Knights

by Linda Lael Miller

  Nightmares rose up around Gloriana, like the mud of a stagnant marsh, and sucked her under. She did not find Dane in that terrible darkness, though she searched and struggled and flailed.

  When she awakened, she found herself in a plain room, and the shades were partially drawn against the watery light of a rainy day. Lyn was with her, his face beard-stubbled and etched with worry.

  “There you are, back again,” he said, his fingers clasped tightly around hers, as though to hold her here, in his world.

  A needle, connected to a tube, pierced the back of Gloriana’s other hand, but oddly there was no pain. “You should have left me there,” she told him. Her voice sounded raspy, and her throat was raw and dry.

  Lyn shook his head, and his eyes, for a moment, were overly bright. He lifted her hand to his face, and she felt the roughness of his beard against her flesh. “All I want is to take care of you,” he said. “Won’t you let me do that?”

  Gloriana turned her face aside, letting his question pass, countering with one of her own. “How did you find me?” she asked, closing her eyes. She knew now that Lyn loved her, and she didn’t want him to care, didn’t want him to be hurt.

  “The caretaker remembered you from before,” Lyn answered after a long time. “He recalled that I’d taken you away then, and rang me up at the cottage.”

  “Please, Lyn,” she whispered. “Leave me alone, for your sake, as well as mine.”

  Lyn made no promises. Nor did he release Gloriana’s hand.

  Chapter 14

  When she’d gathered her wits about her again, later that same day, Gloriana was filled with chagrin. She had been surpassing foolish, going to the ruins of Kenbrook Hall in the rain, letting her emotions run away with her, subjecting herself and her unborn child to danger. In the future, she must be far more prudent and consider her actions thoroughly before plunging ahead. An impulsive nature had ever been her plague.

  Gloriana had just decided, quite sensibly in her opinion, to put the mistake behind her and proceed accordingly, when Lyn appeared in the doorway of her hospital room. He looked tired, rumpled, not at all his usual clean-shaven and chipper self.

  “You’re pregnant,” he remarked, holding her medical chart in one hand. Lyn was not Gloriana’s attending physician, but he was a member of the hospital staff and thus had access to any record he might wish to see. She had learned much about the workings of medical institutions by watching Marge and Mrs. Bond’s melodramatic “programs” on the television set, before moving to Janet’s flat.

  Gloriana shifted restlessly against her bank of pillows. She ached in every bone and fiber of her being, and she’d caught a dreadful cold, but she wasn’t sick unto death or anything near it. She had been admitted to this bustling, sterile place for observation, according to Marge, who had appointed herself as Gloriana’s private nurse.

  The diagnosis was simple exhaustion.

  She replied to Lyn’s statement, at length, with a quiet, “Yes.” While Gloriana had not told anyone except Dane that she was carrying a child, it certainly wasn’t a shameful secret. She was duly married to the infant’s sire, after all—even if the man had been dead for some seven hundred years.

  “How long have you known?” Lyn remained in the doorway. His manner, while not unfriendly, was cool and a bit distant, injured, somehow.

  “From the first,” Gloriana replied forthrightly, smoothing her covers. This was no exaggeration, as far as she was concerned. She and Dane had conceived the babe in the Roman baths beneath Kenbrook Hall; in some strange wise, she had felt the beginning of that new life.

  “Well, you should have told me,” came the crisp reply. Her friend entered the room then and drew up a chair to sit beside her bed. “Great Scot, Gloriana, a pregnant woman needs quiet surroundings and plenty of rest. And vitamins.”

  Gloriana had no idea what “vitamins” were and didn’t ask, for fear Lyn would explain, in detail and at length.

  Lyn gazed at her in silence then continued. “The father—?”

  “Dane St. Gregory, fifth baron of Kenbrook, and none other,” Gloriana answered in a soft but unwavering voice. Her chin might have protruded, just a little way, and her arms were folded.

  “Of course,” Lyn said, after a deep sigh. “But he’s nowhere about to look after you, our Dane St. Gregory, fifth baron of Kenbrook, now is he?”

