She was careful not to let the young woman beside her know she had such designs on her. Yet she wanted so much to bind her daughter just a little to her. There must be something Lydia could take that would remind her of her mother.
“Wait just one more minute, dear,” Sidra said as they were preparing to go. “I won’t be long.”
She hurried to her room and threw open one of the chests, searching among the good linens. Finally her hand struck something hard and she drew it out. Her eyes clouded as she rested her hands upon the polished surface of the box. Then she shook herself and hurried back out to the waiting group.
“I’m sorry, my love,” she panted slightly. “I wanted to find this for you.”
She handed Lydia the box. It was of a rich auburn wood inlaid with oak, upon which was painted the likeness of a man and a woman. They seemed familiar to Lydia, but she couldn’t place them.
“Your grandfather had it made for me when your father and I were married. The artist was a Greek. My mother’s jewels and a few other things are in it. I was saving it for your wedding, but take it with you, in case I can’t get away to see it. Please, dear, to remember me?”
Lydia dismounted and carefully stowed the box among her clothes. She wavered a minute and then flung herself into Sidra’s arms.
“I won’t forget you, Mother,” she wept. “I love you terribly. I’ll stay if you want. I wouldn’t be unhappy here with you.”
Sidra soothed her back, content with the reception of the gift. “Maybe not, my dearest, but you will be happier where you are going. If your father approves, I will be glad to see you next fall with this Cei of yours. It’s about time one of you gave a thought to marriage. Constantine . . . well, never mind. I know you’re eager to be off. Take care of her, Geraldus.”
Sidra watched them as they slowly picked their way among the rocks up to the road. They would be out of sight soon—a turn, a bend, and the stones obscured them. She sighed and put her mind to the day’s work.
“Cornelius! Lamden! Isn’t it your turn to curry the horses? John, get a crew to bring some water from the well. What are you girls doing? Standing? Take advantage of the sunlight, bring your work out here!”
She bustled back into the castle. She was glad that they had eaten early today to give Geraldus and Lydia a good meal before they left. It kept her from having to oversee the fosterlings now while she still ached from the parting. A few hours alone, struggling with accounts and reports, would do her good. She gave the sky one look before she went inside. Perhaps it would be a nice day. The fog had almost gone; there was just a strip left clinging to the shoreline. The sun would burn it off soon. Spring might have reached the coast, after all.
She had not reached the first staircase when she heard the strangled screams from the guard tower. She froze only long enough to catch the startled cries and the sudden clink of metal.
The children! She raced back outside. The girls were still gossiping in the courtyard. Thank God, they hadn’t obeyed her!
“Cornelius!” she cried. “Get all the horses out and put the girls on them at once. Take them into the forest . . . far! No, Merith, you can’t go back for your shawl!” She pushed the girl toward the stables.
“We’re being invaded! Hurry! Go! Get help!”
They seemed paralyzed. She shoved at them and screeched again for the boys with the horses. They came loping out, each holding two sets of reins. Sidra fairly threw the girls on, two to a horse, and sent them off as the boys went back for more mounts.
“Go on! Faster! This is no time to cry, child. You’re a soldier’s daughter. Now you boys, both on one horse. I need some for the others inside. Stay with the girls and don’t any of you come back for any reason. Do you understand?”
She slapped the rump of the final horse as it went off. The screams were becoming louder. Who else was still inside? Some of the boys were working there, she knew, and a few servants. They must have heard the noise by now. If only someone had the sense to grab a torch and head for the signal pyre, always dry and ready. She smelled smoke. Good. But she had no illusion that help would come in time. Her only hope was to get everyone but the guards safely away.
Odd. The smell of smoke was stronger as she entered the interior of Cador castle. She started coughing, her eyes watering. In the great hall it was impossible to see or breathe and she had to feel her way around the wall to the far door, the one leading out to the ocean and the pyre. She was choking by now and crawling, pulling air from the crevices in the stone. She bumped into something. She recoiled from it and then reached out her hand again.
“Oh, no! My poor boy! Whatever am I going to tell your father?”
One brave child had kept his head and run to give the signal. But he had been seen as he raced down the corridors, flaming torch in hand. He had traveled only a few yards after the spear struck him. The torch flew from his grasp as he staggered and fell and the oily straw on the floor had picked up the flame and carried it across the room to the wooden tables and chairs and the cloth hangings.
Sidra dragged herself out into the air. In her horror and near suffocation, she had not noticed that the sounds of battle had ceased. In the open air, she heard the crackle of the growing conflagration behind her. Then she saw them. Her smoke-scorched eyes were almost blinded as the sun struck their silver hair and golden trappings. She reached for the knife at her belt. She also was a soldier’s daughter—and a soldier’s wife and a soldier’s mother. Sidra had no intention of giving the Saxons a hostage.
Her last comfort was the knowledge that Lydia was safely away.
• • •
Lydia and Geraldus had not hurried after they left. There was no need to rush. Geraldus was deep in a recital of the new piece and Lydia deep in her dreams when the first of the girls caught up with them.
She was sobbing violently as she fell from her horse. The girl behind her tried to push out a few words between gasps.
