Debt of Ages

by Steve White

  Gwenhwyvaer said nothing and neither did anyone else. Again her eyes swept the group, and again none met diem. For once, Cerdic left well enough alone.

  Tiraena stepped forward. She was wearing a broad-brimmed hat which helped her carry off the “Philogius” role. “I, too, beg you to show Bedwyr mercy, Lady. He’s a rough, common fellow, but he means well.” (You’ll pay, Sarnac thought darkly.) “And I ask it as a favor, for you’ve known me before.”

  “When have I ever known you, lad?” Gwenhwyvaer asked, puzzled.

  Instead of answering, Tiraena took off the hat and relaxed from simulating the body-language of an adolescent male. For a lone moment, the two women stared at each other in the firelight and the silence.

  “Lucasta,” Gwenhwyvaer finally whispered. “But you’re…”

  “Lady,” Tylar broke in quietly but firmly, “we need to speak to you in private. There is more at stake here than you perhaps realize.”

  At first it seemed that Gwenhwyvaer hadn’t heard Then she nodded. “Yes… There are many questions that must be answered. Come with me to the hall.” She turned to the puzzled onlookers. ‘The rest of you, disperse. Guards, see to it.”

  “Ah, perhaps I’d best be getting back to my men’s camp, Lady.” Cerdic began to sidle off.

  “Ha! So the sight of your face can stir them to anger? No, you’ll come to the hall as well, you can sleep there. We’ll send a messenger to let them know you’re spending the night” Without even waiting for an acknowledgment, she swept off. The four time travelers followed.

  By the time they’d entered her private chambers and she’d shooed out a gaggle of ladies-in-waiting,

  Gwenhwyvaer’s self-possession had returned. She turned to face them unflinchingly. “I know not what’s afoot here, but you cannot be Lucasta, however loudly my mind shouts that you are, for you look no more that a few years older than you… than she did fifteen summers ago. I’ll know the truth! And you, Gerontius or whatever your name is: remove that hood!”

  “Is that my lady’s command?” came the deep baritone.

  For a time beyond time, there was absolute stillness as terror and denial and emotions less easily defined struggled back and forth across the battlefield of Gwenhwyvaer’s face. Then she amazed all of them by speaking firmly. “Remove it.”

  The hood fell from Artorius’ face. Sarnac managed to catch Gwenhwyvaer as she fainted.

  Chapter Eight

  She didn’t entirely lose consciousness, at least not for more than a moment. Artorius was instantly at her side, and he and Sarnac got her to a chair. She blinked only a few times before her eyes steadied and her face lost its disorientation. Sarnac wondered at her lack of hysterics. Well, Tiraena said she’s a remarkable woman. And maybe this era’s people find all this easier to take than those of my time would. After all, they don’t think they understand the universe. For them, the world is full of unexplained mysteries, so what’s one more?

  Finally, Gwenhwyvaer extended a hand—not altogether steady, Sarnac was oddly relieved to note—and touched Artorius’ cheek where the nascent facial hair had reached the bristly stage. “I’d almost forgotten what you look like without a beard,” she whispered as though thinking out loud. “It’s been so long… we were young then…” She shook her head again and her voice firmed. “But otherwise you look much the way you did the last time I saw you, on your return to put down the western rebels after the Battle of Bourges. Not long after I last saw you, Lucasta.” A smile flickered to tremulous life. “Does the journey from Constantinople restore one’s youth, then? Perhaps I should try it.”

  “Gwen,” Artorius began, “you must believe me, even though what I speak sounds like madness. On this night, Artorius Augustus lies abed in his palace in Constantinople.”

  “You… an imposter? No! I know you, Artorius—I think I knew you when I first saw you cloaked and hooded on the trail by the Cam where we once… No! Unless I am mad indeed, it is you.”

  “Yes, I am Artorius—but I last saw you before leaving for Gaul in 469.”

  “Madness,” Gwenhwyvaer began. But Artorius pressed on, overriding her attempts to speak.

