Chapter 22: A Bitter Recollection

Elizabeth walked to her father in a daze.

"Don't trust him," Wickham intoned.

"Are you well, my child?"

"You abandoned us!" Elizabeth cried. "You left us, to make our own way to the monastery, where…where…how could you leave us like that?!"

"Dear Lizzy. I fully comprehend your frustration," Sir Bennet said, putting an arm around her shoulders. Wickham spat in disgust. "But someone had to stave of Lord Brennus and his men; if I had stayed with you, those soldiers would have caught up and killed us all. I did what I had to, in order to protect you."

"What protection," Wickham scoffed. "If not for me, your daughters would likely be dead by now. Dead, killed by soldiers of Brennus."

Sir Bennet ignored Wickham, and continued to address Elizabeth. "When I made it to the monastery, Horace now being a weak and old horse, the entire place was afire! I feared so much for you, and for Lydia, but was assured by the monks that you had both somehow escaped. The Saxon warrior was feared dead, however. I am so relieved to find out that you are alive, Lizzy. But where is Lydia?"

"If the Saxon warrior was feared dead, you wouldn't be found at this location now, would you?" Wickham taunted, entirely uncaring that he was not being responded to. His comments did have the effect of holding Elizabeth back somehow, from truly buying into what her father was saying. Wickham's words were like a needle poking in her side, trying to remind her of something long forgot.

"Lizzy, where is Lydia? And what has brought you to this remote spot?"

"That's right, do go on," Wickham drawled. "Let us extend this fiction where you pretend to care about the welfare of the daughter that you had ordered to be killed. I haven't heard a good fairy tale since I was a boy."

That finally received attention. Sir Bennet looked at him in distaste. "Lizzy, who is this vagabond that you have found?"

"Under normal circumstances, I would introduce myself, but I don't see the necessity of extending common courtesies to traitors." Wickham all but spat out the last word.

"What are you speaking of?" Elizabeth asked Wickham, as it was obvious that Sir Bennet was going to resume ignoring the man.

"He is a traitor. Plain and simple."

"You are speaking to knight of King Arthur," Sir Bennet warned.

"And what of that? Being a knight somehow absolves you of your sins? I spit on you, I spit on your Arthur, and I spit on your knighthood!" Wickham snapped. "You brokered a peace. You brokered a peace. All us Saxons well remember it. You and your Arthur. And then you broke it. You broke it, and you killed us. Traitor."

"Father," Elizabeth said, and found her voice cracking. "Father, why are you here, gathered here in this forsaken spot?"

"Child, as I told that Saxon warrior, to slay Querig was a mission entrusted to me. A mission entrusted to me by Arthur himself. I am here to on that mission, as I am laying out some plans."

A fragment of recollection stirred on the edges of Elizabeth's mind. The emotion it provoked, even before she could hold it down, surprised and shocked her, for mingled with the overwhelming desire to go to speak to her father, were distinct shadows of anger and bitterness. "Father, didn't our ways part years ago? Mine remained with my sisters, while yours …"

As Sir Bennet stopped before the cairn and bowed his head to the stones as if in apology, she felt both memory and anger growing firmer.

"And indeed child, who's to say your path wasn't the more godly?" he said. "To leave behind all great talk of war and peace. Leave behind your power to heal. To leave behind Arthur once and for all and devote yourself to your sisters." He glanced over again at Wickham, who had maintained his defensive posture.

"A good and noble sister you are," Sir Bennet continued. "I've watched how you have walked beside Lydia as a kind shadow. Should I have done the same? Yet God guided us down separate paths. I had a duty. This vagabond accuses me of being a traitor. That great peace that was brokered, torn down in blood! Yet it held well for a time. Torn down in blood! Who blames us for it now? Do I fear youth? Is it youth alone can defeat an opponent? Let him come, let him come. Let your warrior come."

"Father, how could you?"

"My dearest Lizzy, I saw you that very day and you talked of cries in your ears of children and babes. I heard the same, yet were they not like the cries from the surgeon's tent when a man's life is spared even as the cure brings agonies? Why should I fear your warrior now? I've fought fanged Norsemen with reindeer snouts!" Sir Bennet went striding off, not stopping till he stood where the land's edge appeared to meet the sky.

"He may be your father, but he is a traitor who was willing to sacrifice your sister," Wickham said quietly. "I know that you hold me in distrust, but I implore you to be wary of your father."

Sir Bennet, gazing down at the view, had raised his arm in the air, and now without turning, shouted through the wind, "They'll soon be upon us! They come up the slope eagerly."

