Slowly, over the next fortnight, the abnormal becomes normal: sleeping in a barn; cooking in a makeshift kitchen still half-open to the elements. Turning a couple of spare stalls in the stables into a buttery. Working a rotating watch, so at night someone is always awake, in case the arsonist comes back.
It’ll be survivable for the spring and summer, but come winter, they’ll need a real home.
And there’s the problem.
Harry could go to Montagu for the money. But then Montagu would own him completely, even more than he already does. Or, worse, Montagu would refuse, and give Dartington to Rabbie, forcing Harry to become a vassal knight of the House of Ufford.
He can’t go to Montagu.
Arundel has the money to spare, too, but Harry doesn’t want to switch being beholden to one great lord for being beholden to another. Especially one who also gains from using Iain as his pawn.
There’s a third way. Harry keeps shoving it to the back of his mind, because as much as it solves the majority of his problems, it causes as many more. But as the weeks stretch towards May and the tournament at Burstwick draws closer, it seems like the only choice left to him.
A dowry.
A marriage to Alys.
And he does love Alys. Just … not the way he loves Iain.
Iain, who is looking at him across the makeshift dinner table in the barn, and who nudges his ankle with his foot. ‘What’s wrong?’ Iain mouths.
Harry shakes his head. ‘Nothing. Burstwick’s coming up. We should start training again.’
Iain nods and grabs another piece of chicken. ‘Tomorrow?’
‘Yes,’ Harry says. Luckily, most of their tourneying equipment and weapons had been in the stables, spared consumption by the fire.
‘Should we ask Sir Hugh up? And the Cornish brothers?’ Iain says.
‘Iain,’ Harry groans, motioning to their ramshackle accommodation. ‘We can’t host anyone. Not like this.’
Iain shrugs. ‘They have their tents. And I don’t think they’ll care.’
Harry shakes his head. Sometimes it’s hard to make Iain understand exactly how rigid their social codes are. That just because Iain knows what rock bottom is, has been there and climbed back up from it, does not mean others will be as forgiving of any slip in status. Those who have travelled great distances on the class scale often forget how much those who have not measure every inch above and below them as if it were a league.
Harry rationalises his shame by telling himself that it’s not necessary to invite others, that Iain is getting to the skill level where he’s a real challenge for Harry. He says as much. ‘You and me. Every morning. On the horses. We can set up a tiltyard in the fallow bean field.’
Iain nods. ‘I’ll get on it.’
Harry hopes that their practices don’t become a spectator sport for the entire manor, because the change in living arrangements since the fire has meant that the two of them have no privacy. Sure, they sleep in each other’s arms in the barn every night when one of them isn’t on watch, but they’re a few feet away from two dozen other people. Not that those people themselves don’t have sex, quietly, in the dark – and sometimes less quietly. But he and Iain can’t.
They snatch their time where they’re able: in the north barn, Harry pushing Iain down onto the winter straw. Behind a tree, deep in a copse, desperate mouths seeking each other out, fast hands reaching under shirts, unlacing breeches. But there’s always the risk of discovery.
Harry misses being able to take his time with Iain. He misses the time he wasted, believing he could somehow turn off his feelings for the boy.
Hitting each other with broadswords and lances is an adequate, if ultimately unsatisfying, way of working out his frustrations. He dreams of fucking Iain in the field, in armour; of dragging him into a nearby copse and pushing the boy onto his knees, having Iain take him in his mouth. But, as he feared, their sparring sessions become popular events, with a dozen vassals and friends cheering them on. He knows it takes everyone’s minds off the perilous state of their lands. He’s not sorry to provide the distraction. He just wishes he were allowed his own distraction now and then.
They leave for Burstwick shortly after May Day celebrations. Harry hugs Annie and quietly promises her that he has a solution. That one of the reasons he’s tromping the entire length of England to faraway East Yorkshire is to get the money to rebuild the hall, bigger and better than ever. And she nods, and smiles, even if something in her eyes doesn’t quite believe him. After all, last summer he’d promised her Scotland would make his fortune.
The trip takes ten days, moving quickly, staying in crowded inns along the Great North Road before they break east at Doncaster, towards Hull. Harry becomes increasingly restless as the trip goes on. He’s so close to Iain, with the boy every minute of the day, but not with him. Not in the way he wants. Not even at night, in an inn bed often shared with other travellers.
Iain merely retreats into silence, growing quieter and yet wilder the further north they go.
They arrive in Burstwick the afternoon of 14 May, two days before the tournament is set to begin. Two days Harry thought they could have to themselves. But the problem with being the standout of the winter tournament season is that everyone recognises them. The other attending knights see the star-and-hawk banner and drop by to invite him to dine with them. To practise. To drink and gossip. To do everything except the thing he wants to do (pin Iain down and fuck him until he screams), and the thing he has to do (find the red-and-gold lion rampant banner of
