Patrick rubbed his hands together and sifted through everything he had planned to say. “I have come across some news that may concern your friend, Loki.”
Katherina made a face but let him continue.
“We have learned that he is, perhaps, involved in nefarious activities, and may be a threat to Greensprings.”
Katherina’s expression was incredibly confused. “How do you know this, and how does this concern me?”
Patrick gestured with his hands, but no words came immediately. “I can’t really tell you how I know this,” he said. “It’s an Avangarde thing. Information comes to us and we must at least investigate it. Incidentally, I’m taking a risk by telling you this. It’s just that I am worried for you and thought that you should know, but you must tell no one, especially Loki.”
“That make little sense, Patrick, and what make you think I am in danger?” She took her usual crossed-arm stance. Her clear blue eyes were blazing.
“Because, I know that you two are close.”
“Gawain, that is...”
“I saw you two yesterday in the garden in each other’s arms.”
Katherina froze. The angry look on her face diffused into exasperation. “This is true. But that is neither here nor there. What am I supposed to say or do? Am I supposed to ask Loki about it? Am I supposed tell him that I won’t be his friend because I heard that he may be wicked and that I heard it from a possibly jealous source?”
“I’m not jealous,” Patrick snapped.
“Yes you are,” Katherina returned. “This is not about protecting Greensprings. This is about protecting you.”
“Is that really so surprising!” Patrick said a little louder than he intended, his eyes flashing.
“What that supposed to mean?” She placed her hands on her hips and leaned forward at him, opening her mouth to say more.
“You said you would never abandon me,” said Patrick, cutting her off, “you promised, by the side of the brook where we ate.” His voice was cracking, betraying the air of control he had promised himself he’d maintain.
Katherina cooled, and she put her face in her hands. “That different. I will always be you friend, Patrick, but I can’t live with this agreement of ours the way it is. I don’t want agreement anymore with anyone. It seem to me awfully lopsided.”
Patrick sighed. “Then let’s not have one anymore. Let’s be together normally.”
“That is not fair,” she said.
Patrick frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t think you mean it. Either to me or to yourself. This whole fiasco between us. You are not entirely honest with me, or yourself, and especially not to that servant girl Aimeé.”
“What does Aimeé have to do with this?”
“Don’t tell me that. You are one to talk of seeing me in another’s arms. I saw you with her in kitchen.” She stabbed him in the chest with her finger.
Patrick rolled his eyes and sighed at the church ceiling. “I was only comforting her. The poor girl was raped for God’s sake.”
Katherina nodded once, hard. “Yes, raped because another man saw her throwing herself at you and assumed she that kind of maidservant, and so exacted tribute from her. If you had only been honest with her in beginning, and not played stupid man-game with her, maybe that wouldn’t have happened.”
Patrick was speechless.
“You see, Patrick, you are ship lost at sea. You are big strong ship, but you don’t know where to land―or why. I can’t live with that.”
He chewed on the inside of his cheek and kicked at the base of the statue next to them. Finally, he shrugged. “I can’t say that I am surprised.”
Katherina looked sad. “What do you mean?”
“I told you, it’s the curse,” he said. “I knew you would leave one way or the other. I’ve heard all this before.”
Katherina threw her arms up into the air. “Well, if you hear all this before, then maybe I should save you trouble and leave you now.”
“No,” Patrick almost cried, lunging forward with hand outstretched. He caught himself short of actually grabbing the girl. “Don’t. Please.”
“Patrick, I’m really not going to leave you. I will still be here. I will still be your friend. Nothing has changed.”
“Except that you will be spending your time with Loki instead.”
Katherina didn’t answer right away. “I don’t know that yet.”
Patrick glowered more and paced about, but couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t send her immediately out the door. Katherina came forward and cradled his face. “What ever happen from this point on, I will be friend. Do you know how happy you made me? I know that I did not show it, but I was very homesick, very sad. I even questioned my life going on. You change that just enough so I can carry on again.”
