Another man held me. A third fiddled with the pack, apparently unable to figure out the zipper.
“He don’t have nothin’.” A pock-marked face leered close to mine. He pulled his stringy hair away from his eyes to get a good look at me, then whistled inward. “He’s a she.”
“Izzat so?” The speaker angled around to share his sour breath. “Let’s get her off the road.”
“There’s no one goin’ to come,” said the guy behind me, shoving me face forward onto the stone.
He was right. No one would save me.
“We’re at the crossroads. Could be a patrol.”
“This far? Coward.”
“I’ve seen them.”
Someone heavy sat on my buttocks, making a bench of me.
“Shove off her, I want a go!”
“I saw her first.”
“Let him at ‘er, he’ll be quick!” They laughed.
My heart hammered against the road. When they finished they’d kill me. My squatter stood and his friends helped roll me over. One undid his pants, and the others were busy trying to figure out how to get mine off me, when he stopped and looked up.
“What? She smell bad?”
“Shut it. I hear something.”
“It’s the water.”
“Shut it!”
They froze. With my head against the road, I heard it. Horses. Not one. Not Lucy. A few. I couldn’t guess how many. More than three.
“What did I tell you? A patrol.”
“Congratulations, you’re bloody right.”
“Run or you’ll bloody die.”
Their hands left me and they were gone. I rolled to my side and tried to sit up. Whatever patrol was coming, be they Saxons or Britons, I did not want to be wretched in their sight. I wanted to stand and accept my fate.
The horses emerged at a walk from the dark southeast road, the direction toward which I had been heading. There were five of them, all strong, able men, all armed and armored. At their lead was an impressive warrior, a savior or a nightmare. They reined their horses to a stop a few feet from me.
“Mistress Casey,” said Lyonel. “I am delighted to see you.”
FORTY-FOUR
I didn’t much like it when Lyonel sent his fellow soldiers galloping across the plains after the highway robbers. Not that I liked the highway robbers, but I was afraid to be alone with Lyonel. Seated in front of him on his horse, enfolded in his powerful arms, I wanted to feel safe, but I would have preferred crawling to Poste Perdu.
Lyonel steered his horse along the southeast branch of the road. Once we’d passed the grove at the crossroads marker, the torches of Poste Perdu flickered into distant view. I tried to gauge that distance and thought it two or three miles at most, and my heart quickened with hope. I would get there in time. But Lyonel’s horse walked at an even pace. Because I itched to give Lancelot my message for Guinevere’s sake, I dared to ask.
“Lyonel, if you please, may we go faster?”
“My only wish is for your comfort, my lady.”
“As fast as you can then, please.”
To my surprise, he obeyed. He crushed me to him, which pulverized my arm but was necessary because there was no other seat belt but him. Then he dug his heels into his horse’s flanks and we took off at a run.
Without further conversation, we quickly arrived at Poste Perdu and entered the same gate through which we’d left with troops barely a month before. The guards, recognizing Lyonel, let us pass. Beyond the gate, stucco buildings cast sagging shadows on streets of dried mud. I was relieved to see people still about. A dice game gathered an audience at the fountain, and men loitered in the alleyways. That meant it was early enough.
Lyonel eased his grip on me. “I will take you to Lancelot. Will that please you, my lady?”
“Thank you, yes. I have an urgent message for him.”
“Then we must hurry.”
Lyonel clucked the horse to a canter. A run would have been too reckless in the fort’s narrow passages. We stopped outside the courtyard of the central building, Lancelot’s headquarters. Lyonel leapt down as nimbly as a smaller man might do, and reached up to help me dismount. I had not seen the chivalrous side of him before. Unwavering in propriety, he took my hand, gently, and led me inside. While we waited for the servant boy to fetch the commander, Lyonel found a chair for me, placed it beside the cold fire pit and helped me to sit. I was completely fooled.
FORTY-FIVE
Lancelot stepped in through the archway and stopped. In the flicker of light from the single torch on the wall, his curls glowed with gold and hid his eyes in their shadows. “You seek your death here,” he said.
