“Why?”
“What do you think happened—in the time between Ardana’s first two husbands and Guy, I mean? Why can’t she ride out with him?”
“Oh, God knows. The priests, I think. Not the old boys from Ireland and Cerniw—the ones they sent from Rome, or trained up at Canterbury and places like that. Lance, you think you’re very cunning, but I am aware that you’re undressing me.”
“Is that something you’d rather I didn’t do?”
Art shivered. “I’ve thought or dreamed about you doing something of the kind every night since I left you.”
“I, too. Does this have any kind of fastening?”
“No, it comes off over my head.”
“Put your arms up, then.” Lifting the robe away was the work of a moment. For all its fine embroidery, the fabric was supple and light. “How beautiful this is,” Lance observed, thoughtfully, almost as if to himself. “How beautiful you are.”
“I’m not certain. Perhaps when you first saw me this way… But I’m scarred now. Skinny, too. This is the first place we’ve had enough to eat since we left Cam.”
Lance kissed the colour he’d called into the pale face, just under the cheekbones, and then—more daring than he’d been before—lifted Art’s chin and brushed his lips across his warm, half-open mouth. “Yes, you’re thin. But your muscles have come up like corded ropes, and I can see the perfect shape of you underneath. And here are your bandages. Is it safe for me to move these?”
“Yes, I’m almost healed. But…”
“Hush.” It wasn’t a time for fear, although a horror he couldn’t define—much more than the shrinking of the flesh a man might feel on sight of such injury to another—was trying to enter his soul. A song welled up from his earliest childhood. The king is wounded in the thigh—so falls the kingdom, and the land must die… Where had he heard it? The words were nonsense, he told himself fiercely, unfastening the linen strips that held the dressing in place. Art was trying to catch his wrist and stop him, but he had to see. “Oh, I remember.”
“Remember what?”
“A rhyme came into my head, about a king with a wounded thigh. Some travelling players came to White Meadows, years and years ago, when I was just a boy.”
“Oh?” Art enquired, propping himself up a little on the pillow. “And did they hire the duck?”
Lance snorted. “Be quiet, stupid. This is important. Father Tomas tried to send them away, but my mother insisted we give them hospitality and listen to their stories and songs, because old truths get caught up in such music like flies in amber.”
“What was the song?”
“It doesn’t matter. They didn’t really mean thigh, though—it was just a polite word for…”
“Cock.”
“Ah, you’re so regal.” At last Lance got the bandages untied. He grabbed Art’s knee to hold him still, then pushed it back towards his chest, turning him a little so the flickering light from the lantern would shine on the damage.
A faint choking sound escaped him. The Saxon’s knife had gouged a long trench out of the flesh and muscle of Art’s inner leg. The blade tip had nearly castrated him in very truth: one testicle had almost been ripped from its moorings. Scar tissue was forming, and whoever had treated him had done it well, but still it was hard to see for dried blood. The force of the thrust had carried on upwards. He was lucky not to have been disembowelled. “This must have hurt you so much.”
“I couldn’t stop myself from crying out. I nearly got Guy killed, too—he had to stuff a rag into my mouth, or they’d have come back and finished us both off. I was so ashamed.”
You were crying for your father, not this wound, dreadful though it is. Lance held him still. There was no hope that such a king could ever ride into battle again. Whatever excitement or blood-flow he’d been feeling was a dream: his cock was lying limp against his belly. Such a king could never bring a child to the world, or restore life to the land.
“Arthur. I want you to understand something.”
“Let me go. I can’t bear for you to look at me this way.”
“In a moment. Are you listening?”
A flame-rustle silence filled the room. After a moment Arthur nodded. “Yes.”
“You’re perfection to me, just as you are. If I had my way, I’d carry you off with me back to White Meadows, and we could spend our days herding sheep, and swimming in the lough, and our nights in each other’s arms.”
“Oh, my Lance.”
“But that’s not your destiny. Pass me the sword.”
“What?”
“Just do it.”
Blindly, his gaze never leaving Lance’s face, Arthur reached down to the side of the bed. He took hold of Excalibur by the scabbard and obediently passed it up to Lance. “Are you sure?” he whispered. “About my destiny, I mean? Because the sheep and the lough and the nights… they sounded good.”
“You’re sick and weak now. When you’re strong again, that world would feel too small. Like the little glass globes the Romans make for their children, with models of tiny people and castles inside.” Lance sat back on his heels. He was kneeling between Art’s thighs. He was still fully dressed—their immediate, tussling engagement as soon as he’d managed to kick the door shut behind them had allowed for nothing else, although he’d wrestled Art off for long enough to get out of his boots. Made him take his own off, too, out of respect for Coel’s bedlinen, or the queen’s. How strange that he didn’t know her name or her proper title, that he hadn’t been presented to her first! Even if her life was confined to the castle, she ought to be the presiding spirit there, as Elena had ruled White Meadows. He shouldn’t have encountered her for the first time as a defenceless old woman in a nightgown, pursuing her poor mad king.
These thoughts allowed his mind to drift away. He balanced Excalibur on the flat of his palms, then suddenly, with an impatient gesture, tugged the blade free and tossed the ridiculous scabbard aside. “She belongs in soft leather,” he said. “The well-worn scabbard of a soldier, rich with oil and blood.”
“That’s how she goes into battle with me. That great gaudy codpiece is just to scare the warlords in places like these.” Art swallowed hard. “What are you going to do?”
“I could never understand that the goddess of healing and of warriors was one and the same.”