Avenged

by Lynn Carthage

  I look at the anger and bewilderment in the men’s faces. I can tell by the uplifted sword in one’s hand, and the frighteningly positioned spear in the other’s, that something cataclysmic is about to happen. This is the instant before the blades hit flesh. Which man conquered? Which one fell in a pool of his own blood? It’s impossible to tell. The glassmaker didn’t choose to show destiny on their faces, with one a clear victor.

  I look again at the XXX marking. What does it mean?

  Then . . . it hits me for the first time. There is a slight space between the first and second letter.

  It’s not XXX.

  It’s X XX.

  Not thirty, but ten twenty.

  Or . . . perhaps . . . I clap my hand to my mouth . . .

  . . . perhaps the tenth month and the twentieth day.

  October 20.

  * * *

  Back with Miles and Phoebe, I tell them what I’ve learned.

  “Yes!” says Phoebe, exulting. “This battle must’ve taken place on October 20, and we were all born on that day. It’s significant.”

  “No epic battles spring to mind as having taken place in October,” says Miles.

  “Uh . . . do you know the dates of any battles?” asks Phoebe.

  Miles gives her a glare mixed with a smile. “D-day, June 6. Pearl Harbor, December 7. Bastille Day, July 14 . . .”

  “Okay, you made your point.”

  “Effectively, I might add,” he says.

  “Well, it’s helpful to have something to search for,” says Phoebe. “Let’s hit the manor library, and I’ll see if there’s anything about October battles.”

  We intention there and Miles and I walk the shelves looking for books about medieval warfare. Miles works his way to one of the dark alcoves, his head cocked to the side to read the titles on the spines. Is there anything so pleasing to the eye as a handsome young man selecting a book?

  “I’m finding nothing,” Phoebe calls out to us. I’m on top of one of the ladders to reach the top level of books, too high for a human to even stand on tiptoe and see, although that is a trick of the mind to make myself more comfortable. I could easily just hover here in midair.

  “Hardly surprising,” I say calmly. “We don’t expect to find it within mere minutes when the truth has been hidden for so many years.”

  “I should’ve shaken an explanation out of that damn Raven Gellerman when I had the chance,” mutters Miles, thinking we can’t hear him at this distance. I remain silent. Instead of trying to find out information about the secret society, he had been trying to reach out to his parents. And that time, unfortunately, he had been ineffective.

  I look down from above as Phoebe next turns her attention to the book the appraiser was holding when the truth came out that he was working with the police. She idly turns pages, and then I hear a sharp intake of her breath.

  “I found it! Oh my God, I found it!” she cries out.

  Miles runs to her as I scramble down the ladder as fast as I can.

  “Look at this!” she says, pointing to a paragraph. “The Battle of Camlann. The ancient Celts had a thirteen-month year, but this historian tracked the battle down to what we would call October 20.”

  I lean over to look. There’s a small woodcut illustration at the top of the page, and it’s very similar to the stained glass scene. Phoebe reads the passage aloud. “‘At Camlann, Arthur was killed by his own son Mordred, and in turn killed him. Their weapons reached their goals of the moment, and both hearts, one true, one foul, bled out their essence. A brutal instance where king and heir died on the same inhale.’”

  I raise my eyes to Miles, but his are fastened on Phoebe’s face.

  “The King Arthur legend,” I murmur.

  “Oh my God,” she breathes. “Miles is Arthur. He’s Arthur! Can you even doubt it?” She whirls around to me. “Look at his face. He’s been noble all along, and now it’s clicking into place!”

  Miles sinks to his knees, and I see pain cross his face. “Oh my God,” he says.

  “Are you quite all right?” I ask. I crouch next to him and look anxiously into his eyes.

  “I can see the sword flashing again,” he says. “Like I did right after we drank from the vials.” He puts both hands to his forehead as if he’s been struck by a terrible headache.

  “Stay calm,” I say. “It’s all in the past.”

  “But it isn’t, is it?” he says with a surprising bit of anger.

