My father would have been ecstatic to see a real Roman road in such pristine form. As he would have done and as I had not yet had an opportunity to do, I knelt to examine the stones. Wild rain splashed on rock, then, turning tame, let itself be guided into gullies along the road’s edges to drain from the surface. It was Roman engineering, at work long after the engineers had gone. Yet the road would be buried under civilization in a few hundred years. Nothing lasts forever, not even stone.
I picked up a gray-white rock. Arthur had an “extra muscle,” he called it, to reach back and touch his ancestors. My father existed neither back in time nor forward. There I held him in the Roman stone, across unbridgeable time. I knew in my heart that I could not have saved my father. My mother couldn’t have saved him, either. Only he could have saved himself.
Nor could I have saved Arthur. He had won wars and led armies long before I showed up. I had made too much of myself, taken too much on. I had done Arthur wrong but I had not ruined him; the larger world around him bore that burden regardless of me, even regardless of Arthur. He had asked honesty of me, and there I had failed him. That responsibility I accepted.
I don’t know how long I sat hugging the rock to my chest. The rain did not let up but I felt no need to shelter from it. Gradually, dawn glistened on the splashing gullies. Clouds and rain could not disguise day, however sunless. In the west the light would soon break over Cadebir. Even slowed by the storm, Lancelot and his men would be there by now, fighting to save Guinevere. I pushed myself up to stand, watching rain splash into the channels and drain away like memory. The stone in my hand was as heavy as a heart. No road could take me back to repair my mistakes. Some mistakes were not mine to fix. “Bless them,” I whispered to the stone. With my good arm, I threw it as far as I could out onto the plain.
The Giant’s Ring loomed there in the downpour, across a bleak meadow. I hadn’t seen it in the dark, standing staunch against the storm. My first impression of the stones had been of hulking, downtrodden animals. But in the storm, with no fence to cage them, the stones appeared like great wizards who chose to congregate there, standing strong together and waiting to welcome me.
I sought the land bridge and found it not far up the road. When our war party had loitered there, King Arthur and his friends had taken their time crossing it, their heads bent in contemplation. Had Arthur reached across the centuries and touched his ancestors then? Had he considered time as he walked among the stones rubbing his square, stubbled chin? If there were a place in the world where reaching back was possible, it was Stonehenge. Could it be a place for reaching forward?
Soaked past cold, my sodden boots sank in the puddles. Water splashed in the ditch below the land bridge. I had no need for hurry. At the end of the bridge I came to a single, giant stone. It was rough to the touch. Drawing my fingers along its length, I crossed over to hallowed ground.
The standing stones faced each other in pairs, some with a third slab across their tops for a roof, making rocky gazebos in an ethereal park. Like any animal would, I scrambled through the weeds to take shelter beneath the nearest one and sank to the ground, closing my eyes against the shivers that rattled me. Now I could go home.
I had once feared death in the Dark Ages because it meant I would never be born, never be known. Ha! Ridiculous. What others knew of me didn’t make me important. It was what I knew of myself that mattered. I had done something worthwhile at last. I had loved my friends. I had given everything for them. They wouldn’t know and neither would history. But I knew, and I could rest.
FORTY-SEVEN
Something soft nibbled my ear. My ears pounded and a tingling static shook my body. The thing nibbled again and the shaking stopped. I opened my eyes. Rain filled the puddle where I lay, fetal and numb. Lucy’s big face hovered over me. She nickered sweet and low.
“Lucy.” My lips formed her name but my lungs gave no breath to sound.
Lucy nickered again and nudged my thigh.
“I can’t get up.” I didn’t want to try.
Lucy insisted, nibbling at my legs and snorting. With her saddle still strapped on her back, she was missing half a rein. The other one dragged on the ground, threatening to trip her. She was soaked and muddy but otherwise unscathed.
“You’re so beautiful.”
Lucy nudged my foot and tossed her head, as if she had something to say.
