‘Captain,’ said Torveld. ‘That is a title well earned.’
They spoke about the Patran men, and about Ravenel’s defences. In the end, what Torveld said about his own presence here was brief:
‘My brother is not happy. I’m here against his wishes, because I have a personal stake in your campaign against the Regent. I wanted to face your Prince man to man, and tell him that much. But I will ride for Bazal tomorrow, and you will have no more help from Patras. I cannot act further against my brother’s orders. This is all I can give you.’
‘We are lucky the Prince’s messenger got through with his signet ring,’ Damen acknowledged.
‘What messenger?’ said Torveld.
Damen thought the answer political circumspection, but then Torveld added, ‘The Prince approached me for men in Arles. I didn’t agree until I was six weeks out of the palace. As for my reasons, I think you must know them.’ He motioned for one of his retinue to come forward.
Slender and graceful, one of the Patrans detached himself from the group by the wall, dropping to his knees in front of Damen, and kissing the floor by his feet, so that Damen’s view was of a tumble of curls, burnished honey-gold.
‘Rise,’ said Damen, in Akielon.
Erasmus lifted his bowed head, but did not come up from his knees.
‘So humble? We’re the same rank.’
‘This slave kneels for a Captain.’
‘I’m a Captain through your help. I owe you a great deal.’
Shyly, after a pause: ‘I told you that I would repay you. You did so much to help me in the palace. And . . .’ Erasmus hesitated, looking over at Torveld. When Torveld nodded that he should speak, he lifted his chin, uncharacteristically. ‘And I didn’t like the Regent. He burnt my leg.’
Torveld gave him a proud look, and Erasmus flushed and made obeisance again with perfect form.
Damen repressed another instinct to tell him to stand up. It was odd that the usual manners of his homeland should feel so strange to him. Perhaps it was just that he had spent several months in the company of pushy, forward pets and unpredictable Veretian free men. He looked at Erasmus, the demure limbs and the lowered lashes. He had bedded slaves like this, as pliant in bed as they were out of it. He remembered enjoying it, but the memory was distant, as though it belonged to someone else. Erasmus was pretty, he could see that. Erasmus, he recalled, had been trained for him. He would be obedient to every order, intuit every whim, willingly.
Damen turned his eyes to Laurent.
A picture of cool, difficult distance confronted him. Laurent sat in brief conversation, wrist balanced on the edge of the great table, fingertips resting on the base of a goblet. From the severe, straight-backed posture to the impersonal grace of his cupped yellow head; from his detached blue eyes to the arrogance of his cheekbones, Laurent was complicated and contradictory, and Damen could look nowhere else.
As though responding to some instinct, Laurent looked up and met Damen’s eyes, and in the next moment Laurent was rising and making his way over.
‘You aren’t going to come and eat?’
‘I should return to oversee the work outside. Ravenel should have impeccable defences. I want . . . I want to do that for you,’ he said.
‘It can wait. You just won me a fort,’ said Laurent. ‘Let me spoil you a little.’
They stood by the wall, and as Laurent spoke, he leaned a shoulder against the contoured stone. His voice was pitched for the space between them, private and unhurried.
‘I remember. You take a great deal of pleasure in small victories.’ Damen quoted Laurent’s words back to him.
‘It’s not small,’ said Laurent. ‘It’s the first time I’ve ever won a play against my uncle.’
He said it simply. Light from the torches reflected on his face. Conversation around them was a faded wax and wane of sound, mingling with the restrained colours, the reds, browns and dimmed blues of flame light.
‘You know that isn’t true. You won against him in Arles when you had Torveld take the slaves to Patras.’
‘That wasn’t a play against my uncle. That was a play against Nicaise. Boys are easy. At thirteen,’ said Laurent, ‘you could have led me around by the nose.’
‘I can’t believe you were ever easy.’
‘Think of the greenest innocent you’ve ever tumbled,’ said Laurent. And then, when Damen didn’t answer: ‘I forgot, you don’t fuck boys.’
Across the hall there was a muted burst of laughter at some distant minor antic. The hall was a hazy background of sounds and shapes. The light was a warm torch glow.
Damen said, ‘Men, sometimes.’
‘In the absence of women?’
‘When I want them.’
‘If I’d known that, I might have felt a frisson of danger, lying next to you.’
‘You did know that,’ said Damen.
There was a pause. Laurent pushed himself away from the wall eventually.