Winter Knights

by Harper Fox

  “Yes. And it’s fair enough—you’re right, all of you. I’m glad you laid it on the line by asking—well, ordering me—out here for Christmas. It made me choose.”

  I choked. My effort not to burst into tears had sent salt and snot down the back of my throat. “No. I didn’t mean…”

  “You didn’t mean me to come down on this side? It would’ve been okay if I’d chosen in favour of you? Well, I nearly did. You’ve no idea how close. I went home tonight with every intention of telling my family. Then when I saw them, and I couldn’t do it, I thought about how you’d react, and I…I’d had enough. I’d just had enough of it all.” He wasn’t wearing his glasses tonight. I watched him forget and reach up to pull them off. I knew the gesture so well. He’d warm to his subject, get passionate, tug off his glasses and toss back his fringe. I’d always found it impossibly sexy. “Tell me something, before we both die of cold out here. Why the hell didn’t you offer to come with me?”

  “What—to Elmgates?”

  “Yes. To my family. God knows you’re not gay poster-boy for northeast England, but no-one could look at you and keep on believing the things we’ve done together were…corrupt. Evil.”

  I had two choices. I could weep or shout. I had to pick one instantly. “Oh, come off it! You know we’ve got to deal with our bloody families on our own. I’d never drag you to Winlaton to sit in our council-house living room and listen to my dad shoot his mouth off about queers and poofters.”

  “Not the point. You never asked me. If you had, I’d have been there in a flash. Do you think I’d care what I got called?”

  “You’d have come to—”

  “Yes, of course I would! You know, we’ve talked so much about my family—I’ve heard so much about how grandly indifferent you are to yours—and yet I’m not so sure. I’m not the one who wakes up at night crying and apologising to my father.”

  “I do no such…”

  “You do, Gav.”

  The bitter taste of unremembered dreams rose up inside me. “My family can’t stop me fucking who I want.”

  “And you can’t stop me believing as I wish. It’s for me to fight to find my own nature, not for you. Gavin, you—you who’ve had such patience with these legendary figures who battle the faults in their own souls, the contradictions—why had you no tolerance for mine?”

  I lowered my head. I had no intention of ever raising it again. Piers might be cold, but me—I was immune to it. I could stay here forever, clutching barbed wire, staring blindly down at the snow.

  His fingers brushed my hair. Unlike Art, he knew the nap of it, the odd way my close crop grew. He never rubbed me up the wrong way. “You’ve hurt your head.”

  “It’s okay. It’s been seen to.”

  “Who did that?”

  “The guys who rescued me.”

  “Rescued…”

  “Oh, didn’t you hear? I made a record-breaking arse of myself. Fell down a hole.” Had a vision of King Arthur’s court, got trapped in a rockfall and fucked by the world’s most beautiful caver, but you’ll never hear any of that now. I’ll never be able to tell you any of my stories ever again. Had it been worse when I’d thought that was because I was going to die? “They got me out. I’m fine.”

  “Are they still here? I don’t see anyone.”

  I looked up. The road was empty. The hillside too, though the place I’d been hauled out of wouldn’t be visible from here. “Well, they’re around.”

  “I’m not sure. You’d better come with us. We’ll take you back to the hotel, or your flat, or wherever’s best. Hexham hospital might not be a bad idea, actually—you look terrible.”

  “Piers, shut up. Go… Go get back in the car with chauffeur Gwen and let her drive you home.”

  “You know—you can be as horrible as you like. Which is pretty bad, by the way. I’m not leaving you out here on your own.”

  “I’m not on my own.” I drew a breath and met his eyes. He wasn’t showing any signs of moving. I became, therefore, very slow and distinct. “I want you to leave. Enjoy your royal bloody wedding when it happens, and I wish you every joy. For now all you have to do is turn around, take ten steps back in that direction, get in the car and fuck off. I mean it. Go.”

  The car stayed where it was for a while, its engine idling. Over the thrum, I thought I could hear raised voices. That didn’t bode well for the future, did it? I hoped poor Gwen wasn’t arguing for them to stay here and look after me. I wouldn’t have put it past her. She was a nice girl, as sincere in her beliefs as Piers. She’d turn the other cheek until the cows came home.

