Gawain by Gwen Rowley Page B

Gawain’s ankles. Star and Motley soon followed, though Sooty only rose and stretched by way of greeting before turning herself in a circle and settling back down on his pillow.
    “Don’t you like them?” he asked, hoping rather wildly that she would ask for a separate chamber.
    “I—I don’t mind them,” the crea—, no, Ragnelle , answered.
    Gawain threw open the shutter. “Out,” he said, and they went—all but Sooty, as always supremely disdainful of anything resembling an order.
    “You, too,” he said, scooping her into his arms. He ignored her resentful yowl and tipped her out into the night. What now? You know what, he told himself, don’t pretend you don’t. This is your wedding night.
    God help me. I’d rather face every one of those Saxons again. Single-handed. Weaponless. Blindfolded, with my hands bound behind my back.
    He cleared his throat. “Shall I send for a woman to attend you?”
    “I’ve been getting in and out of my own clothes for years,” Ragnelle said. “I think I can manage it tonight.”
    “Right.”
    He gazed out at the moon-washed courtyard, wondering how this had all happened. There must be something he could have done—or said—to make it turn out differently. But what? Where had he gone wrong? He couldn’t have refused to save the king’s life. He’d had to accept. Just as he’d had to accept the Green Knight’s challenge years ago. He wished now that he’d let the fiend cut off his head. At least that would have been an honorable death.
    “Well?” a voice said behind him. “Are you going to stand there all night?”
    He turned. There she was, lying in his bed— his bed— her scanty white hair spread out against his pillow, her eyes bright beneath her tangled brows.
    God help me. Drawing a deep breath, he crossed the chamber to the candle.
    “Leave it.” His bride cackled, watching him with avid eyes. “I want to see what it is I bargained for.”
    It was intolerable. Yet he had wed her. She was within her rights to ask that he show himself to her. That was the point, after all, of the public bedding he had denied her.
    But he wished she’d let him blow the candle out. Warm light washed the bed, pitilessly revealing the gross, misshapen features of his wife.
     
CANDLELIGHT lent Gawain’s hair a ruddy glow, that exquisitely fair hair that one popular ballad had compared to falling rain.
    There were many ballads about Sir Gawain. Aislyn, disguised sometimes as a lad, sometimes as the crone, had often stopped outside the village alehouse, arrested by the sound of his name drifting from within, borne upon a cloud of music and stale ale. It was a weakness and she’d known it, but like the drunkard with his ale, she’d been helpless to resist.
    She watched him strip off his tunic and hose. Of course she didn’t have to look. She had seen him naked before and it wasn’t a sight she was likely to forget, no matter how much she’d wanted to. He had already attained his height then—or most of it—but had still been a bit uncertain about managing his arms and legs. That slight awkwardness was gone; he was in command of his body, moving gracefully through a world that had been fashioned for smaller men.
    His shoulders had definitely broadened, she thought; new golden hairs glittered on his chest. Her gaze drifted downward, past the taut plane of his belly. As though aware of her scrutiny, he turned his back, presenting her with an equally pleasing view.
    There wasn’t any harm in admiring his form. In her form, she couldn’t do anything but admire him. Which was all to the good, because he was indeed the most admirable of men.
    She’d thought the same five years ago, standing in the doorway of his chamber. She had gone to him that night at Morgause’s bidding, to fulfill the very special task the Queen of Air and Darkness had set her: to use first her body, then her magic to seduce Gawain and bind him to her will.
    He had lain sprawled upon his bed that