by Donna Hosie
“I have not seen Lady Samantha since last eve,” replied Talan thickly. He was eating several slices of toast.
Arthur was now clutching at his shaggy blonde hair.
“Sammy’s probably outside having a smoke. Calm down, we’ll find her.”
“If anything has happened to her, I swear...”
While Tristram, Gareth and Talan tore apart Arthur’s bedroom looking for the burning acorn, Arthur, Bedivere, David and I searched the rest of the house, and then the surrounding streets, for his girlfriend.
But there was no sign of Slurpy - or her purse, cell phone and cigarettes.
“She was really mad yesterday, Arthur,” I said, in an attempt to calm him down. “She’s probably taken the train back to Wales, just to annoy you.”
“But Sammy was fine last night once we were alone, and after what happened to your neck...”
The only trace we could find of the acorn was a small circular scorch mark on the cream carpet. We searched everywhere, including under Arthur’s bed - and there were things under there no sister should discover - but the acorn continued to evade us all.
“Lady Samantha may have the seed on her person,” suggested Tristram, as the five knights, Arthur and I sat around the dining room table. There were only six chairs, and so I was sat on Bedivere’s lap with my arm wrapped around his shoulders. I wasn’t interested in discussing Slurpy, and so I played with my old earring, which Bedivere still had pinned above his heart. I had wrapped a scarf around my neck so mum and dad wouldn’t see the burns – not that I thought for a second that they would actually notice. I was invisible once more, although it was doing my head in the way my mother was fussing over Arthur and the knights, even going so far as to wash their clothes for them – well, actually she asked Jenny, our cleaner, to wash them, which meant the same in motherland.
Our father had gone out to watch a football match, although he never took an interest in the sport normally. Perhaps it was his new religion for a Sunday afternoon? Anything to avoid being in the house with us.
A torn map of the British Isles was open on the table. Arthur was pointing out the location of the enactment of yesterday, and then different spots that the knights may know like Caerleon, our old house in Wales and even Solsbury Hill. Arthur continually checked his cell phone for missed calls or messages, and his face would fall as he scrolled through the texts, only to find there was nothing from Slurpy.
There was a knock on the dining room door. The knights all jumped up and bowed as my mum walked in with a tray. I squealed as I was upended onto the hard tiled floor.
“Jenny made you boys some sandwiches,” said my mother.
“Boys? What am I? Bloody Welsh mist!” I asked, as an apologetic Bedivere helped me to my feet.
“Oh, you know what I meant, Natasha,” said my mother in a strained voice, “and please don’t use language like that in the house.” She was smiling, but it was more of a grimace and showed off the veins in her thin neck. “In fact, could you help me with something out in the kitchen, darling?”
Something was wrong. My mother had called me darling, and she was smiling.
I followed her out of the dining room and into the kitchen, rubbing my hip bone, which had taken the brunt of my fall from Bedivere’s lap. The kitchen was enormous, with stainless steel appliances and dark marble worktops. Pots and pans hung from the centre of the ceiling, and several wine racks were spaced out along the surfaces. All had bottles missing.
“Bedivere is an unusual name, isn’t it?” said my mother. I couldn’t see her face because she had suddenly become very interested in rearranging the spice jars in an overhead cupboard.
“I guess.”
“Have you known him long?”
“A while.”
“He seems very sweet on you, Natasha.”
I couldn’t think of anything sensible to say and so my mouth stayed glued shut. Several minutes of torturous silence then followed, because my mother clearly couldn’t decide on how to advance the conversation either.
“Can I go back in?” I asked.
“Just be careful, Natasha,” said my mother in a low voice, as I started to back away. She was still facing the spice cupboard, but her hands were now spread about a foot apart on the gleaming black marble worktop.
“I am being careful.”
“Boys your age...well, they can promise a lot to get what they want.”
“He’s not like other boys, mum.”
“They are all like other boys, Natasha.”
I could feel the anger starting to rise in my chest. What the hell did she know about Bedivere and me? Just because her marriage was a total disaster. She had spent the last two years nagging me because I didn’t have any friends - we had even been arguing about a stupid school dance on the day I fell into the knights’ tomb. Now I had someone who meant the world to me, and she still wasn’t happy.
“Do you say this sort of crap to Arthur?”
“Don’t use that sort of language with me, Natasha.”
“I bet you don’t. I bet you wouldn’t have said this to Patrick either.”
I immediately knew I had gone too far.
“How...how…we don’t...ever…”
Yet she still didn’t have the guts to face me. It was the spice jars that had her undivided attention. I wanted to smash them into pieces, to see if she actually cared about anything anymore.
Once it was obvious she wasn’t going to say anything more, not even in anger, I turned and ran from the kitchen. My loathing seared through me: for her, for me, for my brother’s idiotic girlfriend, and for the murderous Nimue.
The arctic wind blasted me in the face as I pulled open the front door and ran into the street. The day felt even colder than the downcast day before.
Wearing a pair of green skinny jeans and a black and white striped sweater, I ran down the road. Sneakers were like a second skin to me, and I always had my feet in a pair from the second I dressed. Now I understood why - because I would always be running from something.
