Chapter 21
Twenty-One
Elaine was waiting for us in the vestibule with a pair of white robes.
“Change into these,” she instructed. “I will lead you to your quarters.”
The robes were fine wool and scented with lavender.
I held mine to my nose as we followed her through the castle.
Unlike the chapel, the rest of the halls were well lit and inviting, with ornate rugs and impressive wood furnishings.
Everywhere I looked my eyes landed on some new painting or reliquary, a feast of clutter that distracted me from my thoughts of Lirius.
We passed by attendants carrying cakes and flowers. Were they for our arrival? We still didn’t know what Elaine wanted with us. Finally Galehaut asked her.
She turned to him, surprised. “Do you not know it’s Beltane?”
I knew of the holiday, a celebration between the spring equinox and summer solstice.
There were bonfires, cattle drives, and dancing.
Boughs of hawthorn adorned thresholds to usher in a verdant summer.
Giant’s Island embraced the holiday, but our home of perpetual summer had no need for such a festivity.
“Of course,” said Galehaut. “And we are intruding.”
Elaine stopped walking. She let out a laugh.
“Intruding? This is why I asked you to stay. Corbenic has seen better days. But no one does Beltane better.” With a curled smile she added, “And something tells me you will be fun guests.”
Elaine, it turned out, longed for friends just as we did.
We washed and dressed in the robes. I felt awkward in such attire, but Galehaut looked like a statue, his shoulders round and hard, his thick arms hanging loosely by his side. He was neither insecure nor confident, and as I regarded my reflection in the water basin, I envied his self-possession.
I had my mother’s eyes, her high cheekbones.
I had my father’s tousled hair. The idea that my parents also lived on, with people like the Fisher King, and others I had never met, was bittersweet comfort.
But now that I knew the sword’s origins, I realized that all my prayers to Danu had not gone unanswered.
They’d simply reached me by an alternative route.
Galehaut rested his head on my shoulder. “What are you thinking about?”
I am thinking about my parents. I am thinking about our night at the lake. I am thinking about what will happen when we return.
“Many things,” I said.
“Lirius will be fine.”
But will we?
“I hope so.”
“You are pondering the grail.”
I had told him the Fisher King’s story on our walk back, told him the secret of the sword. By now he knew about all my sword visions. I would not keep anything from him, especially not this.
It made sense that the sisterhood had not divulged the sword’s whereabouts.
Better for everyone to believe it remained missing.
Better for knights to go on futile quests to restore it.
Yet the grail, the most important of the three objects, the treasure that could secure the heart’s deepest desire and prolong life itself, was still out there.
“I think you will be the one to recover it,” Galehaut said.
I laughed, shoved him playfully. But he’d made the remark in earnest.
“The lake showed you that it was missing. The Round Table scene. The three objects that disappeared. The sword was showing you the moment Camelot learned the grail was gone.”
He was right, and I was intrigued by the grail’s properties.
“A cup that prolongs life,” I pondered. “Would you drink from it?”
Galehaut cinched his belt and looked up at me. The candlelight glinted off his deep brown eyes.
“Only if you did.”
Elaine was dressed in the same white robe. Her curly hair was plaited and tied in bows.
“I despise such trappings,” she said, gesturing to her painted cheeks. “Don’t laugh.”
“You look beautiful,” Galehaut assured her.
“Lower your heads.”
She crowned us with wreaths of white flowers, another Beltane tradition.
Then we saddled horses and rode to a clearing deep in the woods.
Along the way we passed the village—smaller than Sorelois, with granaries, a watermill and a stone bridge leading to the island’s last tract of arable land.
Vast stretches of Corbenic, I’d learned, had gone to seed, but I spotted signs of resilience by the river beds and on the outskirts of the woods.
Those who remained had what they needed to sustain themselves.
The clearing was already busy with villagers, all dressed in the same white robes, their complexions warm and happy in the glow of a massive bonfire.
“This is the best part of Beltane,” Elaine explained. “After the children are put to bed.”
We strolled around, taking in the wonders.
The sisterhood had small festivities for the solstice and equinox, but this was my first true holiday.
The music was unlike anything I’d ever heard, a swelling of voices and instruments, layers of harmonies, fast notes leaping with joy.
We passed by a woman pouring wine into cups.
Druids performed incantations around the fire.
A small crowd was cheering on a man who guzzled ale from a boot.
“Impressive,” Elaine assessed.
We slipped between dancers and clowns. Acrobats bent their backs in impossible angles, all of them brought to Corbenic on special boats by decree of the Fisher King. A drive of cattle circumambulated the fire and we let them pass.
“In the winter, the cattle graze in the valley,” Elaine explained. “But Beltane marks the day we herd them to higher pastures.”
