Page 30 of Gwen and Art Are Not in Love

‘I didn’t know,’ she said eventually.

‘This is shaping up to be the worst hangover I’ve ever had,’ he said irritably. ‘Just so you know, that’s the only reason I haven’t already jumped head-first out of the window rather than continue this. I’m compromised.’

‘You drink too much.’

‘Yes, and to that point, the sky is blue.’

‘Don’t you care?’

Arthur pressed his thumb and forefinger against his eyelids, distantly hoping that he might push his eyeballs into his brain and put an abrupt and bloody end to this conversation. ‘What else would you recommend?’

‘I’m not sure,’ Gwen said. She glanced over at the window. ‘Areyou going out?’

‘Yes,’ snapped Arthur. ‘No. I don’t know.’

‘Very illuminating,’ said Gwen. ‘You really don’t have to let every single thing I say put your back up.’

‘Pots, kettles.’

‘God, can’t we – can we just call a truce? For, I don’t know, five minutes?’ Gwen said. Finally too tired to argue, Arthur just shrugged. He regretted ever entering this room, but he was quite committed to this armchair, and Gwen was pouring him another glass of lemon water.

‘Where do you go? When you go … out?’

‘Oh, you know. Dens of ill repute. Gambling houses. Unregulated cockfights.’ Gwen just looked at him over the rim of her glass. ‘I don’t know, usually … inns, taverns. The gutters outside inns and taverns. So far, Sidney isverydisappointed by what your fine city has to offer – did you know that you’ve gottwodrinking establishments called The Round Table? They’re only ten minutes apart.’

‘No, I didn’t,’ said Gwen. ‘I don’t really go into the city. It doesn’t surprise me though. I have four cousins named Lancelot. Two Percivals. Court is rife with noble ladies called Morgan, or Morgana.’

‘No Mordreds?’ Arthur said, and Gwen snorted.

‘Shame. He always seemed the more interesting of my ancestors. They do love to gloss over all the sticky parts though, don’t they? What’s a little incest, between family.’

‘It doesn’t bother you, then? To think about … where you came from?’

Arthur laughed drily. ‘Er, no. If you go back a few hundred years, I’m afraideverybodywas shagging their brother. It was weird if youdidn’tshag your brother. Don’t make that face, nobody’s asking you to do itnow, although as brothers go—’

‘Arthur.’

‘I’m just endlessly thankful that my family ran out of attractive siblings and first cousins and branched out to other kingdoms. You probably weren’t so lucky.’

‘Well, Father wasn’t a blood heir to the throne,’ Gwen said, shrugging. ‘Just related by marriage. Our line is Norman too, of course, like the old king’s, but you can keep your inbreeding jokes – they don’t hold water.’

Arthur sighed. He was fond of those jokes. ‘I’venever understood why he dragged court to Camelot, when he has absolutely no ties to the place and it’s practically demolishing itself.’

Gwen wrinkled her nose at him. ‘Do you payanyattention to what’s happening in this country?’

‘Not if I can help it.’

‘When Father took the throne, the people had just united behind him – your family included – to avoid the risk of becoming West Norway. But once that threat had passed, people stopped feeling quite so cuddly. The rift that Lord Willard had wanted to leverage to take the throne himself – the growing divide between Catholics and Arthurian cultists – was still there. Willard himself has long quietened down and made peace with my father, but the cultists are still unhappy.’

‘So he dragged everybody to Camelot as a peace offering?’

‘Well. Yes. He’s trying to heal the divide. Make an England for everybody. There are lots of cultists on his staff, you know. Lord Stafford, for one. And of course we have a Wizard, Master Buchanan, which my mother thinks is completely ridiculous.’

Arthur laughed. ‘It is ridiculous.’

‘Your father is a cultist!’

‘Yes. And my mother was Muslim, and your father is Catholic.’