by Donna Hosie
Picking up Mordred’s fallen sword, he stabbed Mordred in the chest. It ran straight through his body to the other side.
Mordred’s eyes rolled for the final time as he fell sideways into a small green pocket of brambles.
“Turn around, Lady Natasha.”
I did as Gareth asked and closed my eyes for good measure. There was a rushing, whistling sound, a heavy thud and then a splash.
I didn’t want to look back, but just like Lot’s wife, I couldn’t help it. Mordred’s body was sprawled over the gorse bush; the stump of his left arm was pulsing blood in thick waves over yellow flowers.
I looked down at my own arm. The scar was gone. The blood oath was no more.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Counting the Days
Another restless night. Another restless day. Bedivere, Gareth, Lucan and I walked for miles through woods and fields. We figured if we couldn’t go through the tunnel to Arthur and Talan, we could walk above it. Hope was being snatched at now. We all knew that there was no way of telling whether we were still above the tunnel, but we had to try. We might have missed another opening in time.
But hope is like grains of sand. You start off by clenching it tightly, but it falls through the tiniest of gaps anyway, and before you know it, there’s nothing left.
The camp was getting ready to leave, although no one would admit it. The knights were leaderless and so they looked to Bedivere for answers.
Inside I was begging him not to make me choose, but I also knew that he was the only one who could.
Arthur and Talan had been missing for four days. Torrential rain had fallen the entire day, and the steep path to the collapsed tunnel was a quagmire. Everyone was afraid of the water. The floods from the collapsed falls had not drained away, and riders had reported that the rivers were rising quickly. People were scared.
By that evening Bedivere was burning up. Taliesin diagnosed a fever and ordered him to bed. He wasn’t the only one who was ill, but he was the only one I cared about. There was only so much of me that I could spread around.
Lucan and Guinevere stayed with Bedivere while I walked through the rain and mud to the entrance. No one else was there – not even Tristram, who had barely slept in days, and had scraped the skin off his hands in his attempt to move the rocks. Huge lumps of stone were now glued by mud and magic.
I squelched into the dirt. It rose up over my boots, like a muddy hand with outstretched fingers, holding me to this world. For the first time since Slurpy had destroyed everything, I was glad that no one was here digging. I didn’t want witnesses.
With my hands against the rock, I leaned in, pressing my left ear against a box-shaped stone that was sticking out. The wind was blowing a gale, and there were rumbles of thunder in the distance, but I strained my ears, feeling the rough stone scrape against my skin.
Just a whisper would be enough and I would stay.
But the wind hitched up. The elements were screaming. Arthur and Talan had been gone for four days and they weren’t coming back.
They weren’t coming back.
My nose started to prickle. Usually I tried everything I could to not cry, but Arthur deserved something tangible. I leaned forward and let my tears splash against the rock face. They were submerged by the raindrops, which were bigger.
“ARTHUR.”
I screamed it just the once, thumping my palm against the stone. My voice didn’t echo. It was swallowed by the wind.
They weren’t coming back.
What was left of the travelling court of Camelot left the next morning. People were openly crying. Some of the women were wailing. What the hell for? Arthur didn’t know them. They were even throwing flowers down, but it was so muddy after the rain that they just got trampled into the dirt. It was just like the scenes they replay on the television every year when some princess called Diana is remembered. The people were hysterical then as well. It was her sons who remained calm, although they were the only ones who should have been going mental with grief. I just couldn’t understand it. There was something fake about it all. Insincere.
I was the last to leave. Bedivere was waiting on the horse that was going to take us back to Camelot. He looked so ill, deathly pale and limp.
But he didn’t once ask me to hurry up. He was giving me the choice without saying a word.
Arthur or Bedivere?
I chose to live in the present, but a part of me was now lost to the future.
