I wish I could. Whatever enchanting song the blood sings, I wish I were listening to it. How unfair such gloriousness is only for him. I made the vials in some guise, some personage. . . and he experiences them better than I do.
Kate walks, and I don’t even pay attention to where we go, so focused on the vials and what they offer me. She crouches behind a hedge to provide secrecy for us.
She delicately unwraps the folds of fabric until it’s exposed to us, the small glass bottle with a cork at its top.
Miles groans and falls to his knees, his arms around his head to cover his ears. “It’s too much,” he says.
Kate’s face. She is pulled to the vial. I will have to be careful or she’ll take it all. Miles told me how it just has to tilt enough for a drop to land on your lip, and then it’s yours.
Kate removes the cork and Miles cries out.
I see it in Kate, what had happened with Phoebe. Greed kicks in. That vial is meant for me—she knows it.
We’re here only because I need to drink. No one else. It’s all for me, and yet Kate is tilting the vial toward her own face and opening her mouth in anticipation. I hurl myself into the same space as her and uplift my face just as the bottle tips in her hands to deliver a sweet and succulent drop.
It lands on my lip the same time that it lands on hers. We are aligned and we each taste. We become Sangreçu at the same moment.
I pull aside the bed curtains. Fire flickers at my back. The moon in the casement is large and ominous over the sea. Nimue and Arthur make love, so involved in each other they don’t notice my presence.
How my heart shrivels in that tower room, so secretive for the clandestine lovers, while Guinevere sleeps downstairs, while Nimue supposes me off on a voyage I’d failed to take.
Everything stops for me. She is beautiful as I knew she’d be, her body lush and willing, her hair winding around her and around him and unwinding to the floor as if still coming from her head. Magic is making her more fertile and growth-filled; longer nails now clench at his body.
I wanted this for myself, and she gave it to Arthur.
I howl at the betrayal, and the lovers cease. Her green eyes panicked and sorrowful and gloating, all at the same time.
I am filled with nothing but Nimue. She was all I wanted. She was my every breath and my every thought, from the day I met her.
I hear her voice whisper, “I’m sorry” as I hurtle back to Miles and Kate.
“I saved some for Phoebe,” says Miles in a slurred voice.
“How lovely your first thought is of her,” I say tartly.
I know where I am. That witch, that circular-spelled siren buried me deep, and the Arnaud Manor was built upon my hiding place. It was known and then forgotten. The protectors kept the prophecy spoken of, and they waited for me to be found. Today at long last, I will roll back the capstone and release myself.
“Eleanor?” asks Kate, and I see her eyes widen at my appearance, her first time seeing me. I don’t bother to answer.
I use intention. They don’t need to know where I’m going. It’s all my quest now. They can take the plane flight back to England, since even as Sangreçu, the living Kate can’t use intention. But I can’t wait. I’m heading to Rookmoor.
The museum appears to be closed today, the lighting dim and no one around. I approach the chair, resting in its alcove. Some throne, made of flimsy wood and its embroidered seat, but it harks to far older than the Arnaud household. I climb over the velvet rope barricade, but my body, so unused to responding to the dictates of my mind, clumsily lurches. I fall, and the metal stanchions holding the ropes up clatter noisily to the ground. If there is a watchman, he is surely running to me at full bore.
I stand up and laugh. I actually feel bruised. My palm is stinging from catching my weight. It’s a glorious sensation. “Catch me, I don’t care!” I yell to the museum. “I will fight you off! And woe to the man who thinks he can best me now!”
I come to the chair. So many memories, and they roar through me at an awe-inspiring speed. It was Guin’s chair, and so often as I conferred with Arthur, its charming air would play as she smiled at us. She was a sweet lady, it is true, although history has recorded her as a terrible wench who cuckolded Arthur. But truth be told, she was only doing to him as she was done unto.
I perch on it, and lo and behold, my body has weight and heft and the chair plays again. Tears stream down my cheeks for the power of that melody. Why is it that music holds us in such thrall?
