The Camelot Spell - Laura Anne Gilman [5]
“Your care?” Gerard could feel himself spluttering, outraged to be dismissed like that. “Yours? You dung-smeared, rear-faced, snot-nosed…peasant!”
As easily as that, they were down on the straw-strewn ground between the wooden stalls, wrestling to get the best hold on the other. Gerard thought he had the upper hand, managing to land a solid elbow into the other boy’s face. But the stable boy was agile, slipping from his grasp again and again. He got in a blow with the heel of his hand first to Gerard’s jaw and then solidly into his nose.
Gerard tasted blood in the back of his throat and spat straw out of his mouth as they rolled, the sound of nervous horses snorting and shifting in the stalls around them.
“Enough!”
A hand reached down and grasped Gerard by the collar of his shirt, lifted him off the other boy, and tossed him onto his backside. It soothed the blow only slightly to see the stable boy treated in the same manner. But that sense of justice faded when he recognized the newcomer.
Sir Lancelot, his ugly-handsome face set in lines of absolute exasperation, glared down at them.
“Gerard, for the love of God, what were you thinking—assuming you were thinking at all…I expect far better behavior of you than to be scuffling about like an ill-bred child.”
Gerard’s complexion flushed again and he bit his tongue to keep from responding like the sulky child Sir Lancelot accused him of being. A perfect day: first running errands like a mere page, and now this.
He knew full well that fighting with a stable boy was not acceptable behavior for a squire who was almost ready to be considered for knighting. He knew that and had done it anyway. And in front of Lancelot! The respectable man was everything that Gerard hoped someday to be—a great warrior and Arthur’s most trusted knight. Or at least he had been until recently. Lancelot spent more time away from Camelot now, almost as though he were avoiding the place.
The thought of having disappointed the most famous Knight of the Round Table was more bitter than any scolding or punishment he might receive. But still—Gerard fought down the anger that rose in his throat—it wasn’t fair! He had been provoked!
“And you, Newt. Thirteen’s old enough to leave off childish ways.” Lancelot looked down at the stable boy, who had scrambled to his feet, and cuffed him across one ear. “I despair of ever teaching you manners.”
Newt grinned up at the knight and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “Maybe I’m no gallant, but I speak the truth, Lance. You know that.”
Gerard almost choked on his outrage then, that this…nothing dared use the king’s own nickname for the greatest knight in all Camelot. But Lancelot didn’t seem to mind. “Back to work, you. And Gerard, go clean yourself. The banquet will begin soon and I’ll not have you disgracing your master further by appearing with straw in your hair as well as a bloodied nose.”
Gerard got to his feet, brushing straw out of his hair and off his backside.
“Go on,” Newt said, mimicking Lancelot’s tone perfectly. “Must be tidy for the castle.”
“Newt!” Another crack across the ear, this one harder. But not hard enough to suit Gerard.
The squire left, shooting a sharp look at Newt as he went. Scolded like a puppy, and that boy got away with such familiarity!
“It’s not fair,” Gerard muttered to himself, kicking at a clod of dirt and watching it skitter across the stones of the courtyard.
“It rarely is,” Lancelot said from behind him. Gerard jumped, startled. He had been so wrapped up in his own misery, he hadn’t heard the knight catch up to him. The knight’s eyes were kind with sympathy. “Life, that is. But you’ll find your way around it,” Lancelot continued, matching himself to Gerard’s slower pace. “Or, if you don’t, it will be a failure of your own, not your birth or education, neither of which Newt has. Keep that in mind, young Gerard. We who have the benefit of our station in this world must never forget it, even