‘When you notice a flaw in security during a time of heightened peril,’ Gwen said, crossing her arms, ‘you tell the Captain of the Guard. You make sure nobody else can utilise it. You do not exploit said security flaw as a means to … party.’
‘You make a good point,’ Arthur said diplomatically. ‘Unfortunately, I’m not actually in the market for good points, so – shut up and put your moustache on.’
Gwen would have pressed this further but for two things: the first was that the attacker in the royal wing had been conclusively determined a deeply unfortunate one-off, a point that Lord Stafford had been making repeatedly and at length since the incident in question. The second – which she never would have admitted aloud to Arthur – was that since his arrival at Camelot she had found herself falling prey to a creeping dissatisfaction with many aspects of her life.
Her mother had sat her down at breakfast – on her birthday, no less – to tell her that the date for the wedding had been set for the end of the summer, and had proceeded to lay out plans for a packed schedule of meetings, fittings and mind-numbing conversations about the guest list and which meats they should serve at the feast. All semblance of her usual schedule would be thrown entirely out of the window, her days filled to the brim with other people making plans for her and talking over her and poking at her, with absolutely no room for what she might want – namely, time to sit in a quiet room by herself or to slip away and see Bridget.
As she listened to the queen, something inside her had finally snapped. It must have been a key part of her brain that looked after all of her more sensible faculties, because Arthur’s terrible plan for the evening actually seemed quite appealing.
As a result, they were going out.
It was, apparently, still possible to escape the keep by means of climbing down the outer wall, as long as the initial portion of the climb was done at great speed between guard patrols. Sidney had done reconnaissance to perfect the timing. Gwen thought that, on the whole, it shouldn’t have been quite so easy for Arthur to convince her and Agnes to dress in some of Arthur’s clothes, adhere false moustaches to their top lips and shimmy out of the window to their almost certain doom.
‘Whose hair is this?’ Gwen said as she dubiously inspected the moustache in question. ‘Did you pick it up off the ground?’
Arthur flashed her a grin. ‘Don’t worry. It’s Lucifer’s.’
In truth, Gwen thought that almost nothing could survive the ferocity of Arthur’s energy when he turned it against other people’s wills; given another half an hour of arguing when he was this fired up, he probably could have convinced her that the whole thing had been her idea in the first place.
The climb went surprisingly smoothly. Sidney had fashioned a very basic sort of rope ladder, which he knotted expertly to a pillar in Gwen’s room so that she and Agnes were spared the true perils of mountaineering, and then removed for his own descent. They were waved through the castle gates, nobody particularly caring who they were due to the fact that they were going rather than coming.
As soon as they were on the main road into the city it became a little too real; Gwen felt slightly sick with panic, and started muttering an almost constant stream of regrets – Oh my God, we’re going to get caught, we’re going to die, we’re going to get caught and die – until Sidney handed her a bottle of something and told her to take a nip of it to fortify her nerves. It tasted like she was being scoured by fire from the inside out.
‘You shouldn’t make a habit of that, you know,’ Arthur said, as Sidney took the bottle back from her.
‘A thief knows a thief as a wolf knows a wolf,’ said Agnes, and everybody turned to look at her. She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It’s something my mother used to say.’
‘Am I the thief, in this scenario?’ Arthur enquired with mild interest. ‘Or am I the wolf?’
‘You’re the man with the suspected alcohol problem,’ said Gwen.
‘Christ, not that again. I’m not drinking tonight, am I? Bone dry. Practically a saint.’
The closer they got to the city proper, the busier it became. There were street hawkers selling what they claimed were genuine pieces of knightly armour, scavenged from the tournament; crowds of drunkards, overflowing out of the taverns and into the squares, which were packed; children rushing about underfoot, selling blackened buns and bone whistles and small bundles of dried flowers. Gwen realised once again with a rush of embarrassment that despite living in Camelot for most of her life, she had never really seen it; on parade days, or when the royal party left the castle en masse to travel to a nearby city or noble estate, the streets were cleared before they arrived. She had never seen what her father’s people actually did when they hadn’t been told to stand up straight, comb their hair and not come within twenty feet of a member of the royal family; it involved a lot more spitting than Gwen could have imagined, but a lot more chatter and life and laughter, too.
