“That’s right. And he goes up to the keeper and orders himself a pint of ale. The keeper’s astonished, but he serves him his drink, and the duck goes off into a corner, sits down and settles to read the bill of fare.”
“This is ridiculous, Lance.”
“Next day, the same thing happens. Duck comes in, orders a drink, sits down to read. So the keeper decides to talk to him, find out something about him. And the duck says he’s only in town for a while. There’s a building site over the road, and he’s doing some plastering work over there.”
“For God’s sake…”
“Don’t you want to know how all this turns out?”
“No, I... All right, yes. Go on.”
“The next day, the circus comes to town. Not gladiators and horse-racing—clowns and performing animals, that kind of entertainment. And it occurs to the tavern keeper that they might be interested in this marvellous duck. So when one of the animal tamers comes into the tavern, he tells the man all about him—how the duck can speak, read, drink a pint. The animal tamer thinks this would make a great act. He tells the tavern keeper to get the duck to call in and see him.”
Art shook his head. “I’ll never get it back, will I—the time I’ve spent listening to this?”
“You won’t regret it, I promise. Next time the duck comes into the tavern, the keeper tells him he might have the chance of a job with the circus. The duck says, ‘The circus? You mean the place with the great big cloth tent that they take down every time they move on?’ The tavern keeper says thatisthe place he means, yes. And the duck looks at him and says, ‘What the hell would they want with a plasterer?’”
Art stared at him in silence for a long moment. Then he got stiffly to his feet and tapped his tankard off the table. His voice was steady enough: perhaps only Lance and Guy could have detected the tremor in it. “Will you excuse us, Your Majesties? My honourable lords and nobles? This day has been a long one, and I must retire.”
He took Lance by the elbow. Lance scrambled off his bench with as much grace as he could manage and followed him through a narrow doorway at the far end of the hall. Silently Art limped ahead of him to a room little bigger than a cell, with the remains of a fire glowing in the corner. A guard’s chamber, Lance guessed. There were no chairs, but like good soldiers they made do with the wooden stools on either side of the fire. Arthur was wiping his eyes on the sleeve of his robe. After quite some time—during which Lance watched him with the greatest satisfaction—he was able to speak. “Well,” he said raggedly. “You succeeded. You did make me forget. What do you want for your prize?”
Desires and hungers ran through Lance’s blood, glittering, fuelled by hot wine. Carefully he said, “I’ll tell you at some other time. Come on, Art—you’ve heard every word of my tale, and the tale of the duck. How fares the legendary Arthur of the Britons?”
“I thought I wanted to tell you all about my triumphs and campaigns. Now I’m alone with you…” He folded his arms, shifted uncomfortably on the stool. “Now I’m alone with you, all I can think of are the times when I’d have given my soul for you to be there with me. I killed both my half-brothers in battle last year, the legitimate sons of Pendragon—contenders for the throne. In fact the first time I met one of them was when I split his head in two with an axe. Not very fraternal, was it?”
“No,” Lance agreed softly. It was hard for him to remember that the boy he had met three years ago had been engaged since then in almost constant warfare. How many lives had he taken? Lance was not sentimental; had stabbed a sheep-raider to death and snapped his comrade’s neck for him barely a month before, when a bunch of them had ambushed him on his way back from the moors. But Art had been a warrior. “You had your reasons.”
“I had Ector’s. He told me it was necessary, that I’d saved the kingdom. The Merlin had prophesied I’d kill them, he said.” Art shuddered. Then he pushed to his feet and paced a few strides toward the narrow, barred window, where the night pressed in blackly from outside. “God, Lance!” he suddenly cried, turning by the wall like a caged wolf. “I wish I’d been Ector’s son in very truth. I’d have flown his pennant a thousand times more gladly than Uther’s bloody red dragon. I didn’t even realise until he was dead.”
“He was trying to guide you by what he thought was right. It cost him dearly.”
“It’s made me want to exterminate every Saxon and Angle in the land, pirate or settler. And that’s wrong, isn’t it?”
Not a question Lance was meant to answer. Arthur was looking into the silences inside, where he had to make his own decisions. “Bless you, Lance,” he said fervently. “You won’t ever tell me what I want to hear, will you?”
“Not unless I think it’s right.”
“Or advise me, unless…”
“Unless you ask for it.” A double meaning there: he let Art know, with a lift of one eyebrow, that it was intended.
And after a thoughtful few seconds, Art threw off the shadows that had clustered around him. The effort was too harsh, and Lance could see that he was exhausted. “Well,” he said. “Sufficient to the day, for these grave topics. What do you think of Din Guardi, Lance? It’s beautiful, isn’t it. But why?’
Because somehow life runs into it from the heart of the world,Lance thought.The dragon of the ridge lives here, just as she does in my land.But all Arthur needed right now were his thoughts on the military advantages of the fort, and he sat back, tilted his head and looked around. “It’s beautiful because… it has a well, straight down and into the bedrock. Pure water, unfailing supply—you’d have to dig through solid rock for weeks to poison it or cut it off.” He leaned forward a little, tracing with his finger the line of the walls beyond the guard’s chamber, the height of the roof. “Also because… just there, you could run a dividing wall through and make the place independently defensible from north and south. I’d triple the width of the walls—about nine foot should do—and, nice as they are, I’d lose all the windows.”
Arthur laughed. “I knew it would be so. You’re a strategist, my friend, and you’ll see what’s to be done on the battlefield just as clearly as you have in here. Thank you for coming, for giving up your father’s kingdom. You won’t regret it. I’ll make you a general, like Guy. You’ll be my second-in-command.”
Lance listened in dismay. “What—because I know how to quarter off a building?”
“You’d be astounded how many don’t. Listen, Lance—”
“No, Your Majesty. You listen. If you put me at the head of your army like a bladder on a stick, the men won’t respect me. They don’t know me from King Coel’s wolfhound. Thank you for giving me my own chambers, for welcoming me as a friend, not a recruit. But tomorrow, while you’re in discussion with the kings, let me go and drill among your soldiers. Let me work with them, fight with them, and if I do well, promote me as you wish. Not until then.”
“But I want you at my side.”
“Yes, as your friend, as I am now. On the battlefield and in the conference chambers, too, once I’ve earned my place there. Don’t make me into something I’m not in the meantime. That’s all I ask.”
Arthur turned pale. Had Lance overestimated his capacity to bear contradiction? He was much more imperious in manner than Lance remembered from their weeks at Vindolanda, the boyish airs he’d assumed to make Ector laugh replaced with the real thing. It suited him, God knew, like his new height, like the quiet royal splendour of his clothes. But Lance, a future king himself, and proud as death even if he’d been a swineherd, could not jump through hoops for him, not at any cost…
