Lance didn’t mind.Of course I don’t bloody mind, he told himself sternly. He had come here as a soldier. Easing off the bench, he dropped down the gallery steps into the groups of chattering, quarrelling stragglers, and was borne with them out into the sun.
Outside, the day was ending in shafts of brilliant light. Lance had never travelled as far east as this coast, and although sometimes when the wind was right, faint tangs of brine had blown over the hills of White Meadows, he had never smelt the salt of the North Sea.
He followed the scent, shading his eyes from the sun. Blood and metal, he thought, trying to define its richness. Kelp, and the air before a storm. A big gale was galloping in off the water. He hardly had to breathe for the air to find its way to the depths of his lungs. It was stingingly fresh. He fought the impression that it was greeting him, buffeting him with its wings in boisterous welcome. He threaded his way towards its source, through the maze of small buildings that made up the fort, and soon emerged onto the cliff.
A low parapet wall bounded the seaward side. There wasn’t much need for more here, Lance reflected, taking in the beautiful defensibility of it. You could almost see clear to Juteland, so clear and bright did the setting sun lie on the water. The invaders troubling Bryneich now must have found their way ashore elsewhere: no-one could ever surprise Din Guardi. From the seaward base of the wall, the cliff plunged a sheer hundred feet to the dunes. Lance leaned out to see the high-water mark. A fine chain of seaweed and shells traced the white sand about two thirds of the way up the beach from the water, but he wondered if, on stormy nights, the east wind ever heaped up the waves so high that they dashed themselves on the very roots of Din Guardi…
“Lance!”
He whipped round. He hadn’t noticed the doorway behind him, or the rising ripple of voices and laughter coming closer. Coel’s fort was a honeycomb, halls and chambers linked by unexpected corridors. Halfway down the curving stone stairway that led from the floor above to the door onto the parapet, Arthur was standing. He was holding fast to the banister with one hand. His other arm was around the waist of one of the handsomest women Lance had ever seen. Her face was kind, her bearing noble.
Art was to be married. That was good and right, and in the nature of things. A woman like this would be a companion to him too, if the keen intelligence in her eyes was anything to judge by. The shape of her brow reminded Lance of Coel’s, and she was perhaps a daughter of the house. She was a dozen years older than Art, but that mattered little: an alliance was an alliance.
A huge pang of grief seized Lance. He told himself there was relief in it. He and Arthur had their separate paths—could live without each other, as they’d lived for the last three years. All was for the best. What would he have done, if Art had let go of the woman at his side and taken a step towards him, saying his name as he had by the moorland lake, in front of the courtiers and maids gathered round him?
Art let her go. He could barely walk without her support, but he clutched the stone rail with both hands and took one step down. “Lance,” he said hoarsely, eyes clouding with tears. “Lance!”
Chapter Seven
He dismissed the crowd with a look. Even the queenly lady at his side whisked herself away in a sweep of scarlet cloak, casting only one concerned glance over her shoulder as she vanished up the stairs. The others scattered like leaves on the wind, and then he was alone.
Why couldn’t Lance run to him? He’d ridden halfway across the country to get here, almost broken the heart out of a good horse. Why couldn’t he climb a flight of stairs?
Arthur saved him the trouble. He half-stumbled, half-fell down them, and limped across the patch of windswept turf. The sun had gone down now and the sudden night was cold. Uncertain lamplight painted the parapet wall. “For God’s sake be careful,” he said. “I lost two off there last week in a drunken scrap.”
At last Lance could move. He strode forward, holding out his arms. Arthur walked into them, and their bodies met hard, a subdued thump of ribcage, flesh and bone. Art was shivering. “Lance,” he whispered. “You came.”
***
Three stars were rising over the North Sea. The stone archway framed them, making a new constellation. TheTrinity of Joy, Lance would have called it, orJourney’s End. He knew it was only the tail end of the Plough, beginning her nightly sweep up and away to the zenith, but he would take what he could get. The Plough was also called the Bear, and soon Arcturus would rise too—Arthur’s star, the sign he’d watched for on clear nights over the moors. Red-gold, like the head resting now against his shoulder. The stone archway could be his own arm, a shielding curve. “We’d better go in,” he said softly. “It’s getting cold.”
“I can endure it if you can.”
“Yes.”Fire, ice, the mud of battle, whatever you need me to bear. “Not very kingly, though, is it? To be sitting here on the back stairs?”
“No-one dares question me. And when I tell them to go, they stay gone.”
More sorrow in that than pride. “Even the lady in the red cloak?” Lance asked tentatively. “She didn’t seem to want to leave your side.”
“Yes, even she, though she has more right to disobey me than any of the others.”
“Because… Is she your chosen bride?”
Arthur sat up. He looked at Lance in undisguised amazement. A smile dawned on his face, pale echo of the blazing grin that had lit up Lance’s summer three years before, putting the sun to shame. “My what?”
“Well, Drusus said—I hope it wasn’t a royal secret—that you’re about to be married. I wondered if that was the lady concerned.”
“Lance, for God’s sake. She’s seen thirty winters if she’s seen one, and she’s a bony old girl into the bargain.”
Was she? Lance had only seen strength in the woman’s tall frame. He’d clearly put his foot in it, though, and was glad the shadows would hide his blush. “I’m sorry. I thought her handsome. Anyway, if she’d been your choice—”
“But she isn’t. Good grief. She’s my sister-in-law.”
“Your… Oh! Guy?”
“That’s right. Within two weeks of clapping eyes upon her. She’s Coel’s eldest daughter, the Lady Ardana.”
