Chapter 28
Twenty-Eight
Don’t give it to him.” Bagotta was straining against the knife, clutching the gash across her chest.
“Father,” said Delice, her voice tremoring. “Let go of her. I’ll fetch the antidote.”
As she ran out of the room, Brunor’s two guards rushed in, surrounding Galehaut with their swords. All of the fellow islanders, at least those capable of defending their homes, had gathered at the castle’s walls, lest the remaining legionaries breach the shore.
“Don’t do anything stupid, Galehaut,” Brunor said. “I don’t want them to hurt you. But I can’t promise they won’t.”
A minute passed and Delice returned with a ceramic bottle.
“Don’t give it to him.” Bagotta gritted against the knife. “He’ll kill me either way.”
“You take me for a monster, don’t you?” said Brunor. “But it is the other way around. I came here peacefully and have been poisoned by my very daughter.”
“Are you looking for sympathy?” Delice laughed. “That gash across our mother’s chest is the least of the wounds you’ve inflicted. You abandoned us. You betrayed our ways. And let us speak freely. You never cared for Galehaut.”
“That is not true.”
The thinness of his words. Galehaut had to look down.
“Oh yes it is. He never fit your mold. It was mother who showed him how to step into his power. You failed him. You failed as a father just as you failed as a knight of the Round Table. Even your lone brother is ashamed of you.”
At this, Brunor drove the knife into Bagotta’s stomach. She cried out in shock.
“Mother!” Galehaut screamed.
“That’s enough, Delice. Do you want to watch your mother die?” Brunor had the knife against Bagotta’s neck again. “Give me the bottle.”
In the time it took Delice to react, Bagotta seized the moment, biting the hand that held the knife and punching Brunor in the groin.
He keeled over and Bagotta kicked him in the stomach, but the guards were on her now, tossing her to the ground.
As she lay on her back, surrounded by sword blades, Brunor grabbed the dagger and drove it into her heart.
As his mother’s eyes went wide and still, Galehaut stood frozen, the scene before him illegible. Delice let out a guttural scream.
“That was for making things difficult,” he said to her. “Now give me the antidote.”
Delice, shaking, raised the ceramic jar. With a vengeful glare she uncorked it with her teeth and poured its contents through the floorboards.
“You fool!” Brunor shouted and charged at her.
Galehaut’s body snapped awake. The guards were on him quickly, but they seemed unsure whether to kill him or keep him alive, and in their hesitation Galehaut attacked, knocking out both with nothing but his fists.
He tackled Brunor to the ground, pinning him by the elbows, but Brunor managed to slide out of his grip. In one swift motion, Brunor reached for the dagger in his belt sheath, and rammed it into Galehaut’s side.
The dagger was finger length, with a silver pommel and leather grip.
It was in him up to the cross guard. The wound itself was not painful—Galehaut was too stunned to feel any real pain.
But as his father scrambled out from underneath him, a rush of air struck his bleeding stomach, and years of pent-up rage exploded through him.
His mother was dead, he’d failed to protect her, and the irreversible finality felt like fire on his skin.
In some wounded place he’d craved his father’s approval, even summoned, on his return, an ambivalent sympathy.
But his benevolence was gone now, burned to ash.
What remained was the scorching immediacy of the task at hand. The brutal activation of his training.
Galehaut charged towards the window where Brunor now stood.
He knocked his father to the ground and pummeled him until his face went pulpy like rotting fruit.
Galehaut had always been a methodical fighter, but now his rage had unraveled him.
He was solely focused on ensuring that his father felt, for the first time, the immutable pain he’d caused.
In his blind fury, Galehaut missed his father stretching for the knife yet again.
He barely felt it as it went into his stomach a second time.
Brunor flipped on top of him and was about to stab Galehaut in the heart when Delice pounced, landing a flurry of punches.
But Brunor made quick work of her, slicing the dagger across her throat.
From the floor, Galehaut watched as she grabbed at her neck, but he could not comprehend what was happening, what had happened.
He did not consider that Brunor was already near death, the henbane charting its final course.
His mind could only focus on the threat before him.
He attacked Brunor again, but Brunor stabbed him once more, this time in the chest, the first stab that Galehaut truly felt.
The knife, he sensed, had torn something that could not be repaired.
And then Galehaut felt his body being pushed towards the window. He felt the slap of shutters against his back. And then he felt weightless.
In free fall, his mind flashed one last time to Lancelot. And then he felt nothing at all.