Chapter Thirty-Three
Thirty-Three
And so the King met Prince Owain of Wales, and he did cry in all this country a great feast shall be held in honor of the King’s coming, and no man may come but if he dance, and so the King
And the King, who was passing kind, did choose to dance with
And when the time came to dance
***
—FROM AN EARLY DRAFT OF THE QUESTS OF KING GAbrIEL AND HIS ROUND TABLE BY SIR FLORIAN ARDEN
“I have no idea,” Sir Florian said, watching the dancers, “how I’m supposed to write any of this down.”
Bridget, who was taking a break from the dancing, shrugged. “You’ll have to ask the king.”
“I will,” Florian said. “Later. He’s … busy.”
Gabriel and Arthur were still out there. Not always together, but the way these dances worked, even when they were flung apart, they always ended up coming back around to each other.
“Not like it’s going to be much of a secret.”
“No,” Florian said thoughtfully. “I suppose not. And there is … It must mean quite a lot to some people, as the new laws did. To have grown old and never been able to love someone in full view…” He flushed. “Sorry, I know this isn’t exactly academic to you.”
“Do you now?”
“I have suspected … but don’t worry. As I’ve told the king, I consider myself an ally to your cause.”
“An ally,” said Bridget. “That’s nice.”
“I hope I’m not being patronizing.”
“No.” Bridget shook her head. “Well. Just a bit. But you’re trying to be kind.” She liked Florian, or what she’d seen of him on this quest anyway. He was kind of quiet. Friendly. A nice guy, and surprisingly normal for this family.
Plus, he wasn’t at all weird about the fact that she’d killed his father, so she owed him some grace.
Back in Bridget’s grandparents’ homeland, conquered lords were left in place, sending their children to their overlord’s states—mueangs—to marry and fight for them, friendly hostages, while the conquered fought for the winner’s causes.
It felt strangely fitting for Florian to be here, riding under Gabriel’s banner.
Bridget wondered if he felt at all like a hostage.
“I imagine it hasn’t been quite this easy everywhere?” Florian asked.
Bridget surveyed the room. Some of those who hadn’t left but clearly didn’t approve had flocked to the edges of the hall so that they could mutter alarmedly together.
“Might not be that easy here either.”
“But if the king were to go public,” Florian prompted, “to proclaim that he is courting a man … that might move the needle quite considerably, would it not?”
“Could do,” said Bridget. “Or it could make things worse, for the people who need it. The ones who said those letters were fake and the king was godless are already out for blood. And it’ll add fuel to that fire—course, he’d have said he found love letters between Sir Lancelot and King Arthur. Suits his agenda.”
“You think they’d say he falsified them? The letters? But experts have—”
“People don’t like experts,” Bridget said glumly. “Unless they’re backing up exactly what they already believe. Plus, it’d put an enormous target on his back. Or … an even bigger one. People might decide that, king or not, it’s past time to kill him.”
“Do you look for assassins in every room?”
“Yep,” said Bridget, her mood soured. “Because, sometimes, I find them. Excuse me.”
Gwen was now dancing with a stranger, a dark-haired and handsome Welshman who kept smiling bashfully at her every time the steps required them to meet face-to-face. Bridget wasn’t going to put any sort of stop to it, but she did want to be in knife-throwing range, should the need arise.
She was crossing the hall, not taking her eyes off Gwen, when Sir Bowen stepped into her path.
“Sorry, Bowen,” Bridget said, trying to weave around him, “I’m just—”
“Being paranoid and overprotective? I’ve heard.”
“Why do you think we have guards here, if there’s no risk?”
“Why do you think we have guards here, if you’re going to act like we’re entirely unprotected regardless? Come on, I want to talk to you.”
Bridget glanced at Gwen again, and then followed him reluctantly from the hall and into a side chamber, which contained a table, chairs, some sauce-soaked trenchers, and three mostly demolished pies.
“Did Gwen put you up to this?” Bridget asked warily. Bowen ignored her.
“Do you know why horses sleep standing up?” he said, sitting down at the table, picking up a knife, and probing hopefully at one of the pies.
Wrong-footed, Bridget frowned and sat down too. “Do I … What?”
“Horses. Not always of course, but sometimes.”
“I don’t see what that has to do with—”
“Well, I’ll tell you,” said Bowen, finding a soft cut of meat and spearing it happily.
“Because they’re prey animals. They’re conditioned from years and years of running away to be ready to flee at a moment’s notice.
So they can doze off standing, but then if a bear or a pack of wolves comes along, away they go. ”
“Is this a metaphor?” Bridget asked miserably. “I don’t like metaphors.”
“No, I’m being very literal. They’re flighty because they have to be.
Danger is around every corner. And I think after you’ve been at war, you feel the same way.
It’s such a big, terrible thing that it gets woven into your system, and it’s hard to get rid of it.
We called it battle nerves, or soldier’s heart.
Makes you tired, frightened; sometimes you feel like you’re back there on the field.
After that, you’re always sleeping standing up. ”
Bridget looked down at her hands, because looking at Bowen right now would have been excruciating.
“But you’re not like that,” she said. “Are you?”
