The Camelot Spell

by Laura Anne Gilman

  On another day, Gerard might have tried to smooth things over, as he so often did when Ailis spoke her mind in front of his fellow squires. But he was still upset at the stable boy’s actions, and her dismissal of his heroes rankled him. “You’re a girl,” he said instead. “Maybe that’s why—”

  “Oh!” Ailis looked as though she’d like to smack them both, but settled for a parting shot before she turned away. “Two of a kind, you are; overfull of yourselves and your positions—such as they are, as neither of you is actually being taken along on this grand Quest.”

  They both winced as the bolt struck home.

  “Ailis, I…” Gerard began awkwardly.

  “Oh, go on, they’re calling you,” Ailis said, spotting a commotion near the main door. “Hurry!”

  Ailis watched the two boys move across the crowded floor to where one of the under-cooks was waiting, and sighed in relief when they made it without further delay. She hated to see anyone get into trouble. Then, recalling her own duties, she lifted the refilled pitcher of spiced wine and made her way carefully back to where her ladies waited. At fourteen, Ailis was one of the youngest of the queen’s servants, chosen for her quick eyes and steady hands. Unlike the pages and squires, she had only to serve wine and set out fresh napkins at this feast. But it took all her concentration to anticipate their needs without appearing to eavesdrop on them. Especially when they said such interesting—and gossipy—things.

  “Do you not think Sir Gawain has the greatest chance? He is…very religious.”

  “So religious he will seek the Grail only in churches and monasteries,” another woman at the table suggested, waving her bejeweled hands in dismissal. “If the Grail were there, it would have been found already.”

  Ailis kept her gaze lowered and her mouth shut as she refilled her lady’s goblet and replaced stained napkins with new squares of cloth. It was one thing to argue with Mak and Gerard, despite their squire’s rank. Responding to an adult was out of the question. No, she was a servant, and as such would never dare speak her mind to any of the court, not even if they asked her. That would lead to dismissal, and no matter that the queen had been known to smile upon her from time to time.

  Someday soon, she knew, Mak and Gerard and the others would earn their spurs and go off to be knights in the service of the king, but she would still be here, serving at the castle. That was the fate of a landless, family-less orphan.

  “Oh, stop feeling so sorry for yourself,” she scolded herself quietly. A practical girl, Ailis knew it wasn’t a bad life. Lonely? A little. But she was well treated and fed and cared for, and was learning skills that would be useful as she got older. She had a fine hand with her stitching. That might earn her a place as a seamstress, eventually, in the queen’s cozy, comfortable solar. But…

  “I want more than to be a seamstress or the mistress of the linens in some lord’s manor house,” she whispered fiercely to the food-stained napkins in her grasp. “I want…”

  Her thought was interrupted by something odd. Her head lifted, like a doe scenting the air, and her young lips creased in a frown. The musicians…that was it. The musician playing the lute—his tune was off somehow. Not much, perhaps nothing most in the crowd would notice, but Ailis had a good ear as well as a pure singing voice, and music she knew well.

  Ailis shrugged. Perhaps he had drunk too much mead. Or he was tired. They had been performing for hours now, and it was far more difficult work, she knew, than any observer would think. Either way, it was no concern of hers.

  But still. Something was odd, now that she looked about her. It wasn’t a specific thing, exactly—a smell that was off in the air, maybe, like wood smoke, only not as familiar or comforting as that. Movements were also off, slowed somehow, as though it were just a bit too much effort to carry on as usual.

  Worried now, Ailis instinctively looked over her shoulder to check on the queen. Others might think the sun rose and set on King Arthur. He was the lion of the court indeed, but Ailis had long ago learned that Guinevere’s moods set the temper of the castle, not Arthur’s.

  “My lady?”

  Guinevere turned to look down at Ailis, smiling prettily. The queen was no longer the young woman she had been when she first came to Camelot, but her beauty remained intact, and her wits likewise.

  And yet those eyes, normally sharp with intelligence, looked dulled now, as though the queen were having trouble focusing.

  “My lady, is all well?”

