Harry fidgets as he walks. Court clothes are tight. And stiff. And short. And the damn hood tail keeps unwrapping itself off his shoulders, like the garment knows it doesn’t belong on him and seeks to make its escape. As beautifully crafted as the clothes are, they make Harry painfully aware of the fact that he’s wearing them, with their subtle but definite restrictions on his movements.
The game turns out to be a tableau of the hunt, with the twelve most eligible bachelors at court portraying beasts of the forest. Each is given a tabard of emerald damask gilded with leaves and vines to wear over their tunics, and a visor to wear over their heads. The King is Lionel, the lion, of course. Harry is the stag. Rabbie is a boar, and it feels sharply appropriate for his brusque manners and blocky features.
While they wait their turn, their papier-mâché beast heads in their hands, Rabbie offers Harry double what he paid for Libby. Harry remembers the gashes from the spurs on Rabbie’s palfrey after the hunt and politely declines.
Rabbie offers him triple.
Harry points out that they aren’t likely to go hunting again this week as the King seems to value variety over habit.
Rabbie grumbles and moves to sit closer to the King.
The performance goes well, and afterwards each of the ‘beasts’ is paired off with one of the eligible ladies at court, for a dance. Harry is chosen by Alys de Morton, who is as elegant as she was the first day, this time in a forest-green overdress with a saffron underdress.
‘I’m sorry,’ Harry whispers. ‘I don’t know how to dance.’
‘Just follow,’ she whispers back. ‘It’s quite simple, really. And it’s I who must apologise, about dinner the other day. I do enjoy your company and I fear you think that is not so.’
Harry inclines his head. He has been avoiding her; easier to do than face the inevitable disappointment as she passes him over for someone closer to her rank. ‘But there are so much better for you to spend your time with,’ he says as they spin around the hall in a complicated formation.
‘In pocket, yes, but not in spirit,’ Alys replies. ‘And I have enough lands of my own that I need not be impressed by theirs.’
Harry relaxes slightly. ‘Well, that’s good, for I have only a tiny corner of Devon.’
‘I’ve heard Devonshire is pretty. Is your corner such?’ she asks, her brown eyes warm and her smile wicked.
‘It’s the most beautiful place on earth,’ he says, smiling back.
The dance draws to a close and they face each other for the final steps. ‘I would like to see it one day,’ Alys says as she releases his hand and flows into a curtsey.
‘I would like that, too, milady,’ Harry replies as he bows to her. And he finds he’s not simply being polite – he really would like to walk around Dartington with Alys and hear her quick, clever take on things. Annie would love her. Iain would … Iain would hate her. At first.
He stops again at the chapel after supper and prays until late into the night. Again, it’s empty but for a friar or two from the nearby cloisters. It seems everyone at court is too busy this week with matters temporal to bother with the sacred.
For the first time, however, Harry feels he is as he wishes to be. He only thought of Iain once that day, and without the hot curl of lust that usually waylays his mind. He thinks of Alys more often now, but even that is appropriate: courtly admiration, rather than base, sinful desire.
The next morning is Sunday. No games are planned. Instead, the court is expected to go to Mass with the King at noon, but their time is their own before that. Harry rises with the bells of Prime to find both Lower and Upper Wards still sleeping off the previous night’s amusements. He decides to explore the royal gardens, which are spectral in the late-autumn morning fog. Burlap shrouds protect the more delicate bushes, and the skeletons of perennials still reach their withered stalks heavenwards. The distant lamentations of peacocks echo like the cries of lost souls.
Harry assumes he’s alone, until he rounds a corner and finds himself not twenty feet away from a white lion. His hand drifts to his sword-hilt, but the beast merely blinks red eyes at him and shakes its mane, then turns to go. Its huge feet are soundless on the frosty ground. The lion fades back into the mist, white on white, and Harry is left wondering whether it had existed at all, or had been some strange vision.
‘It’s an albino,’ says a voice behind him. ‘Gift from the Doge of Venice.’
Harry turns. Nearby, on a bench under a rose bower, sits the Green Knight, the lord with the trimmed beard and the merry eyes. Alys’s friend. The man sees the confusion on his face and bows slightly. ‘Richard FitzAlan, Earl of Arundel, at your service.’ Then he pats the open space next to him on the bench. ‘Come. Sit with me.’
Harry introduces himself, though he feels Arundel knows exactly who he is already, and begs to remain standing.
Arundel shoots him a suit yourself look, then asks, ‘What do you know of French politics, Harry?’
‘I know little, and care less,’ Harry replies, as he begins to trace connections between Alys’s interrogation of him and the Lord Arundel whose presence in Carlisle caused Iain to be thrust into Harry’s care in the first place.
He still doesn’t know the reason for the game between Montagu and Arundel, nor where he or Iain fits on their
