Page 79 of Gwen and Art Are Not in Love

‘Sid!’ she said; a second later she was rushing from the room. Gwen and Gabriel exchanged a glance, and then went after her.

In the hallway by the east stairs, they found Arthur collapsed on the rug, Sidney crouching over him while a couple of guards watched dispassionately from their stations, clearly used to Arthur’s antics and unimpressed. ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ said Gwen as they approached. ‘I thought you were inrealtrouble. Sid, how much has he had to – ohGod.’

She had assumed Arthur very drunk, but as his hat fell from his head she saw in the torchlight that he was hurt. There were dark bruises blooming on his face, gashes where the skin had split open, and there was a terrifying amount of blood splattered down the front of his shirt under his jacket; he looked for a moment as if he might be able to open his eyes, but instead Gwen only briefly saw the whites of them before they rolled back into his head.

‘Shit,’ she said, dropping to her knees and running a shaking hand over his hair, pushing it back from his swollen face. ‘What happened? How did you even get him back here?’

Sidney glanced up at the guards and then leaned in towards them, his voice low. ‘He was – attacked. They jumped him outside an inn, he was … I don’t know, he went out there with some boy, I thought it was that blond one from before, Mitchell. When I got out there he was down, and they were kicking him. He was conscious at first, he even managed to do most of the walking by himself on the way back, but then he just …’

Gwen glanced over at Gabriel, whose jaw was clenched so tight he looked in danger of breaking a tooth.

‘Why weren’t youthere?’ he shouted at Sidney, who flinched backwards as if he were the one who’d been hit in the face. ‘Isn’t that yourjob?’

‘Why are you just standing there? Go and fetch the physician,now,’ Gwen said to the guards. They had already scrambled away to do her bidding when something else occurred to her. ‘Damn it. Agnes – can you please go too, and fetch the Wizard?’

‘Why wasn’t I tagging along with him into some alleyway?’ Sidney was saying to Gabriel. ‘Why do youthink? I was inside, I was making sure nobody followed them out there. By the time I got outside they had him on the ground, and they ran, and I thought I’d better …’ Sidney lookedspittingmad, but somewhere underneath it all Gwen could tell that he was extremely upset. ‘It was an ambush. I don’t think they knew who he was, I guess he just looked – wealthy. But they didn’t take anything. He didn’t have anything worth taking.’

Except chunks of his face, thought Gwen.Except a body upright and unbroken.

She gently touched Arthur’s shoulder, trying to see where he was hurt. He had crossed his arms over his torso protectively, as if expecting to be kicked again. Sidney took off his jacket and eased it under Arthur’s head. Gabriel just stood there, staring down at Arthur.

‘Hold his hand,’ Gwen said. Gabriel looked at her, startled, hardly seeming to be awake. ‘Hold hishand, Gabe. Sidney, grab the other one. I want – I need to see if he’s still bleeding.’

They crouched down and did as she asked. Arthur moaned as they gently pulled his arms away from his torso. Gwen gestured for Gabriel to hand over his dagger and then cut open Arthur’s tunic with it; it was so stiff and wetwith blood that it fell heavily to the floor, revealing a chest already so swollen and bruised that Gwen couldn’t imagine how bad it would look in the morning. The blood didn’t actually seem to be coming from anywhere on his abdomen, so there was no wound that needed urgent staunching – it must have come from his split chin or temple or cheekbone, Gwen thought grimly as she tentatively touched the swelling at his ribs.

‘Something in there might be … broken,’ Gwen said, thinking of fallen tournament knights and the mysterious internal injuries that sometimes killed them, and feeling very, very sick.

Somebody was approaching quickly from down the hall; Gwen looked up, expecting to see the grim face of the doctor – but it was Bridget. Clearly just out of bed, a thick nightshirt stuffed into a pair of breeches, her hair sticking up all around her face. For the first time, Gwen thought she might cry.

‘What happened?’ Bridget said, striding over and putting a hand on Gwen’s shoulder. ‘Agnes sent someone to fetch me, she said—’

‘Robbers. Outside the inn,’ Sidney said, clearly too exhausted to repeat the story in its entirety. Bridget didn’t seem to need it.

‘Which inn?’

‘The Round Table. The – the smaller one. But they’ll be long gone.’

‘I know it,’ said Bridget. ‘What did they look like?’

Sidney described them, although they sounded so generic that it felt hopeless. Gwen watched Bridget as shetook all of this information in, her expression focused and serious.

‘All right,’ she said, giving Gwen’s shoulder a firm squeeze. ‘I’ll be back.’ Before Gwen could react, she glanced around to check that the coast was clear, then leaned down and pressed a kiss into her hair. Gwen closed her eyes tightly and felt hot tears escaping from beneath her eyelashes. When she opened them, Bridget was gone.

The doctor arrived at last with two apprentices and the Wizard in tow, and Gwen saw Gabriel instantly let go of Arthur’s hand. They had brought a makeshift litter, and Arthur’s head lolled horribly as he was hoisted up on to it and then carried up the stairs towards his own room, Sidney at his side.

‘We should go with him,’ Gwen said, looking at Gabriel still sitting on the floor, his shirtsleeve soaked through with Arthur’s blood. ‘Come on.’

‘I can’t,’ said Gabriel. Gwen wanted very much to say something to him then, but she knew it wouldn’t help – so she left him there alone and made for Arthur’s rooms, trying hard not to look at the trail of splattered blood leading the way.

Arthur tried not to breathe too much. It hurt to breathe.

He kept wanting to ask Gwen to stop scowling – she looked bloodyterriblewhen she scowled, all haughty and imperious – but then he saw that she was also crying, so it felt rude to say. A thoroughly horrible man kept waking him up and poking him and making him drink things. Sometimes Gwen or Sidney would get angry if he did it for too long, and shout at him to go away. He wanted to cheer them on, but there was the whole issue of breathing to contend with. Cheering would use up an awful lot of air.

Sometimes in the middle of what felt like a long night, when he could feel darkness and pain pressing against him from all sides – when he felt like his chest was going to break under it, that no mortal body could possibly withstand it – he knew Gabriel was there, and if he squinted very, very hard, he could just about see his face, a single point of light in the black. Gabriel didn’t cry. He looked dreadful, though.

Who hurt you?Arthur wanted to ask, but every time he tried to get the words out, the darkness swallowed him.

He dreamed of golden-haired boys who kissed him hardand left him bleeding; of a murder of crows bursting from the treeline, hundreds of them flying overhead, until they blacked out the sky; of his mother, who was less a person and more a feeling, singing to him in a familiar language he didn’t understand, holding something soft and cool to his head while he sobbed and clutched at her skirts. He dreamed of Gabriel sitting on a horse, the crown on his head white-hot and burning – he tried to cry out, to warn him, but Gabriel knew and smiled sadly and did nothing as he was engulfed in flame. A hand emerged from the inferno and Arthur stepped towards him to try to grasp it, but instead Gwen appeared, and calmly slipped her hand into Gabriel’s so that they could go into the fire together, leaving him behind.