  “Indeed. It is simply…I find myself wearying of all this.” The queen gestured at the entire hall. “But it pleases Arthur to send them off with such frolic.”

  “Yes, my lady.” Ailis bowed and backed away. But her frown deepened as she noted others at the high table looking as—there was no other word for it—sleepy.

  Something wasn’t right. But the queen’s taster, a bright-eyed lad, one of Guinevere’s cousins from her home of Cameliard, was still alert and healthy, so it was not anything in the food. Indeed, Ailis had eaten and drunk much the same, sneaking bits from half full plates as they were carried out, and she felt fine.

  It may all be my imagination, Ailis thought. I’d look a proper fool if I said anything. Nodding in agreement with herself, she tucked the dirty linens into the fold of her skirt and headed for the laundry, where she could leave them and then return. Some fresh air and all would be well.

  The stuffed peacock had been the success Cook promised; even Gerard had to admit that. Four pages had staggered into the hall under its weight, the tail feathers spread in an astonishing display, and the flesh golden brown and filled to bursting with spiced meats. The squire had managed to be near Sir Rheynold when it was brought in, the better to see his master’s reaction when Arthur saluted him for his contribution.

  The pleasure the knight took in his triumph, however, was soon overtaken by a look of puzzlement on his face.

  “Sir?” Gerard stepped forward, one hand raised in a conscious gesture of aid.

  “Hmmm?” Sir Rheynold looked up at him, his eyes creased with exhaustion. “Can’t drink as much as I used to, I suppose,” the knight murmured, slightly confused. “Don’t remember it getting so late…”

  Gerard lunged to catch his master as he slid sidewise on his bench. Pushing him back onto his seat and propping him against the wooden table, Gerard glanced around, panicked that someone might have seen the old man’s embarrassment.

  But instead, as the bells in the courtyard church struck the midnight hour, every adult in the hall—from the broad-shouldered form of the king himself down to the wiry-limbed jugglers performing before him—all slowed their movements, stilled, and fell limply where they stood.

  The pages running the endless chores also slowed and then stopped, looking about them as they tried to understand what was happening. Some, smaller and younger than the others, burst into tears of confusion.

  “Gerard?” Ailis’s voice, small and scared, came from behind him. “What’s happening? Why are they all…are they all…dead?”

  TWO

  Two of the younger pages began to bawl, sitting on the rush-strewn floor with tears rolling down their chubby faces. Other pages ran from table to table, some of them intent on finding an adult who was still awake, others grabbing whatever food or drink looked good off the table. Several of the tumblers’ children were tugging at their elders who had fallen over their balls and hoops, while somewhere in the hall one of the younger children started to wail, her voice high pitched and keening. Gerard felt a pain start behind his eyes from the noise. He scanned the room, hoping desperately for someone—even Cook!—to come forward and explain what was happening. But all the adults he could see were slumped and motionless.

  “They’re sleeping.” Finan, a squire in Sir Danforth’s service, gave one of the visiting knights’ arms a rough shake. When there was no response, he stood up and faced Gerard. “The adults are all asleep.”

  “All of them? How?” Mak asked.

  “How should I know
?” Finan was freckled and red-haired, and so skinny that even on a feast day he looked as though he were about to die of starvation. But he was a good squire—one of the best with a lance, even if he was hesitant to take charge in any situation. “It’s only us who are still awake.”

  Ailis spoke again, her voice steady despite the fear that was sweeping the room. “Do you think it’s happened to everyone…throughout the castle?”

  Gerard turned to Ailis; he’d been about to ask the question she had just voiced. Their earlier disagreement was forgotten as they stared at each other, the situation at hand almost too horrifying to accept. Adults couldn’t just fall asleep all of a sudden. Not all of them. That didn’t happen!

  “Wait here,” he said to her. Then he looked at Finan, including him in the order. “Try to keep the little ones calm. I’ll be right back.”

  Outside the Great Hall, the corridors were empty and oddly silent. Camelot was like a beehive, as Sir Rheynold always complained. The castle hummed with activity every hour of every day. But now, for the first time Gerard could remember, the beehive was still.

