Bridget was leaning against a tree, her head bowed, her back heaving with effort; Adah was carrying Beowulf away, trying to calm him as he shrieked and flapped his wings, straining against his tether. There was a large scratch on Bridget’s right cheek, oozing a slow trail of blood down to her chin.
‘What happened?’ Gwen said, going to put a hand on Bridget’s shoulder and then swerving at the last minute and letting it hover uselessly in the air.
‘Nothing,’ said Bridget, but her eyes were squeezed tightly shut, and she looked alarmingly bloodless. ‘I’m fine.’
The hunting party was starting to move further into the forest; nobody seemed to notice that Gwen, Bridget and Adah were being left behind.
‘You need to sit down,’ Gwen said firmly, actually putting a hand to Bridget’s arm this time. She was surprised when Bridget allowed herself to be steered gently towards a fallen tree trunk. They sat down, and Gwen watched as Bridget stared at the forest floor and breathed shakily in and out through her nose, fists clenched tightly in the fabric of her dress.
There was silence for a moment, broken only by the sound of Bridget’s laboured breathing and the occasional flap of Beowulf’s wings, as Adah came walking back towards them.
‘I think he’s done with his tantrum now,’ she said, Beowulf still comically incensed on her arm. ‘You all right, Bridget? Can I do anything?’
‘Could you go and fetch the guards, please?’ Gwen said. ‘We need to go back to the castle.’
Adah looked as if she wanted to give Bridget a comforting squeeze on the shoulder, but when she tried to shift her arm Beowulf looked incredulously furious; instead, she hushed him, and walked quickly off in pursuit of the group.
‘Did Beowulf try to murder you?’ Gwen asked seriously, and Bridget gave a short, pained laugh.
‘No,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t his fault.’ Her blood had formed a scarlet line from cheekbone to chin, and was dripping into her lap. ‘I felt faint, and … I almost dropped him.’
‘Here,’ Gwen said, reaching out and blotting it with her sleeve. Bridget barely seemed to notice; her blood blossomed purple on the blue silk. ‘Are you ill?’
‘Er – no,’ said Bridget, opening her eyes with a grimace. ‘Not really.’
‘Well, you’re doing a very impressive impersonation of an ill person then,’ said Gwen, watching as Bridget seemed to be struck by a fresh wave of pain.
‘I’m fine, you don’t need to baby me,’ Bridget snapped, and Gwen raised her eyebrows.
‘Are you embarrassed?’
‘I’m not embarrassed, I’m just – I’d rather not be seen like this.’
‘Oh,’ said Gwen. ‘Well, I don’t mind. But I would like to know what’s wrong. Have you been poisoned? Cursed?’
Bridget squinted over at the trees beyond Gwen, and then looked down at her hands.
‘It’s my bleed,’ she said bluntly. ‘It hurts. A lot.’
‘Oh,’ said Gwen, somewhat relieved that Bridget wasn’t in danger of dying imminently of some obscure illness. ‘Oh. You should have said something! Is it always like this?’
‘Yes,’ said Bridget, through gritted teeth. ‘Or worse.’
‘I didn’t know it could be that bad,’ said Gwen. Inconvenient, messy, yes – but not bad enough to render somebody whey-faced and shaking. She’d seen Bridget walk away from being literally beaten with the blunt side of a sword with her head held high, so she couldn’t imagine how bad the pain must be for her to almost collapse during a stroll in the woods.
‘Well – apparently it isn’t,’ Bridget bit out.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’ve tried to speak to physicians about it,’ Bridget said, tentatively sitting upright, bracing her hands against the log. ‘I actually thought when I came here that the castle doctor – well, I thought he’d probably know more than my doctor at home. But he said what they all say. It can’t be as bad as all that, it’s normal, and something about ladies and a low threshold for pain – and then a lot of blustering noises until I … until I go away.’
‘But – that’s awful,’ Gwen said, outraged. ‘Do they give you something? For the pain?’
‘No,’ Bridget said, with great effort. ‘They say it would interfere with the natural order of things.’
‘Does anything help?’
