Текст книги "The once and future queen"

Автор книги: Paula Laferty

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Текущая страница: 2 (всего у книги 33 страниц)

Vera snatched her hand from Allison’s like the touch burned her.

She looked desperately at her mother, the person she trusted most in this world.

“Mum, it’s impossible! This doesn’t make sense. You’ve got to know this doesn’t make sense.”

Allison nodded, her eyes wide. “It doesn’t. It really doesn’t. At first, I didn’t believe it either. Merlin had to show us—”

“Merlin?” Vera croaked.

This seemed as good a time as any to throw back the rest of her whiskey. She choked on it and hastily wiped the escaped dribble from the corner of her mouth.

“Ah, yes.” The man cocked his head to one side and raised a finger. “That would be me.”

Vera leaned back as she took him in. “You don’t look like Merlin.”

“Oh?” he said with a raised eyebrow. “It’s my hair, isn’t it?”

“A bit,” Vera said as she breathed a laugh. She’d have pictured a long silver beard and not his dark, manicured facial hair with only glimmers of grey through it. Vera thought better of saying that she’d have expected someone claiming to be Merlin to be far older, too.

“I try not to dabble too deeply in knowledge of your time, but I’m well enough acquainted to know that my name is rather familiar in your legends. They have gotten little else about me correct.” He offered both hands, palms up in front of him. “I’m sorry for not introducing myself sooner, but I thought it would only hinder our conversation.”

Vera shook her head. This was madness.

“It was only after Merlin showed us that we believed any of it,” Allison said. “Your father and I thought he’d kidnapped you at first. I was ready to ring the police when—”

“He showed you … magic, or showed you time travel?” Vera asked.

“Magic.” It was Merlin who answered. “Proving to someone you’re from the past is considerably harder than you might imagine. I can tell you many things about our time that your history books have gotten wrong, but my word proves nothing.”

Vera eyed him skeptically but spoke to her mother. “What did he show you?”

“He,” Allison shrugged sheepishly and turned her glass in her fingers, “he turned water into wine.”

“You’re kidding,” Vera said. “Like Jesus?”

Allison let out a short laugh and nodded.

“And what will you show me, Merlin?” Vera said, a sharp emphasis on his name.

Merlin cast his eyes down, grinning at his hands. She thought she heard a snort of laughter. But he sobered and grew focused. Without moving or answering, the lights went out in the entire room. Though the sun hovered in the sky, its light didn’t fully penetrate the front window. The pub took on a heavy darkness. Merlin held his hand out, palm up, and a glowing orb formed millimeters above his fingers. At first, Vera thought it was white, then she saw the edges were black, and in some moments blue. But at the center, she saw a vision.

She couldn’t place if the orb projected an image in her mind or if it played like a film inside the ball of swirling light. Vera saw herself clearly there. It was her face and body, but she wore a medieval gown, deep green with gold trim. Her eyes were dark even as she smiled. It was a grim expression Vera recognized, one she herself had worn on trying days. The ball faded from Merlin’s hand, and the lights flickered back to normal around them.

Vera blinked and shivered. “Fuck.” She exhaled the word more than saying it. There wasn’t any way around it. That was magic. And, though she had no memory of being in that place, that had been her in the orb. No, not her. It couldn’t be her. But … it was certainly someone exactly like her, down to the expression.

“Am I her clone?” Vera asked, grasping to make sense of it.

“No. That was you. You are her. That,” Merlin looked pointedly at his now empty hand where the ball had been, “is your body—everything about you before I reverted you to an earlier life stage.”

“But why?” Vera asked in exasperation. She’d never even liked Arthurian legends—though she’d attributed her annoyance with them to her father’s obsession with consuming every film, book, and show on the matter, an obsession which now made more sense. She knew that the legend was about Arthur and his knights, not Guinevere. Why would the king’s wife have any vital role—

Vera’s lips parted with dawning dread. “Was she supposed to have his child?” The notion was a vise grip on her throat. She wouldn’t do it. She’d sooner fight the wizard and die than be some time-traveling broodmare.

“It’s nothing like that,” Merlin said emphatically. “That’s not the way succession works for us. Magic chooses the king, not blood. Whether or not you decide to have any children will be your choice.”

“What is it, then?” Vera asked. “What is she supposed to do that’s so important?”

“It’s not she. It’s you. You bore witness to an act that is draining magic from the kingdom. You were the sole witness. It is not a matter of if it will destroy our world; it is when. And your memories are our only chance of fixing it.”

“You need me to remember what she saw?”

