Camelot & Vine

by Petrea Burchard

  “I think that’s like a battery.”

  “You’ve seen it?”

  “Yeah, we use that kind of power to run cell phones and laptops.”

  “Are they moe-tors?”

  “Sort of. But Myrddin, it would take a thousand of those jars to move a car. Maybe more.”

  “That many? Hmm.” He thought about it, but not for long.

  -----

  Myrddin charged through the gloomy forest ahead of me, carrying the clay pot. Wet branches, heavy with rain, formed arches above us, turning the path into a dark hallway. Trotting to keep up with his traveling stride, I carried the sodden folds of my tunic. My muddy slippers splashed in cold puddles, and kicked up the scent of life swarming in the underbrush. When at last the woods thinned, the rain was free to make its freezing way to my skin. We’d barely cleared the edge of the forest when lightning flashed over the plains, renewing the storm’s vigor.

  “There!” Myrddin shouted, pointing to the split-second view of a crest of high ground a couple of hundred yards away.

  We waded out into the downpour through grass as high as my hips. Grass tangled around our ankles as we crossed the open field, grass grabbed at our legs as we climbed the slippery sides of the rise. At the top we were just high enough to gaze out over an ocean of grass and more grass.

  Myrddin thrust the pot at me. “Hold this!”

  I almost dropped it.

  “Hold it tight! Now raise it to the sky!” He took the lodestone from his pouch.

  “Are you kidding? I’ll be struck!” As if to back me up, the heavens chose that moment to shout down their loudest thunder yet.

  “The lightning didn’t kill you,” Myrddin yelled, “it sent you here!”

  “You said it wasn’t the lightning!”

  “I said it struck near you! I’m attempting to send you home! Do you not wish to go?”

  I hugged the jug to my chest. Myrddin spread his arms, welcoming the rain like a priest welcomes the holy spirit. Black clouds poured forth, opening like overturned urns of ice water. I craved hot coffee. I wanted that coffee in a civilized coffee shop with electric lighting and a flush toilet. I wanted soft, dry fabric against my skin. I wanted more than one pair of shoes and I wanted a decent, hot shower.

  I also wanted Myrddin’s respect, Guinevere’s friendship and King Arthur’s trust. And I wanted to live.

  I held the jar out to Myrddin. “I’m afraid.”

  He reached for the jar. When his bony fingers touched mine on the clay a crunching blast of thunder smashed our ears, accompanied by lightning bright enough to blind us. The jar exploded in our hands, shards striking our skin like pelting rain.

  I screamed. Myrddin roared. We tumbled down the rise.

  TWENTY-THREE

  When I could see again, I noticed I was still there.

  Myrddin took my hand and helped me to my feet. Leaving the shards of the broken jar behind, we returned to the forest. I no longer cared how cold and wet I was until we got back to the hut. Drostan, Myrddin’s hefty aide, had tended the fire and brought biscuits, and the place felt plenty civilized. As much as I wanted coffee, Myrddin’s tea sufficed. I stood by the fire to let my tunic dry.

  Myrddin went off to change and came back in a dry robe. His long hair became frizzy in the moist air, a detail he obviously cared nothing about. “They say wizards can’t cross water, you know.”

  “I’ve heard it said, yes.”

  “You did fine in the rain.”

  “I didn’t have to cross it, did I?”

  “Ah,” he said. “You’ve got me there.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  “One must be physically the most powerful,” said King Cadwy of Cornwall, a slim, elderly man whose lack of chin could not be disguised by his thin beard. He leaned back in his chair after dinner, satisfied to have ended the conversation with his pronouncement.

  “Not necessarily,” said King Arthur, raising his goblet to call for more wine. “A soldier may succeed by being deft even if he’s the smaller man.”

  I avoided such conversations. It was easy enough to do at my end of the table. Rarely did Myrddin show up for the evening meal, and as Elaine wasn’t much of a talker, it was relatively quiet where I sat. I could watch and listen.

  At the center of the table, Kings Arthur and Cadwy continued while the priest nodded agreement no matter what anyone said, and Owain of Corinium Dobunnorum continued to drink as much wine as he could.

