My dearest Lance, now that we are settled at Cam, I can write to you on this fine parchment instead of birch. Everything here is abundant. I lack for nothing except my moorland prince.
I am glad that the eggs we gave you are healthy, and breeding well with the rest of your flock. Is it not an inconvenience, however, when they roll down the hills?
Dear friend, forgive me. Ova and ovis are so similar, anyone could mix them up. The rest of your epistola was perfect. How did you get your priest to teach you so many words of love? On still, starry nights, I go onto the earthwork fortifications of Camelet and look north to find the Bear and Arcturus, which are my stars, and then I find the lights of the great Shepherd, which are yours. I sense that you are watching over me—and your eggs, of course. A bear should not need such comfort, and nor should a future king. Nevertheless, I seek you out.
Saxon incursions continue from the east. I am recruiting, but the sons of the chieftains here are bred to a life of ease and plenty. I must strike north again soon, to remind the kings of Rheged and Gododdin of my existence and our shared interests, and seek men of true heart, with fire and ice in their veins. I am fortunate in that I have found one already, so at least I know what to look for.
I don’t know where your next letter will find me, but write it anyway. Better still, come to me. Can it be a year since we rode together on the wild heights, and since I knew the joy of your touch?
Two years. The drover who brought news, sheep-cures and messages from the east coast had handed Lance a parchment that looked as though it had come to him through water, mud and hellfire. Arthur’s tin merchant had been set upon by pirates during his voyage north, the drover said, his vessel run aground and its salvaged contents left to make their way overland as best they could.
Two years! Lance paced the floor of his study, the fragile parchment in his hands. A miracle that he’d received it at all, but he could gladly have balled it up and tossed it into the fire in sheer frustration. Anything could have happened to Arthur in that time. His own missives to Cam could have ended up anywhere. He came to a halt by the window of the bright upper-storey room he’d taken over for his books, writing implements and the peace in which to learn how to use them. Instead of ripping the letter up, he raised it to his lips and kissed the wild, freeform scrawl of the signature. Then he sat down at his desk.
He wrote his reply in less time than it took for the early summer shadows to mark out the flight of an hour. He was full of thoughts, brimming over with words of love. All was not abundant at Vindolanda, so he worked through strip after strip of the birch bark he’d cut and prepared for the purpose. His gull-feather quills scratched and caught on the wood, but his hand remained lucid and clear. When he was uncertain of a spelling or a form, he picked up one of the volumes for which he’d vigorously traded in the markets at Rivers Meet and Corstopitum. He knew each of these from worn leather cover to cover, and exactly where to find the example he required. He could have kicked himself for mixing up sheep and eggs, but he’d been barely literate then. Reading a letter from Art had taken him a fortnight: writing one in return the task of a whole month.
Thoughts, words of love. Two years since he’d parted from his future king, two years and five days—he was counting—since he’d known the astounding, transformative joy of being touched, from head to foot and skin to soul, by Arthur Pendragon. No doubt Art had had dozens of girls and boys since then: it was his nature, and he’d never said he wouldn’t. It wasn’t his fault that for Lance, there was only one source and focus of desire.
Even if Bryn the drover made it back from Caer Lir this month and took Lance’s letter in safety to Pons Aelius, the tin-trader’s vessel was gone, that line of communication snapped. Even if he found another way, what direction would he mark upon the outside of his hopeless little heap of birch? Art could be anywhere between the Forest Wild and the Old North.
He laid down his quill. When he put his hands to his face, he thought for an instant that he could detect a trace of the scent that had lulled him to rest on the sun-heated rocks by Broomlee Lough. Warm skin, crushed moss, promises and salt... “Oh, Art,” he said softly to the empty room. “I miss you.”
The day was still young. Lance had given orders that, when his morning tasks around the farmsteads were done, he was to be left in peace until noon. These were his hours for study. He now possessed a wide, unfiltered knowledge of a world stranger than he could possibly have imagined, rising into his startled mind’s eye from the pages of his books. He knew that there were sea-creatures so vast they pretended to be islands, and when unwary sailors landed and made fires upon their skin, would suddenly dive, taking men and vessels with them. He knew that giants walked the earth. From underneath a stall at Rivers Meet, a trader had handed him a thing called a necronomicon, and he knew, in theory at least, how to summon a voluptuous female demon to satisfy his every need.