Elizabeth wanted to see what her father was speaking of, and even Wickham followed her, but the old knight came walking towards them, and they all three halted not far from where the animal was tethered.

"The Saxon warrior will soon be upon us, and what a fellow he is! Go, look if you doubt it! They emerge from the wood below. Now he comes, and on his rope not a goat, but a lass to guide him."

"Have they seen us?" Elizabeth asked in excitement.

"I'll wager that warrior has keen eyes, and sees us even now against the sky." Sir Bennet laughed to himself, but a melancholy lingered in his voice. "Yes," he said finally. "I fancy he sees us well enough. Elizabeth, I see you before me now and I'm reminded of that night. The wind as fierce then as this one. And you, still just a lass, cursing Arthur to his face while the rest of us stood with heads bowed! For who wanted the task of striking you down? Each of us hiding from the king's eye, for fear he'd command with one glance to run you through, girl though you were. If he had ordered that, I would have stood against it! But see, Arthur was a great king, and here's more proof of it! You cursed him before his finest knights, yet he replied gently to you. You recall this, child?"

"How am I to recall anything, when this she-dragon's breath keeps it all from me?" Elizabeth asked bitterly, though she was beginning to well remember the night her father spoke of.

"My eyes lowered like the rest, almost expecting your head to roll past my feet even as I gazed down at them! Yet Arthur spoke to you with gentleness! You don't recall even a part of it? The wind that night almost as strong as this one, our tent ready to fly into the dark sky. Yet Arthur meets curses with gentle words. He thanked you for your service. For your loyalty and honour. And he bade us all think of you with thanks. I whispered my farewell to you as you took your fury into the storm. We all shared something of your anger, even if you did wrong to curse Arthur, and on the very day of his great victory!"

"Victory?" Elizabeth said, feeling more and more the emotions raging through Wickham. "Victory? You brokered a great treaty. A great peace. It well held for years. Didn't all men, Christian and pagan, sleep more easily for it, even on the eve of battle? To fight knowing innocents were safe in villages? And yet, when Arthur decided to break it, to break a brokered treaty to gain complete control, you didn't fight! You didn't object! You should have walked out with me, if not because your own daughter died for it, then because it was so, so wrong! You killed villages and villages of innocent Saxons, in order to crush soldiers in battle! It was an unholy thing to break the treaty, father!"

"Ah, now you recall it!"

"My memory's of God himself betrayed, sir. And I'm angry of being robbed the memory of our greatest betrayal till now."

"For a time I wished the same from the fog, my child. Yet soon I understood the hand of a truly great king. For the wars stopped at last, wasn't that so? Hasn't peace been our companion since that day?"

"Peace at such high a price of betrayal and dishonour is no peace at all. None who was party to it will be allowed entry to heaven."

"Child, you are still too young to understand the ways of kings. But we can talk this through once we are away from this place."

"You shall never make it away from this place," Wickham said with conviction. "Darcy is almost upon us."

"I don't fear him, even if he's got youth on his side!"

"Your helmet is missing," Wickham pointed out, with disarming lightness.

"I left it in those woods! But what need of it now? The armour too I'd take off but I fear you waiting to skin this fox underneath in some dastardly, ungentlemanlike manner."

"Well, I guess I will stay and see who survives this day," Wickham said, assuming a languid air.

"My daughter, will you not understand the acts of a great king? We can only watch and wonder. A great king, like God himself, must perform deeds mortals flinch from! Who calls me a coward? Or a slaughterer of babes? Where was this vagabond that day? Hiding behind his nurse's skirt, I wager."

"Better coward than traitor," Wickham said.

For a moment, the howl of the wind was so loud that nothing could be heard. Then, Elizabeth became aware that both Wickham and her father had fallen silent and were staring off. Turning, she saw Darcy and Lydia standing at the cliff's edge.

The sky had thickened, so that to Elizabeth it was as if they had been carried here on the clouds. Now both of them, in near-silhouette, appeared peculiarly transfixed; Darcy holding firm his rein in both hands like a charioteer, and Lydia leaning forward at an angle, both arms outstretched as though for balance.

There was a new sound in the wind, and then Elizabeth heard Wickham mutter, "There she goes again, with her singing! Must she be so tuneless?"

The two figures lost their rigidity and came towards them, Lydia pulling in front. Blood was splattered all over Darcy, and even Lydia was speckled with it.

"My apologies," Darcy said coming closer. "Yet it's all I can do to stop her leaping rock to rock till she breaks herself."

