The Night Dance (10 page)

Bedivere had returned to Glastonbury and washed with water from the town well. He’d even used the edge of his own sword to shave the rough bristles from his face.

But the next day, when he returned to the forest for their arranged meeting, Rowena did not come. After waiting by the boulder for two hours, he walked to the wall and found the break through which she must have come.

He felt hurt, angry, and humiliated. She’d played him for a fool, toyed with him! He glanced at his crippled hand and was filled with shame and insecurity. When she’d noticed it, she must have been repulsed, although she’d been too polite to show it. Now, though, she wanted no part of him.

A movement on the other side of the wall made him turn his attention toward the sound. Crouching, he saw a boy’s legs in boots. A mat was pushed against the opening, and the boy settled onto it.

“Boy!” Bedivere summoned him in a whisper.

The startled goose boy put his freckled face to the opening. “Who goes there?”

“Has something happened to Rowena who lives within?” he asked.

“Locked up,” the goose boy revealed with a youthful lack of suspicion. “Her father, Sir Ethan, discovered she was going into the forest through this very opening. Now he has locked in all his daughters and will soon repair this wall.”

“Thanks for your information,” Bedivere said as he got to his feet.

He was elated to hear this news. She hadn’t been
able
to come to him. It wasn’t that she’d
chosen
not to meet him.

He had saved young women who were trapped in towers, had even helped one get past an ogre. He’d rescued all the women of a town from giants! Freeing the woman who had captured his heart from an overprotective father shouldn’t prove too daunting.

He went to the front gate and rapped on it. When no one came to answer, he ran the hilt of his sword, the one he had tucked into his belt, along the wrought iron. “Hello?” he shouted. “Hello?”

After several minutes of this, the grand front door opened and a plump, elderly woman came out to see who was making the noise. “I am Sir Bedivere, knight of the Round Table.” He introduced himself with a gallant bow. “I seek a word with Sir Ethan.”

The woman scrutinized him skeptically. “I will
bring you a meal from the kitchen,” she said. “Wait there.”

Bedivere realized how he must look to her. “I am no beggar,” he called to her, but she was already halfway back to the door.

“I’ll send someone out with food,” she called over her shoulder just before disappearing inside.

Bedivere was stumped. He no longer had his horse, or his companions, or his armor to make him appear formidable. Even if he’d had these things, who would he attack? Certainly not this kindly house servant who was willing to feed one she believed to be a raving lunatic wandering in the forest.

And if he gained an audience with Sir Ethan, why should Sir Ethan allow him to see Rowena? Even with a shaved face he remained a disheveled figure.

Bedivere walked back along the wall and gazed up at the high windows. His heart leapt as he saw a slim figure with long, coppery hair appear at one of the windows. He raised his hand to attract her attention, but in the next second, she was gone.

Sir Ethan stared at the slippers lined up in a row outside the bedchamber that his daughters shared. He could not believe what he saw. They were torn, dirty, utterly destroyed.

Again!

This was the third morning in a row that the slippers had turned up in this condition.

He had done everything he could think of. He’d changed all the locks. The goose boy had guarded the opening in the wall until he’d been able to bring in a mason to repair it. Mary was now with them every minute of the day.
It will take a greater mind than mine to unravel this mystery!
he thought in despair as he stomped away from the line of tattered slippers.

And then he stopped short, struck with an inspiration.

That was it! He needed to recruit some help, a greater mind—but from where?

He sat on a carved hallway bench to think about this further. Many clever young men—students, merchants, and soldiers—lived within Glastonbury. Each might lend a unique perspective to solving the
problem. What if he offered a prize to the man who could tell him where the girls were going at night and how they were getting there?

He recalled his conversation with Rowena. His daughters were of an age where they required husbands. For years he had meant to begin the process of finding suitable candidates.

He had never done it, though.

There always seemed to be more pressing, more immediate concerns to attend to. And there was an element of avoidance; he knew it was true. He didn’t
want
to entrust one of his precious daughters to some unreliable young man. The fellow might appear to be solid at first, but it took a great test to tell what he was really made of. Ethan’s years of military service had taught him that.

