Camelot & Vine

by Petrea Burchard

  From my position on the floor I attempted to comprehend my predicament. The armor should have been my first clue. Then the odd language, the bloody swords, the names.

  We had continued south for a short while, that much I knew. At a crossroads we’d gone east. I remembered some sort of stone marker, but by that time I was beyond jet lag, beyond hunger. Such relatively minor deprivations would have made me woozy enough without the added confusion of having landed in the wrong century. As it was, I’d swooned in and out of consciousness, for how long, I didn’t know.

  “They’ll come indeed, and with vengeance.” Bedwyr sounded worried.

  “We should have burned the bodies.” That was the big one, Sagramore.

  At his mention of burning, I smelled smoke. My chains kept me from rolling over. About ten feet away across scuffed mosaic tile, the road-dusted, lace-up leather boots of four men faced each other around a table.

  “Cremation sends the message that we respect their dead,” came Lancelot’s stilted accent. “It is the wrong message. I assure you the border is tight. I do not know how they got in, but if any are yet alive they will not get out.”

  “Still, we should go back and be certain.”

  Steel rang against steel. Shouts against shouts.

  “Lyonel, hold!” Lancelot sounded almost scolding.

  “He dares to doubt you—”

  “Put up your sword, cousin.” Lancelot again, the voice of reason. “You too, my friends. Bedwyr is only being cautious, are you not, Bedwyr? Let us respect his wisdom.”

  After a quiet moment, where strained breathing was all I heard, swords slid back into scabbards. At least I thought so, from the slip-stop noise of steel on steel.

  Then silence.

  “What about her?” said Bedwyr, sending my heart on a whole new race.

  “There is a cell near the north gate with bars strong enough to hold a giant,” said Lancelot.

  “Don’t like it.” Bedwyr’s low whisper wafted to me along with the scent of wood smoke.

  “Again, cousin, this one doubts you.”

  “Bedwyr and I are friends, Lyonel,” said Lancelot. “Friends may disagree. But Bedwyr, while we remain at Poste Perdu I must do as I see fit.”

  After a short pause, Bedwyr answered, “We’ll comply. Arthur’s grateful for your hospitality.”

  “It would be easier to kill her,” said Lyonel.

  “Mais non, Lancelot said, “Arthur wants her.”

  “She may be important.”

  “Oui, je comprends.”

  I could not shift my position.

  “She is awake.”

  One man stood, took deliberate steps to my side and squatted, blocking my view of the others.

  Lancelot’s symmetrical face loomed sideways above me in shadow. “I am sorry for your discomfort, my lady,” he said. “We are not barbarians. But as I cannot be certain you will not use your powers against us, I will take no chances.”

  My powers.

  He rose and moved out of my field of vision. “Would you like to sit?”

  “Mmmhmm.”

  “Agravain. Gareth.” Lancelot had only to say their names and the matching brother guards came to lift me. My chains made me heavy and the process wrenched my shoulders. It was only pain on top of the pain I already felt. If these are the not the barbarians, I thought, I hope I never meet them.

  The brothers seated me in a leather-bound chair and took positions beside me, with ready hands on the hilts of their swords. From my seat I had an opportunity to get my bearings. Across the long, low room a single torch flickered, braced in an iron wall-bracket like a medieval sconce. In the jagged shadows beneath it, Bedwyr and Sagramore sat at a wooden table, watching me. A legion of axes leaned against the wall in the dark corner behind the two men; beyond that an archway led I knew not where. A stand of spears lined another corner. At either end of the room the doors stood open, allowing small streaks of daylight to enter while letting out the smoke. Whatever the building’s original use, it was now an armory. I didn’t see Lyonel and I hoped he was gone.

  Lancelot faced me across a pit in the floor in which burned a small fire that perhaps warmed the inches nearest its embers but not those near me.

  “Bienvenue à Poste Perdu. C’est ma petite garde joyeuse,” said Lancelot, his tongue somewhere in his cheek, “my happy little outpost. We are not far from the border I share with King Arthur.”

  “Um, merci.” My voice came out ragged.

  “You speak the Gallic?” he asked, abruptly leaning forward in his chair, as if my knowing French made me dangerous.

