A Knight on the Town

by Hermione Moon

  I don’t say anything as the curtains part for the carriage to allow it to enter the next room. Here King Arthur is shown drawing the sword Excalibur from the stone.

  “That’s a typo,” Arthur says.

  “What?”

  He points to the words painted above the scene. “Arthur gladium ex saxo eripuit. Ex saxo means ‘from the stone.’ Ex Saxon means ‘from a Saxon.’ I fought and killed one of the Saxon leaders and took his sword. One of the monks who wrote about the event must have missed off the ‘n’.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “It’s an easy mistake to make. Funny to think it’s spawned a whole legend that never existed.”

  I’m so astounded, I can only sit with an open mouth as we watch the video behind the models of the young warrior as he pulls out the sword from the stone and is declared king. My gaze slides to Arthur, who’s watching the scene, the images reflected in his blue eyes. I fought and killed one of the Saxon leaders and took his sword. He’s probably killed many men in battle. I’m not sure how I feel about that. But I suppose it’s no different to modern-day soldiers who fight to defend their country.

  He looks down at me. “Want to feel my muscles?”

  That makes me laugh. “Do you have strong memories of the time?”

  “No. It’s like an old movie I watched many, many years ago. As if it happened to someone else.” He looks ahead as the curtains part again, and we enter a larger room that depicts a meal in Camelot, with the Knights of the Round Table.

  His fingers thread through mine as we pass slowly through. It’s a beautiful display, full of colour and light, the walls painted to make it look as if we’re in Camelot, with banners above our heads, and tables filled with food for a feast. We listen to the narrator telling us about the knights and their stories—Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Sir Tristan and Iseult, Sir Galahad and the Holy Grail, and of course, Sir Lancelot and his love affair with Arthur’s queen, Guinevere.

  Arthur is silent as we approach the models of the king and queen getting married. Lancelot stands behind them, unsmiling, his jealousy obvious. Arthur told me there was no truth in the story, and I can see from the narrowing of his eyes that he’s annoyed.

  “I’m sorry,” I murmur as the carriage rolls past.

  His blue eyes focus on me. “It upsets me that the legend says we were not faithful to one another.”

  “I know.” Behind him, the scene changes to a video of Lancelot leading Guinevere to bed, and her staring up at him lovingly. Arthur doesn’t look at it, but keeps his eyes on mine, and suddenly I can’t look away. My breath catches in my throat, and my heart bangs against my ribs.

  “I never looked at another woman from the moment I laid eyes on you,” he says.

  I’m so unused to declarations like this that I can’t think of anything to say. Luckily, I don’t have to.

  Arthur’s arm lies along the back of the carriage. I’m close to his chest, and I almost fit under his arm. I’m fairly tall for a woman at five-nine, but he feels so much bigger than me.

  I lean against him, and he lowers his arm around me, and we sit like that for the rest of the journey.

  It’s hard to concentrate, but I do my best as we trundle through the story of the Holy Grail. When he helped Merlin send Liza’s soul on to the Summerlands, as he called it, he told me that the Grail was a well of energy. It makes sense to me now, that Morgana taught Merlin to draw from the well in order to summon enough power to break the bonds that hold a spirit to this plane. I think about the picture I saw in the crystal ball this morning and wonder whether I would also be able to access the Grail to help with my magic. I’ve never thought about it like that before. That it could be real magic. But I’m beginning to realize there could be more to it than blessing herbs for my baking.

  Finally, we come to the last room, which tells about Arthur’s death at the Battle of Camlann, and the transportation of his body to the Isle of Avalon. Arthur is silent through this section, and I wonder whether this is the closest the story has coming to touching on the truth. I know his men took him to Morgana, and that this was where she cast the spell on him and transferred his soul to the ruby. I glance at the ring on his right hand. It almost feels like a dream now, seeing his eyes in the helm of the suit of armour, and helping him unstrap the plates to set him free.

  I look back at the scene. It depicts King Arthur’s son, Mordred, thrusting a spear through his father on the battlefield.

  “So Mordred wasn’t real?” I ask Arthur.

