by Harper Fox
Chapter Fifteen
Earlier that day, Lance had instructed Edern and his family to prepare a fine dinner for the departing Roman guests. He didn’t see why a broken leg should interfere with that, or any of his other duties, and so he fashioned himself a crutch from one of Elena’s brooms, and as the sun was setting in red-gold splendour over the crags to the west, he set off on his usual inspection of the village boundaries.
For once—on the subject of red-gold splendour, he wryly recognised—the prince of Cerniw didn’t appear from the shadows of an alley or the stables to accompany him. Lance was sorry. This would be their last time. Arthur had given him a ride home on Hengroen’s majestic back, leading the stallion contritely by the rein. After doctoring Balana, the prince had brought Lance a draught of poppy mead and served it to him with his own hands. Although he’d been gone when Lance woke, through the poppy’s kindly veils he’d been aware of his presence, silent and watchful by the bed.
They would have time, he and Art. Lance reached the eastern edge of the settlement, the bare stretch of land where Father Tomas had built his church, and time seemed to spread out like a richly laid board before him, each shadowed valley a chalice brim-full of the joys and adventures he and his prince would share. Much use I’d be to you like this, he’d tried to protest on the way back down from the crags, but Sir Ector himself had leaned to pat his shoulder. We’re only going as far as Caer Lir, lad. You can rest and heal there before we head south.
South, to the Forest Wild, where trees grew to five times the height of a man, and Art’s great fortress of Cam would rise beside the river! Where golden sunlight flickered in silent glades, and there would be other lake shores, and the prince of Cerniw would once more say to him, I would choose you. Give me your skin and bone, your seed.
Lance shivered. He offered a silent prayer of apology to his lost older brothers, who’d pursued their dairy maids and strapping farm lads with a determination that had made him laugh. Oh, he’d been a child then, hadn’t he, a caterpillar, deaf and blind, sound asleep in childhood’s dream...
His leg was aching, so he made his way over to the steps of the church and sat down. He’d broken bones before, and was aware of how expertly his shin had been set. Sir Ector had said he’d be taught the arts of battlefield medicine, as well as many other skills and graces. He’d thought himself sophisticated to be able to speak Latin, but Arthur and Gaius could read it too, an accomplishment beyond his imagination. Sir Ector had a whole roomful of enormous leatherbound books, their parchment pages overflowing with tales of strange travels and encounters with mythical beasts beyond the seas.
Only a handful of books were left at Vindolanda, although Ban had used to tell stories of the praetor’s house at the height of its glory. Only Father Tomas ever touched them, and kept them hidden in a chest beneath a slab in the chapel whenever they was out of his hands. Belatedly Lance noticed that the old priest was present and reading now, perched on a bench in the doorway of the church. With his bowed head and earth-brown robes, he almost disappeared against the candle-lit darkness within.
“Is it a good part, Father?” Lance asked. Elena had taught him to be polite about the teachings of the new god, even if he found them strange. “I like it when Joshua’s army goes round Jericho blowing their trumpets, and all the walls fall down.”
“You would, you wildcat’s child,” Tomas said absently. “Those are ancient tales, though the very word of God, and of course beyond dispute. I am reading now in the books authorised by the Council of Laodicea, confirmed by the Easter letter of Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria. The teachings of Christ. Ah, it’s you, Lance, is it?”
Lance smiled. “Who else?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes, at the end of these long days—perhaps because I am nearing the end of mine—I think I see your mother, striding about the fields. I think I hear the heathen babble of your brothers and sisters, and...”
Awkwardly Lance levered himself upright. Arthur had splinted his leg with sturdy cuts of wood, and he could bear a little weight on it already, or use it for balance, at any rate. He would take horse tomorrow with the best of them. He limped up the steps, and sat beside Tomas on the bench. “Don’t be afraid to speak to me about Ban, Father.”
Tomas snorted. “Afraid? Don’t talk nonsense. What’s that on your leg, you wretch?”
“A splint. I broke it.”
“Broke it? While we have distinguished guests? Where are your manners, boy?”
