And all because Ms Fox is very dim...

My coda is much, much shorter than intended. You know why? Check the subject line. Yes, Harper is an idiot. We all always suspected but now it’s a matter of worldwide public record. When Josh and Lb suggested we all do a coda for our Carina anthology stories, I leapt right into...

Yeah. The wrong anthology. This dawned on me this morning while I was loading up my blog. And I’d been so pleased with myself for producing a one-year-after tale for Winter Knights! I’m galloping desperately to deadline on my monks-and-Vikings story, and I didn’t have time to do a proper fix. (Thank you to Josh, by the way, for talking me down at the horrible moment of realisation!) So below you will find a brief – but, I hope, sweet – glimpse into the aftermath of Nine Lights Over Edinburgh.

But – and it’s a big but, as I said to myself whilst heaving myself into my jeggings the other day – my Winter Knights coda had already been written, and I can’t resist sharing that one with you too. So please treat Toby and James as your cherry, and Gavin and Piers as your cake. Enjoy!

*************************

Nine Lights Over Edinburgh – a coda

(Turnhouse Airport, Edinburgh, December 25th)

The Israeli government wanted Toby Leitner home in a hurry. A black limo had come for him at half past eight that morning, parking in arrogant splendour right in the middle of the road outside the Sinclair hotel.

Toby had sent it away. If he was pardoned, he told McBride, who was picking at his breakfast in the dining room, torn between post-coital hunger and the miserable loss of appetite attendant on partings, his lords and masters owed him a thing or two, and the first thing was that they could wait. He’d sat down beside McBride and poured him a coffee – spooned sugar into it for him – slid a hand under the table, found McBride’s and clasped it tight. And they’d taken a taxi out through the snow to the airport, just like two ordinary men.

There all resemblance to the ordinary had stopped. Ambassador Zvi was being flown home in a top-of-the-line private jet, snow or no snow, Christmas morning or not. Probably, Toby had said, he expected the ice on the runways to melt out of awe for him, and perhaps it had done so – ten minutes after their arrival at the airport, the exquisitely suited crack troops of Zvi’s security team had appeared out of nowhere and gathered Toby up into their wings. No time to spare. Less than no chance of a kiss, with those six princely faces looking on. Toby had seized McBride’s hand. And then he had been gone.

McBride leaned his brow on the vast sheet of glass that fronted the airfield. It was stupid to wait, he supposed. What good would he do himself by watching Toby’s plane leave the ground? Take-offs and landings were the dangerous parts of flight, he knew, especially on a day like today. McBride had a superstitious feeling that if he watched him go, at least he would be safe for that part of the trip. And he would land in Israel in sunshine, McBride supposed. He only had the vaguest idea of the climate. His breath clouded the glass, obscuring the plane where it sat on the tarmac. He wiped it away with his sleeve. Now he came to think about it, what did he really know about Toby and his world at all? He would land in sunshine, thousands of miles away. Ghosts stirred in McBride, lonely unworthy spectres. How would such a man as Leitner remember an Edinburgh copper in all that golden light?

Sounds of a tussle from the security desk behind him. The Edinburgh copper turned, professional habits twitching. Somebody objecting to a frisk search?

No. Tobias Leitner, cutting a swathe through the blue uniforms, frowning from his elegant height upon the outraged faces. I’m sorry, Agent Leitner – you’ve been checked through. You really can’t come back here now. Toby stopped dead. McBride had never heard him raise his voice, and he didn’t now. McBride had to lipread him. It was easy enough – just one word.

Mossad.

McBride grinned. His lover was Mossad again, for now at any rate. How often had he chucked his secret-service weight about? He didn’t seem the type. But he’d done it very well. The airport staff fell back from him. He strode back through the gate. “James!”

“Aye. Still here.”

“I told you to take a taxi home before the snow began again, didn’t I?”

“You did. I... I wanted to see you off.”

The distance between them had closed. Toby was right there in front of him, close enough to touch and taste and smell, except that they were in an airport lounge, and Mossad agents did not kiss policemen under such harsh neon lights. Toby was digging in the pocket of his beautifully tailored winter coat. “There is a truly horrible shop in this airport. I found one nice thing in it – for Grace, to say thank you for her friendship bracelet.” He produced a small paper bag, with the horrible Turnhouse logo stamped on it. “I am not sure why they are selling Stars of David in Edinburgh. Perhaps it isn’t one. But it looks like it, and...”

Gently McBride took the plaited leather cord from his fingers. A silver star hung from it, six bright points catching sudden wintry sunlight from outside. “Thank you,” he said hoarsely. “Can I get her something else from you instead?”

“Oh. You think she wouldn’t like it? Is it... inappropriate?”

“It’s perfect. But I want to keep it for myself.”

“Oh.”

McBride couldn’t look up at him. If he did, the tears would spill. An Edinburgh copper couldn’t cry in a place like this. He couldn’t...

