Chapter 1
One
Mark
In my dream, I’m standing between two graves.
It’s winter, a wet winter that blusters and howls, and the wind tearing off the sea is nakedly homicidal. I ignore it, because it’s the same sea I’ve grown up beside, the same wind.
I know its moods, and today, its mood matches mine.
The graves are not in a graveyard but in a walled garden on a headland pressing out to the west, a clenched fist of rock striking at the setting sun.
There is a formidable stronghold here, the seat of my power, fortifications and a great hall and a barracks, the spaces between filled with countless dwellings and the small Christian chapel I allowed to be built years ago.
In the summer, the turquoise water below the headland is filled with ships bringing wine and wealth, ready to bear away my tin and bronze.
Across a narrow spit of stone is the mainland, where a large town thrives, smoke rising from its large houses and small halls.
On Beltane night, you can see the torches and fires burning from here.
Sometimes you can even hear their drums over the waves.
But it is winter now, and the headland is shrouded in mist, and there are no ships and there are no fires and there are no drums.
Even in this garden, with its high stone walls, with the memory of bright summers and full baskets bound for the kitchens, there is nothing. No light, no life. Just the wet and the wind and two grown-over graves.
Of course, there is some life here, and I know it as well as the dream version of myself knows it.
The garden has gone to waste over the last several years, the roses dead and the herbs gone wild, but two things have thrived despite the neglect, despite the lack of gardeners, and despite the bitter watering of my grief.
A hazel tree and a twisting hunt of honeysuckle. Far larger than they have any right to be for how young they are.
The hazel tree, growing from a dead knight’s grave, has already spread its branches wide, and the honeysuckle, growing from a dead queen’s, has crept its way over to the tree and climbed, twined, wrapped itself around every branch it could.
In the summer, it’s nearly impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins, since it’s all a thicket of vibrant green leaves and pink and yellow flowers, but in the winter, it’s easier.
Only the honeysuckle has held on to some of its green.
I move between the graves, and as I often do, I sink to my knees between them. Finger the dying leaves caught in the long grass. Leaves that were grown out of soil so precious I won’t let anyone else near it.
My dead knight. My dead queen.
In this cold, empty garden because of me.