When the song is done and silence lingers, I crouch at the chair and dig my nails into the embroidered covering and rip. I’m like a dog worrying a bone, and the sound of the ripping excites me, just as much as the music did. It is the sound of my body in motion and having consequences. Sheer joy in making things happen after so many years of muted existence!
My fingers dig and pull at the stuffing inside, creating clouds of snow behind me as I toss it. Inside is a magicked key, small and golden and powerful. So tiny it could rest on the tongue and be unseen as a woman tells lies.
The key to the capstone.
* * *
A stone can’t have a key, but this one does. The membrane of a rock can be made permeable. A few choice words from necromancy and the solid becomes molten. This is how a sword can be lodged in a stone.
I take a flashlight from a drawer in the Arnaud kitchen and move to the cellars. I don’t need Phoebe and her lucifers. My footfalls on the rough floor make me delirious with appreciation. Do the living even know how wonderful it is to hear evidence of your progress as you walk through your life?
Phoebe’s likely somewhere upstairs. I don’t care. I have only one task on my mind.
I go straight to the sacrificial table. It had nothing to do with the creation of the Sangreçu vials. It was a rudimentary altar for those who worshipped the woodland deity, that is true, but I had only knelt for that power briefly.
Beneath it, however, is a round and flat stone. We had missed it last time. Nimue had placed a spell on it so it could never be marked. No dragon emblem to call anyone’s gaze, no runes to exclaim what lay beneath.
I apply the key to its surface and it sinks in, as if there is a lock there. I turn it clockwise and listen to the corresponding mechanism within the rock.
And then the rock shouts.
It isn’t ready to give up its treasure.
I shout back at it. A grinding noise, and something revolves inside. A tiny bit of space appears beneath the stone as it raises ever so slightly. It is a hatch.
It takes all my strength to lift it. I try to remember a spell to make it lighter but I can’t focus. Magic takes pity on me nonetheless and I feel the weight lighten.
I push the capstone to the side and look.
Below me, a well yawns. And taking up much of its space is a silver helm. And underneath the helm is the body of a man in full mail, standing upright. In the dim recess, his metal glints dully.
The air screams and the rock wails.
Your poisonous treachery is undone, my mind calls to her.
I claw down to reach him, to merge and blend with him, myself, a different form of myself, fashioned in a different shape, poured into a different mold and yet me.
I lower myself into his narrow dungeon and press my face to the hard metal of his shield, held so futilely against his chest. His sword still at the ready but impotent against the worst of foes, the lover turned enemy who has all his secrets.
“Wake up,” I whisper.
His face could be iron itself; he appears to be a statue.
I hammer on his mail with my fists and the tiny metal rings chink and clatter. “It’s time to wake up!” I cry. I hit him, and all my aggression from the pains of every version of myself takes pleasure in battering him. Every slight, every insult, every bruise, repaid as I rain down anger and abuse.
It’s not enough. Just finding him isn’t enough.
I have to undo the spell.
And only Nimue can do that.
*
* *
I find Phoebe sitting in the kitchen as her mom chops broccoli and Tabby makes a drawing at the kitchen table. She’s overcome with sadness, I can see.
“You look different,” she says.
“Come with me and release me,” I command her. “I’ve found the hiding place, but can’t undo your spells.”
“How can I?” she says plaintively. “That was someone else. I don’t have spells.”
“Just come with me. Please!”
“I haven’t checked on Steven in a while. I should do that before we go.”
I hesitate. “Yes, all right,” I say.
She rises and casts a glance back at her mother.
We intention to Steven. He’s still in the woods, but his positioning is different. He is prone, side by side with a fallen log. His arm is slung over the mossy bark as if it is someone lying next to him in bed.
“How can he be still asleep?” I ask, frowning.
“Magic?”
I crouch and look at his face, unscraped and lax in sleep. Is the forest working an influence on him? Is he more vulnerable when sleeping?