  “Our graduation has to do with righting the wrongs on the field of Camlann?” Phoebe asks.

  “The devil if I know,” he says. “All I know is that I killed someone, and then the grass was full of my own blood.” His voice trails off in a wrenching wail.

  I smooth his hair back. I want to press a kiss to that pained forehead. How awful to have slain his son for treachery and to be dealt a death blow instantaneously.

  He sinks even farther, pressing closer to the ground, as if he can reclaim all that spilled blood somehow.

  “You are not that same person,” I say. “You have your own soul.”

  “But his soul is intermingled with mine,” says Miles, looking up at both of us with a tortured expression. “You felt it, too, Phoebe, don’t deny it.”

  She nods.

  “I hurt someone, too,” she says.

  “Killed,” says Miles with emphasis.

  She looks hurt, but then nods. “I must have,” she whispers.

  “My family has long boasted of a connection to kings long dead,” says Miles. “Is it possible I’m some sort of reincarnation of Arthur? It’s head-spinning.”

  “Our whole world has been head-spinning recently,” says Phoebe.

  They both look at me, and the thoughts on their faces are transparent. Who am I? What might I have seen had I drunk from the vial with them?

  “I have my own soul,” says Miles. “I’m not reincarnated, but a different kind of reincarnated, perhaps, with snatches of a prior soul merged with mine, do you think?”

  “Perhaps the Sangreçu blood didn’t just make you aware of a former life, but imparted it,” I suggest.

  Phoebe snorts. “As if there were lives embedded in the blood?”

  “No,” says Miles firmly. “It was like the blood simply opened the curtain and showed me what had been there already.”

  “So then, if you have vestiges of Arthur’s soul in you, then who am I?” Phoebe asks. “Guinevere?”

  A rush of emotion fills my head. “That would explain your feelings for Miles,” I say stiffly. “But there is no way, no possible way, that you were a woman of such nobility and good breeding.”

  “Thanks a lot,” she says sarcastically.

  “I will say that you were a very bewitching lady nonetheless,” I add. And then red-hot rage fills me. I stare at her beautiful face with such hatred I know it must be visible on mine. What on earth did Phoebe—or some version of Phoebe—do to me?

  Miles seems unaware, however, of my anger. “So does that make you Launcelot, Eleanor?” He laughs as he says it.

  He stops when he realizes no one else is laughing.

  I take one last tortured look at Phoebe, and intention myself away. I can’t be with her right now; it’s too painful.

  * * *

  I return several hours later. They’re poring over the book, continuing to read about Arthur. They tell me that although Arthur died on the battlefield, when his sword Excalibur was thrown back into the lake, three fairy queens came to take his body away to the island of Avalon. There it was reputed they had healed him, and he slept in a hollow hill awaiting the day he could return.

  “Arthur isn’t dead,” says Phoebe. “He’s part of you.”

  “Somewhere he’s lying, perhaps seeing flashes of me as I see flashes of him?” asks Miles quietly.

  No one responds. We have no answers, only guesses.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The hieroglyphics tell so many strange tales that are incomprehensible to us now, remnants of a vanished cul
ture. In the since-crumbled lesser temple at Bubastis, a horned creature is depicted feasting on the neck of a man held down on his pallet by two others. In the next scene, the man arises, green as Osiris, with punctures dripping blood that is caught by a bowl held by a priestress. This has in part given rise to ideas of blood drinking and vampirism in the ancient Egyptian world.

  —Vampyres: Bram, Bathory, and Beyond

  The next morning, the book on the kitchen table is open to an entry about Egyptian vampires.

  “He’s so off base,” says Phoebe, frowning.

  “Well, let’s focus on our own prophecy, then,” I say. “Didn’t the first line say something about a king? It could be King Arthur.”

  “‘On a stronde the king doth slumber, and below the mede the dragon bataille,’” Miles recites from memory.