  No. They were going. With a few angry revs, at that—I supposed she was just human after all. Desolation and relief swept through me. I could curl up at last, huddle against my gatepost and resume the sleep I now fervently wished had never been broken.

  My sleeve was caught up in the damn barbed wire. I struggled, but that only made it worse. Swallowing hard, I turned and tried to begin the process of picking myself free barb by barb. I’d have shrugged out of my jacket, walked off and left in my T-shirt, but that was snagged too, the wire tearing the skin over my ribs. “Fuck. Shit!”

  “Here. Let me do that.”

  I whipped around, or tried to. The deep voice wasn’t Art’s. Lance was striding towards me down the verge. I closed my eyes against his look of amused compassion for my plight, and I stayed still when he told me. “I thought you’d gone.”

  “No. We’re parked just up the road. We thought you could use a little space.” Lance reached around me, deftly plucking fabric off the barbs. I could feel his warmth. “Did he ditch you, then?”

  “No.” I couldn’t bear injustice against Piers even now. I never would be able to. “No, I sent him away.”

  Lance scanned the empty swathes of countryside around us. “Not the most practical sort, are you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well…you thought we were gone, and you packed off your only other transport. Were you planning to walk home?”

  I couldn’t have walked anywhere. I’d made it up here on foot from the hotel, but the world had stretched itself to infinity since then. Maybe that was why I’d tumbled through one of the holes in its weave. I’d never get back. I wasn’t even sure of the direction. “I didn’t think about it.”

  “You’d better come with us.”

  “On Christmas Day? I couldn’t possibly. You’ll be wanting to…”

  I shut up. What on earth had I been about to say? But Lance only smiled, shaking his head. “Well, we do have decent soundproofing. I’m sure we won’t feel fatally inhibited.”

  “I didn’t mean that. I’m sorry. Look, would you just give me a lift back down to my hotel?”

  “I would, but…” He unhooked the last barb and helped me stand clear. “Art’s a bit worried about you. He says he gave you a telling-off of some sort while you were stuck down there.”

  “Nothing I didn’t deserve. I just wish to God he’d…” My voice broke. “I wish he’d come along three years ago and done it then.”

  “Well, he said to try and get you to come with us if I can. I think he’s scared you’ll top yourself or something if you’re left in your hotel room on your own. He’s not right, is he?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Good. Look, he’s coming down to get us.”

  I swiped my torn sleeve over my eyes and squinted off down the road. A Land Rover was bumping its way slowly towards us, its driver taking care on the rutted snow. I could see some kind of insignia on its side, but the letters and symbols were faint in the starlight, oddly faded, as if the vehicle had been left out in the rain for a long time. It was battered and dented, in poor condition for a rescue truck. Maybe that was down to Art’s government cutbacks, as well.

  Lance started walking. I hesitated, and he put an arm around my waist. “Come on,” he said gently. “I know it’s bleak now. But it’ll all look better in the morning.”

  He had no idea, of cou
rse. I tried to keep my head up and walk independently, but my will and self-restraint ran out like the last few grains of hourglass sand. His arm tightened. Grief boiled up in me beyond my control. I turned my face towards his shoulder and stumbled blindly with him towards the Rover’s lights.

  Chapter Five

  “Are you sure you’re okay to drive?”

  “Yeah, fine. You stay in the back with him. Keep him warm.”

  “He’s pretty upset, isn’t he?”

  “Well, you know how it goes. The course of it ne’er did run smooth.”

  “You’re telling me, Mr Hard-to-Get Green.”

  Their exchange carried on. It was sporadic, low-key, and yet I’d never heard two men happier to be with one another. I wasn’t intruding on their reunion after all. They were benignly oblivious to me, although Lance still had an arm wrapped round me. Their distraction was comforting. It left me free to choke my way through a short fit of tears, keeping it as quiet as I could in the handful of tissues Lance had passed me. Then I let my head lapse onto his shoulder—he gave me a squeeze, as if that was all right, as if people came there to cry or to sleep all the time—and I gazed blankly out of the Land Rover’s window.

