One more day.
Gwen just had to make it through one more day, and then the tournament would be over; Bridget would be gone; the people filling the city of Camelot to the rafters would start to make their way home. Her life would shrink, and she and Gabriel could sit down and work out what on earth they were going to do about Arthur.
The letter had spelled it all out for her, damningly clear. The Delaceys had planned this together; her friendship with Arthur, his closeness with Gabriel. Arthur had been sent to charm them. It was all political, a game – and she and Gabriel had walked right into it willingly, ready to spill their secrets the moment somebody showed them the slightest bit of kindness.
After Gabriel had read it for himself, she’d told him exactly what she’d overheard – Lord Delacey’s bragging, Gabriel’s secret hopes for the future laid bare. He had sat for at least two minutes in complete silence going over the letter again, Gwen feeling as if she were going slowly mad as she waited for him to say something, until he had suddenly crumpled it in his hand, looked up at her and said ‘Well. That’s that then.’
‘How can you be so calm? He knows everything about us. Me and Bridget. You, and—’
‘Yes.’ Gabriel was very pale. ‘He does. But let’s think about this rationally. His father won’t use this information now, because he still wants you and Arthur to marry. Lord Delacey likes to feel powerful, and I know Father has been brushing him off – he wants more than Father is willing to give.’
‘How do we know he won’t use it now? He was telling that man plenty.’
‘He likes to let his mouth run away from him, but he’s not going to ruin the chance to marry Arthur into royalty,’ Gabriel said. ‘That’s the highest position available to him, and we know that’s what he’s after. No … I think he’ll use it later. For leverage. He can hold it above our heads – and Father’s – whenever he pleases. Use it to get a higher title, perhaps, or a position on Father’s council.’
Gwen put her head back in her hands, where it felt less likely to fall off her shoulders and plummet right through the floor. ‘Oh God. Do we have to tell Father about this?’
Gabriel rose to his feet very slowly, as if every ligament in his body were resisting. ‘No. Not yet. He might not even tell Father, he might come straight to me. I just need a little time to … think this through.’
‘Gabe,’ Gwen said. He was approaching all of this with careful pragmatism, as if they hadn’t both been thoroughly, ruthlessly betrayed in the worst way possible. ‘You’re allowed to be … I don’t know … angry. Upset. What he did to you …’
Gabriel sighed, rubbing at his forehead until it looked pink and painful. ‘Yes. Fine. I am both of those things. But more pressingly, I need to work out what we’re going to do about this.’
They both looked despondently down at the letter.
‘How could he do this?’ Gwen whispered into the silence.
Neither of them had an answer.
A clean, bright rage had come over Gwen that night. She had told the guards that circumstances had changed, to prevent Sidney or Arthur from snooping around the royal quarters at their leisure, and then cornered Agnes in the ladies’ solar and told her to cease all contact with Sidney immediately.
‘Why would I do that?’ Agnes had said, chin lifted in defiance.
Gwen had given her a brief summary of events, but to her utter disbelief, Agnes had refused to accept her explanation.
‘It must be a misunderstanding,’ she kept saying, shaking her head. ‘If you’d just talk to him—’
‘I’m not going to talk to him!’ Gwen had shouted. ‘I’m not going to give him a chance to worm his way back into my brain when I’ve just managed to get him out. He’s obviously a very … a very skilled liar, a very good manipulator – I’m not going to talk to him, and neither are you. To either of them.’
‘Is that an order?’ Agnes said, her eyes glossy with furious tears.
‘Yes, Agnes. It’s an order,’ Gwen said, turning and marching from the room.
As she lay sleeplessly in her bed that night, counting down the hours until dawn and the final day of the tournament, she wondered what Bridget would say if she knew. She pictured her there, lying next to Gwen in the gloom, the two of them talking in the kind of hushed tones only used between people tentatively mapping the foundations of each other in the middle of the night.
When she’d finally slept, she had dreamed of Camelot silent and empty, besieged by enormous drifts of snow.
One more day.
Gwen had never seen so many people packed into the courtyards of Camelot. As they descended towards the tournament stands, the true scale of the turnout became apparent.
