The priest was staring at the doors to the hall. They had drifted open silently, as if pushed wide by the breeze. The guards, staves crossed again on the off-chance, were gazing anxiously inside. Lance picked up a trace of ozone in the air. One of the guards leaned into the hall, listening. After a moment he turned. “You’re to go in, Lancelot, sire. His Majesty is waiting.”
***
Had the veil been parted to the future? Lance stood in the great vacant hall, its benches bare, its echoes returning with the distant flutter of the doves taking refuge in its rafters from the cruel sea wind. Arthur was alone. He was seated in the throne Coel had placed centrally to honour him, and he looked like a war-weary chieftain of forty summers or more. In decades to come, when battles and loss had worn out the youth from him, this was the face the men and women who loved him would see—hollowed beneath the eyes and cheekbones, pared down to unbearable beauty. After rage and sorrow had passed, and only gentleness remained… “Lance,” he said. “I knew you’d be there.”
“How did you know?”
“Where else would you be on a day of upheaval like this? I hope you’ll always come and find me at such times.”
“I’d have come sooner, but the guard said you were with the Merlin. Where is he?”
“Gone. Completely, in the same way he did when we met him on the stairs that night—with that popping sound, and the smell of copper and the sea—and I pretended not to notice. I think you were right, Lance—I don’t think this onewasthe same as the one in my visions and dreams, or even the one Ector thought he remembered. He was dying, and he wanted me to go on having a father. Any old man who’d turned up then would’ve probably got the job.”
“Oh, Art. Whoever he was—did he say anything to help you before he disappeared?”
“He said he’d done all that he could. That things hadn’t turned out as he’d planned, but events had been set in motion, and I had to make the best of it.” He shrugged tiredly. “I never did understand him. Come and sit with me, please—here at my right hand, where you’ve always belonged.”
Lance approached him slowly. He’d have given anything to obey—to take what Art was offering, as blindly as it was being given. But there was only one place where Lance belonged now. He came to a halt in front of the throne. Then he sank to his knees at Arthur’s feet. He buried his face in Art’s robe, and for the first time since his childhood, began to weep.
Arthur leaned over him. He stroked Lance’s hair: swept it aside, and the warmth of his mouth descended on his nape. “Dear Lance. Please don’t.”
“Send me away, my liege lord!” Lance made a massive effort for control. “Send me to where I can serve you. Or, if I can’t—weak and useless as I am—I will go back to Vindolanda.”
“Youarewanting in health, love. Who knows what poison was on Garbonian’s blade? That’s why you’re prey to… to morbid fancies.”
“Fancies?” Lance didn’t want to let Art draw his face up, but the tender, lifting fingertips were irresistible. “My waking world is sorrow enough to me. I have no fancies, morbid or otherwise.”
“Yes, you do. The whole court is distempered. Otherwise, the things they’ve seen—the things they’ve come rushing like children to tell me—couldn’t be.”
“Oh, God. Don’t. None of it happened for the reasons they believe, but… I have to leave here, for your sake and for hers.”
“The next soul who breathes a shadow upon either of your names, I’ll put to the sword. I’ve told them so.” He gave Lance the ghost of a smile. “They can’t say they weren’t warned.”
“What will happen to Guen?”
“She’ll be honoured as befits my future queen. And, in the fullness of time, if she consents… she’ll marry me, as the Merlin foretold.” He stopped Lance’s protest with a cobweb touch to his mouth. “Iwillsend you away, if that’s what you truly want. You’ll go down to Camelet, where it’s warmer, and my people can take care of you. You’ll get better.”
“No, Art.”
“And… when the spring comes, I will join you there.”
They sat in stillness. Through the windows to the east, the first light of the newborn sun began to disperse the clouds. At last Arthur shifted, just enough to let Lance huddle more closely between his knees. “I’m glad,” he said, “that I decided to ignore you when you said our Jol gifts should be modest.”
“What’ve you done?”
“She’s in the stable next to Balana’s—Roman-bred, used to combat, fast and strong. She’ll be a fine ride for your journey to Cam. You’ll have armed guards to protect you, and a groom to lead Balana on a rein.”
Lance eased back onto his heels. His head was pounding, his vision blurred. He took out the leather pouch from the pocket of his jerkin. “My gift to you seems a poor thing now.”
“Nothing from you could be poor. Let me see.”
The blacksmith had followed Lance’s instructions well. He’d fashioned a piece of rich raw gold into the shape of a sun, rays flaring brightly. On the other side of the solar disc, he’d hammered a crescent of silver, so that—as on clear summer twilights at White Meadows—the new moon seemed to lie in the arms of the old. “The chain is strong,” Lance said hoarsely, as Art took the pendant from him and turned it over in the light. “But one link is meant to break if anyone pulls on it hard. Because…”
Art nodded. “Because there’s nothing worse than being throttled in a fight by your own jewellery. Fasten it on me, Lance. No-one—not priest, not prophet—will take it from me, not until you do it with your own hands.”
“When you come to join me in spring.”
“Yes.”
