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Even if he were not well aware of the armour the Prince used to conceal his identity, Will would still be able to spot him from thirty paces at the very least. There is something to the distinctive heft of Edward’s sword, the way he holds himself as though at any given time he were a king amongst kings and confident of his position. He’s hung his flag for the joust, and entered for the sword. It seems as though in these times of putative peace, in the tentative lull between one battle and the next, he’s eager to keep his hand in.
Will sees him from a distance as he’s heading back to his tent, holding the bracer that Kate’s put a final finishing touch to. Will salutes him from where he stands even though Edward is turned a little away, is surprised at the answering wave.
Under an awning two heralds are arguing, faces flushed. “It is an impossibility,” one of them hisses at the other as Will passes. “The horse alone, the retinue, it is too obviously the Prince.” They both jerk their heads nervously at Will, and a seneschal offers him a low bow as he scurries by to join the heralds in their debate.
“There is not a man in camp who will cross swords with the Prince,” the seneschal, a man Will recognises vaguely from too many a fussily organized banquet at court says, runs a hand through his hair like he can’t think of anything else to do with it.
On impulse Will stops. After all if he were to stop letting impulse rule him, he would not be Will Thatcher, of a putatively noble line or not. “There is at least one man in camp who will cross swords with Sir Thomas,” he says, sketching a vague bow.
The look on the seneschal’s face is clearly trying to decide if Will is a madman or a simpleton. Will smiles brightly, about as innocently as he can manage, there’s no need to make it easy for them after all. “Sir William Thatcher,” he says, raises the bracer in salute and continues back to the tent with a brief stop at the tanner’s.
Wat is in the tent when he gets back, and it’s a measure of just how fast news travels that Wat has his hands on his hips, and a look on his face that says he’s swallowing some choice words. “Great,” Wat says. “He pardons you. So you smack him in the face or offer to. He knights you, and you want to spank him with a sword. Heaven forbid the man ever does anything bad to you.”
“It’s nice to know you have such a high opinion of my skill with the sword, Wat. Are you saying the Prince isn’t good enough to fight me?” Will offers. He’s pretty sure there isn’t anything breakable to hand, and he’s heard it’s good for the heart to be passionate - never let it be said that Will Thatcher doesn’t care for his friends.
Predictably, Wat turns away and breaks a jug by slamming it down as hard as he can manage, to get his feelings out. Must have the strongest heart in three counties, Will is fairly sure. “You put a scratch on him,” Wat says, “there’ll be hell to pay.”
Roland comes into the tent clutching bread, honey, assorted foods and wine. “Leave him alone five minutes,” he says plaintively. “Challenges the prince of England to a bloody fight.” His casting his eyes up to heaven is kind of ruined by the fact that he’s holding a whole dried fish to his breast. Wat plucks it out of Roland’s hands and eyes it as though considering its breakability.
Kate pokes her head through the tent flap and enters, taking the fish out of Wat’s hands and putting it on the table. She holds out her hand expectantly. “Your sword Will,” she says. “When you get put in gaol for thrashing the future king, I want everyone to be asking what sword you did it with and who sharpened it.”
“Can’t we just have food,” Will asks, looking at the table where the fish appears to be looking back at him, with exactly the same desperate look he imagines must be on his own face.
Three voices mingle as one and the upshot he’s getting from the commingled “get your sword sharpened first, never fight on a full stomach, and pray to Jesus for mercy” is no, no he will not be allowed food.
When Will’s on the field, he more or less forgets about the uproar. This is the bit he’s a natural at after all. Before he ever broke a lance, he’d been swinging a sword. It sits in his hand with ease, worn hilt grooved perfectly to his grip. The sight of Sir Thomas Colville’s helm, with the Black Prince’s face behind it only strengthens his resolve. In front of London, Edward took his hand and raised him up. Will can’t do less on the field than honour him as a friendly foe.
Before Will swings the first strike, he’d considered pulling his blows, a mere decorative cross of blades, fencing more than fighting, enough to let them both hold their heads high. At the solid parry of Edward’s blade and the return thrust, he abandons that idea. The Black Prince has spent half his life on a battlefield, Will doesn’t need to worry about cracking a royal head or breaking a royal rib. It becomes swiftly apparent, that it’s all he can do not to be decimated by the machine-like fury of the blows.