Merlin stared at her, considering it. He seemed like he was choosing his words carefully. “You need to remember everything.”

Vera had never had any notion of a life other than the one that she’d lived. No visions of battles or castles. “I don’t remember anything.”

“You used to dream about it.” Allison had been quiet so long that Vera jolted at the sound of her voice—and more so at the content of what she said. “You must have been three or four years old, and you never remembered in the morning, but you’d wake up in the middle of the night talking about him.”

“About who?” Vera hadn’t meant to whisper.

“The king. Once, you said you went on a walk with him and that everyone knew him and wanted to talk to him.” Allison laughed a little. “You thought he must be tired after carrying on as if he liked them all.”

Vera never had more than a passing hello with strangers on the street. She agreed with her toddler self’s assessment. Still, that was a child’s dream. Glastonbury was reputed to be the ancient Isle of Avalon, and the thirteenth-century monks at the abbey had claimed they unearthed Arthur and Guinevere’s tombs. Even with her aversion to Arthurian legends, she could hardly go about town without hearing some reference to it. She was an imaginative child. She could have come up with some King Arthur story. That proved nothing.

“You talked about Merlin, too,” Allison said.

Merlin straightened in his seat, and Vera thought he gripped his whiskey glass more tightly. But when he spoke, he merely sounded interested. “Really?”

“Yes,” Allison said. She shook her head and offered a half grin. “She said you made … water balloon animals to cheer her up. It sounded like nonsense. Does that ring any bells?”

“It does,” Merlin said.

“Do you remember what her favorite was?” Allison asked as she leaned toward the wizard. It seemed an odd question to Vera.

Merlin considered a moment before he flicked his wrist at his whiskey glass. The liquid soared out of it, and, at the twist of his fingers, it gathered into the unmistakable shape of a monkey, bulbous and fluid though not sweating a single drop.

“Oh,” Allison cooed at the whiskey sculpture. Vera felt the unbidden smile on her lips. It did resemble a balloon animal, and it was indeed made of liquid.

Merlin turned his fingers downward, and the drink flowed like a wave back into the glass as Allison relaxed into her chair. Vera realized with a jolt that her mother had been testing him.

She turned back to Vera. “And there was a woman called Matilda. You woke up crying once and asked me to braid your hair … that Matilda lived in the castle and plaited your hair when you were sad.”

“She’s your chambermaid,” Merlin said. “You see? The memories have always been within you. It might take some time, but when you’re back home, we’ll be able to begin unlocking them.”

It was jarring to hear somewhere else, sometime else, referred to as home. This was home. Vera was not a queen. She wasn’t—she couldn’t be—Guinevere. But she couldn’t deny that they were made from the same (what was the word Merlin used?) essence, nor could she deny her own childhood memories. Perhaps she was some sort of … container for Guinevere’s story.

Accepting that brought the possibility of actually leaving into sharp relief. It frightened her. “If I go back with you, will I be stuck there forever?”

Merlin frowned, and there was pity in it. “If you can remember and get the course of history back on track by late spring, we will have another chance for you to return. If returning to this time is what you want.”

“But I can come back?” Vera asked, with a glance at her mother. Allison seemed to be working to keep her face impassive. “It wouldn’t rip the fabric of time or whatever?”

Merlin took a careful sip of his whiskey. “After you’ve helped us set things right, I can bring you back—if that’s what you want.”

Vera clenched her teeth together to keep from grimacing. He kept saying that: “If you want.” Of course she would want to. But as much as the timing was important for Merlin and Arthur, it was for Vera, too.

“Will that bring me back to right now, or will six months have passed here, too?” Vera asked.

Allison gave a sad hum as she reached over and squeezed Vera’s shoulder. “My love, you cannot map your life around his treatment.”

Vera yanked away from her. “Can you guarantee he will survive six months?”

“The treatments are going well—”

“We won’t even know if they’ve worked for another month.” She glared at her mother to stifle her rising tears.

“Ah …” Merlin said quietly. “I gather Martin is ill?”

Vera rubbed at the side of her glass. She’d rather chuck it at the wall. “Yes. Fucking cancer.”

As soon as she said it out loud, she froze. What was she thinking? This man had saved Guinevere from death. “Could you heal him?” Vera asked. “Show me that magic, and I’ll do whatever the hell you want.”

He smiled sadly, and her hope turned to ash. “Cancer differs from mortal flesh wounds. I’m sorry.”

It was back to the essential question, then. “How long would I be gone?”