His heart was breaking, but he stood as still as the statues around them. “I’m glad that I could help. But now that you are better, you are going to leave me? Thank you very much.”
Katherina appeared too sad to be angry. “Patrick, why do you make thing so difficult? I wish I could give you what you want, but I can’t, and it would be wrong of me to try, if I don’t feel it.”
“I can’t have what I want. Ever,” Patrick said gloomily, thinking out loud more than anything.
Katherina had tears falling from her eyes. “Why won’t you ever cry, Patrick Gawain?” She turned and left then, but at the door she turned back and asked almost timidly, “Have supper with me tonight?”
He nodded. Katherina left, and he knew that she was not the same person to him as the girl who had entered.
He outsmarted himself. He had tried erecting an impregnable steel wall around his heart to keep it from being hurt, and that wall had fallen and crushed that same heart he had tried protecting from harm in the first place.
Curse or no, he could only blame himself. And once again, the knowledge and wisdom he had garnered from this experience was no consolation. It still hurt terribly. But she had given him hope. She had insisted that they would still be close. Time would tell if the curse would be broken after all.
He headed for the church door, but stopped. Something had fallen on his shoulder. He looked and saw a wet spot. Then another appeared. Water droplets were falling on him. He looked to the ceiling and could not discern where they were coming from. He would have to tell Father Hugh about that. Moisture collecting in the rafters might cause structural damage. He left the building then.
#
Another drop landed on the flagstones where Patrick had been standing. Above it, quietly standing in the darkness was a statue of the Virgin Mary, and she was weeping.
Chapter Ten
Patrick Gawain once again skulked about.
He talked little, avoided people, and wondered why nobody would talk to him or sit with him at dinner. When he did talk, it usually was about the Viscount Loki.
“Have you ever noticed how he is always touching the girls?” he said one evening at dinner. “Especially the really young ones. Something just isn’t right about him. He’s always in people’s business.”
“If you mean the Lady Katherina,” Sir McCabe said, nodding in the direction of the couple now entering the dining hall—the Viscount escorting Katherina to her seat. Patrick noted that the princess had recently taken to wearing darker colors. “I’d say she is a willing victim. If you ask me, it’s a matter of the girl looking for a father-figure. I’ve known women to do such things.”
“Or,” added Sir Jon, “it’s a matter of rebellion. She’s deliberately and willingly spending time with an older fellow just to be contrary, to get attention. Maybe it’s Loki who will end up being the victim, when her whims have changed again.”
“I seriously doubt that,” Patrick said, glowering.
After a while, such comments were met with silence or rolling eyes. Even the good-natured Waylan and Corbin told him to put it to rest. Yes, the Viscount could be disagreeable, but he had broken no rules. Let it be.
Finding no support for his opinions, and feeling a little betrayed, Patrick threw himself into the task of organizing the tournament. Even that seemed to suck the life out of him; it was much more work than he had realized. Scheduling a location, coaxing the keep and village laborers into setting up the spectator seating and fencing for the competition field, organizing teams, assigning tasks to keep personnel and volunteers, and doing all this while maintaining his normal duty schedule, was next to impossible.
Though he developed a deeper respect for what the Avangarde did, especially King Mark, Patrick still found that his head remained in a fog and his gut turned every time he thought of Katherina.
And to make things worse, she ignored him: just as he knew she would. To her credit, she had truly gone out of her way to make Patrick feel comfortable at first. But the Irishman believed she had done so only to say, “I told you so.” Quickly, even that faded, and she bided more and more of her time with Loki.
Patrick decided that if ignoring was the game she wanted to play, he could play, too. He neglected her, stayed away, and passed up obvious opportunities to be with her. She took notice and withdrew even more from him. That was not the result he intended.
After several weeks, he could not take it anymore. He decided to approach her, feeling that, if nothing else, he should be the one mature enough to admit fault and save a possibly failing friendship.
He found her in a side chamber, reading her Bible next to the window. Minion sat at her feet, playing with knucklebones. She absentmindedly stroked his close clipped head with one hand. Patrick stifled a shudder at the sight of her touching the ugly little man.