  “But,” said Cadwy, waving his hand so the jewel he wore on his finger caught the flicker of firelight, “one big soldier, like Lancelot for example, can crush two smaller, agile men. I’ve seen him do it.”

  “An unfair example. Lancelot is our champion. He’s powerful, and deft as well.”

  “You’re too kind, Sire,” said Lancelot. He’d stayed out of the discussion for the most part, but he was nothing if not gracious.

  “Let the wizard solve the argument,” said the king.

  For him, it was a bit of a brag. Among his colleagues, King Arthur was the only one to have two wizards and, for all we knew, I was the only female wizard in Britain. I enhanced his prestige. We both liked that.

  “Mistress Casey, what’s the best defense when fighting hand-to-hand?”

  I thought about it. “I suppose it’s ideal to be invisible, Your Grace.”

  King Arthur laughed, but Cadwy didn’t like the joke. “Where’s the honour in that? If your opponent can’t see you, how can he strike you?”

  “The honor’s in protecting one’s people from the enemy,” I said. I should have said, “I was only kidding.”

  “I believe the wizard’s got something,” said King Arthur.

  Cadwy said, “Hmmph.” He opened his mouth to argue further but I pretended not to notice and rose to leave, thinking it best to quit the conversation before I got deeper into it. The queen had long since excused herself and it was time I sought my opportunity as well. “Thank you, Your Grace, for including me at your table once again.” I bowed a little. I was picking up courtly manners, or what passed for such at Cadebir. The king nodded, his lids heavy with drink and argument.

  The other women tended to excuse themselves early for the same reasons I did. Even when sober, the men loved arguing for the sake of it. Once they got drunk the logical next step was fighting or sex. On a good night they tore up the hall. On a bad night it was best to stay out of their way.

  It was too early to go to my hut. With no books or magazines to read, when I couldn’t go to sleep all I ever did was sit in the dark and ponder my state. My presence at Cadebir and the stupendous unfeasibility of my return to the twenty-first century made it impossible to lie still most nights. I didn’t know if it was reality or unreality I was facing, and I couldn’t sort it out. Restless, I often wrapped myself in Sagramore’s cloak and walked the wall, gazing out over the blackness of Myrddin’s woods or the twinkling candles of Cadebir town.

  I left the hall and climbed the nearest ladderway at the southwest gate. I wanted to walk, and to think about Myrddin’s experiment. The rain had cleared, leaving a sparkling night. With the woods below me I walked north, letting the plains and then the marshes beyond reveal themselves as I approached the northern part of the wall. I wondered what I’d do if Myrddin found a way to send me back to the twenty-first century. I’d thought it was impossible, but there I was in the sixth century, possible or not. If Myrddin could send me back to Hollywood, I didn’t know if I’d want to go. Yes, I missed coffee and plumbing and electricity. But the future didn’t hold much else for me.

  The day’s work had been put to bed, leaving the night quiet and clear, with stars bright enough to light the plains. The sentries noted my passing but left me to myself. Illogical as it was, I felt safe on the wall. My whole life lacked logic: the future, Hollywood, was behind me and an ancient war was coming. The world I walked in was imaginary or at least tenuous, a bubble. I had to figure out what to do before it burst. I searched the sky but whatever gap I’d come throug
h wasn’t in the stars.

  I pulled the cloak tighter and stopped to watch a small blaze atop the Tor at Ynys Witrin. The priestesses must have been having a bonfire. Their island existence was presumably more primitive even than life at Cadebir. How impossibly distant from LA I was. I hardly remembered it, though at Cadebir I was more of an actor than I’d ever been in Hollywood. Had the people there once meant something to me? They had, so much so that I’d run away from them, feeling—what? Grief? More like fear, or desperation, or shame. But those were feelings about myself.

  I’d once had feelings about other people, especially as a child. Something had happened to my sympathy along the way. Maybe I’d given up on it when my dad died because I gave up on my mom then.

