 Tristan sat on the floor outside his father’s study massaging his bruised knuckles. He wore a completive expression as he ran the tips of his fingers over the coloured skin of his injured hand. On the other side of the thick oak door the prince could hear Tarquin’s father’s raised voice. He had been booming on for a long time. A guard with a severe look and stern stare had been sent to fetch Tristan from the stables; it had not taken the prince too many guesses to work out why he had been summoned. His suspicions had been confirmed when he had seen the king leading Tarquin and his father into his private office. Tristan had been sitting outside the room ever since, and Celidon had fallen asleep at his side.
“I was told to bring you this,” a girl’s voice said, tinged with laughter. Tristan glanced up curiously at the maid who was holding a cloth out for him to take. She was pretty; she had big brown eyes and brown curls peeked out from beneath her cap. The prince smiled and relieved her of the little bundle. It was hard and cold. Tristan unwrapped it and discovered that the cloth had been wrapped around chunks of ice, presumably intended to help to sooth his hand.
“Thank you...?” the prince said applying the ice to his latest injury and glancing up at the made questioningly.
“Miriam” she supplied with a grin as she slid down the wall to sit opposite him with her knees drawn up to her chest, “what’s yours?” Tristan snorted and Miriam didn’t manage to keep a straight face for long; she had an infectious kind of giggle. “So,” she said, recovering herself, “did you really punch him? That’s what they’re saying in the kitchens and all the girls want to give you a hug if you did. It’ll teach him to put his filthy hands where they don’t belong.” Tristan laughed, he didn’t think he minded the concept of being hugged by a kitchen full of girls.
“I did,” he admitted, holding up his hand to show her the bruise, “he’s got a hard head.”
Miriam grinned, “I could have told you that,” she said.
---
He had not been in as much trouble as he had expected. Once he had explained what Tarquin had done to Thoth Arthur’s attitude to the whole situation had altered significantly. Tarquin’s father had been furious, but all Tristan had been forced to sit through was a very long lecture on why he shouldn’t resort to brawling in corridors to solve his problems. The prince suspected that Tarquin had probably received a lot worse from his father which was remarkably satisfying. Tristan had wandered back down to the stables and was sitting on a bale of hay outside Hal’s stall cleaning up his jousting tack. The prince looked up when a familiar face peeked around the door.
“Miriam!” he grinned, putting down his bridle on the bale beside him, “what are you doing here?” Miriam returned the smile and slipped into the stable block, glancing over her shoulder to check that the stable master wasn’t watching.
“I brought you something,” she said pulling a little paper bag out of her apron pocket and holding it out for Tristan to take. Accepting the little parcel, the prince unrolled the top of the packet and pulled out the iced bun sitting inside; his favourite! The icing had been piped into the outline of three hearts along the length of the bun.
“The girls and I made it special,” Miriam explained, looking proud, “we thought it might help make your hand feel a bit better.” Tristan thanked her and slipped the bun back into its packet and then stood up and turned around to put it up on the nearest shelf away from the straw. When he turned back around Miriam had sat down next to him on the hay bale. She was quite short, Tristan realised, noticing that her feet didn’t quite touch the floor when she shuffled to the back of the bale.
It transpired that Miriam was on a break, so they talked for quite a while. She said she didn’t mind if Tristan kept working on whatever it was he was doing and kept teasing him for being ‘proper polite.’ They both froze when they heard the sound of someone entering the stable block, and Miriam turned to the prince with a horrified expression. She wasn’t supposed to be there. Tristan grabbed hold of her hand and pulled her into Hal’s stall. They sat down side by side in the straw with their backs pressed against the door; the only sound left was that of Hal chewing on his dinner. The stable master clomped down between the stalls, muttered under his breath as he hung the seemingly abandoned bridle back on its hook on the wall and then stomped off again. Miriam giggled when the door swung shut behind him again, but Tristan had heard someone else coming and clapped his hand over her mouth.
“Shhhh,” he whispered in her ear, “not yet.”
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