Susan Squires - [Da Vinci Time Travel] (33 page)

“Guinevere’s party.” Gareth turned to shout back to his companions. “She’s arrived from the north!” Excitement spread through the men around Diana. Mordred cantered up the hill toward the new arrivals.

“Get a move on,” Gareth barked, giving Gawain’s rope a jerk. His horse started into a slow canter. Gawain ran beside Gareth’s knee to keep up. She wished she could see his eyes, read his expression. Or maybe she didn’t. Guinevere was here. Instead of excited to see the legendary queen, Diana felt as though the last nail had been pounded into her coffin.

The courtyard was filled with milling horses, large men, and scurrying servants when Diana and Beth stumbled through the gates. Beth leaned over to catch her breath.

“Are you all right?” Diana murmured as their guard surged forward to greet the newcomers. Apparently they knew the men of Guinevere’s escort well.

Beth nodded, but the face she turned up to Diana alternately flushed and went white. Not a good sign. Mordred was helping a woman down from a heavy-boned white horse. So that was a palfrey. Diana had never been quite sure what they looked like.

She would have known Guinevere anywhere. She must have been much younger than Arthur when they wed, for even though there was a strand or two of gray in her beautiful red-gold hair, she was a woman in the prime of her life. Her pale skin glowed and even from here Diana could tell that her eyes were green. Her dress was hunter green, and flowed like it was wool. Her cape was a rich russet, trimmed in fox fur. Mordred knelt in front of her on one knee.

“Welcome, my queen. I hope your journey was not too tiring.”

“Why have my meditations been interrupted?” Guinevere had regal ice in her tone.

“A monastery is no place for a queen,” Merlin said, rising. “You belong at Camelot.”

“With Arthur gone, I no longer belong here,” she said, looking like she belonged here far more than Mordred and his band.

“You must rest from your journey. Take some food and drink,” Mordred said, not at all disconcerted by her damping tone. “And then we’ll talk.”

Gawain’s broad back was to Diana. All she could see was the tension in the set of his shoulders. Her own shoulders sagged. Gawain’s one true love was back from the nunnery in which she’d been immured. If they somehow won through (however unlikely that was) he would stay here with her. Even if she wouldn’t have him as a lover, he would serve her. A parfait knight’s honor would demand it.

The issue wouldn’t come up. Gawain would never be able to kill Mordred, bound as he was, with all these men around him. And there was Merlin’s magic to be reckoned with. Merlin could counter Gawain’s power to turn into mist. It looked like Merlin could do about anything.

Merlin was standing to one side, a silent observer to the queen’s welcome. His stare shifted from Gawain, to Diana, to Beth, and though he was perhaps thirty feet away, Diana could see his eyes roil with speculative color.

Mordred turned to glance at them. “Take this scum away. I’ll deal with them later.” He turned his attention back to Guinevere. The queen looked around, apparently to see the “scum,” but her eyes registered no recognition. She wouldn’t recognize Merlin’s son in Gawain. He would have been ten when she last saw him. What boy of that age would even catch a queen’s eye?

So the scum was pushed and prodded into a window
less hut made of unpeeled logs at the far end of the palisade from the great two-storied hall that had been Arthur’s home when he ruled with Guinevere. The smell of the dirt-floored hut was almost overwhelming: earth, urine, and body odor and . . . and blood. Old blood. Gawain fell to his knees as they shoved him inside. The door was heaved shut. A huge squared timber clunked into place to lock them in.

Dusty rays of light streamed in from tiny gaps between the logs. Guess they didn’t care if the cell got cold in winter. They hadn’t bothered with wattle in the crevices. As Diana’s eyes grew used to the dimness she could make out that Beth was pale and beginning to shake. This was bad.

Diana glanced back to see Gawain pacing the perimeter, hands still tied behind his back, looking for chinks in the walls big enough that he could peer out. She eased her mother down into a corner. Diana pulled Beth’s hair from around her face and made soothing sounds. Guards were talking outside the cell door. Two? No, three.

Apparently Gawain’s quest was fruitless, for he turned into the room, his expression grim. “At least we’ve bought some time. Mordred will be busy with Guinevere for a while.”

She heard Beth’s cry of pain before Beth made it.
Oh no
! Diana held Beth’s shoulders tight and looked to Gawain. She didn’t have to tell him what was happening. “Relax now. You’re close to term and under stress. It doesn’t mean anything.”