‘Walk more like a man,’ Arthur said to Gwen, jostling her with his elbow. She had his hat pulled down low over her face, and despite the fact that they were the same height, his tunic felt all wrong on her, tight across her stomach and loose about the shoulders.
‘I don’t know how to do that,’ Gwen replied through gritted teeth, narrowly dodging a pile of vomit that had collected on the cobblestones. ‘Surely men don’t all walk alike.’
‘Just walk like you own the street,’ Sidney advised.
‘I practically do own the street,’ Gwen said.
‘Fair point,’ said Sidney.
‘Walk like you don’t care where your limbs are,’ Agnes said, doing a much better job of it than Gwen. ‘As if it’s of no consequence to you where they end up. Like this. See? Swing them about. And you should act, at all times, as if your crotch is a burden.’
‘Now hang on,’ said Arthur. ‘I’m a man, and my crotch isn’t a burden.’
‘Maybe not to you,’ said Gwen. ‘But it’s a burden on the rest of humanity.’
‘I made you a false moustache!’ Arthur said, outraged. ‘I did crafts for you! The least you can do is act grateful.’
‘Thank you for my cat-hair moustache,’ Gwen said, rolling her eyes. ‘It’s truly disgusting. I hope you washed it first.’
Arthur winked at her in a way he probably imagined was roguish and charming. ‘I can guarantee you that I did not.’
At that precise moment they emerged from a questionable alleyway and into a square full of sound and colour. A dilapidated inn that seemed to be half sinking into the ground was the source of the revels; a band had set up their instruments just outside the door, and people had gathered to drink and dance in the warm evening air.
‘This is more like it,’ Arthur said triumphantly, as the fiddler struck up a new tune and the crowd cheered in drunken approval. ‘Come on, Sid. Drinks.’ He and Sidney shouldered through the crowd, leaving Gwen and Agnes hovering at the edge of the merriment. Gwen was sure that at any moment somebody would ask her why she had lint stuck to her upper lip, or arrest her for wearing breeches, but nobody noticed them at all.
A slightly awkward silence descended between the two women as they watched the dancers.
‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier,’ Gwen said suddenly. ‘About Arthur and me. I mean, you knew, but I should have told you. I didn’t trust you with it, because … well, I felt like I didn’t really know you.’
Agnes looked at her, biting her bottom lip. ‘Can I be honest?’ Gwen shrugged. ‘You still don’t know me at all, and we’ve spent every day together for years. I think you just wrote me off as some silly giggling woman, off gossiping about you, and – I never did any of that. Well, the giggling and the being-a-woman part, yes. But there’s nothing wrong with that.’
Gwen tried to grapple with this – her instinct was to be rankled, to try to deny what Agnes had just said, or at least reprimand her for her tone if she couldn’t disprove her logic – but she realised that, on the whole, Agnes was right. ‘Fair enough,’ she said eventually. ‘My judgement hasn’t always been … Well, I’m sorry. For being so rude to you. And … I’d like to know you better.’
Agnes gave her a wry smile. ‘Would you like to dance?’
‘Not really,’ Gwen said bracingly, ‘but in the interest of getting to know you—’
Agnes had already taken her by the arm and pulled her towards the dancers; Gwen laughed, stumbling and almost losing her hat, buoyed by the freedom of dancing without skirts or her mother or leering men to put a damper on her enjoyment. There were no formal lines, no set dances; people were simply throwing themselves about to the music however they saw fit, and Gwen did her best to imitate them.
‘You’re being too delicate!’ Agnes called over the pipes. ‘Men don’t dance like that!’
