Excalibur Rising (22 page)

      The voice mail was from Todd speaking quickly but enunciating very clearly so that there could be no mistake.  Crispin Peacock, a man in his fifties, had been found dead in his apartment.  He had been dead for several days.  Michael Mandretti was very concerned about their safety and unhappy that Ryan was not answering his phone, and they were all on their way now to Griffinwood Manor. And, by the way, they believed that the sword was in Shrewsbury Castle.
     Ryan looked out of the window again.  Peacock was already across the lawn and disappearing into the undergrowth around the ruins. He remembered that he had asked Elaine about the gate and that Elaine had glanced quickly at the ruins and then refused to answer him.  Obviously there was a gate right there on the other side of the lawn, and the man he knew as Crispin Peacock was about to go through it. 
     Thoughts began to line themselves up for Ryan to consider.  When Peacock had looked at the rough notes of the Griffinwood Document, he had turned the page sideways, and his hand had trembled.  If he knew how to read the ancient runes, then what else did he know?  Ryan thrust his hand deep into his pocket and felt the shape of little gold cross and the smooth outline of the red stones.  Violet had taken the jeweled pin, but fate, or divine providence, or some other power had provided him with an alternative key, and he made up his mind to use it. 
     He retraced his footsteps from the dining room, back through the cavernous front hall, and let himself out the front door and into the fading evening light. He tightened his hold of the talisman and sprinted across the lawn, through the undergrowth and into the shadows of the ruined chapel.  He walked around the crumbling interior walls on the theory that if he was looking for a gate, then the gate would probably be in a wall rather than in the middle of nowhere, although that had not been the case in Norfolk. 
      His phone beeped at him and he pulled it out of his pocket.  Michael Mandretti. 
      “Hello,” he said.
      “Finally,” said Mandretti.  “Where the hell have you been, Doctor?”
     “I’m at Griffinwood Manor but there’s no signal in the house.  What’s been going on?”
      “That’s what I’d like to know,” Mandretti snapped back. “Where’s Violet? Does she know anything?”
     “She’s not here.”
     “Then where the hell is she?”
      “She left with a woman who has been following us.”
     “What?” Mandretti bellowed. “What woman?  Do you know where she went?”
      “No, not really,” said Ryan.
     “We’re on our way,” Mandretti said. “I want that sword.”
     “Violet’s not here,” Ryan repeated, “and I’m just leaving.”
     “No you ain’t,” said Mandretti. “You ain’t going nowhere.  We’re on our way and you’d better damned well wait for us.”
      “Sorry,” said Ryan, “I can’t do that.  I’m going after Peacock, or whoever the hell he is.”
      “You wait,” Mandretti repeated.
      The stone wall in front of Ryan began to shimmer and a mist rose around his feet.  He tightened his hold on the gold cross.
      “I’m following Peacock through the gate,” he said.
     Mandretti’s voice rose to an angry crescendo. “What gate? You ain’t going through no gate.  Wait for us. Where the hell is Violet?”
     “She’s not here,” Ryan said again.
     He heard Mandretti’s last angry growl, and then the phone went dead and Ryan walked through to the other side of the mist.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Ryan
     The village on the other side was completely familiar to him.  He could name the purpose of every building. Enough of the evening light remained for him to see the sagging outlines of a cluster of wattle and daub huts, all badly in need of repair.  He recognized the fetid green waters of a neglected duck pond, and the muddy wasteland of an overgrazed village green. Then his other senses came into play, hearing the persistent bleating of a goat, the squawk of chickens settling in for the night, and absorbing the overwhelming smell of unwashed humans, animal waste, and the midden heap.  Over it all was the scent of wood fires.
     A little above the village stood the long house of a minor nobleman, larger than the other buildings, but still in a sad state of neglect.  The dim glow from some of the huts told him that tanned leather had been stretched across window frames by the more prosperous villagers, and that tallow candles were burning inside the huts.  As he watched,  a group of small boys in ragged tunics and bare feet drove a herd of skinny cattle through the village and into the safety of a wattle enclosure.
