by Caro Carson
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Epilogue
His Lover from Long Ago
A Time Travel Romance
By
Caro Carson
His Lover From Long Ago © 2016 Caro Carson
All rights reserved. With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this eBook may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the author.
Cover design by Lisa Messegee, The Write Designer
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Contact Caro Carson through her website
www.CaroCarson.com
Table of Contents
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Epilogue
About Caro Carson
Also by Caro Carson
Dedication
This book is dedicated to
Catherine, Teresa, and Wynter,
my friends and fellow Jewel Box Authors.
Chapter One
Briton, 537 A.D.
Kayna was only human.
Kneeling on the wood floor of the chapel made her uncomfortably aware of her human frailty, particularly of the vulnerability of her knees compared to wood planks, but she had no choice. Queen Guinevere had ordered the court to fast and pray, so Kayna would fast and pray.
Dear Lord...
Kayna opened one eye and peeked down the railing. She ignored those who were closest to her, for they were only the skilled members of the household, the same as she. Kayna was the queen’s clerk. The seamstress to her right was farther away from the altar than she was, but the musician to her left was closer. Kayna knew where she stood in the household. Or rather, where she knelt. For today, at least, she was more important than a gown, less important than music that soothed the queen’s troubled soul.
Beyond the musician, closer yet to the altar, were the ladies in waiting, a useless lot on the best of days. Kayna had no patience for their decorative tears in these dark hours. She bowed her head a little more deeply, which allowed her to peek past the ladies to the knights.
The few warriors who remained to defend the fortress knelt on their wood shields. Kayna could barely withstand her own physical discomfort, yet the knights were voluntarily increasing their own. With palms up to heaven, they held their iron swords flat across their hands as they bowed their heads in prayer. Their arms trembled from the effort as one hour gave way to the next, men of action even in prayer.
Dear Lord...
In the center of the chapel, surrounded by her knights, Queen Guinevere was the model of piety. She knelt before the altar in a pose so steadfast and serene that she reminded Kayna of the marble statues the Roman governors had left behind not so long ago. Guinevere’s skin was as flawless as polished marble, never ruddy from the wind like Kayna’s, and her braided hair was a white-blond, unlike Kayna’s common brown, but Guinevere was no pagan statue. She was real, as wise as she was beautiful.
But human. Queen Guinevere had to feel as cold and hungry as Kayna felt, yet she looked peaceful and penitent. Kayna closed her eyes and tried to hold her chin at that same royal yet humble angle.
Dear Lord...
Dear Lord, my knees are killing me.
Her cheeks, which reddened so easily in the wind, were undoubtedly turning red at her own blasphemous thought. She shifted her weight to relieve the pressure on her knees, anyway. She was only human. They were all only human.
What they needed was magic.
Merlin had disappeared two winters past, but Kayna believed some of his magic remained. An aura of greatness still surrounded everything associated with Camelot, including this fortress at Tintagel, although the magic seemed muted now, like the glow of warm coals in a fire pit that had once borne blazing flames.
Briton needed more than a warm glow to fend off the invaders.
Briton needed Arthur, the only man who’d been able to unite the smaller armies of Briton’s many kings. Arthur had led the Britons to defeat Saxons and Picts time and again, but he’d been wounded severely at Camlann.
The king had been victorious at Camlann—of course, for Arthur won every battle he led—but he’d sustained a blow from his own kinsman during the battle. His life was in jeopardy. Every day, another messenger brought word that Arthur was suffering. His devoted wife could weep and pray and command Kayna and all the court to pray with her, but Kayna knew even a queen could not command Heaven to heed her prayers.
Since everyone else was praying for King Arthur’s wounds to heal, Kayna felt it was safe to pray for something just a bit different.
Dear Lord, we need magic.
“Kayna, I need you.”
Her eyes flew open at the queen’s whisper. Kayna turned to find her majesty standing behind her. The musician and the seamstress turned as well, but the queen gestured from them to the altar. “Continue to pray. I need only Kayna. A messenger has come. Pray for us all that the tidings are good.”
A messenger meant it was time for Kayna to work. She could read and write; the queen could not. Moreover, Kayna could speak every language a distant king might use in a message. Because of her skill, she lived in the queen’s chamber and wore the queen’s hand-me-downs and got to get off her knees and leave the cold chapel when a messenger came.
Thank you, Lord.
But while the blood returned to her limbs as she left the chapel in the queen’s wake, Kayna obediently sent one last plea to Heaven.
Dear Lord, let the tidings be good.
The tidings were not good.
The expression on Sir Agravain’s face as he knelt before Guinevere was too easy to read, despite his heavy beard and the filth of the battlefield upon him.
Guinevere broke the wax seal and looked at the letter, but she did not hand it to Kayna. Instead, she froze once more into a perfect marble statue. The knight stayed on his knee, wet from his hard ride, smelling of horses and smoke—and death.