Perhaps one day he’d learn a spell to summon Arthur. He rested his chin on his hand. A sweet May-time breeze blew shimmery essences of gorse and sunlight into the room. How would he be, when so conjured? As Lance had first seen him, in his handsome but well-worn travelling clothes? Or would he come fresh from the lough, wearing nothing but his sun disc on a leather strip around his neck?
Lance stood up. Shivers were tugging at him, heat like summer lightning flashing across his skin. All he’d managed to conjure was his own hopeless yearning. There was a bench against the far wall, left over from the time when the room had been used for storage. If he could stretch out there, allow his memories to inhabit and direct his whole body, so that his hands and touch became Arthur’s own...
“Lance? Lance? Lance!”
So much for peace. As for his orders, they were met with nods and smiles, and then cheerfully ignored. Wearily, dreams and visions blowing away like thistledown, he went to the window. “Yes, Dana? What’s wrong?”
“The pig has got into the midden-pit, Lance. She’s up to her snout in muck.”
“Can’t Farmer Alun get her out?”
“He tried, but now he’s fallen in there too. It’s been raining, Lance. The mud’s hip deep, and everything really stinks.”
Lance examined the girl. She was staring up at him, face solemn as an owl’s. She ought to have been a priestess by now, but times had passed and changed. Her mother was only the baker’s wife, and she herself a skinny farm girl, frail and at a loss. Once upon an enchanted moor, Lance had no doubt, Elena and her women would have gathered round the midden pit and sung the damn pig out, and Farmer Alun too. “Oh, good,” he said. “I’m so glad you came to get me. Have Edern and Bryn fetch ropes and planks, and I’ll meet you there.”
He ran down the outside steps into the yard. It was like swimming through a tide of memories. Here Arthur had half-carried him, broken leg and all, away from the clatter of incoming guests and up to the firelit bedchamber. By the bed, Art had hoisted him up into his arms with a grunting effort: stood laughing at his outrage, and then laid him tenderly down.
He set out for the midden pit. One day these flashes of perfect, vivid recall would cease to plague him. On his way across the courtyard, he paused once, as he always did, by Father Tomas’s grave. The old man had taken a fever in the depths of winter and died. Lance had caused his resting place by the chapel to be marked with as fine a stone cross as his village mason could carve. For himself, Lance had never seen the light of the new god, but it wasn’t what he thought that mattered. Tomas had never forgiven him after Art’s first letter, or consented to teach him another word of Latin, but after his fashion, the old man had tried to help hold the fort, and by then Lance had learned enough to teach himself. Now—more keenly and crucially than ever—he was alone.
***
My dearest Lance, we are at Din Guardi. Do you remember the story you told me, the tale of the dragon who came from the stars and lay down to sleep in the earth? You showed me the scales of her great spine, on the moors above Vindolanda. That spine stretches right across the country, and ends here on the east coast in a splendid outcrop. The name of the place means the hill of the fortress, but the people call it Dragon’s Head. So you and I are connected. The countryside is dangerous, filled with strange tales of monsters, but that would not deter my bold Lance.
Is it not strange that Arthur Pendragon should come to Dragon’s Head? The fortress is not mine, however—not yet. I have come in peace, as an ally to one of the kings of the Old North. He is besieged by Anglian invaders. The times and the affairs of men are exciting. Three years have passed now, and I’m sure your mother taught you the magical power of threes. You have a place here. I say this in every message I send you, and I always will: come to me.
***
To the son of King Ban of Vindolanda—
Lance, I pray this missive finds you. My brother has sustained a wound in battle and lies desperately ill. The journey is a week’s ride. The horseman who brought you this will return with you. I beg you to come.
Gaius, son of Ector, Din Guardi.