Chapter 13
They rode out together the next afternoon, Micha on Bucephalus, Thomas on Slug.
The weather held fine for them. The sharp autumn breeze was temporarily banked, and a faint warmth touched the air instead, like the trailing fingertips of summer.
It soothed Thomas’s bruised heart. Speaking of Edward had been like lancing a wound: necessary but painful.
He had not thought his soul so full of poison.
And, even now, he had no way of telling how deep the corruption went.
Or if it was permanent. If he could be saved.
More than anything, he wished it had not been in front of Micha.
The man thought little enough of him already.
But, at the same time, Thomas could not have imagined saying those things to anyone other than Micha.
There had been no shock, no disappointment, and no false reassurances either.
And, though he was deeply embarrassed, Thomas was grateful too.
And, most surprisingly, it had led to this.
It was the first time Micha had intimated that he might want to spend time with Thomas other than incidentally.
Thomas did not entirely know what had changed or if Micha had just begun to feel more settled in Nettlefield, but it was a question he was content to leave unanswered.
He was simply happy to ride quietly alongside Micha—who had a careful, graceful way about him on horseback—as though they were, or could be, truly friends.
In this unstirring, sun-washed afternoon, yesterday seemed a long time ago.
The grief was still sharp inside him, like a blade plunged deep, but it seemed, at last, possible to bear it, to grow around it, new skin over raw flesh.
Everywhere he looked, the world was beautiful, as though it put on new colours and took up new forms in Micha’s presence.
Or perhaps it was his eyes that had learned to see differently.
Greener greens and bluer blues. The secrets of all the little things: calligraphy in the waving of the grass, constellations in the falling of the leaves.
“Where are we going?” asked Micha eventually.
Thomas pointed into the distance, where a blur of white was just about visible as it cut across the hillside.
“I can’t see anything.”
“You will.”
Micha frowned, though his eyes gleamed with amusement. “This better not be some local joke at my expense. I’m wise to that sort of thing. Isidore took me to see the hand of a buried giant once. And what did we find? Five carved tree stumps.”
Thomas laughed. “It’s nothing like that, I promise.”
They rode on.
“What’s wrong with that hill?” Micha squinted into the distance. “It looks like the chalk is . . . Oh wait, that’s the horse, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but it’s hard to really see the scale of it from down here. I wish I had a way to take you up into the air.”
“What, no hot air balloon in your pocket?”
“In my other coat, I’m afraid.”
Thomas led the way to the top of a small, flat-topped hill, from where they could see the stylised, bone-pale outline of the white horse as it swept over the escarpment. It gleamed against the hillside, timeless as the moon.
“Is it better than five carved tree stumps?” asked Thomas as Micha regarded it in silence.
He nodded.
“It’s Bronze Age, I think. Or possibly Iron Age. Either way, it’s the largest in England, perhaps the oldest.”
“You seem very proud of it.” Micha sounded a little sardonic.
“I do feel a touch of ownership,” Thomas admitted. “Every seventh Midsummer, we join with some of the neighbouring parishes to weed and scour it so that it will never be lost to time.”
Micha barked out a laugh. “Always on your knees, Father.”
“But is it not a wonderful thought? Like linked hands reaching back through history. And then everyone gets terribly drunk.”
Micha shivered, though the day was warm, but when he spoke it was only to ask who had first carved the horse.
“Nobody knows. Hengist, possibly, because his standard was a white horse. Or Alfred, perhaps, as a memorial of his victory over the Danes at Ashdown. Or maybe it was just to honour pagan gods, I don’t know.”
Micha, frowning again, his expression otherwise unreadable and his eyes distant, said nothing.
“We call this Dragon Hill,” Thomas continued. “Legend has it that this is where Saint George slew the dragon.”
“You do like to stake your claim to history around here.”
“We like to feel important.” Thomas smiled. “But you see that piece of exposed chalk? No grass has ever grown there, and they say it’s because that’s where the dragon’s blood was spilled.”
Micha snorted. “Any other local legends I should know about? Did the Battle of Hastings actually take place in the next village across? Was Excalibur plucked out of that stone there? I suppose they signed Magna Carta in your front parlour?”
“Be careful,” said Thomas, mischievously. “You don’t want to give us ideas. But, now you mention it, the Spanish Armada did come up the Cherwell.”
Micha’s lips betrayed him, quivering with the slightest hint of mirth.