He did not move. The queen remained eerily still. The fire in the stone pit did not even pop. The silence stretched until Kayna felt sick in her stomach, as if she were caught in the middle of one of Merlin’s spells, as if the wizard had frozen time here in the queen’s chamber.
But Merlin was not here. This was not magic, but only human fear. Kayna could break the stillness, if she pushed the boundaries of protocol. “Sir Agravain, I bid you to rise and help me fetch our lady a chair.”
The knight moved then, but only to raise his head to glare at her. Apparently, even when a man was delivering shattering news, even when a knight was exhausted from a deadly battle and hard travel, even then a man would not take orders from a female clerk. Lord, were all men so predictable?
Kayna turned with as much of a huff of exasperation as she thought she could get away with and stomped across the room to grab a heavy oak chair by the arm. The chair only moved a few inches as she tugged, so she turned to bump it with her backside. It barely budged, but her actions were enough to restore a sense of normalcy to
the room, enough to snap Guinevere out of her shock.
“Leave that. I don’t want to sit.” The queen thrust the parchment toward Kayna.
Kayna took the letter. At a glance, she saw its words were not written in the king’s Briton, but instead in the language of the Saxons. There was only one Saxon who sat at the Round Table: Kayna’s father, Sir Kay.
“’Tis not written in my husband’s hand,” the queen said.
The implications cut Kayna to the quick. Because a knight had delivered the message, Guinevere had expected the letter to be from the king himself. It was not; her husband was either dead or too ill to write. No wonder the queen had frozen in a moment of fear.
“Your majesty, shall we sit by the window?” They often did so, for the light for reading was brightest by the narrow window slits cut into the log walls, but mostly, Kayna just wanted the queen to sit on the cushioned window seat.
“Read it. I must hear it.”
The light of the fire would have to suffice. Kayna stepped closer to the low edge of the fire pit, grateful for its warmth after the hours in the cold chapel, and held up the letter. She’d have to read the words in Saxon, translate them instantly in her head, and speak them out loud in Briton. Using her skills thus was usually a thrilling challenge, as much of a chance for her to show off her abilities as a joust was for a knight to show off his, but today, she felt only dread as she prepared to do her duty.
“To Guinevere, the daughter of King Leodegrance, blessed handmaiden of the Lord and virtuous in faith and in love, enriched with the dignity of a queen, and crowned by her husband, the great king over all the armies of all the lesser kings of lands both far and near, the king who rules all with Heaven’s grace and Heaven’s fair judgment—”
Kayna paused for a breath and glanced at the queen, hoping for a sign that she should skip all these courtly introductions. The queen only nodded for her to continue.
“—is sent greetings from Sir Kay, humble knight and foster brother to Arthur the Red Lion, and who, though undeserving, has been seated at Arthur’s Round Table since the first day, and who, though perishing himself most rapidly from wounds sustained in the most noble cause, doth now break his silence as he breathes his last, that he may send tidings most important to the queen.”
The words blurred on the parchment as Kayna’s eyes filled with sudden tears. Sir Kay, her father, was dying rapidly? He was a boisterous man, a giant of a man, whose crude ways had been barely tamed by the combined efforts of Arthur and Guinevere; it was hard to imagine him silent, even if he lay dying.
Kayna was not the child of Sir Kay’s wife, so she had been raised in his foster brother’s household. Since his foster brother was Arthur, Kayna knew she had been fortunate, although she’d rarely seen her own father. Merlin had spent more time with her than her father had, but Kay the Giant had always scooped her up and spun her around if he happened to pass her in the great hall, even now that she was of a marriageable age.
It was a shock to read aloud Sir Kay’s certainty of his own death. Kayna had received the last of her father’s warm bear hugs, then. Never had the fortress felt so cold.
“Should this missive find you still abiding in the hall of our liege’s birth, and should you to the Uther’s high tower take thyself, there to be closer to the Lord and to observe His creation as He does from up high, then look you to the cliffs.”
If you’re still at Tintagel, go up to the tower and look at the sea. Even Sir Kay was writing in the courtly style now. Why couldn’t anyone just get to the point in these letters? Was Arthur alive or dead? Kayna read as fast as she could.
“As the waves crash on rocks, as the sea-foam is flung in all directions, so rests your husband and king. Although no one knows the hour of their death, we mortals dared to presume that Arthur would survive the blow from Mordred, whose death was most deserved. Our mortal arrogance has been proved false, for as the king is tossed about like a small boat upon the sea, and as that tossing is as unceasing as waves upon the rocks, I will not be long apart from my royal brother after I have left my earthly life behind.”
Arthur’s wounds are not healing because he cannot lie still and sleep. The exhaustion will kill him. Soon.