  “Is anyone there?” Gerard called down the hallway, walking forward with his shoulders hunched as though expecting to be attacked at any moment. Or perhaps to fall asleep as suddenly as the knights and revelers had. A faint noise answered him. He hurried his steps and threw open a wooden door to reveal a very young page, clutching one of Arthur’s hounds and sobbing his heart out. The dog looked up at Gerard with large, mournful brown eyes, as though to say “What could I do? The little one grabbed me and won’t let go.”

  The boy was safe enough with the hound, and Gerard had other rooms to explore.

  He went first toward the kitchen. It was the busiest place on a normal day, thrice so on a feast day. If anyone with authority were still awake, they would be there.

  What greeted him, however, was not encouraging. Where earlier in the day the kitchen had moved with purpose and order, now it limped, blindly feeling its way. The youngest children were still turning the spit on which a boar roasted over the flames. Three small figures—boys or girls, you couldn’t tell under the flour that dusted them—were at the huge wooden table in the middle of the room, trying desperately to gather the pastry scraps to roll into something resembling a pie crust. Another child—no more than seven or eight—fed wood into a small fire by the far wall, while a taller one stirred a great black pot that simmered with the smell of warmed cider and made Gerard’s stomach rumble. Despite everything that had happened, his body was still concerned about being fed.

  Cook’s massive form had clearly fallen too close to one of the cookfires and been dragged away; Gerard saw soot and a few singe marks on the man’s clothing. He lay on his back on the floor, the older assistants likewise scattered in sleeping disarray around him.

  “What’s happening?” one of the children called as he saw Gerard in the doorway, not pausing in his work as he spoke.

  Gerard could only shake his head. Only ten remained awake in the kitchen, of the thirty or more bodies he could count, and the oldest of them looked perhaps all of eleven years old.

  Thinking quickly, Gerard realized that he was likely the oldest person still awake in the entire castle! It was a sobering thought. He put it aside for the moment in order to deal with more immediate problems.

  “Come with me,” he ordered the children. “No, wait, stay here.” They were doing the right thing. If they couldn’t get the adults to wake up, they would still need to eat. “Move the sleepers out of the way, and make sure the food doesn’t burn. Don’t worry about making anything more for the feast; nothing fancy, just basic foods. Can you do that?” He directed his questions to the oldest, most steady-looking of the bunch, a boy with huge brown eyes and a smudge of something dark across his face.

  “Yes,” the boy responded promptly, clearly relieved to be given specific instructions. As Gerard turned to leave, he heard the kitchen boy calling out instructions to the others in a sweet, piping voice.

  Somehow Gerard didn’t think anything else was going to be that easy. The sound of children’s raised voices crying and shouting as he came closer to the Great Hall confirmed his fears. He bypassed the feast, instead heading to the huge outer doors and into the courtyard. Perhaps whatever was happening was restricted to the building itself.

  But outside, under the clear black sky, the situation was much the same. The guards posted to the castle’s perimeter had slumped against the crenellations. Their dogs, cousins to the hound inside, sniffed anxiously at their masters’ hands.

  Gerard found himself retracing his steps of that afternoon, back to the stables. But inside, he found horses unattended and the stable workers asleep in the straw. Gerard looked for the stable boy he had fought with—Newt—but didn’t see him among the sleepers. He paused to move some of the men who had fallen dangerously close to their charges’ hooves, and made sure all the horses were secured, before going back into the Great Hall.

  Inside the banquet hall, the chaos had worsened. Almost all the pages were crying now, and more than half the young servants had clearly given up, taking food off the tables and sitting in corners to eat. Gerard’s stomach rumbled again loudly, a reminder that he hadn’t had much to eat, either.

  “Hey!” he yelled, trying to project his voice into the corners of the room.

  The noise went on, the children ignoring his shout as though it had never been voiced.

  “Listen to me!” he yelled again, drawing his voice up from the pit of his chest, the way Sir Bors said to do on a battlefield.

