Page 92 of Bridget & Gabe Are Not Okay

“What?”

After breakfast, they were all called to meet in Gabriel’s room, as it was the largest and benefited from a table grand enough they could spread out their maps. Gwen took her place next to Sir Hurst; Bridget went to lean against the wall, as far away from her as possible. There was a frisson of excitement in the air though, that even interpersonal complications couldn’t quell.

Tomorrow was Grail day.

“What I don’t understand,” said Sir Leonard, “is why anybody would even tell us they’ve found it in the first place. Surely you’d want to hang on to it. Heal your ills.”

“A fisherman said he hauled it out of the sea,” said Sir Hurst. “He’s an extremely pious man. One of those Arthurians of old who believes in magic, but that it’s all God’s doing, nothing pagan about it. Blood of Christ in the chalice, et cetera. He’s waiting for us to come and fetch it, because we’re good and true knights and he’s just a fisherman with gout.”

Cardinal Richards sighed, clearly unimpressed by the captain’s assessment. “So why does he think it is, in fact, the Grail?”

Sir Hurst shrugged. “I don’t know. I suppose it has Grail-like qualities. He’s been very insistent that we visit.”

“It was the Fisher King who guarded the Grail in the first place,” said Sir Florian. “Perhaps he’s come again.”

Master Buchanan nodded, enthused. Sir Hurst harrumphed, then tried to turn this into a cough.

Sidney sniffed thoughtfully. “Florian, you know about this stuff—do you think it’ll heal just our physical problems, or maybe our emotional stuff too?”

Sir Leonard laughed. “The fact that your wife has gone home and you won’t see her for a week or two is not the sort of thing people treat with magical Grails. Just have a drink and shut up.”

“How d’you know? You’ve never been Grailed before.”

“I wish you wouldn’t use it as a verb,” Cardinal Richards said, sounding very pained.

“I’d like to have my hairline Grailed,” said Sir Leonard. “It’s looking rather peaky in places.”

Sir Bowen sighed. “Your hairline is fine.”

“Well, you would say that, wouldn’t you, because yours is incredible.”

Gabriel thought, privately, that if he were to ask for one thing to be healed, it would likely be his hand—but if theGrail weren’t able to magically regrow limbs, then an end to his panic attacks would do. He glanced over at Bridget, wondering if she was thinking the same about her own nerves, but she was looking out of the window, unreadable.

Sir Hurst cleared his throat pointedly. “He’s refused to tell anyone where he’s hidden it, because he thinks someone will steal it. Unfortunately, there were witnesses when he first discovered it, hence the need for secrecy.”

“I’d like to be taller,” Sidney said suddenly. “Do you think it does that? Taller?”

“I think it’ll hold your ale for you, and that’s about it,” said Adah. “It’s a cup.”

Gwen waited until everybody else had left, and then sat down on the edge of Gabriel’s bed, looking drawn. He hated seeing her diminished. It was unnatural.

“Still bad?” he asked.

“Still bad. I thought she’d made so muchprogress,” she said, smoothing her skirts and then rumpling them right back up again with her fists.

“Art says she’s just lashing out because she’s going through something.”

“Oh, like I’m notgoing through something. Like I wasn’t still grieving Father when she vanished on me the first time around, and still forgave her, because she was so willing totry. But this is the opposite of trying. It’s like she’s taken five steps forward and ten backward.”

“She hasn’t vanished this time. She’s right here.”

“Right here and refusing to be the one to talk first. The slightest thing happens and she goes right back to being… reticent, and silent, and pretending nothing bothers her at all when I know that’s certainly not true.”

Gabriel picked up the letter from the fisherman, glancing it over for the third time. “Why don’t you talk to her?”

“Because I shouldn’t have to! Because it’s not fair!”

“No, I suppose not. You still haven’t told me what she actually said.”