“It is,” I replied, looking up at the Tower of London. “But it used to be one of London’s palaces, and a prison. Anne Boleyn was held here before Henry the Eight had her beheaded. The crown jewels are held here too.” I stopped myself, realising I sounded like a guidebook. I stepped around Wyn and Percy and headed to the small ticket office by the gates.
“We close in half an hour, Miss,” the man on duty said when I asked for four adult entry tickets. He flicked through a magazine, barely even looking at me.
“That’s fine,” I said, gesturing for Wyn to pay. “We just want to take a quick look around.”
As we stepped through the gates Lance, Percy and Wyn relaxed within the fortified walls. No guards had rushed them, and no terrible magic curse had fallen on them. I almost giggled at the relieved looks on their faces.
It had been years since I’d been to the Tower of London, but I was as awed as I had been as a child. The walls rose on every side, ancient, grey and pitted, dirty with centuries of city smog. Buildings sat square against them, with the main White Tower rising up from the centre. Most of the ground was cobbled and paved, save for a few stretches of green lawn. Smaller towers rose at the corners of the walls, and I could see Lance looking at them with an odd expression on his face.
“Trying to work out if you could storm it?” I asked with smile, laughing when he nodded seriously.
It didn’t take me long to find directions to the exhibition the curator in Wales had mentioned. I was half way toward the entrance to the building housing it when I realised the boys were no longer with me. Looking back I spotted them standing by the edge of a green lawn. A couple of Tower staff were dressed up as knights, teaching a small group of school children about armour and weaponry. I’d seen the kind of show before, but it took on a new kind of meaning now.
Percy was snorting with laughter by the time I got there. Wyn stood with his arms crossed, a bemused grin on his face. But it was Lance’s intense stare that was really putting the ‘knights’ off.
“What are you doing?” I asked him.
He glanced down at me. “It this really what they think of knights?”
I looked towards the actors. They were entertaining the school kids with jokes, but it didn’t look like Lance saw the funny side.
Rolling my eyes, I grabbed his arm and the back of Wyn’s jacket. “Come on.”
With some reluctance they left the ‘knights’ behind and headed into the dark interior of the Keep. We’d been walking for a few minutes when Lance grunted irritably beside me.
“What’s up with you?”
“I don’t like this.” He glanced up at a display of armour. “I feel like I’m in a tomb. This is my world, and to all these people it’s just dry history, easily dismissed.”
His jaw was clenched tightly, his eyes dark.
Without really thinking about it, I reached out and squeezed his fingers. He looked down at me in surprise, then smiled back at me, giving my fingers a little squeeze of his own.
“Just think what these people would do if they knew who you really are,” I told him softly.
“Run screaming for the exits?”
I laughed at his innocent expression. “Well, yes, probably-“
I broke off as Arthur’s voice shouted, making my head ring. It’s here!
Where?
Not far.
“Cara?”
Lance’s voice was questioning but I ignored it, breaking into a jog. A woman shouted at me as I almost knocked into her, but I just brushed past.
My fingers tingled with static electricity building in the air. My heart hammered in my chest.
I turned the corner and stopped dead, like I’d hit a solid brick wall.
At the far end of the corridor was a big glass case with a suit of gleaming armour. I could have blamed the overhead light for the way it glowed, but I’d have been lying. Perhaps to anyone else it looked like a regular display, but not to me.
I edged forward, my feet like lead weights. The glass case grew closer, and I could feel Lance just one step behind me.
There it was in front of me. A huge broadsword hung on a set of supports. The hilt was bound in leather, turned black with age, and a blood red stone was held in place on the pommel by a metal griffin, so perfectly moulded that it almost looked alive, its eyes tiny chips of ruby. The blade was unmarked and undamaged, as flawless as the day it was forged.
Excalibur.
