The Camelot Spell (9 page)

The Grange servants seemed to fall into two categories: stolid, silent types who handled their baskets and hoes with the casual skill that came from years of practice, and more sullen-looking workers, who hacked at the ground indifferently. Neither type was particularly friendly, although Gerard admitted that he didn’t have much experience with servants at this level. Perhaps it was entirely normal. He thought about asking Ailis, but she had always worked in the castle under much gentler conditions. She likely wouldn’t know either.

Newt might know, but he had separated from them early on, joining forces with another weeder, and was now working in another section of the field. Occasionally they would see him stand and stretch, casually looking around to make sure they were still within eyesight. But there was no opportunity to speak with him.

“Care to place a wager that Master Daffyd”—and Gerard made the title an insult—“has gone through our belongings?”

“Or had his servants do it. They give me the shivers, some of them. Their eyes are dead. Have you noticed? Like there’s no one inside. Ugh.” Ailis shuddered at the thought, then said, “The map?”

Gerard inclined his head to the saddlebag, which he had brought with him, defying any of the locals to make a comment. “Is safe. I wasn’t going to trust it out of my sight.”

Ailis stopped, her hand closing around a particularly stubborn weed. “Do you think—”

“I didn’t like the look in his eyes,” Gerard said, putting his hand around hers and yanking. The weed came up, knocking them both on their backsides.

“Thank you ever so much, brave Sir Weed Killer.” Ailis made as though to curtsey, impossible in her rough trousers, and stopped only when she realized how odd that would look to anyone who might be watching. It wasn’t the big things, like lowering her voice or passing water privately, that made pretending to be a boy so tricky. Small things were what caught you out, every time. If only it were acceptable for girls to travel like this; boys had the freedom to!

“Very. Funny.” Gerard sat up, decided that only his dignity had been injured, and wiped the dirt off his hands. “I know that there is no work without its own worth, but this is an experience I would have gladly gone without.”

A low chuckle from behind made both of them start and look around.

“There are worse jobs, youngster. There are many worse jobs.”

The speaker was an older man, his face lined from years in the sun, his silver hair pulled back into a knot at the back of his neck.

“Perhaps.” Gerard tossed the weed into his bag, and offered his hand to the stranger. How much had this old man heard? He made a resolution to be more careful, minding his speech. “I’m Gerard.”

The older man looked at his hand, then shook his head and took up the hand clasp. “Beren.” He looked at Ailis, and she nodded her head shyly, rubbing her hand on the side of her trousers as though to clean them, but actually spreading more dirt over them to disguise the slenderness of her fingers. “Aili,” she said, giving her childhood nickname which could have belonged to a boy or a girl.

“You’re new here.” It wasn’t a question. “Old Daffyd hired ye for the season?”

“We’re only passing through,” Gerard said, nudging Ailis so that she started weeding again. They had wanted to talk to people, yes, but there was no reason to attract unwanted attention by seeming
to slack off on their work. “Just paying for a night’s room and board.”

“Passing through, are you?” Beren looked at them carefully then shrugged. “No concern of mine,” he said, almost to himself. “Offered you shelter, did he?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Nah, nah, nothing. Only best be careful where you lay your head.”

“We’re almost done,” Gerard said. “Half a day was our agreement. So we’ll be gone soon.”

Beren’s expression at that made Gerard wary. “Is there something you want to tell us?” the squire asked as he took the weeds from Ailis’s hand and tossed them into the sack.

Beren shook his head, retreating from his earlier friendliness. “On your own, you are. As we all are.” And he would say no more.

Ailis and Gerard exchanged worried glances but had no choice but to go back to work.

“You smell.” Newt knelt on the rough wooden floor and began to remove his shoes.

“So do you.” Gerard tossed his clothing into a pile and used a ragged towel to wipe himself off. There had been limited water offered for them to
bathe with when they came in from the fields. Ailis had looked so pitiful, the two boys had agreed without speaking to let her have it all. They could hear her now, behind a hastily erected screen, splashing and humming. By the time they had finished dressing, the noises had stopped and she came around the screen, dressed, with her hair laying wet over her shoulders and her face scrubbed pink.