Warm hands closed on his cold face. McBride shut his eyes.  The hands lifted – gentle, irresistible. Toby Leitner’s mouth came down on his.

******************************

And now for your cake –

Winter Knights – a coda

Cautious footsteps in the corridor outside. A discreet tap, and then my office door swings open. A neatly cropped fair head appears, and serious grey eyes fix on mine.

“Dr de Val? Is everything all right?”

I suppose a burst of laughter in these silent halls was bound to draw attention. I’d thought everyone had gone home. “Yes, David. I was just thinking...”

My God, am I really about to tell this polite young seminarian what just passed through my mind? He looks exhausted, though, and as if he hasn’t smiled in weeks. He’s been wrestling his demons. I’ve seen him give them several falls and a knockout right here in this room during our counselling sessions. “I was thinking about this time almost a year ago, and my Christmas present from Gavin.”

“From, er, Dr Lowden? Your friend?”

“From Dr Lowden – my civil partner.”

“Yes. I’m sorry.”

“That’s all right. But try and say the words. If you can’t, how will you face the reality when you become a priest?”

He sighs, and rests his brow on the door frame. “I don’t think I can – not yet.”

“That’s all right too. Keep that kind of honesty, and call things by their right names, and we’ll get there. You’ve still got another two years of study.”

“And you’ll be here for them?”

“Yes. I’ll be here.”

He nods. Then his brow furrows. “I still don’t know how you do it. You’re as good a Catholic as any man I’ve ever met. I trust you. I honour your integrity. And yet...”

“And yet there’s Dr Lowden.”

“Yes. How?”

Outside my dark window, in the unknown stretches of night that bound this solemn building, a first few flakes of snow are falling. So they fell a year ago, when I stopped in my tracks outside a city church, the first organ notes of O Come All Ye Faithful summoning me to midnight mass. Gavin wasn’t answering his phone. I’d thought he was lost to me, and just as one world ended for me, a new one had begun. “I was lucky. I realised in time what I loved best.”

“Dr Lowden.”

“That’s right. Better than my family, better than my fear. Better even than all my old notions of what it meant to be man of faith. Listen, David – you have a harder path than mine to follow. I am a good Catholic. But I don’t practise it as you do, and I could never be a priest. Only you can reconcile your love with your duty, or find out that they can’t be reconciled. Only you can choose.”

“Dr de Val...”

“Yes?”

“Why can’t you ever just tell me what to do?”

“Never gonna happen, son. But come back and see me next semester.”

Just as he’s closing the door, he remembers. “What did he buy you, then? Dr Lowden – for Christmas last year?”

A sex toy and an engagement ring. Here comes that great unseemly rush of laughter again. I force it down, briefly pressing my knuckles to my mouth. “That’s something a trainee priest just doesn’t need to know. Are you off home now, then? You must be about the last one here.”

“Not quite.” The faintest colour comes stealing into his pale skin. “William’s waiting for me. We’re staying at his aunt’s for Christmas.”

Ah. William. Rude, irreverent, heart like a fire in winter. Crashing through all his exams, verging on expulsion, handsome as hell. Hardly priest material – and, David, you are. God help you when you come to have to choose. “All right. Will you lock the door after you?”

“Aren’t you going home?”

“Maybe later. Or I might just bunk down in the dorm. I’ve got a lot of work to do, and Gavin... Gavin’s away.”

***

 Almost midnight at Minster Fields. The building is empty now – I can feel it. My papers are graded, my reports on the psychological wellbeing of two dozen novice priests ready and stacked on my desk. My head throbs. Poor Gav – how did you put up with your headaches for so long? I stand up and stretch, then I go and lean my brow on the dark glass.

Yes, snowing heavily now, and starting to drift on top of thick layer that fell yesterday. Better if I do stay here tonight. I’m not sure if I could withstand the sight of our empty flat, and a bunk in the dorm won’t make me miss your warmth beside me the way our well-used double bed would do. In a way I can’t believe you’re gone, and you too looked half-stunned with surprise right up until the last minute, folding your clothes into your holdall. You even sent the first taxi away, and I had to call you another when you finally made up your mind.

But how could I stop you? I never knew any man work the way you did, in the six months after you came out of hospital and started putting your life and career back together again. And then we were both so damn scared. You were fine – all the tests said so – and you put back the weight you’d dropped during chemo, and we had our civil ceremony, and we lived and loved with the intensity of men who’d skirted the abyss. And we never talked about it, but every time your head hurt and you came to sit on the sofa with me, to lean your brow on my shoulder, we both shared one thought. You were your tough-as-nails self again, lairier than ever with everyone but me – but still you were frightened. I knew.