‘No.’ Bridget blinked up at the sky as she tried to even out her breathing. ‘Well – yes. A … friend of mine used to knead my back. Her mother was a healer.’
‘Oh,’ Gwen said. There was a long silence while she worked herself up to saying something potentially very foolish. ‘Well – I can do that. If it would help.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Bridget said, pressing her hand to her forehead. ‘Sorry, I mean – you don’t have to do that. I’ll ask Adah when she returns, or … It comes and goes, so perhaps in a few hours …’ She broke off, wincing, and Gwen immediately got to her feet.
‘No, I’ll do it,’ she said, sounding braver than she felt, walking around the fallen tree so that she was standing behind Bridget, looking at the broad planes of her back with trepidation. She had spent quite a lot of time thinking about touching Bridget, and now she was being given an open invitation – but it’s purely for medical purposes, she told herself sternly. So don’t go getting any ideas. ‘What should I do?’
‘If you just – my lower back, both hands,’ Bridget said, ‘as hard as you can. And – dig your thumbs in around the spine. This is really – you shouldn’t have to—’
‘No, please, it’s okay,’ Gwen said, putting both hands lightly on Bridget’s back. ‘Here?’
‘Er – a bit lower,’ Bridget said reluctantly. ‘Yes. There.’
Gwen pressed into the hard muscle and felt Bridget immediately relax a little at her touch; encouraged, she dug her palms in deeper. Bridget sighed and seemed to melt into her hands, the back of her head resting ever so slightly against Gwen’s chest. Her hair smelt like something rich and nutty and sweet, and she was warm under Gwen’s fingers; Gwen knew she must be blushing scarlet, and had absolutely no idea where to direct her eyes. She settled on staring at an innocuous and entirely platonic bit of tree.
‘Who – um, who was the girl who used to do this for you?’ Gwen asked, shifting a fraction lower and repeating the movement; she was rewarded with another sigh, and focusing on the specifics of the tree became even more pressing. ‘It wasn’t … Was it Adah?’
‘Adah? No. She was the daughter of a neighbouring lord,’ Bridget said, her words coming much easier now. ‘Until – she left. To marry.’
‘And – you were close?’
‘You could say that,’ Bridget said; Gwen couldn’t see her face, but somehow she sounded as if her eyes were closed. ‘I was courting her.’
Gwen stopped moving her hands. She felt like she had stopped functioning altogether. Her head was full of an odd rushing noise, like a river gone berserk, only one word audible over the uproar: ‘courting’.
‘Ah. Right,’ she said stupidly. ‘Lovely.’
Lovely?
‘You don’t have to carry on,’ Bridget said, a slight edge to her voice, ‘if you don’t want to.’
‘Oh, no, it’s fine,’ Gwen said quickly, very glad that Bridget couldn’t see her expression. She worked away in silence, feeling her wrists begin to ache.
‘She wanted me to come with her,’ Bridget said quietly. Gwen didn’t pause; she didn’t want Bridget to stop talking. ‘When she left. She was marrying a lord, and she asked if I’d go too, as a member of her household.’
‘But you didn’t want to?’
‘No.’ Bridget stretched, catlike, her back rolling under Gwen’s fingers. ‘No, that didn’t sound like much of a life to me. Can you – just up under my ribs, if you can.’
‘Is it helping?’
‘Yes. It is. But you’re not quite – if you just …’ She reached around and closed her hand over Gwen’s, her palm against Gwen’s knuckles, so that she could guide her into position. She turned to the side to make it easier and they finally made eye contact. The colour had returned to Bridget’s face, and her eyes were dark and heavy-lidded, lips parted slightly in what must have been relief; for a moment Gwen just stared down at her, captivated and useless, for all intents and purposes holding her hand.
‘Er – hello.’ At some point Adah had apparently returned with a handful of guards in tow. Gwen immediately removed her hands; she saw Adah bite her lip and look away, as if trying hard not to smile. ‘Your highness. Lady Leclair. I’ve brought … aid.’
‘Lady Leclair is unwell,’ Gwen said, with as much dignity as she could muster, addressing the nearest guard. ‘I need assistance taking her back to the castle. Thank you for your help, Adah.’
