Page 20 of Gwen and Art Are Not in Love

‘This is nice,’ Sidney said as they ate. ‘Could get used to it.’

‘What – waking up with me every morning? If you want to marry me, just ask,’ said Arthur, through a mouthful of bread. ‘It’d solve a lot of my current problems.’

‘I meant the view,’ said Sidney. ‘You couldn’t marry me. I’d be too much for you. Romantically speaking.’

‘Sometimes I think you forget that I’m your boss,’ said Arthur, swallowing the bread and reaching for a cup of ale to wash it down. ‘I could have you roundly flogged for saying things like that.’

‘Hmm,’ said Sidney. ‘On second thoughts, I think you could romance me just fine.’

Arthur snorted. ‘Haven’t you been running around after that lady-in-waiting, pelting her with sugared buns?’

‘Ah, Agnes,’ Sidney said, sighing dreamily. ‘They won’t let me anywhere near that bit of the castle. And anyway, I’m too busy running around after you, watching you get shouted at by pubescent princesses.’

‘Well,’ Arthur said, sighing for entirely different reasons. ‘Consider yourself free of responsibility today. I won’t be going beyond the castle walls. I’m being frogmarched to an audience with the king for lunch.’

‘Sounds like plenty of potential for trouble, to me.’

‘How much trouble could I possibly get up to without leaving the grounds?’ Arthur said indignantly.

Sidney pointed a stern finger at him. ‘Those words will come back to me in a moment of vivid clarity later as I watch you being clapped in irons or hauled out of the moat.’

‘Fine, Sid, you’renotfree of responsibility. I task you to go into the city and locate the very best drinking establishments for our use at a later date. Scope them out, count the entrances and exits—’

‘Sample the libations?’ Sidney said hopefully, perking up.

‘Sample all the bloody libations you want,’ Arthur said, grinning. Sidney immediately got to his feet, disappeared back into their rooms and came back out seconds later wearing his cleanest coat. ‘Oh, right. You’re going now, then?’

‘No time like the present,’ said Sidney, reaching for his cup and draining the last of his ale.

‘Sid, it’s ten o’clock in the morning.’ Sidney hovered, as if awaiting further admonition. ‘No, I mean, I’m justimpressed. Off you go. Try not to make the women weep.’

‘At the sight of me?’ Sidney said, patting his pockets to check he was sufficiently funded.

‘You can’t do my punchlines for me,’ Arthur said crossly. ‘They’re quite literally all I have.’

At home Arthur’s chief occupation had been responsibilities, the avoidance thereof; his father had given up on attempting to engage him in politics or the minutiae of running the family’s affairs when he realised that no matter how much he screamed, threatened or threw things at him, his son remained determinedly uninterested. Instead of dragging him along to meetings or taking him to suppers peppered with influential people, Lord Delacey had contented himself with verbally flagellating Arthur whenever their paths crossed. As far as his father was concerned, his betrothal to Gwendoline was the only proof that he had ever made himself useful to another living person. Arthur had responded to all of this by being out of the house as much as possible without technically being classed as a runaway.

As a result, even a castle as vast as Camelot felt oppressive and claustrophobic. After dressing, Arthur started walking aimlessly around it, exploring the reaches he hadn’t encountered during his first week, trying to find his way by memory alone. There were two courtyards in the north of the castle in addition to the larger one to the south; he thought he remembered that the armoury was attached to the one in the north-west, and was pleased with himselfwhen he visited to check and found himself correct. Other times, his memory failed him; he kept running into dead ends around corners and at the end of long, dusty galleries, and every time he approached the rooms in the most northerly part of the castle the guards would send him back the way he’d come with a shake of their heads. Clearly Gwen had not let them know that he was meant to be enjoying special privileges.

There were quite a lot of people walking around, and they all seemed to have jobs; many of them nodded at Arthur as he passed, and he acknowledged them while wondering who the hell they were. He supposed a large cast of miscellaneous castle-dwellers was required to keep the whole thing running, but had no idea where, for example, the two young men carrying a crate of tiny horse statuettes could have been going with such urgency.

Arthur made his way out into the bailey, and immediately felt more lost than ever. Everything seemed to have swapped places since his childhood; apparently the orchard was one of the only things that had been immoveable. All manner of new buildings had sprung up or been relocated, and he set about trying to catalogue them. Ice house, dovecot, forge, buttery. Almost by accident, he opened a tiny and unfamiliar door in an unremarkable-looking exterior wall and stumbled into a garden so beautiful that it stopped him in his tracks.

It was a rose garden, partially shaded from above by wooden trellises that were covered in soft yellow climbing roses in bloom; raised beds were arranged in concentric diamonds, broken up with small sculptures and stonebenches. It was completely private, with only one entrance in, and nothing that overlooked it. In the very centre of the garden there was a large statue; before he’d reached it, Arthur knew exactly who would be frowning down at him.

King Arthur had seen better days. His nose was chipped, and two of his fingers had broken off. His beard was still intact, rendered in startling detail; in fact, his face was almost entirely obscured by meticulously carved bristles, his beady eyes staring out from underneath enormous eyebrows. Arthur reached out a hand and touched the rough, well-worn surface of the stone sword clutched in the king’s hands; it was almost as tall as he was.

‘Hullo, you old bastard,’ he said flatly. ‘Shagged any of your sisters lately?’

He was startled when the statue seemed to make a sound in response; this mystery was solved by the sudden appearance of a skinny, battle-worn ginger tabby cat, which gave the statue an affectionate headbutt before abandoning it for the flesh-and-blood Arthur and wrapping itself around his legs.

‘How the hell did you get in here?’ Arthur said, crouching to offer a hand; the cat closed its eyes blissfully, and pressed its little pink nose into his palm. ‘On your way to corrupt the royal purebreds, I imagine.’ He gave it a scratch under the chin; the cat purred loudly and then bit down on his index finger. Arthur swore and retracted his hand, but the cat hadn’t drawn blood. It looked extremely pleased with itself.

‘I like you,’ Arthur said approvingly. ‘Try not to get exterminated.’ A bell began to ring somewhere in thedistance, and Arthur’s stomach lurched. After an entire morning of aimless wandering to kill time, he was somehow going to be late.

As he rushed from the courtyard, he was nearly tripped up by a flash of orange fur slipping between his ankles. He sprinted towards the main buildings, trying to smooth down his hair and tunic as he did so; it was only as he reached the east door, out of breath from trying to maintain a loping half-jog, that he noticed the cat was still at his heels.

‘Begone, tiny demon,’ he hissed over his shoulder. The cat blinked back at him, and then sloped off in the opposite direction as the guards let Arthur inside. As he approached the labyrinth of rooms that made up the king’s private cabinets and day chambers, he slowed down, hoping that he wasn’t too visibly sweaty. He was admitted without ceremony, and moments later was standing at the end of a wood-panelled room dominated by a very large table. The king sat alone at the far end.