Percival's Angel by Anne Eliot Crompton

Mary, Queen of Heaven!” Tears flooded down Ivie’s frozen face.
    â€œOh, come! You always knew—”
    â€œBut, but, him! ”
    â€œIvie, we have seen worse men.”
    â€œNot me! I’ve seen no one worse!” Hiccup.
    Percy sleeps.
    Rushes rustled back in the shadows. Alanna eased Percy down on her knees and drew a scarf over her breasts.
    â€œMy Lady Alanna,” said a kind voice at her shoulder, “I’ve brought you strengthening ale.”
    Ivie wept on, head erect, face still frozen.
    Edik stepped into the shaft of light.
    Sir Ogden’s trusted steward was small, dark, and ageless, but for occasional gray curls among the black. Thoughtful as always, he alone in the hall had come to offer Alanna solace in this hour of grief.
    Unsurprised, she thanked him with a deep nod. “Leave it here beside me, Edik. I’ll drink it if I can.”
    Lithely he crouched, brushed rushes aside, and placed the full goblet by her feet. Crouched, he laid a bold, brown hand on Ivie’s knee. “You have heard your own news, I see.”
    Alanna bit back a comment on his forwardness. He’s been like a younger uncle to her. Now he can help comfort her.
    Ivie gurgled, “I’m to wed…Sir Ryan Ironside!”
    Edik patted her knee, as he might pat a sick dog. “So they say down in the hall. They are pleased, Ivie. They say, at least we will still have you here.”
    â€œI wish…I wish…”
    â€œWhat is your wish, child?”
    Alanna breathed a feeble protest. “Edik, you reach too far!”
    He turned soft brown eyes to her. “Lady, what if I could grant her wish?”
    Ivie blurted, “I wish I could go somewhere! Where I could choose my own husband! Or none! None at all! If only there were such a place in the world…”
    Pat, pat, pat. Edik turned back to Ivie. “I know just such a place.”
    â€œWha…what?” Ivie gulped back grief.
    What can he mean?
    Pat, pat, pat. “Not very far off, neither.”
    Alanna’s heart flopped over like a great, caught fish.
    â€œEdik! What can you mean?”
    He kept his face to Ivie. Over his shoulder he asked Alanna, “Lady, have you also a wish?”
    Almost, she laughed. What folly we talk in despair!
    â€œNaturally, Edik. We all have wishes.”
    He turned to her.
    â€œAnd what is yours?”
    â€œWhy! That I could take my babe here to some far, unknown place, where he need never be Knight!”
    â€œThe same place Ivie longs for. It is not so far.”
    â€œThere truly is some such place?”
    â€œWithin sight of here.”
    Oh, God! Can he mean what I think?
    â€œStand up, Lady. Stand up, Ivie. Look out the slit.”
    Alanna laid sleeping Percy against her shoulder. Cramped from long sitting, weighed down by grief, she rose slowly to the arrow slit. Already there, eager Ivie leaned into light.
    Edik said behind them, “On the horizon.”
    Aye! What I thought!
    Ivie whimpered. “Nothing there, Edik.”
    They looked down across Alanna’s garden, where Holy Mary’s statue stood guard under a vine-laden lattice. With the servants, they had barely commenced to spade here. They looked farther down, across Sir Ogden’s three villages, farmlands, pasture lands, bare-boughed woodlots, all shining brown and gold in spring light. Beyond all, shone the distant, pale orange smudge of the forbidden, Fey forest.
    â€œSee you not the forest, yonder, young Ivie?”
    Ivie dried her eyes on her sleeve and looked again. “I see only the…the Fey forest.”
    â€œThere, you can choose your own man.”
    â€œThere!”
    â€œThere, Lady Alanna, you can raise your son to be a man, and never a Knight.”
    Holy Mary! Help me now!
    Alanna faltered. “But, Edik…How would we live, there?”
    â€œYou asked that not, before. You asked only for a land where Percy would not grow to be Knight. There is