  I didn’t remember much from high school, except we didn’t call it ‘the Gallic.’ “Just a couple of words.”

  “Have you had dealings with the Belgae before?”

  “I...don’t think so. What is the Bell-gee?”

  A laugh thundered from the dark, somewhere behind me. Lyonel was not gone.

  “I am Belgae,” said Lancelot, “as are my men.” I looked beside me, to the brothers. “Not them. Agravain and Gareth are Britons. The Britons and Belgae are allies.” He leaned back in his chair. “But I sense you know this. From where do you hail and whom do you serve?”

  I didn’t want to lie. But if my father’s theories about King Arthur were right, I was in the Dark Ages and America didn’t exist yet. “I come from across the water to the west. And I serve no master.”

  “You are a Scot!” Lyonel’s voice sounded more incredulous than accusing. Almost.

  “Patience, Lyonel,” said Lancelot. “You must forgive my cousin, mistress. Many enemies are abroad.” He considered me. The room’s daytime shadows softened the angle of his high cheekbones and the highlights in his hair. “You do not sound like a Scot, nor do you look like one. You look like a Saxon.”

  Sagramore sucked in a sharp breath. Bedwyr’s chair groaned when he leaned forward, his face lit more by interest than by torch light. The older brother, whether Gareth or Agravain I didn't know, fingered the hilt of his sword. To be a Saxon was bad news.

  Lancelot continued. “You appeared during a Saxon raid. You lived through it, without a weapon. If I were not under orders to deliver you to King Arthur I would have left you behind, or killed you, as you might pose a problem.” His beatific smile came across as surprisingly warm. “But it is for the king to decide if you live or die. You are fortunate. He is a great man, Count of the Britons, Dux Bellorum, Leader of Wars.”

  He waited.

  “You may speak,” he said.

  Upon his permission, the question foremost in my mind popped from my lips. “Do you mean the real King Arthur?”

  Lancelot gripped the arms of his chair. “There is an impostor?”

  The warriors at my sides shifted their feet.

  “No,” I said quickly. My headache had intensified since my sojourn on the floor, and it was becoming difficult to look at Lancelot without blinking. I struggled to cover what could be a deadly error. Smoke and body odor filled my nostrils along with the air I had to have. “It’s just...amazing...to think I’m going to see him.”

  Lancelot relaxed back into his chair. “You shall. Tomorrow. If you cooperate.”

  My father had believed the Arthurian legends were fiction and much of the real story was unknown. I wished I’d paid more attention to my dad’s academic studies than my storybook. It would have been nice to know what year it was, for example, or how much time had passed since the Roman occupation. I knew the Saxons had invaded Britain some time after the Romans left. Saxons were the enemy and Lancelot thought I looked like one. I wasn’t about to tell him I’d probably descended from them.

  My handsome interrogator contemplated me. The smoke between us forced me to squint. To look him in the eye was too defiant, so I rested my gaze on a row of helmets lining the floor like neatly planted posies, their empty eyes staring. Above them, too high on the wall for me to see myself in it, a bronze mirror reflected smoke and torch light. I must have looked half dead by then.


  Bedwyr spoke into the silence. “The lady is unwell. I will take her to her cell, if I may.”

  “Very well. I will send men to guard her while she sleeps. If she sleeps.” Lancelot rose and ambled toward the rear door where Lyonel emerged, like smoke from the shadows, to follow him.

  “I may trust you to walk with me as far as the north gate, may I not?” Bedwyr said to me.

  “Yes.”

  With the key from his pouch he unlocked the chains that bound my legs. The rusted iron links fell away, revealing the ruin of my cute, expensive boots. The brothers helped me to my feet, which was useful, because with my wrists still chained I couldn’t use my hands to leverage myself from the chair. My legs didn’t want to unbend at first but apparently the men were familiar with the process, and they waited while I got myself straightened out. Though my ankles were sore my legs felt light, no longer anchored to the planet.

  Halfway to the door, Lancelot’s husky accent stopped us. “If I hear the prisoner has been molested in any way, the transgressor shall answer to me,” he said. “The lady belongs to the king.”

  NINE

  After an awkward episode at a drainage gutter where I was allowed to relieve myself behind a wall in broad daylight, the brothers Agravain and Gareth led me across a courtyard into a decrepit cement barracks, missing a large portion of its tile roof. Bedwyr followed, carrying my chains.