‘Mouse in your trousers, is there?’ Arthur enquired, appearing at Gwen’s shoulder and handing her a cup of sage water. ‘Come on, then. I’ll show you how a real man dances. I’ll teach you the hurdle-girdle. The dirty dog. The polyphonic rhapsody.’
‘None of those are real dances,’ Gwen said, clumsily sipping at her drink without pausing.
‘Of course they are,’ said Arthur. ‘This is the – whatever it was I just said,’ and he proceeded to do something so vulgar with his hips that Gwen sent up a quick prayer for her soul.
‘I’m not doing that,’ she said, and Arthur laughed and grabbed her free hand, waving it about in the air like she was so much seaweed.
It was wildly different from any birthday Gwen had ever had before – so different from what she had ever wanted before – and yet somehow, it was perfect. Everybody was laughing. Sidney kept trying to impress Agnes with misguided attempts to spin her around. When Arthur approached Gwen as if he might be about to do the same, and was rebuffed, he said, ‘All right then, you spin me,’ and she actually did. The crowd seemed to be growing every minute, morphing and changing and opening up to make room for them whenever they needed it. When Arthur let go of her hands and started craning his neck to look across the tops of many laughing and shouting heads, Gwen tried to follow his gaze.
‘What is it?’ she shouted, and Arthur turned back to her looking frighteningly pleased with himself.
‘Your birthday present,’ he said, grabbing her by the shoulders and turning her towards the inn, ‘has arrived.’
‘Oh God,’ said Gwen, dreading to think what Arthur might consider a suitable gift for an eighteenth birthday – but when the crowd parted slightly, she caught a glimpse of a dark fringe, broad shoulders and a carefully neutral expression. She was off immediately, ignoring Arthur’s laugh of surprise when she rocketed out of his grip, pushing her way through the crowd until she could properly see Bridget, who was wearing a simple, silken jacket and holding on to her drink like it was keeping her anchored as she stared suspiciously into the crowd. Her friends were standing with her, talking; Adah said something to make Elaine laugh and Elaine briefly put an arm around Adah’s waist and squeezed, her hand safely back on her tankard only a second or two later.
‘Bridget,’ Gwen called, half laughing; she had the immense satisfaction of seeing Bridget turn towards her, her expression clearing, one side of her mouth quirking up in a smile that threatened to buckle Gwen’s knees. Elaine and Adah excused themselves, Adah raising her eyebrows at Gwen and grinning in greeting as they crossed paths.
‘Happy birthday,’ Elaine whispered, before they were swallowed up by the crowd.
‘Nice moustache,’ Bridget said when Gwen reached her, touching it very gently so as not to dislodge it. ‘Very convincing.’
‘Really?’ Gwen said, feeling excitable and giddy and more than a little stupid.
‘No, Gwendoline,’ Bridget said, her thumb still resting on Gwen’s jaw. ‘Not really. It’s horrible. But everybody here is far too plastered to notice.’
‘So in that case, do you think they’d mind terribly,’ Gwen said, fingering the trailing end of her sleeve as she glanced back at the crowd, ‘if we … ?’
Instead of answering, Bridget used the hand curled under Gwen’s chin to gently turn her head so that she could kiss her. Having kissed Bridget before, all the terrifying newness was gone, and in its place was something better; a slow, familiar ache instead of heady, breathless panic. She liked the way that Bridget seemed to smile into her mouth as she kissed, as if she were pleased to have discovered something; she liked the feeling of strong arms and sure hands pulling her closer; she especially liked the small, frustrated noise Bridget made in her throat when she reached for Gwen’s hair, which was carefully plaited away under her hat.
‘These are ridiculous,’ Bridget said in her ear, fingers pulling very slightly at the braids; Gwen could only make an undignified squeak in response. Her exhalation seemed to dislodge some of her moustache hair, and Bridget had to turn away to sneeze into her sleeve; it was high-pitched, not at all the kind of noise Gwen had ever expected to emanate from Bridget, and she stared at her disbelievingly, and then laughed as Bridget rolled her eyes and hauled her back in by the collar for another kiss.
