-----
When the land flattened we stopped by a stream in the heat of mid-day. The men took their rations and sat by the water, and the horses were allowed to graze. By their joking and laughter I assumed the allied warriors were on friendly terms, though Lancelot’s men tended to stick together and speak “the Gallic” among themselves.
Bedwyr and Gareth came to attend to me. By then I was vulnerable to baking in the sun and I was relieved not to be forgotten. My chain mail sweater was damp with sweat and my chains were heating up like little irons.
“We’re within Arthur’s borders,” Bedwyr said, unlocking my shackles. “As the king’s lieutenant I’m now in command.” He began slowly unwinding the chains at my wrists. Gareth worked at my ankles. “This will hurt,” said Bedwyr, his tone matter-of-fact.
A few yards away, seated beside the stream, the men shared a leather flask, passing it around in a circle. Their voices wafted to us. Lancelot and his cousin spoke to each other and glanced our way. A murmur came from among the men, then laughter.
The chafing iron had scabbed in places and my wounds opened again when Bedwyr pulled the chains away. I sucked in my breath and held it. I would not let Lancelot hear me cry out. The wounds were small, I told myself.
“Can you walk?”
“I think so.”
With the grace of a drunken sheep I crawled around the piled shields to climb out of the wagon. The two soldiers helped me to the ground, allowing time for my aching legs to unbend. I was weak, but my wounds would heal. Eventually I’d have little white scars on my wrists and ankles. While Gareth rummaged among the supplies, Bedwyr ushered me to a shady spot near the stream, away from the others.
“I’m releasing you against Lancelot’s wishes,” he grumbled under his breath. “Unless you can fly, any one of these men can kill you in seconds. Don’t make me a fool.”
“I won’t.” I wouldn’t. Where would I go?
“Here we are.” Gareth stomped over with an armload of bread and dried meat, which he dropped on the ground without concern for germs. Bedwyr took his food a few feet away and, with a middle-aged groan, lowered his bulk to sit with his back against the wagon wheel in a spot of shade.
Gareth motioned me to sit on a clump of earth beneath the branches of a willow by the stream. He joined me there, dipped a brass cup in the water and offered it to me. My thirst overcame any concern I might have had over the little floating bits of algae and dirt in the cup. The cold water tasted thick. Gareth was already eating.
“What kind of meat is that?” I asked.
He didn’t swallow before answering. “Venison. Aren’t you hungry?”
“I’ve never had venison.”
“What do you eat? Rabbits? You look pale. The king will not be pleased if we bring him a sick wizard.”
So that’s what they thought. No wonder Bedwyr thought I’d fly away.
“Eat, please.” Gareth gnawed off another bite, then stopped chewing to let his eyes follow my hand as I reached for a piece of venison. My nail polish, ridiculous under the circumstances, was chipped, but Gareth seemed to find it fascinating. I raised the meat to my mouth and tasted salt. It was tough but my teeth worked off a bite. Venison proved the antidote to nausea.
“Aha! She likes it!” Gareth grinned, a piece of venison dangling from his mustache.
“It’s good. Thank you.”
“You are most welcome, mistress.” It was a courtly response, reminding me that this rough road, this dirt, this hardship would come to an end, and we would arrive at Camelot.
My dashing young guard leaned across me to refill my cup in the stream. Accepting it, I said, “May I ask, sir? The man who drives the funeral wagon—is he your brother?”
He laughed. I thought he might even be enjoying my company. “You needn’t call me ‘sir.’ Just Gareth. Yes, Agravain’s my brother—one of my brothers. Our father is Lot of Orkney,” he bragged. “Gawain’s the eldest. He commands Beran Byrig. Then comes Gaheris. He’s stationed at Essa to lead Arthur’s troops in the southwest. Then Agravain, then me. We’re all in King Arthur’s service, of course. And do you know?” He leaned forward, cocked his charming chin and waited.
I shook my head. I didn’t know.
“King Arthur is our uncle!”
“Oh.”