  “I have, indeed, come from Constantinople—where I spoke to Artorius the Restorer. I tell you now what I told him: that I’m the same man as he, but in a world in which God ordered events differently. In my world, I was delivered by treason into the hands of the Visigoths. And a few years later, Rome-in-the-West ceased to be. Men believed I’d died. Then they made a legend that I was not dead but merely waiting until I was needed again; and they were right, but not in the way they thought. For, though I was grievously wounded, a most unlikely manifestation of God’s mercy had spared me and also preserved my appearance as it was then.”

  “But,” Gwenhwyvaer finally got in, “you say that you met me just before leaving on your expedition against the Saxons and Visigoths in Gaul in 469…”

  “Yes. For you see, Gwen, this world and the world I’ve been speaking of weren’t sundered from one another until the spring of 470, shortly before the Battle of Bourges in this one. Until then, I was in truth the man you knew, and you were the woman I knew. But at that moment, my life and memories parted from those of him who this world knows as Artorius Augustus, the Restorer.”

  Gwenhwyvaer’s eyes grew haunted. “If what you say is true—and I believe it must be, for no one could invent a tale so strange—then there must be another of me as well, living in this shadow-world you speak of, who heard of your death even as I was celebrating your triumph at Bourges! What of her? Does she still live?”

  “I know not, Gwen. It may be so. In my world, Britain took a while to go down into the dark, and she may well have lived on. But I can’t say for certain.”

  She stood up, eyes aflame. “What? Do you mean to say that you escaped death, unknown to all, and left me… her to continue to believe herself a widow? That you never even took the trouble to learn if she was dead, or living in degradation? By God, I swear you’d show more interest in a favorite horse!” As though with the breaking of a petcock, decades of bottled-up hurt began to gush out. “I know your love died years ago, as well I should, having watched it die while trying in vain to give you the heir who might have kept it alive—”

  “No, Gwen, no,” Artorius whispered.

  “—but I’d have thought that the very memory of love would have made you go to Britain, or send someone, to learn how it went with her who you once called—” She remembered the others in the room and cut herself off before resuming. “The loss of love I’d long come to accept. But hatred and contempt? Dear God, Artorius, what have you even been doing for these fifteen years in your world?”

  And that, Sarnac thought, is going to be a tough one to answer in terms she can understand and accept, especially considering that it’s been a hell of a lot more than fifteen subjective years for him. She’s taken all this amazingly well so far—but time travel… P He watched as the man who looked to be in his early forties raised his head and locked eyes with the woman of fifty who had been born eight years later than he.

  “You ve the right of it, Gwen; I could have found out how it fared with my Gwenhwyvaer. Tertullian here could have found out for me. And I never let him.” She took a sharply indrawn breath. He hurried on. “You ask why? It wasn’t because my love for you had died. Indeed, I don’t think it ever truly died.”

  “Don’t lie to me, Artorius,” she said in a voice almost too small to be heard. “Not that.”

  “It’s no lie, Gwen. I sometimes wish I had lost my love, or never had it at all. Either would have been more merciful than feeling it but never being able to give it as much of myself as it deserved and needed.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “In Constantinople I told the Emperor of Rome, who is my own self, that he gave Rome back to the world while I gave a legend to a world that had to do without Rome. But in both worlds, my life has been what posterity required it to be, not what I might have wished.”

&
nbsp; “I married a man, not a Purpose!”

  “Did you, now?” Artorius’ eyes hardened. “Don’t you lie to me Gwen, nor to yourself! You fell in love with what you saw in me. And you knew—or should have known— that the man you saw could never be purely yours. Be honest: could you have loved a man who would have been satisfied with a life which held you and naught else?”

  “I was just a girl!” she stormed. “I understood nothing of such things.”

  “Oh, I think you did… and do. For we’re alike in this, Gwen. Remember what I just said, about the legend people in my own world will make of me, when they think I’m gone? Well, you’re in it too. You reign forever in men’s minds as Guinevere, queen of a wondrous city called Camelot where, for just a little while, men attained the unattainable.” His gaze gentled. “So we’re both caught in the same doom, Gwen my love. We were put in this world to fill not our own needs but those of unborn generations.”