“I wish we could stay here,” I whisper. “But we have to go. I am not letting the Sangreçu effects fade without releasing Myrddin.”
“I don’t know what I can do,” says Phoebe. “I don’t know spells, don’t remember anything. But I’ll try.”
“Of course you will,” I say. Impatiently, I take her hand.
We intention to the depths of the cellars. I take us to the opening in the stone floor, where we kneel and peer down at the silent man in his helm and mail.
“Oh my God,” she says in a raw voice, confronted by her own wretched act.
It is so dim and clammy here. We are underground, and the walls seep the earth’s tears while the grotto keeps up an endless trickle. It is oppressively damp; I think it is the Lady of the Lake’s centuries-old influence. She took the water out of the well and cast it to the walls.
He stands where once women cranked a pail on a rope to fetch the family’s water. Never could they have dreamed a man would remain there, lost in his own thoughts, bewitched and tricked, for hundreds upon hundreds of years.
I can only hope he didn’t understand his plight. Perhaps her spell even let him think he got what he wanted: her regard and love.
Phoebe turns her head so she can’t see him any longer. “I warned you. I don’t remember anything.”
My fingernails curl on the stone floor. She never does as I wish.
My whole body shudders at the intensity of my nails scraping rock, such a small sensation. Colors, air: everything is so much richer when one is Sangreçu.
“Then you must drink again,” I say.
“How can I drink?”
“Miles saved you some,” I rise, wiping my hands on my gown. “It will wear off again as it did before. But this time, your first task is not to talk with your family. We understand the prophecy now. We have everything we need. We just need for me to be released.”
“You did find a vial!” she says, her eyes wide. “I wonder why he didn’t . . .”
I can tell my face holds a deep sneer for her. “Yes, you poor thing, you have been completely betrayed because he didn’t race straight to you and chose to stay with Kate. Never mind that you saved none for me last time. Never mind that we are only in this state of inconclusiveness because of you! Because of your deeds and foul treachery!”
It feels exquisite to raise my voice and hear that most subtle of effects: an echo. Upstairs, Anne and Tabby might hear my speech ringing through the floorboards. It’s extraordinary to feel spite color my cheeks. I’m furious . . . and it feels wonderful.
“Please don’t throw in my face things that I did in another lifetime,” says Phoebe.
“Why not? It was you.”
“Not truly me.”
“Selfish, cruel maiden,” I say. “Although maiden doesn’t really apply, does it?”
“You wanted my maidenhead,” she says. “You were like a dog slavering after me. We’re in this state because of you!”
“No!” I step back.
“Yes, you! You have blamed me all this time, but I had to put you in the ground before you killed me and killed Arthur! You were in a rage. You had put on your armor and challenged him to fight for my honor!”
I shake my head. Did I do that? The man we gaze upon wears armor, and I was so rarely kitted out that way.
“You were going to kill the king for jealous love of me. I couldn’t have it . . . it would ruin the kingdom and all the good his rule put in place.”
“No,” I say again. But I am remembering my incredible, desperate sad anger that day.
“And then he was killed anyway, by his own son,” Phoebe says. Her face shifts only for a second, and in that brief flash I see the ever so slightly different, lustrous face of magic-touched Nimue. “Fate will always out.”
I’ve been so angry for so long. But was it fair to blame her? She fell in love. He fell in love. We can never control that.
“You pushed so hard,” she says. “I didn’t want your kisses, but you pressed them on me regardless.”
I was despicable. And after everything we’d come to agree upon about the courtly treatment of ladies. The pillaging of burning villages—we had agreed not to take the women any longer, spilling our hatred into their bodies along with our seed.
“I am ashamed,” I said. “And yet, I would’ve stopped, Nimue, at one word from you.”
Tears roll down her face. “I had said ‘no’ before. You would withdraw and try again later. You never accepted my resistance, and when you found me with Arthur—you were filled with fury. I feared you would kill him and . . .”