‘I can’t believe there are this many people in England,’ she said to Gabriel, who had joined her as she walked under the portcullis. ‘What are they all doing here?’
‘It’s a tournament,’ Gabriel said disinterestedly. Gwen looked at him properly. She was convinced he hadn’t slept a wink since they had read Arthur’s letter, and one glance at him seemed to confirm her suspicions.
‘You look like hell,’ she said, and he didn’t even attempt a smile.
‘Let’s just get today over with,’ he said grimly. ‘And then all these people will leave the city, and I’ll have room to – to think.’
‘Gabe, are you …’ she said, reaching out to put a hand on his arm, but their little cavalcade had suddenly collided and merged with the king and queen’s.
‘Hullo, Gwendoline,’ her father said, giving her an absent-minded kiss on the head before straightening up, squaring his shoulders and ascending the stairs to the royal stands, his family in tow. Gwen couldn’t help but scan the makeshift rows in front of the competitors’ encampment, which were populated by a handful of knights who hadn’t made the cut for the day’s event. Many had left, helms and prides dented, but there were still a few standing shoulder-to-shoulder on the left side of the grounds. She wished her heart hadn’t jumped so violently in her chest at the sight of Bridget, who was standing at the very end, dressed in soft browns and whites, talking to another knight and shielding her eyes from the watery sun.
The melee was the grand finale of the tournament; after months of competition, the highest-ranking knights were to gather in two teams and fight until the Grand Marshal judged the battle over and called to stop. From the victorious side, the king was to choose the ultimate winner of the tournament.
Excalibur – Gwen couldn’t help but hear the word ‘Nine?’ when she looked at it, in Arthur’s incredulous tone – was sitting, freshly polished and gleaming, awaiting presentation to the winner. The weather was being suitably dramatic, the wind chivvying the clouds along so that the grounds kept alternating between weak sunshine and gloom, banners and flags whipping violently against their restraints.
The crowd was chattering excitedly, the tension so thick Gwen felt strangled by it; she was just settling into her seat when Gabriel touched her on the arm.
‘Lord Willard is here,’ he muttered in her ear.
Sure enough, her father’s cousin was sitting in the raised stands opposite, where they had crowded some of the nobility due to overflow, watching them. He saw her startled glance, and gave her a perfectly polite and perfunctory nod of greeting. His hair was longer than she remembered, and he was grandly dressed in silver and black.
‘What on earth is he doing here?’
‘He and Father have been more cordial lately – he wrote to warn about an uprising in the north,’ Gabriel said, shrugging. ‘I suppose he was invited, as he always is, and decided to be friendly.’
This didn’t quite make sense to Gwen; after all, Willard’s only real stake in the tournament was the Knife, who was no longer competing.
‘Who’s he talking to now?’ Gwen said, narrowing her eyes. ‘Is that – Arthur’s father?’
‘Yes,’ Gabriel said quietly. ‘Yes, I believe it is.’
The Lord of Maidvale was standing at Lord Willard’s shoulder, talking insistently in his ear. The sight of the two of them with their heads together stirred a vague memory, but Gwen couldn’t quite grab hold of it.
‘Gabe, did we have a conversation about Lord Delacey and Lord Willard?’ Gwen asked, frowning. ‘I feel like there was something …’
Gabriel just shook his head, barely listening.
There was something, Gwen knew it. Something about a trip, or a meeting … for some reason she thought of Lord Stafford, and then suddenly it clicked into place.
‘Skipton Castle. Gabe, wasn’t Willard seen at Skipton?’
‘Yes,’ said Gabriel slowly. ‘But Stafford looked into it, and he has family near there. There was no reason to suspect anything untoward.’
‘But – in the stables, the man talking to Arthur’s father … he said that Lord Delacey had been to Skipton.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes,’ Gwen said impatiently. ‘Yes, he said … “What have you learned since Skipton?” Surely that can’t be coincidence. What would Arthur’s father and Lord Willard have to talk about? Why would they both have travelled to North Yorkshire?’
Gabriel shook his head. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps they’re friends.’