“I was out riding with the prince. He was giving me a lesson in swordsmanship on horseback, and I had a fall. It was rude of me, doubtless, but you wouldn’t have had me refuse the instruction, would you?”
Tomas spared him a wintry smile. “Enjoy your joke, stripling. We down here in the vicus thought you’d been ambushed by Picts. That...” His smile faded, replaced by grey fear. “That we’d be next, if it were so. Everyone remembers how it was. Some of the farmers ran to fetch pitchforks. Your mother’s women—savages, of course—were clamouring at doors of Ban’s armoury, wanting his short-swords and spears. But today, most of them were simply afraid. They stood with empty hands in the doorways of their houses. They knew they wouldn’t stand a chance. That they’d been once more abandoned.”
Lance went cold. Tomas, naturally garrulous, had barely spoken about the night of the raid. Lance had taken his silence for shock. Now it struck him that the old man might have been showing a kindly and determined restraint. “Once more abandoned?” he echoed. “Tomas, do you know what my father did, that night when the raiders came?”
Tomas shifted uncomfortably. He folded down the cover of the vast leather book in his lap. “Why?” he demanded, almost harshly. “Do you?”
“Yes. I’ve been... I’ve been told. He ran off like a frightened deer into the smoke.”
“Then I grieve, that you’ve lived with the shame of it. Your mother... My last sight of your mother, she had a Pict by his long barbarian plait and was smiting him with a frying pan.”
“It was his shame, not mine!” Lance pushed the image of Elena out of his mind: already his voice was raw with the threat of tears. He paused, knowing the words building up on his tongue would change the whole world for him, shrink the joyous spread of the future to a few dozen acres of muddy moorland earth. It could make no difference. He got to his feet, the better to deliver his dreadful truth. “I thank you for your silence, for honouring his name, but the shame was his. I will never abandon you.”
***
When Art met him in the courtyard of the praetor’s house, he knew at once that something had changed. But Lance looked too lost and sick for interrogation. Instead, Art fell into step at his side. “That leg must be hurting.”
It was an excuse, kindly offered. Lance nodded, his gratitude plain. “A little now, yes.”
“You shouldn’t be on your feet. I tell you what—I’ll help you upstairs, and you can have a rest before supper.”
First Lance had to manage the steps up to the main door. They were majestic in the Roman style, broad and shallow, their crumbling marble patched by moss. Deftly Art relieved him of his broomstick crutch. He ducked beneath his arm, got a grip around his waist. “There. That’s better, isn’t it?”
“Where have you been all this time?”
“With Sir Ector, getting hauled over the coals for conduct unbecoming to a soldier. Wasting resources, risking valuable lives, that kind of thing.”
“I tried to tell him it wasn’t your fault.”
“I know, and thank you. I don’t really mind it, though.” Art tightened his grip and began to hoist Lance up the steps. The fire had been lit in the praetor’s great hall, and dancing shades of crimson met the last of the sunset in the cooling air. “To tell you the truth, I’m more afraid of the day when he stops doing it. He’ll feel he doesn’t have the right anymore. And that means...”
“That means you’ll be king.”
Art came to a halt. They’d reached the footworn passage beneath the
portico. “That’s right.” Just for a while, I’d thought I wouldn’t have to do it alone. “More importantly, supper smells good. Who’s coming?”
“Oh, who isn’t? Everyone’s still ravenous after the winter. If the word of free food goes out, we’ll have everyone from shepherd boys to squires. The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker—and their women and children. It’ll be chaos.”
“It sounds like you’ve done this before.”
“Many times, in Ban’s better days. He was generous, and would feed people when he could. He was a good master, a good father.”
Nobody had denied these things. Arthur examined the pale, set profile studiously avoiding his gaze. “Of course,” he said gently. In the kitchen beyond the hall, men and women were bustling about: Lance’s housekeeper Edern and his family, who had continued their faithful service, it seemed, through famine and long winter. Arthur doubted that Lance could have afforded to keep paying them after the catastrophic raid. All kinds of things about this lonely, far-flung household were good. “In that case, you can help solve a domestic problem of Sir Ector’s. A future one of mine, at that.”