  But sympathy was coming back to me. I felt it for Guinevere, though I could see her feelings for me ran hot and cold. For one so young, her pressures were great. When I was her age I was drinking my way through college. In my clumsy hands, the responsibilities of a barbarian queen would have been worse than bungled. If I’d been forced to marry an older man I didn’t love, I’d have cheated on him, too.

  My sympathy for Arthur was even stronger. He wasn’t the handsome romantic of my fantasies, though he had a rough charm. But a cheating wife on his mind and the weight of Britain on his shoulders made me want to step in, hold him up, be more than a friend to him.

  My fakery had alleviated his fear. That made me happy and a bit scared. I couldn’t protect him. Myrddin was already onto me. So far the only thing I could think of to get out of what I was getting into was to leave. But there were two things wrong with that: I had nowhere to go and—yes, I had my answer—I wanted to stay.

  My walk had brought me above the exercise yard. Any further would take me near the barracks, a dangerous neighborhood for a woman alone at night. I turned back toward the huts, to take the ladderway down and go home.

  “Moonlight suits you, Mistress Casey.”

  I jumped, not expecting the sentry to speak. It was Lyonel, walking off his mead.

  “Oh. Hello.”

  “You sound less than happy to see me.”

  “You surprised me.” I tried to move past him.

  He blocked my way, towering above me and trapping me atop the wall between himself and the ladderway. “You should not be here alone, mistress. You may be a wizard, but you are also a woman.”

  “I’m going that way.” I tried to look him in the eye, to seem powerful, but I couldn’t.

  “I will walk with you.”

  “There’s no need.”

  “I said, I will walk with you.”

  He allowed me to pass, then placed his hand on my shoulder and walked alongside me. I didn’t know if, under Cadebir mores, I had somehow acquiesced to such familiarity or if Lyonel took it without my granting it. I only knew I wanted to ask the sentries for help but I wasn’t sure I was in danger.

  “This is my stop,” I said brightly, when we reached the top of the ladderway closest to the huts. “Thanks.”

  I moved to get past him. He grabbed my waist while reaching his big paw behind my head to pull me to him. I stiffened, but he buried his face in my neck. His lips crawled across my skin, squirming their way up my chin to my face.

  With my hands against his chest, I pushed. He was strong, as strong as the odor of alcohol on his breath. The only way I was going to get out of his embrace was if he decided it would be so.

  “Let me go!” It was not a whisper, not a yell. I spoke it plain and clear. “I don’t want you.”

  He grunted and released me, staggering back a step. I ran down the ladderway—not graceful, but not backward. I made it to the ground without falling and took off running, only to stumble and fall in the wet grass. Lyonel laughed, but he didn’t follow me.

  I pulled myself up and ran.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  “Casey, sit beside me. Lance, you don’t mind, do you?” The king did not wait for an answer. He turned to the servant to request more wine.

  I thought Lancelot minded but he was too polite to say so. I took up my trencher. Lancelot and Elaine stood, both displaced by the inconvenience and embarrassment at what amounted to a public demotion. Most people were too busy gorging and drinking to notice, but Medraut’s eyebrows lifted like Roman arches when we played our musical chairs at the head of the dining hall.

  King Arthur relaxed when I took the seat next to him. He threw his arm around me. Guinevere, at his other side, seemed to find it amusing.

  “Casey, can you make my men invisible?” The king's breath bordered on the Sagramore. Sometimes I thought he drank entirely too much wine, and this was one of those times.

  “Maybe one or two of them, Sire. Not the whole army. It’s a very complicated process.” I touched the wound on my forehead, where I’d run into the Saxon’s armor upon my arrival.

  “Of course, of course,” he said. “We’ll talk about it when you’ve fully recovered. Soon, I hope.”

  Cadwy leaned across Guinevere. “What if Mistress Casey is invisible while you’re in battle? How will you know where she is?”

  “We shall have to come up with a signal,” said King Arthur.

  Guinevere laughed. “I suppose a wave of the hand won’t do.”

  “Perhaps a bird call,” said Owain, sloshing his words.

