Chapter Forty-Five
Forty-Five
Home, Gabriel kept thinking. I’m going home.
Not just home to the comforts of books and bed, his cat, the familiar smells of the excellent castle cooking, the candlelit corner of the library with the chair that had a dent in it the precise shape of his back; home with Arthur.
Home to a life where he could share all those things. He could hardly wait.
Of course, there was the stress of everything else.
The meetings. The long, heated discussions that made his chest constrict and his mouth taste like pennies.
All the new problems they’d face, after Wales and Bridget’s ambush.
But he felt as if he were going back to them armored, not just with Arthur’s love, but with a renewed certainty that he knew what he was doing.
They’d all agreed. Lord Best could complain all he wanted.
Change had already come. They were never going back.
“Personally,” Arthur said, as they rode side by side along a narrow lane, morning fog obscuring the far stretches of the rolling fields, “I think this trip was a great success.”
“I can’t imagine Lady Oakley agrees. She’s been scarily calm, but she’s been writing a lot of notes, and I have to meet with her eventually. The entire point was to make people like me. Seems I’ve turned half of the country against me, instead.”
“Yes,” said Arthur. “But just the miserable half.”
“And I suppose they were against me anyway,” Gabriel mused. “Or against what I stand for. It’s going to get a lot more difficult before it gets easier. If it gets easier at all.”
“That’s the spirit,” said Arthur. “Hope for the worst, that’s what I always say. Look on the dark side. Keep your chin down. I, for one, am looking forward to seeing the Beast again. Do you think she’ll remember me?”
“I think she’ll be furious, and approximately the size of a wagon.”
“Good. Merlin Lucifer can ride her about, like a horse.”
The roads had felt never-ending before, the views all blurring into one.
Now he noticed everything. Gabriel supposed there was something about knowing that soon he’d be safe within Camelot’s walls that made him appreciate the robin perched fatly on a branch, the gold, bronze, and unlikely scarlets of the leaves, the sweet burn of woodsmoke on the air as they neared some inn or hamlet.
He’d spent so long hiding from England. There’d be so much more to know, now that he was willing to show his face.
Sir Florian slowed his horse to a walk so that Gabriel would catch up, and once he’d pulled level, he began to speak at once.
“I’ve thought about your very kind offer,” he said, as if Gabriel had floated lending him a coat rather than making his son the heir to the throne, “and I think … probably not. I understand the enormity of what it means, and I can’t thank you enough for even thinking it, let alone …
but, no. I simply love him too much to burden him like that. ”
Gabriel nodded. He understood. His own father never would have made that choice, if he’d had it, but who’s to say it wouldn’t have been the right one.
It had never seemed like there were options before, but now that he was king, Gabriel knew that his father could have decided to protect his son from the weight of the crown, had he wished.
He had that power. He knew Gabriel wasn’t suited to the throne, that he dreaded the day he’d sit on it.
Gabriel’s heart broke for the boy he’d been, whose father hadn’t been able to conceive of a life that truly fit him.
It wasn’t that he hadn’t loved Gabriel—he just couldn’t have imagined any other way for things to be.
But Gabriel could. Had done. Would continue to do.
So there would be other ways. They’d figure it out, between them.
Florian’s eyes flared, like he was afraid he’d offended. “We would love to come and visit though. To stay. I’m desperate for Sita and Galahad to meet you all, for him to … to grow up knowing you.”
“That would be lovely,” said Gabriel. He considered this for a moment, the idea of meeting Florian in the halls of Camelot, and then realized where he’d fit.
“You should sit on my council. If you’d like.
You’d be very useful. I mean, please don’t say yes just because you feel obligated, perhaps you’re not in the market for a—”
“Yes,” Florian said, smiling shyly. “Yes … I think I’d like that very much.”
Sir Hurst had been sure that the fog would lift by the afternoon, but if anything, it seemed to draw nearer all around them, a great gray shroud obscuring the landscape until they could barely see a few feet in front of their horses.
The mist seemed to have an agitating effect on everybody, horses included—they all became antsy, and kept getting into minor accidents, riders pressed sideways into hedges or accidentally clipping the person in front.
“Perhaps we should stop,” Gwen said, when she’d managed to find Gabriel in all the white. “I don’t think this is particularly safe. What if there’s a big … ravine, or something?”
“In the middle of the road?”