But Gwen was suddenly seeing the conversation in the stables in an entirely new light. Surely the exchange of idle gossip didn’t require such confidentiality – and if Lord Delacey had attended some sort of meeting at Skipton Castle, a meeting kept secret, from which he had departed with instructions to gather more information…
‘Father,’ Gwen said, standing up to try to catch his attention. ‘Father.’
‘Not now, Gwendoline,’ he said, dismissing her with a wave of his hand – but Gwen refused to be dismissed.
‘Father, please – your cousin is here. Lord Willard is sitting right over there, look.’
The king didn’t appear the least bit surprised. ‘I know he’s there, Gwendoline. Keep your voice down. He was invited, and has decided, on this occasion, to take me up on the offer. We’re trying to keep up friendly relations, a show of unity at this difficult time, so please stop pointing and shouting about him and sit down.’
‘But …’ Gwen said, glancing without meaning to back at Lord Willard, and finding that he was still looking directly at her. ‘Why is he only here now, at the end of the tournament? And – he’s talking to Arthur’s father. He’s talking to Lord Delacey.’
‘And?’ the king said, sounding exasperated.
‘And – I need to tell you something,’ Gwen said, her voice reduced to a nervous sort of high-pitched trill. ‘I … I recently discovered that Lord Delacey wrote to Arthur and asked him to keep an eye on us. He wanted Arthur to ingratiate himself with us – with Gabe and me – and report back to him.’
Her father shrugged. ‘And why shouldn’t he, Gwendoline? He’s going to be your husband after all. And we all know Lord Delacey is overfond of knowing the – ah – particulars of everything that goes on at court. Now –’ he lowered his voice, sounding stern – ‘sit down.’
‘But – listen, that’s not all,’ she said, not sitting. ‘Lord Delacey was at Skipton Castle recently. Just like Lord Willard.’
‘My cousin was seen near Skipton,’ the king said. ‘Not at Skipton. And Stafford confirmed with two sources that he was visiting family. The man is so paranoid about uprisings in the north, he’d certainly have spoken up if he thought nobles were convening secret meetings. Please sit, Gwendoline. Two people may visit a place without—’
‘You don’t understand,’ Gwen said. ‘I was there, I heard him telling somebody – if you’d just heard the way he was talking, I think—’
She was cut off by the sound of trumpets, an elaborate fanfare that went on for so long that her father had asked her twice more to sit down by the time it ended. She finally complied, throwing herself back into her chair and exchanging a look of desperation with Gabriel, who just shrugged helplessly.
A steady stream of knights, their armour polished and their weapons freshly sharpened, was entering the small arena. Cheers and boos greeted each one, and they raised their swords and shook their fists in return. The crowd was ravenous, boiling; in some places it looked as if the stands might fail completely, split at their seams and send the spectators pressed up against them tumbling down into the freshly raked sand.
The noise was reaching fever pitch as the last of the competitors appeared and they started splitting into their two teams, denoted by a knotted handkerchief in either regal blue or knife-slash red about their wrists. It all seemed good-natured, if a little rabid, which didn’t account for how antsy Gwen was feeling as she shifted in her seat; the cheers and screams grated on her nerves, and her fingertips kept jumping against the guard rail. She chanced a glance over at Bridget and saw that she was looking back, frowning slightly as if she’d been watching her exchange with the king.
‘I don’t like this,’ she said in Gabriel’s ear. He still didn’t seem quite with her, as if sleep had given up on waiting for him and come to claim him then and there. ‘Gabe. This thing with Willard and Delacey. It feels … off.’
‘If Father isn’t worried …’ Gabriel said, trailing off. ‘You could go back to your rooms to rest. I’ll tell Father – I’ll say you were unwell.’
‘No,’ Gwen said, turning her frustration on her brother. ‘That’s not it, Gabe, it’s not just a … Wait.’ She had turned back to look at the two teams of competitors, now arranged in relatively neat rows either side of some invisible line in the sand Gwen couldn’t see. ‘Wait, is – where’s Arthur’s father gone? Gabe, pay attention. Where the hell is Lord Delacey?’