  Dane’s absence was a central fact of Gloriana’s present life, and her very spirit thrummed with the hopeless pain of being separated from him. Perhaps that was why she grasped so desperately at the last illusory shreds of her independence. “I am neither idiot nor invalid, Lyn,” she snapped. “I can look after myself!”

  Lyn’s expression was one of infinite weariness. He sagged back in his chair and sighed again. “I did not set out to insult you,” he said, in a tone of grim and hard-won patience. “I am merely concerned—”

  “Well, stop being concerned!” Gloriana broke in.

  “They’re discharging me from the hospital this afternoon, and I’m going back to the bookshop. Provided Janet hasn’t given me the sack by now.”

  “You know she hasn’t. Gloriana, will you listen to reason? You are not in fit condition to engage in commerce—even in an establishment as casually managed as Janet’s. You need to rest, and eat well, and live in a peaceful environment—”

  “God’s blood,” Gloriana erupted, “you make me sound like a sparrow hatched without its wings!”

  “I give up!” Lyn growled in return, bounding out of his chair to turn away.

  “It’s about time,” commented Marge from the doorway.

  Lyn started to say something, stopped himself, and stormed out.

  “It’s just because he cares, you know,” Marge confided, bustling about in her usual efficient manner. She’d brought along a small satchel, and from it she took a beige cable-knit “jumper,” which Gloriana recalled from her earliest life in America as a “sweater,”a pair of corduroy slacks, stockings, underwear, and shoes. The clothes Gloriana had been wearing on her fateful bus-and-graveyard odyssey were no doubt in the laundry, if not entirely ruined.

  “Well, Lyn ought to quit caring,” Gloriana muttered, folding her arms and closing her eyes tightly for a moment, in an effort to hold back tears of sheer frustration. “He’s a good man. He doesn’t deserve to have his heart broken.”

  “But it’s his heart to worry over, though, isn’t it?” Marge said. “You can’t protect people from their feelings, Gloriana. Mustn’t even try, for it’s bad for all concerned. Come along, now—we’ll get you dressed, and I’ll drive you back to Janet’s shop.” She patted the pocket of her medical smock, worn over a pair of matching white slacks. “I’ve a script here, to fill at the chemist’s on the way. Vitamins, and some medicine to make sure that cold of yours doesn’t turn into something worse.”

  Gloriana gave herself up to Marge’s bustling charge, and soon she was dressed and being wheeled out of the hospital in a special chair. Her legs were a bit on the shaky side, but she could have walked under her own power and been the happier for it. All this fuss and ceremony was very wearing indeed.

  After a brief stop at the chemist’s shop—Gloriana waited in the car while Marge dashed inside—they arrived at Janet’s establishment. Gloriana was relieved; if she couldn’t be at Kenbrook Hall, with Dane and their household of servants and soldiers, this place would do quite well. Here, at least, she could imagine that she was taking care of herself.

  She thanked Marge profusely for her help and was more than grateful when, after tucking Gloriana into an overstaffed chair, building a fire in the grate and brewing a pot of strong, savory tea, the kindly woman took her leave.

  Gloriana swallowed her medicine, the foul-tasting vitamin capsules as well as the antibiotics, and nodded off into a restorative, dreamless sleep. When she awakened, Lyn was crouching by the fire, adding sticks of wood. The scent of something delicious filled the air, and Kirkwood looked so forlorn and so vulnerable that Gloriana forgot
her earlier annoyance and greeted him in a cordial tone.

  “Do you always come into people’s homes without announcing yourself first?”

  He looked back at her over one shoulder and smiled his sad, solemn smile. “Not unless I’ve rung the bell a hundred times already and gotten no answer. How do you feel, Gloriana?”

  “Tired, but a bit better. And you?”

  He gave a throaty, rueful chuckle. “I feel, as the Yanks say, like I’ve been dragged backwards through a knothole.”

  Gloriana couldn’t help laughing at the mental picture his remark produced. Watching Lyn, though, and seeing the pain he was trying so hard to hide, she grew somber again. “You’ve been kind,” she said, very carefully and very softly. “And I am more grateful than you will ever know. But for your own sake, Lyn, you must stop spending your time looking after me. I’m not your responsibility.”