  “The prisoner has no privileges,” he told the four guards who waited at the end of a dark hallway. Where the roof was still intact, two more guards stood in the daytime shadows.

  Bedwyr dismissed the brothers, then led me through an archway into a small cell with a haphazard pile of furs on the floor and floor-to-ceiling barred window overlooking a sunny expanse of dirt.

  “Sit there,” said Bedwyr, pointing to the furs.

  I sat. He squatted beside me, his corn-silk braids dangling, and got busy chaining my ankles.

  “When I’m finished I’ll find you something to eat.”

  “Thank you, Bedwyr—may I call you Bedwyr?”

  “You must, for I have no other name.”

  No ‘Sir,’ then. No knight in shining armor. I was starving for the food he promised but even more hungry for answers. “Bedwyr, what does it mean to belong to the king?”

  He squinted at his work. “Means you’re his property.”

  My stomach rolled. “Will I be a slave?”

  “Better slave to a good king than prisoner to a bad one. There.” He finished, locked the chains, and stood. “I’ll be back.”

  “Bedwyr, why so many guards? Why all the chains?”

  “It’s working, then?”

  “One guard would be plenty.”

  He laughed. His smile made him almost jolly. “One guard overpowered by a single spell and off you go.” His smile disappeared. “I won’t be fooled so easily, my lady, not while Lancelot’s in charge.”

  My powers again. Maybe their fear of me would come in handy.

  “Will the king kill me?”

  “Doubt we’d be going to such trouble if he wanted you dead.” He shrugged and started for the door. “But perhaps he wants the pleasure for himself.”

  TEN

  “Medraut! We’ve not seen you in a fortnight!”

  My chains made it impossible for me to roll over, so I turned my pounding head to the light. Sun heated the pile of furs on which I lay, releasing a sharp, rancid scent.

  The barred window opposite the cell door looked out across the sunny, dirt yard, where the younger brother guard admitted two men at the gate, closing it behind them as they passed under a stone archway. The older brother acknowledged the men with a wave then returned to cleaning his horse’s hooves with a pick.

  “It’s fine to see you, Gareth.”The slimmer of the two riders addressed the young brother. To the older one he simply nodded. At least I finally knew which brother was which.

  “How fares our brother Gawain?” asked Gareth, which disconcerted me. I really didn’t need them to have more brothers.

  The skinny man dismounted in a fluid movement. “Gawain is well,” he said. “All’s well at Beran Byrig. So well that though the harvest is not finished, the granaries are quite full.” His chubby companion remained on his horse, unable to sit still, adjusting and readjusting himself.

  “Your news is good, Medraut!” Gareth seemed incapable of cynicism. “Did you find any Saxons afoot? Two nights ago we killed seventeen not far from the Giant’s Ring.”

  Medraut’s mouth opened. He backed up to support his skeletal frame against the gate. “Seventeen? At the Giant’s Ring?”

  “Well, in the woods. But nearby, nonetheless.”

  The thin man’s thin lips remained open but he didn’t speak. His chubby friend dismounted with a wriggle. “You must have killed them all,” he said. “That or they spared us, as we’ve just come that way.”

  Gareth laughed. “It would be unlike them to spare a British soul.”

  Their conversation was drowned out by the clink of marching chain mail approaching in the hallway. A jagged chill trickled up my spine. Four guards entered my cell, refusing to make eye contact, their faces blank to me. I could have saved them so much bother if they had only unchained me, but they went to the trouble to lift me, chains and all, and lug me down the hall.

  We emerged in an overgrown courtyard where the guards deposited me in the bed of a waiting wagon, the same one in which I’d ridden the day before. I landed in a semi-seated position, with my back against a pile of chain mail. The guards gave no thought to the fact that, thus trussed, it was nearly impossible for me to right myself. Surrounded by armed men and the rubble of deteriorating buildings, I had no time to think of my morning ablutions or to rejoice that my jet lag was finally gone.

