“No, I know. I’m hoping to get yours, though, and I don’t think the diplomatic wiles I’ve recently learned will work on you. I was thinking to trade.”
Lance set the bowl aside. He tugged at the sleeping dog’s ears. One good tale did deserve another, and he was longing to hear what had brought this prince to the tumbledown barns of Vindolanda. He was far from sure, however, that he was ready to reply in kind. “I don’t know,” he said cautiously. “Part of mine is dull, part sad and shameful. And the rest—the last two days—sound like a fantasy, something you’d dream after eating ergot wheat.”
Arthur took this in quietly. “All right,” he said at length. “I’ll start, then you can decide if I’ve earned a return, or if my ergot dreams are wilder than yours.”
So Arthur told the story of the storm in the Forest Wild, of the night sixteen years ago when he’d been given into Sir Ector’s keeping—a child out of nowhere, allegedly the heir of Cerniw’s dragon king. Lance’s eyes grew obligingly wide, and his hand ceased its movement on the deerhound’s head. He was a perfect audience. Only when Arthur had finished, and was watching him in amusement, did he even visibly draw breath.
“But did you know? When you were younger, I mean—who you were?”
“Who Imightbe,” Arthur gently corrected. “Not for many years. The old man told Ector to bring me up as his own son, and so he did, if cleaning the stables and pigsties and getting my backside whipped if I did wrong was any measure. But a time came when I thought I should learn to be Guy’s squire, since Ector isn’t rich and couldn’t afford to make noble young soldiers of both of us.” He shook his head. “Believe me, I didn’twantto lug saddles and swords about for the great lump. I had to do something, though, and so I asked them about it one day.”
“What happened?”
“Well, Guy went the colour of that beautiful sunset out there and stared at his boots, and Ector... Ector wept, the first and only time I ever knew him do it. And they both knelt in front of me, though Ector had to pull Guy down to make him, just as he had to with your priest out there. And Ector begged my pardon for lying to me all these years, and said he wasn’t my father at all. And so I found out that I was to be...”
He spread his hands helplessly. “A king,” Lance finished for him, sitting up in bed. “How did it feel?”
“Horrible. I wanted to drop through the floor. I couldn’t stand to see Ector and Guy kneeling there. I made them stand up, and then I ran off into the kennels to hide with the bloodhound’s new pups.” He snorted. “Veryroyal.”
“I’d have done the same,” Lance averred, brow knotted with sincerity. “You must have felt...orphaned. To lose the idea of a father like Ector, even if your real oneisPendragon... I couldn’t have borne it, not calmly.”
Arthur examined him with interest. Dark-eyed Celtic handsome, quite unaware of it, proud as the devil nonetheless. It was time to call in the debt on the exchange of stories. “I’m certain you’ve borne worse.”
“No. Only different.”
“Your priest said your whole family is gone.”
“Yes, in a Pictish raid. It was over a year ago. My grief is done.”
No, Arthur thought, and managed to keep it to himself.Not by half. You almost wept overmypoor sorrows not half a minute ago.He got down off the stool and shoved the deerhound aside far enough to sit on the edge of Lance’s bed. “If that’s all you’ve got to say, you have to listen to me some more.”
“I’d be happy to do so. No more stables and pigsties for you, I’d guess.”
“And you’d be wrong. Well, not about the pigsties. But the first rule of Ector’s household is—no man rests or eats until the horses are fed.”
“Quite right, too.”
“Oh, you’re another like him, aren’t you? No wonder he’s taken to you. I’ll be lucky if he doesn’t adopt another son, and leave me here. I bet you’d make a better job of it than I will.”
“Of what?”
Arthur sighed. The sun was setting in emerald bands to the west, the strange light filtering through the fort’s Roman glass. He lifted his face to it yearningly. “Of becoming the future king of the Britons, of course.”
Lance sat up. “Of theBritons? Not just Cerniw?”
“Since Ector told me my origins, I have had to behave like Pendragon’s heir in more than name. The old sorcerer swore him to secrecy, but he promised to return and never did, and a time came when we couldn’t wait. Saxon raiders are making deeper inroads every day in the south, just as the Danes are here. The Cerniw chieftains can’t tackle them alone, or won’t—sometimes it’s easier to yield and make terms than to fight. So I have set off on what I believe is called a diplomatic mission.”
“All the way from—what did Sir Ector call it? The Forest Wild?”
“That’s right. Ector’s name for his stronghold, deep in the woods to the northeast of Cerniw. Dumnonia is the Roman name for it. A long, hard journey, but we have friends in the north, it seems. I’ve spent the last month making myself pleasant with old Pendragon’s relatives among the Votadini on the east coast. We were on our way west to Caer Lir when you crossed our path. I have another distant great-uncle there, the ruler of Rheged. If I can make friends and promises enough, we’ll have allies at both ends of Hadrian’s old wall—good strategy, I’m sure you’ll agree.”
“What about the Romans? Don’t you believe they’ll return?”
“I don’t think so. They’ve got too many problems of their own. Ector still gets news from Gaul, but less and less often now. It seems to me that the battle everywhere is being painfully lost.”
“My mother was a Votadini queen.”
Arthur stopped short. More an avowal than a piece of information, that. Sudden intense focus in the brown eyes. “What was her name?”