“No,” said Bowen, “because some people are, and some people aren’t, and it seems almost … random. I’ve seen an enormous warrior turn pale and weep at the sight of a paper cut, and I’ve seen boys scarcely old enough to spit escape unscathed. It’s not about weakness, it’s not about failure.”
“And how do you fix it?” Bridget said, impatient to get to the happy ending where the problem was solved and she never had to think about it again. “How do I go back to how I was before?”
Bowen put down his knife. “You know you wouldn’t be that person anymore anyway, Bridget. There’s not … some good, perfect version of you that existed before, and some broken version now, all because of that one battle.”
“I would be that person,” Bridget said, frustrated. “Or at least I would be … better.”
“Maybe,” said Bowen. “Maybe not. Different, perhaps. Better? Impossible to say.”
“This isn’t helping,” Bridget said, getting up, embarrassed by how loud her voice was. “Just tell me what they do next? The soldiers who came back wrong.”
Bowen was looking at her very kindly, which was of course awful.
“If they’re unlucky, and most of them are, they can’t quit.
They turn mercenary, or end up at war again, and sometimes it breaks them completely.
If they’re lucky … they retire. Heal. Talk about what happened to them.
Put down their swords, find another way to make ends meet. ”
“That’s bullshit,” Bridget snapped. “They just give up?”
“Bridget—”
“Sorry, Bowen, but no.”
“I’m not saying you have to be someone completely different, I’m just trying to—”
“No.”
She couldn’t stand to be in this room anymore, listening to Bowen articulate her worst fears.
She stormed out and found herself in the Great Hall, where the noise and smells and sounds of merriment were too much to handle.
There was a door to her left and she took it, discovered a staircase, and followed it up six floors, seven floors, eight, until there was nowhere else to go but outside, onto the battlements of the northwest tower.
It was freezing; the wind blowing in off the sea felt like the flat scrape of a knife, but at least it was so painful and urgent that it mirrored her anger.
Retire. She wasn’t going to retire. Ever.
Or at least, not for twenty years. Forty.
She’d worked her whole life for this, and it was only just beginning.
She was nineteen years old. So many years ahead of her, and they were going to be dedicated to one sole purpose. Her calling.
Retire. Ha. I’d be better off dead.
“Bridget?” Damn it. Gwen had followed her.
Bridget’s eyes flew to the doorway behind her, the door gaping open. This was a dead end, with only one exit that wasn’t an eighty-foot drop onto hard, unforgiving rock. Stupid place for a princess in a foreign land to be, unguarded.
“Go back inside,” Bridget called over, trying to hide the tremble in her voice.
“Jesus, it’s freezing. You come back inside!”
“Just give me a minute,” Bridget said, shaking her head. “I need…”
“Bridget, it’s so cold.” She had her arms wrapped around herself, her silken dress useless against the weather. She didn’t go back inside. She approached Bridget instead. “What are you doing out here?”
It was all too much, suddenly. She couldn’t keep it in.
“Did you ask Bowen to talk to me?” Bridget asked, over the noise of the driving wind. “Did you tell him what’s been going on?”
“Yes.”
Bridget’s hands clenched into fists. “You said that talking about it would help.”
Gwen was within touching distance now, but she stayed there, a couple of feet away. She dragged her hair away from her eyes, blinking, her skin already white from the cold. “It didn’t help?”
“No,” Bridget said, suddenly feeling so full of despair she could have fallen to her knees right there on the parapet, and never gotten back up. “He said it can’t be fixed. I can’t be fixed. He said I should retire.”
“Well…” Gwen struggled for words for a moment. “Should you?”
“You can’t be serious,” Bridget choked out. “You actually think I should give up? You think that would be good for me?”
“I don’t know, Bridget. It might help, if you just—”
“How could you say that to me?”
Gwen looked thunderstruck for some reason. Bridget didn’t think she was talking that loudly. “What? Bridget … come inside, please. I can’t talk about this properly out here. I can’t even hear myself think.”
“This is who I am!” Bridget shouted. “This is who I was always meant to be. There is nothing else for me. If I can’t fight, can’t better myself, serve the realm, protect people—I’m nothing. It’s why I’m like this, why I’ve always been like this. It made sense of everything. It’s what I’m for.”
Gwen was staring at her, hair whipping in the wind, eyes streaming.
She looked concerned in a way that made Bridget feel about a foot tall.
She didn’t understand. Why had Bridget thought that she would understand?
She’d always been a princess. Bridget had molded herself into a knight; beaten it into her body like a blacksmith laboring over a sword, finding the shape that had always been hidden inside, the potential to be a weapon, and refining it to a sharp point.
Nothing had ever felt more right than sliding on her gauntlets, raising her blade, hearing Sir Bridget spoken with respect.
Things were supposed to be getting better—Bridget had been trying so hard. But all that talking, the sharing of feelings, had just led her here, to the worst she’d ever felt in her life. It had all been for nought.
“I think you’re brilliant. I think there are lots of things you could be,” Gwen said eventually, and Bridget shook her head again, utterly miserable.
“Then you don’t know me at all.”