     He had seen such villages before. He had walked their streets, identified their kitchen hearths, dug through their midden heaps, even exhumed their burial mounds, but in each case the village had been a thousand year old ruin.  He had never seen torches burning outside the long hut, women gathering their children into the safety of the family bed, mangy dogs fighting for scraps on the street.  The historian in him examined the scene with excitement.  He could see where archaeological deductions had been correct, and he could see where mistakes had been made.
      One sweeping glance gave him enough material for an entire article in any professional journal, but who would believe him?  If he wanted to be taken seriously he would have to go down into the village and collect artifacts to take back with him.
      He put a stop to his racing thoughts.  He was aware that his brain had been attempting to bury itself under a pile of academic questions instead of dealing with the reality of where he was and what he was seeing.  He was not here to collect evidence for a learned treatise on life in the Dark Ages. He was here to find the man who called himself Crispin Peacock.  And, more to the point, he had no idea where
here
was, or how it could be that he had stepped from the 21
^st
century into a living, breathing 12
^th
century village.  All he knew was that it had happened once before when he had stepped through the mist in Norfolk and found himself looking at a fleet of ships that could not possibly exist. 
     This time the mist had brought him through to a forested hillside.  The ruined chapel wall no longer existed, or perhaps that was the wrong way to look at it, perhaps the chapel was yet to be built. One more mystery in a week of mysteries.  One more impossible anomaly.
     He knew he must put aside his disbelief and apply his thought processes to this hunt as though it was any other treasure hunt. The treasure was the man who had gone through the gate ahead of him.  Only a few minutes had elapsed between Peacock’s disappearance into the ruined chapel, and Ryan’s own journey into the unknown.  Did time move at the same pace in this alternate universe?  If that was the case then Peacock must be near, very near.  Where was he likely to go? 
      Ryan studied the village.  The villagers were bringing their livestock indoors and barricading themselves in for the night.  Ryan knew it was not unusual for the poorer peasants to sleep alongside their animals for warmth and safety.  He heard the howling of wolves from the wooded hillsides above the village, a reminder that he too was vulnerable.  Whatever this place was, whatever reality it represented, it was quite possible that he could die here just as easily as he could die in his own world.  His need to get himself indoors was just as great as the need of the peasants.
     Well, if he wanted information, the best place to find it would be at the long house, the home of the minor nobleman who controlled the village.  Visitors would be expected to make themselves known to the local chieftain and would be welcomed into the hall to sleep by the fire, along with the dogs and servants.  Custom would demand that if he knocked, he would be admitted.  He doubted that he would be welcomed anywhere else. No peasant would open his door to a stranger who came knocking at sunset.
      He scrambled down the hillside, uncomfortably aware of the darkness descending on the forest behind him and imagining the yellow eyes of timber wolves following his progress.  The road that ran through the huddled village was better maintained than he expected.  Tree trunks had been laid down in the mud to keep the road passable.  So, he thought, this was not just an isolated settlement. Someone was expecting horsemen and wagons to pass this way.  This village might not be the final destination, but this road led to a destination of sufficient importance that the road had to be maintained.  Perhaps the villagers were not just wary of wolves in the night, maybe they were also afraid of whomever passed along the timber road. 
     As if in answer to his own thoughts he heard the jingle of harness and the thudding of hooves approaching along the road.   He ducked behind a pile of hay, noting that it was fetid and moldy and would provide scant nutrition.  A horseman passed by, clods of mud flying from the horse’s hooves.  The man rode bareheaded and lightly armored with nothing but a dented breastplate, over a leather jerkin.  His hair was brown with sun-bleached streaks catching the remaining light.  He wore a patch over his right eye, and on his feet were white high top tennis shoes.  Ryan knew him immediately; the waiter who had poured the wine for Taras Peacock. 
      The horseman clattered through the village and up to the long house.  His arrival was obviously expected.  Torchlight flared in the darkness as he was admitted into the hall.  The doors closed behind him.  Ryan hesitated.  Now what?  He could hardly go up to the long house himself and demand entrance now that he knew who was in there.  Anyway, he said to himself, what could he have been thinking?  What had made him think that the local chieftain or nobleman who ruled the hall would have accepted him without question?  Had he truly forgotten what impression he would make dressed as he was and carrying a pocket full of 21
^st
century gadgets?  On the other hand, the horseman who had just passed by was wearing white sneakers and he had been admitted without question.