“Agravain and I are as yet unproven, of course.”
“But...”
“There are family privileges, yes, but our uncle is a fair man.”
“Of course.”
“He has fought eleven great battles. A twelfth is nigh. Agravain and I are ready.”
“I’m excited to meet your uncle.”
Gareth raised his dark eyebrows in surprise. “Why, you met him in the woods, mistress. He ordered Lancelot to bring you to him.”
I sucked in a short breath. Was it King Arthur toward whom I had hurtled through the gap in the darkness? King Arthur, the murdering savage with the Dick Tracy jaw? “And Lancelot is...?”
“A good man. A great man! A friend. You’ll come to admire him as everyone does. It can’t be helped.” He laughed, with a shrug of his brawny, young shoulders.
“How long before we reach Ca-Cam—?”
“Cadebir?” Three, four hours. We’d be faster without the carts. It’s a good road. Roman.”
Of course. I was seeing what the Romans had built, relatively soon after they’d built it. My father would have been thrilled. Briefly, I felt privileged. But Lancelot chose that moment to dampen my mood by sauntering toward us across the waving grass. Gareth rose quickly and struck a stern, guarding pose. Bedwyr snoozed against the wheel of the cart.
“I wish to speak to the lady,” said Lancelot, placing a brotherly hand on Gareth’s shoulder. Gareth nodded and backed away.
When we were alone, Lancelot extended his hand to help me to my feet. I had no choice but to accept. Shaking, I touched the blond hairs of his iron-hard forearm, allowing him to pluck me to my feet as though I were a blade of grass.
“Walk with me.” Lancelot offered said arm and I took it. Was there a Guinevere, I wondered, to be enfolded in those arms? Was it possible Lancelot could be gentle with such weaponry for appendages?
He could. Sensitive to my wounded wrists, Lancelot patted my hand. He led me to the edge of the stream where we stood in the willow’s shade. It might have been romantic if I’d bathed in the previous twenty-four hours.
Lancelot studied me. “You are not afraid of the water?”
“Should I be?”
“Perhaps not,” he said, eyeing me with new curiosity.
He led me further away from the wagons, I assumed because he didn’t want our conversation to be overheard. Knowing he didn’t like me or at least didn’t trust me, the few feet between us and where Bedwyr snoozed felt like a chasm.
“Bedwyr is in command now that we are within Arthur's borders,” Lancelot whispered in his guttural, Frankish purr. “At Cadebir, the king rules. These are kind, trusting men. My friends.” His glassy, blue eyes pierced. “I am kind, too, Mistress Casey. But I do not trust. I will watch you, and if you pose a threat to my king, I will kill you.”
I was still wondering how the words “I will kill you” could come from such full, soft lips when he said, “It is time to go.”
ELEVEN
A wide, flat hill emerged in the distance. It shimmered, a dark green ocean liner on a light green sea. Black smoke rose in puffs at one end, as though from smokestacks upon the great ship’s decks.
“Is that...?” I began.
“Cadebir,” said Sagramore, his droopy eyes glowing. He and Lucy had taken a shine to each other. He rode alongside her behind the cart where she plodded after me, tied by a swinging rope.
We were still too far away to see turrets. “I’ve heard it’s beautiful.”
“It is the greatest fort in all of Britain,” said Lancelot. His white steed swished a fly with its tail. “There is none larger, none better fortified. You see it holds a position of power. Beauty,
however, is not one of its qualities.”
The men laughed, gathering around, in good humor now that they were close to home.
“What’s the fire for?” I asked, fearing it was for the burning of prisoners.
“Smithy.” Bedwyr reined his stout brown horse alongside my wagon. “Work never stops.”
“Nor does the feasting,” said Gareth.
“Oh yes, the banquets,” said Lancelot. “King Arthur spares no expense to entertain his allies.”
“He favors his allies over his own son,” said Medraut, entering the conversation like a pin enters a balloon.
“It’s only politics,” said Gareth. “The king’s son always has a place in the hall.”