“Saxons . . . guards . . . attack. . . ! Sidra . . . sent us. We can’t stop. Hurry, hurry!” she panted as she tried to pull the other girl back on.
The other girls and the two boys were just behind them. Lydia gaped at them a moment and then her face went blank.
“Mother!” she screamed and turned her horse back toward the ocean.
Geraldus was bewildered by the cries and garbled noise around him, which was mixed with the continued singing of his chorus. But he knew at once that Lydia had to be stopped. He nudged old Plotinus to a trot, but the ancient beast could manage nothing faster. Geraldus strained forward. She was getting too far ahead. With a rush of panic, he dug his heels hard into Plotinus’ flanks. The horse was so shocked that he actually broke into a run.
They would not have caught up with her, though, if she had not stopped at the top of the path when she saw the thick brown smoke rising from the castle and the two Saxon men near the wall.
“Mother!” she screamed again. They looked up and spotted her.
Geraldus called out to her. But she did not heed him. She was intent on reaching the castle. Plotinus made one last effort and cut her off. Geraldus grabbed the reins and turned Lydia’s horse around.
“There is nothing you can do!” he yelled at her. "We must go back to safety!”
He felt the thump against his cloak as a hard shock and thought someone must have thrown a rock at him. He prayed that the horses would give them the advantage and that the Saxons would not try to follow. It was not until they reached the comparative haven of the forest that the pain began to grow, sharp and hot across his back and his left side. Lydia twisted around on her horse to berate him for pulling her back. When she saw him, her face went white.
The spear must not have entered up to the barb. If he had been wearing leather mail, it might not have penetrated at all. At any rate, it must have struck him as he fled and then clattered back onto the stones. Blood was running freely down his side, staining Plotinus’ flank and dripping to the earth.
Lydia eased h
im to the ground and tried to staunch the flow with a gown from her bag, but the bright red seeped through and onto her hands. She wrapped him in all the bedding and pillowed his head in her lap. The sunshine receded from beneath the trees as she sat there, her hands pressed tightly over the wound, trying to keep his life within him. She spoke to him, but he only cried out or murmured words she could not understand.
To Geraidus it seemed that the fog had returned, accompanied by an occasional stab of light, which was his pain. Sounds around him were muffled and his music had ceased altogether. As the day lengthened, he thought he saw hands reaching to him through the mist, but he could not tell if they meant to rescue him or snatch him away. Once he opened his eyes and saw Lydia’s face inverted above him. It wavered and then vanished.
“I must help her,” he thought. But his body would not respond.
The light was getting brighter, a fire burning into his heart. He tried to breathe, but could not feel the rush of air.
“What is wrong?” He made an effort to form the words. The fog was growing thicker and cold. “I am dying!” He heard a voice, not angelic, but alto.
“Geraidus, Geraidus, please. We haven’t much time. In another few moments there will be no choice. We don’t know what happens to humans when you leave your bodies. We can promise you nothing. But now, and only now, you may decide to stay with us. We are not immortal. Our lives will reach only to the end of this world. After that, we have no clue. We offer you a place of honor among us for that time. We want you so much, Geraidus—I want you so. But you must choose. It has been said that man has been promised eternal rest and bliss. We can offer you only ourselves as you know us. Geraidus?”
Odd how the agony had faded. He felt nothing. He could see nothing. But he had the feeling that somewhere in front of him there was a door and that on the other side of it he would be welcome. She was asking him to turn aside from it and go with her. He thought of all the nights she had shared his bed. He had never seen her, but he never doubted that she was as she felt and sounded. He had not tired of her voice in over twenty years. And the others! The chorus was just beginning to take form. There was so much more to do. It might be the end of the world before they sang the way he wanted them to.
Yet he wanted desperately to see the other side of the door.
If only he could have one glimpse of her. It would make it easier to decide. Geraldus felt the beat of his life slowing and stopping.
All at once he was sure. “I have not finished my work. I won’t leave you until it is done. If my soul is lost for this, then so be it.”
The fog vanished. There she was, standing before him, beautiful and radiant, with tears of joy blotching her face. She gave him a shy smile.
“Can you bear a millennium with me, do you think?”
His last thread of human existence broke and fluttered away. The pain was gone, the loneliness, the sense of belonging nowhere. Geraldus found himself surrounded by people shaking his hands, clapping him on the back, all overjoyed to see him.
“Thank you, Master, thank you!” they exclaimed, and they all tried to speak at once, making promises, offering shelter and tribute, trying to tell him about their place on the earth. Over it all, he caught the eyes of his alto.
“We’re not what you expected, are we?” she asked.
He shook his head. They were not all beautiful or young. They were not of the same race, but mixtures of many. They were so different and the possibilities of life with them so far beyond what he had imagined that he was suffused with delight and eagerness.
They were all standing together in the clearing. A little way from them, a drab shadow compared to the vividness of the chorus, sat Lydia, alone, in despair, sobbing over the body that had once been his, crying for him, for her mother, and for the fear of being left alone in the dark. Geraldus took a step toward her, but the alto stopped him.