I still had one good arm. I used it to push myself up to sit, and leaned against the stone. The rain would not stop. My last meal had been the night before. The constant pain exhausted me. I had completed my mission with nowhere to go.
Lucy didn’t seem to mind the rain. Together we watched as the wind rose. It threw its weight around and beat down the grass. When thunder shook with the seismic volume of an earthquake, the lightning that followed came so close it blinded me. In its split-second after-light I saw what Lucy was trying to tell me.
Myrddin had been at the Giant’s Ring.
Across the circle, atop the stone formations where the tops were as flat as tables, stood a legion of clumsy, clay jars—a little army poised at attention.
Rain at the full moon. Myrddin must have waited for me and finally given up. But he had come.
The stone’s surface felt smoother than I expected but rough enough for gripping. I pulled myself up, stiff with unfolding surrender. Lucy snorted and tossed her head, glad to see me obey her. I led her into the open by her single rein, seeking a boost, stumbling in the weeds to find a stone from which to mount. But even the fallen stones were giants too huge to climb. With thunder and lightning crackling around us, at last I found a smaller stone I could crawl onto. From there I managed to throw myself across the wet saddle and pull until I was home on Lucy’s back.
I had not wanted to leave Cadebir. I still didn’t. But I had to go. One more deep breath filled me with the sorrow of a last look. I drew Myrddin’s knife from my belt. I would be ready when lightning struck.
The sky emitted a growl from its thunderous throat. The growl became a rumble, then a roar. Lucy reared and neighed. When the lightning came it shattered sight into a thousand pieces, like a mirror smashed against a wall. I threw Myrddin’s knife at the batteries, thinking not of my bad aim in junior high sports but of my success with a fireball at the promontory. For a second I regretted throwing; if I missed I might yet need Myrddin’s knife to protect myself. But if I missed, no weapon would help me.
The little knife flew through the wild air and hit the batteries at the moment the thunder exploded. Lucy reared again, and because I wasn’t holding on I fell. I scrambled for her single rein, unable to find it in my chaotic tumble. I couldn’t lose Lucy again. I couldn’t get home without her and I couldn’t be without her in the Dark Ages. She and I were refugees from the same paved roads, the same streetlights, the same comforts, the same smells, the same familiar, inexplicably lost century.
I tripped and fell backward in the high grass. Lucy’s big, gray nose loomed above me. A flash of lightning revealed her dangling rein. I reached for it.
FORTY-EIGHT
“...shoulder’s dislocated rather badly. How’re the scans?”
“Normal.”
“Lucky.”
English. The British kind. One male, one female. Strong smell of antiseptic.
A finger lifted my eyelid. A light beamed directly into my eye. I jerked back.
“Oh, hello!” A white-haired man hovered behind the bright orb, his face mere inches from mine. He clicked off the light and sat back, revealing a dour nurse behind him.
“I’m Dr. Rattish,” said the man. “Do you know who you are?”
“Mmm. Yeah.”
“Tell me your name.” He tucked the flashlight into the pocket of his lab coat.
“Cassandra.” My throat was dry, my head hurt and my ears would not stop ringing.
“Do you know where you are?”
“Uh...hospital?”
“Right you are. In hospital at Salisbury. How many fingers?” His
dry, wrinkly hand snapped out of the end of his lab coat sleeve like the head of a tortoise.
The fluorescents forced me to squint. “Two.”
“Excellent. Now count backwards for me, from ten.”
I did, mumbling.
“That’s fine. You must not move your left arm and shoulder for now. When the painkiller wears off, ring for the nurse.”
The nurse frowned.
“You’ve a concussion which we shall monitor,” said Dr. Rattish, “but your signs are good. We’ll keep you tonight for observation and if you’re well enough tomorrow, you may go home.”
Wherever that was. “What happened?”
“The police are hoping you can tell them. You’ve gone missing for a month. Do you know where you’ve been?”
I knew. “No.”
