Alymere awoke with a raging thirst.
He pushed himself out of the low bed and walked unsteadily toward the window. Even those five steps were enough to exhaust him. He leaned heavy on the windowsill. Beads of sweat ran down his brow, but this was the honest sweat of toil, not the sickly sweat of fever. His head pounded and his mouth was drier than a witch's withered teat, but these things only reminded him that he was alive. And today was a good day to be alive.
Shades of green were the first thing he saw of the new world beyond the window. The snow had gone. Spring owned the land. Pollen blew on the wind and the sky was a ceaseless cobalt blue. Alymere threw the window open, eager to breathe in the fresh air.
This was his father's house. This was the room he had grown up in as a child. Once, so much of his life had been lived in these four walls, though they seemed so much smaller now. Here he had rescued fair maidens, slain dragons and quested for lost treasures. Here he had bent his knee before the great kings of the land and fought side-by-side with the grail knights for the honour of Camelot. Here he had loved and lost and won the hands of the fairest, worn their favours and been welcomed to the Round Table a hero. Here he had been a child.
He had so many memories of this place, not all of them good.
Behind him, the chamber door opened. He didn't turn.
"It's good to see you up and about, my lord," Gwen said. He saw her reflected in the glass. Her hair was pinned up and she looked a good ten years older than the last time he had seen her. She hesitated by the edge of the bed. Her coyness was touching, but given what they had shared, seemed misplaced. He turned away from the window and walked towards her, managing three unsteady steps before he stumbled forward into her arms. She caught him easily and Alymere leaned in, his lips only inches from her ear, and whispered, "Thank you." They were the first words he had spoken, and they came in a voice that wasn't his own. The smoke had damaged his throat every bit as much as the flames had damaged his face.
He held her a moment longer than was necessary, then leaned back so that he might look at her properly. She did not pull away from him, but neither did she seem entirely comfortable with his scrutiny. Was he so ugly that even a dried-up old maid couldn't bear the sight of him? The thought burned. He felt his anger well up then, and imagined for a moment lashing out to strike the woman across the face. The intensity of feeling shocked him. He swallowed it down, though at his side his hand trembled as though with palsy. She had saved his life and in repayment he imagined striking her? She had been nothing but kind. It didn't matter if she only cared for him out of guilt or honour, because he had saved the child — her child, now. She had been at his bedside day and night when others had left him alone to live or die.
He stepped out of the embrace and turned away, unable to bear the shame of his own thoughts. She watched him through the streaked glass of the window. It was not so easy to hide in such close confines and he wasn't strong enough to walk away from her. How could his mind sink so low? How could he fail to see the good in a simple act of kindness? She had brought him back to himself the only way she knew how. There was no devilry in it. Shame burned in him as hot as any lingering damage from the flames. He looked away.
"I should leave," Gwen said. She sounded unsure, frightened, as though she sensed his inner turmoil and just how close he had come to lashing out. But she didn't move. She was waiting to be dismissed.
"No, please," Alymere said. "I am sorry. Stay."
"If you wish, my lord."
"I do. I owe you my thanks," he said, sinking down onto the bed.
"You do not owe me anything, my lord. It is I who owe you, for the gift you gave me. You saved the lives of two people that day." He thought for a moment she meant the mother, but he remembered too well the look in her dead eyes and the funeral pyre. "With my John gone, and so many of my friends, you gave me something to live for in that little girl. I would not be here without her."
"And I wouldn't be here without you, of that I am in no doubt. You saved my life."
She sat down beside him. There was no intimacy in it, no gentle brush of thigh against thigh, nothing to suggest that they had been lovers. But at least the fear seemed to have left her, and for that he was grateful. If she did not fear him, perhaps he should not fear himself?
He began to doubt his memories.
Had their bodies really joined in communion or was that another fragment of delirium? Some dream-image conjured by his feverish mind as it sought to find a way back from the brink? Why would she have crawled into bed beside him? She was old enough to be his mother. He looked her in the eye but saw nothing beyond gratitude there. He made a decision, then. He chose to believe it did not happen.
"Tell me about the little girl and your new life," he said, kindly. "What did you call her?"
"Alma," she said.
"And do you feed her soul as she does yours?8 Is she happy, Gwen?"
"Yes, my lord, I believe she is."
"That is good. I am not sure we can ask for more, can we? Children should be happy. They should not have to know about death," he was talking about himself then, about his father and this place. "Gwen, do you ever think you see ghosts?"
She thought about it for a moment, although she couldn't know why he had asked. "No, my lord."
"Nor I. More's the pity, for I should dearly like to see my father one last time. To say goodbye. I was born here, do you know? In this house. I lived so much of my life here, and then my father died and everything changed."
"I am sorry."