“Will the Fisher King be here tonight?” I asked.
“Sadly, no. He is resting now. But he told me of your conversation today.” She grabbed a shell necklace from a table and draped it around Galehaut’s neck.
“I must admit, after my father tried to destroy the grail treasures, I was very angry with him. It’s his fault that we are in this situation. But I am thankful he did not die.”
“The sisterhood is partially to blame,” I offered.
She plucked two cups of wine from a passing attendant and handed them to us. “No. They saved us to begin with. If anyone else is to blame, it is Rome and their new ways.”
I had read of the new traditions in Rome, the people who prayed to just one god. But there were many ways of believing, many types of magic and prayer. I did not yet understand how such systems could be at odds.
“Enough talk of grails; I prefer goblets,” Elaine said, raising her wine. “Tell me about your training. Tell me about your lives.”
In the past I would’ve been reluctant to share, but as we wandered about, an easy conversation flowed between us.
Elaine was charming, with a quick dry wit, and a genuine interest in our origins.
I felt a kinship with her, but having Galehaut by my side also bolstered my confidence.
Elaine laughed when I stumbled through an explanation of time.
How until recently I did not truly understand it as a concept.
“But now it moves normally for you? What do you suppose… leveled it out?”
“I’m not sure,” I said, though looking to Galehaut I had an idea.
“Brisen!” Elaine shouted to a tall woman over my shoulder. She was dancing to the fiddles and drums, her eyes hazy with bonfire smoke.
“The ones I told you about,” Elaine said. “We were just discussing Rome, the new ways, mermen and the fickleness of time.”
“All my favorite topics,” she joked. “You won’t mind if I fortify myself before joining this discourse?”
Brisen turned to a table filled with mouthwatering confections and came back with her hands full.
“Here, you must try this,” she said to Galehaut, holding out a wedge of cake. “But only one piece. No more. It is the rule.”
As he took a bite his eyes lit up. The cake looked gooey and delicious.
“Here,” he said, extending the last bite to me. “Have the rest.”
I tossed the piece into my mouth. As my teeth cut through its dense outer layer, a flavor of fruit, not too sweet, burst against my tongue.
Suddenly I was a boy again on the docks of Sorelois, heart beating out of my chest, struck by the wonder of so many people, but spellbound entirely by the enchantment of one.
“Plum cake,” Galehaut said. “Your favorite.”
Brisen was a midwife, and Elaine’s best friend. After the grail treasures disappeared and Corbenic’s crops failed, an island of thousands became a village of less than a hundred, and there was less demand for her services. She moved into the castle at Elaine’s insistence.
“I like the castle,” Brisen said. “But I do miss the Corbenic of my youth.”
“Such is life,” Elaine added. “We long for the past, sometimes even when it was not so good.”
A profound sense of ease was settling into my muscles, warming my chest. My soul seemed to radiate outward, attaching to everything.
“Not me,” Galehaut said. “I don’t long for the past.”
“You are more future-forward?” she said. “A very knightly outlook.”
“I am not that either,” he said. “I’m simply right here.”
Just then an ember sparked through the air and landed at his feet.
He leaped over it, a good-luck tradition.
At every turn, townsfolk handed us sweet pies, slabs of pork, cups of clear spring water and sips of wine.
My neck bent under the weight of cockle-shell necklaces.
Braided flowers draped my body. I felt the people of Corbenic staring at me.
“He is stunning,” whispered one woman to her friend.
“The redhead, too,” said the other.
I looked at the stars. They seemed to blink and spin and I felt I was absorbing their energy, drinking it through my fingers.
The people of Corbenic were welcoming, joyful, a far cry from the aloof reserve of the sisterhood.
And the merriment of the people around us only accentuated my yearning for Galehaut.
“How are you feeling?” I asked him.
“Perfect.”
The fiddle struck up another song and we began to dance, kicking our feet in a circle, laughing uncontrollably, the firelight swirling around us.
I felt a hand on the back of my head. Elaine was pushing my face towards Galehaut’s.
When our mouths opened and our tongues met, I pulled back and looked around.
I did not know the customs of Corbenic, whether two men kissing might be met with punishment.
But the only one who seemed to notice was Brisen, who cheered.
Inspired, she grabbed Elaine by the waist and they too kissed—with the familiarity of people who had kissed each other many times.
When the song ended, Elaine and Brisen grabbed our hands, and a newfound sense of liberation washed over me. They led us to a moonlit grove, where other delights happened.
In the hard years to come, I would retreat into the hazy shimmer of that night again and again. At the time, Beltane felt like the beginning, not the end. A moment when everything faded to Galehaut.