They were interrupted by the sound of cheers. Gwen turned, with Bridget’s hand still pressed to the back of her neck, to see Arthur and Sidney raising their drinks aloft in celebration, Agnes giggling into Sidney’s shoulder; Arthur must have pounced upon Adah and Elaine and made introductions, as they were standing there too, laughing as they were jostled by the crowd. A red-faced man dancing next to Arthur almost lost an eye to Arthur’s wild gesticulating as he applauded in Gwen’s direction, but Arthur mollified him with a friendly clap on the shoulder, shouting, ‘Sorry – sorry, mate, sorry – just pleased for my friend over there, he’s terrible with the ladies, barely knows which end is which – but he’s found himself a lovely obliging girl and he seems to have located the correct end for the sake of public decency.’
‘Stop it,’ Gwen mouthed with narrowed eyes, but Arthur just saluted her with mock sincerity and then turned to Adah and Elaine and began talking to them animatedly.
‘Your friend is deranged,’ said Bridget.
‘I can’t argue with you there,’ said Gwen, too happy to be peeved. ‘I’m sorry we haven’t spoken, I wanted to come and find you, but everything’s been so …’
‘You don’t have to explain,’ Bridget said, shrugging and removing some cat fur from Gwen’s shoulder. ‘I really wasn’t expecting to see you again.’
‘You weren’t?’ Gwen said, frowning, feeling some of her elation dissipate.
‘Hey,’ said Bridget, gently touching her chin. ‘Not like that. Just – being practical. Didn’t see how we could possibly swing it, with everything going on. But your pal Arthur came to see me, and he was very … insistent.’
‘He does tend to be.’ Gwen bit down on her lip, still feeling as if she’d somehow misjudged things. ‘So – you’re happy? To see me?’
‘What do you think?’ Bridget said, drawing Gwen towards her again.
‘Just checking,’ Gwen said, leaning back just enough to feel herself held in place, and thinking that, ideally, Bridget would never let her go.
In the end, she did – but only because Arthur was pulling so insistently at Gwen’s sleeve that she might have lost an arm if Bridget had tried to retain it. Bridget didn’t dance, exactly, but she was willing to move as long as she was next to Gwen, who was in turn being goaded on by Sidney – who kept telling her that as the man, she was supposed to be leading. It didn’t matter; in the chaos, the stamping of feet and the spillage of yet more drinks and the cacophony of raised voices and pipe and fiddle, nobody cared that she was anything other than another warm body; they didn’t even notice when the last brave wisps of Gwen’s moustache finally gave up the ghost and fell to the floor to be trampled into the stones.
Agnes danced with Adah and Elaine, attempting to keep up as Adah shouted instructions. Sidney and Arthur danced together, trying to one-up each other with little kicks and pirouettes that got increasingly violent. Gwen danced with Bridget and smiled and smiled, and Bridget smiled back as if she were trying very hard not to, and Arthur kept coming over and clapping them both on the back and shaking their shoulders vigorously as if they’d won a bet or just announced the birth of a healthy heir. Bridget tolerated him, although her eyebrows seemed to raise higher every time, until Gwen thought he was approaching dangerous territory – but then she went for ten minutes with her shoulders unshaken, and when she looked for him, she realised that Arthur was gone.
‘I’m just going to … You stay here,’ Gwen said, ignoring the uncharacteristically panicked look Bridget shot at her as she backed away and Agnes held out a hand to Bridget instead, shimmying her hips suggestively. Gwen shouldered her way through the crowd until she reached the edge of it, and there she found Arthur leaning against a very lopsided well, watching the festivities with an empty cup in his hand and a melancholy smile on his face.
‘Hiding?’ she said, and he shrugged.
‘Taking a moment to replenish my youthful strength and vigour so that I may continue until dawn. And also, Sid stepped on my foot.’
‘A tragedy,’ Gwen said, taking a seat next to him. ‘Are you all right? You look a bit … morose. Not usually your speed.’
