Harry stands and wipes the sweat beading on his brow with his forearm, looking around the room that should contain a whole family, but now holds only him … and his prisoner.
There’s the big bed, a horsehair mattress on a heavy wood frame. Given the summer heat, the curtains are off the bed, and only feather pillows and light wool blankets atop it. The shuttered windows are wide open, to let as much air through as possible. The main carved chest sits snug against the far wall, under a row of pegs for clothes. Smaller chests line the bed. Next to the bed is a little desk, with a polished silver mirror, a washbasin, and a bone comb on it, and a bench tucked underneath it. The chamber pot is beside it too, for Dartington Manor is old enough not to have a dedicated garderobe.
He realises this is the first time he’s been back in the solar since his mother died. Her personal effects are gone, or perhaps just put in the chest against the far wall, but it’s still a room Harry associates overwhelmingly with her.
The room even still smells of her, somehow. The way she should smell, of fresh-cut grass and baked apples and just-washed linen. Not the way she was at the end.
Ralf grabs Harry’s arm and only then does he realise that he’s stumbled. That his cheeks are wet.
‘I— I’m sorry,’ he stutters, swabbing at his face with his sleeve. ‘We should get the boy.’
The scabbard of his broadsword bangs against his leg on the way down the steps, and it’s a reminder to Harry of how everything has changed. He runs Dartington Manor now. It stands or falls by his decisions. He’s nineteen, an age where boys his class are normally riding from tournament to tournament, following the court’s progress around England the way flowers follow the sun. But instead he’s responsible for all these people, for whether they flourish or starve. All of them looking to him, to him, who accidentally wished a man dead, for wisdom and guidance.
Except for the one person who wants to kill him, of course.
Harry feels like he can’t breathe. All he wants is to sit down on the stone steps and not do anything, not decide anything. But there’s a boy in a cage outside, and a dozen people downstairs in the hall who think of him as their lord, and they’re all depending on him.
Harry clears his throat, tugs down his tunic and steps into the hall. He thanks Ralf, who pats his back a little too hard with his spark-scarred hands and says, ‘Anytime,’ and they both go outside.
Harry squints against the late-afternoon sun.
Iain is lying on his back in his cage, hands folded under his head, one ankle thrown over a knee, as if he doesn’t have a care in the world. He lazily rolls into a sitting position when he hears Harry fumbling at the lock.
‘I don’t want to have to tie your arms in front of everyone,’ mumbles Harry, when he feels those pale eyes on him.
Iain grins, wolfish.
Harry groans. Of course the boy is going to be a little shit about it. He grabs the length of extra rope from the front of the cart. ‘Give me your wrists,’ he says.
‘No,’ Iain replies.
‘Then you’ll stay out here all night without supper, instead of sleeping on a nice pallet indoors with a stomach full of—’ and Harry sniffs over his shoulder— ‘roast mutton, and damson pie.’
Iain shrugs, and lies back down again. ‘Eh, I’m fine here.’ Then he smiles again. ‘Your vassals give me a lot of funny looks, Harry. Guess you don’t get people in cages very often in this backwater of yours.’
Harry flicks the lock on the cage, opens the door and deliberately turns his back, walking a few steps away. When he speaks, it’s barbed, deliberately so. ‘My people are concerned about me. But then again, I make sure they have plenty of food and clothing. You may not remember what that’s like, but I can assure you that a well-run manor—’
—And then ten stone of concentrated Scottish rage slams into him.
Harry is expecting the hit, so he twists with it and ends up sitting on top of a flailing, furious Iain, who’s yelling at him hysterically in a nonsensical mix of Gaelic and French in between trying to bite him and claw his eyes out.
Both the Peters come running out of the hall at the noise, and they sit on more of Iain, and after a frantic few moments of wrestling they manage to tie his arms and hobble his legs. Iain gets a split lip and opens one of the cuts on his head again. Peter gets a nasty scratch on his face, Piers is bitten on his leg, and Harry gets kneed in the balls, but the job’s done. He thanks the Peters and tells them to go back inside. As his gaze travels to the entrance to the hall, he can see Annie standing there, watching them.
Iain snarls at them, sprawled in the dust.
And Harry has had enough.
He gets up, grabs Iain’s shoulders hard enough to bruise, and hauls him to standing. Then he marches the boy at arm’s length into the hall. Harry can feel the population in the hall staring – and it’s everyone, word has got around that their lord is back, knighted and with a prisoner. Dozens of new faces, eyes burning with curiosity, tongues blooming with gossip. Harry keeps his head down and concentrates on getting Iain up to the solar without the boy wrenching free again.
When they’re finally upstairs, Harry can’t resist shoving Iain so hard he topples to his knees. Iain twists so his shoulder takes the rest of the fall, rather than his face.
‘Sorry,’ Harry says reflexively, as he attaches the leg iron to Iain and snaps its padlock shut.
