The Past
The sun had baked the very stones in the earth, that day. A harsh, white, ceaseless sun, turning all the world to glass. And Arthur, heir to the throne of Camelot, had been expected to bear witness in a way that the lowly townsfolk never were . . . because unlike them, he could not choose to look away.
King Uther stood like a column of black marble on the burning white balcony, the crown a glare of gold in his peppered brown hair. There was a flicker of something – satisfaction, perhaps – at the subdued disquiet of the crowd, and Arthur tucked away that piece of knowledge without quite knowing why it felt so important to do so.
After all, he was only ten years old.
Two knights dragged a sobbing boy across the square, and the people parted like the Red Sea to allow them passage. The child, no older than Arthur himself, struggled against hands that were as adamantine as the gauntlets that usually encased them; he made them fight him for every step they took. Once, he kicked at Sir Pellinor's unprotected shin; once, he squirmed half out of his sweaty tunic before they could secure their hold of him.
Arthur had never been so proud to call Roland his friend than in that moment.
He must have made some unconscious movement towards the balcony's edge, because at that moment Uther laid an inexorable hand on his shoulder and began to squeeze. Battle-hardened fingers dug through Arthur's shirt, and dimpled bruisingly into the flesh beneath. Arthur stilled; but under the surface, where the king would never see, his insides seethed like a pot of water set to boil.
"Remember what I've always taught you, Arthur," said the king, from the corner of his hard-set mouth. "No man is worth your tears. And certainly no inconsequential peasant boy."
Arthur's lip trembled, once; then he shivered in a single watery breath, and put away the tears where his father could not see.
"People of Camelot," said Uther, raising his voice to a proclamatory boom. "We are gathered here to witness the sentence of Roland Tanner, who by his reckless insubordination endangered the life of your future king. For the three days in which he kept my son lost amongst the southern hills, he is hereby sentenced to three days in the town square without food or shade. Let it be known that any subject caught approaching the prisoner will be interfering with the king's justice(1), and will be charged accordingly under the law. Let this serve as a lesson to all, that your first duty is to protect and serve your king and prince, as they serve and protect you."
The clang of the iron gate rang in Arthur's ears like the fall of an axe. Roland's thin chest heaved, his throat convulsed around every laboured breath . . . but his eyes were defiantly dry as they burned up into Arthur's. They burned black as embers in his filthy, freckled, tear-stained face.
"Father," said Arthur, and felt his voice falter under Uther's warning glare. "Please, stop this. It was I who ran off without permission, not Roland. I know I let you believe it was all his idea, but . . . but the truth is that I led him astray. I wanted some time away from my training, just once, and I . . . I pressured him into coming with me. Roland is innocent, Father, please—"
"If that were true," said Uther, levelly, "then you would have owned as much before this. My son would not be so cowardly as to allow another to take the blame for any fault of his. You think I don't see what you're doing, Arthur? This attempt to spare the boy punishment is unbefitting a future knight of Camelot, and the future king. You cannot afford compassion, and you cannot afford to be swayed by sentiment when there are traitors around every corner. This Roland may have been paid to lure you away from the citadel for all we know."
"He wouldn't do that, Father. I know he wouldn't. Please . . . he's my friend."
The hand on Arthur's shoulder clamped down into a single, crushing point of pain that made dark spots swarm before his eyes. When he blinked away the drove of angry black lights and could see again, his father was glowering down at him with a face made almost entirely of straight lines. "He is not your friend. He is a servant, and one not even fit to polish your saddle. Now one more word out of you, and I will see to it that he is denied water as well."
Arthur cinched his mouth shut and blinked back hot, sullen tears. His father was an unclimbable battlement against the sky, a dark shape cut from the white and lit with sparking fire at his edges. He could not be moved, could not be reached.
And trying only made things worse.
§
Wherever Arthur went over the following two days, he could not escape the sight of the cage in the square below. It grinned at him with black, bladed teeth; it cast its broken shadow over everything he did.
From the castle casements, he could look out over the square below and watch the pitiless sun drag those shadows across the bleached grey stones. He saw Roland at first bearing up under the oppressive heat, kicking the bars and spitting at whichever unfortunate guard came to bring him water. Then, Arthur saw him sit sullenly against the padlocked gate as if his will alone would force it to burst open. At both of these, Arthur felt a pressure in his chest that hurt like a broken rib. Roland was a worthy friend for a knight of Camelot – could be a knight of Camelot, if he were not so common-born. His father was a fool.
