Arthur had thought the guards might stop him; they certainly looked suspicious as he strode through the servants’ door with Gwendoline trailing reluctantly behind him, but she must have given them some imperceptible signal to fall back, because they didn’t follow him or try to slap him soundly for daring to be alone with the princess. If they had considered the possibility that he might be leading her off to impugn her virtue, they didn’t seem too bothered – perhaps they thought her virtue was in need of a little light impugning.
He located the door to the cellar and opened it with a flourish.
‘What’s this?’ Gwen said with disgust, as he took a lit torch from the wall and started down the steps into the darkness.
‘What do you mean, “What’s this”? You live here, don’t you?’
‘I don’t make a habit,’ Gwendoline said, stumbling on the stairs as she hurried to keep up, ‘of opening mystery doors and walking into dark tunnels with unreliable men.’
‘You should give it a try, it might loosen you up a bit,’ Arthur said as they reached the bottom. ‘Anyway, this isn’t a mystery door. It’s the wine cellar. Please tell me you knew about the wine cellar.’ The glow from the torch illuminated rows and rows of enormous barrels, stretching on into the gloom. It smelt like aged oak and dust and alcohol, which was somewhat calming to Arthur’s nerves.
‘Why would I?’ said Gwendoline, scowling. She had to stand quite close to him to stay within the torchlight, and she was clearly unhappy about it.
‘It’s where the wine lives,’ Arthur said incredulously.
‘Oh, well, silly me,’ Gwendoline replied, wrapping her arms around herself and looking uncertainly around at the room. ‘I don’t drink. Can you hurry up and say whatever it is you want to say? It’s cold down here.’
Arthur leaned back against a barrel with practised nonchalance and considered her for a moment. She always looked pinched and irritated, but right now her face actually seemed in danger of collapsing in on itself.
‘Let’s just agree to be straight with each other,’ he said slowly. ‘Can you manage that?’
‘What do you mean?’ Gwendoline said, clearly knowing exactly what he meant.
‘You were lurking behind that wall—’
‘I wasn’t lurking.’
‘Okay, fine, you were reclining gracefully – with poise and dignity, as befits your noble house – behind that wall, spying on that woman.’
‘I was – taking some air,’ Gwendoline said too quickly, ‘and she just so happened—’
‘What is she? Lady’s maid? Scullion? Laundress?’
‘She’s a knight, actually,’ Gwendoline snapped, bristling. ‘Lady Bridget Leclair.’
Arthur bit back a laugh at her furious expression. ‘Great name.’
Gwen put a hand to her forehead and closed her eyes. She seemed to be thinking painfully hard; her effort was palpable. When she opened them again, she fixed Arthur with an extremely icy stare.
‘Whatever you believe you saw,’ she said, choosing her words carefully, ‘I saw something at least ten times as … interesting. So I wouldn’t be throwing accusations around here. If I were you.’
‘I’m not accusing you of anything, you despotic little psychopath,’ said Arthur. ‘You know something about me, and I believe I know something – different in the superficial details, but actually rather similar – about you. It would be in both of our interests for that information to stay private.’
‘If I told my father what I saw …’
‘I’d tell him I saw you lusting after Lady Bridget. Although – I might embellish it. Add a few sordid details.’
‘He wouldn’t believe you,’ Gwendoline scoffed, but she was tugging nervously at her sleeve.
‘He’d believe me enough to keep her away from you,’ Arthur said, with a certainty he didn’t really possess. ‘And I think he’d believe me enough to keep an extremely close eye on you from now on.’
‘Even if you had seen what you’ve dreamed up in your head – which you didn’t – not all of us are stupid enough to go running around making our – our private feelings public, by putting our hands all over Mark from the dog-house—’
‘Well, more’s the pity for you,’ said Arthur. ‘And his name is Mitchell.’
‘Is it?’
‘Er … I think so.’
‘Good God, Arthur. Go to bed. We’ll talk about this tomorrow,’ Gwendoline said. She snatched the torch from him and headed for the stairs, taking careful and deliberate steps that somewhat impeded her flouncing. He didn’t move as he was swallowed by the shadows.
‘I’m not sure you’re in any position to be giving orders right now, Gwendoline.’
She turned at the door, her face illuminated in the flickering torchlight, looking at him with utter disdain. ‘You can address me as your highness.’
‘My apologies, your fucking highness,’ Arthur called after her, but the door had already slammed shut – he was shouting into an empty room.
It was quite early in the summer for things to have gone so spectacularly wrong. The situation required quick thinking; usually it was Arthur’s forte, but he had used wine as a crutch this evening, and his deductive reasoning skills had taken a hit.
‘You’re screwed,’ Sidney said, as he watched Arthur pace around their quarters like a caged and tipsy hound.
