14. I'm Glad You're Back

Vanora's new baby was the talk of the town, and Zoe was asked more times than she could remember to give details of the new baby; if it was healthy, how loud it had cried, if it had looked like Bors at all. She'd also been asked about Vanora; if the birth had been easy or not, were there any complications, was Vanora still strong after it?

Zoe had realized quickly that births were risky here, and that not many children survived past five years old, many more dying in infancy. Vanora was considered lucky because out of five pregnancies so far, she'd had five children. Others hadn't been so lucky.

Zoe learned that Lucia had been pregnant twice, and had no children to show for it-one had been aborted and the other had miscarried. She'd also heard about Caradoc's lover, who had died giving birth to his child. The child itself had died of a fever not long after Cador, the unfortunate woman had died, and many had thought that Caradoc would go the same way, his strength weakened by grief.

Soon enough, however, Vanora's baby stopped being such big news as she started to return to her usual routine. She started shopping again, albeit with help, usually her sister's. She started working a little in the tavern again, only for an hour or two at a time when her sister was free to look after the baby. And, soon enough, she was taking the baby up on he daily trips to the wall, looking out for her lover. But Bors didn't come back, even though Vanora waited for him every day.

Zoe ran in to Tam, Vanora's twin, at the market and was told that Vanora hadn't even named the baby yet. She was waiting for Bors.

'She should name him already. And if Bors doesn't like it, he can deal with it. It's not as if he'll call the boy anything other than Five,' Tam said quite loudly.

Zoe managed to slip away from the group of women who surrounded Tam as soon as they heard Bors' name. Tam enjoyed the attention she got from having a sister who was the lover of one of Arthur's famous knights, and answered all of the questions the women had with a smile on her face and giving detail that, surely, Vanora wouldn't want aired in the public marketplace. Zoe's stomach twisted with disgust and she walked away.

'She named him Drostan,' Braewyn told Zoe the next day, after a visit she'd taken to Vanora's to check on both baby and mother, and to give the small family some honey cakes she'd baked.

'The noisy one?' Zoe guessed, looking up from the stocking she was mending.

'He's very loud,' Braewyn said, nodding in confirmation. 'Very strong. His father would be proud of him.'

'Bors will be proud of him,' Zoe retorted. 'They're coming back, Braewyn. All of them are coming back.'

Braewyn agreed readily enough. 'Arthur will always bring them home. It's alive that I'm worried about.'

So Zoe went back to her usual routine. Work at home, walk with friends and worry about the knights. It felt like an endlessly repeating cycle. Vanora was looking worse than she felt, but then, the woman did have a lover out there, and a new child to look after, so she had an excuse for looking awful. But even Vanora didn't look as terrible as Blanchefleur, who had taken to staring into space with bloodshot eyes. She looked, quite frankly, like a corpse. She didn't sleep, she barely ate, and she was constantly talking about Percival.

Zoe, Liliana and Evelyn kept a close lookout on Blanchefleur, to make sure she didn't do anything stupid, like make herself sick with worry or keep a constant watch on the gate. They brought her food, asked her older sister to make sure she slept and bribed her younger brothers with honey cakes to make sure she wasn't constantly miserable. Even Lucia, although she would never admit it, watched the girl more closely than before.

Zoe even started inviting Blanchefleur to play with the village children. They took even longer to accept Blanchefleur than they had Zoe, but after Blanchefleur had pelted Zoe with snowballs, they rallied and defended Zoe from the new lady.

'You're gonna get it!' they yelled, all attacking at the same time and shrieking with laughter.

Zoe had gone home soaked and tired, but laughing, and Blanchefleur had looked like she was much better for it. She had regained some colour back in her cheeks and a smile back on her face and, for an hour or so, she had forgotten that Percival was missing.

Finally, after nearly two months of worry, a horn sounded, and the news spread that the knights were coming back. It was late winter, and the snow had turned to slush, but finally the knights were coming home. Zoe and Blanchefleur heard that they had been sighted when they were caught in the middle of a mudfight fight against a group of children led by a child named after St. Crispin who Zoe called 'Chris'. His mother had walked up, catching the slushy ball of ice and mud Chris had sent Zoe's way in the shoulder, before telling the girls what she had seen

'Are you going to go see them home?' she had asked, taking Chris by the hand to keep him from making another missile. The other kids had slunk away now that there was an actual adult around, disappearing to find another place to play.