Late on that first awful night, Arthur had wakened to a spill of pallid summer moonlight flooding into his bedchamber. The heat was a fist that smashed all the air from his small, undeveloped chest. For a moment he had only lain on his back in the rumpled bed, letting sleep drag at his edges like waves eroding the shore . . . and then his eyes had opened wide to the darkness as he remembered.
Roland. Roland was not in his own bed, wherever that may be. He wasn't lying awake, cursing the sheets for sticking to his out-flung limbs. Roland was even now curled miserably on the hard, hot stones of the square, without food in his belly or water enough to quench his thirst. Wakeful. Frightened.
Alone.
Silently Arthur had slipped from his bed and padded over to the open window. With a slight flinch that would have disgusted his father had he seen it, Arthur looked down to the cage that had towered over his dreams all that long, wakeful night. If he were lucky, if the moon shone its fullest and enough of the torches remained lit, then he would be able to see if his best friend really suffered as badly as his imagination would have him believe. Or if, perhaps—
But Roland was strong. He was like Arthur, a knight in spirit if not in name. He would be all right.
Please, God, let him be all right.
The moon bathed the courtyard in a light as clear and crisp as fresh-laid snow. The cage was a scaffold of stark black stripes, the shadows a lattice of cool grey bars on the stones. And in it, curled into one corner with his arms wound protectively over his head, was Roland.
Arthur sucked in a breath as dense and as warm as bath water. The figure below was nothing but a drab mound of clothes and gawkish limbs; his shoulders shook with every, heaving breath. If Arthur stilled his body and really listened, he could imagine he heard Roland's inconsolable sobs as he wept. And he imagined he heard, amongst the tears, a sound that seemed almost to be a name.
Arthur.
"This is cruel," said Morgana's cool voice, close beside his ear. He hadn't even heard her approach. "You were only playing, for God's sake."
"Knights don't 'play'," Arthur retorted – but his eyes remained riveted on the miserable figure of the boy below, and did not turn to acknowledge her. "We train."
But knights don't cry, either, he thought. Knights don't break when they're punished, even if it is undeserved. And knights don't lie to their father, no matter what the cost.
"You're not knights," said Morgana. "You're little boys who were just doing what little boys do – making fools of yourselves. Uther has no right to punish him for doing what any stablehand or cook's boy does without a second thought."
Arthur felt his fists crunch closed on the windowsill, and studiously avoided meeting her gaze. He only focused on the boy below – a boy, for God's sake, not a knight or a prince but only a boy – and felt his throat crammed full of something very like wet sand.
Princes do not cry. Princes do not cry. They do not—
"It's all right to be upset, you know." Morgana's hand rested lightly on his shoulder: the shoulder where, under the white shirt and the shadows, fresh bruises bloomed in the shape of his father's five ineluctable fingers. "After all, he is your closest friend."
§
On the second day, Roland had a fit. It happened in the hottest hours of the afternoon, when all the inhabitants of Camelot hunkered in their homes to escape the merciless heat. At first it had taken the form of shaking, his body dropping to the ground like a stone. A thin stream of urine trickled down the leg of his breeches, and his arms and legs had thrashed like the tentacles of a landed squid(2). Then he had vomited onto the hot stones, a paltry stream of digestive fluids that steamed when they hit the ground.
That night, he had been unmoving as Arthur crept to the window to watch him from above.
And on the third day, he died.
§
Merlin had been both surprised and grateful to find the passageway darkened outside the prince's chambers, that night. At any other time there would be braziers set in honeyed globes of light along these passageways, the smell of drifting smoke and melting tallow. Tonight, however, all but two of the braziers stood cold and unlit. It was an unexpected boon, and Merlin had no intention of looking a gift horse in the mouth; he could hardly explain to any passersby that he had come to plead for Arthur's help in defying the king. That would almost certainly land him in the cage in place of the faltering stablemaster, and earn him a whipping besides.
And was that really why he had come here? He had saved people without Arthur's help before – he, Gaius, Gwen, even Morgana, all had borne the brunt of many a plot to rescue Uther's victims in the past. Sometimes Arthur had thrown in his lot with them, but it remained an unspoken tenet between conspirators that he couldn't be relied upon to do so. His blind faith in Uther meant that they could never tell which way the prince would jump.
It sat now like a stone in Merlin's gut, that knowledge. The memory of Gaius bound to the pyre was one he had often taken with him into sleep, and woken from to find that sleep had altogether fled. He had looked so small, amidst the faggots(3) of wood and plugs of tinder. So mortal. And in his more rational moments, Merlin could admit that the prince had objected to Aredian's presence from the first; but with the clang of the cage still resonating in his mind, Merlin felt anything but rational.