  I knew the roads around here well, but I’d never seen this one. There wasn’t anything strange about it. The valley still stretched out to the south, rocking gently with the Rover’s movement. To the north, if I could be bothered to lift my head, I would see the line of the Wall, the great whinstone plates of the dragon’s crest. We were heading deep into the hills, the road narrowing down to a singletrack so tight the bare thorn branches tapped and scraped against the windows. I supposed there were lots of far-flung villages I’d never discovered on my travels.

  This one was called Drift. I only caught a glimpse of the sign as we passed. Art was driving slowly, feeling out the crunch and slither of ice, hands steady on the wheel, but a mist had gathered. I hadn’t noticed it start. One second the air had been clear, the next we were passing through silver-grey rags, a cobweb that seemed to have woven itself out of starlight. Drift, I thought, after the sign had appeared in the headlights and vanished. Not a bad idea. I closed my eyes.

  I was standing on a deserted street. The mist pressed closely all around me. A single streetlight cast an aureole into it, coruscating white and diamond-blue. Should have been a wrought-iron gas lamp, I thought sleepily. The modern concrete post and bulb almost let the place down. A scatter of houses, their windows all dark in these Christmas Day small hours, extended off into the distance. They too were ordinary. I couldn’t define to myself why they felt like buildings in a dream.

  “Do you think he’s all right?”

  I turned around. Behind me was another house, this one warmly lit from inside. I smiled. I did like it when people had the sense to leave old Northumbrian window glass alone. It was draughty for certain, but rural Victorian manors around here often had softly coloured panes like these ones shedding rose and gold onto the street, and you couldn’t replace them. There was a garden gate, a short path, a flight of steps leading up to a doorway where Lance was standing, frowning down at me in concern. Had he helped me out of the Rover? I couldn’t remember.

  “Well, he was wandering around for a long time down there before we found him. Gavin? Should we have taken you to casualty?”

  I shivered. That had been Piers’ suggestion. I pictured a white-curtained cubicle and the roaring of Christmas Eve drunks being tended for knife wounds and alcohol poisoning. Would he have left me there? No, of course not. He’d have stayed to make sure I was admitted. Then he’d have gone.

  Gone. Left me as I now knew I damn well deserved. As I’d told him to. Art was waiting beside me, holding my arm. “No,” I rasped. “Please don’t.”

  “Okay. In that case—nice though it is out on this kerb at crap o’clock in the morning—would you like to come in?”

  Art guided me up the wide, dark-oak stairs, one hand in the small of my back. The house seemed huge, disorienting. I couldn’t work out its shadows. “Wow. Is all this yours?”

  “No. We just rent a flat on the top floor. We like it, though.”

  I could see why. Lance had gone ahead to open the doors. He gestured us in from the landing with old-fashioned courtesy and I found myself in a firelit space, a big living room lined with bookshelves. The flames picked out gilding on coloured leather spines. There was a faded Persian rug, and a generous three-seater sofa where Lance had dumped his rucksack. I went to sit beside it, suddenly having no choice.

  “Gavin?”

  Art was leaning over me. I couldn’t get my head up to tell him I was fine.

  “What do we do with him first, Lannie? Wash him or sling him into bed?”

  “Feed him before we do either, I reckon. And it’s you who needs the wash, Polly Flinders. You look like you’ve been down a cave. Go on, there should be plenty of hot water. I’ll cook. Can I give him a drink?”

  “A very little one. You can make mine a treble.”

  I watched the patterns in the rug for a while. Probably I still had dust in my eyes, and that and the dancing firelight would account for the movement I was seeing, the brief heraldic dramas. A swan detached itself from the pattern and flew away, followed by a triad of ravens. A bear galloped after them wearing a coronet of gold. “Here,” a rough, homely voice said, and I gratefully took the glass Lance was holding out to me and knocked back its contents in one.

