It was such a disgusting gesture, I flung my fingers open again and wiped my palm against my dress.
“And how fares your wife, Cousin?” The question came out from behind clenched teeth as I glared at him.
“You haven’t heard? The doctors at Degannwy say it is but a matter of days now. In fact, the messenger may well be on his way here with the news that I’m a free man and therefore able to remarry. Surely,” he added, pushing his face close to mine, “you must have guessed that was why I sent for you?”
I recoiled and leapt to my feet so quickly that the table was upset; whatever hope I had of being held safe in return for ransom had just been dispelled.
The inlaid board fell to the floor with a clatter, sending the pieces scattering. Dormarth growled a warning, so I turned and stalked to the far end of the room, trying not to panic.
Maelgwn stood up as well, and I could hear him behind me. I was trying to get as far away from the dog as possible and only too late realized the danger of being cornered.
“And just what do you expect of me?” I challenged, whirling to face him in an effort to brazen it out.
“You minx, you know full well what I want.” It was half snarl, half leer, and so naked in its intent all hope of avoidance was lost.
I tried to dart past him, but he flung out his arms, catching me on the bad shoulder and throwing me off balance. Before I could scramble clear he had me backed against the wall, his arms extended on either side to keep me from wriggling away.
“If you’ll leave that high-handed Pendragon and come to me,” he purred, “Rheged and Gwynedd combined would make a fine, rich kingdom—a place to found a dynasty…”
It was such a ludicrous idea, I all but laughed aloud. Harsh words of rebuttal leapt to mind, but by then his lips were brushing against my skin and he began to push me against the wall.
I tried to squirm away or at least get enough space so I could bring my knee up, but there was no room between us, and he was careful to stand with his thighs together. The best I could do was draw my hands in under my chin and raise the barrier of both elbows against his chest while I struggled to turn my face away from his mouth.
He slid his arms around me and holding me pinned against his body, began to edge us across the room. I screamed and kicked as we reeled toward the bed like a top, entwined in a wild, flailing embrace.
My feet went out from under me and we sprawled half on the bed, half on the floor. His grip loosened a fraction and I threw all my weight to one side. Rolling free, I watched as he scrambled to a crouch, then did the same myself.
We circled each other as warriors sometimes do in battle, panting and sweating with tension. I cast about with one hand for some kind of weapon, though my eyes never left his face. At last my fingers, brushing across the floor, came in contact with the heavy chessboard.
I pulled it to me, gauging its weight and balance to see if it would serve best on edge as a cleaver or upright before me as a shield. My one consolation was that Maelgwn wasn’t armed; perhaps he’d thought it too risky to bring a knife within my range.
The fact that I now had a weapon made him more cautious, and he straightened up slowly, watching me intently the entire time.
“Do you think for one minute that you can change the outcome of what will happen here?” he asked. “There’s no one to help you, nowhere for you to go, and I’m quite prepared to wait out your silly pride; you can’t stay crouching like that all night. Both you and I know I’ll bed you, and that is that.” He spoke with a scornful smile and deliberately turning his back to me, walked to the bed.
My ribs and shoulder hurt, my back ached miserably, and somewhere inside a giddy, uncontrollable laugh began to take form. The picture of my feral attitude in the face of his calm certainty struck me as hysterically funny, and I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing aloud.
With great nonchalance I also straightened up and, holding the chessboard flat in front of me, slowly turned away from him. With great care I paused for five heartbeats, then suddenly whipped around, loosing the board like a plate sent sailing across a green during midsummer games.
Startled, Maelgwn barely had time to fling his arm up and duck his head—but for that, the board would have put a massive dent in his skull. Instead, he rose unscathed and my laughter broke free, filling the room with an eerie, terrible sound.
He lunged for me, surprise and rage burning in his face. The back of his hand smashed against my cheek, jarring my teeth and making my vision blur. The laughing stopped abruptly. But when he leaned over to tear open the front of my dress, his ear came within range and I clamped my teeth on it.
With my nose buried in his hair, I had to gasp for breath around the gristly mass in my mouth, but I clung to the thing like a terrier while blood spattered everywhere and my attacker howled in pain.
He left off pawing at my dress and tried to shake me bodily, but that only made his ear hurt more. Blows to my head were futile for the same reason. Finally he doubled up his fist and hit me as hard as possible in the stomach.
The air rushed out of my lungs and I lost my grip, gasping frantically for breath and doubled over in pain. Unable to defend myself any longer, I slid to the floor.
Blackness whirled softly over me—numbness, darkness, a snuffling, grunting sound that mingled with the blue light of something suffocating me…I came to with the skirt of my dress over my head and my attacker rooting between my legs with urgent intent. I felt the pushing of his member and writhed away as he sought to force it home—twisted, kicked, clawed at the fabric prison, desperate to reach his face, his arms, any place I could inflict damage. But the silk only got more tangled, and in spite of my struggles he finally attained his goal.
He was not a large man but the pain and revulsion of violation sent waves of nausea through me. I groaned and howled and screamed between retches, but to no avail; apparently the guard had been forewarned, and the dog stayed at the door.
It occurred to me that when Maelgwn was done it would be over, and for a bit I tried to move in consort with him, hoping to bring him to climax and finish. But though he mauled and pawed me, sweating and straining and grunting between pants of breath, there seemed no surcease.
Dear Goddess, I prayed, get this beast through his stupid rutting and off of me.
But the Mother must have been attending to other things, for there came no help, and eventually I lay limp across the bed, spraddled and moaning and utterly exhausted. And still he kept going.
No doubt there were moments now when I could have pushed free of him, had I been able to muster the strength and hope from within. But something had happened; I was no longer pinned beneath the bulk of the man but saw the scene as from a distance, looking down on a pitiful parody of the loving union and thinking what unconscionable creatures humans can be.
