Excalibur Rising (24 page)

CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Violet
     Violet opened the gate.  Her first touch had been tentative.  She was ready to step back at the sight of sparks, flames, waves of blue light, or any other kind of magical protection her mind could think of, but there had been nothing and so she simply opened the gate and stepped inside.
Torches on wall sconces flamed into light at a graceful wave of Elaine’s hand, and Violet saw what the gate had been protecting year after year, century upon century; unchanging and hidden from the changing world outside.
     For a moment she could only stand and breathe long slow breaths to calm her racing thoughts for if what she saw was possible, then everything that she had been told was true. Everything.
      At last she was able to grasp what she was seeing. Twelve knights lay at rest on wooden pallets.  No, she corrected herself, only eleven knights, one pallet was empty.  The armor the knights wore caught the light and sent blazing reflections from the flare of the torches. It was armor that she had only ever seen in fantastical drawings, shining in silver and gold.  The knights were bareheaded, their helmets rested beside them on the floor.  Each knight clasped a sword in his hands. No, not each knight, not the knight who rested on a higher, more ornate palette. His armor shone brighter than the others, and his red surcoat was emblazoned with a golden dragon. His hands were empty.
     Violet heard Rowan’s sudden intake of breath, and saw the light of the torches diminish as Elaine struggled to regain control of herself, and reassert the power that kept the torches alight.  So, Violet thought, they’ve never seen this before.  They didn’t know for certain what was in the cave.  They were as overwhelmed as she was.
     “Is it them?” Elaine asked.
     “I don’t know who else it would be?” Violet said.
     “Of course, it’s them,” said Rowan. 
     She walked forward into the chamber, the red led lights on her sneakers flashing incongruously on the shadowed floor.  She looked at each knight and began to identify them by their emblems. Names from legend rolled off her tongue.
     “Sir Ladinas of the Forest Savage, Sir Melinor of the Mountain, Sir Gawain, Sir Percivale, Sir Lionel, Sir Bedivere, Sir Pelleas, Sir Edward of Carnarvon, Sir Gawain of Orkney, Sir Lionel.”
     She paused and looked down at the empty pallet and then moved on to a knight whose surcoat was white with a red cross. “Sir Galahad the Pure,” she said. 
     She came to the last of the knights, the one who wore a red surcoat with a gold dragon emblem, the knight with no sword.  “Arthur, the High King,” she said.
     “Are they dead?” Violet asked.
     “No,” said Rowan. “It is exactly as we were told, they are sleeping.  If they were dead they would be nothing but bones and dust, but Merlin’s magic was strong; even their armor shines.”
     “I still can’t believe it,” said Violet. “Maybe they’re statues, or waxworks or something.”
     Rowan raised her eyebrows. “After everything you’ve seen today, do you really think that they are wax dummies?”
     “I don’t know what to believe,” said Violet. “Perhaps I’m hallucinating.  Maybe I’ll wake up in bed at the Dorchester and everything that’s happened today will turn out to be a dream.”
     “Would you prefer that?” Rowan asked.
     Violet looked at the row of sleeping knights.  “Can you make that happen? Can you send me back to London?” she asked.
      Rowan shook her head. “No, of course not, my powers are very limited and growing weaker all the time.  I’ll be honest with you, daughter of Ariana, I have also doubted the truth of the legend.”
     “No,” said Elaine.
     Rowan looked at the younger women. “Be honest, Elaine,” she said. “We have all doubted.  It’s very hard to keep a belief alive for nine centuries.  No one living today has ever seen what we’re seeing now.  I don’t know that anyone other than Merlin has ever been in this cave, and Merlin lingers beyond our sight.”
     “Someone’s been here,” said Violet. “Someone took the sword.”
     “If there ever was a sword,” said Rowan.
     “How can you say that?” Elaine demanded.
    “I say it because it has to be said,” Rowan replied. “Violet lives in a world without magic. Her world requires rational thought, so I am offering her rational thoughts.”  She smiled at Violet. “But, my dear,” she said, “I think that by now you are beyond rational thought.”
