Текст книги "The once and future queen"

Автор книги: Paula Laferty

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Текущая страница: 15 (всего у книги 33 страниц)

“S’true,” Lancelot said loudly. He grinned up at them with glazed eyes. “There are only a couple days in the whole damn year I don’t have duties and obligations and—” He waved his hand, searching for the word. “And such. I fully intend to make the most of it.” His speech ran together enough to betray his inebriation, though he made a valiant effort to sound coherent.

“I’m guessing you don’t want to run to the top of the Tor in the morning?” Vera asked with a laugh, hoping her disappointment didn’t show.

“Absolutely not,” Lancelot answered. “But I will for you, Guinna.” He slammed his fist on the table and pointed at her seriously. “Only for you.”

“Don’t you dare,” she said. As much as she’d love to share that with him, Vera would not steal his one morning of respite. And she certainly wouldn’t guilt him into the torture of a hungover run up a wickedly steep hill.

“I haven’t ever been to the top of Tor,” Arthur said. “I’d like to come with you.”

“Really?” Vera asked. “Are you sure?”

“Only if you don’t mind me slowing you down. I’m not much of a runner like the two of you.”

“I don’t mind at all,” she said. “Thank you.”

Had this really been the same man who would only fix her with a cold stare for the better part of the past three months? Arthur’s face was now so flooded with gentleness, his eyes alight with concern. He’d known just how much this meant to her.

Running the Tor was as familiar as drawing breath, but this morning’s venture may as well have been her first time making the journey. In many ways, it was. Chronologically speaking (in a way that positively bent her brain sideways), this was Vera’s first run on what would someday become her well-trodden path. Also her first while knowing the truth about her past (well, knowing more of the truth). Her first with Arthur.

The bed they’d shared was large enough that they didn’t so much as brush fingertips through the night. She’d thought that knowing he was so close might keep her awake, but she fell asleep quickly and slept more soundly than she had in weeks.

That part may have had something to do with being in a place that felt like home. And resuming her favorite morning ritual. He was already up and dressed when Vera woke. Unsure of the condition of the path to the top, they left earlier than necessary and carved their way through the landscape. They jogged up the lane, past the stream of White Spring where Vera had first emerged into this time, and onward, up the long slope. The way was clear. Enough pilgrims had made the trek to leave a natural foot-worn trail through the otherwise grassy hillside. Still, it was tougher terrain to jog. They charged up a particularly steep section, Vera but a half step ahead of Arthur. When he stopped, she felt his absence and stopped, too.

“Shit,” he groaned, looking at the climb ahead. His face shone with sweat, and his heavy breaths came out in cold vapor puffs.

Vera grinned. “Yeah, it’s rough. Do you want to walk for a bit?”

He chuckled through a heaving breath and looked at her with admiration. “No,” he said.

It was a lie, one she knew he valiantly offered only for her sake. She had gotten faster after so many mornings running with Lancelot, and, in her excitement to be back on this trail, she may have pushed her pace more than usual. Arthur gamely kept in step with her until the final stretch when her excitement spilled over. She sprinted ahead to the top. Her breath would have been taken clean from her body even if she hadn’t been winded.

Chest heaving, she marveled at the sight with an open-mouthed smile. St Michael’s Tower wouldn’t be built for hundreds of years. Instead, a single stone totem stood in the center of what would someday be the tower’s footprint. It was taller than both of them, though not gargantuan. Arthur could jump and touch the top, which was like the rounded end of a dull crayon. Squat grey stones surrounded it at equal intervals. These looked like benches. Vera counted twelve and wondered if it formed a sundial.

Then she noticed the base of the totem in the center. It was surrounded by a collection of offerings, a makeshift shrine on the ground. There were candles, palm-sized paintings weighted down with rocks, tied cords and ribbons, Celtic knots made of thin, bendy branches, and a smattering of handmade clay statuettes.

Arthur crested the top of the Tor and joined her in the circle. He’d never seen any of this, either. “Is this here in your time?” he asked.

She shook her head.