As he hesitated now outside the door, he could not help but second-guess his decision to come to Arthur with this all over again. There were still so many avenues left to explore, and plenty of ways for him to solve this mystery without his master's help. He could have checked at the tavern for any evidence that Guillam had purchased that wine; he could have interviewed the stableboys for anything they might have seen, some hint of an intruder that may have tampered with Morgana's horse. Guillam's neighbours, the one son still living in Camelot – any of them might have provided some piece of information crucial to proving the man's innocence. He didn't need Arthur. And yet here he was outside the prince's chambers in the coolest part of the night, one hand raised to push open his door.
Because, more than anything, he needed a reason to believe.
§
The room was in darkness, save for an oblong of moonlight that slanted through the casement onto Arthur's bed. His empty, unmade bed. For a moment Merlin blinked, so certain had he been of finding the prince asleep; he had not been prepared to find him standing beside the open window and staring at him with simmering, barely-suppressed rage.
"Merlin, what on earth do you think you're doing? You can't just barge in here at all hours of the night, you could have woken me up!"
"But . . . you weren't asleep," said Merlin, reasonably.
"And I never will be, if you keep blundering about in the dark like an incompetent burglar. The only time you should enter my chambers in the early hours of the morning is if there's an emergency."
Merlin saw the prince's naked shoulders tighten, and Arthur took two, unsteady steps towards him before faltering to a halt. "Is there an emergency? Is it my father? Or Morgana, was she more badly injured than we thought?"
"No, Arthur, it's nothing like that. They're fine, your father and Morgana are fine. I actually wanted to talk to you about something else."
He saw Arthur's shoulders unbend, just a little. The cords that stood to quivering attention in his neck smoothed away into ivory-pale skin. But his eyes were still livid in his moonlit face: no longer blue in the pallid half-dark, but instead a blazing, incandescent silver. "And you thought that the early hours of the morning would be the best time for this, because—?"
"Guillam has a fever. His, his speech is slurred, and his skin is flushed, and his pulse is erratic – Arthur, I don't know if he'll survive another two days out there. You saw him today, there was clearly something wrong with him. I don't think he ate or drank anything at all during those three missing days, and if he really was sick, or drugged . . ."
Arthur grew uncommonly still as Merlin spoke. His face had softened, and the little sparrow's foot that always appeared between his eyebrows when he scowled was gone; but he was looking at Merlin with something that was almost worse. Something that Merlin, with all his experience of the prince's legendary caprice, found he had no words to describe. "Merlin – why are you so convinced there's something more to this? Men find reasons to drink all the time, even those who wouldn't normally be seen dead searching the bottom of a tankard."
"I went to his house," said Merlin. "I wanted to see if there was any evidence to tell us what really happened. Arthur, the place was undisturbed. His bed hadn't been slept in, and there was no sign of anything having been knocked over or broken. Surely a man who had been drinking for three days would have blundered around like – well, like you at the end of a feast. And there was food left untouched in his larder, when I checked. Who would go three days with food in the house, and not eat it?"
"And he has a fever, you say?"
Relief, a glut of honey-gold warmth in the moon's cold light. "Yes."
"His speech is slurred?"
"Yes."
A pause. When Arthur next spoke, it was with that deep, undulating purr that had turned many an enemy warrior's blood to dust in their veins. "And how do you know that, Merlin? After all – it's not like you spoke to the prisoner, or anything. It's not like you approached him in direct disobedience to your king."
Merlin swallowed. The clamour of his heart may have stilled, in these past few minutes . . . but he felt it fluttering still, a pennant in an uncertain breeze. "I had to know what Guillam remembered," he said. "Something is wrong here, Arthur, something doesn't add up. What if—what if whoever tried to hurt Morgana decides to try again? Or, or if their next move is an attempt on your life? On the king's? I just . . . I have a really bad feeling about this. That's all."
Silence; and if Merlin only imagined that it was cold in the midst of this blazing summer heat, then the realisation did nothing to make the chill any less abhorrent.
"I don't know if it's somehow escaped your attention, Merlin, but the last time I checked I was still only the crown prince. My father rules this kingdom, and what's more, I trust in his ability to do what's best for it. It is not my place to question his every decision. And it is most certainly not yours."
"You've questioned him in the past. We both have. What makes this any different?"
"It just is. That's all."