“Whether deserved or no.” The deep, measured voice came from the wagon behind mine. It was the first time I’d heard Agravain speak.
Medraut turned in his saddle to curl a supercilious lip at Agravain. A tense moment took too much time in passing. Then Medraut laughed. “You speak so rarely, cousin. Why must you always be right?”
The men around me laughed softly, but not freely. Conversational ease had ended. Silence returned for the most part, with the exception of the occasional cluck to one’s mount or word to the rider nearest by.
I was having a little trouble following the king’s family tree, but I was beginning to think that Medraut might be the Mordred of legend, King Arthur’s illegitimate son. If Cadebir was Camelot, maybe the real names weren’t all the same as the storybook ones. The legends had it that Mordred was the son of Arthur and his sister Morgan le Fay, who were tricked into making love by Merlin the magician. If it were true, Medraut was not only illegitimate but the product of incest. All that in a century without psychotherapy.
-----
Closer to Cadebir hill, the ocean liner began to look more like an inverted, earthen battleship, with four tiers diminishing from the largest at the bottom to the smallest at the top. No turret or flag adorned its layers. Instead, a wall of vertical logs, punctuated by stone-built guard stations, surrounded the topmost tier. It looked more like an early American cavalry fort than the medieval castle of my imagination.
I knew by the increased pounding in my left temple and the purple light at the edges of my vision that my headache was becoming a migraine. The realization brought an extra sense of dread. Surely there wasn’t a prescription drug to be found at Cadebir, and being chained in a wagon in the wrong century was difficult enough without blinding pain and cognitive impairment. I hadn’t been forced to endure a migraine’s full progress since my doctor had prescribed a drug to stymie them. But I hadn't forgotten the steady march from purple light to nausea to weakness, all accompanied by a deep-drilling pain behind my eyes.
There was nothing for it. My migraines were caused by stress and I’d had an overdose. So when Bedwyr chained me again “for show,” I took a deep, futile breath and tried to relax.
About a mile from the base of the hill, our caravan entered a small town. The one and only street, down which Lancelot and his men made an impressive procession, was lined with small buildings, made of mud packed into frames of wood and sticks. The townspeople, more finely dressed than their country counterparts (a merchant tucked his pants into his boots, a town wife shielded her skin from the sun with a hat), recognized my companions and welcomed them like celebrities. We were a parade. People stopped what they were doing and came out of their huts to see us.
“Death to the Saxons!” the people cheered, with blissful smiles and raised fists.
The soldiers shouted back, “Death to the enemies of Britain!”
Everyone loved that. Young men roared and the older folks waved and hoo-hooed. Girls cooed and blinked at Lancelot, which he accepted with a parade wave. His cousin, brawny Lyonel, even jumped off his horse and lifted a pretty, screaming lass to kiss her.
The people marveled at me, too. “It’s a woman!” “Is she a prisoner?” “She’s wearing trousers! Maybe she's a warrior.” I might have enjoyed their attention were it not for my headache, plus my awareness of the state of my appearance. I was reminded of Roman triumphs, when the victors paraded their captives through the city. The best I could do was sit up straight and try to appear benign.
At the edge of the village, the road led out across open fields between the town and the great hill before us. To the southeast, tents spread across the land, hundreds of them, teeming with men and smoke. Arthur’s armies, I guessed. To the northwest lay marshland, clouded with fog.
On we went, the mood of the soldiers climbing the heights before we even arrived at the base of the hillside. As we neared it, the hill appeared steeper, and at last we came to the beginning of a path that zig-zagged up a series of switchbacks to a great, wooden gate. There, shouting guards leaned over the wall to hail us, their arms waving like stalks peeking over a garden fence and swaying in the breeze. With a groan, the gate pushed open and out poured a dozen men, shouting and rushing down the muddy zig-zag in a torrent of testosterone.
Lucy betrayed her nervousness with a loud whinny.
“Welcome back!”
“How’s Gawain?”
