Gwen was standing on a parapet, waiting.
The queen had tried to convince her to stay inside; she had said that no good would come of watching, even if they could see everything quite clearly from the north battlements, and that it would be better to occupy themselves with something else until news came of the crown’s victory. She had pointed out that it was, after all, raining.
Gwen had ignored her, and now the queen was standing with her back to the field and periodically asking Gwen what was happening while refusing to look herself.
Lord Willard seemed to have more men, but from what Gwen could see, they were in a state of comparative disarray; despite the fact that they had been the ones to organise this ambush, apparently they had been so convinced of its early success they hadn’t thought they’d really need the second wave to do anything more than ride in and enjoy their victory.
Her father’s men, on the other hand, had immediately fallen in line; they had marched out away from the tournament grounds and then stopped all at once, divided into clear regiments, with a few hundred feet between them and their attackers. She could see her father, clad in his dark armour and cloaked in blue, upright and steady in the saddle; next to him sat Gabriel, and even from so far away and with so much metal between them, she could tell that he was rigid with terror.
He’s practised for this, Gwen thought fiercely. He might not like to do it, but he’s not a bad swordsman – he’ll have an awful time, and then he’ll come home to tell me all about it.
She wasn’t worried about her father. This is what he had been born to do. He was enormous, immoveable, completely unstoppable; he would cut through their line like they were butter and return with a hundred dramatic tales to tell.
‘They haven’t started, have they,’ Gwen’s mother said, in a voice that affected calm but had a tell-tale shake in the delivery. It sounded as if she were talking about a game at the tournament, not a real battle, and it made Gwen feel like she was going mad.
‘No,’ she said, fingers tightening against the brickwork, feeling it crumble slightly beneath her hands and hoping it wasn’t an ill omen. She was feverishly hot all over, and her lungs felt shrunken and useless. There was nowhere to go; nothing to do but to watch and feel every second of this dread. The enemy troops were too far away for her to make them out individually, but she felt a sharp thrill of anger every time she imagined Arthur among their number.
No, Gwen thought, he won’t be fighting at all. Because deep down, under all that artifice and charm, he’s a coward, through and through.
‘Why haven’t they started?’ said the queen, sounding as if she were being personally inconvenienced by the delay, and Gwen sighed with barely concealed frustration.
‘I don’t know, Mother. I don’t know how it all works. I’ve never done this before. I don’t know if they’re expecting some sort of signal. Perhaps they’re waiting for trumpets. Perhaps they’ll all get bored of waiting and give up, and turn around and go home.’
‘Don’t be facetious,’ her mother snapped, and Gwen closed her eyes and took a deep breath so that she wouldn’t start screaming and never, ever stop.
When she was eleven, her father had gone to fight in a skirmish in the south-east. This had been no half-hearted grab for power, no tiny uprising quickly quelled with a firm hand and fresh promises of support and fealty; the boats had come from the south, and they had just kept on coming.
When her father told stories about it later, he had skipped over the most gruesome parts; he had told her only of the bravery of their men on the beaches, of the fact that by the time it was over, most of the boats that had intended to come to shore had simply turned and fled back across the Channel.
Later, a knight who’d had far too much wine at the victory feast had told her the parts she wasn’t supposed to hear; they had slaughtered so many men on that beach that the sand had been stained pink for miles. Her father had stood in the shallow, gentle surf, the salt-spray tangling his hair and beard, and killed and killed until the water around him was hot and red with blood.
From that moment onwards, she’d be looking at her father as he sat at the breakfast table, or read by the fire, or played games of chess with her on the covered balcony, and sometimes he had split in two; it was as if one of her eyes could see her kind, stern, weather-beaten father, and the other could see a man wild-eyed with murder, strong and deadly enough to change the colour of the very sea. She had never been able to reconcile the two images into one man.
Gwen knew why her mother didn’t want to watch, but it was the very reason she had to; she had to be sure that the second man still existed. Even if her father felt human, fallible, the king didn’t; the king would keep them all safe, and bring everybody home.
Lord Willard’s men seemed restless – Gwen could see a single horseman riding along the back of their lines, presumably bringing a message. They had lost the advantage of the surprise attack, perhaps underestimated how many guards there would be at the tournament, or how many of the spectators would fight back rather than flee; many of them were her father’s men, and had sworn fealty to him just the same as any knight or lord of the realm, and they had helped to beat back the intruders with whatever they had to hand.
‘It’s starting,’ the queen said quietly. Gwen flinched. She hadn’t noticed her mother coming to stand by her elbow.
‘How do you know?’ Gwen whispered.
‘You can feel it,’ her mother said. ‘Look.’
A single rider from the front line of Willard’s men had broken rank to do something very odd. He had removed his helm, let it drop on to the grass, and inexplicably seemed to be wrestling one of the banners away from the standard-bearers.
‘What could possibly be the point of that?’ Gwen said. The man had succeeded in his task just as others approached to intercede, and he immediately urged his white horse forward, breaking away from the line as he picked up speed and rode alone towards Camelot. Another horseman had tried to follow, but somebody else seemed to grab the reins to pull him back; they were tussling together as the would-be follower attempted to free himself.
‘I don’t know,’ the queen said. ‘Perhaps it’s some sort of … trick? A distraction?’
Gwen didn’t see how it could possibly be a trick, but it was certainly distracting; nobody else was moving, from her father’s side or from Lord Willard’s. They were all watching the solitary rider as he cantered across the field, the banner streaming through the air above him.
‘He has no chance at all,’ Gwen’s mother said scornfully. Gwen had to agree. He was alone out there, completely unprotected; whatever he was trying to do, it was suicide.
Just as the rider reached the midpoint between the two makeshift armies, he did something even more peculiar. He raised up the banner – his arms seemed to be shaking, the flag listing in the air as he tried to hold it aloft – and then threw it dramatically to the ground in front of him, where it was immediately trampled into the black mud under the hoofs of his horse.
‘Oh God,’ Gwen said, as the figure drew closer, still riding with singular purpose towards the hostile front lines.
‘It’s all right,’ her mother said, touching her arm. ‘Look. The archers will have him down.’
‘No,’ Gwen said, leaning so far over the parapet that she was in danger of tumbling to her death. ‘No, Mother, I think … Jesus Christ, I think that’s Arthur.’
The rider, whose badly shorn dark hair became visible as he put his head down and made straight for Gabriel, never had a chance.
She saw her brother turn to her father, heard him shout something, but the king had already given the signal. Gwen couldn’t tell which of the three arrows found their mark, but the horse startled – the reins were pulled from his grip – and Arthur fell down into the dark, unforgiving ground.