I only started to relax into my stride when I was four streets away from our square. A red London bus rounded the corner at speed, narrowly missing an old beggar man who was crossing the road. The old man would have been tall, but he was bent over like a question mark. He had a long, knobbly wooden stick clenched between gnarled fingers, and his clothes and shoes were torn and frayed. His long, thin face was covered in grey matted hair, but his blue eyes were alert and contemptuous. He glared at the bus driver and muttered a curse under his breath, as it belched out a fog of black smoke.
“Fools, the lot of them,” cursed the beggar, as he reached my side of the street.
I didn’t reply; he wasn’t the sort of person you struck up a conversation with, but I did feel very sorry for him. It looked extremely painful to be in that stooped, unmoveable position.
“Out running, are you?” asked the beggar, and I smiled and nodded.
“Was never a runner myself. Time saw to that.”
I felt obliged to at least acknowledge him. He didn’t look like the kind of person anyone would stop and talk to.
“I like running. It’s the one thing I’m good at.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that...Lady Natasha.”
The beggar man grinned at me: a mischievous smile that bared brown stained teeth.
I took a couple of steps back. “What did you just call me?”
“Oh, I know you, and your brother, and the five young knights currently sitting around your dining room table.” He closed his eyes and pressed his stick hand against his wrinkled forehead. “And if I am not much mistaken, they are currently debating whether to come in search of you, Natasha, Lady Knight of the Round Table.”
“Who are you?” I gasped.
The beggar man laughed. It was deep and throaty.
“You have set events in motion, Natasha. Events that cannot be undone now the bell has been tolled. The seed of Logres has been planted, and a new sapling will ri
se from the ground with the power to turn the skies red with fire .” He laughed and laughed and the more he laughed the deeper and more musical it became. As he laughed, the wider his mouth became, until I swear I could see his floppy, pink uvula swinging like the clapper on a bell, and the more it flapped, the louder and more sonorous the sound of the bell became.
There was a screech of brakes. My neck moved automatically of its own accord, because the next second I was looking at an irate cab driver who was swearing at the flustered-looking driver of a red sedan that had pulled out in front of him. The woman driver looked confused, like she couldn’t understand why her car had suddenly done that.
When my head snapped back towards the beggar man, he was gone.
Chapter Seven
Don’t Call Me Natty
Two months ago I was going mad from grief. Now I was just going mad. In the space of twenty-four hours I had been reunited with the only boy I had ever loved, but it was becoming clear that my sanity was the price to pay for willing someone from another time, a myth, a legend, into my world.
As I turned the corner and made my way back into the square where we now lived, I saw Arthur and Gareth standing on the white concrete steps that led to our front door. Bedivere was already crossing the street towards the small green park that was the heart of the square. He had his sword in his hand.
I ran towards him. “You can’t bring your sword outside, Bedivere.”
“So Arthur said,” replied Bedivere, shifting his eyes from left to right, “but it grieves me to be unarmed in this strange time. I sense a malice is shadowing our steps. I fear this quest will not end well.”
I pulled Bedivere into the park. As soon as we were camouflaged by a large holly bush, I told him of my encounter with the tramp.
“And you knew naught of this man?” asked Bedivere, once I had finished telling him about the bell. I missed nothing out, not even the gross, flapping uvula.
“I swear I had never seen him before in my life,” I replied cautiously, “but there was something about him…something that I had seen before.”
“In a dream, my love?”
I shook my head. “No, not a dream. Most of my dreams have been nightmares since we came back.” I clenched my teeth together, willing my brain to remember something - something that was hidden.
“Argh,” I cried, stamping my foot with frustration. “I never forget anything, so why can’t I remember?”
“From this day forth, you do not leave my side, Natasha,” said Bedivere. “I will not risk more hurt coming to you, in this time or my own.”
“I seem to recall that it was being at your side that got me hurt the last time.”
It was meant as a joke, but by the stricken look on Bedivere’s face, he still wasn’t totally up to speed with my – unique – sense of humour.
“Sir Archibald’s blade was reserved for me and me alone, Natasha. You must swear that you will never place yourself in harm’s way again.”
We started walking back to the house. Arthur was scrolling through his cell phone again, while Gareth was smiling sadly at Bedivere as we walked arm in arm across the square.
“What happened to Sir Archibald in the end?” I asked, as we reached the steps.
“Sir Tristram dealt out swift justice.”
“He’s dead?”
“He will not harm you again.”
I wanted to ask whether Bedivere’s former girlfriend, Lady Fleur - or rather Lady Puke as I had christened her - had any more brothers who would now be avenging her honour, but it seemed churlish. Keeping alive in this time was starting to prove problematic. There was no point in worrying about death and destruction in Logres, especially when I had just been throttled in my own bedroom.
“What did you say to mum, Titch?” said Arthur accusingly, as we climbed the steps.
“Nothing.”
“Well, she’s gone to her room with a migraine and a double vodka.”
“And that’s my fault, is it?”
The colour was rising in Arthur’s face. “Titch, you have got to keep her on our side. There’s no way she is going to let you come with us otherwise.”