     “If I wanted you dead, you’d be dead by now,” said a voice from the other side of the haystack. 
     Ryan sprang to his feet and found himself face to face with the man who had called himself Crispin Peacock.
     “He likes to kill,” the man said.  “I really do try to discourage him, but he just likes doing it.  Well, at least I persuaded him to leave the children alive.  I don’t think that poor old Vicar can really tell us anything but I had to let the kids be taken.  Sometimes he’s beyond my control.”
     Although Ryan opened and closed his mouth, he had no words; none at all.  The man patted him on the back sympathetically.
     “Bit of a shocker isn’t it, old chap?”
     “Enough with the old chap,” Ryan blurted out. “You’re no English prep school boy.”
     “Public school, old bean,” the man replied.  “For some reason what you Yanks would call a prep school, we call a public school, although heaven knows the public don’t attend.  Don’t worry, I came by it quite legitimately.  All the best schools, Cheam and Harrow.”
     “Where am I,” Ryan asked, “and who the hell are you?”
      “Ah yes, that’s a much better question.  My name, the name I was given at birth, is Mordricus, but I’ve had various names since then.  I could hardly be registered among the flower of English youth as Mordricus Pendragon, could I?  Don’t worry about the other names, just call me Mordricus. You are obviously aware that I am not Crispin Peacock, although it really is a good name.”
     “You killed him.”
     “Not I,” said Mordricus.  “I told you, I have very little control over Bors, that’s the name of my one eyed friend.  He kills. That’s what he does.  Don’t worry about that now, I can explain it later.  For the moment I think we should be more concerned with getting indoors somewhere, there are things in the forest that you would not care to meet.”
     “Wolves?”
     “Worse than wolves,” said Mordricus.  “Come on, old chap, chop-chop. We’ll go up to the hall.  In another reality, of course, that would be Griffinwood Manor, but we’re not in that reality, are we?”
     “Aren’t we?”
      “Of course not,” said Mordricus.  “You’re the expert, Professor, where would you say we are?”
     “Britain,  12
^th
Century,” said Ryan.
     “Wrong on all counts,” said Mordricus, hurrying Ryan along the timber road towards the long house.  “We are in Albion, and it is the 21
^st
Century.”
     “Another name for Britain,” said Ryan.
     “Not anymore,” said Mordricus.  “No, this is Albion and in this reality we are not fated to become Britain. “
     “How…”
      “Oh, it’s really tedious,” said Mordricus. “Arthur, Camelot, Guinevere, what a bitch she was, and all the rest of us locked in eternal warfare.  We can’t win, we can’t lose, and we can’t modernize. We can’t do a damn thing until Arthur either dies or comes back.”
      “Is he really …”
     “Really sleeping?” said Mordricus, who seemed determined not to let Ryan complete a question. “Well, that’s what we’re going to find out thanks to the paper you found today.”
     “You could read it, couldn’t you?” Ryan asked.
     “Yes, I realized I gave myself away there,” said Mordricus.  “I had a pretty good idea you would follow me. Still, this must be quite a shock for you.  Don’t doubt you could do with a stiff drink.  Bors keeps a pretty good stock; primitive stuff, but it does the trick.”
     Ryan stopped in his tracks. “That long house belongs to Bors?”
     “Yes, I’m afraid it does,” said Mordricus, “and I have to agree that he’s a vile sort of person, but he’s useful.  I’ll have to get rid of him after we’ve dealt with Arthur and we finally have some kind of peace and progress here.”
     Mordricus rapped on the heavy oak door of the longhouse.  The doors opened to reveal the torch lit interior. Once again Ryan was met with a scene that he had only imagined in two dimensions.  He knew that the floor of the long house would be strewn with rushes, but he had not realized that the rushes would be so damp and dirty, and littered with filth of all kinds.  A blazing cook fire occupied one end of the room sending out clouds of choking smoke that hung low over the heads of the men at the table. The room smelled of rancid meat, unwashed bodies, and wet dogs.
     The room fell silent when Mordricus entered.  The dozen or so men who had been seated at the table rose to their feet.  At the head of the table, Bors lifted a wooden cup and said a few words in an unknown language.