Chapter 39
Thirty-Nine
Why did you come here?”
Gawain was walking to where our horses were tethered. He thrust a pile of furs against my chest.
“To rescue you,” he said. “You’re welcome.”
He jumped into his saddle.
“I didn’t need rescue.”
“Yes,” he said, kicking down the trail. “You did.”
I hopped on my horse. “Morgan was opening up to me.”
“Right.”
“She really was,” I insisted.
We were riding side by side. In daylight, I could see the forest’s well-trodden paths. It felt nothing like the wildwood labyrinth I’d navigated the night before.
“She knows where the grail is,” I added.
He yanked on the reins, stopping his horse abruptly.
“She told you that?”
“Yes.”
“And you believe her.”
“Yes.”
“You’re stupider than I thought.”
We rode for hours in agitated silence. I watched him. Loose hands, stiff back, legs splayed with nonchalant confidence. Even his horse, Gringolet, with its lustrous mane and flowing gait, seemed an extension of his excellence.
I’d made it clear from the outset that I did not want his friendship.
But the truth was, I admired him more than any other knight.
The eldest nephew of our childless king, he moved freely among the various factions of the Round Table, a link between competing perspectives.
It was no wonder he was always courting the most highly regarded women.
He had some hard edges, but he also treated everyone with genuine respect.
In the throes of grief I’d pushed him away.
But I had not done this to anyone else. Why did I feel the need to keep him at a remove?
After the baths that day we could have started over.
I could have blamed my saltiness on the stress of my first tournament and taken his death threat for what I now knew it was—a joke.
Instead I avoided him. But I didn’t dislike him.
The opposite. If anything, I felt unworthy of his light.
I could already anticipate how the coming days would go, how the story of Gawain’s so-called rescue of me would swell, further affirming his prowess and my incompetence. Did you hear of Lancelot? Captured by Morgan le Fay. Squire’s mistake.
Yet while others might dismiss her, I couldn’t write Morgan off so easily.
At the very least, her warnings about Merlin echoed Viviana’s.
Maybe his prophecies were meant to distract us.
Maybe he was intentionally creating chaos.
I had not seen him since the day he delivered me to Camelot, but if he came around again, I’d be vigilant.
We were still hours from home, riding through a forest outside Northgales, when a knight came crashing towards us at a convergence of two paths.
“Gawain, you bastard!” he yelled.
I was a few paces back. Instinctively, I unsheathed my sword.
A red surcoat covered the knight’s interlocking mail.
Had he fought in the tournament? A felled opponent?
I did not recall a red knight, but there had been so many competitors in Taneburgh.
His helmet was lowered, and the tip of his lance was aimed directly at Gawain.
I watched in horror as he surged towards him.
At the last second, Gawain lifted his shield, deflecting what would have been a lethal blow.
“Maleagant?” Gawain yelled, confused. “What are you doing alive?”
The knight circled back, ready to charge again.
I looked on helplessly, too stunned to move.
What was happening? Why could I not react?
I’d disarmed others, on numerous quests, but no one had caught us by surprise like this.
Gawain fended off another blow and this time his foe’s colt reared back, dislodging him.
As Gawain dismounted with his sword and shield, I stayed frozen on my horse.
My mind flashed to Bagotta. Our lessons in the meadow.
A knight must have two hearts.
The memory was enough to activate the tension inside of me.
I charged. The two were sparring and Maleagant had him on his heels.
Gawain had no love for me, but I didn’t want to see him die, especially not at the hands of my own ineptitude.
As Maleagant was raising his sword for a downward strike, my vision went crimson.
With one swooping motion, I knocked him in the side of the head with my shield.
I looked back. Maleagant lay motionless on his stomach.
“Not bad,” Gawain said, looking down at the felled knight, then up at me.
My heart was racing. Gawain knelt down and checked the knight’s pulse.
“Is he dead?” I asked.
“No.”
“Should he be?”
“Probably. But I am not in the mood. Are you?”
“No.”
“Fine then.” Gawain dragged Maleagant to the side of the road. Was this a common courtesy? His body left tracks in the dirt.
“But who is he?” I asked.
“Maleagant? One of the rebel barons. Broke off from Camelot years ago to align with Rome.”
Gawain brushed himself off and got back on Gringolet.
“Wait. That’s it?” I scanned the crossroads. No one else seemed to be coming, but I felt far from safe. “Shouldn’t we go a different way?”
“There is no other way.”
“But what if there are others?”
“Then we fight them.” He looked perplexed. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s nothing. Let’s ride.”
My heart was still pounding, the redness only now receding. I thought back to the long-ago kidnapping incident in Sorelois when I’d been too stunned to defend myself. The shock had nearly frozen me again.
As we rode through Northgales, I feared what this meant. What if I was caught unprepared? What if I couldn’t summon my strength when it mattered most?
Gawain ran a hand through his hair, unbothered. Was this what happened? Did the random attacks accrue, the skirmishes intensify, until the violence became an inhalation?
For others, yes. But not for me. I never grew inured.
We passed by numerous castles with crests I recognized, the many allied families of Camelot. Gawain drew up at a stone cottage just as the sun was setting.
“I’m stopping here for the night,” he said. “Keep riding if you want.”
Behind the cottage stood a barn, coop and kitchen.
“Does someone we know live here?” I asked.
“Dodinel. But he won’t be home.”
We were still a few hours from Camelot. As much as I longed for the solitude, I was bone tired and weak with hunger.
“Think there’s wine?” I asked.
He grunted in the affirmative and I followed him to the stables, where we gave our horses feed and water before settling in the kitchen. He’d brought enough food to share—dried meat, vegetables and bread with mold that scraped right off.
