Captive Heart (5 page)

For a week now I’d ridden toward Camelot, frustrated by the slow but tireless pace of my palfrey. My head knew I could do no better by a horse than steadfast Alice, but my heart yearned for a hot-blooded destrier that, in truth, would likely break either lungs or knees riding at speed for more than a league or two.

Instead I settled for a brief sprint into the castle’s courtyard as we topped the final hill. Hope pounded in my chest the closer we neared. Would Gawain take up my challenge? Could I dare believe it might be Lancelot?

I threw the reins to the dark-eyed man who met me in the courtyard. I slid into his arms as he helped me dismount though I barely needed the aid in my haste.

“Take me to Arthur—or Merlin—I have a desperate boon to ask of them.” Only then did I note the man was young. Not young enough to be a page, not old enough to be a seneschal.

Handing off Alice’s reins to a stable boy who hurried up to us, the dark-eyed man took me by the elbow and guided me silently but surely into the castle’s halls where we were quickly met by a gray-haired man in rich robes.

“Kay, we have a petitioner. Where’s Arthur?” my escort asked.

The gray-haired man scowled at me.

“Please,” I begged. “My matter is urgent. A noble woman’s life. My sister…”

The man’s scowl only deepened, but he struck off with us in tow, leading us to a small hall where sat a man behind a desk surrounded by a handful of men in passionate debate. I caught only the words “King” and “Mark”, “Cornwall” and “tribute” clearly before they broke off at our approach. Somewhere in the room, too, Old Magic curled. Probably in the bones of Camelot itself.

“Sire, a petitioner, if you please. She claims her matter is urgent.” Kay bowed, and I fell quickly into a curtsy.

The man behind the desk—King Arthur—sighed. I was no more than a burden to him. Another neighbor squabble. Another plea for a tax extension. He beckoned. I had only taken a step when Kay’s arm across my chest blocked my way.

It wasn’t me the king had beckoned to but a water boy who set down a goblet and tray of confectionery at Arthur’s elbow. Only when the servant stepped back, waiting to bear away the empty vessels, did Arthur nod to Kay, who dropped his arm and allowed me forward.

“Sire, my younger sister has been captured by the new magistrate of the Red Lands. He holds her there now. I beg a champion of your court to rescue her.”

The king leaned forward. I seemed to have his attention at last. “
New
magistrate?”

“My father slew the old Baron, but suffered wounds that killed him too. The son, Sir Ironside, rules there now, and he’s taking his vengeance out on my sister. On me, as well, for I have it that my anguish at the thought of how he’s treating her joys him.” I sniffed back the tears that threatened. “Though not as much, I fear, as my innocent Nessie will joy him. His own servant—” I prevaricated only a little to avoid any hint of fae involvement—“tells me he waits now on a champion. And while I trust the hearts of my father’s men, I cannot trust their skills.”

“I’ve heard of this Ironside,” my escort put in. “His father held the Red Lands through brutality. The tales tell of the son who is far more perilous.”

The king steepled his hands before him. “Any man I would name for the deed is gone now from the court. Most are away at Joyous Garde and the tourney being held there.”

I hoped my face adequately betrayed both my disappointment and the fear that threatened to overwhelm me at the news. With a single word—
gone
—my hopes of a Lancelot or a Gawain had just been thoroughly trampled.

“Appoint me her champion, Sire.”

My flagging heart leapt at the words… Until I saw who uttered them. The knave standing behind Arthur stepped to the edge of the desk, not to clear away tray and goblet, but waiting on Arthur’s word.

“No! My sister’s life is not an excuse for some…some…
kitchen boy
…to play at being a knight.”

Arthur’s thoughts were impenetrable as he looked from me to the kitchen boy before swinging his gaze back to me again. What he would’ve spoken I shall never know because another of the men in the room spoke first. “An excellent choice, Arthur.”

I glared hate at the man with the staff. “Did you not hear that Ironside is a perilous villein? I require a
knight
—nay, not just a knight but one of the best this court is renowned for. If there be none here I’ll ride to Joyous Garde.” Blinking away the tears of frustration that threatened to fall, I turned on my heel.

“Hold,” Arthur commanded. He had no fae gift of compulsion, but the authority of his voice alone stopped me. “You mistake if you believe knighthood is the station itself. And you mistake if you believe Merlin or I would endorse anyone unworthy of the title.”

Merlin!

How had I not recognized him? How was it that only now when I knew the man with the staff for who he was did the Old Magic that had seemed to permeate the room itself settle over him alone?

What did they know about the kitchen boy I didn’t? I stole a glance his way.
Boy
was, of course, only a subservient term, although it hadn’t been that many years past since he’d left boyhood behind. A year older maybe than Nessie, a year younger than me. The spread of his bared shoulders spoke to many hours of physical labor—or weapons practice. I followed the ripple of his muscles until they disappeared into his legging’s waistband and let my imagination fill in the rest of the details from his flat hips to his thick corded thighs to his thick—

I dragged my gaze up, past the burl of his arms to the goodly form of his face with its hint of beard and the seawashed eyes I could, at another time, drown myself in.

I could ask for worse in a traveling companion. But mere strength and beauty did not a knight make, any more than the title did. I needed a
man
, one with fire in his soul and determination in his heart. This knave had the physique, certainly—and the longer I stared, the more appealing it became—and Arthur seemed to vouch for his skill. But did he have the courage and fortitude of a seasoned warrior, as well as the cunning of an experienced leader to know when to charge and when to prudently bide? Neither a daunted nor a dead champion would get my Nessie back.