‘Helpful,’ Arthur said, scrubbing a hand across his face. ‘Here’s the thing. This – this is the thing. If I had one tiny nibble of real, tangible dirt on her, one salacious little crumb, I’d be laughing. But she’s so dull. She’s just so, so dull. If she has been up to anything untoward, then the only person who’ll know is her brother, and he was always her horrible sidekick when we were children.’
‘So she wouldn’t tell … I dunno, a friend?’
‘What friends?’ Arthur said meaningfully.
Sidney scratched his neck and looked thoughtful. ‘Not one measly friend? No princess clique she has round for sleepovers? Not even a pen pal?’
‘No,’ said Arthur. ‘The only person she ever wrote to while I was here was … Oh, hold on. Hold on a bloody second. I’ve got it. You’re a genius.’
‘I know,’ said Sidney. ‘Why?’
‘Come on,’ said Arthur, feeling freshly renewed with the vigour of somebody who might soon be holding priceless blackmail material. ‘Put on your worst trousers. Oh – never mind, you’re already wearing them. We’re going digging.’
The next morning dawned irritatingly clear and sunny. Arthur hadn’t managed much in the way of sleep, and the dazzling weather felt personal. A note had been brought to his chamber door and then read aloud to him by Sidney, requesting that he meet Gwen in the orchard with all possible discretion and haste.
‘Very nice-looking girl delivered it,’ Sidney said, cramming a sugared bun into his mouth as he did. ‘Think I might be in love.’ Arthur just biffed him feebly on the arm and demanded a bun of his own.
When they reached the gate to the orchard, which was walled on all sides, Arthur turned to Sidney with an expression of deepest agony.
‘Christ, Art, it’s a sixteen-year-old girl, not an hour on the rack,’ said Sidney, rather unsympathetically.
‘She’s seventeen. And I’d take the torture in a heartbeat,’ said Arthur, but he squared his shoulders bravely anyway and went inside. The orchard was large and regimented, neat rows of trees shedding swirling clouds of blossom every time the breeze picked up. Gwendoline was walking slowly down the middle row towards him with a short, delicate brunette woman, presumably the one Sidney had taken a shine to; she was quickly dismissed, and as she walked past him with her head bowed he flashed her a smile and saw her go satisfyingly pink.
‘What’s her name?’ he said when he reached the princess.
‘What?’ She was wearing sky-blue today, her hair pulled back into an intricate braid across the top of her head that looked, if you were slightly hungover and squinting, like a crown. He wondered if that’s why she was always so tetchy; too much strain on her scalp.
‘Her. Brown hair. Grey dress. Nice little hands.’
‘What the hell were you looking at her hands for?’
‘I take an interest in people,’ said Arthur, noticing that quite a lot of blossom had already landed in his hair and attempting to dislodge it.
‘I bet you do,’ Gwendoline said gravely.
‘Oh, yes, very good, I’m a pervert and a criminal because I looked at a person’s hands,’ Arthur snapped. ‘Shall we walk? While we talk? You did ask me here because you wanted to talk, didn’t you?’
‘Fine,’ said Gwendoline, as if walking were beneath her, despite the fact that she had just been doing it quite willingly. They started awkwardly down the row, as far apart as they could be from each other without either of them actually walking into a tree. ‘I don’t see any logical reason why I wouldn’t tell my father what I saw last night. Whatever you try to tell him about me, he won’t believe you. And then the engagement will be off, and we can put this whole thing to bed.’
‘Right,’ Arthur said, dread bitter on his tongue. ‘Well. I don’t suppose I could appeal to your sense of humanity, instead?’
‘Oh, come on, Arthur. He won’t necessarily tell your father why. Then we’re both out of this mess, and free to part ways and never meet again …’
She was still talking, but Arthur wasn’t listening. He knew with absolute certainty that it didn’t matter one jot what reason Gwendoline’s father did or didn’t give for breaking the betrothal. His father would … well, Arthur couldn’t begin to imagine what he’d do. As he had quite a vivid imagination, this was more than a little concerning.
‘I thought you might say that,’ he said, despite having no idea whatsoever what she’d just said. He fought to keep his voice steady. ‘So I had a little think last night. And then I went for a little walk.’
‘A little think and a little walk?’ Gwendoline said. ‘What on earth are you—’
Arthur presented his evidence with a flourish. The flourish was probably unnecessary, but gratifying nonetheless. Gwen flushed an interesting beetroot colour, and stopped walking.
‘But – you – how did you—’
Arthur cleared his throat and opened the cracked leather binding with a reverence befitting the occasion. His prize had, after all, been quite hard-won. There had been absolutely no way to know for certain that the damned thing would still be there, after all these years, and they’d had to dig under quite a few trees before they’d found the right one.