He knelt to upright a miniature statue that had fallen over before he began looking at the other paintings and notes. Vera turned in place. The Tor was empty of any other people, and there wasn’t a single direction in which the view did not stun. And there was her spot; the place she’d liked to sit (or, she supposed, the place she would someday sit in the distant future). She removed her shoes, left Arthur in the circle, and let her bare feet draw her to that place of comfort.

The mists gathered around the Tor’s base. That part had always made it look like an island. Now, there actually was water and marshland underneath the gathered fog. Isle of Avalon. The words came to Vera as Arthur sat down next to her.

His face was set on the surrounding terrain, too, with the look of someone who had stumbled onto a wonder of the world, drunk with the splendor of it. “You can see for miles from here,” he said, facing Camelot. “I’ve traveled all over this kingdom. I’ve passed this hill dozens of times. But I’ve never actually seen it before.”

His careful mask was gone in favor of abject reverence, his eyes roving the horizon left to right as if it were scripture to be read. But even in his reverie, he looked so tired. And not the kind from waking up early to run. There were bags under those awestruck eyes and an almost permanent furrow to his brow. He was weary and stretched. It was something he didn’t let show often but that he always carried. There was a lot he didn’t let show.

“How often did you run up here?” he asked.

“A few times a week, at least.” Vera shrugged, a casual gesture that didn’t match the memory’s importance. “Nearly every day since I moved back home after—” Her voice hitched in her throat. “After—” She desperately wanted to tell him. She couldn’t keep doing this half-truth, half-living existence, but she didn’t know how to unwind it.

Arthur let the emptiness hang there between them. “What would it be like if you finished that sentence?”

His invitation shrunk the gap between what had been and what could be.

“I’d like to know what you didn’t say,” he said.

She wouldn’t allow herself to overthink this. If she hesitated, she’d wheedle a way out of the refuge (and the terror) of telling the truth.

“After Vincent died,” she said. It didn’t explain anything to him. Still, he waited. “I loved him.” She was shaking, but she didn’t stop. “He was the one who took that photo of me and my parents. It was less than two weeks later when he died.”

“What happened?”

“Car accident,” Vera said, and realized that was nonsense to him. “Erm … I don’t really know how to explain that. It’s a carriage without any horses—”

“I know about automobiles,” Arthur said. She turned to him in confusion, and he clarified. “From some of the books Merlin brought you.”

She was curious about what that discovery had been like for him but set it aside for now. His knowledge simplified things for this story. She swallowed and continued. “I got word that he’d been in a car wreck and was rushed to hospital. I knew it was bad, but they didn’t say how bad it was. I got there in time to see them taking him back for care. It was horrible. He was … mangled. I should have known he was dying, but I was naively hopeful. He died alone. Then his parents arrived, and I told them their son was dead. It was worse than a nightmare.”

Her words were yeast to the memory as she retold the story. It all swelled to life again: the frantic sounds, the florescent light shining overhead, casting everything in its putrid aura, and Vincent’s mother … how it took extra seconds for her to comprehend the words after she’d heard them, and the way horror physically rocketed through her.

“I’ve never told anyone about that night.”

He took her hand. “I’m so sorry.”

“It made it easier to come here,” Vera said, “which also makes me feel rather terrible.”

“What do you mean? That’s perfectly understandable.”

Was she really going to tell him all of it?

“My father—my real father, the one who raised me, is very sick. He’s undergoing treatment and he could survive, but it’s—” she stopped. She’d meant to say unlikely but couldn’t. “It’s not good,” she said instead, still needing to grit her teeth and stare at the horizon before she trusted her voice. “If I can help you fix things here, I’ll go back and be with him and my mum until he’s … better.” She finished with the awkward lie of a smile.

At this point, they all might have wished she’d stayed put in the first place. Vera gave a scornful laugh. “Though I’m a hell of a lot closer to bringing your kingdom to ruin than I am to helping. Maybe if I can stop losing my shit every time I …” Her thoughts stumbled over the memory of Joseph and the moment he became an empty body. “A man was killed because he hurled an insult at me, and I couldn’t hold my tongue.”

But Arthur’s face shifted to something like disbelief as his gaze bore into Vera. “That’s not what happened. I was two feet from you. And I spoke with all the witnesses from that day.”

He had? And she’d known he was that close, but she didn’t think he’d been listening.

