Upon waking, Arthur immediately knew that it was going to be another Very Bad Day. Sometimes the bad days came out of nowhere, hitting him with the force of a battering ram halfway through some inane morning task, and sometimes they were easily predicted. A night of drinking, for example, usually precipitated an extremely gloomy morning, punctuated by roiling nausea and waves of self-hatred that left him dour and sullen and utterly useless to absolutely everybody, himself included. Since all that had happened last summer, his lowest lows had somehow intensified, as if he’d unlocked the door to new realms of misery.
Arthur hadn’t gone to meet Gwendoline for the joust earlier in the week – he’d awoken late that morning and not bothered to mark the time, as he had absolutely no intention of being friendly or useful – and had instead spent the rest of the day in bed. And most of the day after. He’d received an extremely snippy note the next morning, delivered to Sidney by a blushing Agnes, but no amount of blackmail could make him a convincing suitor when he was feeling so dire.
Eventually he had decided that the best solution would be to open another bottle of wine, and he and Sidney had stayed up late the previous evening playing cards until Arthur couldn’t distinguish a queen of hearts from a six of clubs. Sidney had left some food this morning, but the sight of fruit and cheese turned Arthur’s stomach; he wanted lovely, reliable bread, and Sidney had clearly already eaten through their supply. It was selfish, really; the man had an iron stomach, and Arthur’s was famously delicate.
He dreaded the idea of leaving the room, but he dreaded life without bread more; he reluctantly slunk from his chambers and made his way down to the kitchens, keeping his eyes firmly on the floor. He refused to acknowledge anybody at all until he had to attempt a smile to barter with the cook, who handed over half a loaf with a suspicious look as if he might be about to do some dark, yeasty ritual with it. He tore into it as he walked, leaving a trail of crumbs in his wake. He was almost at the stairs when he felt something small and insistent bump against his legs with purpose.
‘Hello, Lucifer,’ Arthur said, bending down to stroke him and receiving overenthusiastic headbutts in return. ‘I assume it was you who vomited next to the bed last night. Could have been me, I suppose, but I don’t remember eating anything with a rat’s head in it.’
‘Arthur?’ said a politely bemused voice from down the corridor; he glanced up to see Gabriel approaching, holding a stack of parchment and peering down at him. His curls were sticking up haphazardly, as if he’d been running his hand through them, and he had a smudge of ink on his chin. The general effect wasn’t particularly regal.
When the cat, suddenly neglected, gave a scandalised miaow, it occurred to Arthur that it probably wasn’t the done thing to play with grimy strays on the castle landing. ‘You needn’t look so horrified, Gabriel,’ he said, scratching the cat defiantly behind the ears. ‘I didn’t let the damn thing in. He’s been following me around for days making sad eyes at me – pitiful, really. I named him Lucifer.’
‘Right,’ said Gabriel. At the sound of his voice, Lucifer’s ears twitched; he ducked underneath Arthur’s hand and ran straight for the prince, rubbing himself against his boots and making little trilling sounds.
‘Well. Why did he do that?’ Arthur said, suddenly feeling ridiculous without a cat to stroke and straightening up from his squat.
‘Probably because he’s my cat,’ Gabriel said mildly, bending down to scratch him and losing half the stack of papers as he did so. ‘He’s called Merlin.’
‘Merlin?’ said Arthur, equal parts miffed that the cat had already been claimed and horrified that it had such an awful name. ‘Bet your Wizard loves that.’
‘I think he does, actually,’ Gabriel said, as the cat almost climbed up on to his shoulders in its attempts to get closer to him. The role of court Wizard was an ancient tradition reintroduced when Gabriel’s father took the throne, and was entirely ceremonial. While cultists believed wholeheartedly in real magic – the type that could turn back armies, transform people into birds and heal the sick – even they had to admit that nobody had exhibited that sort of power since the days of Merlin and Morgana (and that was if you believed the legends, which Arthur decidedly did not). As a result, the Wizard took on an informal spiritual and advisory role on the council, and was never asked to produce so much as a spark of true sorcery.
‘Little bit rough around the edges for a royal pet, don’t you think?’ Arthur said, watching Lucifer – he refused to call him Merlin – drop to the ground and then flop over so that he could writhe shamelessly around on his back.
