“This Saxon horde know what they are doing!” King Arthur muttered grimly. He looked at Gwen, white of face and panic-stricken at what she could see unfolding before her. “Fear not, my lady, these knights also know what they are about. They are each one experienced in battle. They will not so easily be caught.” As he said these words he hoped dearly that they would come true.
Things at the centre of the battlefield were getting intense. The light was deteriorating as the clouds lowered and, at a distance, the noise reaching those watching was frenzied, horrific and blood-chilling. For the knights in the middle of it all, the sight and sounds of the carnage must have been all-enveloping. And every second that passed, their predicament became more and more dangerous as the hordes of Saxons came circling closer. Gwen was weeping in fear.
At last one knight and then another turned his horse round and beat a path back out of the cyclone, fighting their way back towards safety. Others began to follow that lead. As they did so, the onrushing foot soldiers concentrated their efforts on the knights that remained. Where oh where was Sir Gareth? It was now impossible to see who was who and, with a sudden curtain of rain that came sweeping into the fray, it made the confusion complete.
Cries rent the air again as knights rode out and into men running towards them. More bodies falling, arrows and spears flying, horses rearing and plunging. Clouds rolled across and drew a veil over the savagery that was taking place.
Then a thundering of hooves came out of the mist and Gwen began to count back each of the knights as they returned to the protection of the castle. Three, four, five silhouettes appeared first. Dark figures on horseback, drenched in blood and rain, thundered up the rise towards the entrance, the gates open and welcoming. Six, seven, eight, then a pause, then two more…ten in all – none of the knights were now recognisable but still no grey horse. Gwen’s heart was thumping, her hands clenched against the stone battlement of the tower, her eyes peered into the blustery, circling mists; where was he? Please let him be next!
Then at last two more came galloping back, just as the clouds descended and closed the visibility to thirty yards or less. There they were: one black horse and one grey, feet pounding, steam flying from nostrils, men bent over black in the rain, racing home. As soon as she saw him Gwen was up and running, she thrust aside her maid’s attempts to stop her, she ran down the spiral stairs as fast as she could go, down one flight, then another, then another, desperate to reach the courtyard below. It seemed to take an age before she could reach the flagstones at the bottom and then she burst out into the open just as the heavens crashed above her and rain poured down steadily. Chaos confronted her. Men were running everywhere; orders were being shouted, the big heavy castle gates were creaking aloud as they were being closed; horses were stamping and staggering all around her and knights, exhausted, some wounded, were dismounting and stumbling into the arms of their attendants. Sir Gareth? Where was he? Was he hurt?
It was impossible to cross the courtyard and find him. What appeared as chaos was actually people running back and forth treating the wounded, assembling arms, calming down the horses; everyone with a job to do and desperate to discharge their duty as efficiently as possible. Rain was drenching Gwen, mud was spraying everywhere, there was blood flowing on the ground and now there were even one or two knights vomiting in front of her. And then just to complete this scene of utter damnation, with an awful hissing sound, arrows began to fall.
Gwen felt a hand on her shoulder, dragging her back. It was Merlyn, wordless but with steel in his eyes, dragging her undercover, back into the kitchens. Beside him stood Chen Ka Wai and with them were a number of catering staff, staggering under the weight of steaming, bubbling cauldrons of some evil-smelling substance that they were trying to drag out across the bailey. It was boiling pitch.
Gwen wrestled herself free. She refused to follow orders; she was not going to fly to safety at the first sign of danger. She had to find Sir Gareth. Merlyn, of course, was not going to struggle with her – he was organising a work party to ferry great vats of pitch up to the walls, there to be used as a weapon of last defence. He had saved this reckless, wilful young woman from being skewered by the first salvo of fire, now he had to return to his own duties and leave her to her own devices. She could surely see the dangers; his own business now must be attended to.