The lines of anguish on Guinevere’s face deepened, but she stayed standing, tall and straight.
The rest of the letter Kayna read with more patience, pausing to give the queen time to digest the meaning of each convoluted sentence. All the flowery wording was a tribute, really, to her and the king. They’d made this style of expression popular because it sounded Biblical, moral and upright. Kayna had heard them say so.
As a child, feigning sleep on her mat near the cozy fire, she’d often listened as the royal couple talked after darkness fell. They’d said if the people of Camelot spoke and wrote and thought in elevated words, then they would be elevated above common debauchery in their deeds as well. Common debauchery, she’d gathered as a young girl, led to liaisons that resulted in too many children like Kayna.
No one paid particular attention to common children born out of wedlock; the spurius child was too plentiful to notice. But the nothus child, a child whose father was known, was different. And if the father was noble, Camelot could not ignore his child.
Kayna was notha. Merlin had discovered Kayna’s ear for languages when she was quite young, so she’d been a welcome addition to the queen’s household. But finding homes for all of the children of all of the knights, well, that had become an issue as Arthur’s warriors roamed throughout Briton and beyond on their quests, dazzling lovesick young maids and producing nothum with great regularity.
Arthur and Guinevere had spent their lives trying to civilize all of Briton. Chapels had been built alongside each of Arthur’s great halls. Invoking Heaven in every endeavor kept the mind elevated. Including the Church in every thought showed refinement. Chivalry, which honored passionate love outside of marriage only if it was never consummated, was promoted. The flood of nothum had been reduced to a pleasantly constant stream.
“Therefore, amidst this uncertainty and darkness, with my face downcast in all humility, do I endeavor to demonstrate with this, my last missive, my loyalty to the most noble of all women as I do to the Lord who abides in Paradise above.”
Guinevere sniffed and shook her head sadly. This final letter was Sir Kay’s way of showing Guinevere, his queen as well as his sister-in-law, that her efforts had finally civilized him.
How fortunate for me that he didn’t reform until after I was conceived.
Kayna felt the heat of her own blush at her unspoken disrespect. Then she wanted to cry, because that disrespectful thought would have made her boorish father laugh.
She waded through the rest of the letter, too aware these were her father’s final words. Never again would she read his Saxon language, for there was no one else in the court who spoke the language of the barbarians.
“Now, my learned daughter, pause and read silently a moment. These words are for you alone. The queen has plans, and you must—”
Too late, Kayna stopped.
“You must what, Kayna?” The queen sounded tense. “Tell me what your noble father has written to you on my paper with my ink and used my knight to deliver.”
Sir Agravain stayed on his knee, but he slapped his hand on the hilt of his sword.
Kayna’s heart beat wildly—of all the times for her father to pay her more than a passing attention. This was underhanded, telling her to hide his words from the queen. It could be seen as treason.
She held the letter out to the queen and bowed her head. “I apologize, your majesty, for my father’s words, whatever they may be. I have no desire to know. I am your loyal servant. I will not read them.”
I do not want to die by Sir Agravain’s sword.
The queen spoke through gritted teeth. “I asked you to read them.”
Kayna could not disobey. As though it were her death warrant, she tilted the paper toward the firelight once more. The page shook
so that she could not read it.
Guinevere sighed, that sigh Kayna had heard so many times when Guinevere wished for patience dealing with a child’s too-strong will. She covered Kayna’s hand with her own and held the page steady, peering at it as though she could decipher the cyphers. “These could be your father’s final words. He helped himself to a royal messenger to send them to you, the disobedient oaf.”
Kayna nearly wilted with relief. Guinevere sounded like the good-humored foster-aunt of Kayna’s youth.
Kayna began reading. Sir Kay’s lines to her were more direct. “The queen has plans, and you must share a widow’s fate. When she can no longer serve Arthur, she will serve God as the abbess of a nunnery. You must go with her.
“The Britons have splintered into armies so small, they will not be able to defend a piss pot. The best men, men like myself, were slaughtered at Camlann. There is no one to replace Arthur. The Saxons advance, the Picts attack, and the Romans are rumored to return, but I wager none will tempt the wrath of God by attacking a nunnery.
“Therefore, be a good girl and keep writing letters for the queen. She will make you a nun. Live out your days within the abbey walls. You’ll never have a husband to share your bed, but neither will you starve as war ravages the land. Your belly will be full of food, if never a baby. Remember this: a nun’s life is better than none.”
Kayna nearly choked. A nun’s life is better than none. Her entire future was reduced to a pun.
“Oh!” Guinevere exclaimed through tears. “How very Kay, joking unto the end.”
“The end,” Kayna echoed. Was her life ending already? You’ll never have a husband in your bed...
Guinevere squeezed her arm and gestured for Sir Agravain to rise. “How fared Sir Kay when you left the camp?”