by Caro Carson
As the ship continued along the coast of Cornwall, she slept fitfully, murmuring the same names. Guinevere. Arthur. Merlin. Over a breakfast of bread and ale, he attempted to distract her with the one book that hadn’t bored him in school, Le Morte D’Artur. Perhaps she’d read it as a child, too, and the characters somehow haunted her sleep.
When she realized the book contained stories of Guinevere and Arthur, she cried again, tears of happiness this time, as she clutched it to her chest. Her smile made him her slave. If reading out loud to her made her smile, then he would read to her every day, chapter after chapter.
He skipped the beginning—the conception of the baby that would become king—unwilling to try to explain with their language of gestures how badly Uther Pendragon wanted to bed a woman he couldn’t have. Griffin began reading at the wedding of Arthur to Guinevere.
“King Arthur said unto Merlin, ‘I love Guinevere, the daughter of Leodegrance, king of the land of Cameliard.’”
“Not Leodegrance,” Kayna interrupted. “Lowen et Granse.”
It was startling, the way she continued to do that, as if she was the authority on the names in myths in a book written in the fifteenth century. She nodded at the Table Round, but she shrugged at Tristan. “Not this knight heard I.” Then she would correct the order of her words. “I not heard this knight. Griffin say it.”
“I have not heard of this knight.”
She would study his mouth as he spoke. It was hard not to lean in and kiss her as he smoothed out her sentences.
He’d doubted the wisdom of using a centuries-old book to teach anyone modern English, but her vocabulary grew with each of the tales. Green was explained by pointing at the leaves painted on the Oriental screen, but soon, the corners of Griffin’s costly maps were filled with sketches of things he could not point to or act out. Church. Horse. Stag.
“Ah, yes, Merlin was the stag,” she said brightly, tapping the little drawing he’d squeezed into the margin.
They’d eaten their fill of supper, a luxuriously hot stew that was only possible when one sailed close to land, but they lingered at the desk so Griffin could read by the candlelight. Terrence had stayed to listen to King Arthur’s tales, but it seemed Kayna knew a tale about Merlin, too.
Griffin closed the book and crossed his arms over his chest, ready to listen. Any good sailor recognized when a yarn was about to be spun.
Kayna thumped her chest and affected a man’s voice. “Merlin speaks. Stag am I. White stag am I at marriage of Arthur.” She made a whooshing sound and used her hands to indicate a stag’s horns growing from the top of her head. Then she cursed like a modern sailor, and used her hands to clomp on the desk, crashing into candlestick and book and the tureen of stew. “Oh, no! Stag goes here. And here. Merlin not the good stag.” Now her fingers imitated people walking and running as she made little screaming noises.
Griffin found himself chuckling, enjoying her story of a white stag causing chaos at the wedding. She told it with such glee.
“Guinevere not happy.” Kayna sat up straight like a regal queen, chin in the air, and narrowed her eyes at Terrence and him. With her Celtic brooch and the way she’d braided her hair into a circlet at the crown of her head, Griffin felt like he was looking at Guinevere in the flesh.
A chill passed over his own flesh.
But Kayna shook her head and smiled once more, chuckling at her own story. “Arthur not happy. Arthur speaks. ‘Stop that. Merlin not stag.’”
“Arthur forbade him to ever become a stag again?” Griffin guessed.
“Arthur forbade him to ever become a stag again.”
Griffin was still grinning as he opened the desk drawer and pulled out the silver stag, unclipping it from the ruby and the doe. He held it out to her. Every good sailor knew a tale could be told many times, many ways. “A prop for the next time you tell your story.”
She made no move to take the figurine.
He moved the little stag like it was running across the desk and let it bump into the candlestick, then held it out to her again. “You see?”
She pressed her hand to her throat, her eyes wide with something like terror, and he feared she was choking although they’d finished dinner long ago.
“Merlin,” she gasped. She dropped her hand back to her lap and took a bigger breath. “Merlin’s...?”
“Stag,” he supplied.
She shook her head vehemently. “The red. The red.”
“The ruby.”
“Merlin’s ruby.” She pressed her hand to her heart, tears filling her eyes, but the smile she gave him was radiant. “Merlin’s ruby, Griffin’s ship. Oh, Griffin.”
She vaulted out of the chair to land in his lap, nearly knocking him off the barrel he’d been using as a stool. She threw her arms around his neck, rained kisses on his cheek, then let go only to take his face in her soft hands and kiss him squarely on the mouth.
“Right, then. I think I’d best be going.” Terrence’s voice had never sounded so properly British as he stood and picked up the tureen. “Back to my duties, then, sir.”
Kayna, still bubbling over with her sudden happiness, let go of Griffin to stand and curtsey to Terrence. They’d been practicing such manners since their first shared meal, when Terrence had been shocked by the way Kayna used her knife to eat but ignored her fork and spoon.
“I thank you for a pleasant evening, my lady,” Terrence said, sounding like a fine nobleman, but Griffin caught the way Terrence was studying Kayna. “The story of the white stag was told differently in the book. Where did you hear your story, my lady?”
