The Midsummer Wife (The Heirs to Camelot Book 1)

by Jacqueline Church Simonds

  The Prime Minister’s eyes looked even more sunken. “I said I’d had a dream where a woman told me help was coming and to be prepared for the unexpected.”

  “And it was the exact same voice in the warehouse that proclaimed this man king,” the king said.

  The Prime Minister simply nodded.

  Samuelson started out of the room. “I’ve had enough of this.” Just loud enough to hear, he muttered, “Damned if I’ll let this country crown some bloody Black and a pair of witches!”

  “See here, Samuelson!” the PM said, looking shocked.

  “That was uncalled for,” an affronted King Edward said.

  “How dare you!” Harper exploded.

  “Racist swine,” Falke snarled.

  “I saw that coming,” Ron grumbled.

  Do not let him go. And instantly something like a video streamed in Ava’s mind of what Samuelson intended to do.

  “Sit down!” Ava said in the voice of command.

  Like a marionette, Samuelson took his seat again, then slumped, eyes shut. Ava winced inwardly; she’d used a bit more force than was entirely necessary.

  “Is he dead?” Ms. Clarke stood, looking as if she might run out of the room.

  Ron arched a brow at Ava. Once again, she had just revealed something that might make him afraid of her.

  In her normal tone of voice, Ava said, “He’s merely asleep.”

  “If you can control people like that…” Ms. Clarke trailed off, as she sat back down.

  Harper’s eyes were back to normal. “Then we don’t really need your permission to do anything. But that’s not our way or our purpose here. Take this as an indication of our sincerity.”

  Ms. Clarke looked troubled.

  Ava said to the Prime Minister, “These have been difficult times for all of us, but some of us, it has unhinged. Mr. Samuelson isn’t just a racist, he’s about to raise a military coup against this government. I suggest we don’t let him. I can give you a list of key conspirators I gleaned from his mind.”

  “I’m not sure who to have take care of him,” the Prime Minister said.

  “What about the guards in the warehouse?” Ron said.

  “Who swore themselves to you?” Ms. Clarke asked.

  “Yes,” Ron said with a thin smile. “That one young soldier, Tryfan, I think I recall his name badge said. He’ll be only too happy to assist you.”

  “Would you take care of that, Gemma?” the Prime Minister asked.

  Ms. Clarke went out. Ava knew she would do as asked, but they would have to watch her. Ava took out her phonestick and tapped in the names she’d gleaned from the vision before she forgot them.

  The Prime Minster turned to her. “Obviously you have some sort of plan. Tell me what it is, please.”

  Ava knew if she told him how nebulous their ideas were, things might go against them. She could feel how close to cracking the poor man was. Suddenly, there was that eerie feeling of duality. Out of her mouth came: “In three days comes Midsummer. At the Sun’s highest point, we will do what we may to heal this land.” The doubling disappeared as quickly as it came on her.

  There was silence in the room.

  “Just like that?” the Prime Minister asked.

  “Just like that,” Ron said. “You don’t have to believe us. Judge us by what happens at that point.”

  “Would you like to stay in my residence, in the meantime? I should like that,” King Edward said.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Later, two police cars escorted the Rolls to the magnificent Castle Cardiff. The ancient monument was both austere (which Ron informed Ava were the Norman parts)—and ornate (Harper told Ava those parts were built in Victorian times). The spire was especially impressive. Falke pointed out the temporary radio tower, not far from it.

  Harper said, “I visited the castle as a lad on a school outing, but I never thought to stay the night in one of the beautiful rooms, and certainly not in the company of a king!”

  Ron laughed. “I’m having trouble believing this is happening!”

  Ava swallowed hard. The castle walls loomed over the Rolls, and she was sure they would fall on the car, crushing them before they got things started. She clutched Ron’s hand, and it steadied her. He was so busy sightseeing, he didn’t notice her death grip.

  Funny how I got through the craziness at the government warehouse with very little anxiety, but now that everything is over, I’m starting to melt down.

  Staycalmstaycalmstaycalm.

  I don’t have time for this.