Gerard looked longingly at the thin pallets they had been given. A far cry from his bed back home, but right now it was worth a solid gold piece to him, if he could only lie down for an hour or five. But they had been invited to meet with the master of the Grange before the midday meal. From the way Newt’s stomach had been growling, Gerard didn’t think either of his companions was going to like that bit of news.

“I feel so much better,” Ailis declared, braiding her hair up again. “I feel I could take on anything right now.”

“Well, that’s good. Because we’re about to.” Newt and Ailis turned in confusion to look at Gerard. “A servant stopped me on the way up. Daffyd wants to see us, personally, before we go down to dinner.”

“So?”

Gerard shook his head, exasperated by Newt’s
question. “The map said that one of the talismans was here, didn’t it?”

“It glowed. We still don’t know what that means. It could just mean that we’re moving in the right direction. Or that someone here has information we need. Or…anything!”

Gerard considered that. “Even if Daffyd does have the first talisman, how will we know what it is? It could be anywhere. It could be anything. If we could figure out some way to question him—”

“That assumes he’d be willing to help us, and that we could believe what he says,” Ailis pointed out. “I don’t think he’s to be trusted.”

“He’s not,” Newt agreed. “I spoke with some of the workers. They would not speak ill of the man.”

Ailis shook her head. “How does that—”

“There’s no slave so well-treated that he will not speak ill of his master. The only man who is silent is one who’s afraid.”

“So speak carefully,” Gerard interrupted. “Better yet, don’t speak at all. Let me talk to him.”

“What? You don’t think we can—” Ailis started, her expression indignant.

“No. I don’t. Come on, Ailis. Think for a moment. You didn’t even want him to know you were a girl.
The minute you start to talk for any length of time, he’ll know. You think he’ll listen to you then? And Newt—”

“I’m not ashamed of who I am,” Newt retorted.

The squire threw his hands up in frustration. “I’m not saying you are. But I know men like this Master Daffyd. They’re proud. The way he treated us, like we’d agree to whatever he said just to get fed? You said it yourself, Newt—we weren’t impressive. If we had been—if I’d ridden in here with Sir Rheynold—he’d have been all over us like a dog hoping for a bone.” Gerard shook his head. “I’m not trying to be cruel, honestly. But the only way to talk to someone like this is from a position of strength. And neither of you can do that.”

“You just spent half the day digging weeds. What makes you think he’s going to recognize you as any better than us?” Ailis meant the words to sting, and they did.

“I have a better chance than either of you.” But Gerard’s voice, previously confident, began to waver a little with doubt. The sight of the servants slogging back from the field, half of them without any animation or casual talk at all, had unnerved him more than he would admit.

“We’re doomed.” Newt sat down on the one stool in the room and put his head in his hands. “And I’ll never get my supper.”

The moment they entered Daffyd’s study, Newt felt the unease he’d experienced before jump in intensity. A sideways glance showed that Ailis was equally nervous, if the way she kept rubbing her hands flat against her shirt was any indication. Almost in passing, Newt noticed that when she did that, the fabric pulled tight across her chest. He hadn’t noticed before, much, but they were going to have to find her a jacket or vest of some kind if she was going to keep passing as a boy.

“Ah…Ready to be on your way, are you?”

Daffyd sat in a heavy chair, his back to the one window in the room. The sun came through at such an angle that he seemed almost surrounded by the late afternoon light. If you looked directly at him, you had to squint or risk being blinded. Newt had seen better in bit-player shows. But this was Daffyd’s ground, and that made him worth watching. Even if that idiot Gerard didn’t seem to realize it, bulling forward with bluster wasn’t going to win the day.

“We thank you for your hospitality. But yes, after
the midday meal we will be ready to be on our way.”

Newt had to admit, the way the words dripped off the other boy’s lips, you’d think he was Arthur himself being gracious to unworthy underlings. An annoying twit, yes, but a well-trained annoying twit. Gerard was almost as good as he thought he was.

“Not so quickly, my young sirs,” Daffyd said, stretching his legs out in front of him.

Newt tensed. He didn’t like the sound of that. Not at all.

“I have a challenge for you. A game of sorts, if you will.”

