Chapter 26
Vera regaled Arthur with the whole story on their way down the Tor—what she saw, how it matched up—all in great detail. “I know it was you,” she said. “I’m sure of it. Is that completely mad?”
But he didn’t think it was mad at all. Maybe the veil of magic and time was thin: same day, same place. Maybe it was luck. Either way, whatever it was felt like it meant something, that at least something that was happening was right with the universe.
They made a quick stop for Vera to change her shoes and throw on a dress before meandering on down the High Street.
The street already bustled with the daytime revelers getting a jump on shopping the market’s celebration wares.
Arthur stopped at a food cart for sweet apple pastries, piping hot but so delicious that even when the steam singed Vera’s tongue, she closed her eyes in bliss.
Wisdom would have been waiting to take another bite as the next one was more toward the middle and rich with even more gooey filling approximately the temperature of molten lava.
The special drive of post-run hunger made a different decision.
At that point, Vera had two choices, neither particularly graceful: let the bite fall from her mouth to the ground or do her best to suffer through it.
Vera chose the latter and was inelegantly sucking fresh air into her scorched mouth to cool the traitorous apples as Maria approached.
Arthur tore his concerned stare from Vera’s antics (which, of course, she couldn’t explain because she had a mouthful of food) to greet Maria.
For Vera’s part, she did her best to smile without fully closing her mouth (the steam had to have somewhere to vent), nor appear she was in absurd, self-inflicted pain, which she obviously was.
Maria took no notice. “Good morning, Your Majesties!” she gushed, her voice arching melodically over the words. “Look at you two. To see you together again … and my goodness! Inseparable, it seems. Well, I suppose it only makes sense after being apart so long.”
Vera squinted as she swallowed, another misstep as she now felt like her throat was hot enough to breathe fire.
Maria, however, carried on. “We weren’t going to ask because we know the queen has been recovering.
But now that we’ve seen the two of you together—that’s to say, we’ve seen how well the queen looks …
” Maria beamed at her. Vera heard the hidden meaning.
The rumors of trouble between her and Arthur had made it this far.
“Yes?” he prompted.
“Do you remember the year that the two of you opened the festivities? With the Yule Carola?” she asked.
“Yes,” Arthur said, and Vera began nodding, too, trying to play along. He bit his lip to stifle his grin.
“It would be so wonderful if you would do that tonight. Would you? Would you please?” Maria’s twinkling eyes settled on Vera.
“Certainly!” she said with a shrug, still in the tumult of her scorched mouth, but to the pleasure of an effusive Maria and to wide-eyed surprise from Arthur.
Maria practically squealed as she hurried off to let whoever know about whatever Vera had agreed to.
“What is that—the Yule Carola?” she asked Arthur. “Is it, like, a reading or procession or … recitation?”
“That—I cannot believe that just happened,” Arthur said. “Erm, no. It’s a dance.”
“Oh,” Vera said. “Shit.”
The worry dropped from his face. He laughed. “That’s all right. We have all day for you to learn it.”
They didn’t quite have all day. Maria made it clear that they intended to give Vera a more traditional royal treatment to prepare for the evening.
But they had plenty of hours before that would begin, even after Arthur said he would need time to gather a few things.
Vera and Matilda shopped the market for a while, where she found enough treasures to purchase that her full hands made the decision to return to her quarters easy.
She hadn’t been there long when Arthur returned with his hands full, too—carrying a lute.
Vera raised her eyebrows at him and sipped the drink she’d poured herself. “Are you musically inclined?”
But he didn’t respond in kind. His eyes darkened and locked on her goblet. They shot to the corner where his saddle bags lay on the table.
“Where did you get that drink?” he asked with the edge of panic in his voice.
“I—bought some wine, apple wine, while I was out with Matilda this morning.” Vera fumbled through her words. “Is that okay?”
The stiffness dropped from his posture. “Of course it’s all right.”
What the hell was that about? “Would you like some?” she asked.
Apples were a Glastonbury specialty in Vera’s time, too.
The whole morning had felt like she was holding the end of a string in the seventh century with a kite on the other end in her time.
Special. Mystical. She’d bought the wine intending to share it with Arthur.
