Lammas night

by Katherine Kurtz

  "Well, did you find out about Drake?"

  "Drake? Yes, indeed. Damned if I can figure out what it all means, however. Part of it had to do with Queen Elizabeth."

  "Good Queen Bess, eh?" William had eased the car back onto the road, and now he glanced at Graham as he increased speed. "What did you see? Maybe I can help."

  "With respect, I doubt it. If Selwyn and the others haven't been able to crack it yet—"

  "With respect, maybe a fresh point of view is exactly what you need," William replied, ahnost a little archly. "I do have some insight into the thinking patterns of monarchs, after all. In any case, it can't hurt, can it?"

  Graham supposed it couldn't, so as they drove, he briefly outlined what he had told the others about the scene on the Golden Hind. William asked a few questions during the recitation, but he was silent after Graham had finished. Graham began to wonder whether it had been a waste of time until William cleared his throat and glanced his way again, a dark shadow against the darker shapes of fleeing countryside.

  "You may be right," the prince admitted. "Perhaps I need some time to digest the bits about I>rake and old Bess like the rest of you. I have a feeling I'm going to be doing a lot of that in the next few days—maybe with some mental indigestion, too."

  Graham chuckled, but his amusement was quickly dampened as William went on.

  "Let's talk about that final part for a moment, though, if you don't mind. What happened then? Your hands were gripping the chair arms so hard, I really wondered whether the oak could take it. And your face—Jesus, Gray, your face! I think that's the only time I was really scared."

  Graham drew a deep breath, suddenly cautious. He had not been going to tell William anything about the unplanned memory excursions. Slayer of kings and slain for kings —he was not sure the prince was ready to handle that. For that matter, Graham was not sure he was ready to handle it himself.

  He could safely talk about past hves in general, however, perhaps even mentioning a few names. He would bypass the talk of slaying and slain.

  "I went into a series of flashbacks to other lives besides Drake's," Graham said carefully. "I'm not sure why, and I don't remember much about them other than very brief images, but those were what caused the reaction you saw. It isn't that unconmion, though the intensity was a little more than I would have expected. Actually, one rarely knows what one is going to get in the usual run of past-life regressions."

  William seemed to be turning that over in his mind as he negotiated a narrow turn. Then he said, "These other lives— were you able to identify any of them?"

  "A few. The clearest one was an ancestor of yours: old William Rufus. I think I was one of his retainers."

  "Rufus? Really? I seem to recall he's buried at Winchester."

  At Graham's grunt of agreement, Wilham went on.

  "As a matter of fact, you've mentioned him before, haven't you? Something about his death being some sort of pagan sacrifice, wasn't it?"

  Graham smiled, though a vague foreboding was stirring at the back of his mind. Why had he even bothered to censor his account?

  "Something like that. You know, you're getting quite a knack for pulling odd bits together. Why the great interest in old Rufus?"

  William chuckled. "He's another William, of course. When John and I were small, we spent a lot of time indoors because John was sick so much. Nanny used to read to us about our ancestors. I can tell you all about Williams I and III also, if you like. Ask me anything."

  The prince's voice was jovial, almost inviting a response, but Graham resisted the temptation. He was too tired for mental sparring and definitely reluctant to explore the other past life material with William until he'd had a chance to think about it more on his own. The unsought recall made him very uneasy, and somehow the uneasiness had to do with William as well as himself.

  "Not tonight, I think. You're entirely too cocky not to be telling the truth." He paused. "On a more serious note, however, we'll be arriving back at your quarters very shortly, and there may not be an opportunity to talk privately again for some time. Was there anything else you wanted to ask about tonight?" William drew a deep breath and let it out audibly. "Boldly into the breach. Yes. The woman who seemed to be in charge—is she Selwyn's wife?"

  "She is. But remember what I told you about letting on that you know in the future."

  "I'll remember. Ah—what did she do behind us, just after we went in?"

  Graham glanced at the prince in mild astonishment. He had been almost sure William hadn't noticed.

  "I told you before that the room would be prepared before we arrived," he said truthfully. "Cleansed of negative elements and sealed off so that no distractions could enter while we worked. She was closing the gate she'd opened before we came in."

  "I see. That's why we had to wait outside for a moment after you'd knocked. And the brigadier was opening it up again before he took me out?"

  "You really don't miss a thing, do you?" Graham replied, verbalizing what he had only thought before. "Anything else you'd like to know? State secrets, perhaps?"

  "Well, you asked whether I had any questions." William took another deep breath. "This gate—if it hadn't been opened, could we have entered the room, anyway?"

  "I wouldn't have wanted to try," Graham said. "Would you?"

  "Ah—pass on that one for now. That's really out of my depth."

  "Well, at least you're beginning to realize that some things are."

  "Now who's being cocky?" William returned. "Another question: how did you go into trance like that? I've read more about hypnosis since we last talked about it, and the countess— what was her name, if I may ask?"

  "Alix. You'd find out, anyway—damned MI.6 smart aleck!"