‘He’s a free spirit,’ said Gabriel, more to the cat than to Arthur. ‘I found him when he was a kitten, looking rather lost, and he never really took to a life of leisure. Too wild, I suppose. You’re a man of action, aren’t you, Merlin? He scraps with father’s hounds all the time, and they’re about eight times his size. I just feed him and try to clean up his war wounds, when he lets me.’
This was without a doubt the most Arthur had ever heard Gabriel talk. It stood to reason that it was about a cat. Arthur scrubbed a hand across his face, and looked up to see Gabriel watching him.
‘Are you all right?’ he said, surprising Arthur again; the prince was looking at him closely, probably taking in his dark circles and the general air of despondence he wasn’t alive enough to disguise today. He was frowning again. Arthur would have frowned back, but his face hurt.
‘Not really,’ he said, which was also a surprise. This was why he shouldn’t have left his room; it was dangerous to be let loose like this, to be alarmingly honest to anybody who happened to stumble across his path and express a modicum of interest. He had a reputation to uphold, after all.
‘You look … tired,’ Gabriel ventured.
‘So do you,’ said Arthur.
It was true, but it was almost his default state. Gabriel had always been a serious, quiet child – Gwen was the only one Arthur had ever seen get a smile out of him – and it didn’t seem like much had changed.
‘Well. I’m expected at the … My family is attending the tournament again today,’ Gabriel said slowly. ‘I know Gwen has asked you to join her.’
Arthur felt immediately rankled by the suggestion that he had been summoned, and should therefore obey. ‘I did receive that invitation. Many invitations, in fact, each more colourfully worded than the last. I actually thought that instead I might go and find a man with strong arms – you know, blacksmith, window cleaner – and ask him to hold me down in the moat until dead.’
Gabriel looked taken aback, and somewhere very deep down Arthur felt a little guilty. He put a stop to this at once. He and Gwen may have made a deal, but he was no royal lapdog; they were supposed to be equals in this arrangement, if nothing else, and he wouldn’t come running on her every whim.
‘Fine,’ said Gabriel, starting away down the corridor. The cat attempted to follow; he glanced down at it, then back at Arthur, and said, ‘Stay here, Merlin.’ Incredibly, the cat stopped abruptly and sat down, tail twitching. They both watched as Gabriel disappeared out of sight.
‘Uh-oh.’ Arthur turned to see that Sidney had finally caught up to him; he was watching Gabriel walk away, with his arms folded and one eyebrow raised. ‘I know that look.’
‘What look? There isn’t a look,’ Arthur snapped. He strode over to the cat and picked it up, ignoring its startled little yowl.
‘He’s not bad-looking,’ Sidney observed as they walked together by unspoken agreement back in the direction of their chambers. ‘And I mean, you love a terrible idea. This one could be your worst yet.’
Arthur chose to ignore him.
They returned to their rooms and Arthur slept soundly all afternoon with Lucifer curled up on the pillow next to him, purring madly and digging his claws into Arthur’s scalp whenever the mood took him. When Arthur finally opened his eyes, Sidney’s face was inches away from his.
‘Is this a seduction?’ Arthur croaked. ‘Because your breath smells like onions.’
‘Believe me, you’d know if it was a seduction,’ said Sidney, putting a bit of space between them. ‘You wouldn’t be able to miss it. You’d be like, Christ, what a seduction I’m having right now.’
‘Lovely,’ Arthur said dully.
‘Was just checking that you’re still breathing.’
‘I regret to inform you: yes,’ said Arthur.
‘Do you want to come out tonight, or do you want to mope?’
Arthur considered. ‘Mope.’
‘I don’t suppose there’s much point asking what’s wrong?’
Arthur sat up on his elbows and sighed. ‘It’s sort of general and specific at the same time. Life, the world, existential despair; my father, my blushing-bride-to-be, her father. It’s all extraordinarily boring, Sid. I’m exhausted listening to myself talk about it.’
‘Well, I think you should buck up,’ said Sidney, pulling his jacket on. ‘Living in a castle. Whole city of strapping young men to pine after. There are much worse things, Art. And you’ve got a cat.’
‘It’s not even my cat,’ Arthur called after Sidney as he left. Lucifer looked at him reproachfully, and Arthur tapped him gently on the nose. ‘I didn’t mean that.’
A few hours later, Arthur found himself quite bored with sulking; he paced circles around the room, drank some wine, trailed bootlaces across the floor for Lucifer, and then felt genuinely hurt when the cat eventually got bored too and screeched at the door to be let out. Once the door was open, Arthur thought he might as well put on his coat and see about catching up with Sidney.