Arrows rained down. The archers outside had approached clearly close enough to fire at the defenders manning the battlements atop the walls, knowing that even if they missed, their arrows would continue their trajectory and perhaps hit others below in the interior. The battle had reached its climax.
Out on the far side of the courtyard Gwen saw a big man raise a shield and shelter himself as he remounted his horse.
“Gareth!” Gwen screamed. She ran out and threaded her way across the courtyard, dodging men, horses, arrows everything in her desperate attempt to get close to him. She dreaded the thought of what he was about to do.
He couldn’t be going out again, surely? The enemy were now right outside! Gwen saw one other knight remount as well. She could not see who it was. But the two men turned their backs to her as she was still struggling to reach them. They ordered the gates to be open; they urged their horses forward, and then with a lot of splashing and manoeuvring they rode out through the narrowest of gaps, away from the courtyard, through the gatehouse, onto the battlefield and out to face the surrounding army. Gwen screamed after Gareth again as, to her horror, she saw the great oaken gates now swing shut and be locked, barred and reinforced. Those two knights had gone out to face hundreds and with no chance whatever of return. It meant certain death.
Bang! A great crash of thunder erupted above her. Lightning flashed. The rain poured in torrents out of the black clouds above, but Gwen did not care. She sank to her knees in the mud and cried out to the heavens in despair and utter, utter desolation. He had gone. She had not been able to reach him. He had gone. He had ridden out to kill and be killed!
Chapter 13
No.5 RAGLAN ROAD
The Lady Gwendolyn clung to Gareth Jones on the front porch of number 5, Raglan Road, as if paralysed. She dared not move. If she did, she was actually frightened of what it would lead to next; such was the uncontrollable passion that was gripping her. And Gareth had put his arms back around her so he was not moving either.
A rumble of thunder and then a crackle of lightning broke the magic. They fell apart. Lady Gwendolyn’s eyes were round with wonder but she was still speechless. Her mind was racing; her blood was surging through her veins; she had stopped breathing. She just stood there goggling at him.
“Wow!” Gareth was the first to react. He felt as if the lightning, still far away, had somehow reached out and struck him. He had been with girls before but nothing like this. He had slept with girls before but the emotional contact had been minimal. This was altogether different. It was an inferno that had just ignited, here and now. His and her eyes were locked together. The flames were white hot, burning from one to the other.
“Gwen…Gwen…” he stuttered. His brain was refusing to function. He had wanted to walk and think and sort out the confusion in his mind but now he had trouble doing any of that. He just wanted to hold her and kiss her and kiss her again. He was totally bewitched by her.
But there was something niggling at the back of his brain and he had to get it out in front. No matter how gorgeous she looked – and she was still looking at him with those big, open, beautiful eyes – he just had to dig up that doubt, that issue that was worrying him about her and wouldn’t let him just cave in and wallow in her loveliness.
“Gwen…we have to talk….will you…will you walk with me a bit?”
Lady Gwendolyn nodded silently. She would walk with him anywhere at this moment.
Gareth turned and shook his bewildered head as he led the way to the front gate, opened it for them both and then started walking slowly down the road, holding his hand out for Gwen to hang onto. A big man and his little
lady – both still in the Arthurian costumes from the hotel – strolling in the heavy, early-evening air looking as if they were on their way to a fancy-dress party. One hundred yards down, there were fields at the end of the lane, and a stile which gave on to a footpath, stretching off to some distant woods. Gareth stopped by the stile and looked at her intently.
“Gwen, what do you really know about me? Very little, I’ll bet. You seem to know all about some character, some knight from Camelot…but that’s not me. The man you know…he’s in your dreams. You say all sorts of lovely things about that man but you’re thinking of him, someone else, he’s not me. How can you say anything about me? Do you know who I am?”
As he was saying this he was thinking: Do I really want to prick this bubble? If she looks at me and sees someone else, I’ll make do with that! I’ll be that other person for as long as I can…just so long as I can have her and keep the dream going for as long as possible. After all, it’s not as if I have gorgeous girls throwing themselves at me every other day of the week. Let me hold onto this one for as long as I can!
