Wren tucked his forged letter back into his waistcoat pocket. Mr Grigsby hadn’t even asked to see it.
~
Wren almost didn’t recognize the tourney field.
The sea of dead grey grass limned with frost had transformed and rejuvenated into a verdant meadow of lush new growth. Fragrant clusters of common yarrow scattered across the deep green field like foam capping waves in the open sea, interspersed with golden buttercups and cowslip, the powder-blue harebell, the pale pink of ladies’ smock, and flowing purple heather. A multitude of bowers had sprung up since midwinter with trellises bedecked with honeysuckle and apple blossoms woven through willow lattice. Their sweet perfume wafted over the whole field and, for Wren, mingled with the vanilla wood-smoke musk of Shrike beside him.
Still more blooms adorned the fae who wandered between the bowers. Tiny white bells of lily-of-the-valley tucked behind pointed ears, the fluttering petals of blue aquilegia braided through the hair to match the wings of the wearer, and woven bands of purple foxglove encircled the delicate wrists of one who bore a tufted tail. The folk of the Court of the Silver Wheel, as they gathered in trios and pairs and occasional clusters, reminded Wren more and more of the fashionabletonof London strolling through Hyde Park by day, as much to be seen as to see.
The fae, however, did not content themselves with mere flirtation of glances and pouts. Ungloved hands clasped ungloved hands, arms twined ‘round bare shoulders, and lips drank as deeply of kisses as they did of wine.
At least, Wren assumed it was wine, for it had the right colour and smelled of elderberries when a passing couple offered their shared goblet up to Wren and Shrike. Shrike glanced to Wren to seek his opinion before he declined with a silent shake of his head.
The revellers simply shrugged and moved on to one of the many bowers. This offered some privacy from prying eyes, though, when Wren considered the multitude of fae engaged in carnal relations in the open field, he concluded the fae did not believe privacy an absolute necessity for those pursuits.
And rising above it all stood the proud maypole.
Of course, Wren didn’t suppose the fae called it that. But its ribbons and garlands would not have appeared out of place at a mortal village fête. The folk dancing around it might have turned a few heads, with their pointed ears and fluttering wings and gently curving horns, but the pole itself, even topped by a moon-like hoop strung with myrtle and lily-of-the-valley, seemed familiar nonetheless.
The only aspect that remained of the tourney field Wren had known was the tower of intertwined hemlock trees at the far end of the clearing with the ring of knights standing guard at its base and a balcony of branches growing out of the top where Wren could just barely glimpse the vague outline of a golden-haired figure.
And when he turned to his companion, he found Shrike’s gaze likewise fixed on that same figure, with narrowed eyes and his jaw set in a hard line.
“Well!” said Wren, gazing over the field once more. “It seems the rite of Ostara bore fruit.”
Shrike shot him a startled glance. Then his low rumbling laugh overtook him and Wren rejoiced to see his slight and handsome smile return.
Wren took full advantage of this to add, “Shall we not reap the fruits of this harvest?”
Shrike quirked his brow in a manner which told Wren he could not mistake his meaning. His smile likewise turned coy.
With fingers yet entwined, Wren led Shrike to a particular bower.
The bower Wren chose had white stars of flowering myrtle woven together with love-in-idleness. It was the love-in-idleness which struck him, much like how Cupid’s arrow had struck the blooms and turned them “purple with love’s wound,” according to the Bard’s legend. The Beltane celebrants had already reminded Wren of those affected by the love potion inA Midsummer Night’s Dream. To see amongst them the myrtle, five-pointed like Gawain’s pentangle and white like the mistletoe which had surrounded his and Shrike’s Samhain ritual, only reinforced his decision.
Shrike, for his part, shot Wren an approving and mischievous smile as he parted the flowery curtain draped over the bower’s entrance and held it aloft so Wren might pass under it. The interior occupied about the same circumference as the nest in Blackthorn. Stray blooms of myrtle and love-in-idleness dotted piles of moss as soft as swan’s down.
No sooner had the flowery curtain fallen into place behind them than Shrike took Wren’s face in his hands and caught his lips in a kiss. Wren, his blood thrumming with anticipation, wrapped his arms ‘round him for support as Shrike broke away to bruise another kiss onto his throat, then nip his way up his jawline to his ear.
“What my lady offered to me,” Shrike murmured as he went, his lips brushing Wren’s ear, “I should like to offer to my lord.”
All Wren’s breath left his body. How many uncounted evenings had he abused himself with fantasies of Gawain surrendering the spoils of his hunt to the Green Knight—though whether Wren himself played the role of the Green Knight or Gawain he could never quite say. He knew only that the mere thought of it sufficed to send him spilling out of his hand. Shrike could offer him no more potent temptation than this.
A wry half-smile curled the corner of Shrike’s handsome mouth. “Would I not make a worthy vessel?”
“You would indeed,” Wren assured him before his mind had quite caught up with his tongue. “But I…”
He trailed off, the words sticking in his throat. Irrational, he told himself, and yet it remained; an instinctive aversion to the risk of the act under English law. The spectre loomed over his mind now as it always had, tainting his fantasies with the poisonous bloom of anxiety. The same fear that had kept him out of Hyde Park at night. The same fear that had kept him from giving voice to his overwhelming emotion at university. The same fear that had kept the deepest, truest parts of himself relegated to villains in his own manuscripts. The knowledge that any penetration of man by man sufficed for the capital offence of sodomy—no matter how willing the participants.
Despite Wren’s trailing off into silence, an understanding came into Shrike’s eyes. The wicked gleam of desire softened. His grin grew gentler until it became a warm and no less handsome smile. “Something else, then. Perhaps—what did you call it? The Oxford rub.”
Such a reply ought to have reassured Wren. And in some respects, it did. To know Shrike would never demand anything of Wren that he did not wish to grant.
And yet.
Wren wished to grant it. He wished it more than anything. Decades of self-denial, of self-reproach, of self-abuse, had given him a surfeit of restraint. He wearied of suppressing his desires. His own cowardice exhausted him. Everything he’d ever wanted lay before him in the form of a handsome and willing partner. He hadn’t the chivalry of Gawain. He couldn’t satisfy himself with giving and receiving mere kisses. Not now.
Besides, English law held no sway over the Court of the Silver Wheel.
