Searching for Arthur (The Return to Camelot #1)

by Donna Hosie

  Searching for Arthur

  Book One in The Return to Camelot Trilogy

  Donna Hosie

  Acknowledgments

  For Steve, Emily, Daniel and Joshua, who gave me time to pursue my dream.

  With thanks to Suzie Forbes and Victoria Marini, who gave their time to make this better.

  I am indebted to Mike Weinstein for his super keen eyes and attention to detail.

  To those friends and writers who follow my blog: Musings of a Penniless Writer.

  And Harry!

  Searching for Arthur was inspired by Roger Lancelyn Green’s King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, and many of the characters featured in this novel are taken directly from the myths and legends laid down through the centuries by writers and poets such as Sir Thomas Malory, Charles Williams, Dryden and Tennyson. A few knights, such as Sir Talan and Sir David, are my own invention. I would, in particular, like to point readers to the epilogue of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, which is titled Avalon. There is a legend told in Gwynedd, Wales that King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table are simply sleeping, waiting for the day when they will awaken to bring glory to Britain once more.

  I thought it was about time they woke up!

  Chapters

  Are you Arthur?

  Avalon Cottage

  Starlight

  Follow the Rabbit

  The Lady and the Bell

  Five Strangers

  Dwarf-Riders

  Caerleon

  Bedivere Revealed

  Decision Time

  Lady Slurpy-Titch

  A Flash of White

  The Physician

  Ddraig

  A Warrior is Born

  Gore

  Arthur’s Letter

  A Maze of Information

  The Army of Blue Flame

  M and M

  The Falls of Merlin

  Look after your Brother

  The Day with no Date

  Camelot

  The Inquisition

  The Sword in the Stone Table

  Balvidore the Bear

  Make the Trade

  And the Winner is…

  On the Move Again

  Five Friends

  Chapter One

  Are you Arthur?

  Mr. Rochester was jumping through the long grass. It made me laugh because he looked like one of those newborn tigers that you see on nature programmes. Mr. Rochester was a floppy-eared baby rabbit, honey-yellow with large white patches of downy fur on his paws and belly. My brother, Arthur, had given him to me for my seventeenth birthday, two months earlier, and I had fallen in love with him instantly.

  Mr. Rochester had slept in my room in a box lined with towels. My first mistake was taking the towels that nobody ever used. Stupid me thought they were old ones for mopping up any old mess, but apparently they were “special ones” for guests.

  What guests? We never lived anywhere long enough for people to update their address books and actually find us.

  My second mistake was using Mr. Rochester as an excuse to not go to the school dance: an event that everyone, apart from me, was obsessing about.

  “He’s a baby. He needs me here.” I knew my mother was standing behind me in the garden, but I was intent on watching Mr. Rochester. He was trying to catch an orange butterfly that was almost as big as he was.

  “I am not arguing with you, Natasha,” said my mother coolly. “You will go to the dance and that is the end of it.”

  “But I don’t want to go.”

  “How do you expect to make friends if you don’t even try, Natasha? Look at your brother. He has lots of friends and a girlfriend already.”

  “Arthur can go to the dance then.”

  “You’re going and that is the end of it. Now put that rabbit back in the cage, wash your hands, and come and try on the dresses Net-A-Porter just delivered. Other girls would be overjoyed to have their parents spend so much money on these things.”

  “I’m not going to the dance.” There was no point in shouting. Being louder didn’t make my mother hear me any better.

  Mr. Rochester stopped chasing the butterfly and stood upright, like a periscope. He looked like he wanted a cuddle, and so I scooped him up and buried my face into his downy tummy. I could hear my mother’s clicking tongue over the chirping insects.

  “I’m sorry little guy. I’ll be back soon, I promise.”

  I hated - absolutely hated - putting Mr. Rochester in the chickenless chicken coop, but I needed to get my mother off my back for a while. As soon as she was over me using her special towels, then he would be back in my room where he would be safe.

  I kissed his little nose and he nibbled my chin, but his large black eyes looked sad, almost teary, when I placed him on the hay in the coop.

  My mother was waiting in the kitchen. She had already placed the antibacterial soap dispenser on the table.

  “Why can’t you be more like your brother?”

  There. She had said the magic words. The ones guaranteed to piss me off. The ones that could make me disappear. Poof. Gone.

  I’ve always been good at running. It’s a skill that was inherited. My parents – the Foreign Office diplomat and the housewife – were professionals. They’d been running for years, although Arthur and I never knew what they were running from most of the time. It could have been job postings, terrorists, or even ghosts.

  I liked to blame the entity, because the reality was they were probably trying to run from me.

  My father refers to any disagreement that takes place as an exchanging of words. We can’t use the term fight or argument because that would be too confrontational, and nothing gets tackled head on in this family.

  Not really. Not anymore.

  So, not for the first time in this wretched place, I was retreating. Running from my mother and her voice and then the silence that follows which is worse.

