“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.”