  Ava focused on how the Goddess’ words had helped center her, and she stopped feeling as if she was going to go flying through the roof of the Rolls.

  They were greeted by the staff. Indie Glaser, the head of household, informed them the government had closed the palace to the public. The guests were just the king, three security people, and now them. Indie showed them to their rooms, which seemed a lot too lavish for Ava’s taste. But then she remembered she was holding hands with the future king of Britain.

  Once they put their belongings in assigned rooms, they were told they were free to explore the place. The “Arab Room” with its ornate ceiling treatments wowed Ava in its extravagant exuberance. While Falke liked the public rooms, he especially wanted to get up into the tower. Most of the higher rooms were empty or for storage, but when they turned down an upper hall, they heard music.

  “Do you suppose…?” Harper said to Ron.

  Ron’s pace increased, and he went to a room where the light spilled into the corridor. He peeked in and smiled. “Hello, there.”

  They crowded around him and peered in. There sat a nattily dressed elderly black man with a neatly trimmed white goatee. Most of his sparse white hair was covered by a tweed cap. He held an open leather-bound book and looked up at them quizzically. Beside him on a battered table were two old-fashioned turntables, records spinning on each. A sheaf of official-looking paper memos lay next to an antique microphone. A radio broadcasting apparatus assembled from spare parts of wildly different generations glowed with lights behind the record players. The room was filled with boxes and boxes of phonographic discs, neatly hand-labeled. In between the stacks was an army cot with a tangle of blankets. Playing at the moment was Benjamin Britten’s “Serenade for Horn and Strings, Nocturne.” The voice of the tenor Robert Tear seemed a presence in the space. The man turned down the speaker volume. “Lost, folks?”

  Ava immediately recognized his baritone voice.

  “Exploring,” Ron said.

  “Are you the genius behind the music for the emergency broadcasts?” Harper asked.

  “Genius?” the man chuckled, but his eyebrows disappeared up under his hat. “I’m just spinning tunes here.”

  “You don’t have any idea, do you?” Ron asked.

  The man looked totally mystified.

  Ava went in, hand outstretched. “I’m Ava Cerdwen.” He shook her hand. “This is Harper and Falke Drunemeton, and Ron Steadbye.”

  “Bastiaan Clarke.”

  “Any relation to Gemma Clarke?”

  “My granddaughter,” he said. They all kept carefully neutral expressions. “Met her did you?”

  “Yes, and lived to tell the tale,” Ava said.

  Clarke erupted in a laugh that was somewhere between a cackle and a cough. “She’s a fierce girl, but her heart’s in the right place.”

  “Wait, Bastiaan Clarke? Weren’t you a big-time DJ on Radio 1 back in the ’Aughties?” Harper asked.

  “Well, I’ve been in the business considerably longer than that,” he said. “But, yes, I was hottest then.”

  “How do you pick what you’re going to play?” Ron asked.

  Clarke motioned toward the boxes: “One from column A,” he pointed to boxes that were labeled with symphonic music titles, “the next from column B,” he pointed at another stack labeled Swing/Jazz, “one from column C,” he pointed at boxes labeled Early Rock, “one from column D,” he pointed at boxes marked
“’70s, ’80s & ’90s.”

  “And you just randomly pull the records in that sequence?” Harper asked.

  “Well, sometimes I forget where I pulled from, and pick a C record right after an A or some such,” he said. “I’m old. I forget what I played last.”

  “Why do it like that?” Ron asked.

  “I’m a radio man, sir. In radio, you play music for your demographic. In this case, I have to address everyone from little kids to the old folks like me. This way, everyone hears something they might like. It’s all I can do for people in this crisis.”

  Falke looked at the record on the other turntable. “Who’re the Rolling Stones?”

  Clarke glared at him. “Ask your father,” he snapped. Falke stepped back. Harper, Ava, and Ron snickered.

  “It’s totally brilliant,” Harper said. “Do you know how much life you’ve given back to people with your crazy choices of music?”

  Clarke shook his head. “What do you mean?”