The servant boy peered in behind Lancelot, but ducked out again when he heard that.
Lancelot advanced into the room. With a little help from Lyonel, I surprised myself by falling out of my chair and throwing myself at Lancelot’s feet. It took a second to catch my breath. “I’ve come to tell you—”
“I do not need to hear what you have to say. You force me to carry out my promise.” Lancelot waved an arm at Lyonel. “Take her.”
Lyonel knelt down, bathing me with hot breath. The scar on his cheek glowed red. He smiled.
I ignored him. “Lancelot. We waste time talking.”
“We do. Remove her.”
Lyonel lunged. Clamping one huge hand over my mouth, he encircled my waist with the other. Thus burdened, he stood and carried me out the door.
I heard Lancelot call after us, “Return to me when you have finished.”
Lyonel did not answer but gripped me tighter. I kicked and struggled. I might as well have been a kitten or a mouse. His clamp was so powerful it struck me that Lancelot hadn’t been the only one at Cadebir strong enough to kill with his bare hands. It must have been Lyonel who killed poor, awkward Pawly—Lyonel, who now carried me under his arm, not as Lancelot had done in the woods, as though I were a bundle to be moved, but in his own brutal way, as though I were a sack of refuse to be done away with.
Knowing this was his plan, I flailed. Men and women still loitered in the streets but no one tried to help me. No one stopped Lyonel as he carried me down darker and emptier alleys and finally threw me to the cement floor of a forgotten shed.
“You are mine now.”
I was. I knew that. He was too strong. I couldn’t fight him to save myself. But I had to save Guinevere.
“Lyonel—”
“Be quiet.”
“Please give my message to Lancelot.”
“No one cares about your message.”
He slapped a hand over my mouth and shoved me onto my back. I tried to stand and even got to my knees but he threw me to the floor again, so hard I whirled and landed face down on what felt like a stack of sharp rocks. I tried to push myself up with my good arm, but Lyonel was on my back, clawing at my clothes.
He was heavy. His smothering presence felt like one of the dilapidated buildings of Poste Perdu had fallen on me, and I couldn’t crawl out from the wreckage. I tried to kick, but on my stomach instead of my back I could not shove him off, nor could I roll away or free myself.
His hands crawled up inside my sweater and he growled, his lips on my ear, his breath brown with ale, sour meat and stale time. “I have a message for you.”
As Lyonel pressed me against the piled rocks, something small and annoying pressed back, jabbing my hipbone. I’d forgotten about the hidden Velcro pocket of my cargo pants. While Lyonel’s paws roamed I inched my good hand under my hip. My fingers recognized the key from the Langhorne B&B. It was still attached to the plastic flashlight with the Gone! lightning logo. I could grasp it, just barely. I held it tight.
With a rough push, Lyonel rolled me onto my back to face him. “Wizard,” he said, “I will show you magic.”
He grabbed my wrists and pushed my arms against the floor. I aimed the flashlight for his eyes and pushed the button. That little flashlight actually flashed.
Lyonel shouted and fell away. I
pushed the button again, gleeful at his fear, terrified in my glee. “Witch!” he hissed, “witch!” He stood, his eyes wide, and backed away until he stumbled into the opposite wall. His eyes never leaving me, he felt his way along the wall until he found the door and ran out.
I sat panting, with tears streaming down my face, grateful that in the Dark Ages people believed in sorcery and feared it, and that even across the centuries, the magic of Velcro had held its spell.
-----
My left arm didn’t work anymore, but I could walk. With my right hand, I pushed myself to my feet by bracing against what I had thought were rocks but turned out to be cement bricks.
I stepped onto the small threshold outside the door and waited, allowing my senses to orient. A path lay at my feet. Across it a high, cement wall rose to meet the night. The full moon shone above, not low in the sky but not straight over my head, either. I’m no navigator but at least I know things rise in the east and set in the west.
