He sounded distraught, barely sane. Lance, dismayed to see him like this, took a few cautious steps toward him, but he shrank away. A block or two detached itself from the keep’s upper battlement, narrowly missing them both.
An elderly woman, also in her night clothes, ran out barefoot onto the turf. She hitched up her long skirts and dashed to Coel’s side. The roar and the vibration were beginning to abate. “No, no, love,” she cried, taking hold of his elbow. Turning to Arthur: “Forgive him, Your Majesty. He sleepwalks. These strange nights disturb him. Come, my lord. It’s cold. Come back inside.”
But Coel stood rigid. He looked at Arthur, then, not seeming to find what he wanted there, fixed a wild gaze on Lance. “The worm,” he repeated. “She feasts, and kills, and nests in my castle.” His face assumed an expression so utterly woebegone that Lance, to his horror, felt laughter strike sparks in his lungs. From the corner of his eye, he saw Art look away, as if similarly affected. “We are cursed,” Coel finished. “I shall call this place the Gard Dolorous, my castle of sorrows.”
His wife led him off, talking to him soothingly. Overhead, the clouds parted, and bright stars blazed out over the sea. Air moved sweetly over the turf, rich with seaweed and salt. Pressing both hands to his mouth, Lance turned to see the king of the Britons huddled against the wall, for the second time that night weeping with silent laughter.
***
Lance helped him back up the stairs. He was still wiping his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said, when Lance, who had recovered more quickly, chided him. “He was just such a sight. That song the men sing about him popped into my head, and… Oh, dear. This is my Gard Dolorous.” He shook with fresh laughter. “And what does he mean, he’s cursed by a worm?”
Lance half-lifted him up the last few steps. He could manage fairly well on the flat, but neither let go. They made their way along the stone-flagged corridor and stopped outside the door to Lance’s room. It was cold now, the night deepening, and Lance pulled his cloak tightly around both of them, frowning in thought. Arthur, like Coel, had used the Latin word vermis, and it resonated oddly in his mind. “My mother’s people had a word not unlike that,” he said, “but it meant something bigger. Is there one in Kernowek?”
Art considered. “I’m not sure. But I had a Breton nurse. The way she spoke—it was a tongue for fireside tales, for twilight, ancient things that could twist and turn out of their own darkness. Ver, she used to say. That’s a little like vermis, but it didn’t mean a worm.” He stood thoughtfully, arm still warm around Lance’s shoulders. Then he burst out laughing again. “A dragon, Lance?”
“Does it sound more deranged than a murderous worm?”
“I don’t know. My whole life seems deranged to me in one way or another. The last thing that made sense was… riding with you and Guy, up in the hills at Vindolanda.” He paused, and they both listened to the tramp of the guard changing watch down below in the keep. Carefully, deliberately, he let Lance go and stepped back. “It’s very late. I must let you rest. Do you need anything else?”
“No. My chamber is very fine. You know I should be sleeping with the rest of the men, in a tent on the dunes.”
“It’s a cold night. You’ll just have to cope. Do you have enough blankets?” He considered, then brightened. “Oh, would you like a girl? Coel has some very pretty maids and kitchen wenches. They’re already gossiping about my handsome friend—you won’t be refused.”
Lance recoiled. The movement was small but impossible to repress. “What?”
Art’s gaze faltered. “Or a boy? I remember you told me, back at Vindolanda—”
“Arthur!”
He hadn’t meant it to come out as a shout. Never before had Art tried to avoid his eyes, but he was doing so now, trying to hide behind the long, thick fall of his hair. “For God’s sake,” he said awkwardly. “Don’t wake the place up. What’s wrong?”
It took Lance a moment to find words. “I’m trying to imagine,” he began, “what my mother would have done to me, had I offered a guest a girl from her household as a… as a toy for the night.” The girl concerned would have been, more likely than not, a priestess, accompanying her mistress to the ceremonies Elena took care to hide from the priest, at full moons and turns of the year. “I’ve hardly even seen a woman here, except scuttling about from one domestic task to another, or flirting with the soldiers at the gates. What’s happened?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Art, you must.” And yet Lance himself couldn’t get any further with putting into words his deep, formless unease. Dragons, worms, a castle under curse. The sword that Art called Excalibur, flashing end over end and disappearing over a cliff. Some power once strong in the land, now crippled and raging, a river thrust out of its course… “Something’s changing, and it’s not good. If we treat women this way…”
“Didn’t you hear me?” Art interrupted him passionately. He pushed his hair back, lifted his chin and stared at Lance with all his old unbridled honesty and fire. “I damned well offered you a boy as well!”
“You are absolutely missing my point.” If Lance let a ripple of laughter into his voice, he was lost. Nothing about this was funny, except Art’s clumsy, generous, utterly misdirected efforts to share the resources at his disposal. “I don’t want a girl—or a boy, for that matter.”
“What do you want, then?”
Lance released a long breath. Oh, let this long night play out however it must, he swore inwardly. Let all dice be rolled, all chances seized like wild horses and ridden on till dawn. He leaned his back against the wall, folded his arms. “I think,” he said, voice dropping to a soft growl, “I want my prize.”
***
“Give me that, before you put paid to your other bollock.”
“I can’t. My hands have gone numb.”
“Are you cold?”
“No, it’s just that… all the blood in me seems to be heading elsewhere. Thank God. I wasn’t sure I’d still be able.”
Lance sat up on the narrow bed. There was barely room for two, and Excalibur and its gem-encrusted scabbard had already dealt them a few bruises. Deftly he undid the strap and buckles holding Art’s swordbelt in place. “Lift up your hips for me.”
Art groaned. “I can’t. Everything hurts so damn much.”
Lance eased a hand under him and tugged the belt free. He grabbed the hilt of the sword before it could clatter on the stone flags. Although the door to his chambers was thick, it had no lock. “Let me see.”
“What?”
“Your injury.”
“No, Lance. It shames me.”
“It’s a battle scar. Why should you be ashamed?”
“I don’t know, but I am. And I’m sorry I angered you about the women. If it makes any difference, they’re Coel’s household customs, not mine.”
“Are things so very different at Cam?”
“A little. Ardana’s a widow. At my court, she’d be let ride out with Guy, to local skirmishes at least, just as she did with her first two husbands here. Instead she has to sit in the solar with the other wives and work tapestries.”
“Come here. Let me help you sit up.”