Chapter Seven
Seven
And King Gabriel faced many who cried out against his wisdom and therewithal invited all manner of mighty and hardy fighters of high and low blood to meet with him at Camelot, to raise them to be seneschals of England.
And I was also invited for some reason.
—FROM AN EARLY DRAFT OF THE QUESTS OF KING GAbrIEL AND HIS ROUND TABLE BY SIR FLORIAN ARDEN
Inviting people to join your round table was somewhat akin to asking them to come to your birthday party.
In both cases, the fact of being royal guaranteed that at least some of the invitees would show up, but Gabriel was still seized with worry that the majority would decide they had something better to do.
The year he’d turned ten his parents had insisted on throwing an enormous feast, and all the other noble children had spent the entire evening playing a game outside that neither he nor Gwen had been asked to join.
Arthur had been included of course. Gabriel remembered him running past the window leading a marauding gang, already charming all who crossed his path.
Gabriel hadn’t even wanted that feast, and he didn’t really want this round table either.
It had been a few days since the summons, so most of the messengers had probably found their targets.
Gabriel had considered asking the new court physician, Master Truman, if he knew of some completely safe way for him to spend the next five days forcibly asleep.
Gwen had caught wind of this, and suggested that she’d hit him over the head with a big rock if needed.
Today she was nowhere to be seen. Gabriel breakfasted alone in his study, went to the library, peered at the pages of some books without registering a single word on them, then decided to take some fresh air, to see if it might help unmuddle his mind.
It was a clear, cool morning in September, the leaves brown at the edges, the furry sweet chestnuts about ready to drop. Gabriel usually liked autumn and winter, because as the weather worsened, it was less reasonable for people to ask him to do things outside.
He looped the orchard first, a few uneven laps beneath the trees laden with fruit all the colors of sunrise, and then found himself approaching the walled rose garden.
It offered more privacy than anywhere else in the Camelot grounds.
He and Arthur had enjoyed plenty of evenings there early in their courtship, but he’d spent just as much time sitting there with Gwen, sharing memories of their father, or just existing together in silence through the seasons as the flowers bloomed and died around them.
Every first without their father, however small, had left him winded.
The king hadn’t even liked this garden—too neat, too formal—and yet the fact that he hadn’t seen the hellebores blossom was unendurable.
The door was slightly ajar, so Gabriel slipped inside and then froze.
Voices. Gwen at first, and then, after a pause, Arthur. They must have been sitting on one of the benches tucked into the far corner, obscured by the greenery and the well-worn statue of King Arthur that presided over the place. The polite thing to do would be to either announce himself or flee.
“Do you ever listen to yourself talk about this and think, Oh my God, I am so boring?” That was Arthur. It was always a thrill to hear his voice, even if Gabriel couldn’t respond. Pathetic.
Gwen’s reply was flat. “Um. Thanks.”
“No, shut up, I mean—that’s what I think about myself.
When I take a second to think about it, it’s like …
okay, move on! Sometimes you nearly die and you get a horrible haircut, and then you nearly die again and the guy you’ve been hitting it off with nearly dies, and then he becomes king and breaks up with you, and then he demands you join him on a very intense road trip. These things happen every day.”
It was still a shock to hear events summarized thus, even though Gabriel had been there too.
“I’m glad the bad haircut ranks up there with everything else.”
“I mean, it was an abomination.”
“Truly.”
There was quiet. Gabriel considered leaving again, and noticed he still hadn’t moved.
“Sometimes I do actually consider going back to Maidvale. Take up my father’s seat, get away from this haunted castle. You could come too. We could renovate. Burn it down, start afresh. Hey—maybe we should get married.”
“Still not funny.”
“It’s very funny actually, you’re just in no mood to laugh.” There was a sigh. Gabriel thought of Arthur moving away from Camelot and felt faintly sick. “She still hasn’t written, I assume?”
“Oh, she has actually. She sent six pages explaining exactly why she’s gone quiet, along with effusive declarations of love and a promise to never abandon me again. I just thought I’d wait an hour before telling you. For fun.”
“I have to say, I love how jaded and bitter you are, because I’d hate to see you thriving and need to drag you down to my level. It’s bad enough watching Sidney and Agnes bint about the place like they invented love.”
“Well, someone should be happy.”
“That’s where we disagree. I believe everyone should be miserable.
” There was a quick, abortive sound like something had been half-heartedly kicked.
“Oh, for God’s sake. I can’t join his round table.
Why’d you have to put my name forward? If you want to see me depressed, you know full well that I can do it here, no travel necessary. ”
Ouch. So he didn’t want to come. Gabriel should have expected as much. Arthur seemed happier now that he’d moved on; Gabriel was the one still floundering.
“Because he can’t do it without me, and I can’t do it without you,” Gwen said eventually, neatly and painfully true. “Bridget will say yes, I think, but she’ll probably tell me she’s done with me the second she arrives, and what a happy little tragedy we’ll be. Heartbreak, on tour.”
“Honestly, it’s like you and Oakley designed this to be terrible. Iron maiden of a social situation.”
Gabriel swallowed. Of course it would be torturous for Arthur to be trapped with him; they could hardly make it through a brief conversation without agony. Gabriel was the one still watching hopefully from his window, thinking that a few months on the road together might be nice. Idiot.
“It’s a good idea,” Gwen said, not sounding entirely sure. “For the kingdom.”
“Screw the kingdom. What about the Arthurdom? Nobody ever seems to think of that.”
There was a trill from somewhere at Gabriel’s feet, and he jumped almost a foot in the air. Merlin Lucifer was busy wrapping himself around Gabriel’s boots; he meowed loudly, seeking instant and lavish attention.
