The Spirit of Nimue (The Return to Camelot #3)

by Donna Hosie

  “Are there other tunnels? Can Arthur get back another way?”

  Merlin wiped his eyes, but he wasn’t crying.

  “I do not know.”

  “THAT ISN’T GOOD ENOUGH,” I yelled. “You’re supposed to be a powerful sorcerer. Bring him back.”

  “I cannot.”

  I launched myself at the old man. I knew it was weak and cowardly and pathetic, and I didn’t care. Merlin had magic. He was the only one left now who did. He had appeared in London; I had seen him. He had almost been hit by a bus. Nimue had appeared too, twice. She had physical form because she had attacked me in my bedroom. There were people here who had magic to go forward in time. I knew they could.

  I started hitting Merlin’s chest and shoulders. I could feel his fragile bones beneath my fists.

  “Is this how you’re going to punish me?” I cried. “All I did was try to help your sister. I didn’t collapse the falls. You did. You and Nimue and Gwenddydd, and because of you, I’ve lost everything.”

  Guinevere was trying to pull me away, but I shrugged her off. Merlin hadn’t just manipulated time in Logres. He had manipulated me. Used me as a pawn in a game of chess. Manoeuvred me into place until I sacrificed everything.

  “Natasha.”

  An arm wrapped around my right side, and I fell back into it.

  “He’s gone, Bedivere,” I sobbed. “Arthur’s gone.”

  “I know, my love.” His mouth was in my hair. I could feel his breath on my neck. “I know.”

  And then I heard the voices outside. It sounded like a male choir.

  The knights were singing – lamenting – for my brother and Talan.

  The Knights of the Round Table had called the time of death.

  Physicians were called to treat mine and Guinevere’s wounds. Taliesin ordered them away with such a rage I expected him to start throwing things.

  “I will treat the king’s sister,” he roared.

  But by the look on his face, he didn’t know where to start.

  Merlin called a meeting of the Round Table. I told him he could shove his council and his table and everything else. I would never sit at it again. I never wanted to go near Camelot again. The ache in my chest was so strong my ribs hurt. Taliesin made me drink a potion for dreamless sleep, but for once I wanted to see my dreams, even if they were nightmares.

  Because it was the only way I was going to see Arthur again.

  It was still dark when my eyes sprang open. I hadn’t seen Arthur; I hadn’t seen anything. Guinevere was sitting on a pile of cushions, sewing. Her hair was tied back, and she was wearing a green tunic that slipped off her shoulders because it was so large. Large purple bruises covered her neck, and I noticed her left earlobe was bloody and torn. Every time she pulled the needle through the fabric, she grimaced. Even holding a tiny sliver of silver was painful.

  “Can I help?” I asked. My throat was so sore it felt like it had been shredded with glass.

  “Your hands are burnt from the ice, Lady Natasha,” she replied. “Let me do this. The pain from my hands lessens the pain from my heart.”

  Excalibur was lying on the ground next to her bare feet.

  “You have every right to hate me, Gwen.”

  But she smiled. “Your brother called me by that name. I like it. Guinevere is such a mouthful. And Lady Guinevere, Knight of the Round Table…why, the battle is over before I have been called.”

  “Arthur called me Titch.”

  “Why was that?”

  “Because I was his little sister. Titch is an English word for small. He always called me that. Even though I was taller than most of the girls he knew, I was always Titch.”

  “He will reclaim these names when he returns.”

  But I knew I would never hear it again.

  “What did Byron call you?” I asked.

  “A troublesome wench with a mouth to rival the size of her rear,” replied a cackling voice.

  Guinevere dropped her needlework and grabbed Excalibur. Byron was standing in the very centre of the tent. He didn’t look how I had imagined now. Not ghostly or scary, and definitely not Night-of-the-Living-Dead Byron.

  He just looked normal. His brown hair was thicker than ever, and his skin wrinkled just like a little pug dog. The weeping sores were gone, and his nose was large and dominant, as he grinned with a set of very nasty-looking teeth.

  “Have you come to say your final words?” I asked suddenly. For a moment I had been fooled by how healthy Byron looked. He looked alive.