  “But someone must take care of you—”

  “Someone is doing that, Lyn,” Gloriana interrupted. “I am.”

  He turned his back on her to stare into the fire, hands plunged into the pockets of his trousers, but not before Gloriana saw the flush of annoyed conviction rise along his jawline. “And you’re having one hell of a go at it, aren’t you?” he retorted. “Wandering among the stones of an ancient ruin, in the rain—”

  Gloriana closed her eyes for a moment and drew a deep breath. She resolved, once again, to hold her temper, for misguided as his efforts were, Lyn was only trying to help. “I admit that was a blunder,” she said. “A very serious one. That doesn’t mean I need—or want—a keeper.”

  Lyn’s shoulders sagged slightly as her words, however gently aimed, struck him with an obvious impact. “Gloriana,” he said raggedly, after a very long time, “the past is dead. Please—let me give you a future.”

  Tears brimmed along Gloriana’s lashes, but she dashed them away with the back of one hand before Lyn could turn and see them. “I have a future,” she said. “What I need, ever so badly, is a friend.”

  He was looking at her then, his face hidden in shadow. “I shall always be that,” he vowed hoarsely.

  “I hope so,” Gloriana replied. “For I don’t know what I should have done without your help.”

  With that, there seemed a new, if tentative, understanding between the two of them. Lyn did not mention his personal feelings again, but instead served up some of Mrs. Bond’s succulent mutton stew, brought from his cottage and reheated on Janet’s stove.

  As Gloriana ate, still ensconced in the chair in front of the fire, Lyn began gathering up Professor Steinbeth’s manuscript.

  “I’ll send word to Arthur that you’re not up to finishing this,” he said.

  Gloriana was exasperated. “You’re taking charge again,” she warned. “It just so happens, Mr. Kirkwood, that I wish to finish the task set before me. For reasons of my own.”

  Lyn left off what he’d been doing, holding both hands up high for a moment in comical acquiescence. “Very well,” he said. “I’ll tell Arthur you’re progressing nicely.”

  “Thank you,” Gloriana replied, and smiled.

  Lyn glanced at his watch. “I’d better be getting along,” he said. “Rounds, you know.” He bent to kiss the top of Gloriana’s head. “Good night, love.”

  She answered by squeezing his hand, and he put on his coat and left.

  Strengthened by the medicine, several hours of rest, and a hearty meal, Gloriana found herself inexorably drawn toward Professor Steinbeth’s manuscript. Setting aside her supper tray and the soft blanket Marge had tucked around her earlier, Gloriana rose and walked steadily to the table.

  Within minutes, the small tape player was whirring again and she was completely absorbed in the words penned so long ago by one of Dane’s own progeny. The account had moved past Kenbrook’s life and death into the tempestuous generations to follow, and Gloriana was better able to detach from the details—which were sometimes dull, sometimes fascinating, and very often tragic.

  She finished reading in the early morning and, still feeling uncommonly vigorous, made herself breakfast, took a shower, and went downstairs to work in the shop. She was eager to redeem herself as an employee and prove that Janet had not misplaced the confidence and trust she had put in her.

  Several customers came in, breaking the usual monotony, and Gloriana even made a sizable sale to an American tourist.

  She was alone in the shop, perched high on the sliding shelf-ladder, replacing a rejected volume, when another headache careened into her, like a runaway bus, and slammed her hard against a wall of darkness. A cold sweat sprang out all over her body, and Gloriana clung to the rungs of her ladder, afraid to let go or even attempt descent.

  Her vision was naught but an ebony fog, peppered with bursts of light, and she felt her consciousness seeping down some inner drain, disappearing into nowhere.

  And then she was falling.

  She fell and fell, end over end, like the fair-haired Alice she’d heard of long ago, when she was still called Megan, tumbling down the rabbit hole. She braced herself to strike the hardwood floor, but the dreaded moment of impact never came….

  Someone was poking her with a stick or a broom handle.

  “Get yourself up from there, boy,” a male voice commanded roughly, “and be on your way. This is no almshouse, nor no tavern, neither.”