Lancelot’s headquarters were behind me then, at the fort’s center. The gate was behind me, too, south and east. If I turned left, the path would eventually lead me there.
I remembered another gate. One morning, from the floor of my cell, I had watched as Gareth and Agravain greeted Medraut and Pawly there. The latter two had come to Poste Perdu via a road from Beran Byrig. Beyond that lay Saxon territory to the north. If I stepped off the threshold and turned right, the path would take me along the wall to the north side of the fort. I could leave.
Lyonel would have killed me like a cat kills a mouse, toying with me, taking his time, for fun. Lancelot would kill me only if he had to. He wouldn’t enjoy it. He was cruel only when necessary. I counted on that. Either way, I’d be dead. And so would Guinevere, if I left.
I stepped onto the path and immediately ducked back into the hut when, high above on the wall, a guard paced toward me. It wasn’t going to be a simple matter of strolling along the road until I found Lancelot’s courtyard. So I used my TV training. After the guard passed I crept to the edge of the threshold and stepped down when the coast was clear, then darted behind the next building and crouched low, avoiding windows.
The far reaches of the fort were quiet. Narrow streets and small buildings provided things to hide behind when the occasional pedestrian came my way. The fort’s center was busier with strolling men and women, perhaps on their way home after eating and drinking as they might have done at Cadebir. Every inch of me ached but I waited—knowing each second of hurry was time saved for Guinevere and time lost for me—hid behind storage barrels, huts, and walls and once even in a horse trough, until at last, dripping and exhausted, I crawled into Lancelot’s dark courtyard. At first I didn’t know where I was because I’d entered through a rear archway. But as I crawled around the side of the building and saw Lyonel stride out the door in a spill of light, I saw that I was beneath the overgrown vines and collapsing roof of the veranda.
I ducked back into the shadows.
Lyonel’s footsteps receded. I dared another peek. He exited the courtyard and closed the gate behind him. I pulled myself up, sidled to the villa’s door and peered in.
I didn’t expect to see Lancelot kneeling on the cold, cement floor in a spill of torchlight. I didn’t expect his eyes to be closed or his hands to be folded in prayer. I didn’t expect to see tears streaming down his face.
For a second I thought I should not invade his privacy. But my message was more urgent than his prayer.
“Lancelot,” I whispered.
His eyes opened, then widened. “You are dead.”
“Not yet,” I said. “But if I’m to die by your promise I will have my death by your hands.”
“Lyonel killed you.”
“Did he tell you that? It doesn’t matter. You’ve got to go back to Cadebir. They’re going to burn Guinevere.”
“I know the penalty. My men prepare for battle—”
“She burns at dawn.”
He didn’t answer right away, but only gaped at me, wide-eyed, as if I were a ghost. “You lie.” He got to his feet.
“I’ll go with you, but you have to go now. Arthur says there’s nothing he can do.”
“So he sends a woman?”
“He didn’t send me. I came.”
“But you wear his ring.”
It was my turn to gape. Guin had asked me to give her ring to Arthur, and I’d forgotten. Tears welled in my eyes. “It’s Guinevere’s.”
“Attendez.” Lancelot circled the pit and crossed the empty room to face me, his knife sheath clanking against his belt as he strode. He lifted my right hand in his warm grip and examined the ring. With my hand in the hand of my killer, suddenly I was not afraid.
As he released my fingers, Lancelot’s eyes hardened. He unsheathed his knife and raised it. “Lyonel is my strongest man,” he said. “What did you do to him?”
“It was just a trick.” No time to explain flashlights.
He appraised me with respect, albeit without fondness. “Magic?”
Though he was reluctant to do so Lancelot would kill me, because I had crossed him and because he had promised. Being anxious to get on with saving Guinevere only increased his anxiety, and mine. He deserved the truth. I breathed, trying and failing to still the pounding of my heart. “I lied to Arthur. I don’t have magic.”
