“He said he’d done all that he could. That things hadn’t turned out as he’d planned, but events had been set in motion, and I had to make the best of it.” He shrugged tiredly. “I never did understand him. Come and sit with me, please—here at my right hand, where you’ve always belonged.”
Lance approached him slowly. He’d have given anything to obey—to take what Art was offering, as blindly as it was being given. But there was only one place where Lance belonged now. He came to a halt in front of the throne. Then he sank to his knees at Arthur’s feet. He buried his face in Art’s robe, and for the first time since his childhood, began to weep.
Arthur leaned over him. He stroked Lance’s hair: swept it aside, and the warmth of his mouth descended on his nape. “Dear Lance. Please don’t.”
“Send me away, my liege lord!” Lance made a massive effort for control. “Send me to where I can serve you. Or, if I can’t—weak and useless as I am—I will go back to Vindolanda.”
“You are wanting in health, love. Who knows what poison was on Garbonian’s blade? That’s why you’re prey to… to morbid fancies.”
“Fancies?” Lance didn’t want to let Art draw his face up, but the tender, lifting fingertips were irresistible. “My waking world is sorrow enough to me. I have no fancies, morbid or otherwise.”
“Yes, you do. The whole court is distempered. Otherwise, the things they’ve seen—the things they’ve come rushing like children to tell me—couldn’t be.”
“Oh, God. Don’t. None of it happened for the reasons they believe, but… I have to leave here, for your sake and for hers.”
“The next soul who breathes a shadow upon either of your names, I’ll put to the sword. I’ve told them so.” He gave Lance the ghost of a smile. “They can’t say they weren’t warned.”
“What will happen to Guen?”
“She’ll be honoured as befits my future queen. And, in the fullness of time, if she consents… she’ll marry me, as the Merlin foretold.” He stopped Lance’s protest with a cobweb touch to his mouth. “I will send you away, if that’s what you truly want. You’ll go down to Camelet, where it’s warmer, and my people can take care of you. You’ll get better.”
“No, Art.”
“And… when the spring comes, I will join you there.”
They sat in stillness. Through the windows to the east, the first light of the newborn sun began to disperse the clouds. At last Arthur shifted, just enough to let Lance huddle more closely between his knees. “I’m glad,” he said, “that I decided to ignore you when you said our Jol gifts should be modest.”
“What’ve you done?”
“She’s in the stable next to Balana’s—Roman-bred, used to combat, fast and strong. She’ll be a fine ride for your journey to Cam. You’ll have armed guards to protect you, and a groom to lead Balana on a rein.”
Lance eased back onto his heels. His head was pounding, his vision blurred. He took out the leather pouch from the pocket of his jerkin. “My gift to you seems a poor thing now.”
“Nothing from you could be poor. Let me see.”
The blacksmith had followed Lance’s instructions well. He’d fashioned a piece of rich raw gold into the shape of a sun, rays flaring brightly. On the other side of the solar disc, he’d hammered a crescent of silver, so that—as on clear summer twilights at White Meadows—the new moon seemed to lie in the arms of the old. “The chain is strong,” Lance said hoarsely, as Art took the pendant from him and turned it over in the light. “But one link is meant to break if anyone pulls on it hard. Because…”
Art nodded. “Because there’s nothing worse than being throttled in a fight by your own jewellery. Fasten it on me, Lance. No-one—not priest, not prophet—will take it from me, not until you do it with your own hands.”
“When you come to join me in spring.”
“Yes.”
Tenderly Lance reached up and hooked the bronze catch into place. Arthur picked up the disc and pressed his mouth to it—the sun and then the moon, and then Lance’s upturned face. “Don’t grieve anymore,” he said, as his tears splashed onto Lance’s hands and the ancient flagstones of Joyous Gard. “Don’t grieve. Spring will come.”
Epilogue
As for Prince Garb: he survived. He didn’t take up with the Anglian pirates. They would have laughed, he knew, at so puny a creature as he, and despised him for his treachery even while they profited by it. Instead he ran deep into the moorlands of Bryneich. His mother had relatives in the villages who would harbour him.
He hid, and he watched and he waited. He saw his father march off north to his last war, taking with him the standing army of Din Guardi. A well-drilled regiment of King Arthur’s troops took their place, and went efficiently about their business. After a month or so, in the coldest part of the year, he saw a weary crowd of travellers arrive from the west—women, children, carts piled high with household goods, as if somewhere a whole town had been emptied and transplanted here. A fair-haired man rode at their head, his bearing noble despite his ragged clothes. They gathered outside the Din Guardi walls, and then the gates opened, and they all were taken in.
Shortly after that, when the days were beginning to lengthen, festivities shook the grim old fortress, and Garbonian heard from a source among the kitchen staff that a great wedding had happened there.
Then news came from the south of terrible Saxon incursions, and Arthur’s army marched. Garbonian had no doubt that his father’s new heir, Lance of Vindolanda, would find whatever battlefield it was and meet them there.
Arthur left the fort amply garrisoned, but Garb watched, and bided his time. Men like Lance, who rode bravely, flags flying, never lasted long. Down among the grasses like a snake, like a toad beneath a stone, Garb could endure indefinitely, passive and unnoticed. Din Guardi would be his again. He knew he could outlive King Arthur’s one good lance.