“Do you doubt him?” Merlin asked.

Had he seen into my heart? Or did my face betray my thoughts? If I said yes it would be the same as my proclaiming that I doubted Arthur and Merlin. If I said no…

Nimue had made it clear I had to offer my champion no encouragement, only abuse. But she was only fae, not a god, to see each transgression fall. Or did I mistake the reach of her power? Panic clutched my heart. “Not his skills for which you vouch, merely his youth and inexperience. Laying steel to a game hen doesn’t give one the courage to raise steel against another man as armed and skillful as you. I’m not chancing a recipe into his hands but my sister’s life!”

“A fair distinction,” Merlin agreed calmly.

It was not so much his demeanor that struck me but the knave’s. Throughout, his liquid gaze remained cool, unaffected.

“And yet you desire fire, flamed by the passions of that same youthful nature that you so disdain.”

I started. Once again Merlin had seen into my soul. “Is both so impossible?” I asked.

He grinned. “In Camelot nothing is impossible.”

Perhaps it was the drudgery of the kitchen work that had compelled me to offer my sword to this lady’s quest. Perhaps, as I’d rather think, it was being unable to stomach the thought of an innocent young woman in the clutch of a villein.

But more likely it was the lady herself who compelled me, bewitching me with her fierce love and compassion for her sister along with the very visible charms of her sex.

In her place, I too would have been disappointed with the nameless and untested man barely out of his youth that was all she knew me for. Her respect was mine to be earned, no matter how demeaned I might be until I had proven myself by deed. Until then, her sharp words might cut my soul but they were wounds to be silently suffered. Was she truly disappointed her words alone were not enough to provoke me? Did she truly believe that forbearance was a fault and wrath a virtue?

With her, I waited on Merlin’s next words, expecting an observation, perhaps, that the difference between a simmering pot and one in full boil was only the amount of heat being applied.

But Merlin’s wisdom struck me dumb. “Take two for your champion,” he advised. “Two halves of the same hero.”

“Two?” The lady’s breaths quickened and the look on her face seemed more panicked than surprised.

“I think you’ll find the temper you desire fully embodied in Sir Marrok.”

“Are you mad?” Marrok’s response came swift. “To put me on the trail alone with…
them
?”

My eyes narrowed. Of the two of them, I was certain Merlin wasn’t the mad one. But while I struggled to make sense of Marrok’s words, and the lady looked more panicked still, Merlin seemed to understand.

“I would not pair you with a lesser knight than him.” Merlin pointed a long finger at me.

“I’m not yet a knight,” I reminded him.

“Did the king not make it clear enough it’s not the title that makes the knight?”

I bowed my head in humility.

“Then what of
me
?” Marrok demanded, his voice a strangled whisper.

“Do not forget who or what I am. I can see both the
man
you are and the
man
you’ll be. Hear me well: ‘Twas beauty that tamed the beast.’”

What had a cradle tale to do with Marrok?
I wondered. More, if the man doubted himself now, how would he conduct himself in a fight? True, there was a volatility about him—something that reminded me of the berserkers of old—that promised extraordinary power at need. Whether that volatility could be harnessed, though, was another matter.

Still, how could I doubt Merlin’s assessment of Marrok when I required the lady to trust Merlin’s assessment of me?

“And the lady?” Marrok asked through gritted teeth.

“Lynette,” she said.

“Has secrets of her own,” Merlin answered. “Blood calls to blood, and I daresay she is more than what she seems. She has more than woman’s wiles to protect herself. And more than woman’s wiles are at play here if she has need to call upon our help.”

“Enchantment?” I guessed.

“Old Magic lingers still in many corners of the land.” Merlin swung his gaze between Lynette and Marrok. Secrets, dark and magical, sparked in his eyes. Understanding seemed to flow between him and Lynette, him and Marrok.

“Can you not speak more plainly?” I asked, tempering the exasperation building in me.

“Their secrets are not mine. Perhaps they’ll reveal them…in time.”

In time
. Did he speak simply in terms of days or months, or did he mean they’d need to reveal themselves in time to rescue Lynette’s sister? I silently damned all fae kind. And Merlin’s hint had me believing that just might include Lynette too.

Marrok, though, remained a mystery. A broad-shouldered, slim-hipped mystery with intense and darkling eyes. The very volatility and unpredictability that made me question his suitability for this quest seared like lightning through my soul. He was all that I wasn’t.

But in this Merlin was wrong. I didn’t need Marrok to make me whole. Were not my brothers Gawain, Uwain and Gaheris already heroes by their own merits?

I was being manipulated. Subtle magics, perhaps, or simply Merlin’s skill at getting inside a person’s head and making them see as he saw.

How much could the far-seer know ahead of it happening and how far did his magics reach? I believed I had come to Arthur’s court under my own volition, and that I had volunteered for Lynette’s quest under my own compulsion. But with Merlin at the center of events could I ever truly know how much control over my own life I held?

A part of me that would have made Lynette proud cried in outrage that I was being used as a tool for a purpose I could not fathom. But more so than my outrage, I was intrigued by the magic and mystery that swirled around me. By the strong will and angel eyes of the lady who rebuked me. And by the way Sir Marrok’s every perfect move seemed to swear danger and death to any who crossed him.

I relinquished the last of my control to Merlin, to Lynette, to Marrok and to the quest that awaited. “We ride,” I told Marrok.

Was the gleam in Merlin’s far-seeing eyes one of triumph or tragedy?