‘I can walk,’ Bridget said, but the moment she stood up she looked in imminent danger of falling over; Gwen quickly braced her with her shoulder, and a guard propped her up on the other side. They all started slowly walking back through the woods.
When they finally reached the castle, they made it as far as a private antechamber on the ground floor, and then sent for the doctor; when he arrived, he took one look at Bridget lying on a chaise clutching her abdomen and tried to turn around and leave again.
‘I’ve already discussed this with – er – with her ladyship,’ he said, looking anywhere but at Bridget. ‘There’s nothing to be done but – rest. Rest, and fortitude of spirit.’
‘Fortitude of … ?’ Gwen said disbelievingly. ‘Surely you can give her something for the pain?’
‘It wouldn’t be appropriate, your highness,’ the physician said. He was actually inching towards the door. Gwen looked at him, retreating, then looked back at Bridget, who seemed to be biting down on her lower lip to keep the pain at bay. There was an odd kind of panic rising in her chest, battling with disbelief and indignation.
‘No,’ she said suddenly, her voice cracking. ‘No, I’m sorry – I would like a second opinion.’
‘It’s all right,’ Bridget said heavily.
‘I assure you, your highness,’ the doctor said, ‘I am the king’s physician – with all due respect, I have a fair knowledge of ailments of the body, and this is not the sort of thing that requires medical attention.’
Gwen faltered, feeling her chest thrum with nerves, but one glance at Bridget’s furrowed brow strengthened her resolve. ‘I am – I am ordering you to either give her something for the pain or fetch somebody else who is willing to see reason. The Wizard has a good knowledge of herbalism, does he not? Fetch him.’
The physician looked outraged, working his jaw but seeming unable to find the words, and then abruptly left the room. A few minutes later he was back, with the Wizard, Master Buchanan, in tow. He was an old, pale man with a smiling face, closely shorn grey hair and robes that were surprisingly simple, based on Gwen’s limited knowledge of cultist tradition; he took one look at Bridget and frowned, putting down the small case he was carrying and walking over to her.
‘The good doctor was a little light on specifics – is it your bleed that troubles you, Lady Leclair?’
Gwen had never in her life heard a man be so matter-of-fact about the intimate details of a lady’s health; even Bridget looked slightly taken aback.
‘Yes. I experience fatigue, extreme pain, nausea—’
‘Fainting,’ Gwen added. ‘You nearly fainted.’
The Wizard rummaged in his case for a few moments, mumbling to himself under his breath as he searched, and then rose and handed Bridget a cup stuffed with herbs.
‘Ginger, fennel and cinnamon bark. Have them add some hot water in the kitchens.’
‘Thank you,’ said Bridget, taking the cup and looking at it with tentative hope.
The Wizard smiled, his eyes crinkling. ‘It is my pleasure to be of use – please call for me any time.’
The physician flounced from the room, and the Wizard followed; Gwen sat down in the chair next to Bridget’s, heart still hammering.
‘Thank you, too,’ Bridget said, giving Gwen a tired smile and briefly pressing a grateful hand to her wrist. ‘For saying what you said. I thought the doctor’s head might fall off.’
Suddenly, Gwen wasn’t sure she could blame her racing pulse on her altercation with the physician.
Arthur was uncharacteristically quiet when he and Sidney visited Gwen that evening. He perused her books while she went through the charade of sending Agnes away – she and Sidney gazed at each other like one of them was being sent off to war – and then simply gave her a half-hearted salute before exiting through the window.
Gwen had intended to do some reading or embroidery, but instead she found herself sitting by the fire all evening thinking herself in circles, returning to the memory of her hands on Bridget’s back; the fact that Bridget had courted a woman; that Bridget had trusted her enough to tell her that she had courted a woman; Bridget’s hands on hers, guiding her into place; the possibility that she may not have invented this pull she felt between them, that her feelings might be somewhat reciprocated. But then she pictured Gabriel’s face when she’d told him – Gabriel backing away from her like she was something repellent. She hated him for ruining something as good as Bridget.
