Gerard was, as always, surrounded by small children, and it was just the way he liked it. Arthur, now aged twelve, was reading while George, nine, enthusiastically duelled his eight year old brother Cedric. Mercy was attempting to join in, but at three she was mostly getting in the way. Gerard scooped her up to avoid tears, distracting her by letting her attempt to strangle him with a cuddly sea-serpent.
The tears came anyway, when a few minutes later Cedric failed to deflect a blow that left his knuckles scarlet. Gerard pulled him on to his other knee and applied some of his ‘miracle healing salve’ and kisses until the howls eased.
“Shall we have a story, my little monsters?” he asked, smiling. Arthur put his book down.
“Could we have one about Aelindis, Father?”
“Of course!” The others clustered around his feet, making themselves comfortable.
“So, as you know, Aelindis used to be a serf on my estate in York - you remember, you’ve been there when we had tea with Dunkyr and the trolls? When she was nineteen, I met her, and I saw how clever she was and how many things she knew, and so I asked her to accompany me while I was riding around being a knight.”
“Was this before or after she rode with Arthur and his knights?” asked Arthur.
“I, um, before, I think.” The children nodded and he continued. “For several years we rode together, and I would fight terrifying monsters, and she would come up with clever plans to help me and use her great magics and heal me afterward. Then we went to the Godstow meetings.”
“Which she tricked Rosamund into holding,” Cedric pointed out.
“Yes. Though I didn’t find that out until much later. So, we went and she saw through the magics at Tintagel to rescue Lancelot, who had been trapped for hundreds of years -”
“Did she already know Lancelot was there? From when she rode with Arthur?”
“I’m not sure - I don’t think so? But we freed him anyway, through lots of dangerous traps and fireball spells and I think a banshee… oh, and then there was the time with Averill’s dragon, where he very wickedly tried to poison us and then the dragon attacked. She had had some very cunning plans with gas bladders, but the dragon caught us by surprise and used our own trebuchet against us. It destroyed Averill’s house and we barely got away. And we had lots of other adventures,” he paused to shift Mercy’s weight on his knee and persuade her to wrap the snake around his bicep instead. “But it all went wrong when we made a deal with the Wild Hunt.”
“What was the Wild Hunt?” George asked. “Were they evil?”
“Now George, you know very little in this world is actually evil. They just act according to their own morality, which sometimes doesn’t fit in with ours. Like how we had to tell Auntie Blodeuwedd not to steal things. Or people. Sometimes you can talk, and make deals, and everything will be alright. And then sometimes they don’t want to talk, they just want to kill people because they can, and you do your best to persuade them not to but if they don’t listen, then you have to go out and save people from them.”
The children, with the exception of Mercy who was attempting to eat the seaserpent, nodded solemnly. They had all heard this before on multiple occasions.
“So, the Wild Hunt. They were a group of Unseelie fae who liked to hunt things. Sometimes they hunted people, and that was bad, but we thought that we could make a deal with them, that we could hunt monsters together, and if we gave them enough monsters to hunt maybe they would get bored of people.” George nodded - this made sense to him. Gerard leaned over and tousled his hair, proud of the son who was already eager to follow in his footsteps and become a great knight.
“So, we rode out together, and the Hunt gave us great beasts with lots of legs like beetles to ride on and we flew up into the sky! And their magic flowed through us all and made us just like them, we wanted to hunt and kill things, not because it was right but because it was fun - and this is why you should always tell mummy and daddy if you feel your thoughts and emotions changing in ways that aren’t normal for you, because it might be a wicked mage. Or puberty, but that’s still important to talk about. Anyway, we saw a great stag and we rode after it as fast as we could, and we caught it up, and we killed it. And that’s when it turned out that it was all a trick, that made us *think* it was a stag, but actually it was a human woman! And of course we all felt really really bad for having killed her. But Aelindis and your Uncle Aleyn, who saw through the illusion, couldn’t forgive us for a long time.”
“But Father, Aelindis had killed thousands of fae to open the first portal. Why should she care that you killed one person?”
“Well Aelindis wasn’t the evil person that everyone thought she was. Even I believed it for a while, but a lot of it was a spell that made an evil copy of her, or her spreading lies so people would think she was bad while she was secretly trying to help us all.”
Arthur’s expression was sceptical.
“Father, she killed thousands of people. She was the most evil person that ever existed! The great alliance to take her down? Didn’t you say she murdered her true love right in front of you and made you all watch? Remember, you named me after him?”
“Well, yes, but… I think some of that was Merlyn… I’m sure…”
“Don’t be silly, Merlyn was just a little hob. *Everyone* knows she was evil.”
“But she… she made the deal with Dii Ca - the Vulture - to protect us. And she… wore Arthur’s face - no, it was my mother’s, she killed your granny and wore her face to my wedding - no, she was a guest, I forgave her - no, it was Arthur’s face, she sacrificed herself to save the world, to trick, to trick… herself -” Gerard buried his head in his hands. “I’m sorry, I just don’t know.”
Arthur regarded him gravely for a moment as Cedric sucked the last of the ‘miracle salve’ from his knuckles.
“I’m sorry, father, but… you are terrible at telling stories. Would you mind if we went over to Uncle Samuel’s instead?” The others chorused agreement with varying levels of tact. Mercy managed to rip an eye from the sea-serpent with much satisfaction - Gerard fished it out of her mouth without thinking about it.
“I…Of course. I’m sorry; Aelindis stories are… complicated. They won’t sit straight in my memories. I’m sure the stories everyone tells aren’t what happened, but I just can’t remember… Yes. Sorry, my darlings; you can go, but only if Uncle Samuel says he doesn’t mind - you are not to pester him. And do remember - always, always knock first, and wait for an answer before opening the door.”
The four children scampered off toward Samuel’s room, leaving their father shaking his head and wishing he could remember the woman who had once been his closest friend.