'Yes, yes we are,' Blanchefleur had said, grabbing Zoe's hand and sprinting in the direction of the gate.

There were people lining the road towards the fort, all looking eagerly towards the direction the knights were coming from, but instead of joining them, Blanchefleur pulled her shorter friend in the direction of the back of the fort, closer to the village where there was another gate, guarded by a pair of legionaries and a courtyard visible through the bars separating it from the street. People also surrounded this courtyard and lined the road leading to it, but Blanchefleur pushed Zoe through the gaps between people until they were both pressed against the bars separating them from the knights, gasping for breath after their mad dash.

'I hope he's not hurt, I hope he's not hurt,' Blanchefleur muttered, chest heaving, as they waited for the knights to appear.

'Why are we here?' Zoe asked, trying to regain control of her breathing and trying to look through the crowd for the knights. A tight knot of tension was growing inside her, and all her worries and nightmares resurfaced. They'd been gone for nearly two months after all, something had to have been keeping them away. Like injuries, deaths, blizzards, hordes of woads to fight; something terrible had obviously prevented them from returning. Zoe pressed a hand to her stomach, as if that would ease away some of her fears.

'They come around this way, it's closer to their stables and the infirmary.' She suddenly reached out for Zoe's hand and gripped it tightly as the noise around them swelled. 'They're here!'

True enough, the knights rode in, splattered with mud and other unpleasant things, their horses, weapons and two months without the benefit of a razor or comb making them look more intimidating than they really were. They pulled their mounts to a halt once they were inside the courtyard and, ignoring the people around them, began to dismount and care for their animals.

'Are they hurt?' Blanchefleur asked, as Zoe's stomach twisted in anticipation, before she let out a sigh of relief.

From what Zoe could see, they weren't all injured. Tristan seemed to be fine, Galahad had a bandage pressed to his side, but was moving around well and his colour was good. Dinadan was fine, Percival, Lamorak, Caradoc, Dagonet and Bors were all apparently uninjured as well. Bedivere had a scrape along his arm, but it wasn't bleeding and there was no bandage, so Zoe assumed he was fine and Kay had blood on his trousers and a bandage around his upper thigh, but he was riding, so that was a good sign. Lancelot was looking annoyed, and Zoe guessed it was because three fingers on his right hand were splinted, and Arthur was looking very tired and he had a large, rather dirty bandage across his stomach. Gawain, Zoe noticed happily, wasn't hurt.

It felt as if a string had been cut inside her and she sagged against the bars, too relieved to support herself properly. They were all here, they all came back. They were all alive. Zoe couldn't keep the stupid grin off her face. They were all alive!

'Oh thank the gods,' Blanchefleur sighed, releasing Zoe's hand. 'He's not hurt.'

Zoe surreptitiously rubbed feeling back into her hand and guessed that Blanchefleur had seen that Percival, although rather blood-spattered, was not hurt in the slightest. Not if his antics are anything to go by, anyway, Zoe thought as she watched Percival attempt to trip Dagonet up and duck away from his retaliatory punch, only to go annoy Tristan, if the man's darker than usual scowl was any indication of his mood.

'Out of the way!' A familiar voice demanded. 'Move!' It was Vanora, her hair half up in a bun, apron tied around her clearly not pregnant stomach. Bors is in trouble, Zoe thought.

Zoe stepped aside quickly, pulling Blanchefleur out of the way as well. She'd heard what Vanora had yelled out when she was giving birth and she wouldn't want to be in Bors' position right now. Given the space that formed around Bors and his lover, none of the other knights envied him either.

Bors gaped at his wife, before breaking out into the hugest grin Zoe had ever seen. 'My pearl, how've you been?' Bors tried to greet her, but was met, not with the passionate kiss he'd undoubtedly been hoping for, but instead with a punch to the stomach.

'You left me when our child was about to be born? You promised you wouldn't be gone for more than a week and it's been more than a month! What took you so long?' Vanora asked, clearly audible even from where Zoe and Blanchefleur were standing.

'But you're here, my love, so everything's obviously fine, yeah? The baby?' Bors asked, trying to pacify his lover.

