Page 100 of Bridget & Gabe Are Not Okay

He was standing closest to the edge of the tree line, and they all went to join him to watch, as first one man on horseback, then a group, now a cart, and then a steady flow of traffic beganto stream down the road toward the village. It was so unlikely as to be unnerving.

“Good. Then… we’ll all go,” Gwen said. “Have we got enough cloaks?”

As it turned out, they did, and Sir Hurst cast up either a prayer or a quiet swear word into the night as he agreed to lead the entire round table down into the village. They hovered in the trees as he held up a hand in the signal for the party to wait, watched until the foot traffic dwindled to nothing and the coast was clear, and urged them all onward. It was easy enough to step out on to the road and hurry to catch up with the crowd.

“Act natural,” he whispered to Gabriel, before putting up the hood of his borrowed cape.

Gabriel wasn’t very good at acting natural. He discovered, in fact, that he’d forgotten how a normal person walked. He tried to do his best impression of a walk, and then realized he was swinging his arm in a very unnerving way and, once they’d reached the village, copied the man in front of him instead; when it turned out that man had a limp, he gave up, and tried to focus on the problem ahead of them instead.

If it was a ransom they wanted, he’d pay it. His father, he knew instinctively, would have refused—but he wasn’t his father, and they could afford it, and while yes, it might set a precedent for future kidnappings, they’d just have to try very hard not to let anyone be snatched from right under their noses again.

Gwen was on horseback with Sidney on foot leading with the reins, and Arthur behind them, also ahorse. Gabriel’s new riding style had been considered too noticeable, despite Sir Hurst’s obvious reservations about allowing the King ofEngland to walk into a dangerous situation on foot. Gabriel kept the others in sight, trying not to panic when somebody stepped between them, to keep his breathing slow and steady. Sir Hurst was still behind him, even if he was out of sight.

Normal, he kept thinking.Be normal.

The steady trickle of people was heading slightly downhill, to a space between the squat buildings of the small settlement that might generously be called a town square. As he followed them, Gabriel felt a hand on his shoulder, almost jumped out of his skin—and then realized that it was Sir Hurst, wordlessly making his presence known.

It was hard to tell at first because of the milling and bunching of the crowd, but as he got closer, Gabriel realized with a violently sinking heart that there was a sort of makeshift stage in the middle of the square, a few upturned apple crates, and that people were waiting expectantly for someone to appear on them.

It looked like the scene of an execution.

He glanced around, hoping he was being surreptitious, and caught Gwen’s eye. She looked just as sick as he felt as she mouthed, “It’s allmen.”

He hadn’t noticed at first, but when he looked again, he saw that she was right. The crowd was overwhelmingly male. There were some women, but they were few and far between.

A door to one of the houses opened, and Gabriel flinched as the crowd sprang to life. Three men came out; between them, Sir Bridget Leclair, with her hands bound and dark bruises blossoming on her cheeks, was dragged out into the night air and toward an uncertain fate.

Forty-One

Bridget had always believed that it didn’t matter if a crowd was with or against you. At least, that had always been the case in the lists.

Now though, facing this particular crowd, it did seem to matter quite a lot that they all so obviously hated her. She could see it in their sneers and stares, the ugly set of their mouths. She felt like a trapped animal, a fox cornered by hounds—and instead of bringing everything into sharp focus, it was obliterating the last of her very frayed nerves. Her vision was blurry, her breath too thin in her lungs; she should have been fighting, doing something,anything, and all she could do was follow her captors to the shitty stage they’d erected, wondering if this mob was going to tear her apart.

She strained against the rope, but she was tired, and all it did was earn her a hard shove as she was pushed up onto the crates.

The older man who’d delivered Bridget a private sermon was the one who spoke, quieting the crowd with a raised hand. “Now I know this might make you angry,” he said, gesturing to Bridget like she was a broken heirloom or a questionable work of art, “but this is what happens when we contravene the natural laws of God. Men must be allowed to be men, and women to be women. When we fight our nature, we become angry, confused—and worse, when those who should know better claim that it is not a sin for genders to be confused, for a man to lie with a man, or a woman with a woman…”

The crowd reacted very loudly to this, as Bridget had suspected they would. She wished she could find it in herself to be furious again. All she could do was breathe, try to ignore the smell of churned mud and woodsmoke, and feel a faint twinge of regret that she was probably about to be murdered by somebody so very stupid.

She thought of the news reaching her mother and father. Her mother, at least, believed wholeheartedly in samsara. Rebirth. That might offer some small comfort. Bridget wasn’t entirely sure whatshebelieved, except that she deserved a better end than this.

“We must make a statement,” the man continued, “to tell those who live in the city, who have been corrupted by all things unnatural, and those who worship false cults of magic, that we honest folk of this country will not stand for it. But first, we will give her a chance to renounce this behavior, and return to maidenhood, as is proper.”

The crowd jeered. Bridget looked the man who’d spoken in the eyes, breathing raggedly, and said nothing.

“Fine then. If she wants to be a man,” called one of the captors restraining her. “Then let us see how she wears it!”

He took the knife from his belt, and Bridget did move then,trying to duck away; he grabbed her by the hair, and she braced for steel at her throat, but instead when the blade moved he was left with a handful of her shorn hair. He held it up for the crowd to see, evidently very pleased with himself—and then there was an odd noise, and his face went rigid and pale.

Bridget watched, confused, as he bent at the waist—and then realized that there was now a knife protruding from his stomach, satisfyingly central, like hitting the bull’s-eye on a training target. She knew that knife. It belonged to Neil. She’d been the one who’d given it to him.

There wasn’t time to think. The other boy holding her dropped his rope in fright and ran, and she was able to bend down and scrabble behind herself, undignified, for the knife still protruding from the fallen man’s belly. Pulling a weapon from flesh was never advised on the battlefield due to risk of bleeding out—it felt strange to do it so carelessly, but the man on the ground was beyond saving.

The preacher recovered from the initial shock, realized what she’d done, and went to take the knife from her; she let him get close and then swung sharply in his direction, unable to judge the angle properly with her hands still tied behind her back. She’d struck true; he jolted away, spattering a wide arc of blood across her side.

There was a disturbance in the crowd. As Bridget watched, a man wearing a cloak drew his sword and threw off his hood, revealing himself to be Sir Leonard, furious and deadly. It turned out that Bowen was not far away—those nearest to him tried to fall back, scrambling as he raised his blade.

Sir Hurst. Neil. Adah. As each was revealed, Bridget felt fire returning to her chest, a humorless smile on her lips.