SEMPER LIBER
Summary: A dying man's final request sends a young woman to a new life at Badon Hill. TristanOC.
Disclaimer & Author's Note: I like to think that Malory would have his legends of King Arthur belong to the ages, but I cannot lay claim to them nor to those responsible for the 2004 film by the same name. Thank you for reading, and enjoy!
A/N#2: Clues as to time's passage can be found in the chapter, but for those who cannot be bothered to pay that close attention: this chapter begins three months and ends four months after Cariad's arrival. Let me know what you think!
Chapter 12: Ghosts, Part II
It was not until one bloody night, nearly three months after she had arrived at Badon Hill, that Cariad felt like she was belonged. Home came in the form of another woman's infant, gory and screaming, quintessentially alive. The midwife shoved Cariad backwards with one deceptively strong shoulder, depositing the newborn boy into its mother's arms and away from Cariad's wide, fascinated stare.
"Hello, my baby boy," Vanora whispered, her voice hoarse with exhaustion.
Cariad was not aware of her tears until her vision blurred. When the midwife moved aside, Cariad sat hesitantly at the edge of the bed. "He's beautiful," she breathed.
Vanora bent her head to her son's and smiled. "Yes, he is."
The midwife returned with a bowl of warm water. She patted the young woman lightly on the hand and then pushed her out of the way. "It will be your turn soon enough," the older woman said knowingly. Cariad froze, hands hung awkwardly at her sides.
Vanora swallowed a laugh, her body aching as she did so. "Do not scare the girl," she said to the midwife. "I've become quite fond of her company." Satisfied and weary, Vanora closed her eyes.
The midwife swaddled the newborn. "Here, make yourself useful," she said, placing the infant easily into Cariad's arms.
"But…"
The midwife slapped the girl lightly on the cheek. "No," she said sternly. After a moment, she pointed to a chair near the hearth. "You may sit." She watched Cariad's progress across the room and the stiff, careful way she sat. "It's a baby, child. Just don't drop it and you will be fine."
Cariad lifted her head and watched the midwife owlishly. The older woman tended to Vanora without a word or question, her measured silence a welcome presence in the room. Cariad sighed softly, sleep tugging at her eyelids. "You look like your mother," she said to the resting baby. "And I daresay you yell like her, too."
Waking with a start some time later, Cariad felt the hot spark of panic shoot through her veins. Her arms were empty and somewhere nearby, a child was crying. She stood and opened her mouth in a shout that never passed her lips.
"Thank the gods, you are awake!" exclaimed the eldest. She grabbed Cariad's hand and dragged her into the next room. There was Bors's own little refugee camp, five cots for the eight older children, most of them awake and grumpy as the morning came over their tousled heads. The eleven-year-old lifted her three-year-old brother easily and shoved him into Cariad's arms. "He wants you," she insisted.
Cariad took the boy and glanced over her shoulder. The newborn was sleeping, a miracle, next to Vanora in her bed. She did not think Vanora had woken during the night, and if she had, there was no sign. She laid her head against the top of the boy's and took number five, a girl of seven, by the hand. "Who wants breakfast?" she asked.
The eldest had arranged the remainder of her siblings at a crowded table in the middle of the kitchen, save for the one-year-old, who clung with chubby hands to his ten-year-old sister's fiery hair. Cariad helped the little girl onto the bench with one awkward hand before helping the eldest distribute plates of shredded wheat topped with lukewarm goat's milk. She fed the three-year-old standing up against the kitchen counter, eating little herself.
A miniature war broke out between the third and fourth, boys separated by only a year. Gilly, eight, had gone on the offensive with a wooden spoon, and the potato-hurling gremlin from the tavern two months ago countered with soppy shredded wheat.
"Stop it!" Cariad and the eldest shouted in unison.
"You tell them to come in here and try that nonsense!" Vanora hollered from the next room.
"We're fine!" Cariad called back. The eldest rolled her eyes. "Don't get up!"
Vanora shuffled into the room short moments later. "You all behave!" she barked. She smiled sardonically at Cariad and her eldest two daughters. "You tried, my wonderful girls." To the rest of them she said, "You will eat and you will do so quietly, and then you will find something useful to do outside of the house for the rest of the day." She glanced out the window at the pale grey sky. "The weather is fine." To herself she murmured, "They will come home today."
-
"If you throw that, I will kill you."
Ignoring Gawain, Galahad tossed the snowball in his bare hand and caught it up again. He pursed his lips and glanced sidelong at Tristan.
"I will kill you slowly," Tristan grumbled. Sparing Galahad a scathing glance, Tristan rode ahead, angling his horse alongside Arthur's.
"We will reach the fort by the evening," Arthur said, staring straight ahead.
Tristan nodded silently. There was nothing to the landscape before them, an endless expanse of pale grey snow, piled in high drifts and set with moguls of melting ice.
