Chapter 11
There was no plan. There was direction to obey, but no plan. And as the days wore on, it became clear this was the unspoken,
agreed consensus among the soldiers and Prince Edward. Dragon or no dragon, we had all been given an order by the king, and
here we were, sitting and doing the thing, trying to occupy our time with meaningfulness, but really just watching the sun
roll across the blue sky. The upside was that it was finally summer. The surrounding fields shimmied green waves of alfalfa.
Our chickens praised the warmer weather and cooed more like joyful parrots than chickens. Crickets, grasshoppers, butterflies,
and all the songbirds that feasted on them were sprinkled across every vista like film grain and the only thought I could
keep in my mind was “This place . . .” like a sigh. This place, this place, this place.
The first two days, there was an attempt at appearances—ignore the nature and get to wartime work.
One of the soldiers tutored Simon and I in sword fighting and how to improve our aim with a bow and arrow.
The prince watched us struggle, amused. We’d run military drills, practice combat stances, memorize the weights of different weapons, and avoid the issue of what exactly we had been tasked with going up against. The strictness quickly devolved into lightness and the drills became more like camp games, and everyone looked forward to the nightly meal from Scarborough, which would arrive with great ceremony.
Pheasant and chicken and veal—often all stuffed inside each other.
Dark liquors over steak-like cuts of grilled vegetables I didn’t know were available out here.
Wine and mead, wine and mead. This place, this life.
Nobody dared talk about what actually the dragon might be. The soldiers seemed to have varying degrees of credulity about it, happy just to be here and not at
a battlefront. The prince seemed to have forgotten what we were here for too, distracted by worry more for his absent lover,
Piers. He spent most of the days inside, reading and writing letters with his scribe. By late afternoon he’d march around
with on-the-fly orders ranging from the position of a tent flap to the stacking of firewood. One day he made us all skinny-dip
in the canal, which then became a daily ritual. There was an erotic, masculine charge to everything—the physical exercise,
the endless preparation and riling each other up. There was the stiffness of formality and discipline, the wonderment at the
exotic mystery of what was to come, and finally the liberation of laughing it all off, stripping down and admitting one’s
insignificance, jumping into cool fresh water. Inside these rhythms were spaces where even Simon and I could relax, forget
about any supposed terror, and enjoy each other. We swam in the canal and wrestled each other, wrestled the soldiers, played
games, and lounged. Sunsets danced on the narrow water.
“Look at the vortex,” I said. I clung to the side of the canal and stopped swimming.
I let the pull of the water take over, stretching me out.
“I don’t know what causes it.” Simon on the other side was pushed in the opposite direction and a shallow swirl formed between us.
His face was adorable as he marveled at it.
“We dug the switchback too deep here, so there’s an undercurrent,” he said. “The water can’t complete the turn.” He reached
his arm like a hook over the vortex and dipped a single finger into the water. “It’s kind of beautiful.”
“You’re kind of beautiful,” I said.
Simon smiled. Beads of water glistened off his shoulders and dark curls. Between his eyes, the water, and the sky was an unbelievable
blue beyond all blues, and on his cheeks, faint summer freckles had begun to appear like tiny dots on a pear. He swam through
the vortex and we kissed. We fashioned a boat made of twigs and watched it sail down the rest of the canal, hypnotized.
By the end of the week, all discipline was lost. The day of the new moon came and we acted as if there would be no dragon
at all. If anything, we’d see an environmental glitch like a geyser or a rare spotted owl and all the hearsay would be explained.
The dragon would be a vibe more than anything.
Only Simon kept up the combat training, wanting to master the regimental weapons he had been given. On that last day, he stood
in the meadow alone with his bow and arrow doing target practice. Everyone else lazed about, binging on leftovers from the
night before, watching the day’s long shadows continue their slow turns.
“Do you want to fuck?” Prince Edward asked me. His messenger had just left with another letter for Piers. We were lounging in the grass watching Simon practicing farther away. None of the other men around us seemed surprised by what he had just said.
“What?” I said. “No.”
“Why not?” he pressed. “You and Simon fuck. I heard you last night. I’ve seen you running off into the woods together for
your private moments. You kissed in the canal the other day. Why don’t you fuck one of my men? Or me?”