  "Why, thank you. You did train me, after all. At any rate, I was wondering how you went into such a deep trance without her saying anything. I remember you spoke to Michael that day in Dover—and I would assume that you're both experienced subjects."

  Graham let himself relax a little. They were almost back. If he could stay on this relatively safe topic long enough, there would be no more heart-stopping questions about matters arcane until he could think things through. Surely things would look better after a good night's sleep.

  "We are experienced subjects, but there are a lot of factors that can influence response. Pain, for example, can make it very difficult to concentrate on a purely mental process. That's why I talked Michael into a trance, even though ordinarily he could go quite deep with a touch or any of a variety of other nonverbal signals—which is what Alix did with me. Going into trance is easy. Using it for something definite can be quite another story. There's nothing magical about a trance per se."

  "Indeed. Do you suppose I could be hypnotized?"

  "Surely. It isn't a parlor trick, however. I thought I'd made that clear."

  "You did. I still might like to try it some time, though. Who knows? Maybe I've even had some of these past hves you keep talking about."

  William chuckled at that, and Graham laughed with him.

  but as they threaded their way through the wet, silent Plymouth streets, Graham wondered whether the prince realized how close to the truth his speculation might be. William's intervention and the rightness of it at the time pointed to some kind of connection that could quite well involve past lives, some of them undoubtedly touching Graham's. Nor could Graham deny the rush of warmth from the thought.

  But the intervention raised other questions—inmiediate questions that almost invariably led to an even greater involvement on William's part.

  Was William, the Knight of Wands of Alix's reading, destined to play a part in what was unfolding? Or had Graham merely seen William in the cards because he was looking for justification for his own actions and wanted the card to be William?

  And if the Knight of Wands was William, how far dared they let him go? Did they even have any control over it anymore, or must they simply stand by and accept things as they came, trusting th
at some provident fate would keep the prince from getting in over his head?

  Above all, if Graham and William had known one another in some previous life and Graham had been slayer and slain, then who had William been?

  William's flight back to Southampton the next morning was uneventful but not uninteresting. The Sunderland took off shortly before noon into a sky washed bright blue and pristine from the night's rain. William watched Plymouth and Lord Selwyn's warship grow smaller and smaller as they climbed for altitude and headed east, but his thoughts invariably ranged back to the night before and all that he had seen and heard.

  At least a night's sleep, however truncated, had taken the edge off his confusion. He fell far more confident now that he was in a familiar environment again, heading back to London. Griffin was a little stiff this morning—Denton had put him back in his chair to sleep off the night's "drink" when William and Graham returned—and Wells mentioned a slight headache at breakfast, but neither man seemed any the worse for wear or found anything particularly amiss. Denton apparently had done his job well.

  William felt a little initial awkwardness with Richard and Geoffrey when he first returned to the flying boat, but that soon evaporated in the face of the two younger men's good spirits and obvious warmth toward him. He could not put a finger on the reason for it, but he decided not to question it. Somehow he felt far less the-outsider among them today, though they still deferred to his rank with respect and careful courtesy.

  As soon as they were airborne, he was again invited forward to occupy the second pilot's chair for the duration of the flight. To his unexpected pleasure, they spent the next half hour in good-natured bantering, as if the night before had not occurred—or perhaps because it had, he later realized. When, just before landing, Geoffrey hesitantly invited him to join them for lunch at their officers' mess, he never even thought of declining.

  After lunch, the two took him on an informal tour of tlifeir base—an activity for which he ordinarily would not have been able to muster much enthusiasm, seeing more than his fill of such tours in the course of his more usual duties—but somehow this was different. Wherever he went, his presence seemed not only well received but actively appreciated by officers and men alike. He stayed far later than he had planned, but he found he was oddly reluctant to leave these men who were so intimately connected with the world he had glimpsed the night before—though neither of them spoke a word about it.

  He thought more about the previous night on the way to the train station, and on a whim asked Wells to check the departure schedule from Winchester, twelve miles farther north on the line. When he found that it was possible to connect with a London train at seven, he asked their driver to take them there instead. He had never seen the cathedral, and it seemed a shame not to stop, since they were so close and had the time. His own staff seemed a little surprised, but their plucky WRNS driver headed north without a word of comment.

  Dusk was falling and Evensong halfway done by the time they reached the cathedral. He left Griffin with the car and driver—and would have left Wells, except that the aide would have been scandalized at the thought of his royal master entering so public a place unattended—then slipped quietly through a side door and along the dim south aisle. The choir was singing the Creed.

  A verger started to intercept them, for visitors were discouraged from wandering about the cathedral during services, but when the man saw Wells's staff aiguillette and got a closer look at William, he bowed and quietly ushered them to seats in the back of the south choir stalls. William and his aide were not the only men in uniform in the rows behind the choir boys, so they were able to blend into the shadows without arousing undue interest as the sung Amen faded away in the stillness and everyone knelt for the Lord's Prayer. William bowed his head and half covered his eyes with one hand as he slipped to his knees, glad for the dinmess and the anonymity it afforded. After a few seconds, he was not even as keenly aware of Wells kneeling in the stall beside him.

