Chapter 52
Fifty-Two
Gawain and I roved between the bonfires, munching on hazelnuts. Everyone was out in the square, tossing stones into the flames. Gawain and I did the same.
It was my first Samhain. The holiday took place every year at the beginning of November, when the divide between the human and spirit worlds was said to be permeable.
Samhain was a night for auguries and omens, elaborate costumes and masks.
We passed by ale tents and relic vendors, children dressed as wolves, birds, sprites and wildcats.
Priests divined meaning from tossed stones, as sisters of the new ways gathered with their rosary beads, lighting Hallowtide votives for their saints.
Gawain wore a mask fashioned with deer fur and antlers. He pointed to a group gathered by a water basin.
“Snap-apple,” he said. “Let’s play.”
I peered over the crowd, trying to get a sense of the game. Two contestants, hands behind their backs, submerged their faces in a barrel of water. They seemed to be pecking at the apples floating around them.
“That is supposed to be fun?” I asked.
I could feel his withering glare through the mask. A woman jolted her head out of the water, clenching an apple between her teeth. The crowd roared.
“Our turn!” he said, removing my clay mask. It was painted in saffron and lampblack to resemble a bright orange fox. Despite Merlin’s deceit, I still had fond memories of my fox friend.
“Lo!” barked an onlooker. “It’s Sir Lancelot and Sir Gawain!”
“Are they about to apple bob?” called another.
“My money’s on the White Knight.”
“His mouth is too small!”
“Gawain has the chompers.”
“But Lancelot has the jaw.”
Gawain lifted his hands to get their attention. “Perhaps a wager,” he said. “If Lancelot loses, a drink for all of you at the Olney Arms!”
The crowd roared.
“And if Lancelot wins, the round is on me.”
“We drink either way!” someone yelled, and the crowd erupted in even heartier cheers.
I dunked my head under. It was much harder than it looked, and the sensation was so foreign that I began to laugh, taking in water.
The waxy apples kept bobbing and sliding away from my mouth, and I sputtered and coughed, which only made me laugh harder.
I could hear the crowd cheering, calling our names, and felt Gawain’s shoulders jostling against mine, trying to box me out.
The water was cold. It burned my ears, but I didn’t care. I wanted to lock in this memory, to seal it in my mind. My face was soaked, eyes stung, but I was truly happy.
I heard a muffled roar and flung my head back, playfully sopping some of the crowd. Gawain displayed the apple in his mouth, eyes wide with victory. He took a bite and tossed it to me.
“Finally,” he said. “Something you can’t do.”
I sunk my teeth into the apple where he had bitten it. Then I lifted an eyebrow.
“To the Olney Arms,” I called. “Drinks on me.”
The crowd flowed with us to a narrow alley.
I followed Gawain down a few steps, ducking my head beneath a low-slung ceiling.
The inn was loud, the air sweaty, but a sparkling energy pressed against the windowpanes.
Night fell darker this time of year, making Camelot’s inns and taverns grow brighter.
I watched Gawain weave to the bar, anonymous again in his deer mask.
At the Olney Arms, discretion was its own form of currency.
Frauds and schemers rubbed shoulders with healers and nuns.
As revelers in costume packed the tables, a troubadour belted out a familiar song and everyone joined in, arms swinging, ale splashing, oil lamps swaying above us.
I told the bartender who I was and happily sponsored a round.
“How does it feel,” Gawain said, “to not be recognized?”
“Like a dream.”
We downed ale and joined the dancing. Gawain moved his feet to the fiddle’s swift music, his antlers nearly striking the rafters.
“This is a real party,” he said.
“I agree!”
After many rounds of dancing, Gawain pressed his mouth to my ear. “I want all of you,” he whispered. “Right now.”
He nodded to the back of the tavern, and I shuddered with desire. I loved this part of him—unquenchable, spontaneous, just this side of deviant. It brought out mirroring traits in me, ones I hadn’t known I possessed.
We scaled a tightly curved staircase to the floor where the rooms were.
“Gawain,” I whispered. “What are we doing?”
“Shhhh,” he hushed me. “This way.”
I followed him down the hallway, heart pacing with anticipation. Sounds from the tavern tremored the floorboards.
“I doubt anyone in these rooms will get much sleep tonight,” I said.
“I think that’s the point.”
He pulled a latch in the ceiling, and a trapdoor opened, spitting out a folded ladder.
“Grab that lamp,” he said, pointing to the light by the windowsill. “And follow me.”
The ladder delivered us into a vaulted attic loft. It was a cozy space, surprisingly warm and inviting, with wood beams bisecting a sloped ceiling. Moonlight poured in through the window, illuminating a bed tucked beneath the rafters.
“Spare room,” Gawain explained. “No one ever uses it.”
I rested the lamp on a chest. “Are you sure?”
Gawain was already unlacing his tunic. “I’m sure.”
He closed the space between us. My pulse blared. We were both still wearing our masks. I tried to lift mine off, but he tilted it back.
“Leave it,” he said. “Just for a minute.”
Our masks rested just above our mouths, and they clanked as we kissed.
Perhaps it was my imagination, but I could feel in his tongue something animal, as if he were inhabiting the wild energy of the stag.
I didn’t feel like a fox, but rather like someone else, an observer of my own body, both spectator and participant, a duality that ignited me.
I pulled him against me, grabbed him by the sinewed bells of his arms. I ripped off my mask—I no longer needed it. Quickly we were naked and pressing our bodies together. Gawain tossed me onto the bed and I lay on my back, staring up at him, his manhood long and angled upward.
He straddled me, thighs tight against my hips. I loved the pressure, loved feeling him hover over me.
We kissed deeply. I slipped two slick fingers inside of him, and the involuntary moan that escaped his mouth made me harder.
By now I knew every corner of his body. I knew what he liked, knew the rhythms of his pleasure.
He pressed me inside of him and we moved in unison.
We were good at this, we both knew it, and we kept looking down at the locus of the act, watching ourselves fuck, watching the point where we were one.
When I knew he was close, I clenched my hips, imagining I was him.
For a blissful moment, as I gazed up at the wood beams, I had not a single thought in my head. Then the noises out the window went silent.
I peered down. The roads of Camelot had gone still.
I turned to Gawain. “What’s happening?”
From the castle’s keep came the rib-shaking blare of a warning horn. I could tell by the look on Gawain’s face that the sound would divide our lives into before and after.
“Is that—”
“Yes.”
We threw on our clothes and scrambled down the ladder, our masks left abandoned on the floor.
Men and women were stumbling over tables and chairs, tripping to race out the door.
As Gawain and I made for the exit, I caught sight of two women sitting in the corner.
One wore a black dog mask, the other a crow.
I didn’t recognize them, not in their costumes, but I would learn later why they were there.
It made sense that, as the world collapsed, they were the only two who chose not to move. Guinevere and Morgan had reunited.