Chapter Nineteen
Lance was up early on the shortest day. He dressed in silence, and kissed Art’s sleeping face before padding barefoot out of the room. He put on his boots in the corridor outside, shivering in the icy blast from the stairwell. He and Art had spent their first chaste night—not talking, not loving, barely even breathing as the wakeful stars had wheeled by. They’d clung to each other like frightened children, badger cubs in dried leaves, dependent on silence for survival. A cold grey light had been painting the sky before Art had gone heavy and still in his arms.
Let him sleep. Today would be a day for celebrations—Coel’s midwinter festivities, and a banquet to welcome Guenyvre as Art’s chosen bride. Everything was unfolding as it should—and yet, if Art felt within himself the plunging weariness that was still dogging Lance, he’d need all the rest he could get. Pausing in the open doorway to the courtyard—empty now, only wisps of straw from the stables being whipped about on the wind—he drew deep lungfuls of the air that had done him so much good since his arrival.
Not today. His wound was almost healed, but poisons must still be chilling and darkening his blood. He leaned on the sandstone pillar by the door, distractedly admiring the feathery swirls the weather was beating out of its construction. Winter after winter, scouring off layer after layer…
“My lord Lancelot!”
He jerked his head up. That bloody name! But it was too late to put it right now, and here came the blacksmith trotting through the gateway, red in the face with exertion, saving Lance a walk into the village he wasn’t sure he’d have been strong enough to make. “Good morning, Aedan.”
“It’s finished, my lord. And since I was coming up here, I thought I’d bring it to you. Here—see what you think.”
He thrust out a small leather pouch at Lance. A chain was dangling brightly from the open end. Lance caught hold of it and gently withdrew the heavy pendant inside. He turned it over in his palm: held it up to the weak sunlight making its way through the clouds. “Beautiful,” he said. “Very fine workmanship.”
“I’m glad. I had to watch out over my shoulder while I was hammering out the shape of it. That priest of Coel’s taken to snooping round the smithy.”
“What on earth for?”
“Forbidden images like this, I suppose, my lord.”
“Here, then. I know we agreed on less than this, but you did well, and it’s worth it to me.”
The blacksmith flipped the coin Lance had given him in delight. It was a gold piece from the emperor Diocletian’s time, still good currency in these parts. “Thank you, my lord! God Jol to you, and a blessing on the fruit of your loins.”
Lance wasn’t sure he’d ever muster any up, if he continued to feel this way. “Thank you. Er…God what?”
“God Jol, my lord. It’s what the Anglians say to one another at this time of year. We’re having a few of them over to feast with us tonight.”
“Really?”
“Yes, sire. Whyever not? They’re good enough fellows when you get to know them.”
“I’m sure of it. God Jol to you, too.”
Lance went back inside. The fort was beginning to wake up, servant lads and girls dashing about with hot water, the warlords and knights who’d overdone it at Coel’s generous dinner table making their yawning way down the stairs. In the dining hall, a small team of men who were probably tired of their task by now were engaged in hefting the great Jol log another foot or so into the heath, where it was burning merrily. Gratefully Lance went to meet the heat halfway: he couldn’t seem to get warmed through, although he’d put on his new woollen tunic and best coney-lined winter cloak.
Both of them gifts from Art. Wearily Lance sank onto the bench at the far end of the banqueting table. Coel had ordered great swathes of holly and ivy to be brought in and hung from hooks on either side of the hearth. The foliage cast deep shadows in the flickering light from the fire, maybe enough to keep him out of sight of talkative incomers. Even in Coel’s generous household, the first meal of the day was a simple one, but there was plenty of dark rye bread, cheese and small ale set out.
He took a chunk of the bread. Ardana was responsible for the brewing of the morning ale, though she never got to sit down and partake of it herself. Perhaps her recipe was a kind of vengeance: she had it sent from the kitchens hot, sludgy and the colour of porridge. Still, Lance knew from experience that if he could keep the stuff down, it put a good lining on the guts, and perhaps the malty heat of it would drive out the crawling unease from his bones.
He paused, one hand on the jug. Sounds were issuing from within the thicket of leaves. Someone had burrowed even deeper into this hiding place than he had done—was, if possible, even less anxious to be found. Normally Lance would have respected such a wish and moved away.
But this was Guenyvre, sobbing in monotonous despair. Lance got up. He looked around. No-one was paying attention, so he pushed back a tangled curtain of ivy and ducked underneath it. He spoke without thinking. “Guen, dear. What on earth’s wrong?”
She looked up wildly. She was hunched up on a footstool as close to the fire as she could get without singeing the strands of her unbrushed hair. A billowing nightgown—it looked like one of Queen Coel’s—concealed her from neck to toes, and on top of that she was clutching a blanket. “Oh, Lance! They wanted me to sit in the solar and… and embroider!”
He wanted to laugh. Then tears of pity stung to his eyes. “May I sit with you?”
She nodded mutely, and he found a second footstool and pulled it round so that he could crouch in front of her. “It doesn’t sound like much fun,” he said, “but is it as bad as all that? Are they unkind to you—the other women, I mean?”
“Oh, no. Ardana and the queen are kindness itself. But there’s blood, Lance—I have blood running from between my legs. I wish to go outside and bleed onto the earth, and to roll around on the earth, and let the earth take the ache from my belly and my back. But when I told this to the queen, she put a hand on my mouth and begged me to stop. She gave me a sorry little cloth to use, which chafes me. And she said… she said I should come and sit with the other women, and tend to my needlework, and the less I spoke about my sickness, the sooner it would go.”
“It’s your moon blood, Guen. It’ll stop after a few days.”
“How would you know? You don’t have a hole that bleeds!”
“No, but I did have a mother. She would boil up dried mugwort leaves and drink the potion hot, and the rest of the water she’d put into a stone flask, and lay it to her stomach.”
“Did that help?”
“Better than silence and sewing, I should think.”
“And… may I have these things?”
“Of course. I’ll fetch them for you myself.”