Death.”
“Great,” said Bridget. “I’m going to die. Are we done?”
“Well, you might die tomorrow. You might die in sixty years, happy and fat in your bed with a maiden in each hand. That is not what the card means.” Bridget was still stuck on a maiden in each hand as the Lady leaned toward her.
“It means that endings, young knight, are necessary for new beginnings. Sometimes we must let go of the things we have held dear to us … our egos, perhaps, or the people we have tried to be to appease others, even the things we once loved that no longer serve us … so that we can be reborn.”
Bridget looked down at the grinning skull and shivered despite herself, discomfited in ways she couldn’t explain.
Had it always been this cold in here? This dark?
The room, lit with just the one candle, suddenly felt so far from the rest of the world that it was as if they were floating in the night sky, playing cards by the light of a single star.
“Now,” said the Lady, slapping the table and breaking the spell, the room just a room again, “we are done.”