The Cursed Blood, стр. 66
“What happened?” she snapped as I suddenly found my greens and its bitter dressing extremely interesting as I toyed with them with my fork. “Benjamin Earl Bright, you look at me this instant and explain yourself,” she all but shrieked, her eyes flashing and buggy behind the huge lenses of her glasses. Her screeched demand startling a poor serving girl so bad as she passed our table that she dropped the tray of drinks she had balanced over her shoulder with a shattering clatter and yelp.
My heart pounding and face flushed scarlet with embarrassment and guilt, I stutteringly told them everything, leaving nothing out.
“Oh, dear…” Fazool moaned as I finished my tale. Aunt Milly looked like she wanted to agree but instead downed her entire glass of wine in one gulp, poured herself another, downed it, then poured another and stood—storming off wordlessly to the rooms, glass in hand, leaving the empty bottle and us at the table.
“I really messed up, didn’t I?” I asked the little Halfling Witch who gave me a sympathetic look over the rim of his own glass, raising a tiny shiny ringed hand to order another bottle.
“It’s not your fault. Not really,” Fazool puffed out his ruddy cheeks and sighed as the serving girl rushed over to show him a bottle, which he approved with a smile that had her blushing as she worked at the cork with a took from her apron. She paused as he stopped her from pouring a glass.
“Let it breathe, love.” He smiled sweetly. She nodded, batted her eyes at him, and left giggling like a schoolgirl. Fazool shook his head as he watched her go with an appreciative chuckle.
“Much like this surprisingly fine French wine, some things need time to breathe when you open them up,” Fazool explained. “And this whole thing has done a fine job of opening up your poor grandfather. Though ‘gutted’ may be a more apt term for what this return to Camelot’s done to him,” he added thoughtfully as he took a forkful of salad and popped it into his mouth.
“Memories, particularly bad ones, can hurt worse than a blade—especially when they were never dealt with properly to begin with. When Gwenevere died, all of Feydom mourned,” he began in a soft, hushed tone. “More beautiful than a virgin snow sparkling like a thousand, thousand diamonds in the morning sun and kinder than the kiss of a summer breeze on a hot August afternoon she was. And the way she was taken from the world…” He shook his head sadly and picked up the wine, sniffed at it, and then filled his glass all the way to the brim.
“Artur went mad with grief, vowing to kill whoever had done this wretched thing as he plunged into an investigation that had him leave Camelot with Lancelot—his most trusted knight and closer to him than a brother—to investigate a lead that had been tortured out of a particularly nasty brigand.” He sipped his wine, then after a second thought gulped it down before continuing.
“Three times assassins tried to murder them. The last time costing Lancelot his life. Now his oldest friend gone, Artur mercilessly hunted and turned over every foul rock he could find until he dug up answers—at times at the tip of his sword. In the end he didn’t like the truth he discovered.” He poured himself another helping and sat in silence for a long moment until I almost thought that was all the Halfling had to say. I was wrong. “By then his treacherous son had usurped the throne and turned the whole of Camelot against Artur. He couldn’t return—not then with the whole of Camelot demanding his head on a pike.”
“What did Sir Becket tell them?” I asked.
“Nothing good,” Fazool sniggered. “He invented a sordid tale that Artur himself had murdered fair Gwenevere, and then led her supposed scandalous lover, handsome, brave Marcus Leander Lancelot, the Swords Master of the Realm, who was honestly more adored than Artur himself, out of Camelot where Artur allegedly murdered him too, with a knife to his back. The treacherous swine told a sad story of Artur being a cruel, abusive man that drove his wife into his own best friends’ arms, where the two supposedly fell in love like some kind of sordid, twisted fairytale.”
“Was it true? The affair I mean?” I asked.
Fazool arched a brow at me and chuckled sadly as he shook his head. “Of course not,” He assured. “The two, though separated by many years were deeply in love and fiercely faithful to one another. Besides, poor darling Lancelot had no interest in women outside of his own arranged and loveless marriage. As he had far, far, far more interest in men, and many of them,” he explained matter of factly. “A bit of information the population of Camelot well knew and perplexingly conveniently forgot.”
“How did he convince them then?” I demanded.
Fazool frowned, looking for all the world like someone had stuffed a hot chili in his mouth as he stared at his glass as if he could divine the best way to answer in its shining surface. “He produced the beaker the poison had been in that had allegedly been found by a cleaning lady. Stuffed behind Artur’s wardrobe wrapped in one of the monogramed handkerchiefs Gwenevere had gifted Artur on his birthday. Becket even had a Wizard verify the residue in the beaker was the poison that killed his mother before the whole city…I bet you can’t guess which Wizard, can you?”
I shook my head blankly.
“Eric Von Clampett. He was the one the murdering git got to prove Artur’s guilt,” Fazool answered, the words sending a chill down my spine and