“I doubt it, but go on.”
“Come indoors where it’s warmer. All these squires, farmers, shopkeepers... I suppose they have their own ideas about their importance, just as the knights and landowners do who come to visit us in the Forest Wild?”
Lance smiled reluctantly. They’d entered the friendly dining hall with its long trestle table, where he, Tomas and the Roman visitors had taken their evening meals for the last fortnight. “You’ve no idea. The miller would come to blows with our blacksmith over whose wife had more of a right to sit nearest the head of the board.”
“And whose wife does?”
“Neither of them, of course. We shan’t be eating in here tonight—come with me.” He detached himself from Arthur’s grasp, took back his makeshift crutch and set off across the hall. He pushed open a door Art hadn’t noticed before. “There,” he said. “My mother solved the problem long ago.”
Rushlight torches had been set in cressets all around the walls. Arthur stepped into the flame-lit space, and burst into laughter. Occupying the centre of the room, skilfully crafted from peg-tied sections of brightly polished oak, was a perfectly round table, nobly set out for dining. “Wonderful,” he exclaimed. “I shall have one like this made for my fortress at Cam, only five times the size. If I have nothing else, I’ll have this, even if they have to build the place around it.”
“It does help. You do know they’ll still squabble for the privilege of a place at your right hand?”
That place ought to have been filled. Arthur bit back the words fiercely. If he didn’t push, he didn’t have to know—not yet, not yet. “Perhaps I’ll fashion mine with a hole at the centre,” he said thoughtfully. “I’ll put my throne there, with some kind of wheel and mechanism to turn it. Then I’ll sit in splendour, command myself to be rotated, and shed my kingly beneficence upon each of them in turn.”
Lance was laughing now too. “Please don’t do that. You’ll look like the sack of grain they put up on a pole at the fair, for the lads to shy down with stones and clods of mud.”
“Thank you very much. Maybe not that, then. Your mother was a clever woman, though.”
“She was. She died fighting, I’m told.”
Art turned to him, suddenly as serious as he. “Oh, Lance. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t. It’s better that way, isn’t it—to go down with honour and pride?”
“Far better, I’m sure. But fearful too, and far from easy. I hope it won’t ever be asked of me—or you either, my friend. How long do we have before these guests of yours arrive?”
“None at all. I can hear cart wheels on the cobbles right now.”
“And here come Ector and Guy, all dressed for feasting.” Art pressed a hand into Lance’s back and began to steer him out of sight of the handsomely turned-out pair striding through the main hall. “They can take care of things for a while.”
“Arthur, no. I have to do the honours of the house.”
“Come and do them with me. My blood’s warm, and so is yours. How can we get out of here without being seen?”
“We can’t. But Edern’s too busy to notice us, so... Quick, through the kitchens. There’s a flight of wooden steps from the yard at the back to the bedchambers. It’s more like a ladder, though—you’ll have to help me up.”
Art beamed. “If I have to carry you. Come on!”
***
Down amongst the deerhounds and the furs.
Lance lay crushed and unbreathing. He wanted to hold this instant forever: his heartbeat racking him, his friend’s warm weight pressing him deep into the skins and hides where he’d huddled alone all winter. The dogs, sleepy and fat with kitchen scrounging, had barely moved aside for them. A haze like dawn on the lough covered his vision, and Arthur gave a shuddery laugh and sat up a little way. “Breathe.”
“I don’t want to. I want... so much, and I don’t know how to begin to get it. If you were a girl—”
“Oh, if I were a girl!” Art cut him off with tender scorn, turning to kiss the palm caressing his cheek. “I’d have eaten you alive by now, my Lance, and sucked out your core and planted your pips to make more of you. I can’t think what your village maidens have been playing at, leaving such sweet fruit as you on the tree all this time.”
“Maybe I was... on a high branch. I wish I hadn’t broken my leg coming down!”