“You thought he was insulting Helene.” Arthur rubbed his thumb across the back of Vera’s hand, and a rush fluttered through her stomach. “That’s not what happened with Wulfstan either. That’s never been what’s happened.”

“How would you know that?” It sounded more accusatory than she’d meant it to. Vera let go of Arthur’s hand in the guise of repositioning herself, regretting that she had before the warmth of his fingers had faded from her skin.

“Because you don’t do that on your own behalf,” he said. “I’ve given you a hundred reasons to lay out your wrath on me, and you haven’t.”

She didn’t have any answer to that, but a glow was blooming on the horizon.

“The sun’s about to come up.” Vera nodded toward it. “You don’t want to miss this part.”

It effectively pierced the bubble of tension as he averted his expectant gaze from her. When the first petal of sunlight appeared, Arthur gasped.

“I’ve never watched the sun rise before,” he said. They sat in silence until the sun broke the horizon’s plane entirely, a coin of gold hovering low in the sky, bathing the land in its glow.

“It wouldn’t have been wrong if you had spoken up in your own defense,” he said, his eyes on the horizon. “I wish you would.”

“I’d just as soon you not give me any more reasons to.” She’d meant it as a joke, but his response didn’t match her smile. It was like a weight was dropped on top of him.

The weight of his loss, perhaps? She wasn’t the only one grieving. Vera wrapped her arms tightly around her knees. “Is that what Guinevere would have done? Shouted at you?”

His breath came out a hard laugh. “I’m not sure. There were certainly many things she needed to say that died with her.” He clenched his jaw. The tension was gone before Vera had time to decide what it meant. “You’re like her in many ways. I like those things about you,” he added when she bristled. “And you’re different in as many ways.”

“Did you love her?” she asked it quickly.

His response was nearly a grimace. Guilt? She thought of Matilda. If Vera and Arthur were being honest, she may as well lay it out. “Are you in love with Matilda?”

His grimace fell. Arthur looked as though ice-cold water had been dumped over his head. He actually laughed. “Is that what you think?”

Vera shrugged sheepishly and nodded.

“I do love Matilda,” he said carefully. “But it’s never been romantic. She’s family. Our mothers were sisters. Matilda is the closest to a sibling I’ve ever had, except maybe Lancelot.”

Now it was Vera who laughed. “You could have mentioned that before.”

“I didn’t think to because—”

“Because I used to know.” She finished the thought for him and then corrected herself. “Guinevere knew.”

Arthur sighed. He stood and took a few steps forward. He shook his head and started pacing, deep in thought. “I hate that your life has been stolen from you. This is such a mess.”

“It is. I love my home. My parents. It’s a simple life, but it’s good.” She wasn’t sure how to reckon with her feelings but tried anyway. “But there are parts of being here that are rather lovely. I’ve never really had friends before. And … being in Glastonbury for the Solstice, getting to see it in a way no one from my time could even dream of?” She looked around and was re-stunned by the sunrise and the circle atop the Tor. Then her eyes fell on Arthur. Being here with him was the part that made her heart stutter. “This is spectacular. I’ll cherish this morning forever.”

Arthur smiled, though some of the mask returned, covering a flash of shame. He strode a few paces, turned, and did the same in the opposite direction. If she let the silence hang long enough, she knew he’d find the words he was struggling to churn up. But when he turned to pace in the other direction again, Vera realized she’d seen this before.

She gasped, and Arthur looked up at her, completing the vision, matching it perfectly.

“It was you,” she whispered.

“What?” Arthur was bewildered.

“Last Solstice, I was here. I was right here, sitting in this spot, and I thought I saw a ghost.” She swallowed. Her hands shook. “It was this. I saw this exact moment. I saw you.”

Vera regaled Arthur with the whole story on their way down the Tor—what she saw, how it matched up—all in great detail. “I know it was you,” she said. “I’m sure of it. Is that completely mad?”

But he didn’t think it was mad at all. Maybe the veil of magic and time was thin: same day, same place. Maybe it was luck. Either way, whatever it was felt like it meant something, that at least something that was happening was right with the universe.