“I don’t know how well we’re maintaining random tracks in the middle of the countryside, Gabriel, but based on the size of some of the holes in Camelot, I’d say it’s a distinct possibility.”
This was fair and reasonable. Gabriel signaled for them to stop, and then there was a period of confusion during which only half the party got the message, so that the other half almost ran them over.
They turned off the road and staked the horses under an oak tree; attempts to start a fire were entirely unsuccessful, so there was nothing to do but sit and wait for things to clear.
Bridget and Gwen, who seemed to have gone from deeply at odds to so blissfully happy they were reluctant to stop holding hands, had gone to sit on a gnarled and lifted tree root, and Arthur had interrupted them.
Gabriel wandered over to see what they were doing, and found them all eating slices of yellow apple.
“I don’t have any left for you,” Arthur said. “Sorry.”
“That’s all right,” said Gabriel. “I’m mildly allergic to apples.”
“You’re what?” Arthur exclaimed. “But that’s impossible. Who’s allergic to apples?”
“I can still eat them, but they make my throat itch,” said Gabriel. “It’s not that odd. I’m sure it’s the same for lots of people.”
“I’ll never look at you the same way again. God. Perhaps it’s best, in matters of love, to keep some of the mystery alive,” said Arthur. He paused, then cocked his head. “Do you hear … water? It sounds like the sea.”
They all listened, and at length Gabriel did hear what sounded like a wave lapping against the shore. It didn’t make any sense. They should have been surrounded by small hills and flat and featureless landscapes, no bodies of water to be seen, let alone ones large enough to have shores.
“I hear it,” said Bridget. “Perhaps there’s a stream.”
“I’m going to investigate,” said Arthur.
Of course, that meant all four of them were going. Gabriel thought perhaps they should tell Sir Hurst, but the man wasn’t even visible from where they were standing, and they’d only be a minute.
They walked gently downhill until the grass beneath their feet did, unbelievably, turn to pebbles, and then shifting silt.
“It is water,” Gwen said, when her footsteps started to slosh. “What on earth … It’s a pond.”
Gabriel felt a gentle breeze on his cheek, and then the fog cleared ahead, just enough to reveal a natural causeway, big flat rocks rising up out of the water, which in this strange light appeared just as milky-white as the sky.
It made no sense whatsoever, but it was undoubtedly right there in front of him.
“No, wait … it’s a lake.”
He’d have blamed it on the sleep deprivation from travel, but clearly everybody could see it.
“There’s a bridge,” Arthur called excitedly. “Sort of … rocks. A thing.”
“An isthmus,” said Gabriel.
“Bless you,” said Bridget.
“Arthur,” Gabriel began fruitlessly, “I don’t think you should—” But of course, he’d already started to walk across.
There seemed to be no choice other than to follow him. The world was deadly silent around them but for the gentle hiss of the water and their clumsy footsteps. Gwen almost slipped on a particularly glossy bit of stone before being promptly rescued by Bridget.
Then there was grass beneath their feet again.
“It’s an island!” Arthur said, delighted.
It seemed he was right. Here in the middle of the lake, visibility was much better, and they could all see the curve of the land, the sliver of shore.
It was wooded on the island, dense and strange, the leaves on the trees far greener than they had been on the road.
There was something so odd about the whole thing that when Arthur laughed, giddy, Gabriel laughed too.
“Wait,” Bridget said, her hand going to her sword—and then Gabriel saw what she’d seen, a figure approaching out of the mist. “Who’s there?”
It was a very elderly man. He was tall and frail, his head bowed, but he was dressed in a beautiful ruby robe, and looked perfectly pleased to see them. He was strangely familiar, as if Gabriel had half glimpsed him a thousand times before.
“Hullo,” he said, with a lilting accent Gabriel couldn’t place. “Have you come to visit? I’ll put on some tea.”
Gabriel exchanged a glance with Arthur, who shrugged, and then happily followed this stranger in search of mystery tea.
They all walked after him—he was surprisingly quick, for his age—until they came to a campfire, surrounded by slightly moldy velvet cushions, with a pot of something greenish bubbling away above it.
“Fetch the cups, would you?” the old man said to Gabriel. Gabriel, not used to being addressed so casually by strangers, jumped to attention immediately, and discovered that the small cups were stacked neatly nearby. “Ah, there we are. Hand them round. You cannot have that one, it’s my favorite.”