I laughed. “Aren’t you like seventeen?”
“All the more reason to want to fuck me,” he said. “It’s military strategy, you know, it’s good for morale. The Romans kept
boys like me as pets back in the day, little trophies to take with them on their battles. Or you can be my pet if you want. I take good care of my pets when I’m on deployment.” He reached back to a soldier behind him and
grabbed his leg. The soldier obediently leaned forward and kissed the prince’s cheek, tousled his hair.
“What about Piers?” I asked.
The prince’s face dropped. His tone soured. “That’s different.”
“He’s your boyfriend?”
“My what?”
I tried another combination of words for what I meant: lover, romantic companion, helpmate. The prince shrugged but nodded
slightly. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that although my knowledge of British history was negligible, I knew for certain
there had never been a King and King of England.
“You write to him every day?” I asked.
The prince nodded again. “My father sent him to the front, which means he’s trying to get him killed.
Pathetic old man, playing toy soldiers like its Anglo-Saxon times.
He’s looking for formal war where there isn’t one, or at least not how he expects it to be, not one he can drum up money for.
These Scots are grunts and rogues, compulsive gamblers beholden to barons more than anything else, they don’t care about military formations and ceremony, which actually shows they’ve got something worth fighting for.
That’s what will get Piers killed—an ambush while my father wanks off to a war dance from his Crusader days. ”
“He’s expecting King Arthur.”
“Exactly. That’s what I thought he wanted you for, but I suppose he’s found a new mythical beast to chase. Giant lizards.
You know King Arthur’s tomb was empty when we dug it up? We sparked riots across Wales all because of an empty hole in the
ground, and for what?” He looked out across the meadow. Simon was pulling arrows from a hay bale. “I feel bad for your little
squire. He’s cute, getting all worked up for nothing. We’ll drink all the mead tonight, look up at the sky, and have an orgy.
Then we’ll send a messenger to my father in the morning and let him know his precious Yorkshire is safe from dragons and we’ll
be off. You’ll get a commemorative letter at the new year if he remembers and your squire can use it to get your roof fixed.”
“He’s not my squire,” I said.
Edward laughed. “Right. I’ve seen the way he looks at you. I know that face—I see flashes of it in Piers sometimes. You can
spit in it and he’ll still call you his man.”
“We don’t have that kind of relationship.”
“I’m not saying anything about your relationship.
I’m sure you love each other, but it’s a nonstarter with a squire.
I get it with Piers all the time. We fight, he bolts, I call him back.
He pisses me off, I send him away, I call him back.
He says something out of turn, he pisses my father off, he gets sent away, I call him back.
He comes whimpering back to me. His obsession is in his blood.
It’s sick but that’s what I love, that’s what I’m looking for.
I’m Prince of Wales and I need that. As king I’ll need that.
The unconditional love I’ll have to give to this country—I expect it in return just from one person, one man, that’s all.
Now for you—a man who doesn’t even get to be king?
I can’t imagine the difficulty. I wouldn’t be able to get it up. ”
I opened my mouth to tell him he was wrong but stopped myself. I sighed long and hard and stayed silent. Swallows and finches
chased gnats and mosquitoes. I watched Simon draw his bow back, let go, and hit a clean, pointless bull’s-eye. Then I spoke.
“How do you stop it?” I asked quietly. I looked at the prince.
He leaned back and stretched, put his hands behind his head. “If Jesus Christ himself appeared to us right now and told us
to stop worshipping him, our belief in him would only be stronger. You need to find someone who’s not been raised like an
animal, who has his own mind, not just yours.”
“Simon’s not like that,” I said. “He’s been spooked by all this, sure, but he’s not like that. He’s his own person.”
“You love him, so you don’t see it, but it’s there, it’s hardwired. Sadly the only way out the other side is to break his
heart, really destroy it—which is your heart—shatter his reality and hope he’s able to put something of it back together on
his own and then maybe, possibly still love you again. He’ll come back to you like a dog one final time and hopefully won’t
bite.”
I considered this for a moment, then scoffed. “You don’t know a thing about love.” I stood up and felt the eyes of all the prince’s bored soldiers watching me.
“I never said I did,” said the prince, giggling. “And I’ve got no reason to know. Love is a peasant’s game.”