Gwendolyn's Sword Read online

  “Christ on the cross, girl! Is there some reason you refuse my company any time you enter a wood?” His blasphemy was loud enough to draw a politely cleared throat from the priory’s monks that walked within earshot, returning from the fields for evening prayers. She watched his features rearrange, as the realization that he had entered the hallowed grounds of the priory settled over him and he sat straight in his saddle again, the soldierly model of discipline and reverence. She was aware that she was about to enter a world that few women ever saw.

  A boy’s fair head popped up over the wall for a moment, spotted them, and disappeared again. They were close enough to hear him call for the prior within the monastery walls.

  Moments later a short, spry man with white hair clipped in the customary tonsure stepped out of the monastery gate. The man looked them over keenly, and as his eyes fell on William he relaxed and smiled openly. Gwendolyn knew that William had lived with the monks as a novice until he turned seventeen, when the prior had tactfully suggested to the baron that William’s skills might be put to better service at arms rather than at prayer.

  “I am Prior Thomas, child,” he said, walking lightly to her and reaching up to hold one of her hands in both of his, rough and warm. Her father had also been fond of the monks here, and she remembered him referring to Prior Thomas as “the old scholar of the black robe.” That was nearly fifteen years ago, and she wondered how many summers the lively, sharp-eyed man before her had seen. The prior beamed at her with a genuine smile, but she was more drawn by the dark shadows beneath his eyes that reminded her of the monks’ rigorous schedule of prayer. He stood facing her and paused for a moment longer than necessary while his gaze took in her stature and features.

  “You have your mother’s eyes, but I see Gwyn in the rest of you,” he said with a note of excitement in his voice. She felt her cheeks warm at his observation and thanked him; whatever reason William had for bringing her here, she was already glad for the chance to finally meet this man who had known both of her parents.

  While they settled their horses for the night, the prior and William chatted lightly about the late baron and the changes at the priory in the eleven years since William had left. When their saddles and bridles had been stowed and the horses were munching hay contentedly in their stalls, the prior escorted them to the monks’ dining hall, a small room lined with narrow tables and benches. William had given their provisions of food to Simon, and her stomach grumbled at the lingering smells from the monks’ supper. The prior seemed to have noticed and he told them to have a seat and left them for a moment. When he returned he carried a round loaf of bread, a chunk of sheep’s milk cheese, and two cups of watery wine.

  They were alone, and after they had eaten a few bites the prior leaned across the table toward them and folded his hands into a point, drumming his fingers together expectantly, his eyes on William. Between mouthfuls, William told the prior in a low voice about the mercenaries in the forest and their deaths at Gwendolyn’s hand—the first time for her to draw her sword in combat, he added, and the prior nodded, apparently unmoved by the discovery that she was capable of such violence. But when William told the prior what they had learned from the captured mercenary, that Walter de Cardinham had joined Prince John’s rebellion and ransacked the crypt at Glastonbury Abbey, the prior sat up straight and took in a sharp breath, then exhaled it slowly. The old monk appeared to be sorting out some larger puzzle in his head.

  “Yes, you were right to bring her, William. It’s time.” The prior pivoted on his stool to face Gwendolyn and stared at her intently.

  “Gwendolyn,” he began softly, “There is much to tell you, and I’m afraid you aren’t going to like most of it.” The prior cleared his throat and frowned in concentration. He appeared to be sorting his thoughts for the right words, and yet she had the feeling he had anticipated this conversation for years. “You have heard the legends, some call them prophesy, told by the Welsh of King Arthur’s return?”

  Thomas paused, and she nodded impatiently; she had more immediate concerns than Welsh lore. “Yes, their bards still sing that Arthur and his men will march from Avalon and expel the Normans and the English from Britain. My father told me these tales to entertain me and put me to sleep. It’s one of the few memories I have of him.”

  “And I suppose you also heard the stories a few years ago of the discovery of the tomb of Arthur and Guinevere at Glastonbury Abbey?”

  “Yes, of course. It was just after my wedding. King Richard ordered a shrine built there, declared the songs of Arthur’s return proven false, and Glastonbury now enjoys a regular stream of pilgrims and their coins. What of it?” She realized she was sounding combative and tried to soften her voice. “I’m sorry, Prior Thomas, but other than being Welsh, I don’t see what these tales have to do with me or Penhallam.”

  Thomas said the next words so quietly that she had to strain to hear him.

  “It has everything to do with you and your family, child. Your father, and therefore also you, are the direct descendants of Arthur.”

  4

  GWYN’S LETTER

  Gwendolyn held the prior’s gaze and leaned back slowly from the table. She knew that she had heard the prior correctly, but he could have told her she had two heads and could soar with the birds for as much sense as his words had made to her. She folded her arms across her chest and bit her lip with the effort of suppressing her laughter.

  “You can’t be serious,” she said.