Chapter Twenty-Two
I couldn’t get to it. Without thinking about it I drew my hand back to smash the glass case. It wasn’t rational, but I wanted to hold it, I wanted to feel the cold metal in my fingers, and I would do anything to get to it.
Lance’s hand closed over mine before I could hit the case.
“What are you doing?”
I blinked and looked up at him, suddenly remembering where I was.
“It’s Excalibur.”
“I know it is, Cara. But you can’t just smash the case. Not right now.”
I bit my lip, turning to see Percy and Wyn watching me. They both looked marginally impressed.
“So, what do we do?”
Lance hesitated. “Didn’t the guy outside say this place was closing soon? We need to find a way to still be in here when they lock up. Breaking out will be a lot easier than breaking in first.”
A part of me couldn’t believe I was actually considering theft so calmly and rationally. But another part of me simply didn’t consider it theft. Excalibur was Arthur’s; I was only taking back what was rightfully mine. Excalibur didn’t belong to the Tower of London, so I wasn’t really stealing it.
We moved down the corridor away from the glass case and ahead of me I saw a sign for the men’s bathroom. Yanking open the door I gestured for the boys to go inside.
“Lock yourselves in a cubical and stay quiet.” I’d seen it work in a movie before. I couldn’t be sure it would work in real life, but it was the only thing I could think of.
“What about you?” Lance asked even as Wyn and Percy headed inside.
“I’ll find somewhere else.”
Lance stepped back into the hallway and let the door close. “Then I come with you.”
“But-“
“Don’t argue with me, Cara,” He cut me off. “Just go.”
I’d expected to find the ladies toilet nearby, but we still hadn’t found them when I could hear some of the staff in the next corridor telling people it was closing time. I tried the nearest door and to my surprise it opened. Pushing Lance in ahead of me, I stumbled in and closed the door.
We were in a storage closet, and not a very big one. With the door inches in front of me I could feel Lance pressed tightly against my back.
“This is cosy,” he muttered. “I’ve got to move my arm…”
I wondered why he was telling me, and then I felt it curve around my waist as he braced the palm of his hand against the door.
His breath was hot on the back of my neck, making my skin tingle. Shifting his other hand slightly, he rested it on my hip.
Had he noticed my shirt had ridden up and his fingers were resting on my bare skin?
I wasn’t in the closet anymore; I was stood by the window in the high tower room of a castle. A small village spread out below us and Lance was stood close behind me, looking over my shoulder.
“What am I looking at?” I asked him in a whisper.
I felt him stiffen behind me, then he relaxed, his lips tickling my ear as he replied. “Joyous Gard. My home. Not that I spent a lot of time here in the years of the Round Table.”
He shifted his fingers, moving them down to my jean clad hip, and the image vanished. I sighed in disappointment.
A little chuckle escaped his lips; I could feel it vibrating through his chest. “Sorry, but we really ought to focus on the job at hand.”
Hand. That just served to make me focus on the hand Lance had now dropped lower down my hip. I was certain I could feel the heat of it even through my jeans. It
felt too intimate, alone with him in the dark.
I tried to force my mind away from it. I’d promised myself I’d bury the growing feelings I was having for Lance, but it was difficult being pressed so tightly against him in a dark closet.
A long time passed as we stood there, both of us barely breathing. The building beyond had gone very quiet and, at last, Lance shifted his hand to ease open the door. Most of the big overhead lights had been switched off and we crept through the semi-darkness, using the faint light of the glowing exit signs to guide us. We’d nearly reached the men’s toilet when the door was pushed open and Wyn peered out.
“All quiet?”
Lance nodded and he and Percy joined us in the corridor.
We came back round the corner and again I felt the tingling in my fingers, this time accompanied by white noise in my ears.
I reached the case and pressed my fingers against the cold glass. The red stone glittered even under the dim lights. Whilst I simply stared up at Excalibur I could hear Lance and Wyn having a low, whispered conversation.
“We can’t break the glass,” Lance whispered. “It’ll make too much noise.”