'Is a lovely baby boy, as loud as his father. Now come with me and I'll show you 'fine',' Vanora snapped at him.

Doesn't he know what they say about redheads? Zoe thought, wincing as Vanora grabbed him by the ear and dragged him in the direction of their house. The remaining knights thought this was hilarious, particularly Caradoc, one of Bors' closest friends among the knights, and Lancelot.

'I won't expect Bors at breakfast tomorrow, then,' Arthur said with a small smile on his face, causing the knights to laugh louder still and some of the women standing around Zoe to mutter about living in sin.

'Not just living, revelling,' one of them, a horse-faced woman who Zoe vaguely remembered was talking with Tam in the marketplace about Drostan.

'At least he loves her, which is more than you can say for your husband,' Blanchefleur snapped, tearing her eyes away from Percival long enough to glare at the woman, who flushed a shade of red that made her look unhealthy.

'At least I managed to attract a man's attention long enough to be married. If you don't marry soon, you'll end your days as a whore!' The woman turned and shouldered her way through the crowd and Blanchefleur looked back to Percival. Zoe squeezed her friend's hand reassuringly; the insult had been sharp and bitter, but the knights were back now and who knew what would happen? Blanchefleur might have her faults but she was far from stupid, and far from lacking in admirers for that matter. Let the wizened old hag stew in her own bitterness, Zoe thought angrily.

The two girls watched the knights for a while, just happy to see them all well and relatively uninjured. Arthur disappeared pretty quickly; he looked as if he had the most serious injury of the knights. Kay had limped away with the help of Galahad and Lancelot was struggling to groom his horse with his splinted fingers, much to the amusement of Caradoc.

Zoe shivered a little, glancing at her spellbound friend. She was showing no sings of leaving, but Zoe was getting cold and her legs were getting sore from standing around for so long.

'You can leave, Zoe, you don't have to wait for me. I'll see you tomorrow at work, yeah? There'll be quite a bit of it,' Blanchefleur predicted.

That night Zoe slept undisturbed by nightmares of the knights dying and instead was disturbed by dreams of dancing laundry.

xxx

As it turned out, Blanchefleur was right. When Zoe showed up at work the next morning she had almost been overwhelmed, both by the volume of laundry and its potent smell. Every article of clothing the knights had taken with them needed repairing, some were ruined so new ones needed to be made and all of them needed to be washed as quickly as possible, if only so that the laundry girls didn't faint because of the stench.

'How do they manage to ruin their breeches on a mission like this?' Liliana asked in frustration, dumping a pile of them into the tub to be washed.

'How does any man manage to ruin them?' Lucia shot back from where she was hanging shirts to dry near a fire.

Nevertheless, her friends tackled the laundry with determination and enthusiasm. Almost immediately after the knights' return Blanchefleur looked better, and Zoe watched the change in her friend with relief. Evelyn preferred having a routine in her life and both Lucia and Liliana looked for excuses to get out of their houses, and so the mood amongst the young women was far happier than it had been, despite the extra work.

Zoe was less enthusiastic. She'd done some thinking while she'd been having a break and came to the conclusion that she was wasting her life. She'd been a straight A student, one of the best in her class; she could speak five different languages, if she counted the two she'd learned while she was here, and she was wasting her life mending clothes for a bunch of men she didn't even like. Mending a rip in one of Galahad's tunics, she tried to assure herself that the knights meant nothing to her.

Of course Lancelot had the funniest dirty jokes Zoe had ever heard, and she couldn't help but admire Arthur. And Bedivere was surprisingly interesting and knowledgeable for a knight, and Bors was such an affectionate father to his five children that she couldn't help but forgive his crudeness. And then there was Gawain…

Pricking her finger with the needle, she wiped the blood away before it could stain the cloth she was working on.

Not caring about the knights seemed to take more effort than she wanted to admit.

xxx

'You managed to see Percival, Blanchefleur?' Evelyn asked as she and Zoe hauled a dripping pile of clothes out of the vat where they had been washing them.

'Yes,' Blanchefleur replied, sounding a little choked. She was sorting through a pile of unwashed clothes, deciding what needed to be washed and what needed to be disposed of. 'Me and Zoe went together to see them come home.'