Blood up in his face and his throat, Will can feel the resolve crystallise in him. He hasn’t lost in the sword since the very beginning of his private odyssey, and he hacks back, renews his attack with vigour, arcs wide blows and blocks the heavy smacks of the blade that Edward sends his way. He relies as always on the lightness of his armour and the swiftness of his strikes to counter against the decisive force of Edward’s blade, the trained ferocity of his attack.
Will has never fought like this before. He’s used to beating with ease the men who let themselves get stout and secure, who didn’t hunger for the winning or the gold in the same way the small hungry boy he’d once been still thirsted for the glory. This now, it feels like a battle, and he treats it as one, relishes the opportunity to fight with all his soul.
Will’s beaten of course, Edward’s been handling a blade for all his born life, and he’s as hungry as Will is, even if it’s for different things. Edward smacks Will down to the ground, but he doesn’t make Will yield, simply steps back and plants his sword in the turf. Edward pants through his helm, and gestures as Will tries to stand, offers a hand impossible as it may seem, and pulls Will to his feet. When Edward lifts off his helmet, there’s the obligatory gasp from the crowd, but Will only has eyes for the deep intensity with which Edward regards him.
“Tell me,” Edward says, and there’s a curve of his mouth that hints at a smile. “William Thatcher, did you go easy on me?”
Will looks at him with deep disbelief, gestures at his throat, at the way that he’s wheezing. “Go easy?” he asks, “I was fighting for my life. Sire, I begin to believe it is not for respect that they decline to fight you on the field, but out of consideration for their ribs.”
“You’re a noble now Will,” Edward says. “Someday I believe, we will fight side by side. I could not ask for someone better to watch my back. Tell me, tomorrow will you still joust?”
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Will says, and he speaks the truth as far as his mind is concerned, his sides on the other hand beg for mercy.
The joust is much like it. Edward breaks the first lance, Will breaks the second, through mutual accord they decline the third. The stadium lets go of a collective breath, neither ready to see their hero defeated or their king deposed. Afterwards, Edward raises his true flag, the cursory pretence done with, and canters up to where Will stands, scrubbing down his horse with a wisp of hay. “Join me this evening,” Edward asks, a request in name only surely.
Will bows in acquiescence, and Wat clucks his tongue, cuffs him round the head. “Sir Ector beat a civil tongue into us,” he says reproachfully. Will shrugs helplessly, after all this time, court niceties still pass him by.
Inside the tent it seems that all order has been put aside. The interior is sparse, even a little Spartan, there is a page who fills their goblets with wine and then bows his head to leave them, large worried eyes as though he expects a boot to be thrown at his head at any minute during this time of contravention of all natural order. Edward raises his glass. "Perhaps even now," he says a little wryly, "you do not know what a gift it is, to fight a man who comes to you honestly, who raises his sword high and believes that you can meet it. Thank you Will for that."
“You order men to fight for you,” Will says, a little hesitant, as Edward is after all still a prince, albeit one who values an honest tongue in an honest head. “Is it so different to order them to fight you?” Even as he says it, he sees the impossibility of it.
Edward sees him realise it, smiles a little. “You see Will,” he says, as casually as any friend. “I would not ask a man to raise his blade against me, not when I ask him to follow me.”
It feels like it should be wrong that Will has never hesitated to take up arms against his prince. He opens his mouth to say that, but something entirely different comes out. “You don’t need to ask me,” he offers instead.
Edward smiles, the scar on his face deepening, the seam that says one foe at least hadn’t hesitated to set blade to royal flesh. “I know,” he says. “Some day if you strike me like you did today, I may indeed ask you to take it a little easier on an old man.”
Will is back on solid ground with that. “You would not,” he says, decisively, is rewarded by Edward’s one sided shrug, the open splay of his hands as though he could not dispute Will’s words.
“We are two men of a kind,” Edward says. “We would rather die than ask for quarter, rather die than refuse to give it. When I saw you there, on the streets of London, surrounded by your men and your women who would have given their lives for you, to the last drop of their blood. When I understood they would have died for you rather than suffer you to have received indignity, then I understood in that moment what we shared in common."
He strides to the table and picks up the flagon of wine, splashes it carelessly into their respective goblets and proffers one back to Will.
