Page 24 of Bridget & Gabe Are Not Okay

“It’s nice,” Gabriel said, watching a fat robin beak through the moss on a wall, chancing for lunch.

“Yeah, well. A sunny day in October is the best day of the year,” Arthur said. “Didn’t want you to miss it.”

They’d finished their short walk on a stone bench in the rose garden, and Gabriel had been surprised to find fluffyfuchsia flowers still in bloom, the air sweet. They sat for a while, and Arthur chatted away, made jokes, as he always did, but there was a tight undercurrent of worry in his tone.

Gabriel didn’t want to be the cause of that worry. So he stopped telling Arthur how bad the pain was, and Arthur had believed that it was better, thatGabrielwas better, which had been easiest for everyone.

Now Arthur was sitting astride his horse in a patch of sun, his face turned toward the light, a half smile playing around his lips while he thought nobody was watching. A private moment of contentment on a sunny morning in October.

Gabriel imagined a reality in which he nudged his horse forward and went to Arthur’s side to share it. It was a nice little fantasy, and nothing more—he’d never been brave enough to do anything so bold before.

Arthur had almost always been the one to come to him, directly and with purpose; Gabriel had only ever discovered Arthur by wandering in his general direction.

Gabriel’s horse, Penelope, took a couple of ambling steps forward, like she’d read Gabriel’s mind (or perhaps just wanted to go and bother Arthur’s handsome horse)—but then Sir Florian came trotting up on a glossy black mare, and Arthur turned to smile at him and say something Gabriel couldn’t quite hear. Florian didn’t smile back, but he was watching Arthur very closely, and when Arthur laughed, he nodded in time, like he was mirroring the steps of a dance.

“I’ve been trying to get you alone fordays,” Gwen said, pulling up alongside Gabriel on her very grumpy speckled palfrey. “Do you actually do anything except have meetings?”

Gabriel shrugged. “Sometimes I lie in a darkened room for a few hours.”

“Sleeping?”

“Dreading the next meeting.”

“Ah.” Gwen looked him over. “How are you doing today? You look a bit cadaverous.”

“Thanks,” said Gabriel. “I could use a little…”

“Encouragement? Don’t fall off your horse, don’t talk too much. Try to smile. Oakley noticed that you always frown at people to demonstrate that you’re listening so it looks like you’re trying to kill them with dark brain magic.”

Gabriel attempted a smile, and Gwen held up a hand, as if she were trying to shield herself from a view of a roadside corpse.

“Never mind.”

Gabriel felt a lurch of nausea and clutched the reins tighter in his sweaty hand, causing Penelope to shuffle sideways again. “Oh, God.”

Gwen softened immediately. “I’m just jesting with you, Gabe. It’s going to be great. You’re mostly going to be asked to do the things you’re good at. That’s why we’re all here.”

“What am I good at?” Gabriel asked hopefully.

Gwen considered. “Charts,” she said. “You love to draw charts, and talk about charts. And also… statistical analysis of economic factors.”

“That’s just another way of saying ‘charts,’” Gabriel said glumly. Gwen leaned over to pat him on the shoulder, and then Lady Oakley came striding over to them, her expression somewhere between genuine excitement and professional dread.

“I didn’t think you’d want to speechify,” she said, “so we’re doing trumpets.”

“Wonderful,” Gabriel lied. Oakley was staying behind with Lord Das to keep Camelot running, two voices of sanity on the reduced council.

She had decided they ought to pair the more decoratedknights with the recent additions, and so they all lined up in pairs, like children about to be checked for lice, and then once the vanguard had proceeded out of the gates, it was time to go. The cheering was always a shock, if only because, based on some of the reports he was hearing, Gabriel expected thrown cabbages instead.

People had come to line the streets that led down the hill from Camelot castle, many of them waving flowers, which they began to toss enthusiastically at the party as they approached. The trumpeters were blasting away, giving it their all. The sun was very bright.

It felt to Gabriel like the entire world had been rendered in stained glass, the sky and the sun and the people and the trumpets, and that stained glass had fallen from its frame and was pressing down on him so that he was trapped beneath it, the colors much too vivid and the sounds too near, an intrusion so palpable he wanted to turn his face away so it didn’t cut off his breathing.

A white flower bounced off his leg, and he flinched, and next to him, Gwen paused her regal waving to say, through gritted teeth, “Remember what I said about smiling.”

Twelve

And so the knights of the King’s great order departed from Camelot in a chorus of trumpets, and journeyed many a day over hill and dale, and the King spurred his horse so by fine force he could have ridden for a year, and afterward a great feast was made ready, in honor of their quest.