So every time you had a chance to do something new, meet some new challenge, I helped you. Helped you? I practically slung you out of the flat by the seat of your pants. I insisted you grabbed every good thing going. Excavations, a place on the visiting-lecturer circuit, academic folklorists’ conferences. You were too good to waste. And so your rep and publications backlist grew, and more universities wanted your insight into the delicate, intricate meeting place between history and myth, and three weeks into December, just as we’d finished putting up our first-ever Christmas tree – a sorry effort, but very satisfactory to Gwen’s crowing baby girl – you got the call. A researcher’s job on the Çatal Hüyük dig in Turkey. Six months of cutting-edge work, if you could fly out straight away.

I’m so tired. I don’t know why I don’t just call it a night and turn in. Part of the trouble, I suppose – aside from a few nights here and there, I haven’t been apart from you. A sex toy and an engagement ring... How crisply I remember discovering both, in our rumpled bed in the hostel on Hadrian’s Wall! My bones ache with longing for you. And, enlightened Catholic as I am, I can’t imagine lying down here in a trainee priest’s bunk with hot thoughts of you in my mind. I close my eyes.

The building has good central heating, old Victorian radiators that pump out a soporific warmth. My office window ledge is almost wide enough to qualify as a seat. Lonely – desolate, if I’m honest – I allow myself to drift.

Piers, should I do this?

Yes. Absolutely. Come on, love – it’s perfect for you.

Do you want me to do it?

What can I say? I want you to be happy. I want you to do everything that makes you that way.

So I’ve only got myself to blame. The window frame dissolves to a warm mist, and I float there, held by invisible hands.

Shapes form in the blizzard. I can’t make them out at first. Maybe they’re only a trick of the half-moon night, the diamond-blue glow behind snow clouds. Then I hear a percussion. The mist around me clears, and I know I’m not floating poised above the Minster Fields lawns. I know – I think I know – that I’ve fallen asleep in the window. So when the whirling patterns resolve themselves, and two men on horseback tear out of the woods, I’m not alarmed.

No. A fierce joy springs up in my chest, a sense of recognition older than my life. I press both hands to the glass. Oh, I know these two. I saw them in the book I bought, my Christmas present to Gav, the one he loved so much and treasures still, the last thing he placed in his holdall, with tender, reverent hands. These two knights were on the cover of that book, and I saw them one time after that too, on a sunny, impossible afternoon. Gawaine and Parsifal ride into battle...

My brow slips on the glass. I start awake, gasping. For a moment I want to die, of loneliness and loss and disappointment, and the tiny betrayed belief that after all he wouldn’t leave. And then I see headlights in the dark.

***

His car skids on the hard-packed snow. He nearly runs me down. His headlights strafe the trees, and the seminary walls, and the long flight of stone steps and the door I’ve left open behind me in my rush down to the drive. I leap out of his way, and he grinds to a halt with his hire car’s front bumper buried in a white drift where the rose beds used to be. The gardener will kill him. The driver’s door swings wide.

He’s so beautiful. That’s the one thing I never can get him to believe. He calls me his prince, his aristocrat, and tells me he looks like a pit-bull terrier by my side, but oh, God, if he could only see himself as he is now, wide-eyed in moonlight, his tough, lovely frame held in a stasis of tension, as if he hasn’t believed he would make it here, or wouldn’t find me when he did. He’s clutching the car door. “Piers?”

“Sweetheart – what are you doing here?”

He walks into my arms. I meet him more than halfway, letting him crash into me, clamping my arms tight around his back. “They cancelled it,” he says, muffled against my shoulder. “My job. The gig. So I came home.”

I rock him. I kiss the top of his spiky head, the place where the hair never will lie down no matter how close he crops it. He’s such an abysmally bad liar. “Bollocks.”

He fakes a gasp. “Dr de Val – such language.”

“Are you okay? Did your head start to hurt? Did you – ”

He takes my shoulders. He pushes me back to arm’s length. The snow swirls around us, and just for a moment I hear the thunder of hooves, and I wonder if he does too. “I got to the airport,” he says carefully. Truth is a delicate, difficult thing. “I sat in the lounge and looked out at the snow, and I wondered if they’d cancel my flight. And they didn’t, and I was... gutted. I felt sick. And I thought about last Christmas, and... Well. All about it. You know.”

Yes, I do know. We never talk about it, but I know. I trace the tired marks on his brow with my fingertips.

“And I remembered what you said to me when they offered me the job. You said...”

“I want you to be happy.”

“Yeah. And I had a vision – God, a hallucination, more like, it was so real... Oh, love, no. Not like that. Just the kind anyone can have if they want something bad enough. Our crap tree with the tinsel falling off, and Gwen’s bairn squealing about it, and... it’s probably too late, but our tiny kitchen table with seven people wedged around it – you, me, my brother and Anita, Gwen and Rosalind. Your mam if she wants to come.”

“I’m sure it’s not too late. It sounds like hell.”

“Mm.” He nods, grinning at me. “And I thought how it would be on Christmas night, when they’ve drunk all our sherry and trod crumbs into our carpet and finally buggered off home. And...”

“And it’s just you and me.”

“Yeah. So if you want me to be happy...”

“Yes, love. Let’s go home.”