Hopeful gratitude marked the first few days. But it did not last.
Despite Arthur’s reassurance, coupled with his and Vera’s constant presence throughout the city, there were struggles at every turn. Ruthless merchants thought to profit off insecurity and gouged their prices. They had to be tracked down by the troops and set right. Some with the resources to do so stockpiled more food than they needed for fear that there soon wouldn’t be enough, which temporarily created a legitimate shortage and left the poorest in the city without a way to buy food. Arthur put ration limits on how much each household could buy. While it ensured no one went hungry, it did nothing to improve the people’s spirits.
A cold front slinked into town in the early morning on the sixth day. And with frost lingering on the tips of every tree came a chilling amongst the people, too. Vera didn’t expect anyone to continue throwing parades of gratitude as their anxieties ballooned. The frequency of tense encounters with citizens felt reasonable, but she kept catching Matilda and Lancelot sharing worried glances when they thought she wasn’t paying attention.
They’d been at their morale-boosting work for nearly two weeks when what Merlin was able to save of the harvest began to arrive. Prices started righting themselves, and while it wasn’t the economy of abundance the kingdom had grown accustomed to, fears of shortage abated. But like the colder weather, which seemed to have gotten comfortable and planned to stay awhile, the chill remained in the people, too.
Lancelot had adopted a casual way of keeping his hand on the pommel of his sword at all times. He accompanied Vera and Matilda on every excursion into town now, and though he’d join in on their conversation, his eyes continually scanned their surroundings.
They were picking up firewood for the week when Lancelot distractedly grabbed at empty air before finding Vera’s hand to help her down from the seat of the horse-drawn cart. They’d stopped at the end of a long line, the equivalent of half a block from the woodcutter. No sooner had Matilda clambered down from her seat than four more groups tucked into line behind them.
Lancelot glanced at the newcomers, his lips pressed hard together. It was no bigger a crowd than the one at the pit on Vera’s first day, but size wasn’t the problem. The happy sounds of laughter and excited shouts to friends across the square had been frequent before. They’d have felt foreign and inappropriate now. People stood together in clumps, talking in low voices and casting uneasy glances at anyone outside their groups. It was alarmingly different. Lancelot was like a dog with his ears pinned back—and clearly displeased that he couldn’t watch everywhere at once.
Voices raised from near the front of the line, accompanied by a rippling murmur of discomfort.
“We need guards posted here.” Lancelot looked around in exasperation as if one might appear. They’d never needed to have soldiers posted through town before. This was all fresh territory. More voices joined in what had boiled over into an argument near the front.
“Go help,” Vera said. “Babysitting me is certainly the lesser of your duties. That’s actually your job.”
He sighed, but he didn’t argue. “I’ll be right back.” He and Matilda shared that worried look over Vera’s head before he disappeared into the crowd.
“What?” Vera snapped. “Why do you keep doing that?”
“Do you honestly not know?” Matilda asked.
“I know everyone’s a bit on edge, but—” She stopped at Matilda’s look of pity. “What?”
“Lancelot and I started noticing it about a week into all this. People aren’t just on edge, they’re treating you poorly.”
“That’s not true. They’re—” But she stopped. This morning in the market, a woman’s laugh had stopped abruptly when her eyes fell on Vera. Her face had hardened as she hastily grabbed her husband by the arm and left in a huff. Vera had been deliberately ignoring it, but all the glares these past weeks had been directed at her. “But … why?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Matilda said, but she must have noticed how Vera tensed. She laid a hand on her arm. “We’ve told Arthur, and he’s asked Percival to put his ear to the ground. We’ll get it all sorted out. People behave strangely under stress.”
“Don’t make me talk to them.” Vera tucked in against the cart, yearning for the invisibility that once felt like a curse.
Almost simultaneously, the atmosphere shifted. It didn’t take but a few moments for grumbles to morph into electric murmurs and for all eyes to point in the same direction. Vera knew what she’d find before she turned to see.
Arthur was there. He alone had that impact on a crowd. He and Vera had never gone on these endeavors together, though he’d been out amongst the people constantly. Their eyes caught for a second. He gave a stiff nod to Vera, and she returned a fleeting smile, her heart stuttering.
She pressed into her nook behind the seat, her back lodged against the cart, avoiding eye contact with anyone. But she was constantly aware of Arthur. The other times she’d seen him in town, he stayed on the opposite side of the square from her. This time, he weaved in. Closer and closer until Vera could take a few steps, reach to her right, and touch him.
She could hear him even through the crowd’s noise, sometimes only the tone of his voice, not quite loud enough to form words. As his volume raised in laughter or to call to someone farther off, she’d make out a few words. She was entranced in listening, soothed by his presence—and unnerved that he had that impact on her.
He shifted as Lancelot called out to him, pulling him out of Vera’s view. She peeled herself from her hiding place and moved forward as if her adjustment were to tend the horse.
Arthur’s eyes found her immediately, as if he’d known her every move as she’d tracked his. This time, his brow was furrowed as his attention was drawn back to whatever Lancelot was saying.
Then Lancelot pointed at Vera, and the couple they’d been speaking with turned around with bright faces—and it wasn’t just a couple. There was a cherub-faced toddler with mussed curls like he’d been freshly woken from a nap as he nuzzled into his father’s trousers, and the mother cradled a bundle of white cloths in her arms, which proved itself to be a baby as it thrust a tiny fist into the air.
They were coming toward her now. Shit. There’d be no avoiding this. The man, who must have been the one to bestow his son with curls (though his were not so unruly), closed the distance with a few strides and bowed. “Your Majesty, my name is Roger, and this is my wife, Helene.”
Helene ducked her head and drew her dress out with one hand in as best a curtsy as she could manage with the baby in her arms. Lancelot smiled with a glint in his eye from behind Helene while Arthur stood tense at his side.
What the hell was this about?
“It’s … it’s a pleasure to meet you.” Vera didn’t know if she should ask the couple a question, but Roger solved that for her.
“We know you aren’t taking queries, but … we hoped you would bless our new daughter,” Roger said.
“Oh.” If this had been one of Guinevere’s duties before, it could be added to the countless other things Vera didn’t know about.
Arthur cast Lancelot an uncharacteristically unguarded glare before he sighed and stepped close to Vera, between her and all the others. He leaned next to her ear and spoke quietly, raising goosebumps on her neck. “This is quite customary, and you’re fully capable if you’d like to say yes,” he said. “But I can do it if you’d rather.”