‘Hmmm,’ Arthur said, peering down into his cup. ‘He’s not a dainty lad, our Sidney. They may have to amputate.’
‘I didn’t mean about your bloody foot.’
‘I know you didn’t,’ Arthur said, sighing. ‘You are terribly nosy and far too discerning for somebody who should currently be caught up in celebration, being thrown about the dancefloor by Lady Muscles over there.’
‘I’ve done plenty of celebrating,’ Gwen said, nudging his elbow with hers. ‘If it’s my brother you’re moping over—’
‘I know you think everything is about you and your blood relatives, but it’s really not,’ Arthur said, wrinkling his nose at her, which softened the blow.
‘He wouldn’t have come, you know, even if he hadn’t been busy in the library under ten types of guard.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Arthur said, shrugging. ‘I can be pretty persuasive.’
‘Urgh,’ Gwen said, pulling a face. Arthur smiled grimly back. ‘I’m sorry, Art. I know he’s not … I know it’s not easy, with him. He’s got it into his head that he must be everything our father is, and more – and that if he doesn’t manage to unite the country and smooth over hundreds of years of bloodshed and squabbling, it’s because he didn’t work hard enough. There isn’t space inside his head for … for much else.’
Arthur put his cup down, smoothing his hands over his hair and turning to look at her properly. ‘Don’t be silly. I’m fine. I’m always fine.’
‘All right,’ said Gwen, finding his hand where his fingertips were pressed into the bricks and giving it a squeeze. ‘Well. If you’re sure.’
‘Lady Leclair must like you an awful lot,’ he said, instead of replying. ‘Sidney is currently trying to spin her, and thus far, she hasn’t killed him.’
‘I like her an awful lot,’ Gwen said. ‘Thanks for doing this. For inviting her. And bringing me here. And just – for all of it.’
‘Christ, I must be going soft,’ Arthur said, shaking his head. ‘I mean really, what was in this for me? Practically nothing. It’s shocking.’
‘Art,’ Gwen said, as she leaned clumsily into him and rested her tired head on his shoulder. ‘I know we didn’t get off to the best start – don’t laugh at me, I just want to say something, and you’re not to interrupt.’ She felt Arthur nod, and gathered her thoughts before continuing. ‘Before you came here … I spent a very long time feeling confused. I didn’t know why I was feeling the way I was, or what it meant, and … you were the first person who knew. And all right, you used it to blackmail me, which wasn’t ideal, but I suppose it was in self-defence … What I’m trying to say is, you knew, and it made perfect sense to you even when it didn’t to me. I didn’t have to try to justify it to you, or beg for your understanding – it wasn’t something that even needed explaining. I had no idea how much that would mean to me. When I talked to you about it, even when you were being a bit of a nightmare, you always made me feel like it was … completely ordinary. Something I should be allowed to want and to have, without question. And this might sound foolish, but it felt like you were somehow on my side, even when you hated me. It … it made me braver. That’s what I really want to thank you for.’
Arthur didn’t say anything. When Gwen lifted her head from his shoulder to squint up at him she could have sworn that before he casually swiped at them with his sleeve, there might have been tears in his eyes.
‘We’ve both gone soft,’ he said, his voice a little scratchy. ‘What sort of a marriage is this going to be? One of us has to wear the metaphorical breeches. Oh, here – I have a gift for you.’ He rummaged inside his jacket pocket and then dropped something small into her lap. ‘Should have given it back ages ago, but … anyway. It’s all there, even the parts we tore out. I checked.’
Gwen looked down at the diary in her hand, all that childhood longing and sadness and loneliness pressed between a few hundred pages, and then back up at Arthur.
‘Good birthday?’ he said, and she smiled, turning to watch as Sidney did indeed try to lift Bridget off her feet; Bridget stopped him with a very serious look and one hand held up in warning. Adah had managed to pick up Elaine, who was shrieking happily, while Agnes threw her head back and laughed at them all.
‘The best.’