Chapter Thirteen
Thirteen
In the circular parade of anxious thoughts that plagued Gabriel every night when he lay in bed, Merlin Lucifer the cat was usually being fatally chased by his father’s hunting dogs.
Other times, Gwen fell from a parapet quite by accident.
Sometimes it was Arthur who died, for no particular reason at all.
On days when meetings had been particularly taxing, it was the people of England who suffered.
Famine, plague. Gabriel ran endless scenarios in which he mismanaged it all.
Howling widows threw dung at him in the streets; imaginary children came to him, hollow-eyed and starving, and begged to know why he’d let their fathers die.
It was impossible not to slip into the fast-flowing river of these thoughts, and so he gave in to them, and slept horribly, and carried a gnawing sense of guilt around with him at all times, even though he wasn’t entirely sure what he’d done wrong.
Going to bed early in the largest and therefore coldest room at the inn had just meant more time to ruminate.
He was almost catatonic with exhaustion when he staggered downstairs the next morning, too early, to find Sir Florian sitting at the table by the light of a candle, nursing a hot cup of something dark and reading through a pile of papers.
He stood up when he saw Gabriel (horrible) and only sat again once Gabriel was seated too (even more horrible).
“Nobody seems to be awake yet,” he said, gesturing toward the kitchen. “I made this myself. Would you like some? It’s dreadful.”
Gabriel tried for a smile, but as Florian looked slightly frightened, immediately ceased. “Will it wake me up?”
“Rudely, I’m afraid, Your Majesty.”
“Then yes please.”
While he was gone, Gabriel pulled one of the pieces of parchment toward him. He glimpsed something about the royal party departing amidst a “chorus of trumpets” and immediately pushed it away again, feeling like he’d pried.
“It’s all right,” Florian said, returning with another cup and placing it next to Gabriel’s hand. “You can read it, if you like. It’s not very good yet.”
“You’ll be documenting everything?” Gabriel said, grabbing the cup and releasing it again when it attempted to remove his fingerprints. Florian must have had hands like fire tongs.
“Scribe’s obligation,” said Florian. “You’ll have final say of course, before it’s entered into the record books.”
“And lost forever,” said Gabriel, “as I’m the only person who reads them.” He realized a second too late that this might be construed as slightly insulting to the man whose writing would be consigned to a shelf in the castle library until it was swaddled in a veritable dust duvet. “Oh, er—sorry.”
“No, I’m the one who’s sorry.” Florian grimaced. “Lady Oakley actually asked me about … publishing it, in part. Distributing it.”
“Good God.” She hadn’t run that past him yet, probably still perfecting the right approach to get him to agree.
The expense alone would be astronomical, but perhaps the benefits of royal propaganda outweighed the fortune spent on parchment and scribes.
Gabriel couldn’t imagine it would help. Then again, he was hardly an expert on how to make people like him.
“It can’t be a very inspiring read so far.
We traveled for about four hours and then had to stop at an inn because I was feeling peaky. ”
“There’s no problem there,” said Florian, taking up his work and scanning it until he found a particular line. He pushed it across the table and tapped the first word, inked in his unbearably neat calligraphy.
“Then King Gabriel spurred his horse, until he came with his knights to the Horse and Grail, and supped at his leisure to fortify them all for the mighty quest to come … This isn’t quite how it happened though, is it? I rode with medium force, at best.”
“Of course, it wouldn’t be quite right to record it like that. This sort of thing has a very particular style.”
Gabriel braved a sip of tea, and found it to be impressively bitter. “Then King Gabriel felt a bit sick on his horse and rode with sweaty palm, until he came with his knights to the Horse and Grail, and went to bed early.”
Florian smiled. It was only a glimpse of a smile, like he wasn’t entirely sure it was permitted, and was used to being careful about such things.
“I usually write fiction,” he said, probably feeling the need to offer something personal in return for Gabriel’s sleep-deprived babbling about his tummy aches. “Poems too.”
“Knights and quests?”
“No, they’re … er … about ordinary people.”
“Peasants?” Gabriel said, hearing the surprise in his voice and then feeling very ashamed of it. “I mean, that sounds … that’s nice.”
“Not usually, actually. My father said it was violently depressing.”
