Camelot & Vine

by Petrea Burchard

  “It’s Evelyn,” said her cheerful outgoing message. “You know what to do, so do it.”

  I took a deep breath.

  “Hi Mom. It’s Casey. I know, I know, it’s not a holiday, but guess what? I’m in England. I actually took a vacation. Um...listen, I just wanted to say hello. I’ll try you again soon.” I hung up, relieved and slightly shaking.

  At 11:55, having dented the pain in both head and arm with Dr. Rattish’s prescription painkiller, I waited on the Langhorne’s front porch. I had left the purse and fanny pack behind. Everything I needed fit into my one remaining serviceable pocket. My muscles were stiff but my jeans were loose. I felt lean and tough and ready to stand up to whatever Bellorham had to say.

  The daylight made me squint, probably an effect of the concussion, so my sunglasses came in handy. I could have done without the bra, but the thrill of clean underpants was no small thing. My feet burned from the abuse of my stylish, ruined boots, which I wore without zipping them. It hardly mattered because the soles flopped loose, but Small Common didn’t have a shoe store and I was damned if I’d wear hospital booties to meet a lawyer.

  From the porch I saw thatched roofs across the way, reminders that what Small Common lacked in commerce it made up for in charm. It might be the perfect hideout for a green-thumbed widow, a novelist with a day-job in Salisbury or an errant actor who needed a new path.

  Tires crunched on gravel. A black Mercedes-Benz sedan—not new, not old—rolled to a stop on the driveway. I ran my fingers through my newly defiant hair.

  A dark-haired man climbed out of the driver’s side. I took one step down the porch stairs and stopped. The man approached and offered his business card.

  “Hello, I’m Arthur,” he said.

  He was.

  FIFTY

  I stared.

  “Perhaps you have one already.” He even had the gravel voice.

  “Sorry. No. Please.” I held out my hand.

  He smiled and gave me the card. “I’m glad to meet you, Cassandra.” He had whiter, straighter teeth than the king’s, which was to be expected in a century with dentists. “Extremely glad. Relieved, actually.” He laughed in a soft, embarrassed way, as though maybe he shouldn’t have said that. He had gray eyes.

  “You mean the accident.” I hardly heard myself.

  “Well. Yes. Erm.” He cleared his throat. “Have you had lunch?”

  Bellorham had a sturdy build, like the king’s. He was clean cut, like a lawyer should be, but not overly so. He wore his brown hair just long enough to pull it behind his ears. A country lawyer, I assumed. Without whiskers to soften it, the corner of his jaw was accentuated. Instead of a tunic he wore a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Whatever battles he may have fought had not scarred his arms.

  He ushered me down the steps and held the car door for me. Such gentlemen, the Brits.

  “I’m certain we can put things right without much trouble,” he said, backing the car out of Ajay’s small, gravel lot. “There was no damage to the monument and English Heritage doesn’t want publicity. If the world knows how you got inside the fence, then everyone’ll want to have a go at it. And of course they’re afraid you’ll sue.” He glanced at me, then back at the street. “You’re not going to sue, are you?”

  “English Heritage?”

  “Stonehenge is one of their properties.”

  “Why would I sue?”

  “Some people think that’s what Americans do.”

  If I hadn’t been in shock I’d have laughed. I tried smiling.

  “You must tell me if you don’t feel well,” he said.

  Not the reaction I was hoping for.

  “I’ll be happy to drive you to Salisbury if you need to see Rattish again.”

  “Thanks. No, I’m okay.”

  We pulled up in front of the pub and he hurried around to help me out of the car. I could have managed it myself. We could have walked to the pub, for that matter.

  An unlettered, painted sign, a picture of a turkey and a cat, hung above the door. Inside the pub a carved, wooden bar, leather booths and a stone fireplace (unlit for summer) accommodated a few regulars.

  “I recommend the fish and chips,” said Bellorham. “It’s the real thing, not that greasy stuff they sell in the tourist spots. Hello, Tom.”

  The red-faced innkeeper ambled over to us from the far end of the bar.