In silence, Gawain tapped a barrel and drew wine into a pitcher. I found two cups. The wine was slightly sour, but it warmed my chest.
Gawain ate his supper, licked his lips. I envied his coolheaded assurance, the distance he seemed to keep between his inner and outer worlds. If he hadn’t found me, I realized, I might still be at Morgan’s, parched and tethered to her chair.
“I forgot to say thank you,” I said, raising my cup to him.
He barely looked up. “For what?”
“For finding me at Morgan’s.”
“Oh.”
“How did you know I was there?”
He cracked his neck, made a point of sighing. “Aunt Morgan has a habit of this. Luring knights to her home, extracting information, playing with their minds. She put a spell on the woods. One is easily lost. But her magic is set up for kin to find her home.”
My heart ached at this poignant arrangement.
“Being her nephew, you found it,” I said.
“And gained entry,” he confirmed.
“Dramatically.”
A slight curl of his lips.
“Morgan has played tricks on me, too,” he added.
“Has she?”
Gawain took a long sip of his wine and stared at me. It was the first time since the baths that we’d made real eye contact. I could not help but note the sharp contour of his jaw, the dimple in his chin. His brown hair was lushly parted in the middle and swooped in layers just behind his ears.
“A few years back she set a test for me. She transformed herself into an old lady and colluded with a man, Lord Bertilak—perhaps you have heard of him as the Green Knight?—to create an elaborate moral trial involving, in part, the lord’s wife.”
“Moral trial? The lord’s wife tried to tempt you?”
“Yes. But I fended off her advances. All but her kisses. For those I received this.”
He lowered his head, revealing the scar running across the back of his neck.
“What was Morgan’s goal?”
“To expose me? Toy with me? I do not know.”
“And you do not trust her.”
“Not at all.”
“Do you trust Merlin?”
“Even less.”
He downed the last of his wine and washed his cup and plate. “Pallets are in the loft,” he said, and made to leave.
“Wait.”
“What?”
“If you don’t trust Merlin, why do you buy into his prophecy?”
“I don’t.”
“Then why do you seek the grail?”
“Because it is the right thing to do.”
“You have no other motive?”
“No.”
Dubious, I raised an eyebrow.
“Fine,” he conceded. “I want the glory. I believe I deserve it.”
It was true. Gawain had done more to burnish the legend of the Round Table than anyone outside of Arthur himself. He did deserve the glory of the grail.
I had an idea. An idea that somewhat scared me.
“What if we worked together?” I said.
“To find the grail?” He laughed. “No.”
“Why not? I don’t care about the glory. I’d let you have it.”
“Right.”
“I am serious.”
He washed his plate and cup, ignoring me. Then he made for the door.
“I’m off to bed,” he said.
“No, please.” I was desperate to locate the grail, to have my heart’s deepest desire fulfilled. Gawain could claim the achievement.
I tried to reason with him. “Gawain, as fellow members of the Round Table—”
“Fellow members?” he scoffed. “Have you been knighted?”
“You know what I mean.”
“No. I don’t.”
“Why do this? A knight shouldn’t—”
“You don’t know the first thing about being a knight.” His voice remained calm, but his green eyes widened. “You barely managed to attack Maleagant. Maybe you wanted him to kill me.”
“Is that truly what you think?”
“It would make sense, the way you treat me.”
“I saved you,” was all I could say.
“A rescue for a rescue then. We are even. Now spare me your fellowship. Spare me any foolish ideas of a partnership.”
He left the kitchen. I looked down at my wine cup. It was nearly empty. I filled it up and drank it down. Then I filled it up again.
By the time I entered the great room, candle in hand, Gawain was already asleep across a bench, nestled into a hay-stuffed mattress.
In the glow of my candle I could see the scar on his neck from the Green Knight.
And suddenly I knew. The sword’s final vision.
I’d seen him kneeling in the Green Knight’s chapel, ready to receive a fatal blow.
Even in that short flicker, I sensed his calm acceptance.
I was about to head to the loft to search for a pallet of my own, when I noticed he’d laid one out on the bench next to his.
I slept in snatches, never getting comfortable. By the time I did wake, it was sunrise and Gawain was out back, bathing in a stream.
I watched him splash water over his face and scrub his arms with an oilcloth.
He seemed to take an almost religious approach to hygiene.
He picked his teeth with hazel twigs. Rinsed his hair with lime and salt.
His hands were cracked and dry from vigorous washing.
He dressed immaculately, in tailored clothes. He looked every part the knight.
I joined him outside, the cold air jolting my cheeks.
“Thought you’d never get up,” he said, as I reached the stream. He was naked from the waist up, shaking his hair dry. The winter air goosebumped his skin.
I splashed my own face and said nothing. The cold water, a delicious shock.
“You aren’t used to the weather,” he said. “I can tell. Pampered prince from the Isle of Women.”
The contempt in his voice. Did he truly believe I’d considered letting him die yesterday at the hands of Maleagant?
“Pampered? My birth parents died the day I was born. I did not know I was a prince. I spent my days doing every imaginable chore. And I certainly did not grow up like you in Camelot.”
“I didn’t,” he mumbled.
“Orkney then. You are the son of a king and the nephew of a king. I didn’t even know my name.”
He looked up, held my gaze.
“You didn’t… know your name?”
“Not until my training began.”
He let out a surprised laugh.
“Mock me if you want. I don’t care what you think.”
“It is not that. Ha… I…” He was staring at me now with blinding intensity. I had to look away.
I could see his shivering muscles, the sad downturn of his mouth. One of his eyelids, I now noticed, drooped slightly lower than the other.
Cracks in the shell. The light poured in. Before he even said another word, I felt the knot within me beginning to uncoil.
“It’s just that… I didn’t know my name either.”