Camelot & Vine (16 page)

Unaccustomed to life without a mirror, I
hoped for a glimpse of myself in the waters of the wellspring. I
hadn’t seen my hair in days. I wondered if the clothes I wore
flattered my figure. Did the color of the cloth enhance my skin
tone? Did I resemble a fair, Arthurian maiden or was I just Casey
in a green tunic?

It wasn’t my day to find out. When we
arrived, half a dozen women were already dunking shirts, tunics,
and strangely familiar rags in the well and slapping them against
the stone. They ceased their work only long enough to make way for
us to sit.

Elaine, finally at ease, chattered with her
workers and moved among them, inspecting their morning’s efforts.
Lynet sat and removed her shoes to kick her feet in the same well
from which Sagramore had given Elaine a cup to drink. I untied my
shoes but decided not to soak my feet, not in that well, not ever,
no matter how tired they got.

“I forgot about that, sorry,” said
Lynet.

“About what?”

“Wizards and water. Shall we sit somewhere
else?”

“No thanks, I’m fine.” I rested my head
against the stones that lined the spring. Sending up a prayer to
the gods of dysentery, I thanked them for not visiting me.

Lynet splashed unenthusiastically. For a
minute we watched the plain far below the hill, where men as small
as bugs crawled amid the tents of the camp. Then Lynet leaned close
to whisper to me, changing the subject of my thoughts. “Guin says
Arthur wants her out of his way. I think he merely wants to keep
her occupied. That’s what the walks are for. Do you see?” She sat
back and eyed me sharply, trying to tell me something without
telling me.

Did Lynet know of the affair? “You mean it’s
my job to occupy her?”

“Not exactly, no. I don’t presume to know
the king’s wishes. I can only guess. But you have his power behind
you.”

Our eyes locked. I considered my response. I
wanted to trust Lynet. I thought she wanted to trust me.

“I can’t tell the queen what to do. Can
I?”

She shrugged. “Perhaps not directly. But you
are the king’s wizard. Like Myrddin, right here on the hill.”

NINETEEN

“I’ve put many hours of thought into the
circumstances surrounding your arrival.”

Myrddin set steaming mugs on the table in
his laboratory, where I sat hoping for an easy answer. “To send you
back, we must recreate those circumstances exactly.”

I hung my head. Impossible.

“You arrived with the full moon. That may be
important. Then there’s the car. Tell me about this car.” He
pronounced the word carefully, setting it between vocal quotation
marks.

“It’s a motor vehicle. You drive—”

“—Moe-tor?”

I sighed. I had to explain everything, and
most of it confused even me. I gazed out the open doorway to where
Drostan the gardener squatted among the herbs, weeding and humming.
“A motor is...it doesn’t matter.”

Myrddin tilted his eyebrows and waited.

“Okay. It’s a...a thing. It moves other
things. It’s powered with fuel so it moves on its own once you
start it.”

“What sort of fuel?”

“Gasoline.”

Up went the eyebrows again.

“Liquid gas. Pumped from the ground. They do
something to it. Refine it. Same as airplanes, except a car runs on
land.”

“Go on.”

“The motor powers the car. The car’s got
wheels and you sit in it to drive it. It’s a lot like a cart but
you don’t need horses. You steer it, and you control the speed with
pedals. With your feet.” From my seat on the stool, I demonstrated.
“In my city, everybody has a car.”

“Why?” Fascinated, Myrddin pulled up a stool
to sit. “Is your Lucy a rarity? Have horses gone the way of
bears?”

“What way have bears gone?”

“They once roamed the forests, but we’ve
hunted them to death.”

“Oh. Well, no. Horses are still relatively
easy to come by. But you can go faster in a car than on a horse.
And a car’s enclosed, so if it rains you stay dry.”

“Very good. Let's return to the Gap. What
happened after the car?”

I went over the accident in detail as well
as I could remember: the rain, the headlights (which I had to
explain), screeching brakes (which I also had to explain), Lucy,
the man in the car, then my strange flight. “Here’s the weirdest
part. I think I hit my head
before
I landed.”

“Oh yes. The obstruction you hit was the
armour of the Saxon you killed. It was quite a blow. You must have
been going very fast. I’d say you’re hallucinating from some sort
of concussion but that wouldn’t explain why
I
can see
you
.”