It was impossible to bring fathers into this conversation without things becoming very awkward, and they did, instantly. Gabriel took another molten sip and then nodded stupidly.
“I ought to—”
“Your Majesty, I wanted to write—” Florian said quickly, at the same time. They both paused, embarrassed. “Oh. Go ahead.”
“No, no. Please. And I’d rather not be Your Majesty, if you don’t mind. Just your cousin.”
Florian took a deep breath, shuffling his papers. “I wanted to write to you after the battle, but … it felt pointless, in the end. What could I have possibly said? It wasn’t as if you and I had ever met. And anything I wrote would have been met with suspicion.”
“Yes. You’re probably right.”
“Not that I would blame you of course, with the way it … anyway.” Florian actually seemed to be grasping for his words now, which was comforting to Gabriel, who always felt like he was the one grubbing in the dirt for morsels of conversation.
“Your friend Arthur said that I was lucky I wasn’t thrown into a dungeon somewhere. ”
“Yes, well, there was a bit of a misunderstanding between us last year about his allegiances, and I think he’s still quite upset.”
“Mmm.” Florian nodded and ducked his head, and Gabriel wondered how much Arthur had already told him, freely, with no thought to the consequences.
Then he checked himself, the self-loathing kicking in right on time—assuming the worst about Arthur was a bad habit he should have broken by now, with all the evidence he had to the contrary.
“We weren’t very fair to him,” Gabriel said. “I … haven’t been very fair to him.”
“Well, he speaks very highly of you.” Gabriel glanced sharply at Florian’s expression, and found it entirely earnest. This only made things worse.
Arthur ensconced with Gabriel’s handsome cousin laughing it up at Gabriel’s expense was a painful thought; the reality that he’d been unfailingly kind was much worse.
“I’ve been talking to him this past fortnight about last year actually, trying to fill in the gaps.
This quest is only part of the story. Hard to tell it without everything that came before. ”
“What has he told you?” Gabriel asked quickly. Too quickly.
Arthur might not be malicious, but if he had actually been flirting with Gabriel’s cousin, the very fact of his interest might imply all sorts of things about the events of the previous year that Gabriel didn’t want to come to light.
Even now that it was explicitly legal for men to consort with men, the right of a consenting adult to love any other enshrined in three separate laws, Gabriel wasn’t quite ready to make it clear to the world that he was one of those men, despite ongoing and very invasive speculation.
Lady Oakley shielded him from most of it, but he knew it was out there.
It would make the endless internal conversations they’d been having about heirs a matter of public debate, and nothing said destabilization like succession crisis.
“He hasn’t said much,” said Florian. “Only that he was with your father when he died, and a bit about what that was like for him.”
Grief closed Gabriel’s throat like a garotte, and it was a moment before he could breathe again.
He knew Arthur had been there. He’d asked him about it once, early on, and had received the gentlest of replies, the exact sort of story Florian might write about a king’s noble end.
It hadn’t felt entirely real, but that had been a relief, because Gabriel hadn’t really wanted to know.
He was often haunted by an image in his head, a dramatic tableau of Arthur cradling the king’s broken body—and it occurred to him now, for the first time, that Arthur might be grieving him too.
It had been Gwen and Gabriel’s father who’d died, their grief that had mattered.
But Arthur had been the one actually there as the king took his last breath, and he’d borne the weight of that moment alone.
He’d cried a lot at the funeral. Gabriel had been so overwhelmed that this had barely registered.
He and Gwen had been preoccupied with their mother, keeping her upright between them, accepting platitudes from nobles who seemed laughably unimportant in the moment but were, in fact, crucial.
But Gabriel remembered Arthur standing apart as the procession moved on, heading for the feast. One last silent farewell.
“Could I read it?” Gabriel asked. “His account?”
Florian looked pained, his elegant fingers moving to span a page on top of one of the piles. “I think you ought to ask him.”
“Yes,” Gabriel said, nodding, feeling his cheeks get hot. “Of course.”
Obviously he’d be doing no such thing. He’d think about it, a lot, and refuse to act. Like a normal person.
“But if you want to talk to me about any of it,” Florian broached gently, “to … fill in the gaps. I think that would help the narrative enormously.”
“Thank you,” Gabriel said, suddenly the kind of tired that horrible tea couldn’t touch. “I’ll think about it.”
He’d add it to the list.