  “Welcome to Two Toms, miss. Good to see you’re feeling better. Fish ‘n chips?”

  “Two,” said Bellorham. He ordered a pint for himself and a sparkling water for me. The regulars tracked our progress across the room and we took a booth in the farthest corner by the window. One man said, “Hello, miss.”

  I welcomed the engulfing coziness of brown leather seats. “I guess people notice strangers in a town this small,” I said to Bellorham as we settled in.

  “We’re only just a village. And you’re a bit of a celebrity.”

  “Oh no,” I blushed, “I’m not famous.”

  “You were a missing person. We’ve all been concerned. Especially me.”

  “Oh.” Of course they hadn’t seen my commercials. “Because you were driving.”

  “Yes.” He leaned across the table and whispered. “And because it was strange. I didn’t hit you. Did I?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  He gave a satisfied nod. “I did brake, you know, as hard as I could. But it was raining. The horse slid on the pavement. You flew into the bushes and the horse seemed to fly after you. I got out to help and you were...gone.”

  He waited for my reaction with eyebrows raised.

  “Gone?”

  “Completely disappeared.” He slapped the table. “The vision has not ceased to plague me.”

  It happened. He saw it happen. He saw me leave.

  He tilted his head to intercept my gaze. “What is it?”

  “Maybe you imagined it.”

  “I did nothing of the sort. The horse practically left skid marks.”

  “That’s wild.”

  “Yes it is,” said Arthur, watching me.

  I turned away and gazed out the window, not knowing what else to do. People came and went from the half-timbered buildings of Small Common’s one block downtown. They carried bags, swept sidewalks, stopped to chat. Between the shops, shady alleys beckoned to secret hiding places overflowing with flowered vines.

  “I like Small Common,” I said.

  “It must seem provincial compared to Hollywood.”

  “Not necessarily a bad thing.” I touched the rippled window glass and wondered about other eyes that had gazed through it in other years, long-ago.

  “That ring is most unusual,” said Arthur. “Where’d you get it?”

  “Um.”

  “I have one much like it.”

  He placed his hands on the table. They were just like the king’s, only cleaner and without calluses. He didn’t wear a wedding ring. On the fourth finger of his right hand he wore a ring like King Arthur’s, the one that matched Guinevere’s. It could have been the same ring, black from tarnish and age.

  Tom arrived with our fish and chips. “Best in town,” he said, placing the plates before us. He headed back to the bar.

  “Easy to say when you’re the only pub,” said Arthur to Tom’s back.

  I stared at the food, taking in the aroma of fried fish and hot potatoes.

  “Go on. Aren’t you hungry?”

  I remembered I was famished. The fork felt strange in my hand. The fish was delicious and the green, lumpy stuff on my plate was interesting.

  Inexplicably, Arthur poured vinegar on his meal. “The ring’s been in my family for as long as anyone remembers. I’ve never seen another one ‘til yours.” He wiped his hands with his napkin, pulled his bifocals from his shirt pocket and lifted my hand to examine Guinevere’s ring. “Yours is exactly the same only smaller, as though they were made to be companions. Sorry.” He returned my hand to where he’d found it. “I assume you bought
it in England?”

  I swallowed. “It was sort of a gift.”

  “Sort of? From whom?”

  I sat there with my ears ringing, wanting to tell him, but not wanting to tell him, how I got Guinevere’s ring.

  Arthur shook his head. “That was prying. Sorry.”

  “No.”

  “It was. Mind you, not all my questions are prying, but that one was.”

  He picked up his glass and, resisting the urge to ask more questions, dabbed his napkin at the puddle it left behind. I wasn’t sure if I could trust him with my story and even if I could, I didn’t know how to begin. Is there a good way to tell someone you went back in time without making him think you’re nuts? I took another bite of fish. I hadn’t had much salt in a while and my mouth watered indecently. I gulped my water and splashed a little onto my shirt. I couldn’t find my napkin.

