Camelot & Vine (32 page)

At last my hand found empty air. The vines
came away like a curtain, revealing a black abyss with a shaft of
gray light about fifteen feet away at the opposite end. I raised my
hand to feel the ceiling but couldn’t reach it. To test the width
of the tunnel I reached out my good arm to touch one wall then,
silently cursing my shoulder, turned to touch the other. Each
minute spent working around my injury was a minute of Guinevere’s
life.

Lucy would fit.

I led her into the darkness, relieved to let
the vine curtain fall behind us. Between us and the light a pile of
old blankets lay rotting in the damp. In peaceful times the lovers
might have found better ways. At Tintagel, which I could only
imagine, a romantic nook could be fitted with soft furs and
flowers. Cadebir camp was not a palace but a castle, and I had come
to know the difference.

I started when a rat scurried across the
other end of the lovers’ refuge. A month before, a rat would have
stopped me. Gripping Lucy’s reins, I groped my way forward along
the rough wall, fingering dampness and stones. I was grateful for
Lucy’s trust. One loud neigh and my escape would be my death.

When we stepped out to the fresh air we were
hidden by heavy foliage. With no path to follow we crunched through
tangled underbrush, our noise covered by shouts on the other side
of the wall. A fallen log marked the edge of the copse. I climbed
onto it to mount Lucy, throwing myself across her saddle and
pulling up to sit. The saddle creaked, but with all the commotion
inside the fort, no one heard. The fire must have grown. I
regretted the destruction, but huts could be rebuilt.

It was time to march out into the open and
onto the zig-zag path. There was no other way down the hill, not
for a horse. Noise was our only cover now. I steered Lucy below the
well, as far from the gate as possible, and for the sake of quiet
started her down at a walk. My back felt like a center of fear, a
naked target crying out to be hit.

We completed a full zig and half a zag.

“You there!”

I reined Lucy to a stop and turned toward
the guard tower, keeping my hood over my face. Two guards stood
silhouetted in torchlight, aiming their spears at me. I was reining
with my right hand so I patted my chest with my left as if to say,
“Who, me?” The shock of moving that arm staggered me in the
saddle.

“Some old drunk from Cadebir village,” said
one of the guards.

“Don’t loiter about, old man,” said the
other. “Get on home.”

I waved weakly. Good, good, we were free to
zig and zag. Playing the “old drunk” character the guard had
assigned to me, I slumped my shoulders and kept Lucy to a walk. At
last we reached the bottom of the hill where the Roman road lay
ahead like a racetrack. But instead of a full run I kept Lucy to an
easy canter for the mile into town.

I didn’t anticipate problems from the camps
south of the road. The soldiers there had no jurisdiction and would
assume I had right of passage, coming from the fort. The
townspeople, gearing up for Calan Awst, wouldn’t inspect travelers
too closely. Chimney smoke there told me people were still awake
and it was early, a relief because it meant I had time. Still, I
had to be cautious.

I hadn’t considered what effect Calan Awst
would have on the village. Carts lined the roads and people filled
the carts. Soldiers who had money hung about in town to drink. Each
little alcove harbored a camping family or a dice game. Lucy
remained calm and determined, taking careful steps. I was glad I
hadn’t traveled to the sixth century on a skittish show horse. If
they didn’t look closely, to all I passed I resembled nothing more
than a farmer on his way home from an errand.

“Good evening, Felix.” Two well-dressed
gentlemen wobbled drunkenly outside the lamp light of a noisy hut
that might have been the pub.

I turned away and pretended not to hear.
What if I had to talk to them? I couldn’t let them hear my voice or
see my face.

“Silly, that’s not Felix. His horse isn’t
nearly that large.”

“Beg pardon, friend.”

I saluted, keeping my face in shadow. I
should have skirted the town altogether, but I didn’t know any
other road. Lucy plodded on. I knew I mustn’t rush, not yet. But
the urge to surge into speed snatched at my breath, stiffened my
back and clamped my thighs to the saddle. What little time
Guinevere had was wasting away.