  Byron nodded, and looked at his sister with mischievous eyes.

  “You swine. Your last words to me will be about my backside,” she snarled. “Why I should strike you down with this sword.”

  “Knight him, Guinevere.”

  “Lady Natasha?”

  “Knight Byron. You have the sword, it’s always been yours.”

  Guinevere’s eyes widened into glassy grey-blue orbs. She looked at the plain sword glinting in her hand.

  “Kneel, brother.”

  The ghost of Byron started to back away with his podgy palms pressed out towards us.

  “Sister, I was but jesting about the size of your rump. True, when you bend over in your brown gown you could be mistaken for a boar sniffing out truffles, yet…”

  “Get on your knees.”

  Slowly, Byron lowered himself to the ground. Guinevere walked over with Excalibur vibrating slightly between her swollen and bloodied hands. The blade went to the right of Byron’s head, then the left, just above the outline of Byron’s shoulder. Any lower and I had no doubt it would have gone straight through his ghost.

  “For faithfulness to King Arthur and bravery extraordinary, I dub thee Sir Byron of Leodegrance.”

  Byron stood, and a blaze of white light surrounded his entire body.

  “I shall see thee on the other side, and I shall be waiting, but now is your time for living. Write your place in history, beloved sister.”

  And with his final words, brave Sir Byron, the best of us all, was gone.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  A Queen for Camelot

  “What will happen to Excalibur now?” asked Gareth.

  “The sorcerer does not know,” replied Tristram bitterly. “We are leaderless, and that witless farce of a knights’ council was veritable proof enough.”

  I was still in the black tent. I hadn’t left it. I didn’t want to. Guinevere had gone to stretch her legs – so she said – after Byron vanished, but I think she wanted to be alone to cry.

  She seemed to think it was a sign of weakness. I thought she was wrong, but I wasn’t going to stop her. I couldn’t think of anything that existed that was stronger than love, because nothing physical had ever come close to the gut-wrenching pain I was going through now.

  Grief and love went hand in hand. I realised that now.

  When Guinevere returned, red eyed and sniffly, she had Bedivere, Tristram, Gareth and David with her. Bedivere sat behind me and spread his legs around mine. We sat in a circle, but we were broken. I kept waiting for the Irish voice of Talan to start singing away. Every time the flap to the tent moved, six pairs of eyes immediately went to it, but he wasn’t coming back. Talan was with Arthur, trapped in a time that wasn’t his.

  No one had said his name, but a gap had been left in the circle between Gareth and David: a subconscious space that would never be filled by another. Both Bedivere and Gareth had brothers here, but as much as I liked Gawain and Agravaine now – and I flat-out adored Lucan – not one of them would be able to take the place of that fifth stranger who had become a friend.

  And so we talked, about everything that didn’t matter and nothing that actually did. The council that Merlin called had been a disaster, by all accounts. Some of the knights were terrified that without Arthur they were going to be placed into an enchanted sleep again. Others thought another invasion from across the water was imminent without a king in Camelot and wanted to be ready for war. A few wanted Merlin to take
charge. More wanted Merlin as far away from Camelot as possible.

  “Sir Bedivere, what say you?” asked David. “You remained silent during the council, but if there is one knight that all will follow, it is you.”

  “My counsel was not given because I am no knight,” replied Bedivere, “but I must ask, Natasha, did your brother leave instructions or guidance before he departed? After the Battle of Camlann, he told me three times to throw the sword back into the lake where Nimue reclaimed it. Now they are both gone, one for the good of all, alas, one for ill. I would throw the sword into the water with my good arm if I thought it would bring the king back quickly to us, but who shall be the custodian? It would simply sink to the bottom.”

  “We will,” I said quietly. “We’ll look after the sword, or rather Guinevere can.”

  Guinevere hadn’t touched the sword since knighting Byron. Excalibur was lying on the ground in the centre of the broken circle.

  “Lady Guinevere,” stuttered David, “but she...as able and brave and noble...she can’t...she isn’t...”

  “It is not mine to claim, Lady Natasha,” said Guinevere softly. “There must be a rightful heir.”

