Chapter Thirty-Five
Thirty-Five
The journey out of Wales was miserable.
The weather truly had turned, just like the Lady had said, and they awoke to frost on the ground and their breath crystalizing into clouds before them.
There was an air of exhaustion about the party as they all gathered down in the ward.
Gwen didn’t emerge until it was time to leave, and when she did, her hair was braided severely away from her face; she looked pinched and sleepless, and didn’t even glance in Bridget’s direction.
There was churning unease in Bridget’s stomach, her throat.
She regretted … not what she’d said, necessarily, but how she’d said it.
How it had hurt Gwen. It was unbelievable that she could so casually suggest Bridget throw away the work of her life …
but there’d been no malice in it. Bridget had just been so very angry, and now that she’d had the night to stew, she realized she was also feeling immense disappointment.
She didn’t want to be disappointed. That would mean she’d accepted what Sir Bowen had said might be true, and that could not be allowed to happen.
For his part, Bowen didn’t seem particularly upset with her. She found herself alongside him as they mounted their horses, and she said, “I didn’t mean to—” and he said, “Your belt’s on backward, Leclair,” and that was that.
“I lost you last night,” Neil said. “Where were you? I needed to borrow some money.”
“You’re my employee, Neil,” Bridget said tonelessly. “I’m not your father.”
“No,” said Neil, “and thank God. I need a firmer hand, I’ve been running amok.”
It took them two days to reach the next village on the schedule, during which Gwen kept a carefully calculated distance from Bridget at all times, always traveling with Gabriel, Arthur, or most likely both of them—they seemed to have finally made up, and were rarely not touching—and taking her meals apart.
By the time they reached the inn where they were to lodge, Bridget was dejected beyond speech, furious at herself, the world, and everyone in it.
She hadn’t slept more than a few hours a night since the storm on the castle roof.
Adah took one look at her face and suggested that they go for a run and then spar before dinner.
Bridget trudged silently along a country track in her wake, and then, when they returned to the courtyard outside the inn, they traded blows back and forth until the sweat was pouring down Bridget’s forehead beneath her helm.
“All right,” Adah said, out of breath. “You’re scary today, I get it. You want to talk about it?”
Bridget knew what she was supposed to say, but still said, “No,” and then felt horrible about that too.
“Okay. Go fight Leonard or Bowen, because I’ve got nothing left to give.”
Leonard and Bowen could not be persuaded out from the glow of firesides and warm baths into the cold, so Bridget went and bathed too, then fetched food from downstairs to eat in her room and went to bed early, just for the sweet relief of no longer being conscious.
In the morning, she was surprised to find Sir Hurst at her door.
“You’re wanted for the school visit,” he said.
Bridget squinted past him out of the window; the watery sun was higher in the sky than she’d expected. She must have slept in.
“Why?”
“Not a mind reader,” he said. “Maybe because of your winning personality in the morning. Or maybe the children will find you novel and interesting.”
Bridget rolled her eyes, then threw soft furnishings at Neil until he got off his cot and came to armor her.
“Are you going to tell me why you’re sulking?” he asked. “Or am I just going to have to guess?” When she said nothing, he sighed. “Oh goody, how I love to play this game.”
“Don’t,” Bridget said sharply. “I mean it, Neil.”
Something in her tone must have conveyed the depth of her despair, because he immediately shut up, a rare treat. They walked to the school, as it was just across the village, and discovered that Gwen, Gabriel, and the guards were already there.
Adah arrived just after Bridget.
“Why’d they ask you to come?” Bridget said, and Adah shrugged.
“I’m handsome. And friendly.” Bridget grunted in disbelief, and Adah laughed. “Your presence, on the other hand, is a total mystery.”
Sir Hurst shepherded them around to the back of the school, where a small gaggle of girls in torn stockings and too-big tunics were waiting.
“Here you go,” he said to them, like he was offering lackluster Yuletide gifts. “Lady knights.”
“You’re Lady Bridget?” said the tallest of the girls, who seemed to have been elected their leader. She had removed her plait from her mouth to say it, but immediately put it back in.
“Sir Bridget,” said Adah, when Bridget said nothing. They seemed to take this entirely in their stride.
“Sir Bridget,” said a smaller girl, with four missing baby teeth and her hair in intricate braids, “I saw you at the tourney in Shotwick. I had a hot pie, but then I dropped it and I was sad, but then I didn’t mind. I’m going to be a knight.”
“I saw you too,” said the taller girl, speaking around her hair this time. “I’m going to be a knight as well.”
“I’m not going to be a knight,” said another girl, fair-haired and sullen.