“Although,” Thomas added, “here’s a real piece of local superstition. They say if you stand on the eye of the horse, it’s meant to grant you a wish.”
“Is that so?”
Thomas nodded.
“Well, what are we waiting for?”
Micha urged Bucephalus into a brisk trot and set off down the hill, with Thomas and Slug wheezing after him.
At the bottom of the valley, Bucephalus broke into a gallop, and Thomas, with no hope of keeping up, let Slug slow before the poor creature had some kind of aneurysm.
Micha’s laughter caught on the air like cherry blossom in spring.
By the time Thomas made it to the top of the next ridge, Micha had already dismounted and was standing on the chalk circle that represented the horse’s eye.
“Are you sure this is a horse?” He stared at his feet. “Looks more like a dog from this angle.”
“You shouldn’t insult an animal about to grant you a wish.” Thomas, out of breath, clambered awkwardly down from Slug.
Micha looked up. “I don’t know what to wish for,” he said, in a strange, strangled voice.
“You mean, there’s nothing you want? Then you are truly blessed.”
“There’s too much I want. And it’s all fucking impossible.”
“Tell me?” asked Thomas, softly.
“Someone to love me. Everything I’ve already lost. To be different. Maybe I want to be scouring this damn horse next Midsummer. Maybe that’s what I want.”
“That’s not impossible.”
Micha stubbed his toe angrily into the ground. “And what about the year after that and the year after that? History doesn’t want to hold my hand, believe me. I’m a man out of time. No past, no future.”
“No.” Thomas shook his head. “Whatever your past, you always have a future. Here, if you want it.”
Unthinking, he held out his hand, as though, with a single touch, he could somehow bring Micha back to the world he seemed so sure would reject him.
Micha’s cold fingers closed around his wrist hard enough to bruise and yanked him forward until they were standing, close as lovers, in a circle of white dust. Suddenly, Thomas could barely breathe.
“And what do you wish for?” Micha asked, his eyes blazing hellfire-dark.
So Thomas, unable in that moment not to, told him. “You.”
The world did not reel. The sky did not crack. Lightning did not strike them apart. And, before Thomas could even begin to feel afraid or regret what he had done, Micha nodded. “Not here. Come on.”
They remounted in silence and began their journey back to Nettlefield. Finally, they came to the outskirts of a small wood, where the trees were crowned red-gold and the sunlight fell thickly through the baring branches. Micha reined in Bucephalus. “Let’s walk.”
They left the horses tethered and stepped between the trees like princes in a fairy tale. Their footsteps rustled upon a multi-hued carpet. Thomas was uncertain what was expected of him now, and Micha’s face was shadowed, and as stern as ice.
Thomas stopped walking and opened his mouth to speak—hardly knowing what he was going to say—but then Micha took a step towards him.
On instinct, rather than with any intent to evade him, Thomas took a step back.
Micha took another step forward. And Thomas found himself against a tree, a rough tortoiseshell of bark pressing through his coat, while the newly woken breeze stirred a fall of bright leaves around them.
Micha’s body enclosed him, the hard pressure of his chest, the sharp angles of his hip bones, the thunder of his heart.
His face came closer still. The edge of his cheek met Thomas’s.
His hair tickled Thomas’s nose. The heat from his lips travelled all across Thomas’s skin like a magic spell.
“What are you doing?” Thomas’s voice sounded peculiar, faraway even to his own ears.
He felt the movement of Micha’s mouth as he spoke. “I’m giving you what you want.”
Thomas had never really imagined something like this would happen.
Could happen. He had thought his desire a private monster, to be locked away and ever unspoken.
His secret sin. But here was Micha, reaching fearlessly between the bars of the cage Thomas had so diligently fashioned.
Thomas tried to turn his head away, just so he could think, but Micha was everywhere.
Warmth and strength and subtle mysteries: the thickness of his lashes and the softness of his lips, the places where his body met Thomas’s body as though they had been designed to stand thus interlocked.
Everything he had learned about right and wrong, lawful and unlawful, natural and unnatural, was flying away, chaff upon the current of Micha’s breath.
None of it seemed to matter now. Mist and shadows and pieces of words.
All he felt was gratitude and wonder. And no shame at all.
Thomas swallowed, his eyes closing as though they could protect him from too much truth. “You knew?”
“Of course I fucking knew.”