There was a pause, and Griffin was certain Kayna was repeating every syllable in her head, picking out the words she understood.
“Where did I hear?” she repeated. “Tintagel.”
Terrence nodded over the tureen, an acknowledgment that she’d given him a correct answer, but it was not evidently what he’d wanted to know. “Who told you the story, my lady?”
Kayna smiled as she said the impossible. “My father, Sir Kay.”
Griffin stood. The earlier chill returned.
Kayna smiled at him confidently, as if she was sure he would be glad to hear her next words. “Sir Kay of the Table Round. I am daughter. Notha.”
Time froze. For just a moment, Griffin’s world stayed suspended. Then it all crashed in at once, all his hopes for her turning to dread. She was mad. She had to be.
Terrence set the tureen back down, ready to ask her more questions, but Griffin’s instinct to protect Kayna was strong. “Hold off,” he barked at Terrence as he crossed the cabin to shut the wooden door to the speaking tube that ran up to the ship’s wheel. This kind of delusion must not be overheard. He would not see Kayna locked up as a madwoman, nor could he risk her being labeled as a witch.
A little wrinkle of worry marked her brow, but otherwise Kayna seemed quite unaffected by her announcement that her father was one of the knights who’d supposedly served King Arthur long ago. Very long ago. The book was centuries old, but the characters were far older, kings even before the Anglo-Saxon invasion. King Arthur would have lived a millennium past, at least.
Terrence was taking her answer more calmly than Griffin was. He reached into his coat pocket and handed Kayna a small square. “Do you know what this is?”
She took it and held it closer to the candle, but frowned and shook her head.
Terrence’s shoulders slumped. Griffin looked at the object, a thin chip of black slate, no bigger than a thumbnail, perfectly square. A green inlay was filled with gold and silver squares. He picked it up from Kayna’s palm.
’Twas not slate.
“What is this?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I found it in the cave where my brother and his wife should have been.”
Griffin dropped the chip on the desk. The cave—he had no explanation for that cave.
“Captain Dennehay, you know Kayna is like my brother’s wife. I thought she might know what it was.”
“A good story,” Terrence said.
“And a true one. You will hold your tongue, and not speak of this again.” Images of women burned at the stake crowded Griffin’s mind.
“Kayna is speaking the truth, and you know it. You’re the only one who knows it. You’re the only other person who was at the cave.”
“Your brother was gravely wounded. His wife was taking him to her home. That is all.”
“Her home wasn’t in a cave. She was taking him to 2014. She did take him to 2014. She was from the future.”
Kayna was listening intently to their words, although Griffin could tell from her expression that she was not following their conversation. What sane person could?
“Kayna is like my brother’s wife.” Terrence repeated, resolute as he put his chip back in his pocket. “Only I think for Kayna, we are the future.”
“Enough.” Griffin drove his hand through his hair, then looked up at the cabin ceiling and shook his head in disbelief that he was having this conversation. Disbelief that this situation existed. “You must stop this, or I’ll be bribing guards to get you out of an asylum as well as Kayna.”
“I’ve never spoken of it, not even to you, not until this very moment. You said yourself we have secrets between us. Secrets they shall remain. But if you need me to help come up with a story to explain her parentage—”
“Leave us now.”
“Aye, aye, Captain.” Terrence picked up the soup tureen once more and bowed to Kayna, but on his way to the door, he kept his back to her as he spoke to Griffin with quiet urgency. “I offer my sympathy, sir, with the Lady Vivien situation. I think it is a crying shame that the Lady Kayna came forward in time too late for you to marry her. Perhaps when I come of age, if she still needs a husband, I would be a logical choice to marry your ward, since I am aware of her true—”
“Get. Out.”
Terrence didn’t have to shut the cabin door as he left, because Griffin slammed it hard behind him.
Kayna, for the first time in her life, actually wanted to kneel at a railing. She lied to Griffin about needing to use the head, and made her way to the back of the ship. The stern.
At the railing, she fell to her knees, the deck of the ship hard beneath them. Since there was no altar of stone, she faced the moon. She hoped it wasn’t sacrilegious of her; God had made the moon, hadn’t He? Just as He’d made the magic that Merlin had used at Camelot.
Camelot. That arrow of loss pierced her chest, but she clasped her hands together and bowed her head to pray.
Dear Lord...
Griffin owned Merlin’s ruby. Everything made sense. Kayna’s presence in this time, her presence on this ship, were no fluke of nature. They were part of her quest. She had not failed, after all.
Kayna clasped her hands tightly and welcomed the pain in her knees like a knight would. She’d succeeded in bringing the ruby to Arthur, although he’d lain on his funeral bower. He was only human, so his death had been inevitable, but it had not been her fault. Sir Kay, Merlin, Arthur, and Guinevere—for Kayna was certain Guinevere had not had the will to live many years without Arthur—had all lived their long lives. Their deaths had left her facing a bleak future of endless war. She thought she’d been sent to deliver the ruby, their last gift of love, as her quest.
Now she knew better.
She’d been sent to use their gift of love. The ruby could no longer help them as their time in the world ended, but they loved her and had not wanted her to be buried with them. The ruby’s magic had been for her.
