The Shadow Companion - Laura Anne Gilman [29]
“Gerard!” Sir Matthias’s bellow could be heard all the way back in Camelot.
“Go,” Ailis said, wiping tears of laughter from her eyes and waving the squire on. “He’ll want to know what really happened. All of it, Gerard. Don’t try to muddy the details, you’ll only make things worse for all of us. Go on. We’ll catch up with you later.”
Gerard raised a hand in farewell and acknowledgment, then turned, dashed past another squire leading two half-saddled horses, and disappeared into the crowd.
“Looks like we’re packing up and heading out,” Newt said, looking around. “So much for the Shadows being the end of the trail.”
“Did you really think it would be? That it would be that easy?”
Newt shrugged, feeling the weight of the salamander on his neck, like an oddly heavy scarf. “I don’t think we’re going to find it at all,” he said. “Not any of the knights, no matter how or where they look, or how pure they are or anything else. I don’t think it even exists.”
He took in Ailis’s expression of disbelief and outrage, and amended his comment. “I think it did exist once, yes. But now, after how many hundreds of years? Even if it was kept in the finest reliquary, in the safest location, wood rots and metals are melted down, and anything jeweled might be stolen or sold to buy food in the winter. Holiness doesn’t stop you from starving if the crops fail.”
Ailis couldn’t find anything to say in response to that, and so they walked the rest of the short distance through the encampment in silence.
SIX
Tom had taken down most of Sir Matthias’s belongings and packed them for travel by the time they got there, so there wasn’t anything for Ailis and Newt to do but collect their own small bedrolls and wait for Gerard to fill them in on what was going on.
“There you are!” Callum said, catching his breath.
Ailis sighed, and Newt made a face, but they both turned to greet Callum with reasonably pleasant expressions.
“You’re back! What happened?” The young squire was flushed, his arms waving madly in his excitement. “Four of the knights came riding into camp—almost naked—and they didn’t want to talk to anyone. They just went straight to where Sir Matthias was, and then they all disappeared into the big tent, and nobody’s saying anything!” Callum stopped to take a breath. “Where’s Gerard? Sir Matthias was yelling for him something fierce!”
“Ger went to find Sir Matthias,” Ailis said. “What’s being said in camp?” The first thing you learned as a servant—the thing that Gerard never quite allowed himself to accept—was that gossip was often the best, most accurate way to get news, rather than waiting around for someone official to tell you the story.
And sometimes it was wildly wrong, like the stories about the ghost of the old Roman soldiers who walked the banks of the river, or Sir Lancelot’s secret marriage, but after a while you started to learn how to filter out the more outrageous exaggerations.
“People are saying everything. And nothing. The knights encountered Morgain herself, and defeated her. That the Grail came to them in a dream, the way it did to Arthur, and led them into battle. That the knights were distracted, led astray by a beautiful maiden, and had to sell portions of their soul to return to us, and Sir Matthias is going to send them back to the monastery to pay penance and see if their souls can be made whole again.”
Callum clearly liked that last story the best. Ailis bit the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing, and Newt merely shook his head. “We should wait until Gerard comes back,” was all he said.
If Sir Matthias was releasing the story, then there was no reason for them to be silent. If he was keeping things close, they would likely need to respect his decision.
“Is anyone else hungry? Because I could eat an entire side of deer