Still, it had to be done, this business of finding husbands for them, and now might be an excellent time to begin. A young man clever enough to figure out this puzzle would certainly seem bright enough to make a good life for one of his daughters.

Of course! He would allow the young man who won to select one of his daughters to marry!

Brilliant!

He frowned and folded his arms, thinking. How would he go about doing this? A sign would have to be made. The monks were skilled calligraphers, always transcribing copies of books; he’d make a donation and get one of them to write the announcement. Then he’d go into Glastonbury and post it for all to see.

He stood, full of new purpose, but a sudden concern made him pause. What if some undesirable fellow won the contest—a person of low moral character or of meager social position, or both?

He shook off the thought. This was too excellent an idea to forsake because of idle worries that would probably never come to pass. The majority of people were, after all, usually fairly decent. And this man would be brilliant.

Putting aside his concerns, Sir Ethan went off to saddle his horses for the ride to the monastery. When he got there, he was greeted by Brother Joseph.

At first, Sir Ethan did not recognize the monk who had tended to him so many years ago when he had gone out searching for Vivienne, but after they had spoken for a few moments he recalled the voice and gestures.

Brother Joseph seemed aware of the look of recognition from Sir Ethan, and he returned it. “What news of your wife?” he asked.

Sir Ethan shook his head. “I often wonder if she was indeed a forest spirit as you told me those many years ago,” he confided.

“It is surely possible,” Brother Joseph said as they walked together through the quiet monastery halls. “The mystic Island of Avalon is said to be very near to here, though few know the way to it. The wizards, priestesses, sorcerers, and sorceresses of old come from there. It is the repository of powerful magic, and it often spills over into our world.”

Sir Ethan recalled the otherworldly beauty of his wife, and it filled him with nostalgia for the old days when they were together. He remembered the terrifying fear he’d known when this monk had suggested that their children might be figments of enchanted imagination rather than real little girls.

“My daughters have proved real enough,” he told Brother Joseph. “They remind me daily of their mother. As such, they are both a comfort and a torment to me.”

“Do you see any signs that they have abilities from the other realms?” Brother Joseph asked as they reached a room where monks stood at separate podiums quietly copying Latin words from thick books.

“No,” Sir Ethan said. Although he had noticed a faraway look in the eyes of his youngest, Rowena, a look that reminded him powerfully of her mother, he thought it more prudent not to mention it.

After he’d made a considerable donation to the monastery, a monk named Brother Theodosius began work on the announcement Sir Ethan wanted made. The monk wasn’t the monastery’s finest calligrapher. His work was, in fact, a bit sloppy, but for sign making it would do.

Soon Sir Ethan possessed a good-size parchment with the words he desired in an elegant, artistic script. They read:

Sir Ethan of Colchester announces a contest

open to all men from the ages of eighteen to thirty.

He who is able to unravel the riddle

and solve the problem posed to him

will win

the hand of one of Sir Ethan’s twelve beautiful daughters

in marriage.

The winner may choose his own bride, who

comes with a handsome dowry.

Brother Theodosius handed the rolled parchment to him. “Ride with care for these are perilous times,” the monk said to him. “Have you heard the news that our King Arthur was slain in battle?”

Sir Ethan stepped back, aghast at these words. He had great respect for Arthur, the son of Uther Pendragon, the chieftain in whose army he had once served. He owed his title to the older man, and he’d heard that Pendragon’s heir was a noble king. He had assuredly brought stability to the country by uniting the lesser kingdoms and warding off outside invaders. “By whom is he slain?” he asked.

“Mordred, his own kinsman. The knights of the Round Table were all slain along with him, every last one.”

Sir Ethan shook his head woefully. “Such brave and noble men! We’ll not see the like of them ever again.”

With this troubling news on his mind, Sir Ethan rode into Glastonbury and posted his new sign on a thick tree in the town square.

He watched as eligible young men gathered around
the sign and began to nod and murmur excitedly to one another. Inside of a half hour the murmuring grew into boasting and posturing as the men tried to scare off potential rivals.