“You cannot touch any time that you’ve already lived, so I couldn’t bring you into your past here, but I can deliver you back to Glastonbury after the moment we depart this evening,” Merlin said. “I do not wish to mislead you; there is risk. I can’t bring you back unless you’ve—until you’ve helped us fix what’s broken. That is imperative. Whether or not you decide to come with me is your choice.”

“And if I choose not to come, what happens?” Vera asked.

He heaved a sigh and stared down at the table before he met her gaze. “Time is,” he clicked his tongue as he searched for the words, “immeasurably complicated. But the present as you know it is contingent upon you, upon your life and your actions … upon your returning to where you came from. If you stay here, the kingdom will fall. And I can’t say how soon or the way it will happen, but this time, this life as you know it will eventually cease to be.”

“You call that a choice?” Vera gaped at him. “Fuck. I have a life here. I’m—” She gestured around at the pub. What was she going to say? Cleaning toilets and changing bedsheets? “I’m happy.”

“I’m sorry,” Merlin said. “If it weren’t for this, death was the alternative. You would have died the day you were injured and lived none of this life. This was the best I could give you.”

Allison had managed to stave off a steady stream of tears, but her eyes were rimmed in red from the fight. “I have to go, don’t I?” Vera said. Part of her hoped Allison would so staunchly object that the choice would be made for her.

“You do, my love,” she said as she took Vera’s hand in both of hers. “I love you to the end of the world.” Allison tried to continue, but her voice faltered. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Listen to me. You are not happy. And this is not a life. I want better for you.”

It stung, but it was true enough. She hadn’t been happy since Vincent died. She hadn’t quite been able to slip back into herself, and Martin and Allison had seen that. In that way, Merlin’s timing was a gift. Vera couldn’t escape her memories of Vincent anywhere here, though she’d tried. She’d fled from Bristol, where they’d met, where they’d fallen in love, where they’d lived together, and where he died … back to Glastonbury.

She fled up the Tor nearly every morning. She fled into the regularity of cleaning rooms and serving breakfasts. No matter the distance or distraction, pain caught up and claimed her. She was typically good at tucking away hard things, shoving them beneath the place her conscious thought and feeling would reach, but this … this wouldn’t go away.

It all only compounded with Martin’s diagnosis just months ago. Vera had taken on the weight of his treatment schedule in a way she knew wasn’t healthy. But she couldn’t stop herself from thinking of his healing as her responsibility.

And she knew why. When it came to Vincent, she couldn’t escape the truth of her culpability. When his car skidded off the road and careened into a tree as he came home from the pub quiz, she had been asleep on the sofa. He’d bled in a ditch for nearly two hours before someone found him. It was too late by then. Vera usually went to the weekly pub quiz with him but had stayed home that night because she was tired. If she’d been there, she could have gotten help. Even if she hadn’t dozed off on the damn couch, she’d have realized he never got home. She’d have phoned the police. He wouldn’t have died.

Vera got to the hospital before they lost him. It haunted her that she hadn’t forced her way through the emergency department to get to him. She let him die surrounded by strangers.

And now, she was helpless as her father wasted away, day by day, with nothing she could do but watch.

Fourteen hundred years was a long way to run from her guilt. But they needed Guinevere’s memories, and evidently, Vera had them. Maybe … maybe if she could fulfill this purpose, maybe if she could be the vessel that they needed, maybe—what? It wouldn’t bring Vincent back.

But maybe you could forgive yourself.

How many lives would Guinevere’s locked-up knowledge save? Surely, surely that deed could absolve her, and she could go back to her unnoticeable life. Her father’s treatments would work (they had to work), and loss like Vincent’s wouldn’t be at stake. She could climb the Tor or read a book or stare at the stars and feel cheerful without being shredded by pain.

Vera laughed a little madly. She never dreamed she’d yearn to clean sheets for the rest of her life, but there was a simple joy to be found there. And if she had to travel fourteen hundred years and unearth some lost important woman’s memories to reclaim it—so be it.

“I’ll do it,” she said.

Allison shifted in her seat and spoke up sheepishly. “I hate to think of this, but what should we do when people notice she’s gone?”

“They won’t notice. It’s been part of the spell—part of what made it possible for Vera to be here for so long,” Merlin said. “Have you ever noticed the way people interact with her?”

Allison caught Vera’s eye as she nodded. They’d only had conversations about it when she was little—and never since. She had cried about not having friends and her mum soothed her, stroking her hair, telling her it was normal to feel uncertain and insecure.

“I tried to pretend it wasn’t happening,” Allison murmured. “After a while, though, it became rather undeniable.”