His brow furrowed as he chewed on that. I still held my hand high, with Guinevere’s ring on my little finger. Close enough to stab me, Lancelot held his knife aloft. Enemies, we faced each other. We had both lied to Arthur. We had both lived inside our lies, and we both knew how bad that felt because we both loved the king.
“But how did you know about Galahad?”
“I read about him, and you. All of you. In a book.”
“What book? There is no book.”
“I read the book in the future.”
He frowned, but he listened.
“I wish I could explain it but I don’t understand how it happened. I’m not—” I stopped for a breath. I would not cry as I faced Lancelot. I wouldn’t beg, either, not even for my life. I wanted my dignity, even at that expense. I let my hands fall to my sides. “I’m not supposed to be here. I came here from the future. It was an accident. I’m not important there, but I want to go back.”
“But that is magic,” he whispered.
I didn’t believe in magic. All the elements of the spell were out of my reach—the car, the lightning, the strange man, and now Lucy. I had come all that way for something. Maybe it was death. Lost in a past that wasn’t mine, I had no place to go where death wouldn’t seek me. I could leave by the north gate and find death at the hands of the Saxons. I might escape by the southeast gate, run out onto the plains and find death in the clumsy paws of highway robbers. Or I could accept it at the expert hands of Lancelot.
“Lance. The book says you’re going to save Guinevere, but you have to hurry.”
The firelight flickered. He tapped his knife against his palm and shoved the knife into its sheath at his belt. “I need soldiers. I do not need you. You are free to go.” It meant, “Don’t stay.” He turned his back to me, stepped past the fire pit and took the torch from its sconce.
I didn’t faint or fall. I continued to breathe. “Lancelot,” I said, wanting to give him one thing more, because honesty had saved me and I was glad to be saved.
He stopped, and I went on.
“In all of history and legend, only one warrior is more powerful than you are.”
“Who is that?” he asked, turning to me.
“Your son, Galahad.”
Our eyes locked for a moment’s truce, acknowledgement of our common shame and our common goal. Then he dashed out the door, shouting, “To horses!”
Poste Perdu responded with the clamor of metal and a thousand pounding footsteps, all rushing toward the gate.
FORTY-SIX
The full moon had gone into hiding. Lancelot and his army galloped west to rescue Guinevere. Regardless of speed or my interv
ention, legend told of their success. But I had learned history wasn’t necessarily the same. I knew only that Lancelot had better ride fast, and I had done right to come.
The guards at the north gate ignored me as though I were invisible. A wall torch struggled against the rising wind, spitting sparks at the very power that threatened to snuff it. From the stone archway, the road led out to infinite, lumpen darkness. No light broke the eastern horizon. There was time—time to save Guinevere, at least, if not the Britons. I had time, too. Forever laid itself before me, a tempestuous ocean empty of boats.
The dirt track led north. I made it about a hundred yards before the rain came. At first it was only a sprinkle and I pulled up my hood. Lightning ahead showed soot-black clouds packing for a rumble in the sky, with the full moon cowering behind them.
My shoulder was past throbbing. Throbbing connotes ebb and flow, up and down, a coming and going of pain. There was no ebb, no going of hurt, only flowing, increasing pain until the only place it could go was numbness.
Heedless of my tiny progress beneath them, the skies at last poured forth. The plains afforded no protection from the abuses the storm chose to throw. At first those were only rain upon rain, cold and repetitive as icy fingernails tap-tapping the Formica counter in a Midwestern winter kitchen. Like the pain in my shoulder there was only build, until wind drove the rain at my face and chest and I walked against a freezing wall of wet.
I considered no choices. I had made my choice and all others were closed to me. I watched the ground and plodded on. The dirt track soon became mud. It filled my boots with extra weight, sucking obscenely at every step. But a step or a slog made no difference to me. I was going nowhere and I was in no hurry to get there.
In minutes, or hours, the track ended at a road. I hadn’t looked up in a long while so when the orderly stones appeared at my feet I stopped, not knowing what to do about them. The choice of left or right was of no matter. I had infinite time to decide so I did not decide.
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