Lucy felt it, too. She tossed her head as we
came to the edge of town. I tugged her reins to hold her back just
a bit longer. Finally the last oil lamps in the last windows glowed
softly at our backs. With the road before us, Lucy was ready to
run. I reined her in. I, too, had been itching for haste, but I
shivered at the sight of eerie moon shadow outlining lumpy burial
mounds across the distant plains. For a time, adrenaline had given
me a fire to light, sentries to hide from, even pain to combat.
Ahead was only running. Just me and Lucy in the nowhere, all the
way to Poste Perdu.

“Okay, Lucy,” I whispered. I clucked to her,
tapped her flanks with my heels and gave her full rein.

First she trotted, then cantered. When she
realized I wasn’t going to hold her back she picked up speed and
soon lost herself to running and road. I trusted her enough by then
to let her take charge as she had done long ago in that other
century, when I’d lost control of her. This time we were both in
power.

For the first time since I’d arrived in that
darkened world I was under no orders but my own. The land lay wide
awake and naked before us and we overtook it, letting the moon
light our open way. With only a vague comprehension of the
landmarks we passed, I sensed rather than saw them fly by in a
landscape where I had little history and no future. Wind rushed
unchecked across the treeless plain behind us, browbeating the
grass and trying to chase us down. Lucy outran it. I laid low and
hung onto the reins and saddle with my good hand, giving myself up
to speed and hope. We went that way as long as Lucy needed to, then
she slowed to an easy canter.

I had been counting time in breaths and
heartbeats. Now I counted hoofbeats, and they couldn’t be fast
enough. To ask Lucy to run at full speed all the way to Poste Perdu
would be too much. Her smooth lope was plenty, and it required
little of me. I had what I didn’t want: freedom, and time to
think.

Rushing toward Lancelot was my last resort.
I had no other plan but to tell him he must go to Cadebir and save
Guinevere. Upon arrival at Poste Perdu I could send him a note, but
he couldn’t read it. I could relay a verbal message but I could
trust no one to deliver it but myself. I had no choice but to face
him.

Unless I changed my mind. I could turn north
at the crossroads and steer to the Saxon border, or turn south and
head for the coast.

Clouds gathered, no longer just pestering
but bullying the moon until they shoved it behind them. Lucy slowed
to a trot, then a walk. Without the moon to light our way, the road
disappeared twenty feet ahead, and kept on disappearing as we
continued our slow pursuit of it. In the distance the plains were a
silver carpet upon which legendary characters might tread, but
close around us, all was darkness.

Loneliness had once suited me, but no more.
I wanted to counter the emptiness of the plains by chattering to
Lucy, but thought better of it. If Arthur was right the darkness
might be filled with enemies. I would not let them hear a woman’s
voice.

For as long as the clouds chose not to
release the moon, Lucy picked her way slowly. This was good, I told
myself. This was fine. Lucy needed to rest and I needed her to
last. But when the moon was revealed again I urged her to gallop
once more. The cloud-moon battle continued to rage above us, making
our pace erratic. Sometimes it forced us to slow down because Lucy
couldn’t see to run, sometimes it allowed her to surge forward with
refreshed power and what I believed was an instinctive
understanding of our mission.

Thunder rumbled far away. We had eased into
a rhythmic canter when the moon disappeared again and something ran
across the road. Lucy neighed and reared. Unprepared, I fell off,
landing hard on the stone. That was bad. Worse, Lucy ran.

Whatever had scared her skittered down the
embankment. I heard Lucy’s hoofbeats retreat. Disoriented, I didn’t
know which direction she’d taken in the dark.

“Lucy!” My voice ran up against emptiness.
No hoofbeats answered. Lucy was gone. I’d brought her to this place
and now she was lost in the wrong century just as I was. I couldn’t
get to Poste Perdu without her. I waited, but she didn’t come back.
I heard nothing except the gurgle of a stream.

I didn’t bother to get up. Everything hurt.
Even my hope was mortally wounded. Lucy had been an integral part,
perhaps the main ingredient, of something I hadn’t allowed myself
to think about until then—my return to the twenty-first century.
Though I’d told Myrddin it couldn’t happen, the foolish side of me
must have believed Lucy was essential to the magic that would take
me back. But if there was a way of crossing the Gap, I didn’t know
it. Myrddin had come up with a list of ingredients he believed had
led to my arrival in his time, but I didn’t have those things
anymore. All I had were impossibility, ignorance and ineptitude. I
didn’t even have a goddamned tissue when snot burbled out of my
nose and tears erupted from my eyes and all I could do was cry.