  “A stronde,” I repeat. “Perhaps that is an archaic rendering of the word strand?” They both look at me blankly. “Perhaps strand is itself an archaic word to you. It means beach.”

  “On a beach the king does slumber,” says Phoebe.

  Yes. It is like the moment that kindling catches fire. Phoebe and Miles had sequestered themselves on a beach once. It must be meaningful.

  “And below the something, the dragon . . . er . . . does something.”

  “Bataille looks like battle,” comments Phoebe.

  “Mede could be an elder form of meadow,” I say. And of course the meadow means something to me.

  We’re meant to restore King Arthur to the throne, I think with a catch in my throat. What a responsibility, and what a thoroughly mind-altering task. For me, Arthur was simply the man of legend, and if I had thought about him when I was a girl, I imagined he might be someone that time and adoration had built up into something more illustrious than what he truly was. He had done well in battle, so well that they believed his sword to be magic, and invented a tale around its coming to him from the wet hand of the Lady of the Lake. They had invested him with a magical counselor, a wizard named Merlin. All these fanciful tales had embroidered the truth of a man who lived a short and brutal life. But what if the legends were true, and Arthur was as remarkable as told?

  “What is the next line?” asks Phoebe.

  After some rummaging, she locates the secret societies book under a pile of similar tomes in Steven’s den.

  “‘. . . the dragon bataille the wicked brike with bisemare from yon damosel,’” reads Miles.

  Deplorable. How ever can we decipher this? What on earth is a brike? And what is a bisemare?

  “Damosel may be damsel,” says Phoebe.

  “So the damsel has or gives the wicked brike some bisemare?”

  “I wish my effin’ phone would work!” Phoebe shouts. “This is so frustrating! It would take me five seconds to Google bisemare!”

  Miles looks at my face and explains what she means. Googling allows a person to access all the information the world has, instantly. I shake my head. It’s too much to understand. It seems like magic on a level with Madame Arnaud’s.

  I have to, for now, set aside my disbelief. “But with this wondrous invention, why doesn’t Raven Gellerman decode the prophecy?” I ask. “Certainly the older members of the group may not understand or know of this resource, but she would, don’t you think?”

  Miles looks at me surveyingly. “Absolutely, she would,” he says slowly. “So why is she behaving like there’s no way to figure it out?”

  Perhaps there is more to Raven than we knew. She is deliberately obscuring the meaning of the prophecy. Does she stand to gain in some way?

  “Was she born on October 20?” Phoebe asks.

  “We need to find out more about her,” says Miles. “Let’s see where she is now. I’ll take you.”

  * * *

  Raven’s with Steven.

  I can’t believe it.

  They’re standing close as lovers on the crest of a stone bridge over one of the streams on the estate. I remember when the bridge was first built, a thin affair to hold only two people abreast. We servants had taken great joy in crossing it on our free day.

  “That’s Raven?” Phoebe asks, her voice tight. “What’s Steven doing with her?”

  “It isn’t every man that can do what you can,” Raven tells Steven, with flattery and admiration in her voice.

  “It’s all for you,” he says. I can’t believe his voice, suddenly thickly English. Steven has always struck me as someone who lived in the States long enough that his accent eroded. Today it is back and thick as if he’d lived in Grenshire all his life.

  Phoebe puts her hand to her mouth in horror.

  “In another year you can divorce her,” says Raven.

  He nods, and Phoebe lets out a sob that brings Miles instantly to her side, pulling her into his arms.

  “But why wait?” says Steven, still with that uncanny accent.

  “Give her another year of thinking you’re hers. I’ll be eighteen in a year,” says Raven. “I’ll take her place, and I’ll make you much, much happier.” She leans backward against the bridge, both hands bracing her weight on the stone wall. She looks like she is arranging herself for a kiss.

  “I’ll do whatever you wish,” says Steven.

  Phoebe vanishes, and a second later Miles does, too, gone to comfort her. I stay and watch. Why is Raven making such forward advances to a man so much older, who is married and with a young child to boot?