They made a quick stop for Vera to change her shoes and throw on a dress before meandering on down the High Street. The street already bustled with the daytime revelers getting a jump on shopping the market’s celebration wares. Arthur stopped at a food cart for sweet apple pastries, piping hot but so delicious that even when the steam singed Vera’s tongue, she closed her eyes in bliss.

Wisdom would have been waiting to take another bite as the next one was more toward the middle and rich with even more gooey filling approximately the temperature of molten lava. The special drive of post-run hunger made a different decision. At that point, Vera had two choices, neither particularly graceful: let the bite fall from her mouth to the ground or do her best to suffer through it. Vera chose the latter and was inelegantly sucking fresh air into her scorched mouth to cool the traitorous apples as Maria approached. Arthur tore his concerned stare from Vera’s antics (which, of course, she couldn’t explain because she had a mouthful of food) to greet Maria.

For Vera’s part, she did her best to smile without fully closing her mouth (the steam had to have somewhere to vent), nor appear she was in absurd, self-inflicted pain, which she obviously was.

Maria took no notice. “Good morning, Your Majesties!” she gushed, her voice arching melodically over the words. “Look at you two. To see you together again … and my goodness! Inseparable, it seems. Well, I suppose it only makes sense after being apart so long.”

Vera squinted as she swallowed, another misstep as she now felt like her throat was hot enough to breathe fire. Maria, however, carried on. “We weren’t going to ask because we know the queen has been recovering. But now that we’ve seen the two of you together—that’s to say, we’ve seen how well the queen looks …” Maria beamed at her. Vera heard the hidden meaning. The rumors of trouble between her and Arthur had made it this far.

“Yes?” he prompted.

“Do you remember the year that the two of you opened the festivities? With the Yule Carola?” she asked.

“Yes,” Arthur said, and Vera began nodding, too, trying to play along. He bit his lip to stifle his grin.

“It would be so wonderful if you would do that tonight. Would you? Would you please?” Maria’s twinkling eyes settled on Vera.

“Certainly!” she said with a shrug, still in the tumult of her scorched mouth, but to the pleasure of an effusive Maria and to wide-eyed surprise from Arthur.

Maria practically squealed as she hurried off to let whoever know about whatever Vera had agreed to.

“What is that—the Yule Carola?” she asked Arthur. “Is it, like, a reading or procession or … recitation?”

“That—I cannot believe that just happened,” Arthur said. “Erm, no. It’s a dance.”

“Oh,” Vera said. “Shit.”

The worry dropped from his face. He laughed. “That’s all right. We have all day for you to learn it.”

They didn’t quite have all day. Maria made it clear that they intended to give Vera a more traditional royal treatment to prepare for the evening. But they had plenty of hours before that would begin, even after Arthur said he would need time to gather a few things. Vera and Matilda shopped the market for a while, where she found enough treasures to purchase that her full hands made the decision to return to her quarters easy. She hadn’t been there long when Arthur returned with his hands full, too—carrying a lute.

Vera raised her eyebrows at him and sipped the drink she’d poured herself. “Are you musically inclined?”

But he didn’t respond in kind. His eyes darkened and locked on her goblet. They shot to the corner where his saddle bags lay on the table.

“Where did you get that drink?” he asked with the edge of panic in his voice.

“I—bought some wine, apple wine, while I was out with Matilda this morning.” Vera fumbled through her words. “Is that okay?”

The stiffness dropped from his posture. “Of course it’s all right.”

What the hell was that about? “Would you like some?” she asked. Apples were a Glastonbury specialty in Vera’s time, too. The whole morning had felt like she was holding the end of a string in the seventh century with a kite on the other end in her time. Special. Mystical. She’d bought the wine intending to share it with Arthur.

“Er, yes,” he said rather awkwardly. “Thank you.”

He shifted the lute in his hands to accept the drink.

“So.” Vera tapped the instrument with her index finger. “What’s with the lute?”

“Ah,” he said. “We couldn’t exactly have a musician come and play the song for us while you learned.” It was a good point. It would be strange that Arthur needed to teach her. “I asked Gawain if he could come up with a way for us to have music to practice in private for this evening.” He held the lute up between them. “It’s a brilliant enchantment.”