“Well. You haven’t been unconscious for thirty days. That’s not possible. If the memory doesn’t return, you may want to speak to a psychologist. Oh!” He jabbed his hand into his pocket and pulled out a white business card, which he laid on the tray table beside the bed. “There’s a lawyer wants you to ring him. But rest before litigation, if you please.”
“Lucy?”
“I’m sure I don’t know her. You may telephone her tomorrow. Rest now.” The last bit he said as the door swung closed behind him, the nurse at his heels.
Next to the business card stood a plastic sippy cup with a straw. Glad I hadn’t blurted out some insanity to the doctor (“I went to Camelot!”), I was more thirsty than curious. Water, in its controlled form, was a relief.
Missing a month.
My memory had the purity of reality, but although Arthur had spoken of reaching back through time one doesn’t really do that, one only wishes one could. I’d had a concussion, not an experience. An injury, not a memory.
I tried to roll onto my side and became twisted in the sheets, frustrated by the pillow. I ended up on my back as before, with tears draining into my ears.
None of it had happened.
I pushed myself to sitting, a one-armed-struggle, and plucked up the business card. Its embossed, gray lettering said “A. D. Bellorham, Esq.” Ambulance-chaser. I flipped the card to the table and missed. The card fell to the floor. In the flipping motion I caught sight of Guinevere’s tarnished ring on my little finger, with the shape of Stonehenge etched on its surface.
FORTY-NINE
Constable Norman Davies stank of cigarettes. His mud-brown hair was parted in the middle, as was the thick mustache that sheltered most of his mouth like the thatched eaves of an English cottage. I wondered how he smoked under there without igniting himself. Davies ushered me through the hospital door into a morning so bright I had to shield my eyes.
“Lovely after all that rain, innit? It was really chuckin’ it down.”
The constable’s petite, brightly-checkered police car waited conveniently in the circular driveway. I was thankful we didn’t have to walk far. Wherever I’d been, not everything had survived the ordeal and I didn’t much relish being seen. My fanny pack was no longer black but a faded charcoal color; I carried it bundled in my hand because the threads were gone where Lynet had sewn the belt—if indeed she had sewn it. The pockets of my cargo pants hung open like astonished mouths where I remembered, or imagined, Lynet had repaired them. My bandaged feet would not fit my ravaged, silly boots, so the constable carried the boots and I wore sillier hospital booties. The only thing on me that wasn’t ruined was my nice, new sling.
Davies helped me into the front seat. Good. I was not to be caged in the back like a perp on a cop show. The car didn’t stink. Obviously Davies didn’t smoke in there.
“S’not far. I’ll have you there by nine.”
I held my hospital discharge papers in my lap. They included myriad instructions: no driving; watch for dizziness, nausea and memory problems; come back in two weeks; sooner if trouble occurred.
The compact leaped forward with a jerk and the papers flew off my lap. We sped out of the parking lot. Davies managed wide avenues and cobbled alleyways with equal velocity and expertise. After living out of time for a month, Salisbury’s streets felt claustrophobic and too smooth. It was my bad luck to be seated on the left side of the car because I couldn’t use my left hand to hold onto the door handle. Instead I grabbed the dashboard with my right, grappling with the unsettling but related concepts of returning to the world, possible amnesia and driving on the wrong side of the road.
We merged onto a highway charmingly dubbed “A345,” which led north out of town. I felt less closed in, but disconcerted by our speed. I wasn’t used to going that fast.
Davies pointed to a flat-topped hill. “Old Sarum.”
“I should visit while I’m here.”
“Should, yes.”
I stared ahead and tried to relax. “Dr. Rattish said you have questions.”
“Not without your lawyer present, miss.”
“I don’t have a lawyer.”
“Mr. Bellorham’s representing you.”
The business card, probably still on the floor in my hospital room. “Did I commit a crime?”
“Well, er. We haven’t sorted that out.”