  “The king’s sister remains,” said Bedivere. “What say you all to Queen Natasha?”

  I gave a mirthless laugh, but no one else saw how ridiculous that sentence was.

  “Queen Natasha,” said Gareth softly. “Of course. Why, Logres does have an heir after all.”

  “A trusted person, someone who can look after the throne while we await the king’s return,” said Tristram, smiling.

  “Stop it.”

  “I have borne witness to much madness in this land,” said Guinevere, “but this is madness I can embrace with my head and my heart. The lady knight who became the queen.”

  “Will you lot shut up?”

  “Would Merlin accept this?” asked David. “We know from the meeting of the knights’ council that he is most grieved with Lady Natasha’s deception. He wants her stricken from the Round Table. The sorcerer will never accept her as queen.”

  “It is not for the sorcerer to decide,” replied Bedivere. “The more I think of it, the more it makes sense to me. Natasha should be the guardian of Logres and the keeper of Excalibur.”

  This had gone too far. I wasn’t a lady, let alone a queen. I didn’t want to be a queen. I was the one sitting at the back of the class hoping no one would see my freak beacon shining like a supernova. Sitting on a throne, high up on a dais, in front of hundreds of people was my idea of mental torture. Just the thought was making me sweat: full-on-taps-under-the-pits kind of sweat.

  “I don’t want to be queen.” I was on my feet now. The grazed and blistered skin across my hands was pinching as I clenched my fists. They couldn’t replace my brother with me. I wouldn’t let them. It was the first step to forgetting about him completely. Patrick had been whitewashed out of my life by other people. No one was going to do it now to Arthur.

  “The king would want you to take his place,” said Guinevere softly. “And you could, you know you could.”

  But I wasn’t inflicted by false modesty; I never had been. I knew what I was good at, and I knew what I couldn’t do to save my life. And the thought of ruling a kingdom would have made me puke up my breakfast, if it hadn’t been for the fact that the others sitting around me, gazing up with perverse reverence, seemed to think that it was the most natural thing in the world.

  I missed having that inner voice in my head. I hated Gwenddydd and would forever. I despised every memory I had of her and her voice for betraying me, and not seeing what was going to happen when Guinevere had stabbed her heart and released her from the falls.

  But I missed having an inner voice. Someone who was caustic but true. Someone who could show me the way when I was lost. Right now I was alone, and floundering amongst the flotsam and jetsam of the last two days.

  Everyone has an inner voice and so do you. Yours never went anywhere. It was just suffocated by Gwenddydd. Now she is gone and you are free. Free to become your own woman. Free from living in Arthur’s shadow.

  But I love my brother, I thought guiltily, and I knew that in the time-honoured tradition of being crazy, I really was speaking to myself.

  Of course you do. But that doesn’t mean you can’t still be special. He’ll find a way back, you know in your heart he will. It’s just going to take time. So what are you going to do while you wait? Sit around and be pathetic? You’re worth more than that – and so is Guinevere.

  Guinevere. Now that was a name already in the history books. Books that hadn’t been written in this time.

  Guinevere. That was it. The truth in the legend. There had been a King Arthur and Queen Guinevere, but they just ruled at different times.

  “Guinevere can be queen,” I cried.

  “Lady Guinevere?” said Bedivere.

  “Guinevere can be queen – Guinevere should be queen – just while we wait for Arthur. If anyone can use Excalibur, it’s her. She took on Nimue in the forest, and she used it when we were in the falls. It answers to her.”

  “You do not wish to rule, Lady Natasha?” asked Gareth.

  “Not in a million years, but that doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be a queen.”

  Guinevere was spluttering and turning pink – but unlike me, she didn’t tell anyone to stop suggesting.

  “Guinevere would be perfect,” I continued. “She’s brave and smart and loyal.”

  “And if I remember correctly, the king entrusted Excalibur to Lady Guinevere in the Great Hall of Camelot, did he not?” said Tristram, slowly scratching his blonde stubble.

  “Then we have our queen,” said Bedivere.

  “A worthy choice,” added Gareth.

  David was doing an impression of a fish. He was blindly looking from one knight to another with his mouth opening and closing as words failed him.