He paused when he reached the staircase; the royal wing was just beyond it. Gwendoline’s notes had been getting increasingly crotchety in tone, and despite his reluctance, he could kill two birds with one stone if he exited the castle via her window. He half expected the guards to stop him when he reached them, but instead one of them gave his neighbour a just-perceptible smirk and then stood aside to let him through.
Arthur knocked on Gwendoline’s door, wondering for a moment if she might be elsewhere, but when Agnes admitted him he saw that the princess was sitting by the fire, reading. Her hair, normally braided up out of her face, was already undone for bed; it softened her somewhat, although she ruined the effect immediately by scowling at him.
‘Are you ever not … here?’ Arthur said, waving around at the room as he entered.
‘Are you ever where you’re supposed to be?’ Gwendoline countered, closing her book. ‘Agnes, give us the room please.’ Agnes left, rather reluctantly. ‘Thanks for not bothering to show up to the joust, Arthur. And for involving Lady Leclair again – does your selfishness know no bounds? You haven’t been at a single event, or replied to any of my notes. You’re a really fun person to fake a relationship with.’
‘Oh, shit,’ said Arthur thoughtfully. ‘I completely forgot about that. The Lady Leclair thing, I mean. Glad it went off as intended.’
‘Your sincere and heartfelt apology is noted,’ spat Gwendoline. ‘Why haven’t you been at dinner either? I haven’t seen you at all. Have you even been sleeping in this castle?’
‘Wouldn’t you like to know,’ Arthur said airily, despite the fact that he’d essentially only been sleeping.
‘This only works if you’re actually here, Arthur, and if we actually pretend it’s … You are so infuriating.’ Arthur shrugged in a way that he knew all too well was frustratingly insolent. ‘We had a deal, and instead you’re toying with me on purpose. Why don’t you care?’
Arthur was slightly taken aback by the emotion in her voice; she looked a little grey around the edges, as if she’d been expending more energy than she could afford to give.
‘All right,’ he said, sighing. ‘Fine. I’m here. I – I care.’
Gwendoline stared at him for a second, and then all the fight seemed to go out of her. ‘Sit down,’ she said heavily. Unable to muster the outrage required to disobey, Arthur did. He could feel her looking at him, so he kept his eyes fixed on the fire.
‘Why do you hate me?’ she said. This was startling enough to get him to lift his head.
‘Does it matter?’
‘Yes, it matters. I’d rather not spend my time with somebody who actively reviles me.’
‘What if I don’t want to tell you?’
‘Well,’ Gwendoline blustered. ‘You have to.’
‘And there it is,’ said Arthur, rolling his eyes. ‘Look – I don’t particularly enjoy being ordered around, insubordinate as that might make me.’
‘I don’t give orders,’ Gwendoline said quickly. ‘One of us has to act like an adult, Arthur—’
‘There is it again,’ said Arthur bitterly. ‘Can’t you hear yourself? As convenient an excuse as it would be to break off this engagement, you’re not my mother, Gwendoline.’
Gwendoline exhaled a quick huff of frustration. She drummed her fingers lightly on the arms of her chair, and then got to her feet and crossed the room to fetch a pitcher of something from her dresser and pour herself a small glass. Whatever it was smelt sharply of lemons – lemons and something slightly medicinal, like mint. She took a long drink, and then turned to lean against the dresser, eyeing Arthur thoughtfully.
‘I never met your mother,’ she said.
‘What? No, you – you did. You just wouldn’t remember.’ Arthur barely remembered, and he clung to the scraps that were there so fiercely that he worried he’d made them up in his desperation. Long, dark hair; the smell of incense burning in her rooms; kisses pressed to his head when he was half asleep; his father actually smiling, his mother dragging him out of his study so that the three of them could eat dinner together every night, Arthur’s legs not quite reaching the floor yet under the table. He’d been six when she died. Gwendoline must have been four.
That summer was utterly blank. He’d asked Mrs Ashworth about it once, and she’d said that he screamed so much and so continuously that his father had asked her to take him out of the house all day, every day, for weeks on end, returning only when he’d exhausted himself into silence.
‘Oh,’ said Gwendoline. ‘What was she like?’
‘She was … I don’t know, she was my mother,’ said Arthur. ‘She didn’t live long enough to be disappointed by me, so all I have are pleasant memories.’