“Girl or boy, broken or whole, there’s ways of doing things.” Quick as an otter, sure as a cat in the dark, Art dipped down to press warm lips to the side of Lance’s neck. Each place he touched should glow, Lance thought, should leave a pattern like the dragon’s molten footprints on his skin. Slowly, with a quivering strength too sweet to be borne, Art moved his hips, throwing Lance beyond speech. How could he ask about the ways, the magic by which a broken boy might find the end of desire?
No need. Art took his weight on his arms. Elena’s embroidered coverlet stretched above them, the arcane signs she’d stitched into it gleaming like the signs the stars made on a clear summer night. Within this shelter, this upturned bowl of stars, Arthur put down a guiding hand.
Lance felt tightness—hot, clenched resistance—and tried to recoil. But Arthur gave a gasping moan and rocked forward. On joyous instinct, Lance let his spine arch, the burning cage of his hips push up. Pain from his broken leg met a bolt of pleasure so sharp that he lost himself, hanging on to Arthur’s arms, crying out again and again until Art, laughing softly, put a hand across his mouth.
“Hush, now. Hush. You’ll make the dogs howl.”
“Oh, Art. Forgive me.”
More laughter. “What on earth for?”
“I should have... held on, surely. Waited.”
“I can, usually. Not with you, it seems. Pass me my linen.”
Limbs heavy and passive, as if honey had got into his bones, Lance watched Art clean them up as best he could. “I didn’t know there could be anything as good as that. Not in the whole world.”
Arthur glanced up, a half-smile gleaming. “Oh, there’s all kinds of good things in the world. I would love to be the one to show you.”
“Art...”
“Hush,” he said again, lithely scrambling away. “Stay where you are. I have to get something for you from our rooms.”
Lance and Edern had given the visitors the best of the praetorium’s sleeping quarters, on the leeward side of the building, looking out across the sweep of the valley to the east. He waited, counting his heartbeats, until they blended with the brisk sounds of Arthur’s return. Then he sat up in the stormy wreckage of the bedding. “Oh, no,” he said, when he saw the beautiful thing Art was carrying, held out towards him in both hands. “I can’t take that.”
“It was made for me by master-smiths in Cerniw. You haven’t seen it before because I’m supposed to carry it on state occasions only, to impress and terrify the local chieftains. It’s not
ceremonial, though—it’s a battle sword, through and through.”
Unable to help himself, Lance lifted the weapon from his grasp. The hilt and blade had been forged from one beautiful length of bronze, burnished to a mossy sheen in the last of the sunset. Gold and silver chasings glimmered around the pommel and crossguard. He drew it a little way out of its leather sheath, and saw that the groove of the fuller was marked with interwoven dragon’s heads. “This is your father’s sign.”
“Yes, the pen-dragon.”
“What is this metal? The one that glows like gold, but looks like the sun at winter dawn?”
“Copper, they call it in Cerniw. They take it straight from the earth.”
“What would Sir Ector say, if he knew you were trying to give me this?”
“He told me to give it to you, Lance. Considering what you’ve given us—given him—it’s very little.”
“You mean the sword from the lake? That’s a fine weapon, but it’s crude by comparison with this. Why does it mean so much to him?”
Arthur sighed. He leaned to help Lance lay the bright ceremonial blade aside, and climbed back into the bed with him. They subsided against Elena’s fragrant, reed-stuffed pillows. “He wasn’t just ripping strips off me earlier on tonight. He wanted to know, in exact detail, how I’d taken your sword from the rock in the crevasse. He thinks it answers part of the prophecy the Merlin gave him all those years ago.”
“Did the Merlin describe such a sword?”
“Not exactly, and poor Ector was confused when we learned from you that you’d taken the sword from a lake. A lough,” he amended, grinning, before Lance could correct him. “Here, rest your head on my shoulder—it’s good to be like this after love.”
“It’s too good. I can’t go to sleep here, Art.”
“I know. I won’t let you.” Art brushed a kiss to his brow. “In Ector’s words, I didn’t just take the sword from the stone—I freed it. And if you avoid the obvious Latin words for stone like petrus and saxum, and use calx instead, like lime or chalk—which is a bit of a stretch, but are widespread rocks in the south...”