The Story of Gawain and Ragnell (2 page)

The pair stopped in front of them, and the warrior in green addressed the priest in accents of the north that brought back memories of Gawain's youth. "Well met, Father Pabius. But I do not see my future bride's cousin among your number."

Pabius clambered down from his mule, the rest of them following suit. "She is detained. She has a Christmas wedding to attend in Glevum, but she sends word that she will come to Caer Camulodon as soon as the festivities are over." Pabius turned to Ragnell. "I hope you will be able to delay your own ceremony long enough to have your loved ones here to witness it."

"Of course," she said quickly — presumably before her "betrothed" could protest. Then Ragnell threw back her veil, and Gawain saw why she affected such an unusual headdress — more than half of her face was disfigured with what looked like burns, the skin puckered and discolored, her features misshapen and monstrous, one eye strangely pale and dead.

Pabius drew in a shocked breath. "Ragnell! What happened to you?"

She shrugged. "An accident some years ago. I do not like to speak of it."

Pabius turned back to the warrior in green, obviously uncomfortable. "Before the wedding, I will also need your name and place of birth for the church records, my Lord... "

There was a pause. "Bertilak," the new lord of the hill-fort said.

"Lord Bertilak," Pabius said, not pressing him about his place of birth. "We have a long, cold journey behind us and we crave your hospitality."

The outlaw turned lord obviously did not have much practice in the formalities of kingship. Ragnell stepped forward. "Please forgive us in being remiss, Pabius. A house has been prepared for you and the rest of your retinue, and I will arrange for refreshment immediately. This way, please."

She turned and led them through buildings of wood and stone, populated by warriors in green and women and servants with expressions of dread on their faces. Gawain watched her swaying walk, thinking what a pity it was that her face was so disfigured.

At a small house with a thatched roof, she stopped and pushed open the door, stepping aside to allow them to enter ahead of her.

"I am glad you received my message," she said softly after the door had swung shut behind them. "Thank you for coming."

Pabius dropped his saddlebags on the packed earth. "I am glad you sent for me; I am only sorry I could not be here sooner. Let me introduce you to the humble brethren who accompanied me on my journey."

Gawain had to admire Pabius's talent for strategic prevarication and misdirection. His men were no less clever; as Pabius said their names, they knelt briefly in front of Ragnell, offering her an imaginary sword before rising again.

"And Brother Gaw," Pabius said. Gawain too knelt as his men had before him, while Pabius added under his breath so that only she could hear: "Wain."

Ragnell's good eye widened, and she clenched her hands in front of her waist. "I am honored that you were all willing to accompany Father Pabius on my behalf."

Gawain rose. "It is we who are honored to be of service, Lady."

She gazed at him with that face, mostly ravaged and still partly beautiful, and he had an odd moment in which the image shifted in his mind's eye, completing the beauty and taking his breath away.

"I must go to the kitchens now and see to beer and wine and bread," she said, hurrying out of the guest house.

"Excuse me," they heard her say immediately after the door closed behind her. Obviously one of Bertilak's men had been waiting outside, keeping an eye on Bertilak's claim to the kingship. "You do not have to protect me all the time. They are men of God."

"Certainly, Lady Ragnell," the enemy warrior outside answered.

Gawain and the others looked at each other, and there was no need to speak what they all knew: they would have to tread very carefully.

* * *

Gawain wandered the perimeter of the hill-fort, trying to look humble — and examining the defenses at the same time. The weather was still cold, but it was sunnier today, less gray and dismal, with no sign of sleet. He gazed at the earthworks and the green clad warriors posted at regular intervals. Were there any weaknesses in the fortifications that he and his men could use to their advantage? How had Bertilak taken the hill-fort in the first place? It was an impressive site, high and wide, with a series of ditches and ramparts on the steep slopes that would make it fairly easy to defend. On the other hand, the size of the flat hilltop would require a large warband to fight off attack — perhaps Ragnell's father had not had enough men at his disposal? One of the things they would have to do before reinforcements arrived would be to try and count the fighting men in Bertilak's service. If they could come up with a good estimate, they would have a better idea of how many men would be necessary to retake Caer Camulodon.

If only there were a way to speak with Ragnell in private; perhaps she remembered something of how the battle had progressed and how the attackers had won.

"Brother Gaw."

Gawain turned, wondering if she had some of the same magic as Yseult — it was as if his thoughts had acted as a message to her and brought her to him.

He bowed his head as he imagined a priest would. "Lady Ragnell. How is it that none of Bertilak's men are following you now?"

She threw back her veils and laughed, a bright, pleasant sound, surprising given her recent trials. "They think me in the kitchens, where I belong. But I slipped out. I wanted to speak with you."

"And I with you, Lady."

She gave him a smile, an odd-looking expression in the middle of her ruined face, and it struck him that her mouth was unharmed, the lips full and red. The destruction of her beauty passed from her right jawbone diagonally across her features, puckering and discoloring the skin from cheek to forehead, but leaving her lips untouched. Even her left profile showed traces of ravished skin, but her lips had somehow escaped the results of the accident.

"What would the great Lord Gawain want with such a one as me?" she murmured, yanking him out of the contemplation of the landscape of her face.

He attempted another obeisance appropriate for a monk. "I was hoping you would be able to tell me something of the battle so that I might understand how Bertilak was able to take this place," he whispered.

"Would you care to accompany me back to the kitchens, Brother Gaw?" she said, her voice at a natural volume.

"Certainly, Lady Ragnell," Gawain said.

