“That,” Lancelot said emphatically, “is a much more interesting question altogether. Not explicitly. But when the invasions began, and Arthur started uniting the people … I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t been there. So many things had to come together just right for us to stand a fighting chance. And we’d have been thoroughly fucked without the mages, but,” his eyes clouded with admiration, “I don’t say this because he’s like my brother, but this country and this peace—none of it would exist without Arthur.”
“He sounds remarkable,” Vera said, feeling like something leaden had dropped into her stomach.
Lancelot smiled sympathetically at her. She could read in his face that he knew far more than he was willing to share.
“What’s wrong with him?” she asked, more bluntly than she meant to.
“Ah,” Lancelot leaned toward Vera so that his shoulder pressed lightly against hers. “It’s … not my story to tell.”
Fiercely loyal. Vera heard Merlin’s words in her mind as Lancelot shook his head and picked at the grass near his feet. “You should talk to him, though,” he told her.
She scoffed. “He’d have to be willing to be in the same room with me first for that to happen.”
He set his jaw and an unspoken exchange passed between them as their eyes met. He wouldn’t say it out loud, but Vera felt like, at least in this matter, he was on her side. He reached up to pat her back but quickly pulled his hand away. “Gross. Gods, you are dripping in sweat, aren’t you?”
Vera laughed as the wave of tension broke between them. “This shirt is so damn heavy.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Then let’s get you better clothes.”
It was only two mornings later that Lancelot led her through the cobbled streets of Camelot straight to the armory. Vera had expected some royal seamstress or a clothing shop. Instead, they were greeted with a sharp glare by the scruffy middle-aged man (who Vera felt unreasonably sure would ride a motorbike if he were born thirteen hundred years later) deftly weaving tiny metal circles into chain mail. He set his work down in front of him and scratched his mostly grey beard with thick fingers as his eyes searched Vera. She felt he could read every lie she was living as if it were written plainly on her face.
“Your Majesty. Lancelot,” he said, more grunt than words. He rose and picked up a neatly folded pile of garments and pressed them into Vera’s hands. Right to the point. She could appreciate that. “Change over there.” He pointed to a makeshift changing curtain in the corner.
After struggling to untie the strings of her dress, Vera pulled on the startlingly comfortable garments. The trousers were rust-brown with loose-fitting legs and buttons just below her knees to keep them from flapping about while she ran. The long-sleeved shirt was more fitted than the tunics she had seen but made of the same soft fabric as the trousers.
“How does it feel?” Vera started at Lancelot’s voice as her fingers fumbled with her new trousers’ buttons.
She stepped out from behind the curtain. “They’re perfect.”
It was no surprise. Lancelot had filled her in on their walk over.
“He made garments for me? In all of two days?” Vera had asked incredulously. “How did he know my measurements?”
“That’s Randall’s gift,” Lancelot had said. “It’s a sensory power. He’s never needed to take your measurements. He saw you at dinner the first night and instantly knew them. He can hear better, see better, smell from farther, and he’s got this thing with his hands, too. He has these massive sausages of fingers, but he weaves the finest, most intricate armor. Quickly, too. It was all dead useful in battle, even the smell part. He’s a bit rough about the edges, but don’t let him fool you. Randall’s one of Arthur’s most trusted knights, and he might be the sweetest man to walk this planet.”
Vera couldn’t speak to the armor nor to Randall’s sweetness, but Lancelot’s assessment of her new running kit was certainly true. Randall made a circle about Vera, eyeing her as he rubbed at his beard. “The shirt’s based on what our soldiers wear underneath their chainmail. The whole set’s a wool and silk blend. It should handle moisture well.”
“That’s good,” Lancelot said, “because she sweats loads. Buckets, really.”
“It was a heavy shirt!” Vera protested, glaring at him. He was seated at a workbench, bent over Randall’s chainmail with metal tools in hand, grinning in satisfaction as he worked. “I sweat a normal amount,” she added to Randall.
He continued his inspection, checking the seams of Vera’s sleeves. “You’re very bad at that,” he growled, and Vera only realized he wasn’t speaking to her when he glanced over his shoulder at Lancelot. “Yes, you,” he added when Lancelot looked thoroughly scandalized. “Going to have to redo all of your work. And you’re slow, too.”
Randall lifted his gaze to Vera’s face for the first time, and his left eyelid flinched just enough for her to realize he was winking at her as he joined the banter on her behalf.
She smiled. “I can’t believe you made these so quickly. Thank you.”
She touched his arm, and Randall awkwardly ducked his head in a bow, color rising above the whiskers on his cheeks. Perhaps Lancelot had been right about Randall’s gentle spirit, too.
Lancelot guided Vera via a different route back to the castle: a winding footpath through a section of town where the structures thinned out and gave way to a lush green field speckled with purple heather and with benches along the side. Between the benches were practice swords, spears, and shields hung on wooden racks.
“This is our training arena,” Lancelot told her. “We run drills with the castle soldiers every day.”
An enclosure caught Vera’s eye on the farthest end of the field. It reminded her of a petting zoo pen she’d once visited on a day trip during school, made of picket boards and the height of her hips.
There were no goats bleating their demand for children to feed them, but the pen wasn’t empty. There must have been a dozen people corralled in it: boys barely old enough to have scruff on their chin, men who could have easily been their fathers, and two teenage girls—all running, laughing, and shouting. Onlookers crowded the picket board wall, cheering them on.
Vera heard a loud THUNK, and soon she could see a roughly sewn-together football. They were playing some sort of keep-away game. Players could kick the ball or smack it with their fists, but when it bounced off the wooden pickets and whacked someone in the leg, or when a player took a directly kicked ball to the bottom, they’d hop the wall, and the game continued with those who were left. It ended when one person remained, who was clapped on the back in congratulations of their victory before anyone wanting to join the next game clambered into the pen.
“That’s the pit. The game is rather a favorite in town.” Lancelot eyed her. “Do you want to play?”
“What? Me?” Vera looked around her as if expecting there to be someone else that he was asking. “Is that even allowed?” There were plenty of women joining in the game.
“Sure,” he said. “Granted, I’m probably not the best judge of propriety, but … I don’t see why not.”
Lancelot didn’t wait for an answer. He took Vera’s hand and escorted her to the pit, where they both joined the gathered players. Nobody spoke directly to her, but a general hum of excitement rippled through the crowd as they took notice of Vera and Lancelot’s presence in the game. The winner of the previous match had the honor of kicking the ball first, and then they were off.