  “No. I had no children. I was mortally wounded by an unnamed Saxon who swung an axe that lodged in my neck…” He lifts a hand to rub it, as if he can still feel the blade lodged in the bone.

  “Would you like to have children?” I want to distract him from any memory he has of the end, of the pain and unhappiness he must have felt as he lay there and said goodbye to the woman he loved. Guinevere bends over his body, her long red hair—so like mine—spilling onto the ground. It gives me a funny feeling in my stomach.

  “If the gods will it,” he says. He smiles.

  “Were you a Christian?” I ask, conscious that Christianity had reached the shore of Britain by that point.

  “I knew of the Christian stories,” he says. “But I’m not a scholar or a philosopher. Back then, we had a closer connection with the land. I could feel the turn of the seasons in my blood, and I knew whether it would be a good or bad harvest before the wheat began to ripen. We built our houses and grew our food, and defended our land against those who wanted to come and take it for themselves. We believed there were spirits in the springs, in the earth, in the sun and the stars. The Goddess was the lifeforce that made things grow. The Oak King ruled one half of the year and the Holly King the other. That’s all we knew. We left the rest to the monks and the druids.”

  His low, deep voice mesmerizes me, creating a vision of wheat rippling in the wind, apples ripening on the trees, and the smell of bread baking in the oven. I appreciate technology and medicine and everything that modern times has given me, but part of me yearns for that simpler life.

  “I want to feel that connection with the land,” I tell him. “At times I’m close to it, when I’m in my garden, and when I’m baking, or celebrating a festival. But it always feels out of reach. Will you… will you teach me?”

  “You already have that connection,” he says. “And I’m no expert. But I’ll help if I can.”

  Chapter Seven

  We emerge through the curtains into the interactive museum, and it’s time to disembark. I miss the warmth of his body pressed against mine, as he wanders around, looking at the exhibits. He smiles at the children pressing buttons and trying on pieces of armour, then stands in front of Sir Boss and stares. I walk up to stand beside him.

  “Are you okay?” I ask softly.

  “It’s weird,” he says. “I spent so long looking at the world through the slit in this visor. Years and years… I miss him, a bit.”

  “I can’t imagine how strange it must feel.” Shyly, I slip my hand into his.

  He looks down at it. “I’m sorry if my feelings for you are overwhelming. But I waited so long for you to come back. I mean, I wasn’t standing there for all those years waiting, but I was aware of time passing.”

  “When did you first become more conscious?”

  “Around the time of Josephine,” he says, naming my great-great-grandmother. “I used to watch her kneading dough in the bakery.”

  I realise he’s talking about the Avalon Café. I’d read somewhere that it used to be a bakery, but his words confirm it.

  “What was she like?” I ask as we wander along the line of cabinets that display items supposedly from the ‘real’ Arthur’s time.

  “She had red hair, like you.” He smiles. “All the women in your family did. Harriet, Lizzie, and your mother, Alice, of course. I’ve watched you all, in a kind of dream state, I suppose. But it’s only been since you were born that I’ve fully awoken. That’s how I
knew it was you.”

  He stops and stares into one of the cabinets. Bending, he peers at an item in the middle. Then he laughs. “That’s mine.”

  “What?” I bend beside him and follow his finger as he rests it on the glass above the object. I studied these in my first year at university. It’s called a zoomorphic penannular brooch—basically, a bronze brooch in the shape of an animal, in this case a bear. Of course—the name Arthur is derived from Arth, the Welsh for bear. He probably wore it on a cloak. It’s set with about a dozen small gems, although the one that would mark the bear’s eye is missing.

  “You gave it to me,” he says. “I’d only had it a few weeks when the eye stone vanished. You scolded me for that.” He smiles.

  My jaw drops. “I gave it to you?”

  “On the fifth year of our marriage.”

  It was an anniversary present? I stare at the item, stunned to see a real piece of our history in the flesh, so to speak. “How long were we married?”

  “Eleven years.”

  I look up at him, shocked into silence. I know the artefacts in this room are from the Dark Age period, found or excavated at dig sites around Glastonbury, but I’d assumed they were examples of objects from the sixth century—illustrations of the life Arthur might have lived. I’d never considered something here might actually belong to him.