Merlin swallowed. It tasted rancid going down, as green and festering as Guillam's forgotten knuckle of pork. "It's because it isn't one of us. That's it, isn't it?" Silence. "I've seen you, Arthur. You've defied your father for Gwen, for Morgana – even for me, despite how many times you insist I'm just a useless servant. You've risked your own life for us, more than once. I guess I thought . . . but it doesn't matter what I thought, does it?"
Because he realised, now, that he had been seeing signs in things that might be nothing more than human nature. He had watched as Arthur crept out from under the king's shadow, like a crab from under a rock; he had felt his own resistance to his destiny begin to wear thin as he found more qualities to admire in the supercilious prince. Arthur had shown himself to be brave, and kind, and willing to defy his brutish father in the name of what was right.
But now, though it was too dark to see more than his own hand in front of his face, Merlin finally saw the truth. Something he should have seen, and hadn't, because something inside him had wanted so badly to believe.
"You thought what, Merlin? You thought that because I've put my own neck on the line for your miserable hide once or twice, that that somehow gives you the right to question my decisions? To question the king's?"
"I thought you would do the right thing," said Merlin. "You'll defy your father for your woman, or your foster sister, or gods, even your servant – but I see how it is now, sire. When it's not someone close to you, you turn a blind eye. You, you convince yourself that your father must be right, because it's easier that way. It's easier to pretend it isn't happening than it is to admit he might be fallible after all."
"You're wrong," said Arthur, in a shaky voice.
"Then why won't you help me? You know this is wrong, you know your father is overreacting to something that was a misdemeanour at best and a setup at worst. All I'm asking is that you help me look into it. Your father doesn't even have to know."
"You know I can't do that, Merlin."
"Why? Do you really believe that Guillam is guilty – or are you just too afraid of displeasing your father to do what you know is right?"
Arthur only continued to stare at Merlin with that quivering, barely-suppressed rage. The moonlight had turned his hair a twilight blue, and his skin to polished silver. Merlin had always thought of his master as something warm and golden, a man whose incandescent aura warmed all that it touched. But this . . . this was a cold Arthur. This was an Arthur as stern and as uncompromising as his father.
This was Uther's son.
"I'm going to pretend you didn't just say that," said Arthur. "You're tired, and upset, and you did not just commit treason by calling the heir to the throne a coward. But Merlin, you will hear me on this. I absolutely forbid you to investigate this matter any further. That is a direct order from your crown prince, and you will abide by it, or so help me I will turn you over to my father myself. Is that clear?"
Like that, the last flicker of hope was gone – snuffed out, like a pinched candle flame. Suddenly the darkness of the room seemed so much more complete than before.
"Perfectly clear, sire."
"Good. Now go get some sleep, would you, and stop interrupting mine."
Merlin fled. And if he wished, for once, that he were fleeing Arthur's thrown breakfast instead of his own irrevocably shaken faith – well, that was simply something he would never admit to a single living soul.
Not even to himself.
§
Arthur dreamed. He dreamed of a cage made of pitiless black iron; of an unremitting sun, scorching the ground below; of a dark-haired boy splayed lifeless on the bare, hot stone.
He had not died easy. The fits had been slow at first, and had grown gradually worse over time. By mid-morning, the boy had been cold and clammy; by noon, he had begun to tremble in short, sharp bursts. By mid-afternoon, he had gone into convulsions . . . and by dusk, Roland was no longer breathing. Not that Arthur knew the cause, not at first; Gaius had later taken him aside, and explained that some people unaccountably suffered from seizures of the brain. The combination of the sun, dehydration, and lack of food had triggered his existing affliction, and ultimately killed him. But it wasn't anyone's fault, Arthur. Not yours for leading Roland into your games, and not your father's for imposing this sentence. It was just a terrible accident.
Arthur looked down at the body being lifted, like a sack of grain, into the back of the grave-digger's cart. His lanky body had grown thinner, in only three days; his skin had been burned the colour of boiled crab, come fresh from the pot. But it was his face that made Arthur's bile rise, when he finally got up the courage to look – blackened by suffocation, split by the perilous sun, he looked like nothing so much as the damsons that sometimes fell half-rotted from the tree.
Twelve years ago, the child Arthur had peeked behind the fallen eyelids with a hand turned numb as stone. Some sick fascination had made him do it, some compulsion that even now he didn't fully understand. He had heard the old soldiers' superstition, that if you look into a dead man's eyes you will see the image of the one who killed him(4) – and it was with a lump in his throat and a cold certainty in his gut that he had peered into the blank, staring black eye of his friend.