  “This must be difficult,” Arthur said, breaking the silence. “Your holiday marred by an accident and now all these questions.” He toyed with his—King Arthur’s—ring. “At least I assume you’re on holiday. Or do you intend to stay?”

  “I haven’t thought that far ahead.”

  “You must have come to Small Common for a reason. As opposed to London, for example.”

  To lose myself. “It’s funny. I meant to visit King Arthur sites.”

  “Why is that funny?”

  “I guess I got sidetracked.”

  “Well, I’m your man. I’m his namesake.”

  “Of course you are.”

  “Where would you like to go?”

  Having the pleasure of Arthur’s company beyond lunch was an appealing prospect. “Is there a hill?”

  “Lots of hills.”

  “Big one. Flat.”

  “That would be Cadbury Castle.”

  My breath went shallow. “That’s it.”

  “It’s said to have been Camelot.”

  “There was no Camelot.”

  “Not much of a King Arthur fan, are you? All facts and no fantasy.”

  “I’m more interested in the history, what really happened.”

  “Fine. But we must stop at the stables first. They’ve agreed not to press charges if you settle the rental fee and pay for the farrier.”

  “What charges?”

  His eyebrows went up. “Horse theft, my lady.”

  “Oh.”

  He leaned forward, with an expression of curiosity rather than accusation, and whispered again, “How did you get the horse inside the fence at Stonehenge?”

  “I don’t remember.” I wasn’t going to tell him there was no fence when I got there.

  He was sympathetic. “Is it a total blank?”

  “I rented Lucy. It started to rain. Your car came along, I remember that. Then lightning. I think that’s what frightened Lucy. Then I don’t remember anything ‘til the hospital.” My voice wavered on the lie.

  Bellorham leaned back against the leather seat. His upper lip curled with a hint of mischief. “A month is a long time,” he said. “It’ll come back to you.”

  -----

  Lucy thrust her long, gray neck out of the stable window and neighed.

  I hopped from the car and limped over to kiss her velvet muzzle. She knew me, all right, and I knew by the way she nibbled my hair that she was happy to see me. I wished she could talk. I wondered if she was as confused as I was and if she missed Llamrai as much as I missed my friends.

  “You’ve bonded with that horse, haven’t you?” said Arthur.

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s as though you’ve been through a trauma with her.”

  “Maybe I have.”

  The livery owner was happy to see me but for different reasons than everyone else’s. I paid with a credit card, which suited him. Outside I kissed Lucy again and promised to visit her, knowing I’d keep the promise.

  Arthur and I settled into his car once more. We turned south onto Old Wigley Road, the same winding road Lucy and I had taken a month before. “There’s where my car almost hit you,” said Arthur, as we approached an intersection where a gravel road met up with the paving alongside a row of bushes. There was indeed a gap in the bushes. I craned my neck to look back as we passed. On one side of the bushes, a gravel road. On the other side, a plowed field.

  I tried to recognize landmarks but everything goes by faster in a car than it does on horseback. The sixth century woods where I’d landed must have been just past the bushes in that field. Britons and Saxons had fought and died there. King Arthur had stood on that very ground. But barns and hedgerows tamed it now and I couldn’t be sure.

  We stopped in the town of Warminster because Warminster had a shoe store, and “You can’t climb a hill in those sorry excuses for footwear.” I was in a hurry to see Cadebir so I bought the first pair of comfortable walking shoes that fit. Arthur said he’d never known a woman to buy shoes in such haste, and I said I hadn’t either.

  -----

  Cadbury Hill dominated the landscape more like a sagging, green layer cake than the proud battleship it had once appeared to be. Where the ramparts had been imposing long ago, they were now overgrown with trees and grass. But it was Cadebir, and the sight of it in the distance simultaneously inflated and punctured me.

  Other than the location it occupied at the foot of Cadbury Hill, the town of South Cadbury didn’t resemble Cadebir Town in the least. The village marketed its English charm, not to Disneyland proportions, but with tourist accommodations and an inn called The Camelot. No soldier lurked, no chimney smoked. Tourists in running shoes and shorts roamed the sunlit streets snapping pictures of rose gardens, ancient walls and old churches.