“We don’t care, Lily.”
The girl sidled up to Adah, brow furrowed. She had very full, red, pouty cheeks. “But I want to hit boys,” she said. “I want to hit them really hard, so it really hurts.”
“Here we are,” said a round-faced brunette woman, appearing from inside the school building with a basket full of kindling. “Wooden swords, for all. Good day to you both, we thank you for coming.”
She lowered the basket, and it was set upon by eager girls, grabbing sticks and then hitting them against the ground and each other to test them for size and durability.
The woman, who must have been the teacher, caught the expression on Bridget’s face and sighed. “The girls wanted to be trained by lady knights. The princess said you wouldn’t mind running them through some … drills, I think she called it. But if you don’t have the time…”
“No, no,” said Adah. “We’ve got time. You’ve got sticks.
It’s a match made in heaven.” She picked up a stick from the basket, hefted it like it weighed a ton, then dropped into a fighting stance.
“Everyone grab your swords and watch me and Sir Bridget. In ten minutes you’ll be a legion of knights such as the world has never seen …
Oops, watch your stick there, Lily, none of you have helms on. In fact … let’s avoid faces entirely.”
At first, Bridget felt foolish, annoyed that she’d had this task forced upon her, but there was something about the combination of all those violent, serious faces looking up at her and the soothing repetition of returning to beginner drills—all the things she’d practiced with her father, day after day in their courtyard, until she was sent to train elsewhere—that felt like a balm to her wounded heart.
There was a brief and terrifying interlude where one of the girls did actually manage to draw blood from the other, but it was just a graze, and the injured party bravely agreed that they should carry on.
“Head up,” Bridget said, walking down the ranks of little soldiers. “Unclench your fists, Emma, nobody’s trying to take your sword from you. Yet.”
“Is it true,” said Emma, the tall braid-chewer, “that you pulled the sword Excalibur from the stone?”
“No,” Bridget said. “It was a novelty replica. Don’t lean so far forward.”
“My father said that, but my mother said that even so, it was welded to the stone.”
“Well, were they there?”
“No. And that’s good, because lots of people died.”
“Yep,” said Bridget.
Lily looked confused. “But you didn’t die.”
“No.”
“That’s good. Oh, oh, Sir Bridget, my stick has mud on it and now my hand is dirty.” She held her hand up as if expecting Bridget to wipe it for her. Bridget just walked away, to tell one of the tall twins at the other end of the line to stop trying to garotte the other with a length of string.
At the end of their impromptu training session, Adah suggested that she and Bridget demonstrate a duel with real swords. Even the boys came outside to watch, and by the end were cheering on whichever knight they had decided deserved the win, which seemed to be about an even split.
Without discussion, they decided on an equal fight, taking it in turns to land blows.
Bridget had lost track of time completely when she realized that Gwen, Gabriel, Sir Hurst, and the guards had come to watch, obviously done with their tour and ready to depart.
Bridget’s gaze flicked over to Gwen’s face for just a second; she was watching very closely.
It was really Adah’s turn to win, but suddenly Bridget had something to prove; she hit her hard, their swords clashing at a right angle that slid into a cross formation, and then drove her into the ground until she was on her knees.
“Jesus, Leclair,” Adah grunted. “I yield, you maniac.”
Shouts of joy and groans of disappointment rose from their spectators, and then Bridget offered Adah an arm and pulled her to her feet.
They said their farewells to the girls, who instantly fell into despondency and begged them not to go.
Adah told them to keep up their practice, and then, when they were still bereft, gathered them to her and whispered the secrets of obtaining knighthood—to train, to be a cupbearer first, then a squire—and the girls all listened seriously, and nodded, and swore they would follow her instruction, except for Lily, who said she was going to be a unicorn.
Some of the storm raging inside Bridget had stilled, but on the way back through the village, a group of teenaged boys sitting on the top of a wall started jeering.
“Freaks,” one of them shouted, and the others laughed in triumph.
“Ignore them,” Adah muttered, and Bridget did try, but as their general insults devolved into something far nastier and more specific, the hand clenched on her belt only closed tighter. As Bridget and Adah passed, one of the young men hopped down.
“You’ll get what’s coming to you,” he hissed, before spitting on the ground at their feet.
He was too close—mere feet away from Gwen and Gabriel—and Bridget’s knife was at his throat before he’d had time to lick his lips.
“Sorry, sorry, it was just a joke!” he squeaked, his face paling, and Bridget let go of him and shoved him away, rejoining her party before most of them knew what had happened.
Gwen was watching though, having turned and only caught the end of it. When Bridget met her eye, she sighed, and turned away.