I sat behind Bedivere and wound the reins around my hands. My legs felt heavy; they could have stretched to the ground. Guinevere was leading the procession, and Tristram, Gareth and his brothers, and David were now acting as her honour guard. Not everyone was accepting the possibility that she might be the new queen, but even the dissenters were happy to wait for the Round Table to decide.
I never wanted to sit at it again. I would have happily started running in the opposite direction and never stopped.
But I had chosen Bedivere, and he needed to go back, at least for a short while. The Round Table would be deciding his future as well.
But the further we rode away from the remains of the falls, the more depressed I became. I went over the original plan in my head again and again and again. I had helped free Gwenddydd and we had removed the spirit of Nimue. Arthur had left with Slurpy and Mila...
The plan had worked. Everything we had wanted to accomplish, we had achieved. Gold stars. A+. Distinctions all round.
Arthur had given me a driving lesson – once. He never offered again after I stalled his rusty little car at an interchange and flooded the engine trying to restart it. When he hadn’t been yelling at me to move up a gear, he had drummed into me the importance of not having tunnel vision. When you are driving, you have to look to the side as well. Looking straight ahead means you miss things.
That was what had happened here. We were so busy looking straight ahead that we didn’t see the crap coming at us from the sides. We had manipulated Merlin and Nimue into duelling with each other, but the consequences of two powerful sorcerers blasting hatred at each other had never even entered our heads. It was the same with Gwenddydd and Morgana. Gwenddydd had kept quiet about knowing my brother’s girlfriend, pretending to be my voice all that time. She used me. Gwenddydd must have known that by absorbing Nimue’s powers, Slurpy would have become more powerful than any of them.
Another restless night. Day four became five. Soon it would be a week.
Bedivere improved a little. He asked me to tell him stories about Arthur. I knew he was doing it for my benefit, not his. It made me love him even more.
Where were the nightmares, the visions? I saw nothing while I slept, as day five became six.
One week after everything changed, we arrived back at Camelot.
The black castle glistened in the baking summer sun. The heat haze around it was even thicker, like an impenetrable force field. I expected the first knights crossing the drawbridge to be spat out again.
But Camelot seemed to stretch out its distorted walls like thick black arms. Was it welcoming everyone home, or claiming us for its own?
Bedivere was half carried, half dragged by Gareth and Lucan to the physicians’ rooms. Taliesin asked me to leave Bedivere’s side. I was a distraction. So I went wandering along the long dark corridors of the castle. It was so cold, even though the temperature outside must have been in the high eighties. I had never managed to work out the conversion to Celsius while at school. Arthur was the math geek; I was the English nerd.
Everyone had something to do.
Everyone, except me.
A week became two. I started marking lines for each day on the wall of my new bedroom with white chalk.
When day thirty-one was marked off, I got so drunk on castle-brewed wine that I puked over David’s boots. My hangover the next day was so bad, I forgot to mark a line. Scratching two down the wall on day thirty-three was so painful, it was like I had crossed the days off in my own blood.
; On day forty, Merlin reappeared. He refused to tell anyone where he had been, and I didn’t ask.
A council meeting of the Knights of the Round Table was called on day forty-one. Excalibur had already been placed in the centre of the stone table. Rumours had swept through the castle like a wind, betraying those knights who thought they were hard enough to have a go. The table didn’t spit them out, but it certainly didn’t give up the sword of the king.
I bathed, washed my hair, and changed into black pants and a thin sleeveless silver vest top. It glittered. It was pretty. I felt sick. I didn’t bother with boots; my feet were so hot in the oppressive summer heat that I had blisters on my blisters.
The last item I put on was a large silver ring. A green stone – an emerald – was off-centre because two stars had been stamped into the corner of the metal. One for Arthur, one for Talan. The ring was from Bedivere. It had started off on the index finger of my left hand. Now it was on the middle digit.
When the time was right, I would move it to my ring finger.