     “Way beyond it,” Violet agreed.
     “So what about your gift?” Elaine asked. “We brought you here because of your gift.  Are you feeling anything?  Do you have anything to tell us?”
     Violet closed her eyes and allowed her mind to explore its own sensations but there was nothing.  Try as she might she could find no thread to follow, her mind was a blank.
     “I’m sorry,” she said.
     “Sorry,” said Elaine. “The water’s rising. This cave is going to be flooded.  They’ll all be washed away.”
     “Perhaps we could take just the king,” Violet said. “We could carry him through the gate.”  She couldn’t really imagine how that could be accomplished, but it was the best solution she could offer.
     “He can’t be moved,” said Rowan.  She stepped a little closer to the king on his bier and studied his face.  “I believe that he’s healed,” she said. “I imagine he was healed a long time ago.  If he’s healed then they are all healed, but without the sword they can’t be awakened.”
     “And who lay here?” Elaine asked, standing beside the empty bier.
     “Sir Lancelot of the Lake,” said Rowan.
     “Are you sure?” Elaine asked.
     “I have identified the others,” Rowan said.  “At the Battle of Camlan, Lancelot returned to fight beside the king.  He should be here.” She looked at Violet. “Come and touch this place, see if you can tell us anything.”
    “The room is dead,” Violet said. “Not even a whisper.”
     “Come closer.”
     Violet walked around to the other side of the empty bier. As she approached her foot struck something that rattled and moved.  She took a hasty step backward.
     “There’s something down there,” she said, hardly daring to look down.
     Elaine crossed to her, carrying a lighted torch. “Probably a dead animal,” she said. She held the torch high and they both looked down at the pile of bones that Violet had disturbed.
     “Oh,” said Elaine and the torchlight flickered.
     “Control yourself,” said Rowan coming around the bier to stand beside them.
      The torch trembled in Elaine’s hand but she was able to keep it alight.
      “Human,” said Rowan, “female and very old. Treat these bones gently, Violet, or they will turn to dust.”
     “I don’t intend to treat them in any way at all,” Violet declared, but even as she withdrew her foot from the huddled bones she felt her mind awakening and entwining with the faint tendrils of another person’s thoughts. A woman, she thought, a queen.  Guinevere!
     She said it aloud. “This is Guinevere.”
     Elaine shook her head. “No, she was exiled to the religious women in Glastonbury.  She never came here.”
      “The trace is faint,” said Violet,” but it’s her.”
     “She followed their religion,” Elaine protested. “They gave her the symbols of their Carpenter God.  Her soul has gone to their heaven.”
     “Or to their judgment,” Rowan added bitterly, “the judgment of an adulterous traitor.”
     “Wherever her soul has gone,” Violet said, listening to the harsh whisper flooding her senses, “the bones still want to speak to me.”
     She lowered herself cautiously to a sitting position on the stone floor, and allowed her hand to rest on the white mound of the skull, and Guinevere began to tell her story.

     Guinevere leaves the convent on a clear, cool spring night when the moon is no more than a fingernail in the sky.  She wears men’s clothes and rides astride. Her maidservant rides behind her, dressed also as a man.  Guinevere carries a dagger at her waist and a sword strapped to the pommel of her saddle.  She is confident that she will use them if the need arises but she has less confidence in her maid.  She has become so accustomed to calling the girl Sister Agnes that she has almost forgotten the maid’s true name; the name she was given in Albion, Nareena.  She smiles and calls to the girl by name just for the joy of using her name and abjuring the titles forced on them by the Sisters.
     How good it is to be free of the conventions of the convent and the endless regulation of the hours of the day. Matins, lauds, prime, terce, sext, none, vespers, compline, and the Great Silence.  She feels the power of the horse beneath her and revels in the thunder of his hooves as they race away from Glastonbury, galloping beneath the spring stars to the place where she will find the man she loves.
      They will ride by night and sleep by day and no one will find them. How shocked the Sisters will be when they find the Queen’s convent weeds folded neatly on the wretched wooden shelf they call a bed. 