She couldn’t decide if it was better or worse that her mother had noticed all along, but the admission stung as a betrayal that Vera swallowed. She didn’t want to leave angry with her mother.

“They forget you here,” Merlin said to Vera. “But no one has forgotten Guinevere in our time. You won’t be ignored or dismissed there. It’s where you belong.” He tugged the chain of his pocket watch, lifting it from his pocket to peek at its face. “The voyage is possible until sundown. We have an hour and thirty-four minutes.” He picked up a satchel from the floor next to his seat and passed it to Vera. “You’ll want to change into this before we go.”

She opened it and peered inside. All she could see was green fabric. A dress, she presumed.

An hour and a half wasn’t nearly enough time to prepare, let alone say goodbye to her parents.

Shit.

Vera craned her neck to get a glimpse of the door as if looking would make her father materialize. Martin was in hospital in London for two more days. She’d been planning to leave first thing in the morning to sit with him during his treatment.

It was a three-hour drive.

“Fuck.” Vera dropped her head into her hands. Tears blurred her eyes.

“I’ll try to ring your father so you can at least …” Allison trailed off.

Vera nodded. “You could have given me more than an hour’s warning, you know,” she said, reserving some fury for both Merlin and her mother. “And just to be totally clear, this … king who she’s—who I’m married to, it’s …?”

“King Arthur. Yes.”

“Right.” Vera scooted her chair out and held the bag up in place of a wave. “I guess I’m going to go change.”

She threw the shoulder strap across her body. The well-worn, soft leather bag bounced on her leg as she climbed the stairs to her apartment. How was this real?

She upended the bag over her bed and shook it until a rolled-up dress dropped out with a pair of leather slippers flopping down on top of it. It was a mercifully simple garment. She didn’t realize until after pulling the dress over her head that she’d kept her underwear and bra on.

“Fuck it.” Her first act of rebellion would be transporting elastic contraband into the Middle Ages.

The irony of Vera’s distaste for Arthurian lore made her feel sick as she glanced at her bookshelf, already knowing she didn’t own a single iteration of the story. She mentally flipped through what little she knew about the legend: Arthur was the king’s illegitimate son, identified by Excalibur to take the throne. There were the knights of the round table, including Lancelot, who had an affair with Guinevere in almost every account she could recall. That part unnerved her. A quest for the Holy Grail—or had that only been in Monty Python? She did like that version … And a strange name jumped to the front of her thoughts: Mordred. He was the villain, the one who killed Arthur.

Vera sighed, remembering Merlin’s off-hand comment about how much history had gotten wrong. She focused instead on the gown, shifting it to sit correctly on her body. It was pretty, stretching down to the tops of her feet and a deep, forest-green color, with golden trim and embellishments along her waist that came to a triangular point below her navel. Vera smoothed the torso down and noticed a small tear on the hem of her sleeve. This gown wasn’t new. Someone had worn it, though it fit perfectly along the curves of her body and was precisely the right length. She realized with a start that the person who’d worn it before was, in fact, her.

This was the very same dress from the vision in Merlin’s hand. It wasn’t entirely uncomfortable, either; no corset or boning, but there was some lacing in the back. Vera awkwardly stretched to reach around with one arm and managed to secure it enough. She turned and stared at herself in the mirror.

It was a funny thing, dressing in some ancient gown. She willed herself to laugh but stared at an expression uncannily similar to the version of herself in Merlin’s vision.

Vera grabbed her phone and earbuds from the trousers she’d changed out of. It crossed her mind to bring them with her. It wouldn’t work for contact, but she’d miss the comfort of music in her ears. She tapped the screen to see her battery was at 16 percent. Typical for the end of the day, but not worth trying to sneak the electronics past Merlin when she’d have no way of charging them. She sighed and set them and her keys on her desk next to her laptop before taking a pen and sticky note and writing down all the relevant passwords she could remember.

Vera wanted to bring something of her life with her, though. She scanned the room, and her eyes landed on a framed picture of her and her parents. Martin had put it on her shelves the day he’d assembled them for her. She popped the back off the frame, took the photograph, and tucked it into the leather bag. It was the only printed picture in the room. She’d gotten rid of her photos of Vincent on a day when she’d felt the pain of seeing them might kill her. Now, she was furious with herself for it. The anger sent roots of rebellion rushing through her as she eyed the otherwise empty satchel and made a beeline for the top drawer of her dresser. She grabbed underwear, two sports bras, and a few pairs of socks, confident the Dark Age counterparts would be woefully insufficient.