I sat in the middle of that road and sobbed
like a frustrated toddler until the thought of flames at
Guinevere’s ankles pushed me to my feet. Maybe I’d never get back
to where I belonged. Maybe Lancelot would kill me. Maybe I was
already dead. But Guinevere didn’t have to die.

The water sound came from my right. That
gave me direction. If it was the river I was more than halfway
there, but whether it was a lot more or a little, I didn’t know. A
light far out on the plain might have been a farm. It was too late
to find out. The wind found its way to my skin through the adorable
links in my chain mail sweater. I cradled my arm to my chest and
hobbled on, sniffling, lonely for my soft leather shoes. They’d be
ashes by now, along with the rest of Cadebir’s gifts.

I should have stayed in Hollywood. At least
I knew my way around there. It wasn’t Hollywood’s fault I’d failed.
Hollywood is a place. A place doesn’t have intentions or opinions.
A place doesn’t have it in for a person. I was the one who’d
arrived clueless and lied my way to the middle. I was the one who
had never bothered to do what it took to move beyond so-so to
okay.

Something straight ahead startled me—a pale,
man-sized thing. The road ran directly to it, where it stood still,
a specter in the dark. I stopped and waited for it to make a move.
It didn’t. I took a step toward it. When it still refused to move I
recognized a stone cross inside a circle. The marker of the
crossroads. A left turn would take me to Saxon territory. A hard
right would take me to the coast. I stopped whimpering and froze.
Only one choice lay ahead of me: the southeast curve of the center
road.

With a
whump,
something struck me
from behind and knocked me, airless, to my knees. I gave in to pain
as clumsy hands wrenched my arms to hold them behind me. Someone
pressed a blade to my neck.

“Get his pack.”

Another man held me. A third fiddled with
the pack, apparently unable to figure out the zipper.

“He don’t have nothin’.” A pock-marked face
leered close to mine. He pulled his stringy hair away from his eyes
to get a good look at me, then whistled inward. “He’s a she.”

“Izzat so?” The speaker angled around to
share his sour breath. “Let’s get her off the road.”

“There’s no one goin’ to come,” said the guy
behind me, shoving me face forward onto the stone.

He was right. No one would save me.

“We’re at the crossroads. Could be a
patrol.”

“This far? Coward.”

“I’ve seen them.”

Someone heavy sat on my buttocks, making a
bench of me.

“Shove off her, I want a go!”

“I saw her first.”

“Let him at ‘er, he’ll be quick!” They
laughed.

My heart hammered against the road. When
they finished they’d kill me. My squatter stood and his friends
helped roll me over. One undid his pants, and the others were busy
trying to figure out how to get mine off me, when he stopped and
looked up.

“What? She smell bad?”

“Shut it. I hear something.”

“It’s the water.”

“Shut it!”

They froze. With my head against the road, I
heard it. Horses. Not one. Not Lucy. A few. I couldn’t guess how
many. More than three.

“What did I tell you? A patrol.”

“Congratulations, you’re bloody right.”

“Run or you’ll bloody die.”

Their hands left me and they were gone. I
rolled to my side and tried to sit up. Whatever patrol was coming,
be they Saxons or Britons, I did not want to be wretched in their
sight. I wanted to stand and accept my fate.

The horses emerged at a walk from the dark
southeast road, the direction toward which I had been heading.
There were five of them, all strong, able men, all armed and
armored. At their lead was an impressive warrior, a savior or a
nightmare. They reined their horses to a stop a few feet from
me.

“Mistress Casey,” said Lyonel. “I am
delighted to see you.”

FORTY-FOUR

I didn’t much like it when Lyonel sent his
fellow soldiers galloping across the plains after the highway
robbers. Not that I liked the highway robbers, but I was afraid to
be alone with Lyonel. Seated in front of him on his horse, enfolded
in his powerful arms, I wanted to feel safe, but I would have
preferred crawling to Poste Perdu.