Gareth’s concerns, his questioning of who Lady Gwendolyn was, what she was talking about, the same conundrum always, this brought her out of her own stupefaction. Her mind reasserted some control again over her body so that her hypnotic desire just to be close to him relaxed a little.
“Sir Gareth…to me, thou art truly that noble knight I speak of. That is what I see in thee. I know that here, in this…this new world of mine…where people speak so funny, if they speak to one at all, I know that there are no knights of Camelot anymore. But I know thee; I know you, the sort of person you are, I see into your soul. I recognise you from before…”
“But how can you, Gwen? Neither the old Gwen I knew in school before, nor this new Gwen that seems to have fallen into my lap from out of heaven, neither of you know much about me – who I am, where I’ve been, what I’ve been doing. For all you know I might be some half-crazed axe murderer who’s been burying bodies in the woods over there for the last two years. You simply don’t know me!”
He smiled down at her at the thought of it all, waving his arm in the general direction of the trees behind him. He was, he realised, trying to put her off him, challenging her conception of him, trying to see if she really did know him like she said she did and was not merely falling for some idealised, cardboard cut-out of a character.
Lady Gwendolyn put her arms up and held him. Her eyes were laughing. “Nice try, Sir Gareth! Isn’t that what people say here? Nice try! Thou art…sorry…you are no murderer. It is not there in your soul. I cannot see such falseness in thy face. You are too honest and true to be other than you are. And thou art everything that my heart tells me. ‘Tis true, I have seen thee in my dreams of Camelot, as you say, but I also see you here in front of me and I know that I am not mistaken. Thou art still the one who hath captured my heart. Thou art my love. I am thine…I am yours.”
The Lady Gwendolyn still struggled with this modern English idiom that had no intimacy; no way of marking the difference in speaking to someone so close and personal from someone unrelated, distant, impersonal. She could not think of Gareth as someone unrelated and distant. In fact her body was telling her once more it wanted the closest relations possible with him. She clung to him again.
Gareth put his arms around her and kissed the top of her hair as she buried her face in his chest. Well there it is then, he thought. Don’t question it any more. She says she knows me and loves me as I am. Christ! Just enjoy it while you can…until the wind changes and she comes out of this dream.
The trouble for Gareth was that, unlike Gwen who seemed to know him from her dreams before and loved him then and now, he knew Gwen before and, much as he fancied her physically then, she was really not a very nice character. Absolutely adorable now, yes…but would that last?
His doubts she immediately picked up upon.
“I do know thee, Sir Gareth. Of that there is no question. I see into thy soul and love what I see there. But I also see thine own fears. Thou art troubled? Fearful that I might change? My love, I ask of thee what thou hast asked of me: Dost thou know me?”
Amazing, Gareth thought. How does she do it? How does she know what I’m thinking?
“I dunno,” he answered truthfully. “There is no doubting who you are now. I’ve already told you – you’re beautiful. What I can’t get my head round is where this you has come from and whether you will stay. I guess I should talk to your mother, and to Dai Mervyn. But – hell! – whatever anyone says, I’ll take the risk! Who knows what the future holds? I’ll love you while I can; while you are like this: so absolutely loveable. If I don’t take the risk, I’ll gain nothing. If it all turns out wrong in the future…well, that might happen with anyone, anytime, mightn’t it? Do I know you? No, I don’t think I really do….but it’s going to be one hell of a time finding out!”
He grinned. He lifted up her head and kissed her lightly on her open mouth. Wham! The effect this had on the Lady Gwendolyn was the same as before: her whole body rose towards him and she could not think nor talk any more – there was just this overwhelming desire to be at one with him. Somehow within the turbulence that erupted inside her, she was beginning to realise that this body she was inhabiting was not the one she had grown up in, and it was telling her of life and passion it had experienced in this world that her head and heart born in fifth-century Camelot had never known.
