Arthur.
“Has he ever played before?” Vera asked.
Lancelot smiled broadly without taking his eyes off Arthur. “Not to my knowledge.”
Arthur bodily shielded the girl, his arms spread, sleeves rolled to the elbow, and pants scuffed with dirt. Sweat beaded on his brow despite the chilly morning. He was fighting tooth and nail to keep both himself and his little shadow in the game. She shouted orders from behind Arthur, to both his and the crowd’s delight.
“King, get him! Get HIM!” she shrieked, pointing at the man who’d pelted the ball in their direction. She addressed him that way every time. “Smack it, King!” or “Not like that, King. Kick it better.”
Arthur made a great effort to keep his face serious and focused, but his smile broke through frequently. The crowd roared with laughter as Arthur’s teammate chided him to play tougher.
Somehow, either by the other players laughing too hard to carry on or perhaps by their generosity, it was soon only Arthur and the child left. He crossed the pit to make space between them and turned to face her, the ball sitting directly between them. The girl’s eyes were the size of saucers.
“What do I do?” she asked Arthur.
“Kick it, Flora,” he said. “Go on—see if you can get me!”
Flora licked her lips and tossed her golden hair behind her shoulders. She ran her fastest at the ball and gave it a clumsy kick that Arthur made no effort to dodge. It bounced along the ground and rolled slowly into his foot. As soon as it made contact, he dropped to the dirt as if knocked unconscious. Flora screamed her glee while the crowd erupted. Arthur grinned from his place on the ground before he got to his feet and was all but tackled by Flora as she threw her arms around his neck, yelling, “We won! We won!”
“You won!” He gave her a jubilant spin, letting his gaze land on Vera. Arthur’s eyes glimmered as he spoke quietly to the child. She glanced at Vera, too, then gave a beaming smile before he set her on the ground.
Flora wasted no time in dashing over to Vera, pulling Arthur with her with one hand and grabbing Vera’s hand with the other. “Come on!” she said. “It’s your turn!”
Vera looked from Flora’s sweet face with her big, pleading eyes up to Arthur and the others preparing for the game.
“Go on.” Lancelot nudged her with his elbow.
“I—” This was not a part of Vera’s plan. “I shouldn’t …”
“I insist,” Arthur said. “Let’s play.”
So she played, and that was merely the beginning of it. As often as weather permitted, dinners with performers were moved into the town square. There was dancing, initiated by Arthur, no less, on more than one occasion. Vera didn’t have to become more formal because Arthur became less so, and all of Camelot seemed to fall in stride.
In the midst of it all, her training with the king’s guard had begun in earnest. It was grueling and absolutely humbling, but it was something of a treat, too. She often stayed after to watch their faster, much more intense sparring that left her slack-jawed at their prowess. But today, Randall was helping Percival into full, plated armor and helmet while Lancelot set up the strangest rig on the far end of the field, a pole with a wooden arm extending from it and a chest plate dangling beneath. He gave it a smack, and the arm spun about the pole. Lancelot caught it on its way back around and nodded, satisfied.
At the other end of the field, Percival was on horseback, and Randall passed him a hefty spear at least two meters long. Her jaw went slack. Surely not …
Percival tucked the lance beneath his arm and set his horse galloping toward the dangling chest plate. The tip of his lance slammed into it, sending the hinged arm spinning about the pole.
“Is he … jousting?” Vera asked. “You lot have jousting?”
Arthur nodded. “We have a tournament in Camelot every spring. It’s the only time of the year all the knights gather in one place. Largest tourney in the kingdom,” he said with no small measure of pride.
“That …” Percival looped back around to make another pass. “I’m a poor historian, but I am almost certain this should not exist yet. Not for several hundred years.” Plenty of Camelot had advancements beyond what she expected, all owing to magic. But things like having the orb lights and magically heated water made sense. Of all things, why would magic advance the advent of jousting?
Arthur nodded to Randall in the distance, who raised his hand and gave a stiff wave. “It came about during the wars. I think it was a soldier from the Frankish Kingdom who introduced us to it … but we started playing at it between battles to ease the tension, and it became rather popular.”
Maybe that explained it, and jousting had some earlier origin in France.
Percival dropped the shattered remnants of one lance, rode close to Randall to take a fresh one from him, and started his next charge.
“Just watching him practice is rather thrilling,” she said.
Arthur leaned against the fence next to her and eyed her.
“What?” she asked defensively, but Vera lived for moments like this. Tiny, private gestures that proved his promise of friendship wasn’t merely for show.
He grinned. “Do you want to try it?”