“Nope.”

“So. Rain, car, screech, horse, man, flight,
bump. What else? Think hard. Might you have forgotten any details?
Did you see anything in the Gap?” Myrddin’s face leaned close to
mine, his black eyes tiny gaps leading to deep, endless space.
“Remember.”

I let my eyelids fall. I found myself
astride Lucy in the rain. A chaotic storm rampaged around us,
though I was warm and dry. Then Lucy’s shoes skidded on the
pavement. Light flashed, silhouetting the man in the car. The man's
mouth moved. I thought he wanted to talk to me, but I was already
flying into the Gap.

“The reins. I’m holding Lucy’s reins.”

“Anything else?” Myrddin sounded like he was
in the Gap with me.

“It was only a second. A puff of wind on my
skin. Then, the blackness opened up. I saw King Arthur ahead and I
was flying toward him really fast.”

“Good, very good.” Myrddin snapped his
fingers. I was in his hut again. He smiled.

I rubbed my eyes. “You hypnotized me.”

“A word with which I’m not familiar. More
tea?” He sprang to the corner and filled our mugs from the
cauldron.

“Is that how you turned Arthur into ants and
fish and stuff when he was a boy? I read that in a storybook.”

“Very much like that, yes.”

“In the twenty-first century, we call that
hypnosis.”

“An invention of mine! Still used fifteen
hundred years in the future!” He plopped flower buds into the
steaming mugs. “Do you suppose my other inventions survive?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“Hmm.” Deep in thought, he set my mug on the
table and padded to his desk.

I took my tea and stepped to the doorway,
allowing time for Myrddin's superior brain to work on the
information I’d given him. The background noise in the dell, as
opposed to the pounding work on Cadebir Hill, was birdsong,
accented by Drostan’s humming, and occasional laughter from the
orderlies who played dice in the shade near the huts. Maybe the
dell was a busier place at wartime, when the injured needed
tending. But that morning Myrddin’s staff had the place to
themselves.

“We don’t need a car.” Myrddin’s voice
rumbled behind me.

I ducked back under the thatch. Myrddin
wrote vigorously at his desk. “What we need is the power the car
generated, in combination with the lightning.”

I didn’t know how we were going to generate
such power, but I didn’t interrupt.

“We may need to get you to the location of
your arrival, or at least near it. Arthur won’t tell us where it
was because he doesn’t want you to go, and his men won’t give us
the information against his wishes. But we know you were close to
the Giant’s Ring.” He stopped writing. “That could work. We have
Lucy and her reins. Lucy may well be the most essential ingredient.
I, of course, am a man, and will play that role.” He went back to
scribbling. “Though we do not anticipate rain at the next full
moon, the partnership of full moon and precipitation will happen in
time and we’ll need that time for creating our moe-tor.”

I sighed. Silly of me. Silly to hope
Myrddin’s plan would send me back when it didn’t make sense for me
to be there in the first place.

Myrddin put down his quill and brought his
hands to his chin. “The question may be, Casey: are you willing to
put yourself through another concussion?”

Even if we could generate the power, which
we couldn’t, Myrddin was not the same man as the one in the
accident. The Giant’s Ring was not the same place. The
circumstances would never be exact, if exactness was what we
required.

But the problem was not accuracy, or my
willingness to endure pain. I realized with a shock that the
problem was I wasn’t ready to leave.

TWENTY

Morning sun beamed through the high windows
of the hall like light from an old-fashioned projection booth. The
soldiers must have eaten and gone, their departure transforming the
room from breakfast tavern to women’s club. The zither player, so
nervous a few nights before, stretched his languid legs along the
length of a bench and strummed his tunes.

I wore Lynet’s bracelet pushed up on my arm,
and had tied my hair back with Elaine’s ribbon in an attempt to
look presentable. I wondered how the privileged women stayed so
clean. The differences between them and the serving women were
blatant: women of wealth wore their hair loose; servers tied theirs
back out of necessity. Wealthy women had soft skin; serving women
were ruddy and sunburned. Except the queen, who wore only white,
elegant ladies wore tunics dyed in all colors; servants dressed in
undyed browns and beiges. And the women of means were relaxed;
servants always hurried.