“Is that ML?” Arthur called out, his tone changing instantly, soft as butter. “Merly? Luuucy? Come to Daddy, my sweet nightmare prince.”
“Good Lord,” said Gwen, as Gabriel tried to back toward the door without making any noise at all, Merlin Lucifer thwarting his every step. “You’re a sop for that cat.”
“Leave him alone, he’s a child of divorce. Merlin Lucifer, you come here at once, young man!”
It was too late. Arthur appeared, with the sort of open, easy smile on his face Gabriel hadn’t seen for quite some time; he missed it instantly when it disappeared.
“Oh,” said Arthur. “Hello. I was looking for … the cat.”
“Yes,” said Gabriel. “Sorry, I just … I just came in, I didn’t know you were here.”
In the whirlwind of their first attempt at romance last year, there had been a terrifying spark in Arthur’s eyes that hinted that he might always be on the verge of setting something aflame.
Gabriel had been both enamored with and deeply frightened of that light.
Lately it had cooled to burning embers, still there but transformed into something warmer and steadier.
It made Arthur feel both utterly familiar and entirely new.
“You’re allowed,” he said, studying Gabriel for a moment before he looked to the cat. “Come on, kitty cat. Let’s go moat-ward and bully the fish.” He picked Merlin Lucifer up like an infant or a sack of vegetables and slung him over one shoulder as he walked. “Bye, Gweneth.”
Gwen emerged with her hair neatly braided and a men’s jacket over her shoulders. It was one of Arthur’s, deep maroon with gold brocade feathers down the arms.
“Good morning,” she said, once Arthur was gone. “Spying? You have people for that.”
“I was just going for a walk,” Gabriel said miserably.
“Right, right. At the same time Arthur always goes for a walk. Fortuitous.”
She took his arm and propelled him out of the garden, brushing past a rose bush that shed petals like confetti at their feet.
“Was that … Were you two talking about…”
“We hardly discussed you at all,” said Gwen.
“It’s not always about you. Honestly, it’s like you think you’re the most important man in England or something.
” She saw Gabriel’s expression and softened.
“He is, unfortunately, one of my closest friends. I think perhaps he tricked me into it. And we talk about everything, and … Look, misery loves company.”
“I’m miserable too,” offered Gabriel.
“Yes, and I do so enjoy our little mopes together, but me and Arthur are strapped in side by side upon the rack of life.”
“And I’m not?”
Gwen pulled away so that she could narrow her eyes at him. Gabriel often wished she weren’t quite so shrewd.
“Maybe. But I think when it comes to certain things you’re turning the crank yourself, Gabe, so it’s different.” They were approaching the mews, with no particular destination in mind. “I’m just saying! You can stop cranking at anytime!”
A boy who looked no older than ten rounded the corner, dwarfed by the old king’s snowy gyrfalcon, Viviane, who was perched on his gloved arm.
Frankly, it looked like the bird should have been carrying him.
Someone must have been exercising her. Only the king was allowed to hunt with the largest of the falcons, but Gabriel was very attached to his own, Edith, and besides …
it hadn’t felt right to fly his father’s bird.
It was too much like admitting that he wasn’t coming back to claim her.
They’d both stopped to watch in silence. He didn’t realize he was rubbing at the twisty knot of scar tissue that closed over at his elbow until Gwen said, “Hurting today?”
It wasn’t, particularly, or at least not more than usual.
The pain was random and changeable—sometimes a lancing agony that extended beyond the remaining flesh of his limb, sometimes scattered bursts like nettle stings under the skin, often just a general ache.
The strangest moments were the ones in which he could still feel his fingers.
The loss was so closely intertwined with the loss of his father that he couldn’t think of one without a twinge from the other.
They had both been such an enormous shock, and sometimes it felt like his ears were still ringing from the impact.
“I’m just very tired,” he said, as they began to walk again. “Even when I actually sleep. I don’t think it’s the sort of tired that sleep can … fix.”
“Mmm,” Gwen hummed. “Yesterday I found one of his beard hairs on a cloak I hadn’t worn in forever, and I picked it up and cried over it.
A beard hair. I was going to toss it away, and then suddenly it felt like if I did I was letting go of him somehow, so I had to keep it.
Sort of disgusting, when you think about it. ”
Gabriel took a deep breath through the pain in his ribs.
“I had this note written down that I needed to talk to him about ports. I have no idea what it was about ports, he’s the one who said we should discuss it …
but we just never got around to it. The note sat on my desk for months.
And sometimes I think, Oh, I must talk to him about ports.
Even if the second before, I was thinking about the fact that he’s gone, it’s as if this …
this outstanding task overrides that fact.
He’s dead and we must discuss the ports. ”
They walked in silence for a while, and Gabriel’s chest hurt, and his arm hurt, and he wondered if he might be dying before remembering that this was just how it felt to be alive most days.
Gwen took his arm again, with a hint of clumsy desperation. “Do you think it’s just going to be awful forever?”
She’d been asking him some variation of this for the past year.
“Still yes. Ask me again next year.”
She let out a little hiss of horror. “I don’t want to have to do this for another year.”
“No. But you know what’s funny? I also don’t really want to feel better. If I feel better, I’ve forgotten, and it’s unfathomable that I could forget. I want to feel terrible every day for the rest of my life, because it means I’m thinking about him just as much as he deserves.”
“That’s deranged. I know exactly what you mean.”
“I suppose you could say, ‘That’s not what he would have wanted,’” Gabriel said, giving her a nudge.
Gwen snorted tearfully, gripping on to Gabriel like he was the only thing keeping her afloat. “Well if he wanted to weigh in on these things, he shouldn’t have died, should he? Silly old bastard.”