“Can we talk?” Patrick asked.
Katherina looked up from her book. “Of course.”
Patrick looked at Minion, who was giving him a toady gaze. “Alone, perhaps.”
Minion looked to Katherina for approval, then slowly stood up and waddled out.
Patrick drew a breath. “I don’t understand what is happening between us. I was hoping you could elaborate for me.”
Katherina closed the bible with care, but kept the page with her finger. “I’m not sure I entirely understand.”
“I mean us avoiding each other. Friends don’t do that. We
are
friends, as you said we would be, right?”
“Yes. But I don’t understand this silence from you.” Her icy eyes stared off at a point to his left and six feet behind him.
“Is that so surprising?” Patrick asked. “I’m a silent person in any case, you knew that, and now that you favor me less, it only becomes worse.”
“Patrick, I try not to, believe me. I am just busy person. I have not much time for you any more, that’s all.”
Patrick wasn’t quite successful in keeping the a sneer out of his voice. “You seem to have plenty of time for Loki.”
“Patrick...”
“What is so special about him? What does he have that I can’t offer you?”
“It not like that. It not matter of what he has compared to you.”
She was attempting to trivialize the issue, and he did not feel like letting it go. “If that is the case, why is that I’ve seen less and less of you? Obviously he has
something
to offer you I don’t. I can’t imagine what. He is arrogant beyond contempt, abusive, a possible criminal, is old
―
much older than even myself, and ugly. You can’t possibly find him attractive.” Judging from Katherina’s countenance she was displeased with his words, but he felt better for having finally said them.
“Maybe I feel beauty is not thing of the flesh,” Katherina said, crystal eyes flaring.
“Obviously.”
“Nobody know him the way I do. Has it ever occurred to you that he is lonely on the inside and his outer bravado is just show to hide his loneliness? Has it ever occurred to you that he is beautiful on the inside?”
“No.”
Katherina’s cheeks flushed and there was a slight roll to her eyes as she looked out the window.
Patrick crossed his arms. “So you find his insides appealing? Then do you find some people's outsides pleasing, but their insides unappealing?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Like me?”
“Ye
―
I mean no, or...” Katherina’s eyes opened wide and she touched a hand to her lips.
Patrick shook his head slowly. She tried to explain herself profusely, but the damage was done. His heart felt as if it had dropped into his bowels. He had suspected all along that was how she felt about him, but did not think she would ever say it.
Patrick took a deep breath. “Katherina, my dear princess, I only wish that things could be the way they were. I don’t mean like on the balcony or in the woods or in the confessional or...well, you understand...but that they could be like when we talked more, when we shared time together laughing. That is all I ask of you. You once said that I made you so happy when you couldn’t have been otherwise. Can’t I again?”
“Yes, of course. But ultimately we are all responsible for making ourselves happy, Patrick. I would have made myself happy again eventually.”
He couldn’t tell if she was adding insult to injury. “But you said you even considered taking your own life, you were so unhappy. And I helped make it better.”
“I don’t recall saying that.” Katherina now looked puzzled.
“So those were once again just words to ease your conscience?” Katherina’s eyes narrowed at the accusation. “Was I just a diversion for you? Was not even the laughter and happiness real? I really felt something for you, you know that?”
Katherina waved her arms in exasperation. “I didn’t want to hear that,” she all but shouted. She was a while in saying anything else. Patrick was so hurt he didn’t try to fill the silence. “I can’t
make
you believe anything. You are just going to have to believe me that it was real.”
Patrick paced and ran his hands through his hair. On the one hand, he didn’t necessarily like what she had to say, but on the other, the conviction in her voice made it sound as if it had been real after all.
Katherina hugged herself. She seemed to be caught between emotions, none of them positive. “Patrick, I still here talking to you. If I didn’t care, I would have walked away long time ago. I still here.”
Patrick nodded slowly. “I’m sorry if I am being...obsessive. I just don’t want to be on my deathbed someday feeling that I hadn’t at least tried.”