Twelve years ago, he had looked down into that face and seen the rounded, childish cheeks of a boy; in his dream, he saw the lean, hollow cheeks of a man. Twelve years ago, the grimacing lips had pulled back over two empty sockets that would never spawn their adult teeth; but in his dream, Arthur saw a row of perfect white that had no business belonging to a simple peasant boy. He had looked into Roland's dead black eye and seen what there was to see . . . but this time, Arthur did not pry open the boy's lid to peer inside. Because these were not Roland's eyes, holding their last image as a cup holds water. These eyes belonged to someone far nearer in time, and far dearer in his regard, than the poor stableboy that had tried to befriend him all those years ago.
And he already knew, with a lump in his throat and a cold certainty in his gut, what he was going to find there if he did.
§
He awoke gasping, gulping in air that only served to fill his lungs with lead. The sheets clung to his body in the sweltering gloom, and beyond the curtains Arthur could make out the pale light of morning pounding against the window glass. It was past dawn.
For a moment he only lay, dragging in air that did little to calm his nerves. He had been unable to sleep for some time after Merlin's visit; despite knowing that he had done the right thing, he had been unable to put aside his servant's disconsolate face as he left. It had lingered in the back of his mind, a needle that would jab him every time he felt himself begin to relax. It had even invaded his dreams.
Dammit, Merlin, I did the right thing, he thought – and his fists curled, involuntarily, into the rumpled sheets at his sides. Why must you always make me feel like I just kicked a blasted puppy? Can't you just trust that I know what I'm doing, for once in your miserable life?
And he did, surely the infuriating boy could see that. Arthur had been reared to understand court intrigue, to suspect most everyone of carrying their own agenda. He had grown up watching even the most trusted of counsellors reveal their hand, be removed, be replaced. He had seen ingratiating sycophants who turned out to be enemy spies, and visitors from neighbouring kingdoms that were little more than a prelude to war. And he had watched his strong, steadfast father grow a little more withdrawn with every year that passed.
You don't understand, Merlin, he thought. You don't understand what it is to be a king.
Or what it was to be a prince. To watch from the sidelines, year upon year, as each betrayal wore away the edges of the father he worshipped above all others. You cannot afford compassion, Arthur, the king had said, and you cannot afford to be swayed by sentiment when there are traitors around every corner.
It was small wonder that his father saw traitors where there were none, now. In his latter years, Uther had begun to jump at shadows. Arthur sometimes wondered if, when it came his turn to rule, he would be any better at knowing the true friend from the false . . . or if, like his father, he would simply have to live his life alone.
With an effort, Arthur kicked off the heavy sheets and rolled out of bed. It wasn't often he got to wake in his own time; usually Merlin would be flinging wide the curtains, dousing Arthur in sunlight and proclaiming it time to "Rise and shine!" But today, for once, there was no sign of his ridiculous manservant. No sign of his breakfast, either. With a sigh Arthur got to his feet, and set about fetching his own clothes for the day.
Merlin was damned lucky, he decided, tugging so hard at the laces on his breeches that the waistband dug into his flesh. Merlin should be bloody grateful. Under his oath as both crown prince and first knight, Arthur was duty-bound to report any criminal offence to his father. He was breaking his oath to cover for that infuriating boy, and that was something Arthur had done very rarely in his life. But did Merlin appreciate the position he had put his master in? Did he care? No. Apparently not.
Arthur clattered noisily to the wash stand, and splashed last night's cold water on his face. On any other day this would have roused his irritation at Merlin a little more – why couldn't the brain-dead beanpole of a boy remember to bring him warm water on time? – but today, the coolness was a balm to his hot brow. He felt it licking the sweat from the edges of his hair, and dripping from his chin to land in gratifying droplets on his chest. And for a moment – just a brief moment, alone in his room where no-one could see – Arthur allowed his head to droop downwards in defeat. He had tried. He really, truly had.
He had gone to his father in the heat of the midday sun, when the king had retired to his chambers for a quiet luncheon. Arthur had felt a stab in his chest at the delight on his father's face, and so he had quickly moved to cut off any pleasantries before Uther could give them. "I've been thinking, sire. About the stableman."
"We've already had this discussion, Arthur. Quite frankly I was appalled at your insubordination earlier today. We must present a united front to our knights and guardsmen, or how can we expect to prevent insurrection in our own ranks?"