The knights and their commander had left Badon Hill more than ten days before with the task of securing provisions for the fort. Merchants had been largely unable – or unwilling – to make the treacherous journey from village to village with their wares. The dangerous open plains between the winter farmers and Badon Hill seemed to evanesce with woads, the blue natives as tormented by hunger as the rest of the land.
Whistling low in his throat, Tristan scanned the icy skies. The hawk appeared some long minutes later. She circled the air above the caravan – Arthur, his seven knights, one carriage, and two over burdened pack ponies – and did not feign to join them. She spun away with a scream. Tristan thought he saw some poor creature in the hawk's talons – a shrew, perhaps – and pardoned her insolence. She did not belong to him, anyway.
Arthur turned briefly to face the silent knight. "Tristan."
Tristan acknowledged his commander with a slight tilt of his head.
"Our friend never complains," Arthur began. "Is she happy here?"
Shrugging, Tristan answered, "I think so. She enjoys being useful."
Arthur smiled weakly into the afternoon sun. "She has become close with Vanora, I think."
Tristan did not answer. His thoughts wandered briefly in that direction, to all the things that were becoming familiar and dear to him: the fresh scent of lilac and river water, the easy way she smiled, even at Lancelot, her knowing absence, her hiding places.
"She is your good friend, as well," Arthur said, carefully unassuming.
"She is," Tristan answered.
"You of all our comrades have no need for my blessing," Arthur said.
Smirking, Tristan kept his keen eyes straight in front of him. "I love her," he said, so softly that the still air nearly took the words away.
Arthur felt something akin to happiness in his chest at the scout's confession, thinking he had never heard the man say so much with so few words and no sharp eye to accompany them. He fed the sensation with thoughts of a hot meal made of fresh provisions and the respite that would follow for all of them at the end of the long journey.
-
Bors's brood flew about the tavern, hands clasped and hair lit up like sparklers in the sconces. He held his youngest in one arm and raised a toast to his lover. Vanora smiled happily in the light of the waxing moon. The celebration was born of a Sarmatian tradition. The birth of a new child was publicly rejoiced only after the moon had come full cycle from the night of the child's birth in order to make sure of the infant's health and vitality. Now, Vanora danced with her eldest daughter, spinning in joyous circles while the tavern's other patrons made way.
Gawain could not keep his mirth to himself, and Galahad's emotions were even more vibrant. Life was something they could all celebrate. The knights all considered Bors's family their own, though they would never put it in so many words. They were slaves to fate, and most of them loveless, but they had secreted away a tribe of their own, unspoken and nearly as close as true flesh and blood.
Tristan kept company with Dagonet, out of the way of the dancers and their lively, boisterous music. He drank his toast to the child and let himself relax as he so rarely did. It was not long after the toast that Galahad rose from the table and dragged Cariad away from Lancelot, who found another partner without much trouble, though neither Vanora nor Bors was particularly happy with his choice.
Galahad seemed to have been made for this sort of unfettered dancing, more clumsy than graceful but completely comfortable in his own body. Cariad had become his favorite dancing partner, as young and unassuming as himself when it came to making a fool of herself for the sake of her own amusement.
"Galahad!" Cariad laughed over the music and the heads of the younger children as they cavorted around them. She let the young knight lead her in a half-skipping step across the tavern floor. She was vaguely nauseous and regretted partaking in the ale with the rest of them, despite the happy reason. She grinned at his flushed face and threw her arms around his neck with an uncharacteristic giggle.
Tristan watched them as he had many times over the past four months, less and less confused by the affection that sprung up in him at her happiness. She had stolen so many moments of his winter, from the dark tears and quick temper that had drawn him to her in the first place to the three months now that he had called her his lover. Even now there was a change in her, since they had returned from their long mission four weeks prior. She belonged, and not just with him.
The world was spinning, cold air and hot torches and happy laughter. Cariad's boots scraped across the tavern stones. She hid her loose grin in Galahad's shoulder to get away from the noise and light. He sang off-key, held her close with sweat-dampened palms, and spun them until she was sure she would be sick. She gripped his shoulders tightly and pushed him back.
"Sorry!" Galahad laughed drunkenly. He put his hands on her waist to straighten her out, and for a moment he thought it was his hands that had missed their mark, and not her feet. Cariad fell to her knees as he scrambled to catch her, grasping hastily at her elbow as she hit the ground.
Cariad yelped, a laugh and a cry at once. She reached up for Galahad's hand. He pulled suddenly away, arcing backwards into the darkness that appeared at the edges of her vision. She heard her name issue from somewhere, a familiar sound from a familiar tongue. Shaking, she pressed her hands flat on the ground on either side of her as she slid from her knees to her seat. "I am all right," she muttered, but she did not know why she spoke.
It was Tristan there, swimming in and out of the music, and Gawain and Arthur as well, taking up all the air with their worried faces. Her name again, flickering dark and light like her vision, twisting and dizzy. She felt a strong hand close around her wrist and pull it from her lap, where it seemed to have flown of its own volition. Tristan's hand, turning hers over in front of them, covered in bright red blood.