Gwendoline sighed. She picked up the jug again and filled her glass to the brim. She hesitated, and then poured a second. When she went to hand it to him, Arthur eyed it with deep suspicion.
‘Oh for Christ’s sake, Arthur, I’m not trying to poison you. Just drink it, it won’t kill you,’ Gwendoline said crossly, sitting back down in her chair. ‘You were a nightmare every time you visited, you know. That’s why I didn’t like you, in case you’re even remotely interested. You were awful to me. And you took pleasure in it. You still do.’
‘You just make it so easy.’ Arthur sampled his glass. It wasn’t bad; sour, but infused with something gently sweet.
‘I was a child! I was younger than you, I looked up to you, and you just … I let you ride my new pony, and in return you put a toad in my bed.’
Arthur stared at her incredulously. ‘That’s not how it happened.’
‘Yes it is, I remember—’
‘You let me ride your pony as a display of your grand benevolence, and then you got angry and started stamping your little feet because you wanted it back, and I was having too much fun, and then – you ran and told my father that you didn’t like me, and that you’d never like me. That you wanted him to take me away.’ He stopped to take a sip of lemons. ‘My father didn’t take that particularly well.’
‘So you put a toad in my bed because your father scolded you?’
‘No, Gwendoline, I put a toad in your bed because my father told me I was useless to him if your parents ended our betrothal,’ Arthur said heatedly. ‘I put a toad in your bed because my father said that it was my sole purpose on this earth to unite our families and to make myself agreeable to you, and that if I couldn’t even manage that, I was even more of a waste of space than he’d previously imagined.’
‘What?’ said Gwendoline sharply. ‘No he didn’t. You were nine.’
‘Oddly enough, I remember it distinctly – although he probably doesn’t; he was drinking quite heavily by that point. Anyway, I didn’t particularly enjoy that little chat.’
‘Hence the toad,’ Gwendoline said quietly.
‘Hence the fucking toad.’
They sat in silence for a while, broken only by the sound of Arthur putting his glass back on the table. He ran a thumb round the rim of it, pressing a little too hard. He felt raw and exposed – he wanted to gather up everything he’d just said and push it back inside himself, not leaving anything for Gwen to hold on to or against him.
‘I didn’t know,’ she said eventually.
‘This is shaping up to be the worst hangover I’ve ever had,’ he said irritably. ‘Just so you know, that’s the only reason I haven’t already jumped head-first out of the window rather than continue this. I’m compromised.’
‘You drink too much.’
‘Yes, and to that point, the sky is blue.’
‘Don’t you care?’
Arthur pressed his thumb and forefinger against his eyelids, distantly hoping that he might push his eyeballs into his brain and put an abrupt and bloody end to this conversation. ‘What else would you recommend?’
‘I’m not sure,’ Gwen said. She glanced over at the window. ‘Are you going out?’
‘Yes,’ snapped Arthur. ‘No. I don’t know.’
‘Very illuminating,’ said Gwen. ‘You really don’t have to let every single thing I say put your back up.’
‘Pots, kettles.’
‘God, can’t we – can we just call a truce? For, I don’t know, five minutes?’ Gwen said. Finally too tired to argue, Arthur just shrugged. He regretted ever entering this room, but he was quite committed to this armchair, and Gwen was pouring him another glass of lemon water.
‘Where do you go? When you go … out?’
‘Oh, you know. Dens of ill repute. Gambling houses. Unregulated cockfights.’ Gwen just looked at him over the rim of her glass. ‘I don’t know, usually … inns, taverns. The gutters outside inns and taverns. So far, Sidney is very disappointed by what your fine city has to offer – did you know that you’ve got two drinking establishments called The Round Table? They’re only ten minutes apart.’
‘No, I didn’t,’ said Gwen. ‘I don’t really go into the city. It doesn’t surprise me though. I have four cousins named Lancelot. Two Percivals. Court is rife with noble ladies called Morgan, or Morgana.’
‘No Mordreds?’ Arthur said, and Gwen snorted.
‘Shame. He always seemed the more interesting of my ancestors. They do love to gloss over all the sticky parts though, don’t they? What’s a little incest, between family.’
‘It doesn’t bother you, then? To think about … where you came from?’
Arthur laughed drily. ‘Er, no. If you go back a few hundred years, I’m afraid everybody was shagging their brother. It was weird if you didn’t shag your brother. Don’t make that face, nobody’s asking you to do it now, although as brothers go—’
‘Arthur.’
