Now it’s Arundel’s turn to kick him under the table. ‘Yes, this is my third, Your Majesty. Thank you very much,’ Harry manages to eke out. Then he sits down.
Harry makes his excuses soon after, forcing himself to leave while the party is in full swing. He doesn’t want to be that sad person lurking around miserably to the bitter end, hoping desperately to catch the attention of a prince.
When Harry gets back to his pavilion, Piers gives him a hug, and Kit squeezes his shoulder affectionately.
They don’t ask about Iain. They don’t need to. The answer is written all over Harry’s face.
Iain isn’t at the Smithfield tournament.
Rumour has it the King has asked him to go north, to stand by in Carlisle in case an opportunity presents itself to negotiate with the Scots for the safe return of Balliol and de Beaumont. Both are still over the border, badly under duress by the forces of Andrew de Moray.
Harry has never prayed harder for England to hold the North than he does upon hearing that rumour. If they forfeit Scotland, he will lose Iain forever to the wilds of Galloway again, he knows it.
Iain isn’t at Smithfield, but Montagu is.
So is Odo Waldegrave, at least until he’s found dead in his pavilion on the third day. There’s blood on his pallet, and apparently on his wrinkled old cock too. It’s not his blood. There isn’t a scratch on the man. But he’s dead, and his new page is long gone.
With no heirs, and with the disgraceful manner of his death, Waldegrave’s lands revert to the King.
Ten, Harry thinks. Ten left of the Galloway Dozen, including him.
Of course, it could be a coincidence, but he doesn’t think so.
Harry loses at Smithfield. Well, he comes in a respectable fourth, but it feels like a loss. The cramped, close quarters of the city, the dirt and the smells, so many people but none of them the right one, it all pecks away at him, bit by bit. And without Iain there to perform for, there is no reason for him to resist London’s thousand tiny cuts.
The English are losing the North.
The rumours are conflicting – Balliol’s fled back across the border; no, he’s still fighting. Henry de Beaumont, the old fox, will sweep down on them all. Balliol and de Beaumont have split, and the Scots are in open revolt against Balliol. De Beaumont’s broken his siege and is riding to Balliol’s aid. Dundarg has fallen and de Beaumont is prisoner of Andrew de Moray. Of princes and parleys, there is no news.
Harry returns to Dartington. There is great comfort in the familiar, even as his heart still breaks in his chest to ride through the gates and see, not a house, but a hollow where a home had been.
And foundations. New, larger foundations, of unburnable stone.
There’s been quite a bit of progress in the month he was away. Walls are going up. They’re not much taller than Harry is, at the moment, but Harry’s been told it’s the foundations that take the longest. The rest should move almost quickly, now.
They’ll still be spending all winter in the barn, but it’s hard not to be hopeful when everyone can see the new grey walls reach a little higher every day.
Harry thinks he catches a flash of sorrow on Annie’s face when he and Kit and Piers come back by themselves, no dark, lanky fourth at their side. She hides it quickly, though, and everyone at Dartington continues with the conspiracy of Not Talking About Iain.
Harry lasts three weeks before he loses his mind.
He wakes one morning and goes outside to an unseasonably warm early-November day, the leaves on the trees gone to gold. And he realises that a year ago on this day was the first time he showed Iain the pond.
The first time they kissed.
Suddenly the ache inside him of Iain’s absence is so great, he nearly drops to his knees, unable to stand the hurt of all that empty space echoing inside him. He lurches against one of those new stone walls they were all so proud of, rebounds off it with minor bruising to his hip, and staggers into the stables. He’s going to fall down in Nomad’s stall and finally cry: for the fire that consumed his home. For his mother. For Iain.
But Piers and the new stable-boy, Bevis, are already there, mucking out.
Harry mutters something to them about going for a ride. He waves them back to their duties, throws a bridle on Numbles who’s tied out while they’re cleaning his stall, and clambers up bareback.
He even manages to keep a straight back and high chin for the hour it takes to ride to the pond. There’s no one on the lanes this early to witness this stoicism, but he keeps himself together, just in case.
Harry feels made of cracked glass. If the world jostles him, even gently, he will shatter into a million unmendable pieces. And then how will the people of Dartington carry on, if they know he can’t?
Harry leads Numbles off into the woods, around the pond. He doesn’t want even a chance of anyone seeing the horse and coming looking for him. Nobody should witness him like this, crumbling under the lonely weight of his responsibilities.
He feels very ordered, all of a sudden. Each small task a defined, practical goal that takes him a step closer to … what? He doesn’t know, until he’s kneeling on the mossy rock where Iain first kissed him, first took him in his hand. Until a sob wracks his body so hard that he bends almost double, forehead touching the cold, dewy surface of the moss in supplication.
He is dizzy with grief, lost in the vast, empty wasteland