  Arthur parked beyond a church at the south end of town. We followed a shaded path up a mild slope and climbed some steps to a gate in a stone wall, where a sign declared we were about to enter “Castle Lane Leading to Camelot Fort.” Castle Lane led straight up the hill without zig-zagging. Nor was it as steep as I remembered. Fifteen hundred years of marching feet and erosion had cut it deep. Trees towered above us and we walked in their canyon of roots.

  Minutes before, I’d been eager; now I dragged my feet in my new leather walking shoes, afraid to arrive at the top, afraid of how different the hill fort would be. My heart bounced like a ball in a box, picking up momentum every time it hit the sides. I stopped to breathe away the dizziness. Arthur held my arm.

  “Maybe this wasn’t a good idea.”

  “I just need a minute.”

  I tried to focus on him. The irony that I approached Cadebir fort with a possible descendant of Arthur himself was not lost on me. But this man wasn’t King Arthur. He looked the same, but something about him was fundamentally different from the king I had loved. I wondered if Bellorham felt connected to the place or if I just wanted him to.

  We went on. The top wasn’t far. When we crested it, Arthur waited, sensing I needed to take it in.

  Everything was gone.

  Nothing remained of the gate where I’d first entered the fort, or if it did, the guard house rested under years of earth. No hall, no barn, no barracks, no wall. Summer’s sweet air replaced the smoke of the smithy.

  Yet traces remained if I allowed myself to see them. The once dusty path that led up to the promontory had given over to wild, green grass on a mild slope. Even the wall could be imagined in the gentle berm around the hilltop. A few people walked the perimeter, looking out over the countryside and taking pictures. A big, white dog followed along behind a young couple holding hands.

  “We can see the ramparts best on the south side,” said Arthur. “Too many trees on the north. Watch your step.”

  He touched my good arm to guide me along the top of the berm, clockwise toward the south. My friends and I had made a habit of walking in the other direction. The smooth ground along the east side remained even where the breach had been, only two nights before. Where once there had been a copse, few trees grew; we strolled past it to the south wall and stood with the pasture at our backs.


  “There,” said Arthur. “The locals brag about this view.”

  The southern ramparts were in good shape, their tiers more defined than those we’d seen on our approach from the north. Arthur walked on and I followed slowly until I had to stop. Squinting, I looked out across the years. Guinevere and I had stood near this spot when, in our first private conversation, she’d told me that everything I could see, including herself, belonged to King Arthur. A country village sprouted where the road to her childhood home had once cut through the king’s southwestern territory.

  “You’re not impressed?” Arthur stood watching me, tossing a small rock from palm to palm. I hadn’t spoken since we’d arrived on the hilltop. If I opened my mouth I’d cry. “Mmhmm.”

  “Such unbridled enthusiasm,” he teased. “I think you should rest. Not much shade here, I’m afraid. I’ll help you down.”

  He started down the berm and reached after to help me. I gave him my hand, stepping carefully down the slippery grass of the inside slope.

  “There’s a bench just over here.”

  My weariness surprised me. Perhaps the concussion had weakened me, or maybe I was worn out from the ordeal of two days before—if it had happened. I twisted Guinevere’s ring on my finger to be sure it was still there.

  “We’ll sit here until you’re rested. Perhaps this trip could have waited a day or two. That is, if you’re staying.”

  “I have to stay, don’t I?” I said, taking a seat on the bench.

  “Why so?”

  “To answer charges, I guess.”

  “I don’t mind telling you I’m a very good lawyer,” said Arthur, sitting beside me. “I wouldn’t be surprised if we can take care of it all through email and a few memos.”

  That was a relief. “I should mention I’m unemployed.”

  “There’s no fee.”

  “So, you’re not a real lawyer?”

  He laughed loud and full. “No—I mean yes. But I feel responsible.” He tossed the rock into the grass and placed his hands on his hips as if to scold. “And damn it, I want to know how you got that horse inside Stonehenge.” He was flirting.