‘Long enough for people to worry for your health,’ he says, then adds, ‘They’ve rung Sext. They’ll be long done with the psalms by now.’
Some way past noon, then. You run your hands over your face and sit upright. ‘I am quite well,’ you say, swallowing the profanity that comes more easily to your lips. ‘Only fatigued by yesterday’s hunt.’
‘Ah, yes. The hunt. No luck, I suppose?’
‘No wolves, if that can be called poor luck.’ You narrow your eyes at him: ‘You didn’t come here merely to wake me.’
‘No,’ he agrees. ‘I came to give you this.’ He hands you a slim volume, newly bound between wooden boards. The binding is simple, little ornamented but for the corner pieces and the bronze clasp that fastens the codex.
You glance up at him, but his expression gives nothing away. Uncertainly, you open the book, and see his familiar clear script in crisp black ink, initials marked out in red.
‘It’s the lais,’ he says, unnecessarily, for you can see that clearly enough. ‘It was always intended as a gift. I’d meant to include another of the romances with it, but in the end I didn’t have the time.’
Time. But there should have been no deadline for this collection of stories, this frivolous, precious book. No patron commissioned it and no business rests on its completion.
You hold the small codex in your hands and you say, ‘You’re leaving.’ He cannot leave. Not when you are so alone, and need him more than ever.
He offers a small smile. ‘I should have known you’d guess. Yes, I’m leaving.’
Your vision blurs. You close the book hastily. ‘Where are you going?’
‘A pilgrimage of sorts. It’s past time I saw my homeland again. I was travelling overmany years before we met, longer than I’d planned, and I cannot stay away forever. It was kind of you to grant me a place here, but my home is calling me.’
Home. Across the sea, to the land that taught him his storyteller’s tongue and gave his precise, pointed script those quirks that so irritate your seneschal. Back to the lies that shroud his past. ‘Forever?’ you say, sounding like a child. ‘That is, do you plan, at all, to return?’
‘That depends what I find on my arrival,’ he says. His smile is sad. ‘I’m sorry. I mislike to leave you, and after only a handful of months at your court. I have greatly valued your friendship and confidences, as I have done since we met. But I must attend to a higher duty.’
You don’t want him to go. Impulsively, you reach out, snatch at him, clinging to his wrist. ‘When?’ you demand. ‘When are you leaving?’
‘As soon as my effects are in order. I have made arrangements with your seneschal. He, at least, didn’t seem sorry to see the back of me.’
For once, you cannot laugh at his joke. ‘But I could – I could forbid you to go. I am your king.’
‘You could try,’ he says. ‘But you may find that I am not so tractable. I’ve never truly been sworn to your service, sire, and there are greater loyalties imposed on me. I must obey those calls as much as yours.’
They are all slipping away from you, water through yourfingers. Soon you will have nothing left. Your voice cracks: ‘Please don’t leave me.’
He frees his wrist from your grasp, but doesn’t let go of your hands. ‘You’ll have your pick of scribes,’ he says, ‘if you continue to feast with storytellers and praise the tongues of poets, but there is one among the chaplain’s clerks with a mind for stories and a heart for secrets. You would do well to call on him, and he’s local enough that his hand will cause the seneschal fewer headaches than mine. He hasn’t my experience with binding, but—’
‘Forget the books,’ you say. ‘Forget the records. It’s you I’ll miss.’
‘For a little while,’ he says. ‘And then you’ll move on.’ He kisses the inside of your wrist, trailing his lips up towards the soft crease of your elbow. ‘You have friends at this court, my lord, though difficult it may be for you to see them. They will be faithful to you if you give them the chance to show it.’
But their unflinching service and wholehearted fealty is nothing compared to his wry smile, his irreverent wit, his commentary on all the absurdities of the court. Their memories of your youth cannot compete with shared exile and the fragile thread of continuity that helps you understand your place in this world. They were not there for you when you were half-formed and abandoned, seeking friends in a hostile land.
‘Please,’ you say again, but like a priest he kisses your forehead in benediction and offers only an uncomforting promise: ‘You won’t be lonely forever.’
But you’re lonelier now than you thought possible.
You allow him to say his farewell, but his fingers against your skin sting with the thorns of parting, and it robs his kisses of their sweetness. You would hold him, tangled with you, unable to free himself without permission; you would keep him beneathyou for as long as it might take to persuade him to stay. You cannot lose him now, when you are so alone, when you have no one else to confide in.
You find yourself crying. He kisses the tears from the corners of your eyes and when his mouth meets yours again his lips are salt with them. ‘Don’t weep,’ he tells you, but it’s a useless command, one you can’t obey. ‘You don’t need me.’
But you do.
‘I could forbid you to go,’ you say again. ‘I could have you bound in irons. I could have every ship in every harbour turn you away. I could have you dragged back over the borders every time you tried to cross them.’
‘You could,’ he agrees.