“And if we won’t?” Newt asked quietly under his breath.

Daffyd went on without hearing him. “I have in this room my most valuable possession. If you can tell me it true, it is yours.”

Ailis looked at Newt, then at Gerard. Newt looked back at them blandly, not showing his unease on his face. It felt like a trap somehow. Adults didn’t simply make offers like that, not to random travelers and especially not to young travelers without status.

Ailis spoke for them all. “And if we cannot tell you what that possession is?”

Daffyd smiled, and Newt was certain he saw
sharp teeth this time. “Then you stay and work my lands.” And with those words, the three could feel the weight of something falling around them, sealing them into the room.

“Excuse us a moment?” Gerard said, taking his companions by the arm and leading them a short distance away, out of their host’s hearing.

“I don’t like this,” Newt said.

“I
really
don’t like it,” Ailis said in a small voice. “He stinks.” The two boys looked at her, and she clarified, “Of magic. Can’t you—” No, they couldn’t, clearly, despite it being so obvious to her. “I can smell it on him in here. This entire room. Magic. Of a darker sort than anything I’ve ever felt from Merlin. If we agree, we’ll be bound by the terms. We’ll end up like half the workers in the fields, the ones with the dead eyes.”

“You think they’re bound by magic? Daffyd is using magic to control his Grange?” He looked at Newt, who nodded, remembering the strange weight in the room when they came in. “Then the King needs to know about this!”

“To tell him, we’ve got to escape first,” Newt pointed out. “I say we decline his offer and pass on dinner as well. Once we get away, we can try and
figure out what to do about the map glowing.”

“Agreed,” Gerard said. His face was pale with anger, not fear.

Behind them, the door opened. Two large men stepped inside, short swords strapped to their waists, clearly there to enforce the rules of Daffyd’s surprise game.

The three companions looked at each other: Newt unsurprised, Ailis afraid, Gerard furious.

“This is your hospitality?” Gerard demanded. “Armed guards to force us into a bargain we have not agreed to?” He might have sounded impressive if his voice hadn’t cracked halfway through. Still, he stood his ground, glaring at Daffyd.

“My boy. There have been no threats made.” But the threat was implicit in the way the two guards stood.

Gerard growled like one of the hounds from the kennel, then turned to his companions. “We each get a chance, that should—”

“No.” Daffyd shook his head with mock sorrow. “One request, one agreement, one chance. Those are the rules.”

“That’s not fair,” Ailis protested.

Newt snorted. “Nothing about this is fair. Nothing about any of this has been fair.”

Gerard nudged Ailis and got Newt’s attention as well. They moved away from both Daffyd and his guards. “Look around,” he said in a tight whisper.

“What?” Newt kept his voice low as well, but they could all hear the fear in it.

“Look around this room,” he said again, still whispering. “The map. It’s glowing.”

“How can you tell?” As far as they could see, it was still tucked into his back, safely out of sight.

“I can feel it. It was warm before, but it’s almost hot, now. Almost…almost as if it knew I couldn’t see it and wanted to be sure it got my attention.”

“You think the talisman is in here?”

Gerard’s scorn won through the anger he was feeling about the trap they found themselves in. “Any other reason the map might be glowing, horse-boy?”

“I haven’t any idea.” Newt put his hands on his hips and glared at Gerard, wanting nothing more than to knock him down again and wipe that look off his face once and for all. He caught the guards staring at him and lowered his voice again. “It’s all magic…and I’m tired of it.”

“Well, don’t be. It might be the only thing that saves us,” Ailis snapped. “Merlin put his magic into the map,” she reminded them with a bit more
patience. “So if the map is getting warm now, it must be reacting to something in this room. It’s Merlin helping us as much as he can. That’s what he meant when he said he couldn’t help us directly. He has to work through the map.”

“So if the talisman is in here,” Gerard said in an undertone, “wouldn’t that be Daffyd’s most valuable possession? Do you really think he’ll let us walk out of here with it?”

“He
has
to if we find it,” Ailis insisted. “His own magic should bind him to his side of the deal, the same as it binds us. But we need to find the talisman first. And we have no idea what it looks like.”