Bedivere and Lucan were waiting for me. In spite of the raging heat, Bedivere was wearing his red ceremonial cloak. Today the Round Table would decide if he was worthy to rejoin the knights. I was incensed at the thought. How could a lump of dark grey stone make that choice? It had no heart, no brain. It didn’t know courage. It was a chimera of Dorothy’s companions before they went to the wizard.
I looked down at my bare feet, imagining red glittery shoes that I could click together.
Ridiculous. Sparkles were for New Age vampires, not Lady Knights of the Round Table, and I was too pale to pull off red anyway.
The three of us walked in silence to the Great Hall. I couldn’t wind my fingers through Bedivere’s right hand because he had to hold his sword. He would have to hand it over at the doors before he entered. Gareth had also told me that Bedivere would be stripped of his cloak.
Humiliation, Camelot style.
Guinevere’s ceremony was going to be even worse. She would have to stand on the table in front of everyone – nearly one hundred and fifty knights – before she would find out if she was worthy.
Both of them were already worthy in my eyes, and nothing a lifeless lump of stone could say would alter that.
Guinevere was waiting by the doors; Tristram, Gareth and David were with her. From the shouting and laughter coming from inside the hall, it was clear everyone was waiting. She smiled at me as we approached, but her skin was white and bloodless. I hugged her tightly and felt her stomach rumble against mine.
“I have not eaten for over a day,” she whispered. “I feared taking the sickness of my disposition onto the table before my hands had clasped the hilt of Excalibur.”
“That sword is yours, Guinevere.” I kissed her clammy cheek. “Arthur gave it to you. Just think of all the things you did with that sword and claim it for your own. Believe in yourself.”
“Do you believe in me?”
“With everything I have.”
“I will look at you and no one else, Lady Natasha. Do not let your eyes leave mine.”
“I promise.”
I turned to Bedivere. 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. I put my left hand out, took the silver ring off my middle finger, and slid it over one place.
I winked at him, blew him a kiss, and walked into the hall. When I looked back over my shoulder, his face was beaming with the brightest smile, and it sent my stomach into spasms.
For the first time in forty-one days, I actually felt my heart beating in my chest.
Marriage would definitely wait, but engaged I could do.
I went to my seat at the table and blanched. I had forgotten my image: a waterfall. A hand, old and gnarled, slipped onto my shoulder.
“A reminder, Natasha, Lady Knight of the Round Table,” said Merlin slowly. “All actions have consequences.”
I shook him off. The bastard could go to hell. I made a silent vow, and now that the voices were gone from my head, I knew it would be a secret promise.
Once this farce was over, I would never sit at this table again.
Bedivere’s place was still smooth dark stone. Talan’s name had been removed as well. How I hated this table and everything it stood for. Myths and legends were real and had broken my heart.
“Take your seats, Knights and Lady Knight of the Round Table,” called Merlin officiously. I clenched my teeth as chairs scraped across the stone floor. I would not look at the sorcerer. He didn’t deserve my respect or reverence.
“Bring in Bedivere, son of Corneus.”
I shuddered. The room was freezing. My arms were bare, as were my feet. I was shaking. Only some of that was down to the refrigeration.
Bedivere walked in. He had been stripped down to his tight black pants and an olive green tunic; his left arm was still bandaged, but the wrappings were no longer as bulky as before.
He was still whole to me.
Merlin raised his arms at a ninety-degree angle to his body. His staff was in his left hand, and the tip was buzzing with a low hum, but it remained colourless.
“You wish to know if the Round Table of Camelot finds you worthy to reclaim your seat?” asked Merlin. A tremor shuddered through the stone. It was listening.
“I do,” replied Bedivere.
“Then place your hand upon it, but be forewarned, Bedivere, son of Corneus, that if the table rejects your request, you will suffer the consequences.”
“Whoa, wait a minute,” I cried. I hadn’t known about any consequences. But I was too late, or Bedivere wasn’t listening. Either way, the second Merlin stopped speaking, Bedivere stepped forward and pressed his right hand to the flat grey stone.