“There is nothing you can do. We can only watch. She is not one of those who can see us. It is hard sometimes. But I can tell you that someone is coming soon who can give her some comfort.”
“Can we stay until then? I can’t bear to leave her yet.”
“It would be better to go, I think. It is hard to watch such suffering. They will mourn you, you know. I first discovered
I could touch you on a night of such sadness. In all my life, I was never before able to give a human my solace.”
He drew her close to him. “But in all this time, you never gave me your name!”
She laughed. “I’m afraid it would sound ugly to your ears. Let us find a new one for me. In a hundred years or so, there may be one we like.”
A hundred years! He kissed her. And that would only be the beginning!
• • •
In the darkening clearing, Lydia shivered and cried until she could cry no more.
Chapter Sixteen
Guinevere hung over the watchtower wall, the guard stiffly on duty behind her. He wished violently that she would stop her mooning and go find something to do. His back was killing him.
She paid him no attention. All her life she had found that the only solution to a troubled mind was to look at the world from the highest place possible. The guard’s discomfort was his own problem.
She couldn’t put a name to her sense of unease. Everything was well enough. Arthur was kinder than ever. The women had stopped glaring at her as she passed. Merlin was too wrapped up in whatever was bothering him to worry her. The knights were back to being funny and entertaining for her benefit. Even Torres seemed not to be angry with her after it was announced that she was going to spend the summer in religious retreat. Sir Ector had assured her that God would take notice of such piety and not only restore Lancelot but also give Arthur an heir. How nice. Spring was definitely making itself known. The sky was buoyant with sunlight and high clouds, and small flowers were creeping over the rocks and up the walls of Caerleon.
But there was something missing, something not in tune. Could it be in herself? She ought to be relieved that the tragedy of Lancelot’s disappearance had been pushed to the back of life here. It was his own fault; it was. A pity, of course, but he would turn up. The Lady of the Lake protected him, didn’t she? Perhaps he was with her now. No point in dwelling on it. There was much to do to build the new Britain.
Perhaps that was it. There was an effervescence about people at Caerleon, a joyous pride in being part of a dream fulfilled. Guinevere did not share it, though she wanted to. Some nights when Arthur held her and his voice went on and on in the darkness, full of hope and promise, she almost got a glimpse of what it meant, almost touched what was so real to him. But in the morning he went away, taking his vision with him. And Guinevere was left behind, puzzled once more.
If Lancelot returned, could she then put her mind to Camelot? Would it be easier to forget what had happened to him if he were there and whole again? Guinevere was unused to mental wrangling and it irritated her. It seemed that Lancelot was destined to annoy her in any case.
All at once she realized that she had been staring for some minutes at Geraidus and his troupe. How wonderful! They weren’t supposed to be at Caerleon this spring! The air must have been exceptional; the singers had never seemed so clear. She waved frantically to them and Geraidus grinned from ear to ear as he waved back. His green lady was standing with him, her arm about his waist. She said something and he looked at her and laughed.
Guinevere turned to the guard. “Go down and open the gate quickly. Saint Geraidus has come!”
The guard started to obey and then glanced at the path. “Where, my Lady? I see no one.”
“He’s right there, almost at. . . .”
But he wasn’t. The guard raised his eyebrows and resumed his post.
“That’s odd,” she wondered. “Where could they have gone?”
Just then, Cei called to her that she was needed in the hall. She hurried down and the guard gratefully relaxed and took a pull off the wineskin under his cloak. That woman should s
top sitting about and start producing children. It was unnatural, that’s what it was.
It wasn’t until dinner that night that the boy, Cornelius, arrived with his story. He was muddy and exhausted. He had lost a boot somewhere on his journey and limped as he walked to face the King. But he stood straight at attention as he told of the Saxon attack.
“Lamden and I took the girls to the home of my brother and then we returned with all the men we had.” He faltered as he realized that Cador was there.
“It was too late. A fire had started. There was nothing left but blackened stone.”
His eyes begged forgiveness. “Sidra ordered us to leave. We didn’t know it was so bad. She stayed behind.”
His lip trembled and he screwed up his eyelids. Constantine covered his face with his hands. Cador showed no emotion as he carefully moved his wine cup farther from the edge of the table.
“And my daughter?”
Cornelius took a deep breath. “She is with the other girls. She should have been well away, but she went back. Saint Geraldus was with her.” He crossed himself. “We didn’t know what to do, so we put him on the old horse and brought it back with us. My brother is perplexed. He thinks we should build him a shrine, but will not take it upon himself to do so without orders from the bishop.”
“What are you trying to say?” Arthur commanded.
“I thought I told you. He was dead when we arrived. Lydia wouldn’t let go of him. She sat there, making an awful noise.” Cornelius shivered. “They sent me to ask you. Please, sir, what should we do?”
Everyone began exclaiming, crying, expostulating at once. Guinevere tried to make herself heard.
“But he can’t be dead. I just. . . .”
Arthur patted her hand. “I know. It seems impossible. Please go help Cador, Guinevere. He is much more upset than he appears.”
“But, Arthur. . . .”
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