Unspoken is the idea that she thought I would press her down and force her. I rebel at the thought, but she thought me capable of it. “So you cast a spell on me without waiting to see.”
“I had so little time. You were so much stronger than me, physically and magically.”
I hang my head. Perhaps this is my fault after all. I should’ve simply let the curtain fall when I saw them making love, returned to my quarters, poured my passion into heightening my skills to make Camelot stronger.
Instead, the kingdom fell. All those knights rode out to find the Grail, dispersing the Round Table. And when they wandered back years later with no stories to tell but grim ones, they laid down their swords in shame. That is the circle discovered by the bulldozer: weapons abandoned by the men who failed to wield them well. They laid them here where Arthur had died, then returned to live unpromising lives as craftsmen, bakers, smiths. All nobility erased.
“I am filled with regrets,” I say simply.
“I want to release you,” she says. “If I drink, I’ll remember the words that bound you.”
“It’s unfair,” I say, “how we are toyed with. I loved you so much, and you cared nothing for me. What cruel fate fashioned that for me, to love someone who scorned me?”
“I cared for you, just not the way you hoped. And please don’t think I wasn’t in just as painful a circumstance as you. The man I loved was bound in marriage to another woman and could never be mine.”
“He was yours.”
“His heart was mine, but was hers, too. He loved Guinevere, fiercely at one time.”
“And she loved Launcelot . . . It is a wretched chain of failures.”
I consider the ways we could’ve reshaped the past: Guin and Launcelot affianced, Arthur and Nimue, and me . . . alone.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
One wonders about place names and the secrets of the past they hold. For instance, ham means farm or homestead, so a town or street named Oldham is surely a place where an older home stood. Similarly, the lane in Grenshire that leads to the Arnaud Manor carries a name that indicates its earlier use: Auldkirk, which means old church.
—From Not At All Resting in Peace: Ghost Stories of England,
Scotland, and Wales, by Kate Darrow
We intention to the
backseat of Kate’s car. She doesn’t notice me, so intent on her wild driving. Miles is in front, and he, too, is so distracted he doesn’t know we’re here. Kate’s traveling way too fast, weaving in and out between cars like a shuttle moved by a crazy weaver. She’s laughing delightedly to herself.
Miles should be having a fearful reaction to the drive, but he’s also recklessly enjoying the speed, waving at the inhabitants of every car they pass. “She saw me!” he exults. “She blew me a kiss!”
Everything on Sangreçu blood is drenched in color, drenched in emotion. Sensation is so expanded now for us who have gone so long without it . . . and I have gone longer without it than any of them.
Beneath me I feel the faded leather of Kate’s seat, hear the grinding of her gears. The very motion of the car trembling beneath us. The smell of the gasoline, reminiscent of the kerosene we lit lamps with. I run my hands over my face just to feel my fingertips. I rake harder, then glide, barely touching. It is . . . beyond anything I can explain. It’s my skin again. I am connected to it and sensation.
The motion of my arms moving above my head just to feel those muscles again, the sensation of stretching, that lovely tension: it makes Kate look to the mirror on her glass windshield and catch me.
She screams and wrenches her steering wheel so hard to the right that car horns blast at us and she pulls over to the side to regain herself.
She stops the car and sits breathing hard for a few minutes before she turns around to stare at me. She can’t see Phoebe.
“My God,” she says to me, her eyes open in stark shock. “You could be my sister!”
I smile. “I thought the same of you when I saw you. Do you know who I am?”
I watch her eyes move from my braid to my solemn black dress. “You appear to be have worked as a maid, it might seem?” she asks.
“Eleanor Darrow at your service, miss,” I say.
It is so worth it to hear her sharp intake of breath and then see her hand clap to her mouth. “No!” she says.
I laugh, enjoying the burbling it creates in my throat. “Hello, Kate. Nice to see you again after our brief meeting in the cemetery. Phoebe is also here.”
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