  The prior regarded her steadily, his sympathetic expression suggesting that it was she, rather than himself, who suffered under delusion. She felt the humor drain from her face as she registered how completely serious the man in front of her actually was. So many questions and arguments raced through her head at once that she could hardly pick which one to utter first. And granting the prior’s proposition even a hint of plausibility by entertaining further discussion over it seemed the wrong way to steer the conversation back onto solid ground. Instead, Gwendolyn noticed that William had not reacted at all, and she swung around to face him.

  “You knew of this?” she asked accusingly.

  William had been staring at the ground, but he raised his eyes at her words and said nothing. She stared back in shock, feeling her gut suddenly become very light and empty inside her. She stood up and took a few steps back, shifting her gaze from one man to the other and distancing herself from both of them. It was one thing for an old monk to find truth in the legends sung during the long winter nights; it was quite another thing altogether that her constable seemed to believe them as well.

  “How can you believe this, William? What evidence have you seen?”

  William gave her a wry laugh. “You would not believe half of what I’ve seen if I told you.” She silenced him with a warning flash of her eyes. William had tried to tell her once about the other-worldly demons and spirits he claimed to have seen, and she had ended the conversation abruptly. She had no desire to revisit the topic now.

  “There was no point in telling you until tonight,” Thomas explained, speaking rapidly, as if he tried to hold her in place with his words. “What would you have done with the knowledge of your ancestry when you were too young to act on it? And without Caliburn, you are vulnerable.”

  “Exactly,” Gwendolyn cut in, latching onto an argument. “If I am Arthur’s heir, then where is my sword? I’m sorry, Prior, but this is rubbish.” She turned back to William, the last man she would have expected to lead her astray on such far-fetched nonsense. “How long have you believed this to be true? Is this what they taught you, after your father brought you here?” She fired her questions at him like bolts from a crossbow.

  William stood up and faced her squarely, looking much the same as he did when facing off with Penhallam’s knights during training in the yard. “My father brought me here at my request. The night that your parents died, I was the one who carried you from the flames. I had a vision that night of the fire. I snuck away to see that you
were safe, but as soon as I got close …” William grimaced slightly with the memory. “There was barely time to get you out.”

  Gwendolyn stood stunned, struggling to grasp what William had just told her. She felt emotion rise in her chest, threatening to overwhelm the anger that was her key to maintaining control in the midst of this ludicrous conversation. After so many years, her rescuer had come forward. And with this knowledge came a new, uncomfortable realization: she owed her constable her life. And she had practically had to beat the information out of him.

  “Why did you never tell me?” she snapped.

  “At first I told no one because I couldn’t explain how I had known of the danger. I was afraid I would be blamed for the fire, and for your parents’ deaths. After I returned to Penhallam to serve in the garrison, I knew that if I told you the truth, you would feel indebted to me. I didn’t want that.”

  Gwendolyn exhaled slowly and gazed out the high window to the stars twinkling in the clear night. Pieces of her memories and those behaviors of William’s that she had written off as mere peculiarities were coming together, falling into place to form a larger picture whose meaning she was just beginning to understand. No wonder he slept outside her door in the manor hall and took such an interest in her safety. But how could he have known to come for her that night?

  “Are you a magician, William? A wizard?” The words felt ridiculous in her mouth when she said them.

  “My vision is a curse to me, unpredictable and useless. That’s all. Saving your life was the only time it served a purpose.”

  “Perhaps you should sit down,” Prior Thomas suggested in the awkward silence that hung between them after William’s answer, but she shook her head and turned her attention back to the old monk.

  “Guinevere bore no children from Arthur,” she argued flatly, returning to the recorded legend. “Mordred was the king’s only heir, and his sons were executed after Arthur’s death.”

  “It’s true that Guinevere bore no child. But the king had mistresses, three in fact. History doesn’t follow the stories of women as closely as it does the men, which has been fortunate for us, really.”

  “Then he must have dozens of descendants, hundreds, all over England and Wales. Why tell this to me?”

  “This isn’t an inheritance, child. Just because one is descended from Arthur is not enough to make a king. Or queen,” he corrected himself. “That is only part of it, and really, it’s the most insignificant part. After so many generations, whatever part of Arthur is in you is barely a trace, not discernible at all. No, there’s much more to it than that.

  “From what you have said, I can assume that you have read Geoffrey of Monmouth and Chretien de Troyes. That’s good; there is important information for you in there. But also many lies. Queen Eleanor and her family have used the Welsh legends to their own ends, and their scholars and bards have altered the tales to suit the royal family’s wishes. It is a reflection of the Plantagenets’ deep fear that the tales of Arthur’s return are true.

  “You have been seen, Gwendolyn, in a vision, with Caliburn in your hand. You are a descendant of a great warrior king, the chief of all warriors. But more than that, your heart is bound by the ancient laws of the land to shelter the weak, punish the unjust, and show mercy to those who ask it. This was the code of Arthur that he required of each of his men. And it is the code by which you have lived your life, even when everything was taken from you.”

  Gwendolyn turned on the prior. She had reached her limit. “No one has seen me with Caliburn. I don’t even know where the sword is, if it exists. Which it doesn’t.”