“Well, I don’t know how else you plan on doing it.”
“There must be a way of opening it. This is only on loan after all. It can’t be completely sealed in there.”
I pressed my palm harder against the glass, a desperate longing churning in my stomach.
“There’s hinges here,” Percy said suddenly. “So there must be a lock on the other side.”
Lance brushed behind me and I finally forced my gaze away from the sword to see what he was doing. He carefully inspected the lock and then reached towards his hip.
A soft noise made me turn my head.
“Cara?”
“I thought I heard footsteps.”
Lance paused, his head cocked. The silence remained. “Must have been your imagination.” He reached to his hip again and this time his fingers closed around the hilt of his sword and he drew it with a soft rasp.
He weighed it in his hand for a moment then brought it down toward the lock. The metal sheered under the blade and the case sprung open.
There were sudden noises around me, but the only thing I saw was Excalibur. I reached out and closed my fingers around the hilt and it was like a shot of electricity up my arm. I drew the sword out of the case, expecting it to drag my arm down, but it was no weight at all. I lifted it straight up in front of me, closed my other hand around the hilt and turned.
“Put it down. Right now.”
I blinked and stared into the face of the girl in front of me. She couldn’t have been more than a year or so older than I was. Her hair was slightly mused and she was a little breathless. I understood why when I glanced over her shoulder to where Wyn was doubled over clutching his stomach.
“I’m serious,” she said, holding up one shaking finger. “Put the sword down.”
I looked at Lance but he just shrugged a little helplessly.
“Um, no,” I said. “Look, it might just be better if you go. Should you even be here? The Tower is closed.”
She glowered at me. “I know it is. I work here. Look, if you just put the sword down – should it be glowing like that?”
She was so focused on Excalibur she didn’t notice Wyn edging up behind her. He shot me an apologetic sort of look and then his forearm connected with the back of the girl’s head. Her eyes glazed and she started to fall, but Wyn caught her before she hit the floor.
“What the hell did you do that for?” I exclaimed.
“She was causing trouble.” He rubbed his ribs. “Pretty strong for such a tiny thing.”
“But now what are we going to do with her?” I protested. “When she wakes up she’s going to go straight to the police, and that’s the last thing we need.”
“We take her with us.”
I knew I looked pretty gormless as I turned to stare at Lance with my mouth open. “I’m sorry. We what?”
“We don’t have a choice. You’re right about not needing the police after us. So we take her with us.”
“So not only will we be in trouble for theft, we’re going to be kidnappers too?”
“Listen, Cara,” Lance took one of my hands, the one not currently wrapped around Excalibur’s hilt. “I don’t know who she is, but there’s something odd about her. I don’t like the idea of just walking away.”
I looked back at the girl with her curtain of long black hair and sighed. “Fine. Let’s just get moving.”
Wyn grinned at me and hoisted the girl up, slinging her easily over one shoulder.
I decided there and then that my life couldn’t possibly get any weirder.
Getting out of the Tower of London proved to be surprisingly easy, almost too easy. We left the main visitor corridors and found a side staff door unlocked that led out under the outer wall to the street beyond.
Part of me felt we should have had to scale walls, or fight the guards, but when I mentioned it to Lance he only laughed and offered to take me back inside so I could do it again.
“What about Excalibur?” I asked, looking down at the sword still clasped tightly in my hand. “It’s a bit obvious.”
“It’s also protected by old magic – whilst it’s in your possession no one can see it unless you want them to.”
“People can see her though,” I said jabbing my thumb over my shoulder at the unconscious girl. “You can’t really be planning on taking her with us.”
Lance shrugged. “I don’t see that we have much of a choice. We’ll take her to Merlin. He’ll know what to do.”
I grunted my reply but didn’t respond to Lance’s curious look. I couldn’t quite articulate why I didn’t really like the girl coming along – besides the fact that we were abducting a complete stranger. A pretty little stranger.