  “Do you think you can do what we’ve asked?” says Raven.

  “Of course,” says Steven.

  “You say that each time but do something slightly different.”

  He hangs his head. “I try.”

  “Give me a chaste kiss and do my bidding.”

  “Yes, my lady,” he says.

  She bites down on her lip and whimpers as blood appears. I draw closer, confused and fascinated. Steven’s eyes lower as if he is about to swoon, and he presses closer to her. “Give me a chaste kiss,” she repeats. He presses his lips to her for a mere second and he does as she wishes, a brief kiss with little emotion in it. As he withdraws, I see her blood on his lower lip.

  “It scares me,” he says. “I don’t want to do it.”

  “But you must.”

  “Now?” he asks.

  “It is the perfect time.”

  “I’ll go,” he says.

  She makes a funny motion with her hands, almost as a spell would look. She turns one direction on the bridge, and he another. They part without saying another word.

  * * *

  I stand stunned, in disbelief about what I’ve just seen. Raven asked Steven to kill—there’s no other interpretation, is there? I frantically try to review their conversation to see if it can be construed any other way.

  Raven’s face as she passes me is bland and satisfied. She walks at the kind of pace you’d use to fetch a broom when you’re not in a hurry.

  But Steven . . . he’s alternately hurrying and then slowing almost to a standstill. I catch up to him.

  “Steven,” I urge. “Don’t do this.”

  He doesn’t see me, doesn’t hear me. His eyes are wide and his hands tremble. I try to take his hand, without success.

  “Steven!” I scream into his ear, and he doesn’t even blink.

  I whirl in a frustrated circle. I can’t stop him. I’ll have to tell Phoebe, and she can use Tabby to get through to him or her mother. But in the meantime . . . he’s going to murder someone.

  If I could just find the Sangreçu vials, I could fix everything: stop Steven, bring the bodies to the surface, tell Raven’s parents their daughter is involved in something awful. I could use one of those mobiles and figure out the wording of the prophecy—and enact it. I could earn my forever peace and see if Austin is on the other side waiting for me.

  Blood is everything. It opens all the doors, makes a man do a girl’s bidding.

  Miles told me once that the vial he drank from had sung to him, hummed an allure like the mermaids bringing sailors to dash their ships again
st the rocks. Why can’t I hear that tune? I know it is being sung somewhere on this estate. We haven’t tried hard enough to find it. But that is because Miles and Phoebe are already Sangreçu. They don’t care. They have supped at the table, and what do they care that I came in from the cold after the table was cleared?

  I stand for a long time regarding the tree branch at the edge of the meadow, keeping Steven in my peripheral vision. No one passing by here today would ever know I swung from that branch, heavily swaying after my feet stopped kicking. It is unremarkable now, this scene of my former high pitch of distress.

  And so the world passes. One person’s end of the world is simply another day of buttering bread for another. My life didn’t matter. Phoebe’s didn’t. Somehow Miles’s did, though, because the world wouldn’t let King Arthur die. We are his subjects and we must resurrect him.

  I turn from the tree with disgust, regard instead the long pass of the meadow where wildflowers wag their thoughtless heads. I must be pragmatic, must solve this problem like the dairymaid keeping the bucket from being kicked over. I will calm the cow, soothe its stress. I will find the vial or vials. Methodically.

  Wherever they are.

  I formulate a plan. I need to see the blueprints for the manor. Madame Arnaud had it built when she escaped from France.

  The plans for the grounds.

  The outbuildings, stables, chapel, all of it.

  There must be a clue. A walled-off chamber, a secret passageway: something will show me the place Madame Arnaud built to house the vials she stole.

  Phoebe may be able to touch the blueprints since they would be original to the home, but she doesn’t know where they are. Only Steven knows. I check his progress and see to my relief that he’s clearly heading back to the manor. Did he change his mind, resist Raven’s dictate, or was he always on his way there?

  The tree is now a stark outline against the blue twilight. Time to go back.