Of course, the fire that arose in Lady Gwendolyn immediately aroused the same in Gareth. A big, physical man he needed little encouragement. There was only one direction this was now going to lead, and that was over the stile, across the fields and into the woods beyond. But fate was not yet ready to allow them to consummate their desires. There was a monstrous roll of thunder, a brighter, closer flash of lightning and then rain began to fall in torrents.
“Shit, shit, shit!” swore Gareth. There was no alternative – caught out in the open, the few trees about them offered little shelter. They had to run back up the lane, back to number 5 Raglan Road. Their passion would have to wait.
The two of them held tight to each other and they set off, laughing as they clumsily splashed through puddles – it was not easy for two, ill-matched in size, to hold hands and run together in a synchronised manner through the drenching rain.
One hundred yards to go, the rain came down beating ever harder, the thunder crashing now right on top of them and lightning dazzling, crackling all about them. Fifty yards remaining and the Lady Gwendolyn had to let go, to gather about her the soaking long dress the hotel had given her, and skip over the river that was now coursing down the gutters beside the road. She skipped, but her foot slipped and crash! – down she went in the rain, sliding and tumbling onto the pavement, Gareth desperately trying to catch her, but to no avail. She banged her head on the kerbstone, thunder and lightning now seemed to flash around inside her skull and then she saw only blackness.
Chapter 14
GIRLS OUT OF THEIR TIME
With the huge, oaken, barred and bolted gates between her and the man she had lost, as she knelt there in the mud, blood and rain, despair slowly turned to anger within Gwen’s breast.
She raged at herself for not getting here more quickly; she raged at him – the big brute of a man, stupidly going out to some pointless sacrifice, and most of all she hated those bastards outside who were now thumping on the gates, having at last brought their great battering ram up to the castle.
Thunder seemed to be rolling around now inside the walls of Camelot and a tremendous flash of electric blue lightning lit up everything in a split second. Gwen looked up and saw rain falling from the heavens, sparkling in the light. Arrows were coming too but they were falling behind her into the centre of the bailey. She dragged herself nearer to the gates, her insides still seething. Atop the central tower of the keep another bolt of electricity split the skies to strike the newly-erected lightning rod and again illuminate everything in an instant. The brilliance ca
ught archers on the battlements, attendants running in the courtyard, shields being held aloft – all as if frozen by the strike. Just as instantly the flash disappeared, leaving only silhouettes about her in the murderous, late afternoon darkness as Gwen at last hauled herself upright.
To one side of her, a wooden staircase led up to the gatehouse battlements where she could see Merlyn, Chen Ka Wai and others carefully manhandling great steaming cauldrons – absolutely focused on their task at hand whilst all else around them was chaos. That was the place to go. Gwen had just started climbing when a fearsome, timber-splitting crash shook the gates beside her. The ram was in action and threatening to break through. She hurried upwards, gathering her soaking wet dress higher about her to more easily move. As she did so she saw four men above her, swathed in cloths to protect them from the heat, tipping the first of the cauldrons’ contents down the aptly named murder holes above the approach to the gates.
Shrieks and howls issued from below. The battering at the gates stopped. Boiling oil cascading down upon the men beneath her was causing pandemonium. Good, thought Gwen viciously. Let them suffer!
The battering ram was the Saxons’ main hope to enter Camelot and there to make their superior numbers count so, despite the wounded below, men burnt by the oil were quickly replaced and the thundering on the gates resumed with little delay. Shields were deployed above heads as more cauldrons were summoned forth above and their contents tipped over them. This offered some defence, so fewer howls and cries followed and the determination to keep going, battering their way forward, was not slowed for long.
Merlyn was cursing aloud. “The rain is cooling the oil too quickly – we must set it alight somehow!” But carrying boiling oil and pitch from the kitchens by hand was tough enough. Doing the same with cauldrons that were already alight was impossible. What to do?
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