William, the thatcher’s son, has served many a glass of wine, but bar the occasional banquet he had had none served to him, particularly not by such an illustrious hand. He holds onto it, and looks into the red depths, darkened and deepened by the shadowy flickering light of the tent. Holds onto the golden heft of the cup. “Aquitaine,” he says slowly. “Crécy. Eleven thousand dead.”
“Yes,” Edward adds steadily. “And we yet alive at the end.” He drinks a little, and tops his glass up once more. “You lived a while in France,” he says, thoughtful. “I suppose there were tales of butchery. Not so much on the other side of course. But tell me, if I called, would you come?”
Will looks at his hands. He sits here at the mercy of this prince. The day before, he’d felt his sword at his throat, that day, they had raised lances. “Yes,” he says steadily. “Not for your mercy, not for your cause. But you, I would follow.”
There's golden light in the tent, a little of it on Edward's hair, swallowed in the darkness of it, and it chases the slowness of the smile across his face. "I believe you," he says, takes a sip of his wine. "A rare thing to find a true soul in such a dark place."
Will's a little hazy from the wine, a little awed from the sight of the Prince, the intentness of his gaze and the steadiness of his regard. "Know sire," he says, wishes he had Geoffrey's gift with words, Wat's directness, Kate's trueness, that he could combine them all to say how he feels in this moment. "I would stay with you even through the worst." The words are bald, without flourish or fanfare, he does not have the word crafted skill to explain what he means. All he's ever had to offer is his hands, his heart, his true intent. He would try to explain more, even if there are parts of him that must forever stay unspoken, the way that the sight of Edward moves him, has moved him from the beginning to the depths of his soul, such that he had to turn to God, to whatever simulacrum or semblance of a heaven existed to beg for an explanation.
Then Edward is kneeling before him, and it's an outrage against God, against man, a disarrangement of the natural order of things that he should do this, that he should sit between William's thighs, and touch him familiarly in such a way, run his hand along his leg, and touch him over the solemn woolen hose that is Roland's compromise between court fashion and the coldness of winter. That, he should look up, with dark eyes and say with his god-touched voice "Will, William, will you let me touch," in such a way that like his coat of arms above the board, he asks, but does not insist, hopes but does not believe that hope will be met. That he should be on his knees, is an insult, an outrage, one that Will can not brook, and he touches Edward's neck as though to bring him up, and Edward resists against his hand.
"An answer, Sir William," he says, voice stern, implacable.
"Always," Will says, helplessly. "Always."
There is nothing of surrender in the way that Edward bows his head, his fingers are iron against Will's thighs as he unlaces him, eases him out, touches him enough that Will is hard and aching in his touch, unbelieving still that the centre of the world kneels before him. He thrusts up a little at Edward's touch, stills his hips and keeps himself steady, as the Prince takes him in hand, slides his hand from base to tip as though to measure him, to enjoy him, before with a semblance, an affectation of surrender, utterly unbelievable when taken in conjunction with the proudness of his back, the unbending nature of his character, he opens his mouth, and takes Will in. His mouth is an inferno, the heat of it almost unbearable, the tenderness that he shows, even as he restrains Will's hips, holds him down as he sucks him. He drags his mouth across Will's prick, licks at the head, swallows him down whole, the frenzy of it overwhelming him as Will tries, again and again, to thrust up, restrained by the calloused strength of Edward's hands, until utterly desperate he bites his hand to muffle his cries, turns into his sleeve to express the utter unbelieving of the feeling.
There is a little of satisfaction in the look that Edward turns on him, when Will begs, when he scrabbles with desperate hands for the return of Edward's mouth, left wanting as he is. The second time is slower, deeper, Edward takes him entirely, shelters him within the hollow of his throat, his mouth, the same way he spread a wing of protection over Will before a London crowd who would have torn him from limb to limb. He tucks his head against Will's stomach, touches his hand to the cut of Will's hip, lets Will touch his face, his mouth, run his hands disbelievingly across Edward's face, engaged as it is. Will restrains himself as much as possible, before instinct takes over and he fucks helplessly up, comes in Edward's mouth, helpless against his touch and the royal command.
Afterwards, Will touches Edward's face, believing the whole time that this is a dream, that he will be ushered away by an embarrassed page. Edward smiles at him, stands up and presses him back against the bunk that serves him for both tourney and battle, touches his hand first to Will's face, then to his neck. "Will, he says. "William. Will you let me touch you?"
There's only one answer, and it's always been the same. "Yes," Will says.