"There's nothing for you to be sorry about. This is my life; I have long since made my peace with it. But that does not mean that every now and then I do not think about what it would be like to speak to my father man-to-man. It is one thing for a boy to say I love you, it is unconditional, but it is quite another for a grown man to share such a bond, I think."
"Perhaps it is so, my lord, but who is to say that unconditional bond ever changes? Who is to say that a son's love isn't always unthinkingly given? Would it even make a difference?"
"I never got to say goodbye," and there it was, the one regret of his life expressed in six simple words. He didn't need to see ghosts, not when there were so many memories alive in everything around him. "Help me, Gwen. I would get out of this house. It only makes me maudlin."
"Is that wise, my lord?"
"Perhaps not, but when is anything I do considered wise? I am still allowed to hide behind the folly of youth for a few more days yet." He held out his hand.
She helped him to rise, taking much of his weight on her outstretched arm. Alymere wasn't ashamed to lean on her. Together they walked slowly to the door. The pain of it was evident on his face, and even before they reached the threshold she questioned again the wisdom of over-exerting himself. Alymere shook off her concern with a brusque shake of the head, which he immediately regretted but refused to admit. "I would feel the spring air on my face and remember how it feels to be alive and well, not sick."
That day they made it as far as the hundred-year-old apple tree in the centre of the lawn. They sat in the shade of it while Alymere gathered his strength for the short walk back. The main treeline of the forest was still hundreds of yards distant. It seemed like forever away. Every muscle burned.
"What of my uncle?" he asked, plucking a yellow buttercup from the grass and stripping its petals one by one.
"He carried you all the way from the sea in his arms. It was truly a miracle. He carried you for three days before he collapsed, finally, in sight of the house. Even then he would not rest. He summoned healers and watched over you day and night when first you returned, my lord, worrying as a man would for his own son. But when it became clear that there would be no quick healing and there was little these men could do for you, he had no choice but to ride south to Camelot and report the attack on Medcaut and the slaughter of our villages to the king. Not that he has confided in me, but I believe he plans to urge the king to raise arms against the North. His only instruction was that we tend the fields as usual, for no matter what, we would all need to eat."
"Ever practical," Alymere agreed, especially if there were to be more mouths to feed. His blood ran cold at the thought of what such an act of war would mean. Blodyweth had promised so ominously that if the Devil's book were to fall into the wrong hands it would mean the end of Albion as they knew it, but how could civil war against the northmen be any less devastating? "When did he ride out?"
"When the weather broke, my lord. He has been gone near two weeks."
Two weeks. More than long enough to ride to the Seat of Albion and back alone, if you flogged the horse, but not with a war party. Supply lines would slow them down greatly. He had to assume this meant war was coming to his home. It was impossible to believe, looking up at the endless blue sky and hearing the music of the grasshoppers' wings and the birdsong.
They walked together back to the house, and within minutes Alymere succumbed to exhausted sleep.
The walk became a ritual, with Alymere gaining strength every day. The exercise was cautious at first, no more challenging than climbing the staircase unaided, though even that had him reliant upon the wall more than once for support. Before the week was out they made it as far as the treeline and back without rest.
Still his uncle had not returned.
Seven more days and Gwen was sitting in the shade of the old apple tree watching him run, first no more than a gentle loping stride, the distance more important than the speed with which it was covered, and then pumping his arms and legs furiously as he gave every ounce of strength he possessed to the sprint. Frequently his body buckled beneath the exertion and his legs betrayed him, but sheer determination always had Alymere back on his feet before she could come to his aid.
Afternoons, he stripped off to the waist and gave himself to physical labour. His body tanned with the sun, or part of it did. The scar tissue left by the burns whitened where the old skin browned, making him appear even more like a man of two aspects, two souls.
Gwen never left him. She urged him on as he split logs, working his upper body until some semblance of power returned to his frame. His muscles slowly returned as he hefted the axe over and over, slamming it down into the logs.
When the heat became too much, he would descend to the cellar and spend an hour or more moving casks of wine and mead, and hulking sacks of grain over his shoulder to carry them from one side of the cellar to the other, back and forth, back and forth until his legs refused to carry him.
He forced his body through more and more gruelling exercises, bringing the casks up from below to load up a broken cart — which leant precariously on its splintered axel — so that he might press greater and greater weights, building the muscle in his shoulders and lower back, and before long he surpassed his previous physique.
He was born again, body and soul.
And still his uncle had not returned.
A curious relationship formed between Gwen and Alymere during his rehabilitation. There was a tenderness there, and pride, friendship even, but it was completely maternal. He welcomed it. Of all the servants in his father's house, she was the only one who could bear to look him in the eye. Not once did they speak of their fevered coupling, so he became more and more certain that it had never happened, although that only left disquiet in his bones.
It was a month before he realised what it was that so disturbed him: during all of their time together he never once saw her with the child, Alma.