  And I certainly never thought I might have given it to him.

  His blue eyes are warm, amused. “Yes,” he teases, “you put up with me for eleven years. Does that surprise you?”

  I hold his gaze, knowing as I do that deep inside, I’m beginning to remember the way I felt about him. “No. I’m not surprised at all.”

  His smile spreads, and for a moment I think he’s going to kiss me. But he sighs, stares at the brooch for a bit longer, then continues on.

  I pause and rest my fingers on the glass above the brooch. I wish I could get it for him, but of course it’s a museum piece, and it needs to be here so everyone can see it and appreciate it.

  We walk around the rest of the exhibition, and then we make our way outdoors, into the spring day. Arthur announces he’s hungry, so we circle the building, give Merlin a bit of fuss, then leave him outside and go into the Avalon Café. I was going to have to introduce Arthur to the others at some point, so I might as well get it over with.

  “Arthur is an old friend who’s come to stay for a while,” I tell everyone as we approach the counter.

  “Hello, Arthur.” Delia shakes his hand, her eyes wide. Her gaze slides to mine, bright with amusement, as he shakes hands with Melissa, her sister, who’s a couple of years younger than Delia, and a couple of pounds lighter, but otherwise a carbon copy of her sister. “How come you never mentioned him before?” Delia scolds.

  “I haven’t seen him for a long time,” I explain, “and he lives a long way away, so I never thought he’d visit.”

  Cooper, the young barista who works for me when he’s not at college, comes forward. “Hey,” Cooper says, “good to meet you.”

  “You, too.” Arthur shakes his hand. Did they do that in the sixth century? I would imagine they would have clasped arms like Russell Crowe did with soldiers in Gladiator, but he’s obviously seen others do it.

  “Where are you from, then?” Cooper asks.

  “New Zealand,” Arthur replies without batting an eyelid, obviously recalling the map we studied last night.

  “Wow,” Delia says, “you have come a long way. Are you enjoying your stay?”

  “I’m having a fantastic time,” Arthur says. “Apart from the murder, obviously.”

  Everyone’s smile fades, and Delia shakes her head. “I know, awful isn’t it? And someone said you found Valerie’s body, Gwen.”

  “Yes, Arthur and I were out walking. It was pure coincidence.” I nod as Cooper gestures at the coffee sign, and I put up two fingers, indicating Arthur. “I can’t believe it, after what happened to Liza.”

  “I thought you said you lived in a quiet town where nothing ever happened,” Arthur says.

  “I got that wrong, didn’t I?” I point to the cabinet that holds our hot food, and the one beside it with all the bread, sandwiches, and cakes. “What would you like for lunch?”

  “You choose for me.”

  I order him a roast beef roll and myself a chicken sandwich, and add a couple of pieces of the chocolate cake I made yesterday. Then we take a seat in the window, down from where Merlin’s lying in the sun. We take off our jackets and put them over the backs of our chairs.

  “New Zealand?” I murmur, smiling.

  He laughs. “First thing that came to mind. It sounds like a nice place, anyway. We’ll have to go there someday.”

  I study him, admiring the way his sweater stretches across his impressive chest and arms. We need to get him some more clothes. It’ll be interesting to see what kind of things he chooses.

  “Would you like to travel?” I ask him.

  “Definitely.”

  “Where do you want to go?”

  “Everywhere,” he states. “Eventually. But there’s no rush. It would be nice to see some of England first.”

  I think about his statement, There’s no rush. I hope he’s right. At the moment, I can’t shake the feeling that he’s going to vanish at some point, but I suppose that’s natural considering the situation.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” he says gently.

  I look into his eyes. “Can you be sure about that?”

  “Yes,” he says. “I can’t explain how.” He reaches out and picks up my hand where it’s lying on the table. “I know it’s a lot to ask you to trust me. I am aware of that.”

  It is a lot to ask, but I understand that he can’t prove he’s here to stay, so I just smile and shiver inwardly as he brushes his thumb across my fingers.