As the pain passed, Beth looked up at her with serious eyes. Nothing need be said. They all knew what was happening, no matter what Diana said. Time was running out.

Diana stood and went to Gawain. “How long does she have?” he whispered in modern English, so Beth couldn’t understand them if she heard.

“I don’t know.”

“We can’t let her baby . . . We can’t let you be born in here. It’s filthy.”

“Then we have to get out before she bears the child.”

Gawain’s eyes darted around the cell. “I had thought to wait until dark. . . . Even if I get out unnoticed in daylight and kill the guards, how will I get two women, one in labor, out the gates?”

“You won’t,” Diana answered steadily. “So leave us behind.”

Gawain practically rolled his eyes. “I’m not doing that.”

“Of course you are. What’s the worst that can happen? We can’t save Beth. If the baby dies, too, I’m never born, I never come back in the time machine. I don’t take Mordred. He dies of his wounds, and history is put right again.” What she didn’t say was that Gawain wouldn’t have to risk being killed by Mordred’s guard before he could even reach Mordred. Gawain wouldn’t want to do anything just to avoid a fight. That would be against his stupid honor. “You grow up to fight a guerrilla war against the Saxons, which is ultimately unsuccessful.”

“Sounds wonderful. I don’t think so.” He turned and peered out through the cracks between the door and the frame. “My father said you were important.”

“You know it’s the only way.” He had to see it, given time. She would never have existed. What would that be like?

“You’re forgetting some things,” Gawain said, his back still to her.

“Like what?”

He turned. “What if the baby doesn’t die? What if you’re here when the child is born?”

He was right. That was bad. “The note in the book says
if you meet your former self, you merge into that self. You can’t get out again.” She waited for him to say something, but he just stared at her. “Okay, so that’s a danger. I would be trapped inside a baby until she grew up. So, after you get out, I’ll call for the guard and . . .” Her theory ran out of gas. Why would a guard let her out of the cell? Well, there was one way. . . . “I’ll let him think I’ll have sex with him if he lets me out for a while.” Actually, he’d probably take what he wanted without her consent. But she wouldn’t say that. Gawain would never leave them then.

Gawain pressed his lips together. After a moment he managed to say through gritted teeth, “I’m not fond of that one, either.”

“Well, I’m not fond of any of it,” she snapped. “But we’re running out of choices here.”

“I’ll find a way. I’ll get you out and get your mother to somewhere safe to have the baby. You have to survive, Diana.” He looked so fierce and so protective it was almost frightening. But she couldn’t be frightened of Gawain, not anymore. How long it had been since he was a sinister stalker in her mind? She could be frightened
for
him, of course. That was all too easy.

She moved up to him and put her hand on his bare chest. Even in such horrible circumstances, that stirred the woman in her. It made her feel alive. And that felt good just now. “History is more important than any one of us,” she said softly. He knew that. He just had a hard time accepting what it meant.

“Okay,” he said grimly. “We wait until dark if we can. In any case, if she gets close to giving birth, I escape. You call the guard and tell him I’ve gone. Do whatever you must to get out of here when the child is born. You have to survive, Diana.”

It always came back to that. Why her? Why Diana Dearborn, romance writer? Or Dilly, the tagalong girl she didn’t remember? How the hell could
she
be important?

She sighed. “At least turn to mist and get out of your bonds.”

He shook his head. “It costs me some strength, and if I have to do it again, it will come more slowly. I’d better save myself.”

That frightened her. “Come here,” she said softly. “I’ll loosen them.”

What Gawain wasn’t going to tell Diana was that even if they made it to nightfall, even if he escaped and killed the guards and let them out of the cell, his father would never let them escape. He could see everything. He knew everything. And he served Mordred.

Gawain still couldn’t reconcile that with the father he had known. Sure, Gawain was a disappointment to him. Gawain had doomed his father to be forever unable to pass on his great gift. Sure, Diana coming back in time had changed things. But Merlin had always stood for what he believed, and he had enough power to enforce it. He didn’t help men like Mordred cause the people of Britain to suffer. Would Merlin help Mordred against his own son? Gawain knew his father had recognized him. If Gawain was killed by Agravain and Gareth and the guard, would Merlin protect Diana and her mother from Mordred’s revenge?