Sir Ethan felt satisfied that this plan would work perfectly. Any one of the young men gathered around his announcement struck him as a suitable enough husband for one of his daughters. They might not be as noble as a knight of the Round Table—but that was no longer even a remote possibility, it seemed. That noble breed had disappeared, gone like the fierce and brave unicorns of old.

These lesser men, who appeared to be merchants, like him, and also tradesmen, itinerant soldiers, and scholars, crowded around the sign. Occasionally a man came by who seemed to be of high-born stock, possibly a duke or count. Sir Ethan was pleased to see even these wealthy gentlemen stop to read his sign.

His eyes narrowed with concern, however, when he caught sight of a scruffy beggar quietly reading the announcement. He didn’t like the fiery determination burning in the bedraggled pauper’s dark eyes.

Eleanore’s hands went to her hips as she scowled darkly at her father. Her sisters, who surrounded her there in their bedchamber, all wore similar expressions. “How could you?” she cried, made bold by her genuine outrage. “You’ve offered one of us as a prize? A
prize
!”

“Rowena told me you wanted husbands,” Sir Ethan defended himself.

The sisters turned their angry looks on Rowena.

“I said we wanted to meet young men and fall in love,” she insisted. “I didn’t say I wanted to be given away like a prize
pig
. This is a different thing entirely.”

“What if some arrogant idiot wants me for his wife?” Ione fretted. “He’ll always be telling me what to do, and it will always be the wrong thing that shouldn’t be done at all…because he’s an idiot.”

“If he’s an idiot he won’t win,” Sir Ethan pointed out.

“Win!”
Eleanore cried. “He’ll
win
one of us—a flesh and blood human being, one of your own daughters—as a
prize
! Can’t you see how
wrong
this is?”

“Eleanore, I recognize that you girls have been
sheltered,” Sir Ethan began angrily, “so I understand that you are perhaps unaware of the ways of the world, but you might be interested to learn that young women frequently, in fact nearly
always
, are given in marriages arranged by their parents.”

“Well, that’s insane!” Rowena burst out, throwing her arms out at her sides.

Sir Ethan frowned at her insolence.

“She’s right,” Eleanore backed up Rowena.

“
This
argument is insane,” Sir Ethan exploded, clearly out of patience. “We can end this contest right now. All you need to do is tell me why your slippers are ruined every single morning even though when you enter your bedchamber they are in perfect condition! Where do you go? How do you get out?”

The sisters glanced at one another from the corners of their eyes. Eleanore knew what they were thinking because she was thinking the same thing.

Nothing could compel them to give up the dancing they’d enjoyed these past three nights. Of course they knew that their stag escorts weren’t potential husbands, but how could they resist them? They were so charmingly attentive, fetching the girls food and drink, dancing with them until dawn.

The island the golden barges carried them to was a paradise. Icy fountains of bubbling drinks flowed without stop. Musicians strolled constantly, playing every kind of lively, exciting music.

Ornate mahogany tables groaned under the
weight of delicious foods, some that they had never even seen before like the tart star-shaped fruit and the tiny, glistening black fish eggs served on toast that they so especially loved.

And most of all, they danced, danced like they were on fire. The musicians never tired of playing, and the sisters were on their slippered feet nearly the entire time, stopping only to refresh themselves with food and drink.

The stag princes partnered them, moving with animal vigor, leaping, spinning, carrying the sisters over their heads as they jumped high into the air. Their large deep eyes caressed attentively and it didn’t matter that they were not directly amorous. The way they danced—holding the sisters tight one moment, throwing them wildly the next—conveyed an exciting sensuality that was thrilling in itself.

In part, they were aware that this was a fantasy, maybe even an enchantment of some kind, but they felt powerless to resist it. It was every hope of exotic excitement suddenly become reality, and they were completely enthralled by it. On the luxuriant, thrilling island in the middle of the glittering, fathom less underground lake, they felt beautiful, desirable, utterly seduced.

How could they give that up?

No. They couldn’t—not for anything.

“If you will not answer me then you will abide by the terms of my contest!” Sir Ethan bellowed,
reddening with rage. “I will have the servants remove the door on the room adjacent to this one. We will set up a sleeping quarter for the young man, and he will know your every move.”