For the morning meal the kitchen staff had
converted the king’s table into a breakfast buffet. Great portions
of aromatic egg pies had presumably gone missing by the time I
arrived, but plenty of food remained for the twenty or so women
lounging throughout the hall. Ignoring the flies that feasted at
the rims of jam pots, I loaded a trencher with a slice of warm
bread, a piece of egg pie, and small, sweet strawberries from a
bowl that spilled over with them.

Guinevere and Lynet had already eaten. They
were sipping tea and cleaning their teeth with toothpicks when I
joined them at one of the long tables.

I jabbed a bite of egg pie with Myrddin’s
knife. “No Elaine this morning?”

“She’s gone to work,” said Lynet.

“Oh,” I said, “she was afraid she might not
be able to keep up—”

“You must both stop worrying,” the queen
interrupted. “I will help Elaine.”

Feeling scolded, I chewed my pie. The flies
had probably been on it but I hadn’t seen them and I was hungry
enough to pretend they’d missed it. Guinevere twitched nervously
beside me. Across from us, Lynet sat stiff and unsmiling. In the
silence, I realized I’d interrupted their conversation, and it
hadn’t been a pleasant one. It would be awkward to pick up my
trencher and leave.

“Thank you for inviting me to breakfast,
your majesty,” I said, trying to smooth the air.

“
Guinevere
.”

“Right. Sorry.” I was silent for a few
moments more while I ate, but I was compelled to placate when
people weren’t speaking to each other. It was my family role. “The
kitchen sure does an amazing job.”

“Heulwen’s in charge. That’s her, there.”
Guinevere pointed out the big-boned woman I’d seen Myrddin talking
to in the kitchen. Heulwen moved up and down the center aisle
carrying a clay pitcher in one hand and several mugs in the other.
“I can’t imagine how she feeds so many people every day,” Guinevere
continued. “Arthur loves her. We all do.”

Heulwen’s hair was pulled tightly under a
bonnet, accentuating her round, red, face. With one hand she hefted
the pitcher and poured a mug of hot liquid, while laughing with a
boy who collected empty plates from a table. Her eyes were
puffy.

“She looks tired,” I said.

“Not at all,” said Guinevere. “Heulwen’s
always jolly. It’s good fortune to work inside the fort, especially
to be a kitchen servant. Better than tilling fields or tanning
hides. And she’s the monarch of the kitchen, is she not, Lynet?
Even Arthur obeys her there.”

Lynet chewed a mint leaf, nodding.

“I wonder if she’d let me use a bowl or
something,” I said.

“Shh,” said Guinevere. “Don’t ask.”

Heulwen arrived at our table and placed a
mug before me.

“Good morning, dear,” said the queen.

“‘Morning, ladies,” said Heulwen, one hand
pouring while the cup hand rested on her broad hip.

“Mistress Casey was just saying how much she
likes her breakfast,” said Guinevere.

“Good,” Heulwen grinned at me, her cheeks
going redder. “I do like being appreciated.” She strode off to fill
other mugs.

Guinevere lowered her voice. “For what do
you need a bowl?”

“Spells?” asked Lynet, her violet eyes
wide.

All I needed was something in which to dump
my money and credit cards so the stuff wouldn’t be lying around
loose in my hut. The tea smelled not of well water but of spices. I
took a careful sip. It tasted of apples, and something like pepper.
“I’m not supposed to practice magic. King Arthur’s orders. But,” I
winked for effect, “a wizard can always use a bowl.”

Both women nodded in complete understanding.
“Don’t ask Heulwen,” said Guinevere. “She’ll never let you have
one. She’s too thrifty. She uses and reuses everything.”

Lynet stifled a giggle. “It’s true. From
apple cores she can make a dessert so delicious that King Arthur is
proud to serve it to King Cadwy of Cornwall.”

“We had that last night,” said the queen.
“Cadwy loved it.”

“Owain of Corinium Dobunnorum had two
servings,” said Lynet.

“The priest took an entire bowlful to his
lodgings,” said Guinevere.

Their laughter made me hope that perhaps
whatever tiff I’d interrupted was minor. I wanted another piece of
egg pie, but was too full to manage it. “Don’t men eat in the
mornings?”

“Yes, but early,” said Lynet. “They’re
working already.”