“Did everyone survive?”
“Surely Beran Byrig has better women to offer.”
I tried to ignore the jab by staring at my lap. The laughter ended when someone asked about the riderless horses tied to Agravain’s cart. Questions and shouts filled the air until Bedwyr raised his hand for silence. “Get these carts up the hill,” he ordered.
The brutes bent their shoulders to the work without argument. The wagon lurched, zig-zagging up and across earthen ramparts wide enough to ride two or three abreast, steep enough that an invader would be hard put to climb them, old enough that grass, weeds and even trees sprouted between their stones. Below, the town we’d passed through was laid out like a map of itself. Miles of road we’d traveled curled back across the plains, disappearing into the morning we left behind.
Anticipation built in my breast as the cart pitched and swayed, drawing near the gate. Finally we made it to the top and rolled under the high, wooden arch where the horses could pull the weight on their own. I jerked and wriggled to turn myself to see. Like the opening shot of a grand epic, my first sight of Camelot was revealed to me.
Sun bore down on a grassless camp. Men and women came and went pushing carts, trotting briskly in the dust or meandering along the wide path that led away from the gate. With the red-haired boy driving, we rode among the meanderers along a path as deep as a trough, worn to a ditch in the dark soil by centuries of rolling cartwheels and trampling feet.
Could this Cadebir be Camelot? It was a working fort, and working hard, from what I could tell. The dust couldn’t settle, being constantly kicked up by activity. I had no choice but to breathe it. Even the young wore work on their hard faces. Sunburned men pushed carts loaded with produce, animal carcasses or black dirt along the path. Women carried bundles. No hand was empty. Even the animals, at least the live ones, bore burdens, pulling wagonloads of stones or wood across the hilltop. Sweat glistened on every neck, from bent laborer to plodding dray horse, dripping in dusty rivulets through fur and hair.
Our carts bumped past a row of cement barracks like the one in which I’d spent the previous night. Across a lumpy expanse, the ground rose to a promontory where a large, rectangular structure commanded the rise. Its steep, thatched roof swept up to meet a pair of beams at the crest, declaring the building to be the main hall. On the slope at its flanks several high-peaked, round huts huddled near it like campers at a fire.
We rolled to a stop at the hall's massive, wooden doors. Bedwyr dismounted and climbed aboard the wagon to unlock my chains and help me to the ground. Blood rushed into my feet and I thought they wouldn’t hold me, but my ankles warmed quickly. Standing felt like a reward. I awaited instructions.
A pair of wide-eyed boys gaped over their shoulders at me as they led the riderless horses away. They took Lucy, too, my last connection to the real world. Sagramore shouted after them
, “No one touches that saddle until I get there.” Smoke from somewhere stung my eyes.
I hadn’t heard the doors open but when I turned, a tall man stood before them, waiting. Beyond him, the hall was dark. The man’s beard was closely trimmed, his hands were folded at his flat belly, and his steel-gray hair was twisted into a pair of neat braids. Stone-faced, he bowed slightly, like the gentleman butler of a haunted house. “Welcome home,” he said.
“Caius,” Bedwyr offered his hand, “All’s well?”
Caius made no move. “All is well. The king wishes to see you, Bedwyr. Sagramore, too. And Lancelot. And, of course, his kinsmen.” He barely glanced at me. “Bring the prisoner.” He looked over our bedraggled bunch as though inspecting a delivery, then stepped down from the doorway, his perfect posture evident in every move. Then he clasped Bedwyr’s hand, and suddenly they were all slapping each other on the back, hugging and laughing.
All except Lancelot. He stood at the fringes of the group, looking to the far side of the building with a gaze that would melt stone. A young woman peered back at him from her hiding place around the corner of the hall. Her long, dark hair was offset by her white tunic. She was fair, far more fair than I had ever been, even when I was twenty, even when my hair was not caked with soil and blood. No one noticed her but me before she ducked into the afternoon shadows under the eaves.
Camelot & Vine Page 6