“That’s indecent!” Gwendolyn objected. “How will we dress?”

Sir Ethan reddened slightly with embarrassment. “We’ll install a drape over the doorway, and I will threaten any young man with death who behaves improperly toward you.”

“I don’t want some hairy old man sleeping nearby, practically in the bedchamber with us,” Isolde grumbled.

“Enough!” Sir Ethan shouted. “You will be discovered eventually, and one of you will wed whoever uncovers your secret.” He banged the door shut behind him as he stormed out of the room.

As always, the sisters looked toward Eleanore to tell them what to do. This time, though, she wasn’t sure how to advise them. “I think…,” she began slowly, settling on a bed, “that what we must do is be very, very sure that we are not discovered. To be found out would mean a terrible fate for one of us and the end of happiness for all of us.”

“But what if the young man who wins is wonderful?” Bronwyn asked.

“What if he’s not?” Eleanore countered. “Wouldn’t you rather choose for yourself?”

“Absolutely!” Rowena agreed passionately.

Eleanore studied her intently. Rowena had met
someone when she was beyond the manor wall, she was more sure of it than ever. Even on the island, though she danced and feasted, she was more reserved than the others.

“When will we ever get the chance to choose a husband for ourselves?” Cecily said. “That day might never come. Isn’t it better that one of us has a chance to get free of this imprisonment? Maybe that sister could help the others?”

Eleanore sighed in frustration. “It’s all possible, I suppose, but which of you wants to stop going to the island?”

After a moment’s silence, Rowena spoke quietly. “I do.” They looked at her incredulously, but she continued. “Didn’t we set out to find our mother? Have we completely given up on that plan?”

“Have you seen something in your scrying bowl?” Eleanore inquired warily. She loved the island and didn’t wish to be diverted from its pleasures, but she felt obligated to ask.

Rowena nodded. “I see a sad woman. Sometimes she weeps; at other times she stares blankly, as if defeated. At times she pounds on the walls and screams.”

“Are you sure you haven’t imagined this?” Eleanore asked.

“No. I’m not sure,” Rowena admitted. “This entire business of seeing things beyond the reach of normal sight confounds and confuses me. In a way, I wish I wasn’t seeing these disturbing things, but I am.”

“Perhaps you just
wish
to see the things that you do,” Isolde suggested.

“I wish
not
to see them,” Rowena said, disagreeing with a disparaging laugh.

“We have no real proof that our mother is calling to us,” said Eleanore in a voice of one in charge. “The evidence is that she is not even alive. What we know is that we have been incarcerated in this prison of a home without the normal social opportunities to which any young woman is entitled.”

“What opportunities?” Brianna asked eagerly.

Eleanore sat forward as she warmed to her topic. “I have read the books that the servants bring in, particularly the romances that are penned in France. Young women our age should be going to balls, parties, and lavish dinners. Handsome young men should be begging for our hands in marriage and languishing for want of a kiss. The eldest of us might already be mothers with homes of our own. But the insane behavior of our parents—a mother who abandoned us, a father who is maniacally overprotective—has denied us all that we deserve.”

“I never saw it that way before,” said Helewise thoughtfully.

“Well, that’s how it seems to me,” Eleanore insisted. “And now some strange twist of fate has given to us what we have lacked. Our father wishes to thwart even that, and so we must outwit him at his own game.”

“How will we accomplish that?” Ione inquired.

“I have a thought,” Eleanore continued. “There is much magic surrounding us in our nightly revels. I will ask my stag for some kind of sleeping draught that will render our nightly guardian too sleepy to follow us. Although my stag never speaks, he seems to understand me when I request a drink or some food of him. Perhaps, then, he can aid me with this request, as well.”

“What if he doesn’t know of any such sleeping potion?” Mathilde considered.

Eleanore pressed her lips together as she thought. “I don’t know,” she confessed. “I’m simply going to hope that he does.”

Glancing out the window, she saw that it was nearly dark. “Come, let’s move the bed,” she instructed her sisters. “It’s time to go.”