He was the victim, or perhaps the beneficiary, of the most almighty blunder. Somehow, everyone had mistaken him for a king, when he was very clearly a selfish, clueless idiot who had scarcely in his life thought more than a day ahead. Every time someone called him, “your Majesty” he felt more of a fraud, and with each moment that passed he was more guiltily surprised not to have been found out.

He wandered across the perfect lawn, giving vent to a long, self-pitying sigh. It caught in his throat. There was a Knight of the Body beside a doorway opposite, standing to attention so rigidly that Jezal had hardly noticed him. He cursed under his breath. Could he not be left alone for five minutes together? He frowned as he walked closer. The man seemed somehow familiar. A great big fellow with a shaved head and a noticeable lack of neck…

“Bremer dan Gorst!”

“Your Majesty,” said Gorst, his armour rattling as he clashed his meaty fist against his polished breastplate.

“It is a pleasure to see you!” Jezal had disliked the man from the first moment he had laid eyes on him, and being bludgeoned round a fencing circle by him, whether Jezal had won in the end or no, had not improved his opinion of the neckless brute. Now, however, anything resembling a familiar face was like a glass of water in the desert. Jezal actually found himself reaching out and squeezing the man’s heavy hand as though they were old friends, and had to make himself let go of it.

“Your Majesty does me too much honour.”

“Please, you need not call me that! How did you come to be part of the household? I thought that you served with Lord Brock’s guard?”

“That post did not suit me,” said Gorst in his strangely high, piping voice. “I was lucky enough to find a place with the Knights of the Body some months ago, your Maj—” He cut himself off.

An idea slunk into Jezal’s head. He looked over his shoulder, but there was no one else nearby. The garden was still as a graveyard, its shadowy arcades as quiet as crypts. “Bremer… I may call you Bremer, may I?”

“I suppose that my king may call me whatever he wishes.”

“I wonder… could I ask you for a favour?”

Gorst blinked. “Your Majesty has only to ask.”

Jezal spun around as he heard the door open. Gorst stepped out into the colonnade with the soft jingle of armour. A cloaked and hooded figure followed him, silently. The old excitement was still there as she pushed back her hood and a chink of light from a window above crept across the lower part of her face. He could see the bright curve of her cheek, one side of her mouth, the outline of a nostril, the gleam of her eyes in the shadows, and that was all.

“Thank you, Gorst,” said Jezal. “You may leave us.” The big man thumped his chest and backed through the archway, pulling the door to behind him. Hardly the first time they had met in secret, of course, but things were different now. He wondered if it would end with kisses and soft words between them, or if it would simply end. The start was far from promising.

“Your August Majesty,” said Ardee with the very heaviest of irony. “What a towering honour. Should I grovel on my face? Or do I curtsey?”

However hard her words, the sound of her voice still made the breath catch in his throat. “Curtsey?” he managed to say. “Do you even know how?”

“In truth, not really. I have not had the training for polite society, and now the lack of it quite crushes me.” She stepped forward, frowning into the darkened garden. “When I was a girl, in my wildest flights of fancy, I used to dream of being invited to the palace, a guest of the king himself. We would eat fine cakes, and drink fine wine, and talk fine talk of important things, deep into the night.” Ardee pressed her hands to her chest and fluttered her eyelashes. “Thank you for making the pitiful dreams of one poor wretch come true, if only for the briefest moment. The other beggars will never believe me when I tell them!”

“We are all more than a little shocked by the turn events have taken.”

“Oh, we are indeed, your Majesty.”

Jezal flinched. “Don’t call me that. Not you.”

“What should I call you?”

“My name. Jezal, that is. The way you used to… please.”

“If I must. You promised me, Jezal. You promised me you would not let me down.”

“I know I did, and I meant to keep my promise… but the fact is…” King or not, he fumbled with the words as much as he ever had, then blurted them out in an idiotic spurt. “I cannot marry you! I surely would have done, had not…” He raised his arms and hopelessly let them drop. “Had not all this happened. But it has happened, and there is nothing that I can do. I cannot marry you.”

“Of course not.” Her mouth gave a bitter twist. “Promises are for children. I never thought it very likely, even before. Even in my most unrealistic moments. Now the notion seems ridiculous. The king and the peasant-girl. Absurd. The most hackneyed story-book would never dare suggest it.”

“It need not mean that we never see each other again.” He took a hesitant step towards her. “Things will be different, of course, but we can still find moments…” He reached out, slowly, awkwardly. “Moments when we can be together.” He touched her face, gently, and felt the same guilty thrill he always had. “We can be to each other just as we were. You would not need to worry. Everything would be taken care of…”

She looked him in the eye. “So… you’d like me to be your whore?”

He jerked his hand back. “No! Of course not! I mean… I would like you to be…” What did he mean? He fumbled desperately for a better word. “My lover?”

“Ah. I see. And when you take a wife, what will I be then? What word do you think your queen might use to describe me?” Jezal swallowed, and looked at his shoes. “A whore is still a whore, whatever word you use. Easily tired of, and even more easily replaced. And when you tire of me, and you find other lovers? What will they call me then?” She gave a bitter snort. “I’m scum, and I know it, but you must think even less of me than I do.”

“It’s not my fault.” He felt tears in his eyes. Pain, or relief, it was hard to tell. A bitter alloy of both, perhaps. “It’s not my fault.”

“Of course it isn’t. I don’t blame you. I blame myself. I used to think I had bad luck, but my brother was right. I make bad choices.” She looked at him with that same judging expression in her dark eyes that she had when they first met. “I could have found a good man, but I chose you. I should have known better.” She reached up and touched his face, rubbed a tear from his cheek with her thumb. Just as she had when they parted before, in the park, in the rain. But then there had been the hope that they would meet again. Now there was none. She sighed, and let her arm drop, and stared sulkily out into the garden.

Jezal blinked. Could that really be all? He yearned to say some last tender word, at least, some bitter-sweet farewell, but his mind was empty. What words could there possibly be that could make any difference? They were done, and more talk would only have been salt in the cuts. Wasted breath. He set his jaw, and wiped the last damp streaks from his face. She was right. The king and the peasant-girl. What could have been more ridiculous?

“Gorst!” he barked. The door squealed open and the muscle-bound guardsman emerged from the shadows, his head humbly bowed. “You may escort the lady back to her home.”

He nodded, and stood away from the dark archway. Ardee turned and walked towards it, pulling up her hood, and Jezal watched her go. He wondered if she would pause on the threshold and look back, and their eyes would meet, and there would be one last moment between them. One last catching of his breath. One last tugging at his heart.

But she did not look back. Without the slightest pause she stepped through and was gone, and Gorst after her, and Jezal was left in the moonlit garden. Alone.