"I haven't come to argue further on the matter. I understand that you have your reasons for passing sentence as you did, as harsh as it may seem to some. But the purpose of the man's punishment is to uncover the identity of the true saboteur, is it not?"
Uther nodded. He gestured impatiently for his son to take a seat at the table, but Arthur remained standing. He didn't think he would be able to say what needed to be said, if he allowed his guard to drop by even that much. "I see your studies in strategy have not gone to waste, Arthur. We'll make a king of you yet."
"Then forgive me, Father, but surely threatening such radical punishment for anyone approaching him renders that strategy moot?"
"I fail to see how."
Arthur took a deep breath, and felt his toes curl uncomfortably in his boots. "Sire, I fully believe that Guillam Le Frye was simply a victim of poor judgement, and there is no conspiracy beyond that. But if he was persuaded to abandon his post, it was almost certainly through coercion rather than bribery – and no such blackmailer will care tuppence(5) for the stablemaster's fate. Even a co-conspirator would hesitate to approach him with such a sentence hanging over their heads."
"Then what do you suggest, Arthur? That I send him on his way with naught but a warning for his folly? Morgana could have been killed."
"Retract the decree of punishment to any offering aid. The chances are good that the culprit will decide to pay him a visit, if only to ensure his silence."
Uther did not reply for what felt, to the agonised prince, to be several minutes or more. It was only seconds, but they stretched away like the hours of a council meeting all the same. Uther carefully set his goblet on the table, and swallowed down the wine he had been drinking; then he laid his knife on the trencher in front of him, to make it plain that the meal was done, and said:
"Perhaps I applauded your strategic ability too hastily, Arthur. The plan is not to draw them to him; I understand better than you do the nature of such traitors, and there is no honour amongst thieves. I intend merely to offer the stablemaster a choice. He can tell me the name of the saboteur, and be released for his trouble; or, he can remain where he is."
Arthur's mouth worked around a throatful of broken glass; his cheeks felt shrunken against his teeth, drained of all moisture like a mummy in its tomb. For a moment, these things made it impossible for him to speak. Then: "So it's torture. That's why you won't allow anyone to interfere, because you're torturing him."
"No. I am merely using the tools at my disposal in order to prevent any further threat, either to you, or to the Lady Morgana. Sometimes that requires a certain degree of . . . practicality, and one I fear you have yet to learn. Now, sit with me, Arthur. Have some wine, and tell me about your day."
§
It was as he was pulling on his boots that he heard the door snick quietly open. At last, here was that idiot manservant of his with his breakfast. Arthur doubted that he could face eating, this morning – the queasiness that had taken root in his stomach at the dream had still not left him – but better for Merlin to be carrying out his chores than to be doing something stupid.
"You're late, Merlin," he said, not looking up. "Just put my breakfast on the table and start fetching my armour, would you? We can't all spend the night skulking about like rats and then turn up for work when we feel like it."
A cough alerted him to the fact that it was not Merlin who stood inside his door. Merlin's voice was nowhere near as deep as that, and he would never cough to attract his master's attention. "Sire?" Arthur looked up to see Sir Leon, his hands folded to attention in front of him. "The king requires your presence on the balcony immediately. From what I can gather, there has been a further development in the case of the stablemaster since yesterday."
"Thank you, Leon. Tell him I'll be there in a few minutes."
Leon offered him a deep nod, and majestically swept from the room. Leon did everything majestically, Arthur reflected. It had something to do with his being tall.
NOTES:
1) This was a real crime in the Middle Ages, and was considered a lesser act of treason. It was often punishable by torture, and not something to be taken lightly.
2) I couldn't find anything in my research to confirm if medieval Britons ate or even knew of the existence of squid. However, if any were imported or even recorded in books during the 6th century, it's safe to assume that a prince would be one of the few rich enough to hear about it.
3) The word "faggot" has since been appropriated by bigots to describe gay men, and in that context, is utterly unacceptable – but originally it meant a bundle of firewood, and is the correct term when describing a pyre.
4) I've taken liberties a little bit here, because I just loved the symmetry too much to pass it up. There is an old urban legend along those lines, which states that the last thing a person sees will be branded onto their retina like a kind of photograph; there were even scientific studies conducted on the phenomenon in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. I've modified it a bit to suit my purposes, and brought it forward by several centuries, but it is based on the very real concept of optograms all the same.
5) I have absolutely no idea what the currency of 6th century Britain might have been (they were probably still using Roman currency, is my best guess), but I'm damn sure they had no such thing as a tuppence. There's just no translating some modern expressions into Medieval speak, so I left it as it is.