  We lived on the edge of a forest. Perfect for escaping. Running through it though was difficult, even in sneakers, and being handicapped by stupid tears didn’t help. The ground was uneven with fallen branches and ditches of decomposing vegetation.

  I was not going to a stupid dance. I hated dancing. I hated my new school even more.

  I could hear whispers as I ran. When I was ten years old, my parents forced me to see a child psychiatrist because I suffered nightmares about ghosts and being haunted. The psych told me that ghost stories were way worse than the reality of death because it was the fear of the unknown that was terrifying. It was one of the few things that she said that actually made sense. I do remember she smelt of cabbage and coffee. That was all I took away for 200 bucks an hour, but as I wasn’t paying, I didn’t care.

  But now the ghosts were back. They were trying to trap me amongst the trees instead of in my past. Creaking boughs were reaching down like thick arms; their spiny fingers clawing at my clothes, my hair, my soul.

  I wanted to carry on running away from my mother and dancing and designer dresses, but sharp twigs had invaded my socks and scratched my skin. I noticed one tree that had long exposed roots snaking away from the trunk, like ribbons of tagliatelle. It looked like a good a place as any to sit down. I thought if I stretched back against the bark and closed my eyes, I would be able to fool myself into thinking I wasn’t being haunted anymore.

  The ground started rumbling the second I slotted in between the roots. I could feel the vibrations through my legs. It was like sitting on top of a washing machine. I knew the rumbling wasn’t an earthquake because nothing above the earth was swaying except me.

  The twigs in my socks could stay there.
I wanted to start running again, and my sixth sense was telling me to get the hell out of there.

  But my legs weren’t quick enough, not this time. The leaves and dirt started to crumble away beneath my feet. I didn’t have time to grab hold of anything as gravity claimed me, and I fell down, down, down through the thick, snaking roots.

  The ghosts I had heard whispering became real.

  He had no eyes. That was what I noticed first. He had a moustache as well. Not a moustache like Hitler’s. This ghost had a long thin moustache that blended into his beard, like an anorexic Father Christmas. His hair was fine, almost dusty, like the mane on a white stallion. If I had touched it, it would have crumbled. His whole body would have disintegrated into ash, and the strands of his hair would have flown away on the wind as if they were never there.

  But he was there. And there were others too. I counted at least six bodies in the darkness, all lying in state, too exhausted and old to move.

  Waiting. Biding their time.

  Because they were solid, I wasn’t scared. Not for the first few seconds anyway. It’s hard to be frightened of something that is so ancient the air itself becomes powerful enough to destroy it. For a brief moment I thought it was a game, a bizarre enactment. So why were the strange people in their strange clothes underground and not out in the open?

  Then I heard a guttural noise, like the moaning you would expect from someone who had forgotten how to speak. I went back to the eyes, or rather the gaping black holes in his heavily creased face.

  “Are you Arthur?”

  The ancient soul groaned out the words as if he was in pain. Dazed and disorientated, I said nothing at first. My forehead had connected with something solid. It was cold stone, like roughly textured pumice used to scrape dead skin off your heels when you have a pedicure.

  “Are you Arthur?” he groaned again. The sound echoed around the earth-made sepulchre, magnifying as it bounced off the dirt in deep waves.

  My next thought: why did he want my brother?

  The thought after that: I’m in a hole with a person with no eyes.

  That was when the screaming started.

  I knew from the throbbing pain in my head that I was conscious. Then I noticed the blood on my hands. With my feet, legs and hands failing to coordinate, I scrambled in the dirt on my arse and threw myself into the curved lumpy wall of the pit.

  I was in a grave. I started screaming again.

  “Are you Arthur?”

  The ancient man still hadn’t moved from his sentry position in front of the other prostrate figures. This wasn’t a game or bizarre enactment. Between two cadaverous hands he clutched a sword, which was pointing down into the powdery earth.

  Yet he looked frail, fragile. I doubted he had the strength to pick up the sword, let alone strike me down with it. Then another voice spoke. It was familiar. It was mine.

  Do you think it has super-human strength? it asked.

  “I don’t know,” I whispered back, still afraid the un-seeing man was about to skewer me like a kebab.

  Then presume it doesn’t. Now look around. Is there a way out?

  Orange coloured dust swirled in the claustrophobic space. I could see it through a thin shaft of light that had penetrated the roots of the tree that had swallowed me whole. The back of the tomb was dark, and I was in no hurry to find out what was there. An entire army of warriors could have been waiting to feast on my tender – slightly spotty – flesh for all I knew.

  “Are you Arthur?”

  For the fourth time, he spoke those words. But I noticed something different in his voice as he choked out the question. He wasn’t demanding or even asking anymore. The ancient warrior was pleading.

  Be careful how you answer, warned my inner voice. You don’t know whether he means your Arthur or someone completely different. Friend or foe right now is all that is keeping that sword from connecting with your neck. One swipe and your head will be getting an extreme close-up of your Converse All Stars.

  “I thought you said to presume it doesn’t have super-human strength,” I hissed back.

  Why are you listening to me? replied my inner voice. I’m not the crazy chick having a conversation with herself, fool.