  It was a good peaty scotch. In a moment or two I felt better, or at least a little more attached to planet earth. Sounds of food preparation were coming from the room next door—neon-lit, far more prosaic than this magical chamber—and I remembered my manners. I kicked off my boots in deference to the rug and stumbled through. “Can I help?”

  Lance turned round from the stove. He had stripped out of his overalls and cold-weather gear. The T-shirt and jeans beneath them were ordinary, but not the man. I fought not to stare. He was tall and lean as Piers, but unlike my skinny academic hadn’t spent a lifetime searching out the word of God in books. Every inch of him I could see was finely muscled, machine-tooled to its purpose. “Yes,” he said, flashing me a smile. “You can grab yourself another scotch, and one for me. Then sit down and talk to me while I cook.”

  It was hard to work out what to say. Perversely, I was missing Piers by the contrasts, my throat aching at the memory of our brief holidays, snatched sunny days at the beach when his skin would turn delicate pink then a startling rich biscuit-brown. Days when I could tease him into dropping his book in the sand and chasing me through the dunes until he downed me, gauchely passionate, wrapping me in his long limbs. “I’m sorry,” I said, as if he could hear me.

  Lance continued calmly chopping vegetables. “What for?”

  It was useful that I owed him an apology too. “For making you and Art risk your lives tonight. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

  “Well, it wasn’t an ordinary night for you, was it?” He unhooked a big copper pan from the overhead rack and set it on the stove. “He told me what happened to you. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “No. No, not at all. Still, though—making field trips is part of my living. If I’d been in my right mind…”

  “You weren’t. And rescue work is part of our living, so just forget about it. Is a nice veggie broth okay with you? It won’t take long to cook.” He glanced in the direction of a door on the far side of the living room, the one through which Art had disappeared for his shower. “Reckon I’d have been staggering around on the hillsides myself, if…”

  If it had been him. I nodded and nervously gulped my scotch. Big tough caver or not, I’d never seen a man more completely in love than this one. Serenely, too, as if nothing could ever shake his faith. Until this moment I had somehow managed to forget about my scuffle with his partner in the cave. Suddenly imminent death felt like no excuse at all. “Er, broth is great. Thanks.”

  “Not your traditional Christmas breakfast, but we can start again with buck’s fizz
on the balcony once we’ve all had some sleep. Art won’t be long in the bathroom, then you can get cleaned up too. Meantime, give me that damp coat. I’ll hang it by the fire.”

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  “No trouble. Come on.”

  I stood up, ducking my head awkwardly while he helped me out of my jacket. Guilt was surging like sickness in me now. What had I done? Art’s willingness—his powerful engagement in the act—seemed irrelevant. Something in me must have brought it on. I should have done something to stop it.

  “Gavin? You okay?”

  “Yeah. Fine. Why?”

  “You looked almost healthy when you blushed like that, but now you’re white as a codfish again. You know…” He took the coat through, spread it out over the arm of a fireside chair and came back to me frowning in concentration, as if my problems were nearer to his heart than his own. “If this bust-up came out of the blue, maybe it’s not as final as it looks. People can chuck the baby out with the bathwater when they’re upset.”

  “It’s not out of the blue. I’ve had it coming for months. Years, probably.”

  “Oh, since before he met you, I should think.”

  I glanced up at him. He had taken a kitchen chair beside mine at the table. His brown eyes were alight with humour, but it was very kind. “Yes. I should think so.” I could have dropped to my knees and begged for his mercy. “I’m bad news for everyone.”

  “Not absolutely everyone, as it happens. I want to tell you something about Art.”

  Oh no. Don’t confide in me about your lover. I swallowed dryly and repressed a twitch of nerves.

  “He used to run his own team of rescue workers. I was his deputy. Of course with our names people thought that was funny—our team got called the Knights and some clever bugger painted the word Camelot over the door on our HQ hut.” He paused, smiling at the memory. “But you’re the first person he’s pulled out of a cave in a year, Gavin. We had a rescue go badly wrong. We were roping a kid up from a pothole system last December, and a carabiner clip failed. The kid fell—Christ, farther down than he had been, deep into a crevasse. There was no way we could get to him again.”