From the far-off safety of detachment I told myself it was not I he was touching; only the flesh, not the spirit, was subjugated to his will. Let the monster hump and groan and wallow in the trough he was plowing between my thighs; what had that to do with me?
My spirit moved, cool and clean as a mountain pool, in realms he would never know. I closed my eyes and drifted out of consciousness.
***
“Gwen?”
The word came softly, gently, across vast stretches of time. It was repeated over and over, rounding on the air—calling, guiding, cradling me in its sound. Slowly it gathered my spirit in, drawing me back to existence, to a body that ached and throbbed and moaned with pain.
“Gwen…Gwen…can you hear me?”
The voice was familiar, running soft and sure, like the hand that brushed the hair back from my face, as much a caress as a gesture of concern. I nodded without opening my eyes, wondering vaguely what Lancelot was doing in my dream.
“Gwen, love, we have to get you out of here. Can you walk?”
“Don’t know,” I mumbled, the effort raising a searing pain in my ribs. I wanted to tell him I’d try, but all that came out was a whimper.
“Well, I can carry you if it comes to that.”
His arms were around me already, holding and cuddling and protecting me against something dreadful that lurked just over the edge of wakefulness. The dream was threatening to become a nightmare, and I tried to avoid it by turning in to his embrace.
But the terror persisted—just beyond memory, diffuse and ugly and having something to do with my cousin.
“Where’s Maelgwn?” My voice was weak and frightened and as hushed as Lance’s own.
“Posting back to Degannwy. His party almost ran me over at the gate, riding as though the Hounds of the Wild Hunt were on his trail. Must be awfully important to have drawn him out at midnight in such a rush.”
Probably his wife’s death, I thought fuzzily, then wondered how I knew she was dying. Horrible half memories floated up to consciousness; disjointed bits of detail paraded behind my closed eyelids like a grotesque pageant until the physical pain in my body blotted them all out.
I was shivering so hard my teeth chattered. Lance drew his cloak around us both and began rocking gently as I snuggled in against his warmth. For the moment there was safety, there was protection, there was a kindred soul willing to stand beside me and help ward off my pain. The very idea was unbelievable.
“We must leave soon,” he whispered. “My horse is in the copse of birches where I hid when Maelgwn’s entourage thundered over the bridge. There’s a coracle beached by the side of the lodge; we can take it back across the water. Just stay down and quiet under my cape, and let me do the talking if anyone challenges us.”
“But there’s a guard at my door.”
Both mind and vision were blurring in and out of focus, and I wondered how Lance had gotten in without seeing him. More and more things were getting tangled in this weird delirium.
Arthur’s lieutenant swallowed hard and turned his head away.
“Some deaths can’t be helped,” he answered. “I only wish it had been Maelgwn himself.”
The outrage of his tone left no room for reply, so I gritted my teeth and struggled to my feet. My body was stiff and sore, but no bones seemed broken except perhaps the ribs, judging from the constant pain in my chest.
With the Breton’s help I made it slowly to the door.
A torch flickered in its bracket, casting shadows across the main room of a hunting lodge where the walls were hung with horns and antlers and a pair of bearskins flanked the door. I saw the sentry’s feet as we crept past the place where Lance had dragged the body and mentally made the sign against evil.
There was no moon, so we slipped the coracle into the stream without even casting a shadow and made for a clump of rushes beyond sight of the guards on the bridge.
The cold lapping of the water sharpened my senses, though my mind still moved with the languid calm of one in a trance. The undefined nightmare was following us even across the water, and I shied from thinking of it. It was enough to concentrate on escape.
Our luck held and Lance’s horse remained silent as we approached through the trees. Lifting me to the saddle, Lance swung up behind and gathered me in his arms. Within minutes we were well away from the hunting lodge and heading for the Road.
“How did you know where I was?” I asked numbly as we left the trees behind and the horse lengthened out into a long trot beside open fields.
“I was going south to join Arthur, and met Uwain posting back to Penrith with the news. He led me to where the ambush took place; from there the trail of flowers showed where you’d entered the forest, and there were enough in your party to make the tracking easy.”
I nodded, only half understanding what he said, though a shower of hawthorn blossoms seemed to be falling around us. My mind reeled when I tried to make more sense of it, and my teeth began to chatter again.
“There, now, you just relax,” Lance murmured, settling me back against his chest. He started to croon the little melodies one sings to a frightened bairn, and I moved closer in the shelter of his embrace, suddenly very, very tired and glad to give over control to someone else.
The tears began without my even knowing, starting in little runnels that brimmed silently from a pool of sorrow welling up in my heart. Nestling my head against the Breton’s shoulder, I let the flood of anguish pour out while the stars glimmered around us and the horse moved as smoothly as though gliding over glass.
I cried for the loss of my father, of Kaethi, of the child at Stirling and Igraine in the convent; for those I had known and loved, and those, like the guard at the hunting lodge, whom I had cause to fear or hate. There were even tears for Mama, now so long gone, and for the Irish boy who had once carried me through a starlit night himself, oh so many years ago.
Gone and lost, every one, and only I left to mourn them, here in the magical safety of Lancelot’s care. Their faces rose before me, floating in the starlight like the stuff of dandelions wafting on a summer breeze. They lifted and fell while Lance’s voice spun out around us, keeping fear and remembrance beyond that web of sound. Sometimes he sang, but more often he talked as Kevin had talked, proclaiming his love and promising to take me to Tara to be his Queen. Even in my fever state it seemed an odd thing for the Breton to do, and I pulled back slightly, trying to see his expression.