  The red-haired boy from the previous day climbed aboard to drive, glancing over his shoulder to make sure I was securely fastened and unable to do him mischief. He clucked to the horses. The cart jerked forward to rumble along the uneven streets of the walled, ruined fort Lancelot called Poste Perdu. Armed men watched us from the doorways of cement barracks. In the drying mud of the streets, soldiers ceased their dice games to witness our rolling passage. The few women seated at the well stopped washing, allowing their braceleted arms to soak their laps while they gazed at me.

  I wanted to pull my blood-crusted hair away from my eyes, but my wrists were chained and it was too late to attend to beauty. I gazed back at the women, making a conscious attempt to appear to be at peace but not placid, confident but not indifferent, brave but not defiant. Eyes open wide. Not too much blinking. No smiling, but no frowning either.

  Lancelot, Bedwyr and the rest of the previous day’s party awaited us on horseback at the end of a walled street. Together we exited the fort by a southern gate. Although I feared what the day would bring, I wished Poste Perdu good riddance.

  -----

  Our band of travelers was much the same as before, augmented by about two dozen of Lancelot’s men and the pair of soldiers who’d arrived that morning: lean Medraut and the tubby sidekick he called Pawly. The only other difference I noted was the laurel branches with which the brothers Agravain and Gareth had freshened the hearse wagon, and the three horses, probably those of the dead soldiers, plodding behind, tethered by their reins.

  Retracing our steps, we headed west. Within a couple of miles we came to a crossroads indicated by a giant stone marker and lined with leafy trees. I had seen the marker on the previous day’s ride but had been too delirious to recall it in detail. Cut into the stone, taller than a man, was a weathered cross inside a circle, carved with symbols and festooned with bird droppings.

  Our choices at the crossroads were south, north, or west. Without lingering, we continued west. In the early miles the men scoured the hillsides and groves, wary as our wagons rolled through open country, wheels groaning against the stone road. I watched, too, but saw no threat, only wildflowers and tilled fields. The few people we passed labored amid crops in the open. E
ach ceased his work to salute us as we went by, with a hand raised to a ruddy cheek.

  If not for the iron rubbing against my skin, if not for the ache in my muscles from lack of movement, if not for fear of where I was and knowledge that I couldn’t possibly be there, I might have thought I was in paradise. A picture from my storybook had come to life: the one of the road winding through watercolor green meadows and rising in the distance to a castle in the clouds. Grassy lumps, sprinkled with flowers and too small to be hills, dotted the landscape on either side of the road. They might have been graves, but not recent ones. Some were marked by giant stones that had long since fallen, allowing waving grasses to grow across their pocked shoulders. Small groves of trees peeked around this lump or that hill, and the sun gloated over everything.

  My fate would soon be in King Arthur’s hands. All morning my heart hurtled between wonder and despair, terror and romance. The thought of dying out of time chilled me even in sunshine. My presence in that wagon on that road was a scientific impossibility, but when we hit a bump and I tensed to balance myself, the weight of the shackles was real, the clang of jostled chains was loud enough to draw attention from the mounted guards, and the bump on the back of my head when it hit the driver’s seat was perhaps a small thing but painful enough, real enough.

  I tried to remember what I’d learned, in the yoga classes I’d bothered to attend, about holding a pose. The lack of movement gets tiresome but you are moving; you hold the pose because you’re working in that pose, you’re stretching or feeling a muscle. You’re becoming stronger. You know that. You aren’t supposed to take pride in yoga but you do, or at least I did, when I did it well. But I was too impatient for it. I couldn’t see the point. Why sit there for so long doing nothing? What was I going to need that skill for? When was I ever going to have to sit for any more than a few minutes in the same position?

  Hours in the wagon, chained and unable to move, did not give me a sense of pride or achievement. The pain deadened itself. I grew blessedly numb and less blessedly bored. Keeping the larger dread at bay, little things occupied my mind: how Bedwyr’s braids bounced against his back when he bounced on his horse; how Sagramore was in ways Bedwyr’s opposite: so large and broad it was inconceivable for him to bounce, and I pitied his horse; Medraut’s dark eyes poking in every direction as though he thought he was watched, yet always watching, too; Pawly a constant at Medraut’s side, rarely saying a word; and Lancelot, shining and fine as I had always imagined he would be though not quite, with that strange shadow of mistrust between us I wished I could shatter; not to mention his shadow of a cousin Lyonel, who I wished would disappear.