“As a union.”
“As a marriage?”
He demurred. “Well, not as a marriage because one of us would have to be a woman for that, but theoretically—”
“There, see! That’s what I mean.” I tapped on his chest. “Where I come from two men can get married.”
“What for?”
I balked. “Well, I—don’t know actually. Because they love each other.”
“Plenty of people get married without loving each other. And plenty of people love each other without getting married.”
“I know but I’m just saying there’s a difference. Between us. And this.” I pressed against him, ran my hands over him. “We each have this idea about the two of us and I worry it’s two different ways of thinking—thinking in opposite directions or something—and I guess I only say that because it scares me. Because...” I let my voice trail off. I toyed with letting my mind dive fully into this feeling—devotion, melding, giving myself fully into someone else, into the love—but pulled back like a face from cold water. I thought of Callum lying there, feet propped up on my desk, nudging me. I thought of him at the pub, holding court among a hundred devotees just like me, a hundred thousand texts on his phone from a hundred thousand Georges. I rolled off of Simon and stretched. Midnight gnats flew up from the grass. Sleeping sheep nearby swatted their ears reflexively. I helped Simon up and we went sleepily back to the house, where we readied for bed in the dark, not wanting to waste a candle, undressing nude and blue. We kissed, felt, squeezed. I sighed. I looked at the ceiling above us, the bars of shaved timber. “Like, isn’t sodomy a thing? A sin?” I asked.
Simon laughed. “Of course it’s a sin!” he said and pulled me into bed with him. We wrestled each other and he playfully slapped and shook my backside. “It’s a really nice sin. So nice even straight people do it sometimes.” He nibbled on my cheek and after more laughter, some flexing and strain, added, “But sois envy, so is laziness, so is dishonesty. So is not showing love to someone as much as you know you could.” He traced a finger around my lips.
I stared into his eyes. “The fact that you even say that means you’re coming at this from a completely different place, so how do I know that any of this—”
He shushed me with his lips, kissing me deep and slow as if to slur. He kept his forehead against mine, curls sliding. His eyes were closed and he said, “Just listen.”
I watched him and listened. I waited.
He said nothing for the longest time, then repeated himself. “Really listen.”
I listened.
Outside our stony hut, an antler rubbed against a tree, a fox coughed, and in the thick, voluminous gulf of the sky, stars vibrated, the moon hummed. Before Simon had a chance to say what he wanted to say—that the world out there and the placement of ourselves within it, whether together as a union or apart, was all that mattered, and that if sodomy was a sin then it was a sin like all the others in the sense that sin was a sign of caution, a warning that served as a guardrail between our world and whatever greater thing lay beyond it, both in unknowable great joy and unattainable great peril, and the timeless, crushing responsibility of devotional love—but before he had a chance, he had fallen blessedly to sleep.
His body sunk against mine like a smoldering hearth, logs shifting, embers sizzling. My craven lust for the boy eased into loving splendor and I tried to fall asleep in that contentedness, ignoring the ruckus of second-guessing, the visage of Callum, the longing for signs—the hoot of an owl, the bleat of a goat.
By the time the sun rose, I had reasoned with myself enough to accept that this was pure living, purer than anything I could have imagined in my previous life, and I had to just live, for the first time in my life. I kissed Simon’s arms and pulled them tighter around me, moved my lower half closer against his, felt the warming, hardening response, and together we greeted the morning, just as there came a loud and forceful knocking at the door.
8
The knock at the door became a banging at the door. Something hard and metal pounded on it, upending the entire facade of our secluded Eden. Suddenly this all felt like camping, like we were in a tent and had overstayed our welcome. Voices called for us outside. Through the gaps around the doorframe, shadows shuffled in the morning sun.
Simon and I leapt from bed and threw on clothes. I looked at Simon for direction—I had never answered the door in this century. We had no windows to peek out of. Simon grabbed a knife and demanded the person on the other side of the door identify himself.
“John Abbenhale of the Crown Equerry,” said a man.
Simon looked at me with bewilderment and shrugged. He slipped the knife under his tunic and went to the door. He slowly unlocked it, then pushed it open fast and wide. Both Simon and the man on the other side stepped backward from each other asit swung open. The spotlight of the morning sun lit up every inch of rustic squalor around us. I squinted.
“Don’t move.”
Five men surrounded the door with bows and arrows raised. We froze.
The men were richly dressed in decorative armor, which had been strapped together over thick layers of colored fabric. Muscled, stoic horses stood behind them. One man with a sword (the one who had knocked) cautiously approached while the others kept their bows raised and pointed at us. He kept his hand on the sword’s hilt and with the other raised a rolled piece of paper.
“Which one of you is George Green?”
I took a second to reply. “I’m George,” I said, stepping forward. “Not Green, but from Greenwich, yes.” My head was tilted instinctively toward the ground, wincing at the arrows pointed at me.
“Your presence is requested at an audience with His Majesty the King Edward on the evening of the fourteenth of June, in the twenty-ninth year of His Majesty’s reign. You will be allowed one horse, no arms of any sort. You are to be escorted into his presence by Piers Gaveston, an equerry to the Prince of Wales, who will meet you in Kirkdale and bring you to the royal caravan stationed at Thirsk.”
He handed me the scroll, which was tied with red string and a wax seal. I opened it but could hardly read the handwriting—I could at least make out the date, the village name. I had never been to Thirsk but I knew it was a day’s journey west, north of York. The messenger and the other men were already back on their horses.
“Wait, but why?” I said. “What’s this for?”