‘I’m just endlessly thankful that my family ran out of attractive siblings and first cousins and branched out to other kingdoms. You probably weren’t so lucky.’
‘Well, Father wasn’t a blood heir to the throne,’ Gwen said, shrugging. ‘Just related by marriage. Our line is Norman too, of course, like the old king’s, but you can keep your inbreeding jokes – they don’t hold water.’
Arthur sighed. He was fond of those jokes. ‘I’ve never understood why he dragged court to Camelot, when he has absolutely no ties to the place and it’s practically demolishing itself.’
Gwen wrinkled her nose at him. ‘Do you pay any attention to what’s happening in this country?’
‘Not if I can help it.’
‘When Father took the throne, the people had just united behind him – your family included – to avoid the risk of becoming West Norway. But once that threat had passed, people stopped feeling quite so cuddly. The rift that Lord Willard had wanted to leverage to take the throne himself – the growing divide between Catholics and Arthurian cultists – was still there. Willard himself has long quietened down and made peace with my father, but the cultists are still unhappy.’
‘So he dragged everybody to Camelot as a peace offering?’
‘Well. Yes. He’s trying to heal the divide. Make an England for everybody. There are lots of cultists on his staff, you know. Lord Stafford, for one. And of course we have a Wizard, Master Buchanan, which my mother thinks is completely ridiculous.’
Arthur laughed. ‘It is ridiculous.’
‘Your father is a cultist!’
‘Yes. And my mother was Muslim, and your father is Catholic.’
Gwen finally seemed to notice that her glass was empty, and went for the jug again. ‘What’s your point?’
‘That spiritually, our cup overfloweth,’ said Arthur. ‘Although my actual cup is quite empty.’ Gwen rolled her eyes, but filled it for him anyway. ‘My point is that I don’t have to believe in what my father does. I don’t know if I believe in anything in particular.’
‘I’m Catholic,’ Gwen said automatically. ‘I mean – I don’t go to mass any more, really. Father can hardly kick off about it when he’s trying to encourage freedom of religion. And I stopped praying when …’ She trailed off, looking suddenly embarrassed.
‘When?’
Gwen wasn’t looking at him; she was picking at her nails instead, half of her lip caught between her teeth, as if she were attempting to devour and unravel herself in the least efficient ways possible.
‘I used to pray for all the usual things. For my family’s health, for the kingdom. And then one day I realised I’d been slipping other things in there too. Things I wanted for myself. Things I knew I could never have. And it got too … painful, I suppose, to keep asking and asking, knowing it was futile. And the things I wanted started to feel … wrong. So I stopped.’
Arthur was trying very hard not to pity her, but it was difficult when she was currently embodying the Platonic ideal of pitiful. ‘I wouldn’t say it’s wrong to develop a crush on a dashing, lusty young knight of the realm. I’d say it’s entirely normal.’
‘Well, of course you would,’ Gwen snapped. She closed her eyes and pushed her hair out of her face. ‘Sorry. I don’t really know how to talk about any of this. I haven’t before. I’m not like you, Arthur. You do what you like, and kiss who you like, and damn the consequences—’
‘I am living with the consequences right now,’ Arthur said bitterly. ‘I am drinking juice with the consequences.’ His goodwill towards her was rapidly evaporating.
‘How do you do it?’ Gwen said. She was looking at him like he was some sort of patron saint of same-sex kissing, and he relented and shrugged.
‘Nobody else is ever going to care as much as you do about the things that you want, Gwendoline. So it’s up to you – you can put them aside forever, if you can live with that, or you can put on your big-girl girdle and demand more for yourself.’
Gwen looked deflated, as if this were not the answer she had been after. ‘I don’t think I can.’
Arthur grimaced at her and then abruptly stood up, scraping his chair back and stretching. ‘Well. This has been depressing enough to make me feel heaps better about my own life, so for that, I thank you.’
‘Oh – so you are going out?’ Gwen asked, looking startled. It was disquieting to have managed civility for so long that she didn’t look immediately thrilled at the prospect of him leaving. It made much more sense to him when he and Gwen actively loathed each other; this had felt dangerously close to a real conversation.
‘No. I’m going back to my rooms. I’m tired, and I’m ill-tempered, and besides – my cat needs me.’
‘What cat? You don’t have a cat.’ He ignored her, giving her a half-hearted wave of his hand on his way to the door. ‘Arthur. What cat?’