Page 5 of Gwen and Art Are Not in Love

‘Lucky bastard,’ Arthur said, before digging his heels in and setting off at a clumsy canter down the road, Sidney close behind him.

When they reached the large courtyard in front of the main house two hours later, the sundial told Arthur that it was mid-afternoon. This was mildly unsettling. Hadn’t itjust recently been the middle of the night? And come to think of it – did that mean it was Wednesday?

‘Is it Wednesday?’ he asked Sidney aloud as they dismounted, handing their horses off to the stable boy. There was a large barrel of rainwater sitting by the servants’ entrance; they crossed to it and started disrobing to deal with the worst of the mud.

‘How would I know?’ Sidney grunted as he pulled his tunic over his head.

‘Isn’t it your job to know things?’

‘No. It’s my job to keep you alive. And you are alive, aren’t you?’

‘Probably,’ Arthur said, checking himself for evidence of mortal wounds. There was a large bruise forming on his shoulder, where the innkeeper had punched him.

‘What’s my face like?’

Sidney grimaced. ‘God.Rubbish. Really awful.’

‘No, I mean – is it all roughed up?’

‘Oh. No, then. It’s fine. Cut on your eyebrow.’ Arthur bent over the barrel and stared at his reflection. It was actually quite a large gash on his eyebrow, and it was still bleeding.

‘Arthur,’ came a stern voice from behind him; he turned around to see Mrs Ashworth, the grey-haired woman who had once been his nursery maid, glaring at him from the servants’ entrance. ‘Whyare you half-naked in the yard?’

‘Afternoon, Ashworth. Is it Wednesday?’

‘Why are you half-nakedandbleeding?’

‘I don’t understand,’ Arthur said, turning to Sidney, ‘why nobody on my staff can give me a straight answer about the Wednesday thing.’

‘It’s Thursday,’ the laundress called wearily as she walked past, ignoring the fact that they were both half-dressed.

‘Finally!’ Arthur cried, raising his hands in celebration. ‘Give that woman a raise.’

‘Don’t say things like that,’ Mrs Ashworth said sharply. ‘You know I can’t.’

In any normal household, a former nursemaid wouldn’t have been occupied with matters of salary and raises – in fact, in any normal household, one might expect the nursemaid to have moved on once her charge reached the ripe old age of nineteen, with no future spawn incoming. Instead, when Arthur’s mother died, Mrs Ashworth had fallen unofficially into the role of running the house. There had been a brief power struggle when Lord Delacey had remarried, but when his second wife had sadly also perished, Mrs Ashworth had picked up where she’d left off; Arthur’s father would say that it all seemed to run itself, but when tradesmen or tone-deaf bards or out-of-work pages came to the entrance and asked for the person in charge, Ashworth was always the one they called for.

‘Looking lovely as ever, Joyce,’ Sidney said, grinning at her.

‘I can’t give raises but I can carry out sackings,’ Mrs Ashworth said, eyeing him suspiciously. ‘Put that away, Sidney – you’re going to have someone’s eye out.’

‘You flatter me,’ Sidney said, but he gamely trudged into the house to get dressed, and Arthur followed him.

‘Is he home?’ he said to Ashworth as he passed, trying to keep his tone neutral.

‘He’s in his study,’ she replied, with a sympathetic tilt ofher head that Arthur hated deeply. ‘He’s on the warpath about something, Art. Were you supposed to be somewhere today?’

Arthur racked his brains. ‘No, I don’t think so. But then – maybe? If it’s Thursday.’

‘It is Thursday.’

‘All right. Well. I’ll go and see what he wants.’

When Arthur entered, washed and dressed, the Lord of Maidvale was sitting at his desk, writing a letter. There was a half-empty decanter of wine next to the ink bottle. Arthur lived in hope of the day he would mistake one for the other.

The walls of the study were cluttered with portraits, coats of arms, old papers of provenance and an enormous family tree in self-important gold walnut ink. There had once been a map in pride of place on the south wall; Arthur’s mother had sat with him here, a pile of rosewater and saffron sweets between them, as she introduced him to the expanding world. She had shown him the vast seas, the distant continents stretching out towards the east; Iran, a place that existed to him only in stories, where his grandparents had started their long journey to England. He had traced the lines with his chubby finger, not really understanding; by the time he was old enough to have questions about any of it, his mother was long dead.

Arthur had crept in a year after her funeral, looking for traces of her, and found the map gone.