  “Tweet,” said King Arthur. “Can you do that?”

  I assured him I could, but if he couldn’t distinguish me from a bird we weren’t getting anywhere. They thought that was funny.

  Lancelot picked at his food. The king pretended not to notice, but his chattiness made me think he enjoyed Lancelot’s displeasure.

  I thought the seating change was only for one night, but it stuck. After a day of sewing with Guinevere and Lynet or making batteries with Myrddin, I’d arrive in the hall to find the place between King Arthur and Lancelot reserved for me. It was an uncomfortable spot, hot on one side, cold on the other.

  Lancelot was never anything but polite. He’d pull out my chair for me and see to it that the servants kept my glass full. He’d retrieve a piece of bread I dropped and return it to me. Not that I wanted it, but anyone else would have eaten it.

  Ordinarily, Lancelot didn’t speak to me unless he had to, but the night Elaine didn’t come to dinner he drank heavily, which made him drop his guard.

  “Is Elaine all right?” I asked.

  “She is not well,” he said. “The baby will come at any moment. Lynet is with her.”

  “Maybe we should get Myrddin.”

  “For what purpose?”

  “To help. With the baby.”

  “Bringing babes is the work of women.”

  “Is there someone here who...specializes?”

  He downed the rest of his wine and shrugged as if he didn’t understand the question. “In the dell, yes. I know only that I shall stay away until the baby is born. And I pray God will give me a son.”

  “Sure. Good.” There may be worse situations for lectures on feminism, but I haven’t been in them.

  Lancelot’s unaccustomed chattiness made me nervous, especially coupled with his inebriation. When Guinevere excused herself, the king gave me permission to leave as well. I edged through the crowd of soldiers toward the front door. Gareth shouted, “Goodnight, Casey!” Bedwyr and Sagramore gave a little salute from their table near the fire.

  Lyonel, lording it over the back of the hall with his Belgae friends, had obviously experienced no embarrassment over our encounter on the wall. “When will you drink with us, Mistress Casey?” He pounded the table with his fist. His scar glowed red from too much drink. “Come sit with me! Stay late for once, eh? Why don’t you like me, Mistress Casey?”

  I didn’t answer. Drinking with Lyonel would be like drinking with Mr. Hyde. Fortunately there were several tables between his and the door. I turned to go.

  “Stay!” Lyonel roared out the order. The hall hushed. He pounded the table harder and spilled his mead.

  I turned back again, not knowing what to d
o. The fear on my face must have looked like something else.

  “Lyonel, she will put a hex on you!” said a Belgae soldier nearby.

  Then it was all laughter and yelling in their Gallic tongue, and my chance to leave.

  The torches still blazed outside the door. I pulled one out of the ground to take with me, partly to light my way and partly to brandish at anyone who bothered me, and started down the path into the Cadebir night. Before I reached the huts I heard footfalls behind me. Immediately, I whirled and brandished.

  “Mistress Casey!”

  Medraut and his overfed shadow, Pawly, appeared and disappeared in the light of the torch I swung.

  “Sorry. I thought you were someone else.”

  “Lyonel, perhaps?” Medraut’s voice oozed from between his lips like grease. “We thought you might like an escort tonight, mistress.”

  Something about their skulking was wrong, though Medraut was too skinny for his violet breeches and Pawly was so awkward I perceived no physical danger. “Are you guys gonna protect me from Lyonel?”

  “After one more glass of mead, Lyonel will fall asleep with his face on his trencher,” said Medraut. “But Lancelot will lie awake tonight, plotting his return to the king’s side.” They fell into step on either side of me, Medraut slinking, Pawly lumbering.

  “Lancelot’s unhappy with me for taking his spot next to the king.”

  “Lancelot has a high opinion of himself. But I’m happy my father has found a friend in you.”

  It was my instinct not to take Medraut’s offered arm. I switched the torch to my other hand.

  The fuzz of Medraut’s mustache twisted over his too-sweet smile. “I must admit, as much as I’d like to sit at the king’s table, from below I’m better able to watch Lancelot as he squirms.”