‘Incoming,’ said a voice at the window, barely an hour or two later. Gwen startled; she hadn’t been expecting Arthur home for a while yet. His face appeared, hair a mess, eyes unfocused; suddenly he pitched forward and landed hard on the floor, barely reacting as bone thunked against stone. ‘Oops.’
It was Sidney who had spoken; he summited the sill, looking almost as drunk as Arthur, then made a hideous belching sound and clasped his free hand to his mouth.
‘If you’re going to vomit, you can climb right back down,’ Gwen said warningly as she rose from her chair.
‘Prob’ly for the best,’ he said, disappearing again. Gwen heard the sound of clumsy descent and then, after a pause, the distinct heave and splatter of vomit hitting the cobblestones below.
‘I’ve died,’ Arthur said dramatically from the floor. Gwen snorted.
‘Not yet. But if I kill you now, I can just say you choked on your own vomit and nobody will be any the wiser.’
‘Do it,’ Arthur slurred. ‘I’m over. I’m done. And I’ve drunk – I’ve drunk all the wine.’
‘In the country?’ Gwen said, watching as he turned over on to his back like an elderly beetle.
‘God, I really hoped I’d climbed through the wrong window,’ Arthur slurred, squeezing his eyes tightly shut. ‘Clearly. Over-corrected. To the right one.’
‘What are you talking about? Can you get off my rug?’
He turned to squint at her, looking violently unimpressed. ‘I know you’re you, so it’s hard, but can you at least dredge up – I dunno … one shred of human emotion? Empathy? Pity?’
‘Arthur, you chose to drink too much wine. And you’re getting mud all over everything.’
‘So … that’s a no, then.’ He pulled himself into a sitting position with difficulty. He and Gwen noticed the blood on his sleeve at the exact same time.
‘You’re bleeding,’ she said bluntly.
‘No I’m not.’ He rolled up his shirt and looked down at his arm. The blood was flowing quite profusely, and he had gone a very strange colour; Gwen had seen that expression on somebody once already today, and couldn’t quite believe it was happening again.
‘Don’t faint,’ she warned. He looked at her scathingly, clearly meaning to say something pithy in response, but betrayed himself by doing exactly what she had forbidden and fainting clean away instead. ‘Oh for Christ’s sake.’
It was lucky that he’d already been so close to the ground; he hadn’t hit his head too badly, and Gwen rather thought he was hard-headed enough to take it. She reluctantly crouched down beside him and turned him over on to his side so that he wouldn’t, in fact, choke on his own vomit. His hair fell into his face, and she swept it away impatiently; his skin was uncomfortably warm, and sticky with sweat. She wanted to call for Sidney, demand that he come up and deal with his charge, but she could still hear him vomiting in the distance.
‘Arthur. Wake up,’ she said, giving him a shake on the shoulder. He just moaned; blood was still dripping from the cut on his arm. ‘Ugh. Fine.’ She cast around for something to stop the bleeding; her half-finished embroidery was on the table by the fire, and she hesitated for a minute before tearing off a long strip of the pearly-white fabric and returning to Arthur so she could wrap his arm.
Arthur stirred as she did so. He made a little sound of discomfort, and then reached for her. Gwen stared down at his fingers, which had closed around the narrow jut of her wrist. He didn’t seem to be conscious. She supposed it must have been a reflex. A desire to hold on to something steady.
‘Arthur? Are you alive?’
He mumbled something, and she leaned down to catch it.
‘No. Better off,’ he muttered, the words sounding heavy in his mouth.
‘What?’
‘Better off dead.’ He said it with such violent self-hatred, even half-conscious, that Gwen winced.
‘Don’t say that,’ she said uncomfortably; she’d certainly wished him gone many times, had joked about murdering him endlessly, but it was one thing for her to say it and another thing entirely for him to do so with such sincerity. ‘You just need to rest, that’s all.’
She thought about calling for Agnes, or the guards, and having him carried back to his rooms – but instead she went and fetched the half-finished wedding blanket from its place on the dresser and arranged it over him, careful not to get it bloody. When she sat down next to him his fingers twitched; he seemed to be reaching for her hand again.
She sighed, and took it.