“Cara?” Lance touched my arm just as we reached the car, but I shrugged him off.
“I’m fine – I just don’t like this.”
“I don’t either, but I don’t think we have a choice.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
We made it back to the M25 around London with the girl sandwiched in the back of the car between Wyn and Percy.
She didn’t wake up until we were nearly twenty miles outside London. Waking with a grunt of pain it seemed to take her a while to realise where she was, then she started screaming.
Wyn clapped his hand over her mouth and she stared at him, wide eyed over the top of his fingers.
“If you stop screaming, he’ll lower his hand,” Lance told her calmly.
She nodded and Wyn dropped his hand from her mouth.
“What the hell are you playing at? Where are you taking me? Who the hell are you people?”
“Whoa,” Wyn grinned at her. “Try one question at a time.”
She glowered at him. “Fine. Who the hell are you?”
“Not important,” Wyn replied. “Next question?”
“Where are you taking me?” she snapped.
“Somewhere safe until we know you won’t go running to the police.”
“Fat chance of that,” she muttered. “You steal from a national museum and then you abduct an innocent bystander. You’re in big trouble.”
“And this is exactly why you’re coming with us,” Lance said twisting in his seat to face her. “Now, what’s your name?”
She looked for a moment like she wasn’t going to reply and then she sighed. “Vivian.”
“Vivian?” Wyn cocked an eyebrow.
She scowled at him. “Are you going to tell me your names?”
“I’m Lance. The charmer next to you is Wyn, the quiet one grinning like a schoolboy is Percy, and this here is Cara.”
Vivian glanced at each of us in turn then her lips curved up in a strange, knowing smile. “Lancelot, Gwain and Percival.”
My hands clenched around the steering wheel even as Lance twisted sharply in his seat again. A moment of stunned silence filled the car.
I looked in the rear view mirror and saw her smiling at me.
“And, of course, Caronwyn Pendragon. Last descendant of King Arthur.”
A short dagger appeared in Lance’s hand, drawn from the same place as his sword no doubt. “Who are you?”
I knew from his tone of voice that he was thinking the same thing I was. Morgana.
“No, I’m not Morgana,” she said, as though reading my mind.
Lance stared at her with an odd look on his face. “Vivian? Are you one of the Fair Folk?”
“Yes, Lancelot. You know my sister very well.”
“Nimue?” I said. It seemed like the obvious guess.
“You truly are a Pendragon, Cara,” she said smiling at me. “Yes, I am the sister of Nimue. She cannot leave the Lake, so she sent me to protect Excalibur. You don’t really think it should have been that easy to steal the sword, do you?”
My eyes met hers in the mirror and I snorted. “I did think it all seemed a little too simple. But why didn’t you just tell us who you were?”
Her eyes sparkled. “And what would have been the fun in that?”
I frowned but Lance simply chuckled. He caught my eye.
“That’s the Fair Folk for you. Nimue is unusual amongst their kind. Most, like Vivian here, only get involved with the lives of men if it’s going to amuse them.”
Vivian laughed. “You just looked like you were having such fun, I couldn’t resist joining in. I’ve been watching over the sword for over a thousand years. Mostly it was just lying in the dirt, so it wasn’t exactly a thrilling job. It seems that’s about to change.” Her expression suddenly grew serious. “But I also think you may have need of my assistance.”
Now I knew she was Nimue’s sister I could see it, as though some kind of glamour had fallen away. The long dark hair and the amber eyes were the same. But Vivian was smaller, more delicate, and more pixie-like than elf-like. Sat between Wyn and Percy she looked particularly tiny.
She made me feel big and clumsy.
I forced myself to pay attention to the road as we hit the motorway just outside Wales. I’d done more driving in the last few days than I’d done in my entire life, but I still wasn’t fully confident behind the wheel.
The Last Knight (Pendragon Book 1) Page 15