  “My child, there is no boundary between real and not real, between magical and natural. The world we live on lies flat between Hell and the heavens, and our home is a battleground overrun by forces we cannot see. But one law rules all of the realms, and that is the divine law of cause and effect.” The prior clapped his hands together in demonstration of his point, and the sound echoed around the empty room and caused a bird that had been watching from the window sill to take flight into the night.

  “When you drew your sword yesterday, you risked your life for another’s. You could have run. You could have saved yourself. But you stood and fought to protect the innocent.” Gwendolyn blinked and realized it had never occurred to her to run. She could have saved herself, as the prior said. She could have easily outrun those men. But the idea of abandoning her maids never entered her mind.

  “Cause and effect. You acted selflessly, with courage and honor. Caliburn was already reaching for you, and yesterday you reached back. The bond is formed. Caliburn will come to you. It is only a matter of time.”

  Gwendolyn scoffed under her breath and turned toward William, ready to leave.

  “You may not believe any of this, but Prince John does,” the prior added. At the mention of the king’s rebellious younger brother, Gwendolyn paused; the prior sensed an opportunity and drove forward. “He is a weak man, only able to inspire loyalty with his purse and promises, and he is using the disaster of his brother’s captivity to seize the throne, by any means possible. He has sent men across England to find Caliburn—including Walter de Cardinham, it would appear—and he will continue to spill innocent blood and raise rebellion against his brother as long as he believes he has a chance of obtaining it.”

  “Glastonbury …” Gwendolyn said quietly, thinking of the monks killed over such folly.

  “Yes, Walter sought the sword for John. But the sword will only come to its rightful heir. John is not aware of you. Only the people in this room and one other know who you really are: the heir of Caliburn—and your champion,” he added, indicating with his gaze toward William.

  William had been pacing the floor behind them, and the steady rhythm of his steps ceased at the far end of the room.

  “My what?” she asked in a low voice.

  “The heir of Caliburn was described as a great warrior and leader of men, true to the sword’s legacy, but with one weakness. He—” the prior shook his head and corrected himself. “She does not believe. So a champion was called, a warrior in his own right, who would protect her from those things she would not see. William understood from an early age that he lived to guard your life. When he confessed to us that he had pulled you from the fire, how he had been compelled that night to go to you and ran into a burning house to save you, we told him about the prophecy. That day he abandoned his novitiate’s vows and asked to take up arms.” The prior stood before her, watching her reaction. “In a way, Gwendolyn, it is your refusal to believe that brings the sword to you. You have no hunger for power, no ambition to rule. You will use the sword to defend and protect or not at all.”

  She sat down, staring at the swirling patterns in the wood on the table’s surface. She was beginning to understand that she stood at the center of a plot set into motion by the lore and cupidity of distant men, some long dead, and some with the power to bring an entire nation to the brink of war.

  “Does the dowager queen also believe these prophecies?”

  “Well,” the prior admitted, looking away, “Eleanor is a practical woman, with more immediate concerns, I’m sure.”

  Gwendolyn snorted, pleased to find another reason to like her sovereign’s famous mother.

  “You said I was seen holding Caliburn. By whom?”

  “By a seer, a man who is the keeper of the story of the Britons, past and future.” The prior spoke in hushed tones, as if he were sharing a mysterious secret with her. “He is the only other person who knows you are the heir.”

  Gwendolyn stared at the prior for a moment, amazed that he still expected her to take anything he was saying to her seriously. Out of the corner of her eye, William appeared to cringe slightly at the prior’s dramatic air. She gave up the pretense of polite forbearance.

  “Who are you, Prior Thomas? What kind of monastery is this?” Her tone was level with authority, and the prior took note.

  “Outwardly, in our dress and our practice,
we are like any other Augustinian canons. But we are also brothers to the ancient ones. The Romans called them Druids. They were powerful once, counselors to kings who stepped unarmed into the midst of battles to forge a truce. The Romans hunted them down because they feared the Druids’ authority and political power. Now only a few live among us, cloaked in anonymity.”

  “Why do they still hide? Why don’t they show themselves?”

  “Now the Church would destroy them for their heresies. These ancient ones see all religions as different aspects of the same truth. For them, it is as if we are all on the edge of a wheel, seeking a way back to the center: our origin and the singular moving force that put our world and all worlds into motion. Every religion is merely one spoke of the wheel. Most will lead to the same place, but from each spoke only a small part of the center can be seen. The priest and the imam both believe their idea of God is the end of all religions, and they cannot spill each other’s blood fast enough. In such a world as this, the Druids must remain hidden if their wisdom is not to be lost forever. When they have asked us, we have provided them shelter. They have lived here among the brothers, following our customs—once while William lived with us.”

  William had crossed the room to lean against the near wall, arms crossed, listening closely. “Far as I could tell, they still stick pretty well to the old ways,” he said.

  Prior Thomas blushed, but he made no argument with William.

  “Why do you help them, if they are heretics?” Gwendolyn asked.