  She slumped into the chair again and ran a hand through hair that had once been the color of flame. “I understand none of this,” she muttered. “I’m old and tired and lonely, and anyone who believes I reigned over some ideal kingdom conjured up by bards from hot air and heather beer will be an even greater fool than I am for continuing to love you all these years! All I understand is that you never sent this Tertullian to inquire after me in a world where I might have been dead, or some barbarian’s slave…”

  “Don’t you see? That’s the very reason I couldn’t ask how you fared! If I’d learned my Gwen was in peril or in want I’d not have been able to do otherwise than come to her aid—which wouldn’t have been possible. You asked what I’ve been doing in my world in the years since I… departed from men’s knowledge. Well, all I can tell you is that I’ve been in a kind of indenture, working off the debt I owe for my rescue from death. And I won’t pretend that I haven’t enjoyed the work, for I’ve seen things that make all the legends of magic and wizardry seem insipid. But it carries a curse: I can’t take any action that would change the appointed course of my world’s future. If I’d learned that Gwen must die, I’d have had to stand by and let it happen.”

  She crossed herself. “This has a pagan ring to it, Artorius—like the Fates of Roman myth and the tapestry they weave, or the Norns the Saxons tell of. I like it not.”

  “No more do I, Gwen, for I’ve always held that men make their own destiny. But now I’ve learned that things aren’t always so simple. I’ve accepted that… but I couldn’t face the possibility of having to let you die. For it would have been you, Gwen, in whatever world.”

  “Ah, Artorius!” Again she reached out and touched his cheek. “Is that truly the reason?”

  “Truly, Gwen. The bards will lie about your having been queen of an enchanted many-towered city, but they’ll speak (lie truth about one thing: you were always queen of my soul.”

  She smiled, allowing them all an instant’s glimpse of what the young Artorius had once seen. “You always did have the power to move me with words, you scoundrel! like the time… But no, I’ll not let myself recall that which lies beyond the veil of years. For it’s all done with now, isn’t it? Oh, Artorius, what a waste! All those years of living, as you say, the lives the future required…”

  “Gwen,” Artorius cut in gently, “I’ve come to you this night to tell you that we’re not through doing it.” She stiffened. “I must ask you to believe what I asked Artorius the Restorer to believe: that I’ve been vouchsafed a vision of the future, and—”

  She rose abruptly. “You ask too much of me… at least without further explanation in private, without these others. Come.” She led the way toward her inner chamber. He followed.

  Left to their own devices in the antechamber, Sarnac, Tylar and Tiraena sat down on whatever was available. Sarnac squirmed uncomfortably on a stool obviously intended for a lady-in-waiting, his bruised kidneys protesting. After a time he spoke.

  “Well, er, Tylar, I suppose they’re, uh…”

  “I’m sure they’re discussing the possible geopolitical options,” Tylar stated blandly.

  “No doubt! All in pursuit of whatever your objective is here in Britain—about which you’ve never been ‘entirely candid,’ as usual!”

  “It’s straightforward enough. We need to make Gwenhwyvaer aware that The Restorer has only a few years left to live, and that when he dies a usurping tyranny will seize power at Constantinople. The time will then be ripe for her to make her bid for British independence.”

  “Huh! But why? I thought you were betting on Ecdicius to set up a separate Western empire. Won’t a British rebellion just be an extra headache for him?”

  “All will become clear in good time,” Tylar intoned. Sarnac was about to wax sarcastic, but Tiraena spoke up.

  “Tylar, does he mean it? Or is he just bullshitting her?”

  “Oh, he means it. I’ve heard him on the subject often enough over the years. And I’ve come to know him very well. He’s quite capable of ‘bullshitting,’ as you so elegantly put it. But I can tell when he’s not.”

  “Then he never really stopped loving her.” Tiraena shook her head slowly. “I suppose I should be glad that we gave this night to her, but I can’t help thinking about the other Gwenhwyvaer, who may still be alive…”

  “She’s not.” Tylar’s flat declarative took them both by surprise. “In point of fact, she died two years ago in our reality, and now lies buried on Glastonbury Tor, in a tomb beside which the abbey will one day stand. And Artorius lies beside her.”