Elizabeth recalled that Lydia was behaving in just this way in the underground tunnel, just before that creature had appeared.

Darcy looked directly at Elizabeth, and his eyes lit up. "You are all well?" he asked, but looked only at her.

Elizabeth nodded shakily.

"As you can see Darcy, we are in exalted company," Wickham said, nodding towards Sir Bennet. "I believe you've met before. What happened to you?"

"We had a small encounter with Lord Brennus himself. I was delayed in overseeing the burial my honour dictated."

Lydia's singing was making it hard for them to hear one another, and she was tugging more than ever, the object of her attention quite evidently a spot at the crest of the next slope.

Darcy gave the rope a sharp pull, then said "Lydia appears anxious to reach those rocks up there. Sir Bennet, what lies in them? I see stones piled one upon another, as though to hide a pit or lair."

"Why ask me?" said Sir Bennet. "Ask Lydia, and she may even stop her songs!"

"Sir Bennet, we share a duty to keep this girl from harm. We must watch her carefully in this high place. Elizabeth, perhaps you can help me." With that, Darcy led Lydia to where Wickham had hammered in the stake, and crouching down began securing Lydia's rope to it.

Indeed it seemed to Elizabeth that Darcy lavished unusual care on this task, testing repeatedly each knot he made, as well as the soundness of Wickham's handiwork.

"Are you alright?" he whispered when Elizabeth was close enough.

"Well enough, now that you are here. I am remembering things that make me shudder…I am relieved to see you safe. I fear what lies ahead."

Meanwhile, Lydia herself remained oblivious. She calmed somewhat, but her gaze stayed fixed on the rocks at the top of the slope, and she continued to tug with quiet insistence. Her singing, though far less shrill, had gained a dogged quality. For its part, the goat had moved as far away as its own rope would allow, but was nonetheless gawping in fascination.

As for Sir Bennet, he had been watching Darcy's every movement with care, and, or so it seemed to Elizabeth, a kind of sly cunning had come into his eyes. As the Saxon warrior had become absorbed in his task, her father had moved stealthily closer, drawn out his sword, and planting it into the soil, leant his weight on it, forearms resting on the broad hilt. In this stance, her father was now watching Darcy, and it struck Elizabeth he might be memorising details concerning the Darcy's person: his height, his reach, the strength in the calves, the strapped left arm.

Wickham, to the side, also was observing everything with careful precision.

His work completed to satisfaction, Darcy rose and turned to face Sir Bennet. For a small moment there was a strange uneasiness in the looks they exchanged, then Darcy smiled warmly. "Now here's a custom divides Britons from Saxons," he said, pointing. "See there, sir. Your sword's drawn and you use it to rest your weight, as if it's cousin to a chair or footstool. To any Saxon warrior, it seems a strange custom."

"Grow to my creaky years, sir, you'll see if it seems so strange! In days of peace like these, I fancy a good sword's only too glad of the work, even if just to relieve its owner's bones. What's odd about it?"

"But observe how it presses into the earth. Now to us Saxons, a sword's edge is a thing of never-sleeping worry. We fear to show a blade even the air lest it lose a tiny part of its edge."

"Is that so? A sharp edge's of importance, Master Darcy, I'll not dispute. But isn't there too much made of it? Good footwork, sound strategy, calm courage. And that little wildness makes a warrior hard to predict. These are what determine a contest, sir. And the knowledge God wills one's victory. So let an old man rest his shoulders. Besides, aren't there times a sword left in the sheath's drawn too late? I've stood this way on many a battlefield to gather breath, comforted my blade's already out and ready, and it won't be rubbing its eyes and asking me if it's afternoon or morn even as I try to put it to good use."

"Then it must be we Saxons keep our swords more heartlessly. For we demand they not sleep at all, even as they rest in the dark of their scabbards. Take my own here, sir. It knows my manner well. It doesn't expect to take the air without soon touching flesh, bone, and blood."

"A difference in custom then."

Suddenly, Lydia stopped singing and began to shout. She was making the same statement over and over, but Elizabeth could not follow her speech. For another moment, Lydia continued to shout and pull, then fell silent, slumping down onto the ground, and appeared on the verge of tears.

No one spoke for what seemed a very long time, the wind howling between them.

"Sir Bennet," Darcy said finally. "We look now to you, sir. Let's keep no more disguises between us. You're Querig's protector, are you not?"

A/N: Bonus points to anyone who saw that coming! ;)