     They will look for Agnes to demand an explanation, but Agnes will be Nareena again, and nothing will remain of the two captives except the nugget of Albion gold that had been tortured into the cross symbol of the Carpenter God. 
     Soon, very soon, she will rid herself of Nareena; a regrettable necessity.  The girl has spent too much time kneeling before the wooden cross and she has changed. Her loyalties are divided.  Guinevere no longer trusts her.  The girl’s magic has surely been weakened by her sojourn among the sisters of the other God, and she is mortal; she can die just as easily as anyone else. With the parchment in her possession, Guinevere will make her own way across the miles that separate her from her lover’s resting place.
     Guinevere slows the pace of her horse and allows Nareena to come alongside her.
     “Give me the document,” she says, thrusting out an imperious hand.
     “Majesty?” The girl’s eyes are bright, and clear of any apparent deception.
     “The document,” says the Queen again. “I wish to read the directions, to be sure we are on the correct path.”
     “I know the path,” says Nareena.
     “Give it to me.”  Now the Queen is angry.
     “I do not have it,” says Nareena, and still her eyes reveal nothing but innocent confusion.  “I left it in the Convent.”
     “Fool,” says the Queen, but the thought occurs to her that there is nothing foolish about this girl.  
     “I know the way,” Nareena says, “and I will guide us.”
     “Ride ahead of me,” says Guinevere.
      She watches as Nareena urges her horse into a slow canter.  No, the girl is no fool but no harm has been done.  The sisters of the convent will find a cross made of a metal that does not exist in their world, and a document written in a language that will defy their understanding. 
     When the sword had done its work, the gates would close and the people of Albion would never again talk with the people of Britain, and the cross and the document would remain as nothing but an ancient mystery.  But in Albion the magic would be restored and Lancelot would be king, with Guinevere as his queen, and the magic of the sisters of Avilion would make the barren queen fruitful.
     Guinevere and Nareena arrive at the place where the great River Severn pours into the ocean and then turn north towards the river’s source, seeking a place where they can cross into the land beyond.  They are two women traveling alone at night under a waxing moon. Their eyes search the shadowed forest for signs of man or beast, and Guinevere’s hand is constantly on her dagger.
     At last they see that the river is growing shallow and they find a ford protected by the fierce Eorle people.  Guinevere approaches in fear, but the tribesmen who guard the ford seem not to notice the two riders as they splash their way across the ford and enter the Kingdom of Gwynedd. 
Nareena turns her horse towards the distant mountains but Guinevere refuses to move.
     “Majesty,” says Nareena, “we must move on.”
     Guinevere looks back at the ford, and the Eorle watchmen gathered around their fire pit.
     “Have you enchanted those men at the ford?” Guinevere asks.
     Nareena hangs her head in shame. “It is forbidden by the Christian law,” she says.
     Guinevere laughs to hide her concern. “We are no longer under Christian law,” she says. “How long have you been practicing enchantments?”
     “Since we left Glastonbury,” says Nareena.  “We are invisible to those who wish us harm.”
     “And yet you let me ride in fear,” says Guinevere.
      “I was not sure that you would allow me____”
     “And I was not sure that the magic in you had survived the magic of the Christians,” said Guinevere.
     “I wished to be rid of it,” Nareena says. “I wished to be Sister Agnes.”
      “You are a child of Avilion,” says Guinevere, “how can you wish to be anything else?”
      “The Christian magic is different,” says Nareena, “and can be possessed by all.”
     “Well,” says Guinevere, “if you wanted to keep the Christian magic, you could have refused to help me. You could have told my plans to our prison keepers.”
     “I was torn,” says Nareena, “between my desire to serve the new God, and my desire to help you to rescue the Knight of the Lake.”
     “Sir Lancelot,” says Guinevere.
     “Yes,” says Nareena.
     “He is mine,” says Guinevere.
     “Yes, Majesty,” says Nareena, but Guinevere does not like the girl’s secret smile.
     “How much magic remains with you?” Guinevere asks.
     “Very little,” says Nareena.