  The last sentence didn’t even register at first. When it did, Sarnac spoke cautiously. “Uh, Tylar, I think I must have misunderstood you…”

  “Artorius will live quite a long time on your standards,” Tylar said obliquely. “But not very long on mine. He was introduced to civilized medical care only after having spent his first forty-two years among… this.” Tylar’s gesture encompassed fifth-century Earth. “Eventually, he’ll grow old. And when he does, I’ll take him back to the early 480s of our timeline, while he and Gwenhwyvaer still have life in them. The monks of Glastonbury will lay them to rest together. Their tomb will be rediscovered in the twelfth century. Later it will be generally written off as a hoax, despite certain annoying facts that will stubbornly defy explanation.” He blinked. “Dear me, I must be growing garrulous with age! I must, of course, insist that you not mention any of this to…” He gestured at the door through which Artorius had passed.

  Tiraena spoke while Sarnac was trying to find his tongue. ‘Tylar, how can you know you’ll do this?”

  “Oh, my! The problem of tenses again! You see, in terms of my own subjective consciousness I’ve already done it. Just another bit of historical policing, you know; history required that those bones be found in the abbey graveyard at Glastonbury. But there’s no regulation that prohibits me from sometimes enjoying my work—or from doing a good turn for a valued associate.” He settled back with a faint smile and composed himself to wait, politely ignoring the other two’s expressions.

  Presently, the door opened. Artorius and Gwenhwyvaer emerged in mid-sentence. “… but it still can’t work,” she was saying. “It comes to grief on the same hard reality that defeated Carausius two centuries ago.”

  My God, Sarnac thought, they really did find time to talk politics!

  “You mean the inability of Britain to survive a serious attempt at reconquest?” Artorius said—Artorius whose corpse lay beside his Gwen’s on a hill twelve miles northwest of here this very night in his native reality. It was, Sarnac thought, like looking at a ghost.

  “Yes. Any usurper who arises in Britain must either conquer the Western Empire or be conquered by it. Maximus tried and failed. Constantine the Great succeeded. But Britain can’t remain aloof in a state of… of…”

  “Splendid isolation?” Tylar offered with a smile. “The situation will be different this time, Lady.”

  “In what respect?” Gwenhwyvaer asked, gazing at him narrowly. “I don’t know who you are, T
ertullian, but there’s clearly more to you than I can see, or understand. Speak!”

  “Artorius has already told you that after the Restorer dies his designated heir Ecdicius will be prevented by usurpers from coming into his inheritance and will lead the West into separation. In exchange for your recognition of his legitimacy as Augustus of the West, he will acknowledge Britain’s independence.”

  Mighty free with Ecdicius’ commitments, aren’t we Tylar? thought Sarnac. Gwenhwyvaer looked thoughtful. “Ecdicius,” she said with a slight frown.

  “You can rely on him, Lady. And without his guarantee, your dreams of an independent Britain are only dreams.” Tylar looked Gwenhwyvaer unflinchingly in the eyes. “Don’t hold it against him that he’s the Restorer’s heir in place of the son you never had.”

  The Regents eyes flashed blue fire, but Tylar’s continued to hold them. The flames subsided, and she said only “How can you know this?”

  “As to that, Lady, I can only ask you to trust me. As you yourself have admitted, there are mysteries here that are beyond ordinary understanding. But… he will vouch for me.” Artorius nodded. “And this much is no mystery: the Restorer cannot live forever. Even if I’m wrong about the nature of the storms that will follow his passing, you’ll want to prepare against some such storms. During the next few years, Lucasta will visit you from time to time with counsel concerning those preparations.”

  Sarnac started, for he hadn’t been told about this part of the plan. But Tiraena evidently had, for she showed no surprise. She and Gwenhwyvaer regarded each other levelly.

  “So you are in truth Lucasta. Indeed, there is a mystery here that I cannot fathom.” Gwenhwyvaer spoke with the fatalism of all the ages before humankind had begun to expect to be able to fathom mysteries.

  Abruptly, the outer door swung open. “Oh, am I interrupting? Your pardon, Lady, but I was anxious to know if the messenger had assured my men that I’m all right within these walls. My son Cynric is out there, and he’s only seen eight winters…”