Kayna bowed her head, humbled to know how much they’d loved her, grateful to have been given this last gift of magic. She would honor them always, by fulfilling her quest. She would live her new life in this new century to the fullest, because they’d wanted her to.
“Is everything all right?”
The concern in Griffin’s voice washed over her like a blessing. He was real. He was solid. He would never disappear and leave her alone.
Dear Lord, thank you for this gift of love.
Kayna stood and turned away from the railing. She drank in the male beauty of Griffin’s face in the moonlight.
“Yes,” she whispered. “Everything is all right.”
With Griffin by her side, what could possibly go wrong?
Chapter Eight
Nothing was going right.
Griffin had needed to battle contrary currents and bad weather in order to drop anchor at Portsmouth, but he’d done it. He was determined to learn his future.
It was possible the original messenger he’d hired in Bristol had made it to London only to find the Lady Vivien was not in residence. The messenger would then have to journey to her country house. Griffin hoped like hell that the man had taken a day or two in London to rest first, buying Griffin time, a thin window of opportunity for the Port Isaac men to intercept the marriage proposal.
Griffin had headed for the inn the moment the anchor had touched the bottom of the harbor.
“No messages for you, sir.”
Griffin was in less of a hurry today. He walked slowly down the market street with Kayna on his arm. She bumped into him often, not unpleasantly, as she struggled to walk straight. She had not yet lost her sea legs. Like many a sailor, she seemed better suited to life aboard a ship.
She’d make a fine captain’s wife, living for much of the year at sea. Griffin’s first frigate in the navy had carried officer’s wives for months at a time during peace. After all, how else could a man produce the sons His Majesty would need to fill the navy in the future?
Begetting children with Kayna—Griffin could not let his thoughts go that way, no matter how delicious she looked in her new clothes. She’d wanted a red silk dress the shop owner had ready-made, but Griffin had found a way to explain that pink was more appropriate for a maiden. Kayna had been fascinated by the shoes with the high heels, which he’d had to explain served no purpose whatsoever. The hoop-petticoat had been even more fascinating and even more useless. She’d stood before the dressmaker’s mirror and jumped up and down in her new underthings, just to watch the hoop-petticoat bounce and collapse.
Kayna bumped into his side again as they walked. Between the hoops and the heels and the sea legs, she could be understandably crying in frustration. Instead, she was laughing.
“I am Merlin the stag,” she said, smiling up at him from under the brim of her very modern straw hat.
Her happiness was infectious. Priceless. He was a greedy man, and wanted it all for his own.
A message might yet arrive. We’ll stay in port another day.
Griffin slept on the floor by the cabin door, as usual. It was no longer for Kayna’s protection. His crew now believed that a woman who had survived a shipwreck must be a lucky person to have on their ship. No, he slept by the door to prevent himself from touching her. Surely one had to be pure and favored by Heaven to be granted life in another time as she had been. She deserved more than to be seduced by a privateer with a pirate’s heart.
Candles had to be lit for breakfast while storm clouds turned day into night. Since they were at anchor, their sails were already furled. The decks were already cleared. Griffin had naught to do but spend time with the woman he could not have. He handed the book to Terrence, and bade him read. Since Kayna was in the chair, Griffin stretched out on the bed on the opposite side of the cabin, as far away as possible. It wasn’t far.
“Book nineteen, chapter six,” Terrence began. “How Lancelot came in the night to the queen and did lay with her.”
Kayna tilted her head. Griffin could practically see her sorting the words she heard. He threw his arm over his eyes and feigned sleep.
“The queen would not be parted from her wounded knights, which were ten in number. She required of the lord of the castle that they be laid in h
er chamber upon all matter of pillows and beds, that she might tend to their salves herself.”
Griffin kept his eyes closed and listened, although he already knew what happened next. The saintly Guinevere had a chat with Lancelot through the window while everyone else slept. It went something like If you want me as badly as I want you, this would be a great time to finally do it, since we’re away from Arthur’s castle. And then Lancelot said something absurd like I’ll show you how much I want to. I’ll tear the iron bars off this window. The idiot cut up his hands and bled all over everything, but at least he finally got to shake the sheets with Guinevere. Misery ensued for the rest of the book.
Women were always the cause of misery. Women were at the root of Griffin’s misery right this moment.
“No!”
Kayna sounded so angry, Griffin was jolted from his fake sleep.
“No, stop that.” She stood and looked from Terrence to him in fury. “That is not Guinevere. Guinevere married Arthur.”
Kayna was passionate in her anger, and damn him, it made her even more desirable.
“Guinevere is a wife. A queen. Arthur’s queen.” Kayna crossed her arms over her breasts as she had on deck when she’d been nude and freezing, freshly hauled up from the angry sea on a stormy day like this one.
Damn him, indeed. She was a miracle, but he could not have her. Bitterness threatened to drag him under.
“Yeah, well, Arthur was old.” He sat up and swung his feet to the floor.
She frowned at him. “Guinevere is old also.”
“Truly?” Terrence asked.
Griffin rolled his eyes. “So this was an old woman’s chance to take someone younger and stronger to her bed.”