Davies didn’t say any more. That was a good thing. During the half-hour drive to Small Common I had shock, relief, heartache and painkillers to sort through, and conversation on top of that was more than I could handle. When we arrived at the southern edge of the village I barely got a glimpse as we flew by the livery stable. Horses leaned their long necks out of its windows, but I didn’t see Lucy among them. By the time we rolled onto the gravel drive of the brick B&B with the familiar, sideways lean I was shaken by tarmac and speed, and the constable was tapping the steering wheel, anxious for his next cigarette.
“Ajay’s expecting you,” he said. “Bellorham will pick you up at noon.”
-----
“Have a shower, love. I’ll put on some tea.” Ajay flashed his fluorescent smile but his shock at the sight of me showed in his eyes. He handed me a clean towel and ushered me up a single flight of stairs, then left me alone. The perfect innkeeper, he had thought to assemble my shopping bags in a tidy room on the same floor as the bathroom. I loved him for it. I ransacked my bags for shower supplies. Then I shuffled down the hall, locked myself in the bathroom and flipped the switch. Light. Just like that.
And a mirror.
The woman looking back at me across the bathroom sink had careless, wavy hair. A few gray hairs gleefully interspersed themselves with brown roots that emerged from fading, dyed blonde. Her suntanned skin stretched taut over freckled cheekbones and she had a dim, yellowed bruise on her forehead that was almost healed. Unplucked eyebrows lifted high over blue eyes, reflecting surprise. Then the corners of those eyes wrinkled in a soft smile of recognition. I liked her.
The bathroom was plain and clean, clean, clean. The walls were painted blue. White lace curtains hung from the sunny window. The white bath mat had been freshly laundered. I stepped around it to avoid getting it dirty.
I turned the shower on as hot as I could stand it and took my toothbrush in with me. Being one-armed, drugged, and having to keep the left arm dry added difficulty, but I was determined. I remembered King Arthur saying, “You seem to like bathing.” I laughed out loud then remembered to stifle the laugh. Then I remembered no one had said it.
It wasn’t as though I hadn’t washed at all in the last thirty days. I had dangled my feet in the well on many days, and after steeling myself had even splashed my face in its green waters. Myrddin kept rain barrels where I often dipped my hair and, if no one was around, scooped a handful to splash in my armpits. It had been almost a month, but I’d had a decent bath in the workroom behind the kitchen, given by two souls whose kindness I missed. And I had rinsed myself in a dark stream in the woods one night, hopeful of a touch I never knew.
I had almost become accustomed to the filth—almost—but sense memory of clean lay latent in my toes and my teeth. As soap revealed my suntan; as I massaged the goop
of suds beneath my breasts and behind my knees; as I scrubbed my scalp with shampoo and rinsed, then lathered again like the label says to do but I had rarely done before; and as I brushed my teeth (Davies and Ajay had been too kind to say anything about my breath or the mixture of scents emanating from my armpits), I reveled in my return to the real world.
Yet I could not let go of Cadebir.
I had no desire to return to Los Angeles. Cadebir wasn’t possible, but I had a hole in me the size of a hill fort. I twisted the ring on my pinkie and wished for home.
What rushed down the drain was merely a month’s worth of grime. Time, memory, pain—none of that would wash away. Even if it was crazy, it was part of me. It was mine.
-----
“You were zonked, remember?” Ajay sipped his tea while I spread jam on my scone. “I was so swamped I didn’t report you missing ‘til the next morning. Sorry. Tourist season.” He winced. “Davies was already searching for you by then.”
“How did he know?”
“Bellorham.”
I set down the scone without biting. “Who is this Bellorham guy?”
“He was driving the car that almost hit you.”
“Conflict of interest. He’s supposed to be my lawyer.”
“He was quite upset. Everyone was.”
I threw up my hands—hand.
“It’s a tiny village, dearie. More tea?”
“No thanks.” I stood to go.
Ajay rested his chin on his hands and gazed at me. “Are you going to tell me where you were all that time?”
“I’d better talk to my lawyer first,” I said. I had questions of my own.
-----
Bellorham was due in a few minutes. I gathered my nerve and called my mother from the phone in the hall. She didn’t answer.
Camelot & Vine Page 26
