Camelot & Vine

by Petrea Burchard

  If the queen took implicit meaning from Lyonel's words, she ignored it. “Very well.” She flounced past him into the barn, skirting the pile of manure. I followed, leaving him outside with his insidious smile.

  Stepping from sunlight to shade I blinked, shaking off Lyonel’s taint of imagined sins. Instead of the expected alfalfa and manure, my nose smarted at the scents of hot metal, leather and oil. Under the low ceiling, about thirty men worked in a central room. Some sharpened blades and repaired weapons. Most of them, though, were making copies of Lucy’s saddle.

  The saddle was perched prominently on a wooden stand in the middle of the main space. Light spilled in from the back door, showing the saddle to its best advantage. I heard not one neigh or moo; instead, men’s voices discussed the work: “It needs to be thicker there. Use more padding.” “Sagramore says that’s good.” “Here now, give a quick cut, will you?” Mostly the pound! pound! pound! of hammer on nail and the whap! of leather slapping against leather.

  I allowed my palm to feel along the seat of one of the copies. The hide they’d used to make it was soft, undyed brown, with short tufts of hair still on it. Brass rivets, their small, round heads etched with intricate designs, attached the wooden stirrups. I tugged on the stirrup leather. Solid.

  “I think Elaine’s going to faint.” Guinevere sat on a stool near the open back door, where Elaine had plopped herself onto a bench. Lynet was fanning Elaine with her scarf and dabbing sweat from her friend’s forehead.

  Sunlight from the door shone directly into Elaine’s eyes. “I’m not going to faint.”

  Sagramore crunched across straw and scraps to block the offending light with his bulk. “Are you ill, my lady?”

  “We’ve been having our exercise,” said Lynet.

  “Arthur’s orders,” said Guinevere.

  “I’m fine,” said Elaine.

  “I have water, fresh from the well.” Sagramore darted out the door. I had not thought Sagramore could dart.

  “One day I’ll get the nerve to suggest he try some mint,” said Lynet.

  “He’s sweet.” Elaine squinted and pushed herself to sit up. “I’m sorry. I’m not much good at exercise.”

  “We shouldn’t have made you come,” I said, leaning on Lucy’s saddle. “It was too much for you.”

  “Here.” Sagramore arrived and knelt at Elaine’s feet to present a cup of water.

  “Thank you.” When Elaine smiled, the big man blushed and cast his bashful eyes at the floor. “I...we...we’re...”

  “You’re very kind.” Elaine drank.

  “You’ve been making copies of Casey’s saddle,” said Guinevere. “They’re quite fine. Arthur will be pleased.”

  “Thank you, my lady.”

  “What do you think of it, Casey?” asked the queen, sitting erect on her stool and appearing to be interested.

  “Yes, what do you think, mistress?” Sagramore's droopy eyes looked up with hope.

  “It’s remarkable,” I said. “Almost perfect.”

  “But something’s missing.” This, Sagramore said with the conviction of the old “death and taxes” joke, as though something were always missing for him and that was the way of the world.

  My instinct was to be more positive, especially in front of women I thought he might want to impress. “Only one thing. It’s important, but I’m sure it’s easy to fix. Look.” I demonstrated with Lucy’s stirrup leather. “See? The stirrups are adjustable. That way the saddle can be fitted to the man.”

  A light went on in his somber, brown eyes. “Ah, for leverage. Ingenious.” He almost smiled.

  “It is,” said Guinevere. “Do you think that will be simple to fix in the time we have, Sagramore?”

  “Simple enough, I suppose.”

  “Wonderful.” The queen stood. “My friends, reward yourselves. Go on to the well and soak your feet.” She looked away from me, from Elaine, and especially from Lynet to fix her gaze on Lucy’s saddle. “I’ll stay here and inspect the work. To report back to Arthur.”

  Lynet straightened. “Surely Sagramore can report his own progress to the king.”

  In the silent second that followed, Sagramore focused on Lucy’s stirrup. Elaine sipped her water. I wasn’t sure what had happened.

  “I will see for myself,” said Guinevere, refusing to look at us.

  She was the queen. It was her final word.

  -----

  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 demonstrate
d. “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?”