  Cooper delivers our coffees, and I glare at him as he grins at me and flicks his eyebrows up at the sight of us holding hands. “Go away,” I tell him, and he laughs and walks off as Arthur chuckles and retrieves his hand.

  Melissa delivers our lunch, and we eat while we talk about places we’d like to go and see. After we’ve finished, we say goodbye to everyone and leave the café, and this time, with Merlin, we head south, to Abbey Park. It’s quiet at this time of day. The grass is covered in daisies, and although the air is fresh, there’s a feeling that summer isn’t too far away.

  I have a ball in my pocket, and Arthur throws it for Merlin, while we walk slowly across the grass. “I wonder how Imogen’s doing,” I say. “She works so hard. I feel guilty for discovering a new case for her.”

  “It hasn’t given her much time to go out with Christian.” Arthur names the exhibitions director from the museum that Imogen has a crush on. “Maybe we should see if they want to go out for dinner with us.”

  I look up at him in delight. “Really?”

  “I don’t see why not.”

  “I’d love that. I’ve never done it. Luke and I were very young when we dated, and although we went out sometimes, it was always in a group, you know? Never with another couple.” A woman is walking toward us, head down, lost in thought. A Cocker Spaniel trots, subdued, at her heels. I frown, sure I recognise both the woman and the dog.

  “Then we should definitely do it,” Arthur replies. “It would be fun. I like Immi, and I’d like to meet Christian properly.” He would have seen him come into the café occasionally, but he’s not spoken to him yet.

  “Yes, I…” My words trail off as the woman lifts her head and looks at us. She’s in her mid-forties, on the plump side, wearing jeans and a rather shapeless black jacket. Her dark hair is sprinkled with grey, and looks uncombed. It’s Kianna Brown; she’s Valerie sister-in-law. I remember then; the dog is Valerie’s.

  I stop walking as she reaches us, and she stops too. “Gwen,” she says. “Hello.”

  “Kianna,” I reply. “I’m so terribly sorry.” I glance at Arthur. “This is Valerie’s sister-in-law, and this is Valerie’s dog, Beauty. Kianna, this is
my friend, Arthur.”

  “Hello,” Arthur says. “I’m very sorry about your sister.”

  She shakes her head, her eyes glistening. “I still can’t believe it. Bradley rang and told me this morning—I’d only just got up. I went straight round. Our parents are there with Valerie’s, and her kids. Everyone’s just crying all the time. I had to get out of the house, so I said I’d give Beauty a walk.” She gives a shadow of a smile at the little dog.

  “It’s just awful,” I reply.

  She rubs her nose. “Bradley said you found Valerie.”

  I stuff my hands in the pocket of my jacket, feeling awkward at the thought. “Yes. I was showing Arthur around the abbey. We just happened to be the first on the scene.”

  “How terrible for you. But I’m glad it was you and not somebody else less… responsible.”

  I nod, touched by her words.

  “There’s going to be an investigation,” Kianna says. “Apparently DCI Hobbs told Bradley that it’s not clear whether Valerie fell or jumped.”

  She doesn’t mention the possibility that Valerie could have been pushed. I glance at Arthur, who raises an eyebrow. Imogen obviously doesn’t want to raise that option unless she has proof.

  “It looks as if Beauty would like to have a run with Merlin.” Arthur watches the Spaniel and the Labradoodle touching noses as their tails wag.

  “Oh, of course.” Kianna bends and takes Beauty off the leash. She and I watch as Arthur draws back his arm and throws the ball. It’s such an innocuous action, but a little tingle descends my spine. Women don’t throw a ball the same way as a man. As both dogs go tearing off over the grass to try to get to it first, it occurs to me that it’s been a long time since I’ve had the company of a man like this, since I’ve been able to turn to someone for support.

  And then I think of Bradley, who’s lost his partner in life, and I feel a swell of guilt and sorrow, and a touch of panic. If you don’t have anything, then you also have nothing to lose. All love involves an element of risk. Arthur insisted he’s here to stay, but I can’t be sure of that. What if I fall for him and then one day I wake up and he’s no longer there? I know being with him will be wonderful, but do I want to take that kind of risk?