Morgain's Revenge - Laura Anne Gilman [10]
“Gerard! I know that you are upset, but it’s not as though we can do anything for the girl right now,” said Sir Rheynold.
“Nor is there any reason to do so,” the seneschal said thoughtfully, folding himself back into his chair and looking hard at the two of them. “You say that Morgain was aware of your discovery of her?”
“I…I think so.”
“But you can’t be sure? This is important, boy, so be as certain as you can.”
He tried to think back, trying not to focus on Ailis’s face, but the expression of the woman standing behind her. Other than the sorceress’s beauty, which was unforgettable, what had she looked like? “I…don’t think so. No. She seemed…satisfied. Not worried or startled.”
“Good. If she does not know you saw her, then she will be complacent, perhaps smug. She will be careless, and that may give us an advantage.”
“But Ailis!” Gerard couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Was this how Camelot protected the innocent? Defended their people? What about Arthur’s code of chivalry?
“One girl is of no great importance,” Godrain said coldly. “Finding a way to put that witch on the defensive; that is important. The king was willing to give Morgain benefit of the doubt before, but the spell has damaged his desire to protect her. This may be the final blow.”
“But—”
“Gerard! Sit down.”
For the first time in his life, in the years he had spent as part of Sir Rheynold’s household, Gerard locked gazes with his master and refused a direct order.
“I won’t let you abandon Ailis.” It was a knife into his heart to defy Sir Rheynold. But if he was not true to his companions now, how could he ever hope to be a good and just knight? How could he even think of taking his place on the Quest for the Grail if he were not true to his heart?
“Boy, we will not tell you again—” Master Godrain began, only to be interrupted by a commotion from the doorway. The clerk’s voice was raised, protesting against a deeper voice. The words were muffled, but the flurry of noise and excitement stirred Gerard’s hopes.
The clerk was trying to bar the doorway. Then he stopped and, with a resigned sigh, stepped aside. Merlin brushed past him, intentionally pushing the young man away, and walked in.
“I don’t have time for that,” he said over his shoulder to the annoyed clerk. “And I don’t have time to turn you into a rat. Rats are beginning to bore me. Rabbits. Rabbits are good. And if one or three end up in the stewpot, it’s not as though they were doing any good interfering with decent people’s lives anyway. Might as well feed some folk by example, as it were.”
His gaze fell upon Gerard, and the perpetual scowl underneath that hawk’s beak of a nose seemed to lighten a touch. “Just the youngster I think I was coming to see. Or have I seen you already? No, that was before, this is now. My brains are still a bit scrambled. Too cold for me, too cold,” and he gave a dramatic shudder under the heavy gray wool cape that had been flung across his shoulders.
Merlin seemed to have a fondness for Ailis, speaking to her directly, his voice in her head even over great distances. To have him back now, when Ailis needed someone to champion her, it seemed so much a miracle Gerard could only promise himself that he would say his prayers more regularly from now on.
Merlin’s attention turned back to Gerard. “Now, I think we have matters to discuss, yes? Something you needed to tell me? Or was it that I had something to tell you?” His heavy eyebrows drew together in a scowl that Sir Rheynold seemed to find threatening, though Gerard felt almost reassured. Merlin was reputed to live backward in time, which left him sounding perpetually mad, but after a while it was a madness that almost made sense. Merlin knew that Gerard needed to see him, that it was important, and that he had the answer Gerard needed. More important: Merlin was here, and the king’s enchanter out-ranked a seneschal.
“You may not interfere here, old man,” Godrain said, not even bothering to rise from his chair again, as though insulting