  He was not sure why he had decided to come. It was true that he had never been to Winchester before, but that never would have mattered in the past. Though he regarded himself as a reasonably religious man, he had never thought of cathedrals as being much different from one another except in architectural terms. Winchester's difference lay in the fact that William Rufus was buried here. He had known that before, but somehow it was a more important consideration after last night's conversation with Gray.

  It was not so much what Gray had said but what he had not said that sparked William's interest. William had the distinct impression that Gray had been evasive, that he had not told all he had seen of the redheaded Norman king. Gray had wept while in his trance—something William had never seen him do even when his wife died. It was so astonishing that William had not even dared to ask about it.

  Had he wept for Rufus? Had he perhaps been Rufiis and seen and experienced his own death in that New Forest hunting mishap? William was not at all sure he believed that Rufus had been some sort of pagan sacrifice, but the death certainly had occurred. Could Gray have seen a glimpse of that?

  The officiating minister stood, and all eyes turned toward him as he sang alone, only his face and hands illuminated by the dim reading lamp on the prayer desk before him.

  "O Lord, shew thy mercy upon us."

  "And grant us thy salvation," the choir answered.

  "O Lord, save the King."

  "And mercifully hear us when we call upon thee."

  The litany continued, sung back and forth between minister and choir, and William let his thoughts wander again, eyes searching the cathedral.

  The cathedral was beautiful. The graceful sweeps of carved wood and stone gave his heart joy. He liked the very feel of the place—the smells, the spaciousness of soaring arches, the lush resonance of voices raised in prayer as they had been for at least a thousand years.

  He studied the play of lamplight on the tracery of choir stalls, screen, and pulpit while a part of him listened. Turning his gaze upward, he drank in the colonnades and fan vaulting, though the great windows were boarded up because of the blackout and the glass removed to preserve it. Color remained in the choristers' cassocks and surplices, however: subdued splashes of crimson and white against the age-worn patina of the stalls, and the glow of the reading lamps reflecting off snowy linen and polished brass fittings.

  "Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord," the minister intoned, "and by thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night. For the love of thy only Son, our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen."

  The people sat. The choir stood to sing the evening's anthem. William listened attentively for the first few bars, easing to one side in his seat so that the deep framing of the stall kept his face in shadow, but the young voices gradually encouraged his thoughts to wander again, lulling him into some other dimension.

  Just ahead of him, down at the level of the choir floor, his eyes came to rest on a scarred black tomb slab, slightly peaked along its length and resting on a base of creamish stone like that of the floor paving. It looked very old, and he wondered idly whether it might be William Rufus's resting place. High on the stone screens farther to his right, he could just make out several painted mortuary chests, but he thought they were from an earlier time. He remembered reading once that they contained the bones of early Saxon kings and queens and bishops.

  He wondered who they were and whether all of them had followed the Christian faith—what it might have been like to be alive in a time when the two faiths had walked side by side. Was it really possible that they still did?

  He was jarred back to the order of the service by the minister's call for prayer for the King's Majesty, and he slid dutifully back to his knees.

  "With thy favour to behold our most gracious Sovereign Lord, King George," the minister recited, "and so replenish him with the grace of the Holy Spirit that he may always incline to thy will, and walk in thy way. Endue him plenteously with heavenly gifts. Gra
nt him in health and wealth long to live. Strengthen him that he may vanquish and overcome all his enemies, and finally after this life he may attain everiasting joy and felicity. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen."

  William lost the thread of the set prayers for the rest of the Royal Family and clergy even though he knew he was included in them, if not by name. Now he was remembering his family in his own way: proud Mama, alone now, with Papa gone; Bertie and his beloved Elizabeth and the two adored nieces, Lilibet and Margaret Rose; his sister Mary and her husband and sons, and Harry and Georgie and all their families—and his brother John, who had died when they were thirteen; and especially the exiled David, who had been so kind to him as a boy, and given up his crown, and might as well be dead By the time he had prayed for them all, the service was ending. The choir and ministers filed out through the choir doorway, followed by a more random trickle of laymen and women who had attended the service, civilian and Forces. William remained kneeling, his face partially covered with one hand in hopes that no one would disturb him, but after a moment, the verger appeared in the choir doorway with an older man he thought was the minister who had led the service.

  William sighed and stood as the two men hesitantly started toward him, putting on one of his more approachable demeanors. If he could manage it without seeming too awkward, he wanted a few minutes alone with Rufus's tomb before he left— though at this point, he was not even certain he had identified it correctly.

  "Sir, would you rather be left alone?" Wells murmured, rising to stand beside him.

  "No, it's all right."

  William moved down into the choir and nodded toward the two clergymen, inviting their ftirther approach with a smile.

  "Your Royal Highness?" the verger said tentatively.

  "Good evening. I hope I haven't intruded."

  "Certainly not, sir. It's an honor to have you here. May I present Canon Thompson, our minister this evening, who wished to pay his respects?"