As they ambled towards the kitchen buildings, Ragnell indicated a dip in the defensive earthworks that Gawain had not yet noticed. "The main attack was from the south. They must have scouted the hill-fort thoroughly before they attacked, and most likely they knew that my brothers were both ill."

"How many men did your father have?"

"Just after harvest and before snow?" she asked in return. "Well under a hundred. War is not normally conducted in winter — there is too little plunder on the road and too great a chance one's own troops will not survive the adventure."

"That may be precisely what Bertilak was counting on," Gawain murmured. "A hill-fort in its peaceful winter sleep."

Ragnell shrugged. "I think he also must have known about the puking sickness that was plaguing us and the surrounding villages, and he decided to take advantage of our weakness. The sickness was not life-threatening, except for the very old and the very young, but it put a swath of warriors besides my brothers in their beds rather than on the ramparts."

He wanted to take her hand, give her whatever comfort he could. He imagined that many of those puking warriors, up to and including her brothers, had died in their beds or not far away.

"I'm sorry about your losses," Gawain said.

"Thank you." She rubbed her good eye briefly and continued. "The green warrior has help of some powerful magic somehow, I am sure of it. But it is not here; he is calling on it from elsewhere."

It appeared she
did
have some of the powers of the Old Race — unless she was one of those who could recognize magic without being able to cast it herself. "You cannot identify who is wielding the magic?"

She shook her head.

"Have Bertilak's men at least treated you well since they took the fort?" Gawain asked.

Ragnell looked away, and all he could see was the smooth plane of her undamaged cheek, beguiling, alluring. What a beauty she would have been if not for the accident.

"Better than might have been expected, for several reasons." She faced him, gazing directly into his eyes. "How many men would want to rape a monster with this face?"

He held her gaze, not answering immediately. The truth of the matter was, men were not very picky when it came to post-battle rape. Arthur forbade it among his men, but Gawain had seen the victims many times. The one thing most of the victims had in common was that they were female. But not even that was a given.

"Then they left you untouched?" he asked, hoping it was not too intimate a question. On the other hand, it was she who had begun the talk of rape.

Her lips turned up in a bitter, sad smile. "Not completely. The usurper wanted to stake a claim on me. At least I am not pregnant."

Gawain drew in a sharp breath. "I am sorry." At the same time, it occurred to him that this, much more than her disfigurement, was the reason she had not been raped repeatedly by the men in Bertilak's warband. If their leader claimed her, intending to marry her to legitimize his position as new lord in Caer Camulodon, then she was off limits to the rest of his men.

"I am not sorry," Ragnell said.

It took him a moment to realize how she had meant her odd response. "My sympathy is for what you have gone through, not that you are not with child."

She chuckled — an astonishing sound, given the topic of their conversation. Gawain shook his head and looked at her, a question in his eyes.

"Oh, I understood what you meant, Lord Gawain," she said. "It is just that I have a tendency to be perversely literal at times."

To his surprise, he found he liked that about her. There was courage in her that spoke to him, that gave him a feeling of connectedness. It reminded him a little of his aunt Gwenhwyfar, truth be told — Ragnell's dead older cousin who had been requested to appear at the wedding. Ragnell could not have known Arthur's first wife well. He judged her to be no more than in her mid-twenties, although it was difficult to tell with her disfigurement. But surely she was no more than a child when Gwenhwyfar died. It was another indication of her cleverness, using her cousin's name in a letter to the Pendragon, a way to deliver a message she couldn't write, and get Arthur's attention at the same time. Gawain smiled.

Ragnell began to walk along the perimeter of the earthworks, Gawain beside her. "While we have this opportunity, I want to tell you how honored I am that you have come to my assistance," she said quietly.

He shrugged. "You are kin. And your ancestral seat is important strategically for Britain."

"Yes, it is, isn't it?" This time, he couldn't tell if she were bitter or amused. She stopped, lifted a hand to his cheek, and stretched up to kiss him softly on the lips before he even knew what she was about. "You have my thanks anyway."

Then she turned and hurried away in the direction of the kitchens while Gawain stood staring after her, wondering what had just happened.

His lips tingled.

* * *

"I inspected the defenses and spoke with Ragnell about the battle," Gawain whispered to the other warriors that night in the small house they shared. "We need to get word out that the fortifications in the south are weakest."

"It is such a shame about Ragnell," Pabius said. "I had not seen her for several years, and I didn't know about the accident. Such a beauty she was."

Gaheris raised one eyebrow. "I thought Christian priests paid no attention to such things?"

Pabius smiled and shook his head. "I am sure there are such men among the priesthood, but those I know are not blind to the charms of an attractive woman. And young Ragnell was certainly that. But the accident would explain why she never married."

Gawain pulled the priest's garb off over his head, feeling much more himself as soon as the humble robes were on the floor rather than on his back. He found he had no stomach for talking about Ragnell, her misfortunes, and her former beauty with a group of men, even if one of them was a priest. It came precariously close to the kind of talk men shared around the campfire, discussing women as they would a favorite horse or a well-fought battle.

He turned to Gareth and Gaheris. "We cannot expect reinforcements from Caer Leon in much less than two weeks, even if they are riding hard. Any suggestions as to what we can do in the meantime to increase our chances of victory?"

"Do you think there is any way we could secretly weaken the defenses?" Gaheris said slowly.

Gareth propped his chin in his palm. "We would make ourselves suspicious if we tried to do that, even at night. I think our preparations will have to be limited to the village." He turned to Pabius. "Assuming the villagers can be trusted?"

"I believe so," Pabius said. "I will speak with the priest again, but my first impression was that there is much support for Ragnell in Caer Camulodon."