'You looking out for anyone special, Zoe?' Evelyn asked, nudging her with her elbow.

'No,' Zoe said, thinking of Gawain's smile. Damn, she was blushing.

'Oh yes you were. Who is it? Lancelot? I noticed you said goodbye to him rather…enthusiastically.' Evelyn was grinning, damn her, and now Liliana was interested, too.

'Oh, Zoe, please tell me it's not Lancelot. You know what that man does with women! I've heard that one of the girls he was with at Yule had to visit Braewyn for herbs to…you know...'

'Well, that's partly true. She came to Braewyn for herbs, but they were for her mother's heart, not for aborting a child. And there's nobody,' Zoe denied.

'You're lying,' Evelyn said. 'You make sure you're looking me straight in the eyes when you want to lie.'

Zoe blushed even more, guilty at being caught, but she still denied it until Lucia came over.

'We need to work, girls, there's too much for us to do if we gossip the whole time as well. Besides, it's perfectly obvious who she keeps looking at.'

Zoe looked at Luica, slightly panicked, but Lucia only smirked back, making Zoe feel rather frightened.

'How do you know? Zoe, did you tell her? Lucia, you have to tell me,' Blanchefleur tugged on Lucia's sleeve as the older woman walked to a line of nearly-dried clothes and sat down to mend them.

'Zoe, I believe you have to take some clothes up to the knights, yes?' Lucia called from where she was sitting.

'I do?' Zoe looked over to the pile, significantly smaller than it usually was before she braved the knights. Anyway, it was still rather early in the morning and the knights were usually more irritable before they'd had breakfast.

'They have to be able to wear something, don't they?' Lucia nodded pointedly towards the door and Zoe caught on suddenly.

'Yeah, I'll just take them up now,' Zoe said.

'But-'

'I'll be back soon, don't worry,' Zoe told the protesting Liliana and picked up the pile of clothes and almost ran out of the room.

She only checked the clothes she had once she had reached the hall where the knights were sleeping. There was no noise except for something Zoe had come to recognize as Gawain, Caradoc and Bedivere snoring in concert. They must be really exhausted because they only did that when they slept really deeply.

Zoe saw she had a few of Bedivere's things, a couple of Galahad's shirts and Lancelot's leather trousers, which Lucia had mended with a sour look on her face. She went to Bedivere first-if he was snoring like that he wouldn't wake up for anything short of a woad attack.

Bedivere's room was, as always, extraordinarily tidy and, as always, he had scrolls borrowed from Arthur lying where his clothes should go. Zoe poked them to one side, taking time to see how much Latin she could read.

'Arms, and the man I sing, who, forc'd by…fate, and haughty Juno's…unrelenting hate…expell'd and exil'd, left the Trojan shore,' Zoe read haltingly as she set the book to the side. She put Bedivere's shirts next to the parchment, casting another lingering look at it before she left.

Galahad's shirts were put in his surprisingly clean room as quietly as possible. Zoe knew that, even if he was exhausted, he was always wary and waiting for pranks, traps and woad attacks. The time she'd accidentally knocked one of his knives off the table and onto the floor she'd found herself with an arm twisted behind her back and a knife to her throat.

Galahad hadn't let her leave until he'd apologized and she'd stopped crying. So now, she did her best to look out for his things, and not to wake him up. By the time she was out of the room, Galahad had only mumbled and rolled over. At least he was wearing trousers this time, Zoe thought, remembering that Galahad usually slept in the nude.

Lancelot, however, was sleeping in the nude and Zoe blushed when she put leather breeches on the chest at the end of Lancelot's bed, ignoring the rustling of sheets that signalled him rolling over in his sleep.

'Like what you see?'

Zoe squeaked and, out of reflex, turned to face the voice. Lancelot was lounging against the headboard of his bed, hands behind his head, completely unashamed of his nudity.

No reason to be ashamed of that, Zoe thought giddily as she looked away quickly.

'Join me?' Lancelot asked, and Zoe just knew he was smiling.

'Sorry, I'm still working,' Zoe said.

'All work and no play makes Zoe a dull girl,' Lancelot was sitting up now, reaching over he put his hands on her hips and they felt good.

'Lancelot!' Zoe pulled away, annoyed at him for taking his flirting up a step beyond usual and at herself for how she felt about it-almost as if she'd strip naked and jump in bed if he asked.