“Er, yes,” he said rather awkwardly. “Thank you.”
He shifted the lute in his hands to accept the drink.
“So.” Vera tapped the instrument with her index finger. “What’s with the lute?”
“Ah,” he said. “We couldn’t exactly have a musician come and play the song for us while you learned.
” It was a good point. It would be strange that Arthur needed to teach her.
“I asked Gawain if he could come up with a way for us to have music to practice in private for this evening.” He held the lute up between them. “It’s a brilliant enchantment.”
Arthur laid the instrument on a chair and plucked a single string. The note rang through the room, and as it was about to fade to silence, the lute began to play itself, a short and happy melody that repeated twice.
“Is that the whole song we’re to dance to?” Vera asked.
“That’s it,” he confirmed. “I’m not an especially gifted dancer, and even I think this one’s easy.”
Arthur undersold himself. He was a patient and pleasant teacher, calling out helpful reminders as they performed the movements.
“Right hands together … Good. Switch to left, and—what was it you called this one? Fancy feet.” He chuckled.
Vera had taken to naming moves. Names that got suspiciously sillier as the bottle of apple wine diminished.
“Oh fuck!” Vera stomped after she got the same move wrong for the third time in a row.
Arthur lay his hand on the lute strings and stopped the music. “It’s all right. Do you want to take a break?”
“Do we have most of it done?”
“We are so close,” he said.
“All right.” Vera nodded at the lute. “Let’s try again.”
But Arthur saw her smiling and paused. “What’s funny?” he asked.
“Nothing. It’s—nothing.”
“Oh, come on.”
“I’ve come up with some lyrics to the song,” said Vera.
Arthur beamed at her as he plucked the lute string to start the music. “I hope you’ll sing them.”
They began the dance: a coming together, palms meeting, a step back. His hand across her waist and hers across his for a spin. Arthur watched her with mirthful expectation. It was Vera’s turn to laugh. When the melody began its repeat, and they moved on to the next set of moves, she sang her words.
“Once upon a winter’s night, the wild queen was all a fright.
She was not so fair and graceful; she agreed to lead a dance disgraceful.”
Arthur laughed. “You aren’t at all disgraceful. You’re doing very well.”
He taught her another step in the dance, and they started over with the new move tacked on. Vera thought nothing of it as the music came to a close with her hand in Arthur’s. He held her fingers near his lips as she dipped into a curtsy.
He stared at her with the funniest expression.
“What?”
“That was the end of the dance. But I—didn’t teach you that last bit yet.”
He was right. He hadn’t. And it wasn’t just the curtsy.
There had been two other parts before that, one when their right hands joined at chest height and left hands met overhead and another when Vera did a sort of promenade around Arthur.
Neither were movements that might have happened by accident.
She had remembered. Two signs of good in one day.
“Huh,” Vera said as she sat down on the foot of the bed. She didn’t consciously remember, but she knew the dance. She knew the steps. That much was certain. “I know I didn’t learn that in my time. My dancing is nothing like that.”
“What’s your dancing like?” he asked.
“My dancing, in particular, might be better characterized as flailing.” She said. “I … feel the music, you know?”
“No, I don’t,” Arthur said with a grin. “I think you need to show me.”
“Seriously?”
He shrugged and gestured to the open space on the floor near him.
Vera shook her head and took a swallow from her goblet before she stood and moved where he’d beckoned. “It’s sort of like—”
With the aid of being tipsy enough and with how much fun they’d already had together, Vera was surprised at the ease of her vulnerability as she broke out some of her silliest moves: hands above her head, a shoulder shimmy, jumping, and spinning.
After a hopping spin, she found Arthur in mid-hearty laugh, a delightful and uninhibited sound.
But it did not make Vera feel self-conscious or made fun of.
His eyes were alight. For a breath, the flash of his face from the first night she had met him, expression hard and cold, jumped to her mind.
She couldn’t believe this was the same person.
In truth, he wasn’t. That man felt like a stranger, and Arthur felt … different.
“That’s the first time I’ve heard you laugh like that,” said Vera.
He smiled broadly. “I’ve seen a lot in the years since I met you, and that is certainly the first time I’ve ever seen you dance like that.”