Arthur laid the instrument on a chair and plucked a single string. The note rang through the room, and as it was about to fade to silence, the lute began to play itself, a short and happy melody that repeated twice.

“Is that the whole song we’re to dance to?” Vera asked.

“That’s it,” he confirmed. “I’m not an especially gifted dancer, and even I think this one’s easy.”

Arthur undersold himself. He was a patient and pleasant teacher, calling out helpful reminders as they performed the movements. “Right hands together … Good. Switch to left, and—what was it you called this one? Fancy feet.” He chuckled. Vera had taken to naming moves. Names that got suspiciously sillier as the bottle of apple wine diminished.

“Oh fuck!” Vera stomped after she got the same move wrong for the third time in a row.

Arthur lay his hand on the lute strings and stopped the music. “It’s all right. Do you want to take a break?”

“Do we have most of it done?”

“We are so close,” he said.

“All right.” Vera nodded at the lute. “Let’s try again.”

But Arthur saw her smiling and paused. “What’s funny?” he asked.

“Nothing. It’s—nothing.”

“Oh, come on.”

“I’ve come up with some lyrics to the song,” said Vera.

Arthur beamed at her as he plucked the lute string to start the music. “I hope you’ll sing them.”

They began the dance: a coming together, palms meeting, a step back. His hand across her waist and hers across his for a spin. Arthur watched her with mirthful expectation. It was Vera’s turn to laugh. When the melody began its repeat, and they moved on to the next set of moves, she sang her words.

“Once upon a winter’s night, the wild queen was all a fright.

She was not so fair and graceful; she agreed to lead a dance disgraceful.”

Arthur laughed. “You aren’t at all disgraceful. You’re doing very well.”

He taught her another step in the dance, and they started over with the new move tacked on. Vera thought nothing of it as the music came to a close with her hand in Arthur’s. He held her fingers near his lips as she dipped into a curtsy.

He stared at her with the funniest expression.

“What?”

“That was the end of the dance. But I—didn’t teach you that last bit yet.”

He was right. He hadn’t. And it wasn’t just the curtsy. There had been two other parts before that, one when their right hands joined at chest height and left hands met overhead and another when Vera did a sort of promenade around Arthur. Neither were movements that might have happened by accident. She had remembered. Two signs of good in one day.

“Huh,” Vera said as she sat down on the foot of the bed. She didn’t consciously remember, but she knew the dance. She knew the steps. That much was certain. “I know I didn’t learn that in my time. My dancing is nothing like that.”

“What’s your dancing like?” he asked.

“My dancing, in particular, might be better characterized as flailing.” She said. “I … feel the music, you know?”

“No, I don’t,” Arthur said with a grin. “I think you need to show me.”

“Seriously?”

He shrugged and gestured to the open space on the floor near him.

Vera shook her head and took a swallow from her goblet before she stood and moved where he’d beckoned. “It’s sort of like—”

With the aid of being tipsy enough and with how much fun they’d already had together, Vera was surprised at the ease of her vulnerability as she broke out some of her silliest moves: hands above her head, a shoulder shimmy, jumping, and spinning. After a hopping spin, she found Arthur in mid-hearty laugh, a delightful and uninhibited sound. But it did not make Vera feel self-conscious or made fun of. His eyes were alight. For a breath, the flash of his face from the first night she had met him, expression hard and cold, jumped to her mind. She couldn’t believe this was the same person. In truth, he wasn’t. That man felt like a stranger, and Arthur felt … different.

“That’s the first time I’ve heard you laugh like that,” said Vera.

He smiled broadly. “I’ve seen a lot in the years since I met you, and that is certainly the first time I’ve ever seen you dance like that.”

It was also the first time Arthur referred to Vera as if she and Guinevere from before were the same person. Her smile hitched, wondering if he would realize his slip. It was also in this instant that Vera understood she’d made a terrible assumption this morning when she hadn’t given him time to answer about whether he’d loved Guinevere. If he had loved her, and now, he was gazing at a woman identical to her …

She couldn’t think about that and, selfishly, was afraid the bubble of this sweet moment might be abruptly popped.

“How do normal people dance with each other in your time?” Arthur asked, feigning innocence.