  My next quest: get David to embrace feminism, but perhaps that was one quest too far-fetched, even for me.

  “Queen?” gasped Guinevere finally. “But I am not worthy. The knights will never accept my rule.”

  “They don’t need to,” I replied. “It’s the Round Table that decides, isn’t it? Bedivere can give the sword back, just like last time, but instead of throwing it into the lake, he can place it back in the centre of the table. Then all you have to do is pull it out and you’re queen until Arthur gets back.”

  It was brilliant. And simple. And brilliant. Crowning Guinevere would be the perfect distraction to keep my addled brain busy until Arthur found a way back. I bet he and Talan were in that muddy wet field already. I could see them now. Just the two of them because no one else was allowed in my picture.

  “A new queen and the reknighting of Sir Bedivere in one fell swoop,” said Gareth admiringly. “Why, Lady Natasha, I do believe the sorcerer may yet see you as a rival as chief counsellor.”

  “Yes!” cried Guinevere. “You have to be at my side, Lady Natasha. We’ll wait for the king together.”

  “Yet there are some who would see the events of these days past as treachery,” said an old croaking voice from the flap of the tent. It had moved and not one of us had seen. Merlin was standing in the entrance, framed by black cloth. A mourning shroud.

  “I didn’t destroy the falls, Merlin,” I replied. “You and Nimue did that all by yourselves.”

  “I am not mourning the loss of my sacred land. There are other places in this world that are untouched and unsullied which I can claim for my own. You knew the falls would not endure, Natasha, Lady Knight of the Round Table. They do not exist in your time. You foresaw what was to happen. The treachery I speak of is your duplicity with the king and Lady Morgana. To remove those that belong from this land.”

  “You’re just pissed at me because you can’t bring Sammy back – or Mila. She destroyed the acorn, your link between worlds.”

  “This was not what I had foreseen.”

  “Then the visions were crap, weren’t they? You tortured me for mo
nths with visions. I was almost burnt at the stake because of you. Nothing you said would happen actually did – and you can’t stop Guinevere from becoming queen.”

  “You are forgetting, Natasha, Lady Knight of the Round Table. I foresaw that which blackens your heart even now. I told you that you would be separated from the king. And that has come to pass.”

  “But he’ll be back...”

  But the old man was laughing. His mouth was wide open, and his disgusting brown teeth seemed to move in his gums like tiny bells. It was deranged laughter from a madman – or someone who had nothing left to lose.

  “And how long are you prepared to wait? A few days, a month, a season, a year, a decade or thrice that? Logres waited a thousand years for its king to return. Bodies were destroyed by the very decay of air. Are you willing to give yourself to a sepulchre of time, Natasha, Lady Knight of the Round Table? Is your mind strong enough to watch your body crumble?”

  “Is that what you’re going to do to us, sorcerer?” asked Gareth. “Is Logres to be placed in another enchanted sleep while it waits for Arthur to return?”

  Everyone in the broken circle was now standing; Tristram had pulled Bedivere up, and Gareth had instinctively edged just a fraction in front of them both.

  “I could – but I will not,” replied Merlin, and his blue eyes flashed for a split second with a blazing white light. He wasn’t capitulating; he was giving us a physical reminder that he still had magic and could do what the hell he wanted.

  “What will you do?” asked Guinevere. She was holding Excalibur, and something had happened to the silver blade. When it had been lying on the ground, it had been dull, as if covered in a layer of dust. Now it was gleaming again.

  “I was tricked, a fool’s bane. It was the same when the Lady of the Lake locked me away. A pretty face – I have always been a fool for a pretty face. I should have kept my wits around me and an eye on the king’s sister. Men wish for glory and treasure, but Natasha did not. She wanted riches of the heart – as ultimately did the king. I did not realise this until it was too late. I did not foresee that the king would place his heart above the crown on his head. Once I did see their intentions it was too late. My sister was leaving, and to condemn her to the void of the netherworld would have been a cruel blow. I felt honour-bound to protect her. And so I joined as one with Lady Morgana. Nimue is now where I cannot reach her, and the sacred falls that bear my name are gone. Destroyed by fire and water and heart.”