“What do you mean come with you? Do you have a plan?”
Arthur checked over his shoulder to make sure we weren’t being overheard.
“I’m telling mum and dad that I’m going backpacking with the guys. They’ll flip out, of course, but technically they can’t stop me because I’m eighteen and I can do what I want. At least it will give me a couple of months away without too many questions. So, I’ve thought it all out. I’ve got a stack of postcards, and I’ll leave them with friends to post out every month or so. That way they won’t get the Foreign Office involved again if they don’t hear from me for a while. They’ll know I’m just travelling.”
His plan did seem rather brilliant – with one exception.
“And what about me? I’m not staying behind. I’m coming with you.”
“You’re only seventeen, Titch.”
“Don’t you dare,” I cried, “don’t you DARE leave without me, Arthur.”
“Calm down, Titch, people are looking at us.”
Arthur grinned sheepishly at a well-dressed middle-aged couple, who were walking a little white terrier past our house. I couldn’t have cared less if they thought I was weird. Everyone else did. It was only a matter of time before the strange girl at number eight was being muttered about at dinner parties.
I sank my nails into Bedivere’s arm.
“Tell him you can’t leave me here. Not by myself. I have no one here. You can’t go back to Logres without me.”
“Arthur…” started Bedivere, but my brother interrupted him.
“Natasha is legally underage here, Bedivere. I’m not saying we leave her behind; I don’t want to leave her behind. What I am saying is that if we leave in the next couple of days, then mum and dad can stop her from coming with us. They still think she’s ill.”
“Then I’ll run away.”
“You’ll shut up and leave it to me is what you’ll do, Titch,” said Arthur, “and in the meantime, you’ll stop winding mum up.”
“Absolutely not,” declared my father later that evening. At dinner, Arthur had tested the water by announcing he was thinking of dropping out of his math degree for a trip around Europe. My coming with him hadn’t even been mentioned yet, and already our father was objecting. It wasn’t looking good.
“May I ask why?” replied Arthur, his fork hovering just in front of his mouth.
Bedivere and Tristram had joined us at the dinner table. Gareth had already eaten, and David was hyper from too much cola and had been locked in Arthur’s bedroom for his own safety. In another room, Talan had discovered the music video channel on the 42-inch plasma television, and had been rendered dumb after seeing Lady Gaga for the first time.
“You can’t just drop out of school, Arthur,” said our father, trying very hard to be non-confrontational and calm. “You’ll have plenty of time for travel in the future, but right now, your education is more important.”
“But I can pick up my education at any time,” argued Arthur.
“I’m not discussing this,” said my father, his face turning purple as he struggled to keep his voice calm. “We have guests.”
“Guests that Titch and I want to travel with,” said Arthur, smiling.
In the space of nine words, our house was picked up from London and was transported to the Arctic Circle, such was the frosty change in atmosphere around the dinner table.
“Natasha is not going anywhere,” said my mother, joining in the conversation for the first time since she had sat down in front of her broccoli and mushroom pie. “We can’t stop you from ruining your future by dropping out of school, Arthur, but Natasha is far too young. We absolutely forbid it.”
She said it with a finality that meant no more discussion - not that there had been any discussion.
Keep quiet, keep quiet, hissed my inner voice, as my fingers
started to turn white from blood constriction, as I clenched every muscle in my body. Let Arthur deal with this.
“Perhaps it would be better if your guests left sooner rather than later,” said my father, still playing the diplomat at the dinner table. He was smiling, but it was totally false. My fingers automatically reached under the table for Bedivere’s hand; he squeezed tightly. “They clearly have plans, and it would be a shame to delay them any longer than necessary, especially if it means putting ideas into Natasha’s head.”
Keep quiet, keep quiet.
“Titch isn’t a child, and neither am I,” replied Arthur, glaring at my father.
“Natasha isn’t well enough to go to school, let alone to go off travelling abroad with total strangers,” said my mother.
Keep quiet, keep quiet, keep…
“When you say I’m not well, you aren’t talking physically, are you?” I said in a quiet voice, ignoring that inner pest who was hissing at me. “You mean I’m not well in the head, don’t you?”
“Natty,” started my father, but I cut him off.
“Do you know what really drives me mental?” I said, standing up. “You call me Natty, like it’s some kind of pet nickname. I’ve never been Natty in my life, but then if you had been around more, you would have known that. You have dragged me and Arthur around the world so many times I don’t even bother to unpack anymore, and yet you have the nerve to make me feel like a failure because I have no friends. Well, you know what? I have no friends because of you, and you,” I cried, pointing from my father to my mother, who had such a pained expression on her face you would have thought her butt had swallowed the chair she was sitting on. “And now I actually want to travel, and see things on my own terms, with friends who would do anything to protect me and Arthur, and you start freaking out about schoolwork and ruining our futures. Do you even know what I’m studying at school?”
There was silence. I looked up, and saw Talan hovering by the archway that led from the living room to the dining area.
“You don’t know what my future is because you haven’t got a clue what my present is,” I cried. “You’re trapped in the past – we all are. So I’m going with Arthur and the others, and you can’t stop me.”