‘Dear diary,’ he began to read. ‘There is a new squire at the tourney. She is strong and brave, and she has black hair and brown eyes. I think she’s very beautiful. They say she is an only child, and that her father saw no reason not to treat her as he would a son. Her name is Bridget Leclair and she is actually a Lady but she wants to be a knight – Christ, didn’t anybody ever teach you that you’re supposed to show, not tell? – so she has been travelling the country attending tourneys all year. I don’t know why but I would like to kiss her.’ Arthur stopped then, not because he had run out of steam, but because Gwen had lunged for the diary and necessitated his taking a very quick step backwards.
‘I didn’t …’ she said, still an alarming shade of purple. ‘You can’t—’
‘Well, that’s just the thing, isn’t it?’ Arthur said smoothly, tucking the diary into his trousers where he was relatively sure she wouldn’t follow. ‘I don’t want to, but I can. And I’ve already torn out some particularly damning entries from that summer and given them to Sidney for safekeeping.’
It had been like striking gold. He had been fully prepared to discover that she had long ago burned it, or to find page after page of utter banality – and there had been plenty of that – but then, dated three years ago, just before Gwendoline’s fifteenth birthday and the last summer she had put pen to parchment, there it all was in embarrassingly neat script.
‘Don’t do this,’ Gwendoline said, finally finding her words.
‘I won’t if you won’t.’
There was a very long silence, during which Arthur wondered if he may have miscalculated.
‘Fine,’ she said eventually. His shoulders sagged with relief before he remembered he was trying to give the impression that he was the one driving this carriage.
‘Good. That’s what I thought.’ He started walking again, and after a pause Gwendoline followed. ‘There’s no need for this to get nasty. And, as a show of good faith, what if we agreed to … to help each other out? In this regard.’
‘In what regard?’ Gwendoline said, her voice still tight with anger.
‘You know. Look out for each other. Or – not, as the case may be. I’ll turn a blind eye to whatever you might get up to, and you do the same for me.’
‘I don’t get up to anything,’ Gwendoline said, bristling.
‘Well, that much is painfully clear,’ Arthur said, raising an eyebrow at her. ‘But if you did ever loosen your skirts for a night out on the town, I’d – I don’t know – cover for you, if you’d do the same for me.’
‘I don’t need you to cover for me,’ she snarled, but then she thought for a few seconds and seemed to reconsider. ‘There is … My mother and father want this match to work. If we were to give them the impression that things are going well between us, it could make my life a lot easier. I’d be left alone.’
‘So we just – pretend to get on?’ Arthur said doubtfully. He supposed it wasn’t actually much to ask, but as he couldn’t look at her scowling face without wanting to flick it, it felt monumental.
‘Yes. We pretend their grand plan is working, we are – pleasant to one another. It’s classic misdirection.’
‘My father will be ecstatic.’
‘As will mine,’ Gwendoline said gloomily.
‘And what happens when they say, “Right, they’re clearly not going to kill each other if left in the same room alone, let’s celebrate by setting a date for the wedding”?’
‘I don’t know. We get married, I suppose.’
‘Brilliant,’ said Arthur. ‘Glad this all has a happy ending. If we’re lucky, some insurgents will rise up and kill us all in our beds before we have to say “I do”.’
‘Don’t give me hope,’ said Gwendoline. ‘It’ll only make reality all the more crushing.’
Arthur looked at her. She was staring listlessly up into the branches of an apple tree, looking almost as miserable as he felt.
‘It’s a deal then,’ he said, keen to conclude the conversation as quickly as possible so that he could achieve his dream of being imminently horizontal.
‘Yes – with some caveats. You can’t get caught with … people. It’ll undermine the whole thing. You can’t do anything to embarrass me. If you must go out, try to be … I don’t know, discreet.’ She looked at him doubtfully, as if thinking that he’d never once been discreet in his entire life. ‘You can’t tell anyone. And we have to make it believable.’
‘I have to tell Sidney,’ Arthur said quickly. ‘He’s going to know something’s up anyway, if we start batting our eyelashes at each other.’
‘Yes. Well. I suppose … Gabriel will have to know at least part of it. I don’t think I can trust Agnes, even if I swore her to secrecy—’
‘Aha. Agnes. That’s her name. The brunette.’
‘Take this seriously, Arthur.’
‘Fine,’ he said curtly. ‘We should pretend we’re meeting in secret. Like we can’t stay away from each other. But we should do a bad job of it, so word gets out. Quick and effective, and it means we don’t actually have to spend much time together.’
‘Fine. But the first events of the tournament start next week, and we ought to be seen there. Let’s lay the groundwork then.’ Gwendoline glanced over at the gate and Arthur followed her gaze; Sidney was clearly visible through it, talking to Agnes. She was holding a sugared bun and looking delighted.
‘You can go,’ said Gwendoline.
Furious that she felt she had the authority to dismiss him, Arthur half wanted to stay just to spite her – but his head was pounding, the sun was too bright, and he really fancied a bun.
‘Whatever,’ he snarled, turning on his heel and stalking away, worried that his magnificent display of anger may have been slightly undermined by the shower of petals that fell from his shoulders as he went.