That was it. She straightened the throw pillow on her bed, replaced a book on her shelf, and put away the coffee cup from her dish drying rack. There was a hamper half-filled with dirty laundry, but that would have to be left to Allison. Vera grabbed her trainers from by the door and went to put them in the closet but stopped halfway there. Surely Merlin wouldn’t allow it, but … these were fairly new shoes.

She shoved the trainers in the bag, too.

Vera switched off the light and closed the door without bothering to lock it.

She could hear the din of patrons beginning to gather in the pub before she reached the bottom of the stairs. Allison and Merlin were no longer at the table. They’d moved to the hallway right near the entrance, but Vera took a last look at the bar where she’d grown up anyway. It was jarring to watch people ordering a steak pie or having a pint when her whole existence had just been upended.

“Vera!”

She nearly jumped at Allison’s voice. Vera hoisted the bag on her shoulder and went back to the hall. Allison had her phone pressed to her face. She held it away from her lips to say, “I’ve got your father!” and resumed her focus on the phone. “There’s no time for that. They are walking out the door, Martin.”

Vera could imagine her father on the other end, arguing against her departure. She took the phone and turned away for some semblance of privacy. “Dad?”

“Hey, love.” Martin’s voice, which used to be so quick to a joke and among the loudest in a room, was soft and somber. Vera didn’t want to guess whether that was sadness or sickness. Both options wrenched her heart. “I’m so sorry I’m not there with you. You’ve—”

He stopped speaking. She knew he was crying. She couldn’t stop the lump rising in her throat either.

“It’s all right, Dad. I’m—”

“Vera, love, you’re going to be okay. Just … be who you are. You’re exactly who they need you to be.”

They needed Guinevere. And that wasn’t her, but the notion that fulfilling Guinevere’s purpose might free Vera had already taken root. She didn’t know how to explain that to Martin, who’d been even more alarmed than Allison by her recent shift in demeanor.

“If I can help them,” she said, hoping against hope that he’d understand, “I can come home and help you finish your treatments. I’ll be better. I’ll have really done something that matters.”

“You matter,” Martin said emphatically. “Do you hear me?”

Vera didn’t answer. He was a good dad. Of course he’d say that. She hastily wiped the tears from her cheeks, sniffing as she tried to keep her breaths from devolving into sobs. This was too much. “Okay,” she said after a second. “I need to go, Dad.”

“I know, sweetie.” His voice was muffled.

Vera could imagine him in his hospital room, half seated in the reclined bed. She knew that his face was in his hand, that he was barely keeping it together. And the truth was, she probably could have taken a few more minutes to talk, but no number of stolen goodbyes would be enough. She couldn’t take any more of it without collapsing in on herself.

“I love you so much,” he said.

Vera’s legs wobbled beneath her.

“I love you, too,” she said, feeling foolish because there was no way to adequately say it. She leaned back against the wall and slid to the floor. “Thank you for being a ridiculous and weird and wonderful dad.” She heard his chuckle, which was mingled with a sob. “I’ll—you’ll hardly know I was gone. I’ll be back and—”

“It’s okay. We’ll talk soon, all right?”

“Yeah.” She crushed her eyes closed. “Bye, Dad.”

And Vera ended the call without waiting for him to answer. She could not stand. Every part of her trembled. She took one deep, shaking breath, focusing on facts: reality had changed. She had to go.

She took a second breath, and it was steadier than the first. Vera let Martin and Allison slip to the back of her mind. She focused on the next thing. She needed to walk out of this building. Her final deep breath filled her lungs without a hitch, and she exhaled a sigh before she stood up.

“I’m fine,” she told herself out loud. Her body seemed to believe her and carried her back to Merlin and Allison. She gave Allison the phone. “Mine’s upstairs. And I left my passwords and keys there for you.”

Tears streamed down Allison’s cheeks as she grabbed Merlin by both elbows and stared him squarely in the face. “You keep her safe.”

He nodded, patting her arm. “I will. I promise.”

Allison released him to pull Vera into a tight hug. “I love you,” she said into Vera’s hair.

“I love you, too. So much. So, so much,” Vera said. She disentangled herself from Allison’s arms. There was no room for a breakdown. She had to be okay right now. “Goodbye, Mum.”

Allison bravely tried to stifle the sob that escaped from her throat.

Merlin held the door open for Vera. She took one final look at her mum, who reached out like she was about to grab her and pull her back. There would be no storybook ending to this moment.

Vera turned on her heel, walked out the door, and did not stop.