     Very well, says Guinevere to herself, she shall serve me until her magic is gone, and then we shall be rid of her.
     “Ride on,” she says to Nareena, “and keep the protection around us.”
     They ride on into the mountains, moving further and further away from human habitation, until they come to a wide valley and a stream fed by a waterfall.  Nareena’s magic is failing for it seems that the few people they pass are becoming aware of their presence.  Guinevere keeps her hand on her dagger and forces the tired horses forward.
     They ride now without food.  Nareena’s magic had previously enchanted rabbits into the traps she set, and her hands had created fire for roasting, but now the rabbits scatter as they pass, and Nareena can conjure little more than tiny sparks.
     ‘I will go alone into the cave,” Guinevere says.
      “But Majesty” says Nareena, “the path is complex.”
     “My love will guide me,” says Guinevere. “Stay here and mind the horses.”
      Guinevere begins to climb the path beside the waterfall.  She looks down at the figure of the girl waiting beside the grazing horses.  Two horses for three people.  She shrugs her shoulders.  Lancelot will ride.
Guinevere enters the darkness of the cave system.  Without Nareena beside her to kindle fire, she must carry her own flame and she has carried a smoldering reed with which to light her torch.  The torch flares into light and Guinevere follows its light along the dark passageways and into the chamber where the knights lie sleeping.  Here is Arthur, clasping the sword Excalibur.  She holds the torch high and surveys her husband’s face.  He seems to be sleeping peacefully and she can see no sign of the grievous wound he had supposedly sustained.  She feels a sense of urgency.  Is he already healed?  Will he open his eyes and see what she is doing?
     Slowly, gently, she removes the great sword from his grasp.  She moves along the row of sleeping knights until she finds the face she seeks, Lancelot of the Lake. 
      His hands are crossed on his chest.  She moves them aside and lays the sword across his breastplate.  She fastens his hands back around the carved hilt.  She waits. The flame in the torch burns low.  At last he    moves. He opens his eyes, bright blue eyes in a pale waxen face.
      “Our time has come,” she says.
     He rises from his bed.  Excalibur seems almost too heavy for him to hold. He is dragged down by its weight as he follows her from the cave.  He’ll grow stronger, she thinks.  The longer he holds it, the stronger he will be.
     They emerge into the daylight and look down into the valley.  Lancelot closes his eyes against the glare of the sun and leans against the rock face, breathing heavily.
     “We have horses,” says Guinevere, “and the gate is very near.  Albion will be ours.”
     “Arthur?” Lancelot asks. “Where is Arthur?”
     “Killed at the Battle of Camlan,” she replies.
     “No,” he says, “the maidens came for him.”
     “He could not be saved,” she says. “Albion is yours now.”
     “Mordred?”
     “We will defeat him” she says, “together.”
     Lancelot staggers under the weight of his armor but he lifts Excalibur high. “For Arthur,” he says.
      “Yes,” says Guinevere, “but Arthur is gone.”
     She leads him down the rocky path.  His eyes are becoming accustomed to the daylight and he sees the figure below in the valley.
     “Nareena?” he asks.
     Guinevere’s heart twists in fear and jealousy.  How can he recognize the girl at such a distance?  How well does he know her?
     “She’s no one,” says Guinevere, “just a local girl holding the horses for us.”
     She takes another step down the path and sees a band of horsemen riding along the floor of the valley. For a moment she fears that Mordred’s men have come through the gate, but then she sees that these men are dressed in hides and riding small, shaggy ponies.  They are nothing but local tribesmen.
     Lancelot is beginning to think like a fighting man. “They’re after the horses,” he says.
     Guinevere can see that Nareena is desperately summoning the last of her magic.  Her small figure fades in and out of view. A mist curls around her ankles and then dissipates. Surely she has used up the last of the enchantment of Avilion.
     “Nareena,” Lancelot says again.
     “Leave her,” says Guinevere, “we don’t need her.” But Lancelot is already stumbling down the path raising Excalibur above his head.
     “Leave her,” Guinevere demands again.