  Ron said, “People are loving the tunes—sure. Much of it is beautiful or makes us recall an earlier time when there wasn’t this awful tragedy. But the juxtapositions…they’re quite mad! And oh, so British! You, sir, are a national treasure!”

  “You’re a hero!” Harper said.

  Clarke scoffed at him.

  At the mention of the word “hero,” Ron’s face froze, and Ava felt his emotions boil. She slipped her arm around his waist and projected calming thoughts at him. Slowly, he relaxed.

  “Are you the only one doing this?” Falke asked.

  Clarke said, “Pretty much. Gemma knew I had a pile of old vinyl records, so when they came up with the idea, she had soldiers heft this lot from my cellar to up here. I have insomnia, so it’s easy for me to be up and doing at all hours. I have a friend who comes in and takes the 4 a.m. to 8 a.m. shift. I suppose they won’t need me soon, now the internet’s back up.”

  “If I have anything to say about it, you can do this as long as you like,” Harper said.

  “Have to admit, I’ve enjoyed being useful,” Clarke said. The music came to a crescendo, and he held up his hand to halt their chat. He dropped the needle carefully onto a track on the other record, then spun two dials in opposite directions. The opening strains of “Beast of Burden” filled the room.

  “Completely mental,” Ron said with a slow chuckle.

  They said their goodbyes and left Clarke to his music.

  Later, they were called to dinner in the formal drawing room—a four-course meal that included roast beef. Ron had three helpings of the roast and praised the cook lavishly. Ava wondered if his penchant for meat didn’t have something to do with the King Arthur in him being revealed. Back 1,500 years ago, meat and a few starchy vegetables were what the aristocracy ate. She watched him sop up the last of the beef juice with his roll. Or he was just “stress eating.” Hard to tell.

  Afterward, they were taken to the elegant wood-paneled library and given glasses of an excellent port. King Edward appeared genuinely glad to have them for company. “Do you fancy birds, young man?” he asked Falke.

  “Um, well, yeah. I like raptors,” Falke replied.

  “With a name like ‘falcon’ I’m not surprised!” the king chortled. “I have a marvelous collection of videos and pictures of some of the rarest in the world. Would you like to see them?”

  Falke and his father had a brief telepathic discussion. After a few moments, the boy subtly rolled his eyes, then turned to the king, “Sure. I’d really like that.”

  The king led Falke upstairs, chattering loudly about his love for birds.

  “That will keep them occupied for a while,” Harper said.

  “I want to thank you for your help today, Harper” Ava said.

  “I was surprised you asked me,” he said. “That seemed even less difficult than the Hela witches.”

  “It wasn’t the difficulty level, it was managing all the variables: the guns, Sanderson, the soldiers.”

  “Is that what happened?” Ron asked, looking troubled. “I should’ve known.”

  “I needed Harper’s assistance in maintaining my focus. With the guns, I had to apply heat in just the right places. Too much, and the guns would’ve blown up in their faces. I was attempting to make them drop the weapons, not harm them. If Harper hadn’t lent his support, I would have been too hasty.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t kill them,” Ron said, veering just a bit into sarcasm.

  “As the Helaites noted, killing isn’t something the Sisterhood is allowed to do. We’re commanded to preserve life,” Ava said.

  “You said you needed help with Samuelson?” Ron asked with less venom.

  “Samuelson intended to attack one or all of us,” she said.

  “A real head full of worms,” Harper said with a shiver.

  “Then I had to nudge the undecided soldiers to either declare themselves neutral or come over to our side,” Ava said. “That young man, Tryfan, by the way, is Sir Bedevere from the Round Table! With Harper’s help, I was able to expand my focus to do all those tasks.”

  “You can change people’s minds?” Ron asked.

  Will there ever be a point at which he trusts me as much as I do him? “Influence their decision-making, yes. I don’t use it unless it’s an absolute need, such as that moment.”

  Ron nodded resignedly. “All right. Enough of that. We have to decide what happens next.” He glared at Ava. “Noon on Midsummer Day? When did this become the plan?”

  Harper said, “That has to be the date, Ron. It’s the time at which the year’s energy is strongest. From that time afterward, we’re in the slack.”