'Fine, fine,' Lancelot let her go and flopped back on his bed, still naked and making no effort to cover himself up. 'You know I don't mean anything by it, Zoe.'

Zoe relaxed and turned back and smiled at him. 'And you know I don't mean anything by leaving now.'

She had only just got to the door when Lancelot suddenly spoke again. 'Thank you.'

'What for?'

'What you said. Just…thank you. Now get out, I need more sleep.'

'Lancelot?' Zoe asked hesitantly, one hand on the door, pushing it open slowly.

An answering grunt from the man told her he was listening, albeit reluctantly.

'I'm glad you're back, and that you're all safe.'

'Me too,' Lancelot said, turning his head to bury it in his pillow.

Zoe left Lancelot's room smiling, still trying to ignore the image of him, completely naked and so handsome, that seemed to be burned on the back of her eyelids. When she got back the laundry, telling the girls what Lancelot looked like naked, and assuring them that he wasn't compensating for anything (and ignoring Lucia's smug face that said 'I told you so') it was enough to distract them from trying to find out which knight was Zoe's favourite.

Not that I'm in love with Gawain, Zoe reassured herself as she scrubbed at one of Caradoc's bloodstained shirts. I just think he's attractive. Really, really, attractive.

The pile of shirts, trousers, pants, socks and whatever else they had to clean never seemed to end. Zoe's fingers became raw from the scrubbing, she'd managed to stab herself a few times with a needle and her back ached from hauling heavy piles of soaking wet clothes around. Her friends weren't in much better condition, but seemed more cheerful about it.

'You'll be doing things like this your whole life, Zoe. Get used to it,' Evelyn teased as the two of them worked at scrubbing mud stains out of Arthur's unmistakeable red cloak.

'Oh no, when I marry, I'm going to train my man to wash, cook and clean house,' Zoe said. 'I can go out and earn the money instead.'

Evelyn laughed. 'You say the strangest things, Zoe.'

'Where I come from, it's not unusual. Sometimes the woman works and the man stays home. Or both of them work.'

'Who would raise the children?' Evelyn looked completely scandalized.

'If the woman works, her husband would. If they both work, well, the children are at school for six hours a day, or they could go into…' Zoe floundered for a moment for the proper words in Latin. 'Day care-other people look after them until their parents stop working.'

Evelyn looked at Zoe and shook her head in amazement. 'You come from a strange place, Zoe.'

'It's normal for me, now let's finish this bloody laundry already,' Zoe growled, angrily rubbing a stubborn stain.

By the time their work was done, it was dark and the night was considerably colder than the day had been. Everyone split up and hurried home quickly. Nobody wanted to linger in the night for long, and Zoe tried to hurry home. It proved difficult to jog through the melting snow, more mud than snow at this point, actually, and Zoe had to keep a careful eye on the path to avoid tripping or stepping in the larger puddles that would find gaps in her leather boots.

'Walking alone?' a voice asked suddenly, from the darkness of the trees that grew thickly along the path.

Zoe let out a little shriek and looked around wildly for the speaker. 'Who's there?' she asked, stepping away from the trees while trying to keep her eyes on the shadows.

Suddenly Tristan stepped out of the trees right beside her and she nearly screamed again. She pressed a hand to her heart, which was beating so wildly that she was sure Tristan could hear it.

'I'll walk you home,' Tristan said, eyes scanning her and, undoubtedly, deciding she was too weak or too hopeless to walk the short distance to Braewyn's house on her own.

'It's not far, I'll be fine,' Zoe replied quickly. Tristan's eyes scared her, and he was still heavily armed. He had his sword buckled at his waist, two daggers, a quiver of arrows on his back and he was holding his bow loosely in one hand and that was just the weaponry that she could see.

Tristan's other hand grabbed her arm suddenly, tightly, and pulled her in the direction of Braewyn's house. His eyes constantly scanned the trees and shadows and he spoke to her in a voice she could barely hear. 'Woads.'

Zoe gulped. She'd heard stories about woads from Evelyn. Stories about rape, death and destruction. Evelyn seemed to have an idea that they used black magic, but Zoe, despite her improbable situation, still remained sceptical that magic even existed. But what Evelyn had told her-that they appeared out of shadows, attacked Roman patrols and burned villages to the ground, regardless of who was in them-was frightening enough.