I tried to move, but once again I was glued to my seat by an invisible force. The stone table started to shake, a crack appeared beneath Bedivere’s hand, and several of the knights cheered as deep grooves started to snake out. They were quickly filled with gold ink.
Sir Bedivere and the unicorn were back. Several more roses appeared, linking his name to mine.
“Welcome home, Sir Bedivere,” said Merlin with a smile, and the genuine warmth in his voice was matched by his startling blue eyes.
Arthur’s eyes. And for a moment I forgot I hated Merlin.
It was Guinevere’s turn next. She was called into the hall in exactly the same way. I could feel the panic pulsing out of her. Her long blonde hair had been side plaited, and she was barefoot beneath long navy pants. While she had been waiting she had taken a knife to her gold tunic, because it was now sleeveless like mine. We locked eyes.
It’s yours, I mouthed.
While we wait, she mouthed back.
Neither of us blinked as she was helped onto the table by Bedivere and Gareth, who each took her by the hand.
“Take the sword in your preferred hand, Guinevere, Lady Knight of the Round Table,” said Merlin. “Pull straight and true. If you are the rightful heir to Arthur, then Excalibur, forged by the Lady of the Lake in the land of Avalon, will surrender to your will.”
Guinevere’s fingers went grasping for the sword. She did not look at the hilt once. Her round eyes were fixed on mine. If she had been able to see into my head, Guinevere would have seen my memory of Arthur, pulling the sword out the year before.
And then his face before the tunnel collapsed.
A gasp from Bedivere. Cheers and claps from Gareth and his brothers, which then carried like a wave around the table. Chairs were scraped back as the knights rose to their feet.
The king is dead. Long live the queen.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
A Strange Stranger
Guinevere was carried out from the Great Hall on a tidal wave of shoulders. She had broken eye contact with me first, but only because she had no choice. Her neck would have snapped if she hadn’t moved it in sync with her body.
Only Bedivere, Tristram, Gareth and David remained. They were all eyeing me sadly.
We were united by loss. David brushed his fingers over the empty seat that would have been Talan’s.
No. The empty seat that was Talan’s.
“Camelot will be overrun with suitors for Lady Guinevere…Queen Guinevere now,” said Tristram, correcting himself. “Merlin has already started the search. He wants another heir quickly.”
“Perchance the sorcerer will want to wed her himself?” said Gareth.
“We will have to protect her,” said Bedivere. “She will now be desired by scullions who will covet the throne.”
“If there is a lady in this land who can look after her own interests, it is Queen Guinevere,” said David. “I pity the fool who comes knocking with untrue intent. He will not have just the queen to deal with, but also the wrath of Lady Natasha.” He smiled at me. “I would rather face ten at the joust than the two of them armed.”
“That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me, David,” I replied.
He bowed. “Speaking of which, we should not leave our new queen for long.”
Tristram and David walked out of the hall. Another summer storm was lashing against the stained-glass windows. My eyes were drawn to the image of me and Arthur. Beads of rain were trailing down the outside of the glass.
We both looked as if we were crying.
“And I will take my leave also,” said Gareth. “Sir Bedivere, we never doubted for a moment that you would be returned to the fold of the knighthood.”
He went to shake Bedivere’s hand, but Bedivere grabbed him and hugged Gareth tightly. A lump lodged in my throat as Gareth pulled away first. His hazel eyes were glistening as he followed Tristram and David from the hall.
“I know your feelings towards the Round Table, Natasha,” said Bedivere softly, “and I cannot hope to understand the torment that is in your mind still, but I would ask you to reconsider your decision to remove yourself from the seat afforded to you.” He ran his fingers through my hair, which was still slightly damp from my bath. “Queen Guinevere will need you more than ever now. Your counsel will be valued above all others. And Sir Tristram is right: many will come calling to lay a claim to the hand of the queen – even those knights amongst us now will not be impervious to the power of the throne. Arthur would want you to protect her.”