  “And why midday?” Ron demanded.

  “The point at which the forces are the strongest.” Ava raised both hands as if they were scales, then dropped them. “Look, I’m sorry to spring it on you. It’s not as if I had plotted it out. It just came out of my mouth. As you both may have noticed, our prior selves are asserting themselves more.”

  “Yes, I certainly felt a moment there where I wasn’t myself, but, well, another myself,” Harper said.

  “I’m not sure I like losing control,” Ron said.

  “I don’t think we have much choice in this,” Harper said quietly.

  Ron leaned against the bookcase, arms folded. The expression on his face told Ava he didn’t want to examine this aspect of his King Arthur self yet. “Do we know yet what we’re supposed to do?”

  “I’ve spent every moment when a gun wasn’t pointed at me worrying about it,” Ava said.

  The three of them stared into space, trying to imagine what could happen and how to cope.

  “Let’s start with what we do know and work from there,” Ron said, sitting back down beside Ava. “We’ll use the Oathstone―somehow―to call Morgaine and the priestesses of Avalon into our time.”

  Harper and Ava nodded.

  “Do we know how to do that?” he asked.

  “I believe if we bend our collective wills upon the Oathstone, and perhaps aim a beam of Goddess light on it, that should do it,” Ava said.

  “Believe? Perhaps,” he said.

  Ava shrugged. “There was no instruction manual with it.”

  “It’s not going to be that hard to activate. I don’t think,” Harper said.

  Ron sighed. As Harper had pointed out, Ron wasn’t a fan of the not-concrete. “All right. We have the ‘how’—more or less. What is our where?”

  “The London Blast Site.” Ava could hear that her voice had changed.

  Both men stared at her.

  After a long pause, Ron said, “The London Blast Hole?”

  Harper nodded slowly. “That must be where we’re to go. It’s the area that must be healed.”

  Ron frowned. “If we fail, we’ll be irradiated and die a hideous death. Was that the Goddess’ plan?”

  “We won’t fail,” Harper said with more confidence than Ava felt. “This was what we were born and bred to do.”

  “I thought you said you
didn’t know what we were to do or how to accomplish it?” Ron asked her.

  “Bits are being revealed as we go along. I still don’t feel I have the whole picture, and it’s terribly frustrating and frightening,” she said.

  Ron took her hand. “I’m sorry to push you so hard. But I just feel tremendously unprepared for what’s to come.”

  “I understand. I believe we all feel the same way,” Ava said.

  “And Morgaine may try to attack us before we can accomplish...whatever we’re to do,” Ron said.

  Harper replied before Ava could. “We expect she’ll either kill us or enslave us. Either way, I’m fairly certain she’ll deal with the radiation as well, so she can take over.”

  “You two are just full of good news tonight,” Ron muttered. “So, the ‘how’ and the unpleasant ‘where’ are established. Now we need a ‘what method’ to control Morgaine.”

  A vague idea arose in Ava’s mind. She needed quiet and darkness to flesh it out. “I think I have the beginnings of a plan, but let me sleep on it before discussing it.”

  “Can you share anything about it?” Harper asked.

  “I think we could use some Eight Lights help,” she said.

  “All right,” he said thoughtfully. “We’re at your disposal, of course.”

  “Well,” Ron said, eyeing Ava expectantly, “I guess we should call it a night.”

  “There’s just one more thing,” Harper said.

  All during dinner, Ava felt something from him. A fear? A plot? There was something that was preoccupying him. “What is it, Harper?”

  “In the car, on the way to the castle this evening, the Goddess whispered to me Her plan for my son. For Falke,” Harper said.

  “Falke? He’s too young! What can She want from a boy?” Ron demanded.

  “No, it isn’t like that,” Harper assured him. “But he can’t stay with us when we go to London.”

  “Well, then. That’s fine,” Ron said, relaxing.

  “Wait. There’s more. Much more.” Ava could almost grab the words from Harper’s mind, he was thinking so loudly about it. But she would wait respectfully for him to tell it as he felt he could. He had waited for Ava to tell what she knew.