Tristan's fingers were digging into her arm so hard they were hurting, and bound to leave bruises. He was tense, and worried, which made Zoe absolutely paranoid. Suddenly, every shadow (and there were a lot of them) was a woad out to get her. Every breeze was the prelude to an attack. And the owls were no longer owls, but signals to coordinate an attack.

Zoe twitched and flinched and stared about as wildly as she had the first time she had gone into the market with Braewyn and seen all the men with knives and daggers and swords. She felt pathetic.

'Stop doing that,' Tristan growled, in a tone that suggested he thought she was pathetic, too. 'They're not just going to jump out at you now.'

'What?' A twig snapped somewhere out there, and Zoe's head whipped around to look in that direction.

'They're watching the fort. We need to move faster,' Tristan said, and his hand yanked her rather violently forward as his strides grew longer. Zoe struggled to keep up without tripping; she couldn't pay any attention to where she put her feet, just to how fast they were moving.

And once they were moving faster, all the sounds of the night became more threatening. As if woads were chasing them, closing in on them. Zoe flinched at an owl call, jumped at a wolf's howl and nearly screamed when a rabbit ran across the road in front of them.

Zoe finally reached her house, just when she was about to begin sprinting to get to safety. She was worried and scared and she wanted the illusion of safety Braewyn's house gave to her. She reached for the door, but Tristan's hand on her arm tightened.

'This didn't happen, you're going to stay here, and you know nothing about the woads,' he said, squeezing her arm until Zoe nearly cried out from the pain. Then he let go and started to walk away.

'Why?' Zoe blurted out, rubbing her arm. 'Why don't I know about the woads who are going to attack the village any time now? Why can't I go warn them?'

Tristan looked back. His eyes gleamed strangely in the moonlight and Zoe nearly turned away and ran inside her house from a strange fear his stare gave her. But she stayed, and did her best to meet his eyes.

'Woads fight the Roman army, not Britons. They'll attack the fort, not the village.'

'But that means my friends, our job, Blachefleur's cousin, we all work there! I have to warn them!'

'You'll be inside, out of the battle, girl. Arthur will protect you.'

'Do you promise?' Zoe asked, afraid for her life and the lives of her friends.

'Stop being so stubborn, girl, and do as I say,' Tristan said with no change in the inflection of his voice, but his eyes flashed in the darkness.

Zoe shrank away from him, feeling threatened even though he had not moved and his expression hadn't changed. She leaned against the door for a moment, drawing strength from its solidity. 'My name is Zoe, and I will,' Zoe turned to look at the knight standing not more than three steps away from her. 'God help you if more people die because I did what you wanted me to,' Zoe said. Then she paused, one hand resting on the doorframe and looked back over her shoulder at the knight. 'Thank you for seeing me safely home and…'

The pause dragged on for a little too long, and Tristan got impatient and grunted 'What?'

Zoe smiled somewhat shakily. 'I'm glad you are back. I'm glad you're all back.'

Tristan's face didn't change, but his eyes did, if only for a moment, and Zoe was glad she had said it. She gave him a last smile and walked inside, nibbling on some of the cold meat Braewyn had left out for her before undressing and going to sleep.

That night, her nightmares returned, but this time, her friends were dying, and not just Braewyn, Liliana, Lucia, Evelyn and Blanchefleur, but Suze, Simon, Brit, her parents, and in the middle of it all was Tristan, saying 'This is your fault.'

xxx

A/N: Sorry for the long break-I was on holidays for a while and my awesome beta was also away from home. That, coupled with the fact that I was rather lazy in writing this chapter means a long delay between updates. Sorry for that.

Thanks to my awesome beta, homeric, for keeping me grammatically correct and historically accurate. Thanks to everyone who has reviewed, I love you guys! And thanks to anonymous readers, I'm glad you're still reading.

Also, the bit that Zoe reads in Bedivere's room is from the Aeneid by Virgil, written in the late 1st Century BC. It's one of the founding myths of Rome, claiming it was founded by Aeneas after the fall of Troy.

Disclaimer: King Arthur movie is not mine, but I'm having a lot of fun playing with the characters.