“Rude!” Vera dropped her jaw theatrically, though she couldn’t hold in a grin. “Well, it’s not usually choreographed, and it’s far simpler than what we’re doing tonight. Just … swaying, really. There’s not much to it.”

Arthur peered down at his feet. When he looked back up, he was still smiling, but his eyes bore into Vera’s. She wasn’t quite used to that, him looking her right in the eye.

“Will you show me?” he asked.

Now she was nervous. “It—it’s odd without music.” Her voice was unwieldy in her throat. “The song on the lute wouldn’t work. It’s slower than that.”

“What about the song with the bird in the Sycamore tree?” he asked.

Vera stared blankly at him. Then Arthur, the ancient king of Britain, began to hum the unmistakable tune of “Dream a Little Dream of Me.” She couldn’t believe it. Hearing his regal voice hum the song she’d grown up hearing performed by the Mamas and the Papas delighted her.

“You singing that song has to be the strangest thing in all of history,” she said.

“Will that one work?”

Vera nodded and held out her hand to him. Her palms were clammy, and her heart was beating faster than it ought to. Arthur gazed down at her with a destabilizing intensity when his fingers touched hers.

“Here,” she said, guiding his right hand to her waist. His fingers slid beyond to the small of her back, holding her closer than he needed to. She hadn’t been expecting that, but it was also exactly what she wanted. Vera swallowed, self-conscious that he might feel her pulse quickening beneath his touch.

She began to softly sing the song, and they danced together. Vera couldn’t fathom looking Arthur in the eyes when they stood this close to one another, so she lay the side of her head on his chest. Almost instantly, she doubted the decision. Was it too close to a full embrace? But then he responded in kind, resting his cheek on her head.

She couldn’t say who backed away first—simply that the song ended, and they were not quite so close together anymore. He’d dropped his hand from her back and she from his shoulder, and though their other hands dropped too, Arthur delicately held her fingers in his at their sides.

“It’s sort of like that.” Vera could only manage a whisper as she tipped her head back to meet his gaze. “How did you know that song?”

“You used to sing it in the chapel,” Arthur said. “I didn’t … I wanted to be there for you without hurting you, and I didn’t know how to …” His voice trailed off. “I went to the chapel after you and would sit in the alcove so you wouldn’t be alone.”

Words failed her. She stared at the floor, no notion of how to hold this care. Care that belonged to someone else, but she had fallen into its glow, nevertheless.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “It was stupid and invasive—”

He stopped when Vera looked up at him. “It wasn’t,” she said.

He did not try to mask the pain in his expression. His lips parted, and he inhaled sharply. “I have to tell you something.”

Vera was nearly certain she knew what it was.

She’d found it suspicious that Merlin agreed to let the memory work wait without anything in its place. And the way Arthur’s behavior had changed toward her after that day in Merlin’s study … Merlin had convinced him to try to connect with Vera. As he’d noticed her affection for him bloom, she guessed he was feeling guilty for not being forthright. That had to be it.

But he didn’t get any further. A sharp rap sounded from the door just before it opened to reveal Maria, already dressed splendidly in a billowing cobalt gown and with sparkling teal and turquoise around her eyes. The top half of her face was painted like the feathers of a peacock.

“I hate to interrupt an intimate moment,” Maria crooned as her eyes darted between Arthur and Vera, looking like she would have rather relished a more salacious interruption than this one. Vera disentangled her fingers from Arthur’s, more like embarrassed schoolchildren than spouses. “But we must begin preparing for this evening if Her Majesty is to be ready on time.”

“Can it wait a few minutes?” Arthur asked.

“No, Your Majesty! We are already behind schedule.” For how scandalized Maria sounded, Arthur may as well have asked her to betray him and the country.

“It’s all right,” Vera said, leaning close to his ear. Her lips were millimeters from his skin. Goosebumps rose on his neck. “Tell me later?” Why spoil the moment?

He brushed a hand down her arm. “All right.”

That was sufficient for Maria, who herded Vera out of the room with the tenacity of a border collie wrangling sheep. Vera risked a nip at her heels to turn for one last glimpse of Arthur, smiling as he watched her go.