  Gloriana opened her eyes to see a man in a shoddy woolen tunic and leggings standing over her, grasping a shepherd’s staff—the object he’d jabbed her with, no doubt. She was leaning against the outer wall of a crude daub-and-wattle hut, and an upward glance showed a thatched roof overhead.

  Cautious joy flooded her soul. Was she dreaming?

  Or was she back in her own corner of history, and Dane’s?

  Gloriana scrambled to her feet. “What year is this, pray, and what realm?”

  The man simply stared at her, as if dumbfounded.

  His gaze moved over her twentieth-century clothes with mingled wonder and disapproval, and he took a step backward, as though expecting fire to shoot from her fingertips.

  Gloriana held her tongue a moment and concentrated, hoping thereby to make the inner shift back to the manner of speaking proper to the thirteenth century. If indeed that was where she was.

  She repeated her question, slowly and carefully.

  “Why, ’tis the year of our Lord twelve hundred and fifty-six,” the man said. “And this be Britain. Seems you ought to know such things as those, lad. Where do you come from?”

  Two years, she thought, stricken. Two years had passed since she’d vanished from the Kenbrook Hall she knew, while hardly more than a month had gone by for her in the twentieth century.

  A great deal might have happened in so much time, and Gloriana’s soaring gladness was suddenly tempered by dread. Professor Steinbeth’s manuscript had not been specific enough for her to know whether she’d arrived in time to avert certain tragedies, but if she hadn’t, unbearable sorrow might well await her.

  Her next thought was that the man was mistaking her for a male—probably because of her slacks and shorter hair.

  He took her arm in a bruising grip. “I asked where you hail from, boy, and you’ll tell or feel my boot amongst your ribs.”

  Gloriana thought quickly and was still not sure, even after the fact, that she’d spoken wisely. “Kenbrook Hall,” she said.

  The fellow squinted into her face. His breath was foul, and the smell of his unwashed body worse still. “Kenbrook Hall, you say? That be a lie, for certain—for no one lives in that place now but for ghosts. It’s but a shell.”

  Gloriana’s heart sank. “How can that be?”

  “The master’s at Hadleigh Castle these days.” He paused to spit, showing his contempt, and Gloriana felt her stomach roll ominously. “That way, he’s closer to the tavern.”

  She wrenched free of the peasant’s grasp and rather handily evaded his attempts to get hold of her again. Looking frantically around, she recognized the landscape, kn
ew she was near one of Hadleigh’s neighboring villages. It was a distance of several difficult miles to Gareth’s castle from there.

  Purposefully, ignoring the impatient inquiries and imprecations that were flung after her like stones, Gloriana set out at a fast pace for the cluster of huts round the next bend, hoping to beg, borrow, or, if necessary, steal a gown of some sort. Her latterday garments would attract too much attention, and questions might be put to her that she dared not answer.

  She passed hay-laden carts on the path to Calway and drew her share of stares, but when she reached the village, she was pleased to see a mummers’ troupe at its center. There were acrobats and jesters and dancing women, along with a small menagerie of tattered animals in rickety wheeled cages.

  Giving a mangy bear on a leash a wide berth, Gloriana approached a gray-haired man, mostly because he was the tallest of the band of players and thus projected a certain air of authority. He was clad in a grand, flowing cloak of azure silk, patterned with shimmering golden stars.

  “Excuse me,” she said, coming near to touching one of the cloak’s great, loose sleeves, but stopping just short.

  He turned to look down into her eyes, and a smile touched his lips, as though he found her familiar. Perhaps he and the others had performed at Hadleigh Castle before, while she yet lived there as Gareth’s ward. Or mayhap they had been part of the celebration when Edward was knighted.

  Gloriana had just concluded that the tall man was a magician when he uttered three unsettling words.

  “There you are,” the merlin said, in the tones of a man finding something that has long been lost and most anxiously and vigorously sought in the interim.

  Gloriana blinked, taken aback by his words and mien, but in the end she was so wholly focused on reaching Dane that she did not pursue an explanation of either his remark or his manner. “Where are you bound?” she asked.

  “Hadleigh Castle,” was the reply, and it was accompanied by a deep and somber sigh. “Spirits are sore sorrowing in that place, and happiness is not found within those walls.”