He had to. If Merlin stood against them, there was no winning through.

Diana insisted on working at Gawain’s ropes until her fingers were raw. She couldn’t untie the knots. It was only when her mother began crying out more frequently that Diana’s attention was diverted from her task. The afternoon dragged on. After a particularly long labor pain,
Diana sprang up and screamed at the guards to let them out for the sake of the baby.

One laughed, and Diana pounded on the door with her fists in fury. Another called softly, “We dare not let you out, mistress. My lord Medraught has ordered you imprisoned.”

Diana sank to the floor. She was feeling utterly ineffectual. Gawain knew that feeling.

But it wouldn’t be long now. The light was almost gone. He would turn to mist and try his best for the two women. He daren’t fail, and yet he knew in his heart he was not up to the task before him. That feeling was familiar, too.

He sat and waited. He’d lost the feeling in his hands now. Could he even hold a sword if he could take one from a guard?

Diana’s mother was sobbing in the corner after the last contraction. It would be touch-and-go to wait for nightfall. The guards outside fell suddenly silent. Very suddenly. Gawain pushed himself up. Something was . . .

A soft sparkling glow started in the corner of the cell, casting a pale light over their squalid surroundings. He heard Diana gasp.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said. “It’s my father.” Of course, he couldn’t be sure that they shouldn’t be afraid. Who knew his father now? He surely didn’t.

The silver sparkles resolved themselves into Merlin, except for a glowing ball of sparkles that floated in the air and lit the cell with a cold light. How strange that all the stories of Camelot had him wearing some goofy pointed hat and robes covered with moons and stars. He was never foolish. Merlin was wearing a fine embroidered jerkin over leather breeches and soft, practical boots. He had no scabbard, no sword (what need had he of swords?), but the belt that circled his waist was finely tooled. His beard
was less shot with gray than Gawain remembered it when he last saw Merlin, but otherwise the lined face was much the same: more tired perhaps, a little more worn. But his eyes glowed fiercely with their swirling colors. He never hid his eyes. Why should he? He was Merlin.

He went opaque and looked around, frowning. “I apologize for your ‘accommodations,’ ” he said. “Mordred was ever crude.”

Beth let out a low moan. She had grown seriously weaker over the long hours of the day. She could barely cry out with her pain. Diana wiped her forehead with a piece of cloth she had torn from Beth’s own shift.

“Can you help her?” Diana asked. How Gawain loved the fact that she asked boldly, though she certainly must be frightened by his father’s appearance.

Merlin shook his head. “I can help no one except Mordred these days.”

“I knew you had a hard heart, but I never thought you’d stand on the side of evil,” Gawain accused.

“Sometimes a man has no choice, my son. You
are
my son, aren’t you?”

Gawain nodded once. “I’m sorry to say, I am.”

“You’re from the future.” His father nodded to himself. “How else could it be? How did you come?”

“We used my machine,” Diana said. “Don’t you remember me coming back and taking Mordred with me?”

Merlin shook his head. Gawain didn’t remember that, either. What did that mean?

His father had been examining Gawain, and now he smiled. “You’ve grown into a fine man, Son.” Then his smile collapsed. “I hope to keep it that way.” He pressed a hand to his forehead, covering his eyes. “I . . . I see so many contrasting images in the pools and the streams these days. I . . . I don’t know the true path.”

“That’s my fault,” Diana said ruefully. “I fouled things
up by saving Mordred. I thought he would be killed, you see, and . . . and now everything is changed.”

“I see you in my visions, too, my dear. What is your name?”

“Diana Dearborn.” She turned away to Beth, who groaned weakly. “I’m her daughter.”

“About to be born?”

“I . . . I think so.”

Merlin frowned again, thinking. “But wasn’t she one of Mordred’s . . . ?”

“Diana is Mordred’s daughter, too,” Gawain said roughly. “The only good thing he ever did as far as I can see.” He took a breath and calmed himself. His father
could
help them if he would. He might be the only one who could. “We have to set history right. Mordred was not supposed to live. He was supposed to die of the wound Arthur gave him, some time after the battle, from infection. After he fathered Diana. The Saxons were meant to prevail. When Diana saved Mordred and we sent him back, he, with
your
help, will hold this area against the Saxons. It changes everything down the centuries. We’re here to put it right.”