  And with that, my inner voice abandoned me to my fate and certain decapitation.

  Then the person shuffled forward. It was only one step, but it caused him enough pain to make his eyeless face grimace. The edge of his filthy cloak swept along the dirty ground like a brush, catching mounds of brown earth and the sun dried leaves that had fallen down with me.

  “I’m not Arthur,” I said quickly, pre-empting the question from the crumbling, blind watchman, “but he’s up there, and he’ll be coming for me, so you had better stay away or…or…he’ll kick your ass,” I added with brave optimism, pointing towards the shaft of sun.

  He sighed long and slow, like the sound of air being released from a blow up mattress. How could anything exist in this world that was so old? Was he a zombie? He didn’t look like a creature of the night. Why didn’t I pay more attention during horror movies?

  “He will come,” sighed the warrior. The cracked edges of his thin mouth started to rise. It would have been optimistic to call it a smile, but it was an attempt. His entire being was now surrounded by light. I could see the dirt particles whizzing around him at electrifying speed. The dust had wings.

  “Yeah, he will come,” I shouted back. My voice was defiant in my head, but it came out as a squeak. “My brother isn’t scared of anything or anyone, and when he realises I am missing, he will move heaven and earth to find me. Plus he’s a third degree black belt in Taekwondo, and can break wood with his head.”

  This bold - and rather exaggerated - statement appeared to placate the ancient warrior. He took two steps away from me and went back into the shadows.

  I seized my chance. I leapt to my feet, and with a running jump, I grabbed hold of the thickest tree roots I could see. Ignoring the stinging pain in my hands, I climbed up, kicking hard as I went.

  With the grace of a bull elephant, I made it up and out into safety. The tree that had betrayed me earlier and sent me falling into the abyss, swayed in the autumn wind. Its creaking boughs were laughing.

  I vomited over its trunk. Adrenaline was pumping through my veins like acid. I stumbled forward, tripping over everything that appeared in my path.

  I would deal with the accusing silence from my mother with my own taciturnity. Right now, I needed to run back to our house. I needed to do my homework. I needed to feed Mr. Rochester.

  I needed to put as much distance between myself and rotting zombies with swords as was humanly possible.

  I fell through the trees, and rolled several feet into a ditch. It hadn’t rained for weeks, and yet a thick sludgy layer of black mud lined the bottom. My skinny white jeans were no longer white. Looking like the stuff of nightmares, bloodied, battered and now filthy, I scrambled up the other side and into the road. I fell to my knees, and clawed at the loose gravel as I attempted to control my breathing. My heart was pounding against my ribcage.

  Silence. Deathly silence surrounded me. My senses went into overdrive as I waited on my knees for the sound of the wood floor to snap, for the voice of the lost to ask once again, “Are you Arthur?”

  But there was nothing, and that was just as unnerving. Complete silence isn’t natural. Where were the birds? Where was the scratching and scuttling of forest animals? Why, for the first time in months, was I not being bitten to death by insects?

  Then the growling started. It was low-pitched, but distant, like a waking bear yawning in a cave.

  Be sensible. You live in Britain now. There are no bears here.

  “So you’re back are you?” I snapped at my inner voice. “Thanks a million for running away back there.”

  I was the one who got you out, moron. Now calm down and listen.

  The growling noise was getting closer. The road beneath my fingers and knees started to vibrate. There was only
one thing on earth that could make that much noise and cause the ground to shake.

  “Arthur,” I cried, as I staggered to my feet and ran in the direction of the rumbling. Running really was my sport, and I was good at it. It didn’t matter whether it was long distance, short distance, or the distance required to escape from zombies with no eyes – I could own it every time.

  A battered white car, held together by long streaks of red rust and black masking tape, drew level and then stopped. The driver’s door flew open, and out jumped a tall male with loping limbs that were way too long for his body. His sun-streaked blonde hair reached the back of his neck, and had been layered in such a way it looked as if a blind hairdresser had attacked him with blunt shears. A few freckles dotted his oval face, mostly grouped together around his suntanned nose, and his eyes were a blinding blue colour.

  “What the…” swore Arthur.

  “Warriors-old-men-with-swords!” I screamed in one continuous sentence as I fell into his arms. “I-fell-in-a-hole-a-grave-he-had-a-sword-thought-he-would-chop-my-head-off…”

  “Titch, calm down,” said my brother, pushing my filthy body away from his clean white t-shirt. He held onto my forearms while he scanned my injuries, making a tutting noise with his tongue - similar to our dear mother - as he shook his head.

  “no-eyes-NO-EYES…”

  “Titch, you know you are screeching so high only dogs can understand you now,” said Arthur, slipping an arm around my waist. “Come on. I’ll get you home and then we’ll survey the damage once you’re clean. You may need stitches in your head, you klutz.”

  It was only when Arthur mentioned it, that I realised the wet stuff dripping down my face wasn’t sludgy mud. It was blood.

  Arthur said later that was the moment I fainted.