  Ailis, across the hall with half a dozen of the youngest children gathered around her, didn’t even look up.

  “You haven’t the voice for it.”

  Gerard turned and glared at the speaker—Newt the stable boy. What was he doing here? He was still wearing the same stained clothing from their fight, his hair had hay in it, and his eye, Gerard was glad to see, was black and blue and swollen, but his expression was distracted as he scanned the hall. “Nobody’s going to listen to a squire with a squeaky voice.”

  The fact that Gerard’s voice hadn’t yet settled into a grown man’s tones had been a matter of much teasing, some not so gentle, in recent months. Try as he might not to care, the taunt hurt.

  It was true. He didn’t sound commanding enough. Not like a knight at all.

  “When in doubt,” Sir Rheynold always lectured, “stand as tall as you can and do what you must.”

  “What does a stable boy know about leading anyone except horses?” he asked and strode across the hall to the high table where his king and court still sat, slumped and sleeping. Setting his jaw hard against the thought of what might happen if they should suddenly wake up, Gerard vaulted himself onto the wooden table and stood in the middle of the remains of the feast. He took a deep breath, let it out, and took in another. Then—

  “Be QUIET!” he roared, pulling every memory of every time Sir Bors had ever yelled at the squires, and pitching his voice deep, to carry better.

  It worked. Not every child was silenced, but enough of them. And they all looked up at Gerard.

  “Crying and panicking won’t wake them up,” Gerard declared as sternly as he could manage. “Sitting around stuffing our faces”—the young players and servants who had been doing exactly that looked down at their plates, then back at him, some in shame—“won’t wake them up. And neither of those things will protect us if whoever did this comes after us next.”

  “Oh, that was wise,” Newt said, coming to stand beside the table. “Scare the little ones some more, why don’t you?”

  “They should be scared,” Ailis said. She still held one of the pages by the hand, his tear-stained face now looking up at her trustingly. “We all should be. How long do you think Camelot will stand if our enemies hear of what’s happened?”

  “What exactly has happened?” Newt asked, not unreasonably. He shoved his unruly black hair out of his eyes and stared around at the others, challenging them. �
��Every adult’s fallen asleep. That’s not exactly a dire situation.”

  “It might have been meant to kill them, and Merlin’s protection spells turned it away,” Ailis suggested.

  “Or the spell wasn’t meant to kill them,” Gerard said. “Just leave them vulnerable. A captive is worth more than a corpse.”

  One of the tumblers, a scrawny, black-eyed boy, overheard them. “It’s sorcery,” he said loud enough for everyone nearby to hear.

  “Of course it is,” Gerard said scornfully, astonished that even a servant could be so foolish as to not realize that by now. “What else could it be?”

  The tumbler looked for support among his fellows, but finding none, he backed away leaving only the three of them, Gerard, Newt, and Ailis standing there.

  “I know you,” she said to Newt. “You’re the hound boy.”

  “I was,” he said. “Now I’m the horse boy.”

  Gerard ignored them and looked over the room, doing a quick mental count. Of the castle regulars who could be trusted to be useful, there were seven other squires still awake: Mak, Dewain, Finan, Robert, Tynan, Thomas, and Patrick. There were eleven servants, including Ailis. And Newt, he supposed. Another twenty pages, maybe, and ten of the players’ children. Gerard had no idea how many children there were in Camelot itself. Ailis might know. She was a girl; they noticed things like that.

  The squires came forward at Gerard’s hand signal, gathering around him as he got down from the table.

  “We need to organize,” Patrick said, his eyes darting back and forth, his pale skin slick with sweat. “Burn a signal fire, ask for help.”

  “From who?” Finan asked, practical in the face of Patrick’s obvious terror. “Like the mouse saying to the cat, ‘Oh come help me, my tail’s stuck!’”

  “You think sitting around waiting is any better?” Patrick was the largest of the squires, muscled from years of weapons practice, and Gerard was more than a little afraid of him. Not that the other boy would ever hurt anyone…but sometimes he just didn’t know when too much was too much, even in mock fighting.